I looked up into the sky. The clouds had thinned, unveiling a strip of the purest pale-blue. I could be in the bar by lunchtime, and think of the tale I would be able to tell! I vaulted over the gate and, buttoning my jacket against the wind, set off along the lane with rapid, determined strides.
It looked exactly like a crime scene. The pub had been sealed off with bright-yellow plastic tape, the words POLICE — DO NOT CROSS repeated every few feet in black. Two of the downstairs windows had been smashed, and the car-park glittered with broken glass. A plank had been nailed at an angle across the front entrance. There were dark stains at the edge of the road. I couldn’t tell whether it was oil or blood. As I stood there, I noticed something glinting in the ditch. At first I took it for a coin, but then I bent closer and saw it was a ring. Though made from silver, it was uneven, almost crude, and it had blackened here and there, either with neglect or age. On the inside an intriguing inscription had been carved into the metal, with an anchor to separate the first word from the last. So you don’t drift too far, it said.
I had just slipped the ring into my pocket when I heard a whirring sound, and I looked round to see a bicycle come freewheeling down the hill towards me. I recognised the rider as the fair-haired singer from the night before. When he saw me, he braked and sat astride his bicycle, one foot resting on the pedals, the other on the ground. He had a gash on his cheek, and three of his fingers had been bound with tape. I asked him if he had seen Fay Mackenzie.
He looked past me, at the view. ‘She’s been arrested.’
‘What happened?’
‘There was a raid.’ He looked at me again. ‘Who are you, anyway?’
I told him roughly what I had told Fay, adding that I had been attacked and robbed shortly after leaving the pub. Fay was the only person I could trust, I said, and I needed her help.
‘She’s the one who needs help,’ the man said. ‘I hate to think what they’ll do to her.’
Midnight was striking, he told me, when they heard engines snarling on the hill below the pub. The lorries were enough to scare you in themselves — enormous military vehicles with searchlights mounted on the top, their wheels the size of tractor wheels, thick shapes carved into the tyres for grip. The police were members of a special riot squad, armed with rubber bullets, tear-gas and electric cattle-prods. At least thirty people had been arrested, and many more were injured. The Axe Edge Inn had been officially closed down until further notice.
‘But why?’ I said. ‘What’s the reason?’
‘They don’t need a reason. They can call it anything they want.’ He glanced at his taped fingers. Then in a bitterly ironic voice, he said, ‘I expect we were jeopardising national security.’
‘You got away, though.’
‘I was lucky.’
The world seemed to flatten, to spread out sideways. With Fay gone, I had no one to turn to — unless … Into my head floated the image of a large bearded man dancing with a bright-green rabbit.
John Fernandez.
I remembered that he lived in Athanor, the Yellow Quarter’s biggest port. As good a place to disappear as any. Ports were heterogeneous, chaotic, filled with strangers. If I went to Fernandez, though, would he hand me over to the authorities? Somehow I couldn’t imagine it. I hardly knew the man, and yet I had spent enough time in his company to realise that he was something of a maverick. Despite his bulky, shambling presence, he had a quicksilver quality. A conventional reaction could not be relied upon, which in my current predicament could only augur well, I felt. In the end, it had to be a risk worth taking.
I asked the fair-haired man where the nearest railway station was. He pointed back the way I had just come. It was fifteen miles, he said. Maybe more.
‘I’d like to buy your bicycle,’ I said.
The man laughed.
‘I’ll give you a good price.’ I took off my jacket and, reaching into one end of the collar, eased out a banknote and held it up.
‘That would buy you three of these,’ he told me.
‘Yes or no?’
The man shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’
Handing him the money, I took the bicycle and swung my leg over the crossbar. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose I should be going.’
Hands on hips, the man was shaking his head. Clearly, he couldn’t quite believe the direction that events had taken.
‘Safe journey,’ he called out as I rode away.
The wind roared in my ears, and the air was so cold that tears slid sideways into my hair, but I felt liberated, almost giddy. I began to sing. I had no words, only a melody, and though the piece sounded familiar I couldn’t place it. That didn’t stop me. I sang until my throat hurt. At first I assumed it was something to do with Victor, a favourite tape of his, but two hours later, when I drew up in front of the station, my mind seemed to open, revealing a door standing ajar and a landing beyond, not L-shaped like the house on Hope Street, but wide and spacious, with a hallway below, and light showing through the dark bars of the banisters … Could I be remembering music my parents used to play after I’d been sent upstairs to bed?
Athanor shocked me with its brazen air of dereliction. I suppose the name had led me to expect a wondrous place, a place of magical transformation, and yet, as I emerged from the gritty gloom of the railway station and started walking down one of the port’s main thoroughfares, I saw stretches of barren land sealed off by wire-mesh and wooden hoardings, whole sections of the city laid to waste, whole streets demolished, gone. At one point I passed a pub that stood entirely on its own, defiant yet piteous, like the last remaining tooth in a punch-drunk boxer’s mouth. In the years prior to the Rearrangement the city would have gone under completely were it not for all the money made from drugs, and traces of that warped energy were still visible in the developments along the docks, the casino complexes and the flyovers that swooped dizzily through the centre. Still, the city seemed defined by omissions, by absences. Athanor: an oven used by alchemists. I couldn’t imagine all this grime and decay turning to gold, at least not in the near future.
Not long after arriving, I saw a group of ten-year-olds with voices like crows and no eyebrows, soft drinks in their hands, and bags of crisps, and mobile phones. Over the choppy paving-stones they came, with predatory speed, only fanning out and flowing round me at the very last minute. One of them lifted the flap on my jacket pocket, his fingers deft as a gust of wind, but it was just habit, a kind of reflex. He had already scanned me as a prospect and rejected me. With hindsight, I was glad I had left my bicycle at the station. I was glad too that my overcoat had been stolen. As it was, the gang never guessed that I had a small fortune sewn into my collar, nor that a silver ring hung on a piece of string around my neck. I touched one hand to my bruised forehead. Oddly enough, the fact that I’d been attacked now stood me in good stead. It made me more authentic, less visible. I could imagine tourists flying in to Athanor with stick-on stitches and fake scars in their luggage, as one took sun-cream to the beach, for protection. Want to enjoy your stay in the Yellow Quarter? Want to blend in? Make sure you look badly beaten up! Choose from our unique range of cosmetic wounds and injuries!
In a street not far from the cathedral I found a pub called the Duke’s Head. The walls were the colour of raw liver, and the wood floor was strewn with cigarette butts. It was Friday night, and people stood three or four deep at the bar. A mosaic of faces, everybody talking. The air mostly smoke. When I got close enough, I sat on a stool and ordered a double brandy. It was a cheap make, and the first taste sent a shudder through me. I held still and stared between my knees, hoping I wouldn’t bring the drink back up, but then I felt the warmth hit my stomach and begin to spread.