Chapter 7
The Fairway
Fairway Foods had been shut for nine years, and the sign was still up.
It stood over the parking lot on two thick poles, a big red-and-white thing with a curly F, and somebody had thrown a brick through the second A. Beneath it, the store sat on the rise of the hill like a giant shoebox, long and low and windowless on the sides, with a flat roof and a row of dead carts by the door. Ethan came at it from the back, up a bank of nettles, over a wall, along a drainage ditch full of black water, and by half past one he was crouched at the foot of a steel service ladder bolted to the north wall, looking up.
If there's somebody at the top, I'd rather find out now.
He climbed. It was a cold, wet, rusty ladder, and the rungs shook in his hands, and every few feet the whole structure gave a little shudder that traveled up his arms like a tremor in a bad tooth. At the top he stopped, with his head just below the lip, and counted. One, two, three. He raised himself an inch at a time.
The roof was empty.
It stretched away in front of him, wide and flat and gray, a long field of tar and gravel with puddles in it like dropped coins. A row of big square vents stood along the middle, with lazy fans in them, still. A pair of chimneys. A satellite dish, broken. At the far end, a low parapet, and a green weed growing out of a drain, and beyond it, nothing at all, only the pale low sky.
He climbed over the edge and lay flat.
He went along the roof on his stomach, like a soldier in a film. It was the only way to do it. The parapet was a foot high, and there was no cover but the vents. He felt absurd. His stomach was wet and his elbows ached and the gravel ground into his chin, and the whole time he kept thinking, Maya would laugh. He kept hearing the high whoop of it. Dad, you look like a seal.
He reached the south side and put his chin on the parapet.
Below him lay the loading bay.
It was a bare concrete apron about forty feet across, with a ramp, and a roller shutter, and a pair of heavy bollards, and a row of wheeled cages stacked against a wall. At the far end, a gate in a wire fence stood open. In the middle, on an upturned plastic crate, with a flask in one hand and a small black notebook on his knee, sat a man in a blue jacket.
He was eating a sandwich. He was doing it carefully, with his eyes half shut, like a man in a restaurant who has been given exactly what he wanted. A cinnamon stick lay on the crate beside him. Next to it lay a telephone, a battered gray one, with its screen lit.
Twenty-five past one. He said five to one. Ethan's breath came short. He's been waiting for half an hour.
He said he would be.
He lay there.
The telephone rang.
It was a plain, loud, old-fashioned ring, and in the quiet of the empty lot it went off like a firework. The man in the blue jacket did not start. He finished the mouthful he was chewing. He put the sandwich down on its paper, and wiped his fingers on his pants, and held the phone to his ear.
"Hello, honey," he said.
His voice came up quite clearly. It was different now. It was softer and a little rougher, the voice of a man speaking to somebody he had been speaking to for thirty years. "No. Not yet. It's only just gone one. I'm having me dinner."
A pause.
"A sandwich. Ham. It's not very good, to be honest. Somebody's put mustard on it. I told them no mustard." He chuckled. "No, I'll not complain. It's only a sandwich."
His eyes had gone to the middle distance. He was smiling a little.
"How's the leg?"
A longer one.
"Don't fuss. Don't fuss, Ellen. I know you can't help it. I'd do the same." He shifted on the crate. "Did the girl come? The new one, from the agency? Did she do the exercises?"
Ethan heard, very faintly, a woman's voice in the receiver, high and quick and cheerful, going on for some time.
"Well, that's what they're for. No, I'll be home Sunday. Sunday morning. Latest. I'll bring you a cake. The kind you like, with the cherry. Is that all right?" He listened. "Aye. I love you too."
He took the phone from his ear, and looked at it for a moment with a very still expression, and put it down on the crate.
He's got a wife.
Ethan had not thought. He had thought that they would all have come out of a box.
