Dispossession (34 page)

She stood back against the passage wall; I squeezed past and
Suzie followed me, her fingers hooked into a belt-loop on my jeans, here where
there was no space for holding hands. I didn’t know if Carol noticed, or if it
was done for Carol to notice, or if it was a genuinely nervous need to cling.
All I hoped was that she wouldn’t be difficult, that neither of them would get
in the way. Managing Luke was never easy, even one-to-one and without
distractions. I was starting to feel nervous myself, only now starting to
wonder what the hell he was actually doing here, why in the world he would have
come.

Only once before had I ever seen Luke in a city, the time I’d
brought him to this house. He’d asked me to do it and I’d done it, though only
because I was sure Carol would be away till he was gone. No consequences for me
or for her, or not directly. The consequences for others had been appalling.
Not my fault, not my responsibility,
not
mine to carry; but with me still none the less, and I had forebodings,
premonitions that this time would be no better and very possibly worse.

And I felt Suzie’s puzzled little tug as I walked past the
doorway into what should be, what would be to her, what
architecturally-speaking undoubtedly was the front room; and I ignored it, and
pushed open the door ahead.

And God in heaven yes, there was Luke; but this was Luke as
I had never seen him even on that other city trip, this was Luke all but shed
of his skin. What lay beneath, his older and greater aspect burned through him,
and he was wickedly hard to look upon.

Is it self-defence, I wonder, is it just a mental game of
duck-and-cover when you come upon something momentous and your thoughts flick
into a kind of random relevance, an oh-that-reminds-me mode?

I stood there with Luke filling my sight in his ice and
steel rage, and what I thought was that this was the first time ever I’d come
to him and there had not been water rising to the boil.

Nor did he say, “I’ve been expecting you,” or anything like
it. But of course we both knew that, he’d sent for me; and that was another
first, though it was also the first time he’d had the means. Luke didn’t use
phones.

Ordinarily, he didn’t use phones by proxy either; ordinarily
he didn’t have the need. Today transparently was not ordinary, and I was not
nervous any longer. I was deep-down, dark shit scared.

I thought he didn’t need the hiss and steam of water on a
fire to greet me. I thought I could hear the hiss of blood or ichor or whatever
it was that he had in his veins, ice turned liquid, perhaps, bitter and
scalding. I thought I could see steam about his body, where ordinary mortal air
met the reality of him and was burned or frozen or otherwise cruelly changed.

He was wearing white, which was new also, a change from his
usual dull earth-colours: white jeans and trainers and a torn white T-shirt,
and maybe there was meant to be a message in that, maybe he was robed in light
as near as he could make it. But there was mud on the carpet where he had
walked, mud cracked and drying on his trainers, mud and other stuff on his
jeans, darker stains I didn’t want to wonder about.

Suzie’s hand had clenched itself tight around my belt; I
could feel her breath on my neck, as she peered at him over my shoulder.
Standing on tiptoe she must have been, to do that.

And me, I was reaching behind to detach her hand almost
without thinking about it, to put my palm against her belly and press her
gently backwards and away from danger even as I said, “Luke, what is it, what’s
up? What are you doing here?”

“I want you,” he said, and his voice was hard like a rain is
hard in the falling.

“Yes,” I said, “but for what?”

“You have to show me Arlen Bank,” he said, meaning
you have to take me there
. And his timing was
beautiful, because this time yesterday I couldn’t have done it, but now I could
count the turnings in my head, I could pick it out on any map that marked it.
Though maps were no use to Luke, of course, which was why he wanted me.

Arlen Bank was Vernon Deverill’s house, where I’d had lunch
and sparred with him and Mrs Tuck, and then watched something halfway to murder
done on a girl whose name I didn’t know.

Luke would know her name. She was on his list of visitors,
of comrades in the struggle. By now, I thought, a day on—a day late—he would
likely know what had happened to her. Which would likely be why he was here now
and raging like ice on fire, and wanting to put himself on the list of Mr
Deverill’s visitors. Avenging angel was this face he wore; and oh, I was torn.

