Oh.
Fuck.
Play innocent? He'd never buy it.
Make a joke out of it? He'd see straight through that.
Okay. Play it straight. Be serious but not confrontational.
I met his gaze. 'What makes you think that?'
He shrugged. 'Instinct and observation.'
He sipped his drink. I did the same. I felt like I was playing poker.
I don't know how to play poker.
'I think Bates was right, you see,' he continued. 'I think you think you're better than this. I catch you, sometimes, looking at me and I think I can see you changing your expression, trying to hide the look of contempt before I notice it.'
'Don't be daft.' I laughed, all matey. He didn't smile.
'I'm many things, right? But I'm not daft.' There was an edge of warning in his voice, but he didn't seem like he was about to get angry. Not unless I said something really stupid. I held up my hands and mimed innocence.
Mac leaned forward. 'Thing is, you're right not to like me. I'm a cunt. A total and utter bastard and I don't care who knows it. I'm a murderer and a rapist, and that's just for starters. I shoot first and ask questions later. I'll fucking slaughter anyone who gets between me and what I want, I don't care who they are. And I enjoy being in control of things. I like bossing people around, giving orders, laying down the law, playing the big man.
'But the thing is, Lee, it's the only thing I'm good at. I have a talent for it, see. Ask me to do maths or English, paint a picture or play the piano and I'm a fucking retard. But give me a situation that needs some muscle, a bit of ruthlessness, and I'm your man.
'And the one thing The Cull did, the one great, beautiful, brilliant thing that The Cull did, is it handed people like me the keys to the fucking world.
'There's no rozzer to haul me in for GBH, no magistrate to hand me an ASBO, no judge to send me to the Scrubs. There's only one law now, and it's not who's got the biggest gun – it's who's bastard enough to use it first. And I am.
'And so are you, I reckon.'
All I could manage was 'Eh?'
'Oh, don't embarrass yourself by playing innocent. You shot Batesy.'
I tried to keep a stoney face, give nothing away. But there was no point.
'Yeah,' he said, studying me, 'I thought so.'
This was not going well.
'Now you might think I'd be angry at you for that. And I was for a bit. But then I got to thinking. You probably did it coz you wanted to put him out of his misery, right?'
I didn't make a sound.
'Right?' There was that note of danger again.
I nodded, never breaking eye contact.
'Merciful. Heroic, even. But that doesn't change the fact that you killed him. Shot him dead in cold blood. However you dress it up, you're a killer now. Just like me. And I like me, so I like people like me, yeah?'
Again, I nodded.
'The others are just followers, thugs, pussies who feel hard when they're around a big man like me. But I reckon you've got a bit more spine than that. I reckon you've got a bit of backbone. You went behind my back, deliberately did something that undermined what I was trying to do. That took guts, especially with that leg of yours. I like guts. But I do not like people who fuck with me.
'So that leaves me with a choice to make.'
We stared at each other.
'Let me guess,' I said eventually. 'Kill me or promote me.'
He inclined his head in agreement, leaned back in his chair and took another sip of whisky. Then he reached out his right hand, placed the drink on the side table and lifted the Browning that had sat there throughout our conversation, a silent threat. He placed the gun in his lap but kept hold of it, his finger resting gently on the trigger.
'What do you think I should do, Lee?'
I said nothing.
He lifted the gun, put it back on the table, and lifted his drink again.
'See, you took a risk and made a difficult decision because you thought it was the right thing to do. If I can convince you that helping me is the right thing to do then I reckon you and I will be quite a team. But I have to convince you, not threaten you into it. If I threaten you then you'll just say what I want to hear and I won't know if I can really trust you.
'So let me give you my sales pitch. After all, I was supposed to be going into advertising. If you don't like it you can walk – sorry, limp – straight out the main gate. I won't stop you.'
He leaned back in his chair, took another sip of whisky and settled down to give me the hard sell.
'When I first arrived back here Batesy took me into his office and he gave me a little lecture. All about history, it was, which was his thing. He said to me that if you look at the history of primitive civilisations, then the same patterns keep appearing again and again. Farms clump together into villages. Then these villages get to know other villages and gradually they clump together and you get tribes. But tribes ain't democracies. No-one votes for the leader. The person who's in charge is the hardest bastard around and that's that.
'Now, if you don't like your tribal leader then you can challenge him, and there'll be a fight, and the winner is leader. It's a simple system. Everyone understands the rules. And it works. It works fucking beautifully. That's why it was the same all over the world.
'Democracy is a luxury. You can only manage it if your society is fucking loaded, well off, organised, stable, got a good infrastructure. But until your society has got that stuff, tribalism is the best way to run things coz it gives the most people the best chance of survival. And that is the only thing that matters – survival. The leader is chosen on merit, on strength. People like strength. They understand it.
'Now Batesy reckoned, and I happen to agree with him, that The Cull has left us in situation where we have to go back to tribes. We haven't got electricity, running water, gas. Fuck, we haven't even got much agriculture to speak of. Small, strong groups is the only way for people to rebuild. And strong groups need strong leaders. And that's me.
'You see Batesy's problem is that he convinced me he was right. And of course once he did that I realised I had to replace him. I knew he wasn't hard enough to lead. A tribe led by him would never be strong enough to keep everyone alive.
'So I replaced him. I crucified the poor sod coz it was the most dramatic thing I could think of. I sent a strong message by doing that:
'I am the leader.
'I am strong and ruthless.
'Fuck with me and I'll kill you.
'And that, Batesy said, is how you establish yourself as the leader of a strong tribe. He knew that was the truth, he knew that kind of demonstration was necessary, but didn't have the stomach for it.
'I did, and I do.
'But it's because I do that I'm the right man to lead this tribe. A tribe led by me has a good chance of survival when it meets other tribes that might want to take us on. I'm these boys' best chance of staying alive. I'm convinced of that.
'Are you?'
Maybe I was.
Dear God, the mad bastard had a point.
It hadn't occurred to me for a second that he'd have anything so evolved as an ideology. I'd just assumed he was a power-mad psychopath. But here he was talking what sounded horribly like sense. Brutal, nasty and dangerous, but logical.
