Chapter 11
The lockless keys
I think part of the blurriness I have in my brain about what and when stuff happened on that day is just because my head was overloaded, like when you put too much weight on a raft and it just sinks instead of floating.
Looking back to the arrival of the two girls there hadn’t – and still hasn’t been – a day in my whole life when I had to take in so many shockingly new things and people.
So some bits of that day have sunk to the bottom of my memory, too deep to get a grip on and pull back to the surface.
And because I was probably drowning a lot myself at the time, I noticed but didn’t pay enough attention to the atmosphere between the girls.
I definitely did notice it though, because I said later to Cat that they didn’t seem to like each other and she said they were probably just as bewildered and startled as we were – and likely way more scared than angry.
I should probably have paid it a bit more attention.
It might have saved a lot of pain later on.
But at the time, I do remember that it felt like a relief to leave them in the Bunker and get back out into the rain, even though it meant we were going to have to deal with the dead man.
Even the dog seemed to want to get away from them, bounding happily ahead of us and looking back every now and then to make sure we were following.
Least the dog’s friendly, I said.
We should go through his pockets and his pack, Cat said. If he’s got useful stuff, that’s where he’ll be carrying it.
She must have seen something in my face.
Or I’ll do it, she said. You go and get the rope.
You get the rope, I said. I’ll do it.
You don’t have to Mouse, she said.
Yes, I said. Yes. I do.
I actually really wanted to let her do it, more than anything, more than everything except the sudden conviction that if I didn’t look this in the face I’d carry the weight of what I’d done for ever, and that it would be so heavy it might break me.
And that it wasn’t fair to let Cat carry it for me, no matter how ready she was to do so.
It’s mine to do, I said. I killed him.
OK, she said. Fine. But we drag him together.
That’s what we did when we hunted. Whoever killed the deer – or the rabbit or the bird – they gutted it and plucked or skinned it. But if it was heavy – like a deer – we dragged it home together.
Going through the man’s things was as close as we were going to get to gutting him, of course, but being that close to him, touching him was somehow going to be way more unpleasant and complicated than the straightforward bloody mess of taking an animal’s insides outside and leaving them for the crows to clean up.
As I approached the nettle patch, I kept expecting him to move, to rear up and point a vengeful finger at me in accusation for what I’d done.
I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t going to do that, and I couldn’t believe that he was there at all, and I couldn’t believe he was dead, that there were actually other people out there in the world and that I’d killed one of them.
Too many big new things in one short day, like I said.
But I had definitely killed him, as one look at his face said he was as dead as you can get, because no one can stare up into a deluge and not blink as the raindrops bounce off their eyeballs.
So I knelt by him and took a deep breath, which was a mistake and made me gag, and so then I did that breathing trick of closing off my nose, because I didn’t want to smell the mess he’d made while dying.
And then I set about going through his clothes, thinking the sooner I started the sooner it’d be done.
He had a silver necklace made of tiny steel balls, and on it he had what looked like a collection of seven stainless rods with indentations on them.
Maybe they’re keys Cat said. Keys to doors that mean something to him.
Should we keep them? I said.
No, she said. They’re doors we’re never going to see.
Still, they were shiny and somehow interesting.
Maybe I just liked the distraction of them.
Easier to look at than him. Maybe they were keys, I thought, and wondered what exactly it was like where he came from if it had such complicated keys to it.
Or maybe they were just decoration. I couldn’t really tell if he was a man who liked to wear decoration because I was busy trying not to look at his face and make any more memories of him that might visit me later.
So I left his necklace where it was and moved my attention to the other end of his body, far away from those open eyes that saw everything and nothing.
His boots were good, well patched with nice grip on the soles, but they weren’t actually a pair to each other, and they were much too big for Cat or I, so I left them.
His trousers were also patched and repaired, and they were so oily with grime that the rain beaded on them.
Maybe he’d sewn them together from old waterproofs.
He had a bulging side pocket on the thigh of one leg, and I opened it and found a soft leather bag which, when I opened it to see what the hard-edged thing inside it was, turned out to be a pair of binoculars, small and very powerful.
I put those on the ground to keep because they were useful.
Those look good, said Cat.
Yeah, I said. Feels a bit like I’m robbing him.
Yeah, she said. No. We’re just doing what we always do. He doesn’t care. Waste not, want not.
I didn’t tell her that I wanted all this not to have happened. Instead, I tugged at something in the pockets of his hooded raincoat.
Cut them, Cat said. We’re not going to keep the coat. Too much blood on it. So just cut them open. It’ll be quicker and we’re drowning out here.
I know she was being brisk and practical because she was trying to inject a bit of normal Cat-ness into the very not-normal day to make me feel better and help us both get through it, but slashing his pockets felt a little too much like skinning a deer for me to do it, so I went through the rest of his pockets with my knife still in my belt, listening to Cat sucking her teeth in frustration as the rain spattered through the nettle leaves drooping all around us.
He had two curved holders, heavy with bullets which I recognised as being the same as the one poking out of the bottom of his long gun.
I added them to the pile. There was a little tin box about the size of a pack of playing cards which had something I couldn’t read printed on it in a foreign-looking writing, Greek maybe.
It was held shut with a twist of copper wire.
I handed it to Cat while I quickly checked the other pockets.
There was a big folding knife and then his pockets were empty and all that remained was the pistol he’d dropped, lying where his heels had hacked a shallow dent in the ground.
It was black plastic and dull metal, scuffed and worn and the moment I put my hand round the handle I wanted to throw it away.
I didn’t, because it might have gone off and who knows where the bullet would go, but I know I wanted it out of my hand fast.
What? said Cat, watching me put it back down. It must have looked to her as if it was too hot to hold.
Nothing, I said.
But it wasn’t nothing. It was a something.
It was a waiting thunderclap. It was the weight of it, the way my hand just closed round it so easily, so seductively smoothly fitting the curves and contours in the handle as it was designed to do, a shape made specially to guide that one finger so very comfortably onto the trigger.
It was so cleverly crafted that you almost didn’t notice how easy it would be to twitch your finger and unleash that ear-splitting thunderclap that could end someone as easily as my unthinking arrow had: one twitch of a finger and a world ends.
And it was so well made, so cleverly designed that once it was there, hefted in your hand there was, however much your top-brain didn’t want to do it, a tiny wheedling voice whispering to your under-brain telling you it needed to be used, and that you wanted to feel that power just the once, just for the noise, just to feel what it felt like to fire it.
I’ve picked up tools with handles worn smooth by the hands of long dead people, and have sometimes felt a sort of intent, like an impulse left by long use – the saw that wants to cut wood, the axe balanced just right so that it swings almost as easily on the upswing as the downstroke, even an old rusty draw-knife that – once we had sharpened it – just seemed to want to skin the bark from the lumber we felled.
All of those tools said “use me”, but they said it honestly.
They said it straight out. But the gun wheedled.
The gun whispered – alluringly – like it was enticing me into something highly pleasurable but a just bit dirty, a little forbidden, hence the need to murmur the call to action.
Looking back I tell myself that I’d set enough traps to know lures are always beguiling, and always deceptive, and that’s why I couldn’t get it out of my hand soon enough.
I know it’s fanciful. I know that the gun had no will.
I know it was just a cleverly made tool.
I know plastic and steel and brass and lead and even gunpowder can’t think.
I one hundred per cent know all of that with my top-brain, the part of me I can control.
Nevertheless, I also believe the gun wanted to be fired, and I know for sure, more than anything that remains in the world, that I now wish we’d buried it along with the man.