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

reasonably steady, tilted the whisky into his own mouth, andgulped two, three, four singles on a breath.

“You’reall a pack of cunts,” decided Sedden. He too stood up, tottered, held to theback of the stone bench. “I’m go’ff to bed.”

“Bye-bye,”said Ball. “No loss.”

Seddenhauled himself, using the bench as a prop, tottered over and, fetching up infront of Ball, smashed him across the face with his fist.

Ballreeled back. A jet of blood, looking much blacker and wetter than the sea, shotinto the air.

“Oops,”said Fiddy. He got up in turn and carefully walked some distance along theterrace. There he sat down on the pavement, resting his back on the prongs ofthe rail, looking at the building’s facade, not the sea-view. He seemed soon tofall asleep.

VanSedden and Ball, however, were now fighting. They staggered about, grunting andmoaning, aiming meaty blows that mostly did not connect. Until, lunging todeliver another of these, Sedden fell over. From his knees, and averting hisface, he spat out a curtailed string of vomit, then bounded up again andlaunched himself in encore at Ball. Ball’s lower face was a mask of murkyblood. His fists struck now, but constantly missing Sedden’s head, landing toolow on ribcage, shoulders. Sedden swerved at every impact, but did not go down.

Fromhis bench, Carver watched them. If surveillance cameras operated out here, assurely they must, then either the monitors were asleep, or had skived off onsome personal errand.

Orelse, was that procedure here? Observe always, with no interference. Enoughrope for each to hang himself. Or did it make no difference?

Itwas Ball who fell next. Sedden deliberately dropped down beside him. He sizedBall’s head and neck and pulled Ball in that way towards him, as if to kiss hisbloodied lips, or lick them. Ball said, slurred and ridiculous, “You’ve bust myRolex.”

Carversaw Charlie was standing up as well. He appeared steady, if in a ratherlopsided way. In total contrast to himself, he was white, and his face shone –not with sweat, you realised. Tears were running out of both his eyes, moreurgently than the blood from Ball’s nostrils.

“ThinkI’ll have a turn on the old girl,” he said, in a choked yet formal voice, thepolite little boy in the playground, frightened, but having had it drilled intohim he must always do, say, the Right Thing. “Bit of a cycle about. Bloodygood.”

Carverfound he in turn had got up. (Only Fiddy remained on the ground against therailing, snoring sotto voce, as if also trying to be as well-mannered as hecould.)

ThenCharlie broke the spell – and the whisky bottle, which he dropped with a sharp-dull,smashed-sugar crash on the paving. And without a pause he ran, faster than hehad seemed capable of before, along the gravel and  toward the far east sideof the building.

VanSedden was dedicatedly banging Ball’s head against the pavement.

Carverwent over, heaved Sedden up and off and cracked him hard on the jaw. Let go,Sedden sat down on the stone. Lacking the support of bench or railing he thencurled slowly over, and lay on his left side, mindlessly gazing at Carver,without interest. Ball was now throwing up. (Carver thought of Iain Cox and E-bone,after Heavy had pushed them. Irrelevant.)

Hewould go inside, Carver decided. Wake someone and get them out here to clearup.

Beforehe could take another step, he heard Charlie’s bicycle, noisy in the quiet,tinnily whirring and scratching and pumping, furious and laden, back over thegravel. It must have been stationed not so far off, by one of the more recessedfrontages, unseen. And look at it now. Coming back along the drive so veryfast, faster for sure than it had been ridden earlier, just as Charlie had runso much faster. Whisky or adrenalin.

Noholds barred.

Inthe moments before it happened Carver understood. Carver was not drunk, in noway affected by the double mouthful of whisky. But he stayed immobile andunspeaking, and watched with the other two who had kept the vestiges ofconsciousness; Ball coughing and spitting, squinting, Van Sedden shivering,focus, it seemed, partially restored to his vision.

Thebicycle erupted to within a few paces of them, then veered straight out acrossthe short edge of gravel, missing all the rose-pots, and onto the stone paving.Charlie was astride the machine, flying easy as a bird, not breathing eithervery fast. His legs beat up and down rhythmically. His eyes were huge, and dry.Not afraid. He looked – determined. That was it. A striker about to score thewinning penalty, a bomb-happy pilot about to release the bomb-hatch above thedarkened, semi-sleeping town.

AsCarver already knew they would, man and bike burst on, missing the benches now,and the men, over the pavement, that abbreviated border between earth and water– and air.

Theyhit the barrier of the rail, Charlie and the bicycle, full on, going in thiscase at quite a speed.

Thebicycle seemed to implode, buckling, condensing.

Charliethough lifted like a gull, up, up, over the top of the railing, up there in thesky of void and stars, the wings of his arms spread wide. Then drifting in anarc, not flapping now as when he floundered down the hill, but caught,appropriately gull-like, as if on some supportive current of the night air. Inperceived yet unreal slow-motion once more, but graceful at last and self-possessed,he curved across and downward, to the unseen rocks and shore below. Gone.

Sixteen

Gelatinouslycold, the lights painted the room and its twelve occupants.

Itwas otherwise hot, the windows shut behind their blinds. (Looking out on allsides at private grounds or open water, why were such blinds necessarily alwaysdown, at least on the ground floors?)

Carversat on the comfortable but businesslike chairs with the other three men who hadsurvived the night: Van Sedden, Ball, Fiddy.

Eventhe damaged squashed bicycle had been brought in. It lay on the space of wood-plankfloor between the four chairs and the sidelong desk. A fifth witness?

Behindthe desk, the other eight; six men, two women. Each wore a dark suit; the women’ssuits also, visible during their group processional entry from behind the desk,had trousers. One of the women was fat, if not as fat as Charlie had been,though he would be losing weight now, of course.

Theother woman was noticeably thin.

Asif to make identification –