Pandaemonium (28 page)

‘Somebody’s got to go and help out our beleaguered deputy head. He must be like General Custer through there.’

‘Nah,’ Blake says. ‘Those kids are perfectly capable of getting pished and causing a riot without any help from us.’

Sendak gets to his feet also, perhaps prompted by the picture Kane just painted.

‘You guys chill,’ he says. ‘But you’ll understand if I got a vested interest in my place not getting razed to the ground.’

Blake looks to Heather, holding the door open for Sendak. She looks . . . Well, yes, that.
All
that, in fact, as the Americans say.

‘I think I’ll go too,’ Blake suggests, feeling strangely bereft as the door closes.

Kane loudly cracks the seal on another bottle of single malt and holds it up.

‘Come on, Con. Do the wrong thing.’

Blake glances at the door. He’d just be following on like a wee lap dog. What could he assist with that Guthrie, Sendak, Heather and Mrs McKenzie couldn’t handle? No. He’ll spell Guthrie later. He can have one drink. Needs to ask Kane something while he’s on his own anyway.

Kane pours him a measure, responding obediently to Blake’s cut-off gesture so that it isn’t too generous. ‘

‘Could be a taxing night,’ Blake explains, ‘and there is a balance to be struck between taking the edge off and becoming disinhibited. In charge of kids, I mean. Obviously.’

‘Yeah,’ Kane says, wearily enough to assure Blake he didn’t pick up on his stumbling elaboration. ‘One too many and there’s always the danger you’ll finally snap and end up beating Deso or Beansy to death with Rosemary Breslin’s guitar.’

Blake has a sip, the reassuring warmth of the alcohol counterbalancing his anxiety about the subject he is about to broach. He can’t even decide which aspect of it is unnerving him more: what he fears Kane might infer from it or what it’s telling him about himself. It’s all in how he couches it, though: if he plays it right, he can disguise his intent by making Kane think it’s just the usual.

‘Were you talking to Heather about me, by the way?’ he asks, making it sound like a casual curiosity.

‘When?’ Kane responds, sounding slightly defensive. That’s a yes, then.

‘We had kind of a weird conversation on the way back this afternoon. Sounded familiar, like somebody had been briefing her on my areas of theological vulnerability. You wouldn’t be using proxies on me now, would you?’

‘Now, if someone else has been worrying at the same chinks in your armour, you shouldn’t cry conspiracy. You’ll end up like those nutters you get on internet forums, who start to believe everyone who disagrees with them is a multiple alias of the same guy.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Blake asks.

‘What did you talk about?’ Kane parries.

Blake sighs. This was a mistake, inviting Kane on to him like this. What was it he wanted to know, anyway? Or did he simply want to hear that Heather had been asking about him?

‘She seemed to be under the impression that there were certain ambivalences about my faith. How do you reckon she could have reached such a conclusion?’

‘I would refer the gentleman to the answer I gave above, and add that this should be telling you something about you, not about me.’

‘Doesn’t it strike you as a coincidence that she should have independently pinpointed this as an area for discussion?’

‘Maybe you don’t hide certain things as well as you think you do, Con,’ Kane says. Blake tries to detect whether there’s layers to this, but Kane has always had a better poker face than his. ‘I didn’t put her up to anything. And if it was up to me, I’d have warned her off trying to pin you down on what you actually believe, but as for identifying an ambivalence about your faith, that doesn’t take a tip-off. It just takes five minutes’ discussion before you start equivocating.’

‘I’m not equivocal the way you like to portray it. There’s complexities that you prefer to interpret as conflicts.’

‘Well, faith versus evidence is a pretty big conflict in my book, and you’re pulled all over the place by it.’

Blake feels a measure of relief at the feel of familiar turf. At least one aspect of this has come off okay: Kane thinks it’s just the usual.

‘I’m not: that’s what you don’t get. Faith isn’t necessarily about ignoring the data and evidence, but about believing there’s something else beyond them. Scientists had to believe in something beyond the evidence of conventional Newtonian physics in order to develop quantum theory.’

‘But what is it you believe in, Con? We both know it’s not some Old Testament bearded guy in the sky, so you can’t hide behind that.’

‘My idea of God is something far too complex to give you a pop-quiz answer. It’s not even something that can necessarily be articulated in language.’

Kane sighs with exasperation, which was the effect Blake intended.

‘Jesus Christ. The theists say God is this being who created the world in seven days. We prove that’s rubbish, so they say “Well, God is actually something else.” Now He can’t even be defined in language? How far do you want to keep moving the goalposts?’

‘Perhaps that’s God’s way of helping us win the argument. We can move the goalposts while you’re anchored to the spot.’

