“Keep going,” Raymond said.
But Billy was still hesitating. “Shouldn’t we do something?”
“Don’t be a fool.”
Once they had entered the woods, Raymond spoke again. “They thought we were queer.”
“What?” Billy’s voice was almost shrill. “That’s ridiculous.” They were both panting as they climbed the hill, the sandy soil working against them now. Billy glanced over his shoulder. “Do you think they’ll come after us?”
Raymond didn’t answer.
When they reached the top, the cars were still there. The one on the right had its lights on, as before. It was at least two miles to the road, but Billy and Raymond had no choice. They began to walk.
A white crack showed briefly above the high ground to the south. Lightning. Billy counted the seconds, bracing himself for thunder. None came. But the air seemed to have thickened all around them.
They had only been on the track for a few minutes when Billy heard the cars. First one engine started, then the other. He sent Raymond a wild look. “It’s them!”
Raymond didn’t react.
With a cry, Billy plunged down a bank of stiff yellow grass into the undergrowth. He lay on his stomach and covered his head with his hands. The cars slowed down, as he had known they would. He heard Raymond’s voice, then another voice. A man’s. A door slammed. The cars both revved savagely, and then drove on.
When the sound of their engines had died away, Billy climbed cautiously back up the grass bank. The track was empty. Raymond had gone.
Panic and helplessness prevented him from doing anything at all for quite some time. The sky seemed to heap itself on top of him. Sweat stuck his T-shirt to his back. In the end, he realised there was nothing for it but to carry on towards the road. Certainly he wasn’t about to go back to the lake. He would have to hitch a lift into the nearest town and report the incident to the police. It wasn’t going to be easy because he didn’t speak the language. He didn’t know what the Italian for “car” was, for instance. He didn’t even know the word for “man.”
“Impossible,” he said out loud.
His voice sounded weak in the harsh landscape.
As he trudged along, his mind began to fill with all kinds of scenarios. Raymond had been kidnapped — but what for? The men would rob him at the very least. He might be beaten up as well, or even killed.
Billy imagined Raymond’s gangster hat lying upside-down on a deserted road.
Though it was starting to get dark by the time he reached the end of the track, it didn’t seem any cooler. He stood still for a moment, trying to remember which way they had come. To his right, on a bend in the road, he saw a cluster of lights. It looked like a restaurant. Perhaps he would find help there.
When he pushed the door open, he saw Raymond sitting at a table by the wall, eating a pizza. Billy was so astonished that he couldn’t speak.
Raymond glanced up. “You took your time.” He was chewing with such relish that knots of muscle showed beside his ears. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Yes, but what happened?”
“I got a lift.” Raymond laughed. “You didn’t think I was going to walk, did you?” He drank from a tall glass, then reached for another slice of pizza.
“But the men — those men—”
“What men?”
“The ones on the beach.”
It turned out that they hadn’t been involved at all. The cars belonged to a group of young Romans who had been taking drugs in the woods. Raymond had flagged them down and then smoked a joint with them. They had stopped at the restaurant because they were starving.
“They only left about five minutes ago,” Raymond said. “Jesus, this pizza’s good.”
Billy shook his head. “I’m such an idiot.”
Raymond ordered another beer. The waitress had straight black hair and sallow skin, and her lips were a curious deep-purple colour, almost aubergine. There were dark rings under her eyes. Raymond watched her walk back across the restaurant, then he turned to Billy. “She looks like a vampire,” he said, “don’t you think?”
Still standing outside the hospital mortuary, Billy noticed a movement at the far end of the corridor. Not a drowned boy or a fish, but a figure in dark clothes. This would be one of his colleagues, he thought, coming to relieve him. He checked his watch. Yes, it was nearly four. Another break, and then just a couple of hours to go. He watched as the policeman passed through alternating areas of light and shadow, almost vanishing one moment, only to emerge seconds later, bathed in a glow that was subterranean, oceanic. There was something hypnotic about the man’s calm progress, something almost eternal, and yet Billy felt separate from it, excluded. Like death looking at life.
Finally the constable stopped in front of him. “Not late, am I?”
“No, no,” Billy said. “Right on time.”
29
On his way to the snack bar, images from that day by the lake in Italy still lingered. He couldn’t remember what had happened after he walked into the roadside pizzeria. Had Raymond spent the night with that waitress? Billy had a vague memory of sleeping in a stuffy back room with all the cleaning equipment, and Raymond not being there, Raymond being somewhere else…
As Billy passed a toilet, the door opened and Phil Shaw appeared. His face looked chapped and blotchy. Probably he had been dowsing it in cold water, trying to keep himself awake.
“On your break, Billy?”
“I’m going to get a cup of soup,” Billy said. “I think I saw some in one of the machines.”
“Mind if I come with you?”
“Course not.”
At that moment, a nurse darted round them and into a nearby ward. On reaching the doorway, which was open, they both paused, curious as to the reason for her haste. Illuminated by a single lamp, an old man was sitting up in bed and vomiting stringy yellow fluid down the front of his pyjamas. “Oh God,” he gasped between oddly effortless bouts of retching. “God, bugger. Fuck.” One of the nurses attending to him held a grey cardboard container below his chin. He vomited again. “Disgusting,” he said. “This is bloody disgusting.” Another nurse arrived with a fresh pair of pyjamas. Phil touched Billy on the shoulder, and the two men moved on.
They covered fifty yards without speaking, then Phil gave Billy a sideways look. “Still want that soup?”
30
Phil was shaking his head. “You know, I never really understood it…”
Billy smiled. “There’s nothing to understand.”
“But you seem like such a natural for a sergeant.”
“I just didn’t want to be one. I still don’t.”
“What’s wrong with being a sergeant?”
“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it.” Billy blew on his black coffee to cool it down. He could feel Phil watching him. “Not everyone’s ambitious,” he said. “I like being on the streets, I suppose. Close to the ground. Where things happen.”
“Even at your age?”
Phil was mocking him, but he was also making a serious point, which Billy took on board. “Well, we all burn out sooner or later,” he said, “whichever route we take.” He was thinking of Neil, of course. Neil who now lived above a launderette. Neil who claimed that there was nothing quite as soothing as drifting off to sleep to the sound of half a dozen giant tumble dryers.
“I still don’t understand it,” Phil said.