The man sat for a while, quite still, with his hands on his knees. Then, softly, he began to hum. It was the old tune, the slow one, with the long sad notes. He did it with his lips closed, so that it came out of him in a thin vibrating murmur, like a bee in a jar. As he hummed, he picked up the little notebook, and opened it, and read through a page, with his lips moving, and took a stub of pencil from behind his ear, and made a small neat mark.
He's not enjoying it. He's not not enjoying it. He's just doing it.
Ethan had a very peculiar feeling. It was something he'd had once before, at his father's funeral, watching the undertaker. It was the feeling of watching a man do his job with such calm, loving attention that it was hard to hate him.
At half past one a boy came into the loading bay.
He came through the gate in the wire fence, at a half-run, with his hood up and his hands in his pockets. It was the young one, Chris. Ethan knew him by the sheer slope of his shoulders. He stopped dead when he saw the man on the crate, and then came on slowly, and stood in front of him like a boy in front of a headmaster.
"Mr. Ford."
"Chris."
"I've been looking all over." He wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Dave's in a state."
"Is he?"
"He hurt his shoulder, in the washing room. And then the old women at the church had a fire drill and he was out in the yard for twenty minutes, and there was a little old lady who wouldn't let him back in with a fire extinguisher." He gave a crazed, high, shaky laugh, and stopped. "We lost him again. It's not funny, Mr. Ford. I don't know why I'm laughing."
"Sit down."
"I can't."
"Sit down, son."
The boy sat, on the edge of a cage, in a heap, with his knees drawn up. He pushed back his hood, and his yellow hair stood up, and underneath it his face was the color of dough. He was twenty-four. He looked sixteen.
"You'll have something to drink."
"No."
"It's tea. It's hot."
Chris took the flask. He drank. His teeth chattered on the rim. He gave it back, and made a face. "What's in that?"
"Cinnamon. It gives you something to think about besides your hands."
"I can't stop thinking about my hands."
"That's all right."
"I keep seeing the man on the bridge." He stared at the concrete. "I didn't see it happen. I just saw Dave come back. And he was so calm. He was whistling. He bought me a doughnut."
"He does that."
"He said it was a style."
"It is."
"Is it?" said Chris. He looked up. His eyes were swimming. "Is that what it is, Mr. Ford? Because I said to my mom, I said, I'll just chase them. I won't do it. Somebody else'll do it." He drew a ragged breath. "But they give you a gun. And you have to carry it. And then you're standing in a washing room, and the old man says open the door." He covered his mouth. "I couldn't. I couldn't open the door."
"I know."
"I'm no good at this."
"No," said Jack Ford. "I don't suppose you are." It was said with great gentleness. He did not look at the boy. He was looking at the notebook in his hands. "It's not a thing you should be good at. If you were good at it, I'd worry."
Chris began to cry.
He did it silently, with his shoulders hunched and his chin on his knees, a long wet shuddering that shook the whole of his thin frame. The man in the blue jacket did not touch him. He took the cinnamon stick off the crate and held it out, without a word, at arm's length, and the boy took it, and put it in his mouth, and bit.
On the roof, Ethan lay with his face on his arm, and did not breathe.
"What does your mother need?" said Jack, after a while.
"A bed. A proper one. In a place with a garden." Chris sniffed. "She's got the thing where you forget. She's seventy. She doesn't know me some days. She calls me Peter."
"Who's Peter?"
"My dad."
"Ah."
"She's in a council home. It's dreadful. It smells. There's one girl for fourteen people. I went last week, and she hadn't been changed. It was three in the afternoon." His voice shook with a high, thin, crazed anger. "There's a nice place on the hill. It's four thousand a month. And the House said, one game. Fifty thousand. That's a year of her having a window."
"Mm."
"I know it's wrong. I'm not stupid. But what do I do? I haven't got a trade. I stacked shelves. I got laid off when the place shut."
"This place," said Jack.
"What?"
"Did you stack shelves here?"
Chris looked around the bay, as if he'd only just seen it. He looked at the roller shutter, and the cages, and the fat gray bollards.
"Three years," he said slowly. "I worked in the freezer section. I did nights." He gave a sick little laugh. "I didn't know they'd put me back in here. They never said."