For her sake and for my own soul’s ease, I wanted to be the
most help I could to Luke today. It came too late, but not he alone was
interested in vengeance.

I’d been here before, though, or close enough. Years ago, I
had brought him to this house because he could find nothing on his own, and
then I’d watched him go off with others on a mission of light; and the results
of that haunted me as though my guilt were greatest. I wouldn’t willingly see
even Deverill exposed to the kind of damage that had been done that day, so how
could I bring him Luke?

“How is she?” I asked, sure that he’d know who I meant and
hopeful that his answer might give me some kind of clue, which way to jump. She’d
been hurt past bearing, or past what I could bear; but she was tough inside,
she’d have to be to survive the life she’d chosen. Maybe if he said she was
okay, recovering, coming through, maybe then I could stand up to him and say
no. First time in my life that would be, but there’s a first time for
everything.

“She’s dead,” he said.

Just that, two brief words and everything turned again.
Gravity sucked harder, the poles shifted, not my world any more and I was dizzy
with it. Not the wall that grabbed me, though, and stopped me sliding; that was
Suzie, her arms tight about me and her body hard against mine, holding me up,
keeping me here when my mind wanted to spin into a place where no light came.

“Who? What’s he talking about, who’s dead? Jonty, what
gives
with you two?”

Nothing much gave with us, in all honesty, and we gave
little back; but this she was entitled to. Besides, I had a ghost to requite,
and she was nearest.

“This girl I saw them working over yesterday, at Deverill’s.
They said they’d let her go...” But they hadn’t, they’d worked her over and
then killed her, regardless of Dean’s intentions; unless he’d simply misjudged
her strength and tagged her as tougher than she was. That could have been it,
maybe she died under his ministrations without his intending her to.

But Luke was here, and they wouldn’t have taken her all that
way just to lose a body. So, “Where?” I demanded.

“Leavenhall.”

And that made it worse, the worst possible, that meant they
must have done everything that Dean intended and then killed her anyway. Or
simply let her die, but that was the same thing. Her blood on their hands and
very much on mine, her life I’d let slip through my fingers because I’d trusted
my buddy, my lifesaving friend Dean to be cruel but true. I’d done what was
easier, and so a girl was dead; and now I too was blazingly, killingly angry,
and against Deverill because again that was easier than being killingly angry
against myself.

“I’ll take you to Arlen Bank,” I said. “Let’s go.”

And tried to walk, and couldn’t: not because my legs wouldn’t
carry me, fury was a great stiffener of weak joints, but because Suzie was
still holding hard, holding me still.

“Why don’t you just give him directions, Jonty?”
Or better yet have nothing to do with it
, her
eyes were saying, but she didn’t bother to put that into words. No one, not
even Carol suggested the police.

“Directions?” I repeated vaguely, my mind slow to absorb and
slower to find a response, clumsy suddenly with words. “Luke doesn’t know his
left from his right.”

“I’m
serious
. I don’t
want you going with him, whatever’s happened. I don’t want you getting
involved.”

“So am I serious,” I said. “He can’t tell left from right,
he can’t read maps, he can’t read anything at all. His mind doesn’t work that
way. It’s no good just telling him, he has to be taken places. And I am
involved. I said, I was there, I saw what they were doing; and now she’s dead,”
and how much more involved could you possibly be?

“Okay,” Suzie said then, “but I’m coming too. You’re not going
off on your own. I’ll drive.”

“No.” That was Luke, not me; and it wasn’t her he was saying
no to, it was the driving. The being driven.

“He doesn’t go in cars,” I explained, oddly anxious that she
shouldn’t take offence. “Not if he can help it. Or in buses or trains or any
kind of transport.”

“How the hell did he get here, then?” Carol demanded, in a
mutter from behind us. “It’s a long bloody walk from the Lakes.”

And he couldn’t have set off before yesterday evening, at
the earliest: time enough for Dean and whoever else to finish with the girl at
Arlen Bank, put her back in the van and drive fifty-odd miles to Leavenhall,
put her through her paces there and then kill her. And that last they would
have done in private, in the dark most likely; and then someone would have to
find the body, however casual they’d been about disposal... No, chances were he
hadn’t left till midnight at the earliest.

