Turquoiselle, Tanith Lee [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

if none of this wasother than a civil discussion between civilised men, or had anything directlyto do with him.

“Whynot?”

“Hischest, sir.”

“Isee,” said the teacher, furious to be cheated of his prey. “Then why didn’t hesay so himself?”

“Well,sir, he’s... a bit – er. You know.”

“Mental,”supplied the games teacher, his utter scorn and irritation precluding any sopto the PC views that were not yet properly in place. Let alone to mere decency.“Go for a walk then,” he scowl-snarledat Heavy. “Brisk as you can. The size of you, you need to lose some of thatblubber. You, what’s your name?”

“PeterCoombs,” said Andy promptly. Lucky Lie Three.

“OK,Coombs, you go with him. Try to wake him up.”

“Yes,sir.”

Thered bus went sprinting off, thumping down its human wheels, as if redundantlyto make the point. Failing to make it.

“Isn’tthe sky blue?” asked Heavy.

“Yes,”Andy said.

Nine

When he and Saralived in the flat above the off-licence, regularly there had been a risingsmell of alcohol. It had its origins less in the shop than in the carelessnessof some customers who, having bought their cans of lager or bottles of cheapwine, opened them instantly once outside, and generally spilled some in theirhaste. Or else to honour the gods.

Theirvery first flats had stunk of stale alcohol spills too, and more intimately,from drink detonated on the premises. Or projectiled or urinated out later on:his father’s offerings.

Carverdid not really like alcohol, or its smell, that much. It had near associationswith violence and claustrophobia.

Tosmell it now, so strongly, as gradually he drifted backfromwherever he had been, was disorientating. Nauseating.

Carverdid not move. He did not open his eyes. It was dark, he could tell easilyenough without doing so. He must have gone to bed and fallen asleep, althoughhe did not recall this. Had he been untypically drinking – knocked over theglass – not cared to clear up the mess?

Somethingwas wrong with him, then. He must have felt ill. Why had that been? The lack ofsleep, the phone calls (Donna, the persistent messageless robot, the malevoice that said Silvia...) Or was itsomething to do with the decoy drive and the grey man on the train. Or theother man – the man by the – shed –

Despitehimself, Carver’s lids flicked back.

And,as he had suspected, it was pitch black; he could see nothing.

Wherewere the windows?

Therewere no windows.

Hewas not out on the concrete at the garden’s end, by the shed. He was not in afamiliar house off a lane in a wood beyond a village. He was somewhere else.Somewhere that blared with the stench of stale beer and wine and whisky, thathad neither a soundtrack nor a helpful visual. Hear no evil, see no evil: hecould only smell evil. And feel it, under hisback, his head. His hands, which he could not move since his wrists, like hisankles, were intransigently fastened down.

Automaticallyhe stopped holding his breath. He heard himself breathe, ragged and needy. Thenhe heard himself speak, in a soft, rational tone. “Hello.”

Butthe pitch-black did not answer. It was cold, and the cold did not answereither. Only the stink, stinking.

Carverlay still. His head thrummed, not painful, too hollow to conjure that. When hefell he had hit his head on the hard concreted earth. Just as Cox did, andEbony, when Heavy pushed them. Had somebody pushed Carver? Somebody had done something to Carver. Doneit in that second, that split second that Heavy rose up from death on the roadwith the living dog in his arms and Andy finally saw the unknown man standingoutside the shed, lit by its turquoise radiance, was none other than RobbyJohnston in an adapted rubbery diving suit.

Scar,he thought.

Ihave reached the Third Scar.

Mymother was a scar and my monstrous father was a scar. I am the third scar.

AndI am on the scar, the rocky outcrop, in some high lightless cave, whereonce contraband booze was stored, and has leaked. Locked from the sun and themoon and the stars. But not the scars.

Ialso am scarred.

Bybirth, by living. My Third Scar will be death.

Oradd an ‘e’, he thought. Scare. I was scared as a kid.

Againhe drifted. Calmly he thought And am I scared now?

Ten

Sara, when hewas a young child, had been very good-looking. She was in her mid-twentiesthen.

(Hisfather had been perhaps good-looking too. But excessive drink and bouts ofmanic fury, drunk or sober, had cancelled most of that before Andy was five.And he had scarcely any illusion of it left when Sara and Andy escaped.)

Saradid not drink seriously. But she smoked cigarettes extensively, forty to sixtya day. Later, slowly, agonisingly, she gave up, not being able to afford therising prices.

Bythe time Andy was fifteen, Sara was in her early thirties, and her looks were beginningto wash off her like make-up.

Hecame back that day about 5 p.m., dissociated from his wanderings about centralLondon; it was an overcast sullen evening, the grey ‘architectural’ buildingshad melded with the sky. Basically, he had run out of things he wanted to do.

Atthis point Andreas Carver, (or Cava, like the wine and champagne), seldom ornever visited Sackville Secondary. And coming upstairs to the flat over theoff-licence, he wore his ordinary uniform of jeans, shirt and jacket, whichcertainly was not theirs.

Openingthe door – he had a key, as he always had – he saw Sara immediately, sitting onthe skimpy pinkish sofa. As a rule, she was not home yet, not today, but outcleaning, with a flock of hapless others, the Devonshire Centre off the HighStreet. But instead here she perched, nervilly drab in the middle of herspilling blonde strings of hair. And opposite her, on the best chair, which wasa sort of mottled green-brown in colour, like a shat-on cabbage, was a guy in asuit.

Itwas a curious suit, too. Inevitably, a suit looked old-fashioned, butconversely it was right up to date, and sharp as a new razor blade. Deep grey,like the evening, and London, and Andy’s mood. And the mood now in the flat.

Sara’spale bony face flashed about.

“Andy,”she said, desperately, “this is–”

“That’sOK, Mrs Carver.” The man spoke with total reassuring self-assurance, false ashell. The sort of voice-over you might expect on the crashing train or plane orrocket-ship – Noneed to