‘Weighed down by hard reality? Come on, Con. What is it you’re hanging on to? I’ve heard you with the kids, telling them it’s all metaphors and symbolism or stories that grew in the telling. I
know
you don’t believe Jesus walked on water or fed the five thousand. Do you believe he raised Lazarus from the dead?’

‘This again. You know I don’t.’

Kane pauses. Blake sees what’s coming just a little too late.

‘So what about himself?’

Blake feels a little hunted, all of a sudden, and not just because of the corner he’s been backed into. The moment he saw it coming, he recalled a hundred such previous arguments played out, always diverting before this point, and realised Kane has always been holding this question back. He could have hit him with it at any time, but never did. Why is he taking the gloves off now?

‘Central tenet of your faith, Con. And it contradicts all the evidence, everything we know about medicine, about human—’

‘What are you trying to prove here, Stewart?’ he snaps back. ‘How long have we known each other? Do you think you’re suddenly going to change me? Why would you want to? I’m happy with who I am. I’m happy with what I do. I mean, what else is it that you think I want?’

At this point, the door opens and Heather walks back into the room, retrieving cash from her jacket for soft drinks.

Kane’s eyes meet Blake’s, answering every question that just passed between them.

Fires in the distance. Beacon fires. Music.

Souls.

Leaving aside the fact that this is just wrong, what’s most concerning her is the implications for her own plans. Dazza had been coming over very friendly earlier, making out that he and his pal Rocks would be interested in a dance and maybe a little more. Dazza usually went out with lassies much older than her, and though she knew he wasn’t looking for anything serious, it could well open a few doors for the future. He’d mentioned Theresa and Yvonne as possibilities for Rocks, but Gillian reckoned it was the ideal scenario for Debs to return to the fold. Unfortunately, she hasn’t found either Dazza or Debs yet, and Rocks appears to be out of the equation.

A gap forms in the crowd, three or four dancers moving simultaneously in the same direction, and she spies Marianne, dancing with Cameron. Good. If the Goth bitch is occupied (though Cameron must be fucking desperate), then she won’t be creeping around Debs.

Then there’s a change in the light, reds into blues, just as Marianne turns to her right and Gillian sees that she’s not Marianne.

Julie registers too, immediately grabbing Theresa and pointing it out. Theresa looks shocked; Julie’s just loving it.

Gillian feels like somebody stabbed her.

The cow. The fucking two-faced cow.

She remembers words spoken yesterday, as a joke.

If she comes out in the morning dressed in fishnets and her hair dyed jet black we need to stage an intervention before she starts to self-harm.

Too late for that: this
was
self-harm. Stupid bitch. What was this supposed to be: revenge? Well fuck her. She’d made her bed. No way back from here.

Caitlin, though? What’s the score there? Christ, now he remembers: yesterday on the bus, though it seems a week back now.

‘
. . . give it a year or two, and out of all the girls in our year, Caitlin could well be one of the ones you’d most want to be going out with . . . Lassie like that, folk never notice what’s there.
’

He was only speaking hypothetically. Daft bastard: it wasn’t meant as a matchmaking suggestion. But fair play to him, and maybe it reflected quite well on Dazza’s own judgment. Course, the most action Rocks is likely to get will be a slap in the dish for trying to feel her tits, but as long as he’s enjoying himself.

Seems like everybody’s enjoying themselves. Gillian’s face was tripping her a wee bit at first, but she’s perking up. Even Deputy Dan looks quite vibed. He’s standing to one side of the doors, arms folded but his head nodding a little to the beat. Dazza catches him looking across to Sendak, who’s on the other side of the entrance. The Sarge gives a calmly approving nod, also in time to the music, as if to say ‘everything is under control’.

Dazza’s attention is then drawn to the ridiculous sight of Deso dancing with Beansy, the two of them acting it as usual. Bastards have got a stash, he’s sure, but from the nick of them, he’s also sure they’ve already tanned part of it. They sidle up next to Julie and Yvonne and start doing some weird figure-of-eight thing that the girls are happy to go along with. Then Beansy moves behind Yvonne and does something to the back of her neck that causes her top to fall open. She dances for a moment without realising her bra is fully on display, then does a double-take and clocks Beansy laughing. She pops the top off her bottle of water and pours it over him. Mad bastard just stands there and takes it, dancing as she drenches him. Then he starts pulling his shirt off, still dancing, doing it like a strip, while folk gather round about him, clapping and shouting.

Yvonne cools her ire and manages a smile.

‘You’ve got bigger tits than me anyway.’

Belter, Dazza thinks. He turns to share it with the Big Man, but Kirk is gone.

Oh-oh.

He makes his way over to Rocks, offering wee Caitlin an apologetic smile for cutting in.

‘You seen Kirk anywhere?’

‘No,’ Rocks replies. ‘Did he come in here?’

Fuck.