"I think they like a theme."
"That's disgusting. I had a locker. It's through there. My name was on it." He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. "God. I'm going to be sick."
"You're not. You've got to eat something." Jack broke the sandwich in two, and held out half. "Have that."
Chris took it. He chewed for a minute, in silence, in the cold gray light. A pigeon fluttered down onto the concrete, and strutted, and looked at the crust.
"Mr. Ford?"
"Aye."
"Mr. Vance rang me."
Jack didn't move. His hand stopped, with the stub of pencil, over the notebook. He sat for a moment like a photograph of a man. When he spoke it was in the same pleasant flat voice, but there was something under it, now, like a very small stone under a mattress.
"When?"
"Lunch. About twelve. I'd just got off the bus."
"He rang you himself."
"On the plain black phone they gave us. It's got his name." Chris was frowning. "I thought it was always the other man. The one with the voice."
"He doesn't ring," said Jack.
"He did. He said, Chris, I'm going to ask you to do something for me. I'm adding a clause. He said whoever brought Mr. Cole to the van got double."
"The van."
"At the gate. The one for the winner. At ten tonight. It's gray. I've seen it." Chris was looking at him, puzzled. "It takes them home. It's how the winner leaves. Isn't it?"
Jack Ford did not answer.
He sat with the notebook open on his knee, and the pencil in his fingers, and for a long time the face above them didn't change. But the eyes did. They went very still. It was a slow settling, as when the surface of a pond closes after a stone. It was the look of a man hearing, for the first time, in a very familiar tune, a note he had not known was there.
"There's no clause," he said. "It's not in the rules. I could say them to you backward. The winner is escorted from the Yard at ten o'clock by the staff. In a car. By Pierce. There's no van."
"There's a van. It's parked at the Mill gate. I saw it this morning. Two men in it. One's got a beard. They said it was for the cleanup." Chris frowned. "And I carried drums. This morning. At six. They had me carry blue plastic drums into the old mill, twelve of them, up the east stair. For damp-proofing, they said." He wrinkled his nose. "They smelled like a gas station."
The pigeon walked across the bay.
"I see," said Jack Ford.
"Chris. I want you to go to your car."
"My car?"
"It's in the lot, by the cart bay. I want you to go and sit in it." He had closed the notebook, and slid it into his pocket. "Don't talk to anyone. Don't answer the phone. If it rings, and it says Vance, don't pick it up."
"Why?"
"Because I'm asking."
"But I'm supposed to be."
"You're supposed to be where I tell you." He stood. He was taller than Ethan had thought, and thin, and very straight. He put out a hand, quite slowly, and laid it for a moment on the boy's yellow hair. It was an odd, awkward, fatherly gesture, as if he were unsure he had the right. "You're a decent lad. I'd like you to stay one."
"I'm scared."
"So am I. It's no bad thing."
The boy looked up at him with his face all wet. "Mr. Ford, what's going on?"
"I don't know," said Jack. "But I think there's a man somewhere who has decided to change a game, and has forgotten to tell the people who are playing it. Go on. Quick."
Chris went.
He went across the bay in a stumbling run, and through the gate, and out of sight. The man in the blue jacket stood alone. He stood for a long time with his hands in his pockets, looking at the gate. It was a bare, cold, high afternoon, and the sky above him was the color of dishwater. A thin wind blew across the roof, over Ethan, into the bay, and lifted the paper of the sandwich and turned it over and set it down.
When he spoke, he did not look up.
"You can come down if you like."
Ethan did not breathe.
"I can't see you. I'm not that good. But I can see where the dust's been disturbed on the lip of the drain, and the way the gull won't land on the left side of the roof." He took out the cinnamon stick and looked at it. "I've been watching that gull for ten minutes. It's a sensible gull. It knows when a person's lying on a roof."
A silence.
"It's not two o'clock yet," said Jack. "It's ten to. I've no business with you till the next one. I'm only saying that if you want a word, I'm here."
