Chapter 8
Colin had seen him too. He was a gangly derelict, sprawled on the dirt, half under the bridge amid his clutter, one leg sticking
out into the dusk. His clothes were piled on, a tattered olive coat over a moth-eaten cardigan over a stained T-shirt. The
T-shirt showed a black knight in a bucket helmet, with blood spouting from a severed arm. A slogan in Gothic print read, ’tis but a scratch. His worldly belongings were heaped in a rusting shopping cart. He even had a TV, flipped on. It was about the size of a
walkie-talkie and had an antenna like a walkie-talkie too. The picture was black-and-white and showed some young women in
thongs walking on a beach.
“You sure it’s him?” Colin whispered.
“Absolutely,” Arthur said, and then added, “He’s watching Love Island,” as if this was determinative in some way.
They started down and across the embankment, but as they angled their way toward the darkness beneath the bridge, some dirt
gave way, and Colin got his next surprise of the day. Colin put in a minimum of twenty-six miles a week on the treadmill and
attended private Pilates classes. He aspired to agility, to move fast and break things. But he slithered in the mud, doing
a comical soft-shoe to try and stay up, then went down anyway, wrenching his left knee and banging his hip. Arthur had to
grab him to keep him from sliding into the river. Colin leapt back to his feet but winced at the sharp stab of pain in the
knee. He was unused to being clumsy. His carbon-fiber hiking sneakers, with their deep-tread outsoles and Gore-Tex lining,
squeegeed right over the ground, while Arthur had on a pair of battered Timberlands that sank into the soft earth like concrete
blocks.
“You okay?” Arthur asked.
“Peachy, boss,” Colin said . . . but he wasn’t. He felt the knee with every step he took. He’d be limping soon. It was a bad
start.
Svangur had stringy blond hair to his shoulders, badly combed over a pink bald spot, a patchy yellow beard, chapped lips,
a cold sore at the corner of his mouth. He was like syphilis with a human face. His watery blue eyes drifted to them and away,
back to his TV.
“One’s black as an old dog shit, other’s slick as a moneylender,” he said to his TV, and chuckled to himself. “Slick has money,
you’n smell it on him. Farts through silk that one. Getcher coin for a little suck, little coin’ll getcher a pint, one swaller
pays for the next and all thirsts are answered, heh heh.” He didn’t laugh—“heh heh” was a pair of distinct words.
“Finger, is it?” Arthur said.
“They has fingered me rightly on the first try.”
Arthur said, “I’ve heard you know the path to a particular hole in the ground.”
Svangur chewed one dirty fingernail. “There’s a hole’n the ground waits for all men. ’Tisn’t so hard to find.”
“This one leads to a crypt.”
“I am sure you shall have a crypt if you wants one.”
“And below the crypt is a natural formation sometimes called Arthur’s Stairs? My friend and I would like to see it. I’d pay
you to show us the way.”
Svangur looked at his TV and said, “Better he pays to see Arthur’s Stairs than Finger’s Fundament, though both holes is just
as dark and just as tight. How much, though? Slick, he smells of pound notes. His man has a wealth of words which makes him
almost as poor as poor Stu Finger. You can have a head full of silver-dollar words, but take ’em to the bank, they won’t give
you a penny for them, heh heh.”
“Ten quid now,” Arthur said. “Ten more when we get back.”
“Ach, and miss the rest of me Love Island? I hate to miss my show.” He grinned to reveal black teeth and said in an aside, “The nig-nog is the rich man’s butler, mark
me now. He speaks for the money as if money can’t speak loud enough for itself.”
If Arthur was bothered by nig-nog he gave no sign of it.
“Forty then,” Arthur told him. “Twenty now, twenty later. Or my friend and I can go back to the pub and spend our money on
the beer you won’t be drinking tonight.”
“Heh heh, he’ll fuck you if you doesn’t take his money, Finger, not a wery good bargain for you, no sir. He’ll have one pint after another and probably leave them
half-drunk without a thought, and there’s a thought to drive you mad. Wasted beer, an evil notion!” He scrambled to his feet,
dusted off the bottom of his sweats. “A spring walk is just the thing to work up a proper thirst. I sees you is ready for
a difficult scramble. Just as well, heh heh, I has no worries you will keep up. I sees you is men born for the briars.” Colin
thought one corner of his mouth twitched up in a nasty grin at that. Arthur gave Colin a nod and Colin produced a twenty-pound
note.
Finger snatched it away and held it up to the dim dusk light, examining the queen.
“Her maj!” he cried. “Her glorious maj! Long live her cobwerbbed quim!” He planted a kiss on her before he crushed the bill
up and stuck it in the breast pocket of his army jacket. He switched off his TV and pushed it down amid his other belongings
in the shopping cart, and then, without a word, began to lurch away into the dusk.
“Come on. He might be satisfied with that twenty. It’s not just money to him,” Arthur said. “It’s also pornography. He might
slip away to be alone with it. Best to keep up.”
They went after him.