The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [171]
John lights another cigarette, and I’m amazed to see his hands are trembling. ‘Trouble is, the dead wrap their arms round your neck and cling on. You got to prise their dead fingers off you. Whose eyes do you think I see at night, Indy? He’s waiting for me in the Lower World, every time, first thing I have to step over a poor bastard in Argentinian uniform, lying in the mud of that God-forsaken place, the wind tugging the photo of his wife and his two kids that’s clutched in his hand. And sometimes he has Mick Feather’s eyes.’
‘I’m not ready after all,’ I say. ‘Let’s…not talk about it, John. Please, not now.’
‘Riz was the problem,’ says John, implacable. ‘Riz owed money to a dealer. Somewhere further up the food chain, someone was interested in finding out where the party was being held, and who was organizing it. Louis and Patrick thought they were so clever, but they didn’t have a clue. They saw themselves as hip young businessmen cashing in on a new idea, but they had no idea how much of a business opportunity those parties were for the people who controlled the Es and whiz that kept people loved up and dancing all night. So Riz found out somehow where Louis and Patrick were hanging out and, armed with that information, he did a deal.
‘Few days before the party was to be held, Louis and Patrick had a visit from some heavy gentlemen. They brought a contract for the boys to sign: a partnership opportunity, was the way they put it. To help them understand the advantages of this new business arrangement, they smashed the computers and set fire to the garden. Then the same gentlemen, for reasons that remain obscure, possibly for no more than fun, turned their attention to the hippies camped in Tolemac’
Keir and I were sitting under the trees by the side of Mick’s van, taking turns on an Etch-A-Sketch Mick had picked up cheap at Eastville market. Mum and John were over by the fire, talking. Mick was…‘Mick was sprawled on the ground at the back of his van with one of his mates, both of them about six light years out of it because they’d been doing K and Es together.’ John rubs his face. ‘Is it me, Indy, or has it gone cold? Riz was nowhere around–maybe somebody slipped him the word to make himself scarce. First we knew of it was revving engines, then this bloody great crash that was the gate, smashed to matchsticks.
‘Two Range Rovers came slewing across the grass into the wood, one doing a handbrake turn so he was pointing the right way to make a getaway when they’d done what they came for. The doors flew open and these guys–don’t ask me how many, could only have been four or five at most but it looked like a frigging army–came piling out with sledgehammers and, Christ albloodymighty, a couple of shotguns. Had no notion who they were, what they wanted, or what the hell to do. I still had the insane idea they were only pissed-off locals and I’d be able to talk them out of it, until I saw that the one at the back was a huge black guy with a sawn-off, and you don’t get many of those to the pound in rural Wiltshire.’
Keir and I looked up, and saw Mum rising to her feet, flapping her arms at us and screaming: ‘Get in the van!’
It felt like one of those dreams where you see danger coming but you can’t move. Keir was round-eyed. I tugged on the back of his T-shirt, but Mum had to shout again before we scrambled to our feet and jumped into Mick’s van through the open passenger door.
‘The wrong van,’ says John. ‘Meg meant you to run for hers–she probably had some notion she’d follow you and drive you out of there to safety, though it was too late for that: the second Range Rover was parked across the gateway. I’ve no idea if the guys with sledgehammers even saw you because they were already going for Biro’s ridiculous little Citron van, the nearest and easiest target. The sides crumpled like paper. I started yelling, but the black guy with the sawn-off shotgun stood in front of me, making it crystal that discussion was not an option. You think this can’t be happening–middle of the afternoon, hardly a quarter of