Ethan did not move.
"Aye, well," said the man in the blue coat, equably. "I thought you'd say that."
He picked up his flask. He picked up his notebook. He walked across the bay, in no hurry, and out through the wire gate, and Ethan listened to him go, the slow tread, the faint scrape of a heel on grit, and the thin tune going away down the long cold hill toward the town. It went a long way. And then the wind came, and took it.
He lay on the roof in the wet for a long time.
A van. A cleanup. Drums that smell like gas.
He thought of Pierce, with his hand on the roof of the car. Forty-two people. I've driven none of them home. He thought of a line on a sheet of gray paper. Winners are collected by the staff. He had been given the whole of it, in pieces, by three different people, and none of them had put it together. He was good at that. He heard a rattle and saw a bearing.
It might be nothing, he told himself. It might be for the bodies. Somebody has to clear up.
At a gate. At ten at night. With drums.
He put it away. It was a good fault. It was shapely. He wanted it very much to be the whole of the machine, and he did not trust it, because he wanted it.
At two o'clock the phone buzzed.
It came through the canvas of the bag, a short shiver, and he took it out and held down the button. The screen lit his face from below. 02:00. CHECK-IN. 01:29. He watched the numbers go down. POSITION RECEIVED.
A second message came up under it.
NOTICE TO THE RUNNER.
THE BOUNDARY WILL CONTRACT AT 16:00. THE RUNNER MUST BE EAST OF THE RAIL EMBANKMENT BY THAT TIME. A RUNNER FOUND WEST OF IT AFTER 16:00 WILL FORFEIT.
He looked up at the sky.
East.
They're herding me. Look at the map. East of the railway there's nothing but the Mill and the wood. He heard his own voice, quite flat. They're going to push me into a corner, and then see what happens.
He gave a short, bitter laugh, with his forehead against the gravel.
I've been so naive. I thought there was a text. A fixed one. That they'd keep to.
It's like playing cards with a man who keeps adding to the deck.
Chris came up the ladder at ten past two.
He heard him a long way off. The clang of a boot on a rung, and a sniff, and a nervous clatter, and then, very slowly, over the edge of the parapet, a yellow head. He climbed over, and walked a few steps across the gravel with his hands in his pockets, and stopped, with his face to the east, and lit a cigarette.
He didn't see Ethan.
Ethan was lying behind a vent, forty feet away, with his face to the roof. He had not moved since Jack left. Stay still, he told himself. He'll go.
The boy smoked. He did it with a kind of furious, jerking dedication, drawing too hard, coughing, drawing again. His hand shook. He stood in the middle of the roof, a small thin figure in a tracksuit top, with his collar up and the smoke blowing away in the wind. After a while he put out his other hand and wiped his face on his sleeve.
He's crying again.
Ethan lay with his chin on his arm and watched him, and he had a feeling he did not like. It was not pity. It was something much more awkward. It was the plain, stupid, ordinary knowledge that he was looking at a kid, a kid with a mother in a home who smelled, and a name on a locker, and a gun in his waistband, and that if he stood up now, and said Chris, the boy would turn round with the gun in his hand and a face full of terror.
I could take him.
It was a bleak little thought. It lay there, plain, on the surface of his mind, like a dead fish in a pool. He's a hundred and forty pounds. I could get to him in six steps. I could take the gun, and I'd have a gun.
And then what? Then I'd have a gun, and he'd have a mother.
He got to his knees, and then his feet, slowly, with his hands held out from his sides, palms open, as if approaching a horse.
"Chris," he said.
The boy spun round.
He did it with a kind of shriek. The cigarette flew out of his mouth. His hand went to his belt, and came up with something black, and for two seconds Ethan looked into the round dark hole of a pistol and saw the whole of the afternoon go very small and very bright, like a coin at the bottom of a well.
"Don't," said Ethan.
"Stay there!"
"I'm staying. I've got my hands out." He kept his voice low, flat, and almost lazy. "Look. They're empty. I've got a multi-tool and a bag of cereal bars. If you want to shoot me, you can. I'd just like you to know I'm not going to do anything."
