The Grave (9 page)

Bobbing and rolling the sodden tarpaulin bundle sailed
through the night.  The cord Samuel had used to secure the ends began to
unravel and the plastic sheet flapped against the wavelets.

It was noticed on the journey three times even though the
night was black and it rained on, easier now but still torrential. 

A farmer driving his beasts from the inundated fields flashed
a torch beam over the banks and the running water.  He was seeking stranded
cattle and the passing shadow hardly registered, it wasn’t his concern, his
threatened herd filled his mind.

A policeman standing watch on an ancient bridge noted the
thing as it snagged on the substructure drawing his gaze.  At another time he
would have climbed down, poked and pulled at the strange flotsam but tonight
the passing vehicles, driving too fast for the conditions, flinging spray into
the air and hurling yet more water at the buildings at risk of flooding were
his concern and so he turned away consigning the thing to the storm and the
night.

An old tramp down on the harbour side saw it drift through,
by now the tarpaulin was mostly unwound.  Phil’s left arm had emerged to flop
and slap, a useless stroke taking him nowhere.  One leg gleamed intermittently when
the roll turned him in the black water, pitching in the increased flow as the muddied,
rubbish strewn river met with the waves crashing and beating against the sea
wall. His brain tried to make sense of the messages his eyes sent but too many
years at the end of a bottle and the need to find shelter overwhelmed any
interest in the mystery and he turned away and scurried along the flooding
streets. 

Phil sailed onwards, his corpse bloated with gases of
putrefaction, out along the seafront, pushed by the dying force of the river into
the crashing waves.  He washed back and forth for a while, hurled against the
harbour wall, free now totally of the covering, arms and legs flailing, his
head lolling loosely on the ruined neck and so out with the tide, out through
the Bristol Channel and further into St George’s Channel until, days later, decayed,
pecked by sea birds and nudged and nibbled by fish the remains sank to the
peace of a watery grave joining the thousands of others, heroes and villains,
who slumber forever in the depths.  

He was missed briefly by his friends and even more
fleetingly by the girls he had run.  Benny found the car, parked in the street
outside his mother’s house, the key hidden under the carpet.  He took it for safekeeping;
it was after all in better condition than his own.  They asked around in the
clubs and bars but no-one had seen him.  They called on his mum but she had
nothing she could tell them, his room was undisturbed, his phone was missing,
she didn’t know if he was coming back. 

Occupied as she was with a new boyfriend and speculation
that the shop where she worked was at risk of closure she had no room for
concern regarding the eldest of her six children.  He had gone bad and she felt
his continued presence in her house to be an imposition and a risk.  He was
always at the edge of the law and she didn’t need the police calling or his
unpleasant, untrustworthy friends visiting.  She told them he had gone, she
didn’t know where and didn’t care. 

So, there followed a few weeks of rumours, he had entered
the witness protection programme or had moved to the north with Sylvie who was
also missing.  There was a report saying he had gone to London to join a gang
there, had been seen running with a mob in the Capital. 

In truth no-one missed him, no-one wanted to speak to the
police and so Benny and Jake shared his stash of drugs, divided up the girls,
and their dark and dirty world washed its hands of yet another piece of
filth.  

Ironically the storm had taken away the need to run but,
long before Phil settled to the sea bottom, Samuel and Sylvie’s life had taken
unforeseen roads and unlikely directions.

Samuel swung into the car park at the motorway services; he
lowered his forehead to rest on his hands where they lay on the steering wheel
and let go a huge sigh before turning to her. 

“Let’s get some coffee.”

They climbed down and hurried into the glaring brightness of
the cafés and outlet shops, Samuel hauling the heavy holdall in his left hand. 

The shock of normality, after the desperation and darkness of
just a short while ago left them disoriented and they reached for each other,
walking through the bright spaces hand in hand. 

In the toilets Sylvie stared at her reflection under the
unforgiving lights.  She looked the same as always, slightly bedraggled from
the wind and rain of the car park and she acknowledged the dark smudges under
her eyes, but really she appeared unchanged.  How could this be, her life had
often been a struggle and it was easy to remember times of turmoil, when her
dad was in jail and her mother drinking but this now, murder, flight and real panic
it seemed impossible these things weren’t drawn on her face. 

She laid her hands flat on the Formica counter and braced
her arms.  Closing her eyes she took in some deep breaths. 

“Are you alright love?”  The gentle hand on her shoulder
drew a squeal and jerk of shock. 

“Oh sorry, sorry pet, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“No, no it’s okay, I’m okay, thanks.  Yes, I’m fine
thanks.” 

The short dumpy woman smiled out from her simple,
straightforward world as she reached over and patted at Sylvie’s arm gently. 

“You take care now love.  Bye bye.”

“Yes, thanks.  Bye.”

