Thus it was that when Troppmann himself was pulled out of bed in the early hours, cursing and sweating, to answer the door, he knew that it would soon be time to start breaking promises. But at first he did not recognise the raw-red couple who leered through the glass door at him and he refused to let them in. They seemed to be covered in some sticky substance and they pounded on the door with a disturbing sort of squelch.
"Please may we have our skins back?"
MADONNA PARK
At dawn, they set out with hooks and chains. They followed the rutted road as far as the dry riverbed. They wove between desiccated trees and cut a swath through the grasses of the veldt.
"There's one!" cried Travis, squinting into the rising sun. A flash of blue raced across the horizon, a tiny figure with billowing mantle. Travis stood up and grasped the handrail as the tall grasses closed in around them. "A miracle!"
Eliot clutched his stomach and groaned. The stench of petrol, the rotting odours of the veldt, left him feeling vaguely disappointed. So far his chief impressions of the hunt were lurching terrain, the glare of sun on metal, the smell of boiling sap.
He peered in the direction of Travis's finger, seeing nothing but the flicker of sun through grass. For three days all prey had eluded them. Eliot suspected the priest who blessed their Jeep had skimped on the holy water. "What?" he mumbled.
"Do you believe in them?" Travis was in high spirits. He bared his yellow teeth and adjusted his fedora over his eyes. His rugged looks, his stoicism, were all second hand. Eliot frowned as he gazed upon the younger man's hair, dyed blue-grey at the temples. The lustrous black of his emerging beard gave the lie to his image. He was probably an avid reader of Hemingway novels.
"Miracles? But of course!" The driver nodded his head. A dubious fellow, he claimed to be a Jehovah's Witness. Again, this was all part of the act: you paid your money and the illusions shimmered at your feet, refracted by the hot air of the promoters. "Do we not owe all this to one? Tears of blood!"
Travis had chosen the role of a Lutheran. He struck the floor of the Jeep with the stock of his rifle. "Hurry!" The package had included the malaria that varnished his forehead with perpetual sweat. The skin cancer cells, grown in culture and grafted onto his cheeks, were not unlovely — they formed an archipelago of dark colour on his bland features and raw-red complexion.
The Driver thrust a pungent cheroot between his lips and changed gear as they bumped over something that squealed. Abruptly, they burst out of the long grasses into a flatter area of savannah. Ahead, a herd of blue figures looked up in alarm and began stampeding across the wide landscape. "Mothers of God!"
Eliot shook his head in amazement. He had never expected to see a whole herd. Even though his role of extremist Quaker had originally seemed a poor fit, he felt his heart swelling with anticipation of the kill. His stomach forgotten, he joined Travis at the rail.
Travis was mumbling a prayer beneath his breath. His fingers were busy slotting silver bullets into his magazine, like the beads of a lethal rosary. The blue tide surged away from them, the fleetest of foot leaving the older ones behind.
It was not long before they reached their first target, a toothless crone, her mantle and halo both faded with age. Travis loosed a shot and caught her in the neck. She fell without a groan.
"Bravo!" The Driver roared his approval and Travis's eyes lit up with pride. He began firing carefully into the general herd, saliva dribbling down his chin. Eliot took aim but the Jeep lurched and a puff of dust bloomed at the feet of his target.
After the crones came the youngsters, the children, who screamed as they fell, with irritating high-pitched wails that offended the ear. Splashes of red on blue showed Eliot he was learning to handle his weapon with greater efficiency — and these were too small to be easy targets. The ones they did not hit they tried to run down.
As the victims mounted, the Driver fixed tiny crucifix transfers to the door of the Jeep, steering with one hand and exhaling cheroot smoke through his flaring nostrils. They skidded on a patch of blood; Eliot lost his balance and fell back with a thud. Travis laughed. "Die, papist swine!" His eyes, glazed with blood lust, fluttered.
One of the figures did not attempt to flee. She merely stood and awaited their approach. Eliot blinked. Although all these beings were just aspects of a single entity, there seemed to be something special about her. Travis signalled for the Driver to stop. He jumped down from the Jeep, stalked across to the target, placed the rifle against her head and fired. The gun jammed: he had paid good money for this. He licked his lips and drew his knife.
As he did so, the figure opened her mouth and said something. Eliot was unable to hear her words, but the tone had a strange effect on him. He wanted to weep. He turned away and hid his face until Travis returned to the Jeep. "Is she dead? How did she die?"
Travis showed him his knife. "Like a virgin."
"What did she say?"
"She forgave me." Travis grinned. "Forgave all my sins. You should have come down too. Saved your soul as well."
Later, they drove back to the clubhouse to have their photograph taken. The Madonnas would be stripped of their mantles and thrown into pits — the mantles taken to a nearby processing plant for lapis lazuli extraction. On the way back, they passed a bus taking a coach-load of pensioners on a guided hunt. The Tannoy system blared at them, fading in and out of audibility as they lurched past:
"Welcome to Heaven-on-Earth…latest extravaganza of Prejudice Inc… utilising techniques of modern science…the perfect opportunity to settle scores… Thanks to a statue of Our Lady in Verona which has started weeping blood…top scientists have succeeded in isolating the DNA of Mother Mary herself… In the confines of this park…no less than a thousand Madonna clones…different ages…"
"Dilettantes!" Travis snarled. Senile faces peered at them from the tinted windows of the bus, eyeing their catch with dim jealousy. Behind them in the dust, on the hooks and chains, forty Madonnas bounced along the rutted road — a respectable hoard by any standards.
Travis was flushed. Eliot felt it was only partly with excitement. "There are no males loose in the park are there?" he ventured. The Driver scowled.
"Of course not! This is a moral outfit. A Lutheran should know this. Ask your complimentary pastor for more details."
Travis frowned and pulled out his knife. He looked at the blade. "If I take the trip again, I'll have to come as an atheist."
"What are you talking about?"
Travis shrugged. "The one I killed with my knife." He abruptly broke down, though it was difficult for Eliot to tell whether his tears were those of despair or mirth. "She was pregnant."
SUTTEE AND SWEEP
"I need more space," said Mr Sweep to his wife.
Martha gritted her teeth. At first she had tolerated his growing introspection, his reversion to a childlike state, because she believed it was only a temporary reaction to stress. But six months had passed and he still showed no sign of emerging back into the adult world. On the contrary, he now wanted more time alone, not that he considered himself to be isolated in the basement he had converted into a private playroom. They had argued about that many times.
"Your puppets aren't real!" she kept insisting.