"You were listening."
"Yes."
"You heard everything." The gun was shaking so hard that the barrel drew little circles in the air. "You were on the roof. Mr. Ford said come down and I thought he was talking to the gull."
"Chris."
"Don't say my name. You don't get to say it." The boy's lips were white. "I'm supposed to do it. It's the job. I don't want to. I don't want to. But if I don't, my mom."
"I know about your mom. I was lying six feet above you." He kept his hands very still. "She's on the hill. In the place with the garden. It's four thousand a month. She calls you Peter."
The boy made a sound.
"I'm not saying it to hurt you. I'm saying it so you know I'm not lying. It got to me, and I'd like you to know that." He swallowed. "I've got a daughter. She's eight. I was told if I did this, I'd have enough to keep her."
"Everyone's got a story. They all say they've got a daughter!"
"I'm not asking you to like it."
"What do you want?"
"I want you to put the gun down. I want you to go down the ladder, and sit in your car, and tell Mr. Ford you didn't see me."
"I can't lie to him."
"Then tell him half." Ethan managed a ghost of a smile. "Tell him you saw a gull. I think he'd like that."
There was a long, shaking silence.
"You wouldn't," said Chris. "Take it. If I put it down."
"No."
"You'd have a gun."
"I know."
"Then why?"
It was a very good question. Ethan thought about it. He thought of a bridge, and a flashlight sinking. He thought, because it's a bad idea. Because I'd have to carry it.
"Because I don't want to be a man who killed a boy with a mother," he said.
It was simple. It was the only thing he could think of that was true.
The gun came down.
It came down by inches. It wavered, and sagged, and the long thin arm that held it began to tremble and give way, until the barrel was pointing at the gravel, and then at the toe of his own boot, and then at nothing. Chris's face had come apart. He was crying openly, like a child, with his mouth open and his eyes shut, and the tears running down into the corners of his lips.
"They had me carry the drums," he said, thickly. "I keep thinking. Twelve of them. Up the east stair. They told me they were for damp."
"Thank you for telling me."
"I didn't. I only." He shook his head. His hair was in his eyes. "I don't know why I did. I'm going to get in so much trouble."
"Go down the ladder."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know yet."
"You can't go to the Mill. There's a van. There's two men. The beard one's got a shotgun." Chris wiped his face with both hands. "Don't go to the Mill."
"Thank you."
"Please. Don't."
"Go on," said Ethan, kindly. "Go and sit in your car."
The boy went.
He went slowly, backwards, with his eyes on Ethan's face, until his heel touched the edge of the parapet. He got a leg over the top of the ladder. For a second his head hung there, a small white face on a dark rim, and then it sank, and the rungs clanged, one after another, going down. Rain fell on the roof. It came in a thin silver curtain from the east.
Ethan stood for a while without moving.
They're going to burn it.
He did not know where it had come from. It was there, whole, like a name remembered. A gate. A van. Twelve drums up the east stair of a building with a history of fire. A great old derelict mill, going up in the night. He thought of it with a kind of cold, slow, curious calm, as one looks at the thing that has been behind the door all along.
He turned his face to the east, where the rain was falling, and the clouds hung low over the roofs of the Yard, and in the farthest distance, very small, like a finger pointing at the sky, a single black chimney stood up out of the haze.
It was the first time he had looked at it straight. It was nearly a mile away. It was thin and tall and plain, with a ring of white brick round the top. He could just read the letters down the side, a long vertical line of them, weathered to a ghost, so that you had to know what they said to see them.
M E R C E R.
He took a breath.
"All right," he said, to the empty roof. "East."
It was only half a reason. At four o'clock, if he were still west of the embankment, they would take the prize and let the hunters off the leash. That was the reason he gave himself. It was a good one.
And the other half was something he did not say. It was the thing that had been sitting in his chest, hard and silent, for seven years. It had begun, quite slowly, to turn over.