Take care.  She had tried, hadn’t she?  She had broken away
from the destruction of her home life, true she had fallen in with Phil but she
had tried to make something silk from the sow’s ear of her life but maybe, for
some people there was no way to take care.  In spite of every effort her life
was to be cruel and harsh.  She was swept with sadness, all she had ever wanted
was peace and if possible a little happiness, was it too much to hope for?  Eyes
smarting with unshed tears, shoulders slumped she drew away from the mirror and
made her way back out to the hubbub and Samuel. 

He was waiting by a clothes shop, flicking through the
fleece tops, idling.  She saw though how he had positioned himself to keep a
view of the main door reflected in the windows and though his hands rattled the
hangers, sliding tops along the rail, his eyes were roaming back and forth
around the whole space and then flicking to the window, monitoring continually. 
She watched him, how had she become involved with all of this and even more how
had she let herself care, because she knew now that she did care and her heart
went out to him, sensing Samuel too needed peace and that his soul was tired. 

She coughed before reaching out, he was wound tight and she
didn’t want to startle him, but he’d already seen her and smiled down as he
turned and took her hand.

“Come on Sylvie, time for coffee and conversation I think.” 

The tall cardboard beakers steamed gently on the table and
they had both wrapped their fingers around the heat.  Neither had raised the
cups to drink.  She looked into his face, tried to read the expression but the
eyes were blank, closed off.  It was as if he had gone inside himself searching
for the way to begin.  She wanted to help him.

“Was she your wife, Marie?” 

He shook his head, sharp and dismissive.

“We were going to get married, after the baby.  She wanted a
nice wedding, a big dress, flowers, so we were waiting.  She was my life.  All
I ever needed was wrapped up in her.”

“You were in the army, are you still?  Is that what this is
about, have you run away?” 

He laughed now but reached for her hand, wanting to let her
know he wasn’t laughing at her.

“No, I came out, they let me go.

“I joined the army from school pretty much, it was all I
wanted to do and I loved it.  Then I met Marie and I didn’t love it quite so
much because it took me away from her.  She was patient and kind and said she was
happy for me to stay and have my career and we’d find a way to make it work. 
We did, for a while we did. 

“I grew up in the house, where we just were.  It was Mum and
Dad’s place, they had it from new and then when they died I took it over.  He
worked for the National Park and Mum was a receptionist at the doctors, but
they died within a couple of years of each other.  It was okay really, sad, you
know for me, but they were old when I was born and they had good lives.  I kept
the house on because it had always been a happy place and it was somewhere
solid and secure.  Marie was a teacher and she got work in the school, just
part time but she did other stuff, exam marking, a bit of extra tuition, it all
worked well and she loved it there as much as I always had. 

“Anyway, I was posted to Afghanistan.  The first tour was
hard on us but we got through it and then the baby happened, not really planned
but we loved the idea.”

By now his eyes had filled with tears which he needed to
brush from his cheeks with the back of a hand.  The other hand was gripping
Sylvie’s as if it was a life line, the only thing that saved him from being
swept away by the grief she saw in every line of his face.

“People here wonder why we’re fighting there, well I
wondered as well. Most of the time you're with people who either don't want us
there or just want whatever they can get from us. They neither know nor care
whether we're American or British or any of the others, they just want dollars
and favours or they want us gone.

You can’t tell who is the enemy, you talk to an old man and
his son one day and they smile at you and then the next day the son is shooting
at you from behind some crappy half built house. It’s hard and uncomfortable
and soul destroying. Blokes commit suicide, lose limbs, are blown to
smithereens, go mental. So, you ask why are we here and they tell you it’s to
keep the UK safe. To stop the drugs trade and to fight terrorism. You make
yourself believe it because if you don’t then all the lads who have died and
all the endless hours sitting on some bloody sand dune staring into nothing,
too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, all of it is for nothing unless
you believe”

He paused, stared around the place as though surprised to
find himself there, in a service station in the rain. His eyes swung downwards,
to glare into the coffee.

“So, Marie went with her mum to London, to buy some stuff
for the baby, just a day out for fun.”

He stopped speaking and blinked rapidly, swallowed hard and
then tried a couple of times to carry on, his throat working, tension evident
in every inch of his body. He coughed

“She was hit by a car, they both were.  They were killed
outright.  Three generations wiped off the face of the earth in an instant.”

Sylvie was crying openly now, her hand covered her mouth but
her eyes never left his face. 

“The car was driven by a drug dealer, chased by the police
and it didn’t stop.  The police had to because of Marie and her mum and my
baby, my poor little baby who didn’t even have the chance to be born, and the
scum got away.

So, there I was stuck in the arsehole of the world fighting
to make the UK safe and the only thing I cared about, the only two things I had
to love were wiped out by some scumbag dealing drugs.  Where’s the sense in
that eh, where’s the justice.  How did I keep them safe?”