But yes, he’d have walked it. Or run if he’d felt that he
had to, if there was that much urgency on him. Luke hates to fly.

I shrugged, unwilling to put all or any of that into words.
But Suzie seemed to have been reading my thoughts on my face. She glanced once
at the mud on Luke’s jeans and on his trainers, and grunted; then she looked
down at her own feet, and sighed.

Soft black desert boots, lacing to the ankles: eminently
practical, no excuse at all. And if she let me go alone, off to adventures
unknown without her, she’d be forsworn. My turn now, to be reading her secrets
on her face; she wasn’t going to let that happen.

“Let’s go,” she said, as I had said before her; which left
me nothing to say but goodbye to Carol.

And “I’m sorry,” I managed that too, as Luke pushed past her
on his way to the door. And it wasn’t for the rudeness of my asocial friend
that I was apologising, or not that alone; nor only for that and for the
greater intrusion, a part of my life thrusting once more and very much
uninvited into hers. So much I had to say sorry for, to a woman who’d refused
to listen. At least she seemed to be listening now. At any rate she nodded
slightly, a gesture of thanks or acceptance or at least something less than the
contemptuous rage of our last meeting. That was the best she could manage,
beyond following us down the passage to be sure the door was closed good and
hard behind us. For now, I thought it was enough.

o0o

Out in the street, both Luke and Suzie stood waiting for me
to point the way. Luckily, we didn’t have to go by the main roads. There was a
back path, past some allotments and through a tunnel under a railway
embankment, that would take us out of town and roughly in the right direction.
Luke must have come here along the A-roads, the way that I had brought him, the
only way that he would know; I didn’t fancy such a walk myself. Leading Luke
through a crowd, or on roads with heavy traffic, sounded to me like a
definition of a slow walk through hell.

Down to the dead end of the street, then, and here was the
footpath; and talking of hell, here also was Shaitan the cat, sitting black and
neat and erect in a tussock of grass. Shaitan my cat, Carol’s cat, it just
depended what perspective you took, how you cut it. Obviously Carol had
custody; and with so much else gone from my life, so many other and greater
losses, I’d hardly given him a thought. But I was glad to see him now, even in
passing. I crouched down and held my hand out to him and sucked air gently
through my teeth, making the little chirruping sounds he always came to.

And he arched his back and hissed, and all his fur was
standing up as if he were only a cartoon cat and nothing real; and not I his
eyes were fixed on as one paw felt for safer earth behind him, as he backed
slowly along the fence. Not I but Luke, of course Luke, though I felt bitterly
to blame because I had brought Luke here.

Luke stood stock-still, as Suzie did behind him; only
Shaitan was moving, creeping blindly backwards until a fractional gap under the
fence gave him a hole he could squirm through. Then he was away, sprinting
through the cabbages, terror clothed in flesh. That was much as Carol had
reacted, much as most people and all animals did. Off her own territory, I
thought, not in her own house Carol also would have run, or at least got the
hell away from Luke as fast as she could manage.

For a fraction, it seemed to me that Luke looked utterly
bereft, standing there watching where the cat had fled from him. And I thought
perhaps that was why he loved trees so much, because they didn’t run, because
they couldn’t.

Then I reminded myself that this was anthropomorphism at its
stupidest, trying to ascribe normal human emotions to Luke. After all, I’d
never run from him, I was one of the few who felt his magnetism the other way,
who felt drawn and not repulsed; and not for years had I made the mistake of
ever thinking that Luke loved me.

And indeed Luke stalked on now along the path ahead of us,
and there was only bright anger in his face and in his carriage, reminding me
what he was here for: that a girl had died, was dead, and she also had been one
of his few, his crazy few, his band of siblings. She more so than me, even: I
might have been there first, but I’d never been one with the tree-lovers, I
couldn’t work up the passion. And Luke I guessed was here for justice or
vengeance or whatever he wanted to call it, to call that crime home to its
originator; and I’d give him all the help he needed in that good cause, and
maybe he did love us after all, or why would he be so passionate about this?