Then his mouth was wide and he was yelling: ‘Kevin! Kevin! Help me!’
The slashes were less and less accurate as Slape lost control of himself, tears, snot and sweat sliming his face as he stumbled towards his intended victim.
Redman chose his moment, and delivered a crippling blow to Slape’s knee, the weak leg, he guessed. He guessed correctly.
Slape screamed, and staggered back, reeling
round and hitting the wall face on. Redman followed through, pressing Slape’s back. Too late, he realized what he’d done. Slape’s body relaxed as his knife hand, crushed between wall and body, slid out, bloody and weapon less. Slape exhaled death-air, and collapsed heavily against the wall, driving the knife still deeper into his own gut. He was dead before he touched the ground.
Redman turned him over. He’d never become used to the suddenness of death. To be gone so quickly, like the image on the television screen. Switched off and blank. No message.
The utter silence of the corridors became overwhelming as he walked back towards the vestibule. The cut on his stomach was not significant, and the blood had made its own scabby bandage of his shirt, knitting cotton to flesh and sealing the wound. It scarcely hurt at all. But the cut was the least of his problems: he had mysteries to unravel now, and he felt unable to face them. The used, exhausted atmosphere of the place made him feel, in his turn, used and exhausted. There was no health to be had here, no goodness, no reason.
He believed, suddenly, in ghosts.
In the vestibule there was a light burning, a bare bulb suspended over the dead space. By it, he read Lacey’s crumpled letter. The smudged words on the paper were like matches set to the tinder of his panic.
Mama,
They fed me to the pig. Don’t believe them if they said I never loved you, or if they said I ran away. I never did. They fed me to the pig. I love you.
Tommy.
He pocketed the letter and began to run out of the building and across the field. It was well dark now: a deep, starless
dark, and the air was muggy. Even in daylight he wasn’t sure of the route to the farm; it was worse by night. He was very soon lost, somewhere between the playing-field and the trees. It was too far to see the outline of the main building behind him, and the trees ahead all looked alike.
The night-air was foul; no wind to freshen tired limbs. It was as still outside as inside, as though the whole world had become an interior: a suffocating room bounded by a painted ceiling of cloud.
He stood in the dark, the blood thumping in his head, and tried to orient himself.
To his left, where he had guessed the out-houses to be, a light glimmered. Clearly he was completely mistaken about his position. The light was at the sty. It threw the ramshackle chicken run into silhouette as he stared at it.
There were figures there, several; standing as if watching a spectacle he couldn’t yet see.
He started towards the sty, not knowing what he would do once he reached it. If they were all armed like Slape, and shared his murderous intentions, then that would be the end of him. The thought didn’t worry him. Somehow tonight to get off of this closed-down world was an attractive option. Down and out.
And there was Lacey. There’d been a moment of doubt, after speaking to Leverthal, when he’d wondered why he cared so much about the boy. That accusation of special pleading, it had a certain truth to it. Was there something in him that wanted Thomas Lacey naked beside him? Wasn’t that the sub-text of Leverthal’s remark? Even now, running uncertainly towards the lights, all he could think of was the boy’s eyes, huge and demanding, looking deep into his.
Ahead there were figures in the night, wandering away from the farm. He could see them against the lights of the sty. Was it all over already? He made a long curve around
to the left of the buildings to avoid the spectators as they left the scene. They made no noise: there was no chatter or laughter amongst them. Like a congregation leaving a funeral they walked evenly in the dark, each apart from the other, heads bowed. It was eerie, to see these godless delinquents so subdued by reverence.