He looked at her now, deep into her eyes, though he must
have known she had no answers for him, he had no answers for himself.  He shook
his head and grabbed the coffee cup and gulped the cooling drink.  It was a
subterfuge, just to give himself time to carry on.  Now he had started he was
determined she would know it all.

Sylvie could think of nothing to say to him, this raw pain
was too much to deal with and so she simply stroked the back of his hand and
waited until he was ready.

“The army let me go, on compassionate grounds.  I was no
good to them, no good to anyone for a long time and so I drifted.  I couldn’t
go back to the house, I didn’t have any other place and so I dossed with some
mates here and there, slept at homeless shelters, whatever suited me at the
time. 

“Slowly I came back, from the worst of it, but the world
didn’t make sense any more.  I didn’t know what to do, how to get back on
track.  Anyway, then one day, down in London, I saw a young lad being beaten
up. It was one of those things, three on one, he was on the floor and I just
jumped in.  I know I was out of control, I was vicious, brutal.  I suppose
there was some pent-up fury, whatever.  I just remember it felt good to be hurting
someone, I know that’s awful but right then it felt better than anything had
for months.”

He reached across now with his other hand and took her slim
one in both of his.

“I was out of control, totally.  In the end they ran off and
I helped the kid up.  Turns out he was a runner for a drug gang and the scum I
had just beaten up were from another crew, oh shit it was just the same garbage
that goes on all over the place.  It sickened me, this was the world that had
killed Marie and the baby and Marie’s mum.  It was rotten, stinking and then I
saw what I could do.

“The army had taught me a lot of things, most of all they
had taught me how to fight.”

He paused, raised his head and looked into her eyes.  Do you
want to know this stuff Sylvie?  It’s not nice, are you okay with this?” 

She nodded and managed to smile at him.

“Okay, well I went on a bit of a vigilante spree.  I roamed
the streets, I hurt some people.  Some of them were injured really badly, I
don’t know if they all recovered.  I didn’t care much.  I slept at hostels and
in squats, I was invisible and at night I went out and hurt people.  It was
animal, inhuman, I thought I was doing a good thing, revenge, getting even and
so on, but really I think I was just living on hate and it was eating me up. 

“After a while a mob down there approached me, they knew
what I’d been doing; they wanted me to work with them.  Can you imagine?  After
what had happened they actually thought I could become one of them.

“I played along, made the right noises, finessed them, used
the skills I had learned courtesy of Her Majesty’s armed forces.  I got in with
the movers and shakers, right up to the top.  They were stupid, really just
thuggish idiots but I played their game.

“Sylvie, I know you looked in the bag.”  He raised his hand
as she opened her mouth to speak, staying the lie that had leapt to her lips.

“It’s okay, really.  It’s what I would have done.  I do
understand.  It’s dirty money Sylvie, it’s taken from the people who tried to
recruit me.  I left them all in a burning building, I don’t know how many
survived, I honestly don’t care.  But, they do they care very much and since
then I have been moving, running.  I thought, in the woods, the shack, I was
safe for a while but it couldn’t last.  They’ll get me in the end I know, I’ve
accepted it, but not you, this isn’t your world, not your problem, you have to
get away.  They’ve found me again, I managed to get away yesterday.  Somebody
must have seen us at the house, whatever, it doesn’t really matter.  I know
it’s only a question of time, they won’t give up.  Each time I escape it’s just
avoiding the inevitable.   

“I’m tired of it; to be honest I’m not sure I really have
the heart to run anymore.  Part of me just wants it to be over, I won’t give up
without a fight but really I just want it done. But you, you have to be safe
Sylvie, I don’t want what I’ve done to hurt you.” 

“Samuel, go to the police.  Can’t you tell them, give them
the money, they have protection things don’t they, you could have a new
identity, go abroad, anything.”

“Oh Sylvie you don’t know though, you have no idea the
things I’ve done, the people I’ve hurt, probably killed, no it’s all gone too
far.” 

She saw him switch off.  He was drained by the confession,
by reliving the horrors and the guilt.  They sat hand in hand for long minutes
as the world swirled around them, together in their loneliness, knowing they
were probably lost to each other already.

She whispered now, as her hand curled in his and the tears
began to dry on her cheeks.

“What should we do now then, where will we go Samuel?  Can I
stay with you, for a while at least?  I’m not scared you know, I can help you,
maybe we can get away, go to America.  You have all the money.  Don’t give up. 
Samuel, I think I love you.  I know you can’t feel the same, you have Marie and
the baby in your heart and there’s no room left for me and I don’t expect you
to but can we be together, just for a while?”

When he raised his face there was such sadness there that
she couldn’t bear to look at him.  She turned away.

“Samuel, there are some men by the car.  Oh God, is it them,
shit.”

He leapt up dragging her with him.