The Beach

Reasonable Doubt

Down the beach, through the tree-line, up the path, into the clearing. I'd nearly caught him. I was just about to get a hand to his hair. Then I tripped over a guy line from one of the tents and went flying, and Karl made a beeline for the Khyber Pass.

I scrambled up. Several people were standing directly in his way. 'Catch him!' I shouted. 'Jesse, Greg, for fuck's sake! Bring him down!' But they were too shocked to react, and Karl whizzed by. 'You idiots! He's getting away!' A few seconds later he'd reached the pass. In the baffled quiet that followed we listened to him crashing through the undergrowth, and then the silence was complete.

'Fuck!' I shouted, sinking to my knees, and started banging my fist on the ground.

A light hand touched my shoulder. I looked round to see Francoise leaning over me, and behind her a semicircle of curious people. 'Richard?' she said anxiously.

Another hand, Jesse's, reached under my arms and hauled me up. 'You OK, mate?'

'Yes,' I began, and then stopped, trying to remember what had happened.' …I think Karl's out of his coma thing.'

'So I saw. What happened?'

'…He attacked me,' I said doubtfully, and everyone gasped.

'You are hurt?' said Francoise, peering at my face to check for damage.

'…I managed to fight him off. I'm fine…'

'Why did he do it?'

'I… I really don't know…' I shook my head in desperation. I didn't feel at all ready to cope with these questions. 'Maybe… Maybe he thought I was a fish. He was a fisher and… he's mad…'

Sal saved me from the shit I was coming out with. The crowd parted and she came striding through.

'Karl attacked you, Richard?'

'Just now. On the beach.'

The second confirmation of Karl's assault brought a second gasp from the crowd, and they all started to talk at once.

'It should have been me to catch him!' said Unhygienix furiously. 'He ran so close!'

'I saw the look in his eye!' added Cassie. 'He looked right at me! It was terrifying!'

'And the foam in his mouth!' said someone else. 'Like rabies! We should catch him and tie him up!'

Only one voice went against the flow: Etienne's. 'This is impossible,' he shouted above the racket. 'I do not believe Karl would attack Richard! I do not believe it! I was with him this morning!'

The din began to die down.

'This morning I was with him for one hour! One hour, and he ate rice with me! He was getting better! I know he would not attack anyone!'

I got myself together enough to frown in disbelief. 'Are you saying I'm a liar?'

Etienne hesitated, then turned away from me, addressing the others. 'For one hour I was with him! He said my name! For the first time in a week he talked! I know he was getting better!'

Quickly I began to backtrack, not caring about this argument, just wanting to get away. 'Yes. Etienne's right. It may have been my fault. I could have frightened him…'

'No!' Sal interrupted sharply. 'I'm afraid that Karl has become dangerous. This morning I also went to see him, and he made a lunge at me too.'

Startled, but not about to contradict her, I studied her expression hard and wished I had her capacity for sniffing out a lie. She was acting like she was telling the truth, but I knew that meant fuck all.

'Luckily Bugs was there to pull him off. We were down on the beach, just before he left for Ko Pha-Ngan with Keaty. I should have warned you all already, but I was trying to work out the best way to deal with him…' She sighed with apparent and entirely uncharacteristic regret. 'I was stupid. I didn't want to bring down the Tet celebration with more bad news. It was irresponsible, but things had been going so well… I didn't want to ruin morale.'

Jesse shook his head. 'Tet's all very well, Sal, but we can't have someone that dangerous just roaming around.'

Everyone nodded, and for some strange reason, I felt they were all nodding at me.

'Something will have to be done.'

'I know, Jesse. You're quite right. Richard, I hope you can accept my apologies. You shouldn't have been put in that situation.'

'No need for that, Sal,' I replied immediately. Even in the context of a lie – and by now I was sure she was lying – I felt extremely uncomfortable having her apologize to me. 'I understand.'

'But I do not!' said Etienne desperately. 'Please! Please, everybody must listen! Karl is not dangerous! He needs help! I think maybe we could take him to Ko Pha…'

This time it was Francoise who cut him off, by doing nothing more than walking away. His voice failed him as he watched her march across the clearing. Then he started after her, still not able to speak, holding his arms ahead of him, paralysed in mid-plea.

Up-ended

Almost as soon as Etienne and Francoise walked off, the rest of us began to wander across the clearing. There was no further discussion about Karl. As far as the others were concerned, I think they were all aware that the calm since Sten's funeral was in jeopardy, and a huge exercise in denial was underway. Instant, informal, an intuitive consensus so that talking about anything remotely contentious was out of bounds. No problem for me. It meant that no one asked me to elaborate on Karl or brought up the topic of the gunshots. The only downside was having to labour through a few contrived conversations, which seemed a fair trade-off.

The strangest of these exchanges was with Jean, not least because he almost never spoke to me. He came over with a shy smile and asked the kind of stupid question that can only come from uneasiness. 'You are working, Richard?' he said.

At the time I was having a smoke outside the kitchen hut, trying to reconstruct my splintered nerves. 'No, Jean,' I managed to reply, relatively steadily. 'Not at this exact moment. I'm smoking a cigarette.'

'Ah.'

'Would you like one?'

'Oh no!' he said hurriedly, looking quite alarmed. 'I do not want to take your cigarette.'

'Go ahead. Keaty's bringing me some back from Hat Rin.'

'No, no. I can smoke grass.'

'…OK.' I returned his smile, willing him to fuck off with all my heart.

But he didn't. He scratched his head and shuffled his feet a bit. I had the impression that if he'd owned a cap he'd have been holding it in his hands. 'You know, Richard, I was thinking.'

'Mmm?'

'Perhaps you would like to see the garden one day. Sometimes you would come to see Keaty, but now it has changed. After Keaty was fishing, I made the garden even larger. Now it has seven areas.'

'Seven?' I said tightly. 'Great.'

'So one day you will come to see it?'

'It's a date.'

'A date! Yes!' He let out a roar of laughter, so theatrical that for a few seconds I thought he was taking the piss. 'A date! Then we will see a film!'

I nodded.

'A date,' he repeated. 'See you on our date, Richard!'

'See you then,' I replied, and mercifully he began to back away.

I avoided visiting Jed until darkness was beginning to set in. I didn't want to be seen entering the hospital tent. I knew that this would be a tacit acknowledgement of Christo's existence – which, under our consensus, was perhaps the most important of the Things To Ignore.

If possible, conditions were even worse inside the tent than they had been before. Stench-wise it was the same deal, but the trapped heat seemed more intense and there were puddles of dried and drying black liquid everywhere. Blood from Christo's stomach, soaking in the sheets, collecting in the folds of the canvas floor, and smeared across Jed's arms and chest.