More than half of the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon; what was left was low in his eyes and it was hard for him to see into the trees, but he thought he saw the wide spectacles and the pallor of Cann's forehead. It was his last try: he had rallied what strength was left to him. Five times he had tried to push himself up and five times he had subsided on to his haunches. He flexed his toe muscles. The circulation had staunched and the muscles were locked tight, but his balance held and confidence trickled back.
'Well done, Mister, a good effort… Now, make my Christmas and run. Don't quit on me now, Mister.'
It was an hour since the voice had last shouted at him, a whole hour since it had goaded him. For an hour he had sat, between his attempts to push himself up, and the valley had gone quiet around him. He had thought of the past and the present, of the Eagle, and the mines, of the Cruncher, and the mines, of the Princess, and the mines, of the Mixer, the Cards, the Eels and the mines, of the spieler cafes on Green Lanes, the lorries coming through Felixstowe docks and Dover harbour, and of the power, and the mines
… It was the pungent smell of the Eagle, like he was rotting already, that kept the mines in his mind.
But he was standing… fuck the past and the present. He would not run, he would walk towards the future. His mind was a shambling mess: that was the sun and the hunger. Mister craved the future…
Lie low, go quiet. Young Sol in the place of the Cruncher, maybe Davey Henderson's boy in the place of the Eagle. The Princess back with him – of course she would be. A new Cruncher, a new Eagle, and the same Princess – and the word would goround the pubs, bars, clubs that Mister had walked on through a minefield, had had the balls to put his fee down, stamp them on ground that was stacked full of landmines. No fear. No bloody fear… He was Mistet no bastard took liberties with him.
The shadows of the trees on the hill groped toward; him.
He turned his body but kept his feet on the crushed grass. The wind came in a little surge, riffled the grass and brought him the smell of the Eagle. It seemed to cling to him. He could beat the mines, he was the Untouchable. There was a sliver of movement ahead of him. The head of his shadow wavered, far in front of him on a patch of ground that was bare or sparsely grassed. Mister saw the snake slide away from his head's shadow. Its skin was rich brown cocoa in colour, but spread on it were paler blotches, like water pools on an oil sea. It must have been sleeping on the sun-warmed earth in the last of the day's heat, but then he had stood, finally, and the shadow had cooled the place where it rested. The snake's place was on the direct line he would have taken, the shortest route he would have walked, to the riverbank. He had no fear of snakes, insects, spiders. He watched the snake meander across the patch. He saw its head, its needle eye and its jabbing tongue. He was about to take the first step, not running and not blind with closed eyes, walking, so that he held his self-respect. The snake went into the thicker grass that ringed the patch of crusted earth. He looked a last time for it. He readied his leg for the first stride. He breathed hard, sucked the air into his throat, his lungs. He had no fear. It was as if a crisis had gone. His shadow was further on than where the snake had slept. He would follow his shadow to the river and leave the kid, Cann, bawling and yelling behind him. He touched the pistol butt above his belt. As he tried to follow the last wriggle of the snake's tail, Mister saw the wire.
If it had not been for the snake he would not have seen the wire.
The wire did not have the lustred sheen of the snake's skin. It was coated in dirt. He followed the line it took. In places grass sprouted over it, and then it would reappear, then it was hidden again. He should not have looked for the end of the wire that ran at a height just above a man's shoelace knot. He knew he should have squinted his eyes shut, denied himself the sight of it, and stepped forward. The wire's line took him away to the left, past an old tree branch in which it was snagged, and then it was angled higher.
He could see the stake that held it up and its green painted body with the faded stencil markings that had a squat cluster of antennae points just below the height of a man's knee, with a ring above them to which the wire was fastened. The breath wheezed from his body… his knees went, and with them his bladder.
The urine steamed on Mister's leg as he went down. When he was on his hands and knees in the grass, he could not see it.
The last of the sun was above the hill's crest and the higher trees were webbed with it. The sky spread blood-reddened light on the valley, washed off it the brightness of the day.
He was broken. His head was on his knees and his fingers were over his eyes, but the tears came, and the urine flowed on his leg. Joey's voice sang out.
'God, Mister, you are a disappointment to me…
Not going to run? Is Christmas cancelled? What you going to do, sit there all night? There's going to be a lot of laughs round Stoke Newington and Dalston, Hackney, Hoxton, Harringay. You won't be able to hear yourself think up Green Lanes, with all the laughter… What's the next big plan?'
He sobbed, and the light failed around him. And the smell of the Eagle and the urine would be worse in the night and the wires would come closer to him, edge tighter around him.
'You know what I was going to do, Mister, if you'd run? I've a big dog here, an Alsatian. I was going to let you get close to the river – if you hadn't stepped on a mine – and I was going to send him after you. You might lose a leg with a mine but this brute's bad, you'd have lost your throat with him. What's to be done, Mister?'
He was mesmerized by the voice and the tears ran on his sun-blistered cheeks and the wind seemed colder on his back. He knew the fear.
'Come and get me.'
'Is that a joke, Mister, is that funny talk?'
'Come and get me out.'
'What? Walk in there?'
'Get me… I can't do another night, not here… Get me out.'
'Didn't your mummy ever teach you what to say?'
'Please… fucking get me o u t… Please… '
'Got to do better than that, Mister, a lot better.'
He cried into the growing darkness that hemmed in the sun's final light, 'I'm begging you – for charity's sake, for mercy's sake – help me. Please help me.'
' Is it over, Mister? Did I win and did you lose?'
' I lost, you won… It's over.'
The voice changed. The mocking sneer was replaced by a brusque rattle of instructions. 'You will sign a statement listing, in your own handwriting, every criminal offence you have committed since your release from HMP Pentonville… You will plead guilty at every subsequent trial you face… You will name every criminal associate… '
'Any fucking thing – but not another night out here.'
'Your word is your bond?'
'Trust me – and help me.'
'You are armed, Mister. Throw any firearm away from you.'
He took the PPK Walther from his belt. He swung his arm and hurled it high. He saw it against the ruddied glow before it fell against the darkness of the hill's slope.
' I did it.'
' I saw you do it, Mister. Strip off. I want all your clothes off you, and your socks and your shoes.
Everything. Then stand. Then I'll come and get you.'
'Thank you. Thank you, Cann.'
He tore off his jacket and his fingers fumbled with his tie. He ripped his shirt open and threw it at the grass, then the belt.
In the dropping light, Joey watched as Mister, out in the field, stood and kicked off his trousers.
He took the mobile phone from his belt and the battery from his pocket, married them, and punched the numbers.
He was tinny and distant in her ear. 'It's as if I've killed him, I have destroyed him. I know what I have done. To get there, Jen, I went down lower than him. I was more cruel, more brutal, more vicious. I sucked the strength out of him. He was untouchable, he did not know fear, he is now standing in a field and bending to take off his shoes and socks and then he will be quite naked – I told him to strip. He said, Jen, to me:
'Please.' For what I've done, you wouldn't want to know me. Two days ago, he thrashed me, and I didn't cry out. He had a big meeting, I wrecked it. I brought him down, I peeled his men away from him. He went into a field. I am at the edge of the field. I have taunted him, laughed at him, I've brought the fear into him which he never had
