While the well-intentioned people who ran the asylum were shocked at the terrible violence of the death of Headman Nurse Gromek, brutal attacks by deranged patients were not unknown. What caused more shock was that Gromek was abusing his patients in such a revolting manner. Patients who could pay for their treatment – a small number that should have included Cale – were taken into the asylum in order to provide money to pay for the care for those who could not. It was as kindly a place as such an institution can reasonably hope to be and Gromek had been rightly regarded, at least until the arrival of Kevin Meatyard, as an uninspired but trustworthy overseer. Cale’s warning to the lunatics to stick to the story he had outlined taught him subsequently to be more careful when making jokes to people he did not know, particularly those who were not quite right in the head and who were prone to deal with the terrible confusion that existed in their minds by grasping with a grip of iron onto anything they were told with a clear and unambiguous determination. So it was that the unusual repetition of learnt phrases about the incident began to make the superintendents suspicious. Initially the story had been generally accepted – after all, Gromek had raped a number of female patients with the help of Kevin Meatyard and he had been murdered and the person accused had run away and in a desperate manner – but now they were preparing to mine for the truth and would undoubtedly have succeeded in finding out what had really happened had not events turned in Cale’s favour. Vague Henri and IdrisPukke arrived expecting to find him lying in the comfort for which they’d paid and hoping he was on the way to being cured.
‘Must you always,’ said IdrisPukke to Cale when he was brought down to the private room kept solely for important visitors, ‘prove your detractors so unerring in their view that wherever you go calamities follow?’
‘And,’ said Vague Henri, ‘another funeral.’
‘And how is,’ said Cale to Vague Henri, ‘one of God’s greatest mistakes?’
‘Speak for yourself,’ replied Vague Henri.
Cale resentfully explained that not only had he gone to humiliating extremes to avoid trouble, he had been too sick to do anything even if he had wanted to. The details of Meatyard’s bullying he kept to himself.
He gave them a detailed account of the truth, the lies he had made everyone tell to cover it up as well as the peculiar bad luck that had put him in the lunatic ward in the first place. IdrisPukke went off to see the newly appointed Director of the asylum and gave her hell about the treatment given to such an important person. What kind of institution was she running? he’d asked, and other rhetorical questions of that sort. In a short time he had gouged a promise from her to end the investigation into the events of that night, and to have Cale brought under the personal daily care of their most skilled mind doctor and at no extra expense. IdrisPukke demanded and received a further promise to cut the fees for Cale’s treatment in half.
By no means all of his anger was simulated. He had not expected a cure, given that Cale’s collapse had been so great, but he’d hoped for an improvement both because of his great affection for the boy but also because he wanted to work with Cale on a much grander long-term strategy for dealing with the Redeemers. But Cale could not even speak for long without pausing to rest and gather his thoughts: and besides, there was the dreadful look of him. When Cale gave away in passing that today was an unusually good day, IdrisPukke realized that the help they desperately needed from Cale might come too late, if it came at all.
IdrisPukke demanded the Director summon the mind doctor who was to take care of Cale so that he could put his mind at rest as to his quality. The Director, knowing that IdrisPukke had to leave the next day, lied that the doctor was away on retreat and would not return for another three days.
‘She’s an anomist,’ said the Director.
‘I’m not familiar with the term.’
‘She treats anomie, diseases of the soul, by talking, sometimes for hours a day and for many months. Patients call it the talking cure.’ He could be reassured, said the Director, that she was a healer of uncommon skill and she had made headway with even the most intractable cases.
Although he was not sure he believed her about the convenient ‘retreat’, IdrisPukke could sense the sincerity of the Director’s admiration for the supposedly absent woman. He took more hope from this, because he wanted it to be true, than his pessimistic nature would normally allow. That nature would have reasserted itself in full measure when, five minutes after he left to return to Cale, there was a knock on the Director’s door which was opened even before she could say ‘come in’. The woman who entered, if it was a woman, was of a very curious appearance and holding in her left hand something so strange that not even IdrisPukke, with all his many experiences of the singular and the fantastical, had seen anything like it.
5
Kevin Meatyard was unwell. He had a badly sprained ankle, a dislocated shoulder, a large cut on the left side of his head and assorted welts, cricks and tears. But none of them would kill him. It was the knife in his upper chest that would do that. The Island of Cyprus was not an island at all but a large isthmus that ballooned out into the Wooden Sea. Its system of parochial justice extended fifty miles into the hinterland so that even small villages had a special constable – even if he was only the blacksmith. Meatyard had every reason to believe he would be followed although he also realized it would be too expensive and difficult to keep half a dozen men on the road for long. The problem for him was that he knew he must stay away from any place where he could get the knife removed and the wound cleaned. In the end, he trusted in his constitution to keep him alive long enough to get so far away that no one would have heard of him. So it was that while Kevin Meatyard was trying to leave Cyprus on a road out of the way of nosy strangers, the Two Trevors were trying to enter Cyprus on a road out of the way of nosy strangers. So it was less of a coincidence than it might have been when the two assassins came across Kevin Meatyard lying in a heap beside a small pond. For obvious reasons, while out in the bundu even people very much less experienced in wickedness than the Two Trevors regarded a body lying in the road as something it would be wise to pass by on the other side of. On the other hand, they and their animals were parched. Having satisfied themselves it was not a trap (and who knew more about bushwhacking than they did?) Trevor Lugavoy threw a large rock at the lumpily prone body and, getting only a faint groan in response, decided that whatever danger there was could be avoided by keeping a close eye and not touching him.
A few minutes later, with the horses still slurping the deliciously sweet water, Kevin stirred and awkwardly got to his feet, watched carefully by the two men. He started to walk over to the pond to get a drink but, still unsteady and weak, he collapsed with such a hefty thud it made both Trevors wince.
It might be thought that given their bloody profession the Two Trevors were men without compassion. But while it was certainly the case that they were no nicer than other people, neither, except when they were being paid to kill you, were they very much worse. This was particularly true the older they got and the more superstitious. They were beginning to wonder if a few acts of generosity might be of some help if it turned out that one day there might be an eternal act of reckoning – though they both knew in their heart of hearts that they would have to rescue an epic number of children from a vast number of burning buildings to weigh much in the balance after all the evil deeds they’d been responsible for. Still, it was mean-spirited to leave a clearly wounded man lying within a few feet of a desperately needed drink of water. They frisked him, then woke him up and gave him a drink from one of their own cups.