Slip of the Knife

I

A car was approaching them from behind, coming out of the dark. Dub slowed to let it pass but it lingered behind them, wary of straying onto the midline of the road until they were out of the hills.

Callum looked at Dub, hunched over the wheel. He didn’t look as friendly as he did when Paddy was with them. His jaw was tight and his eyes narrower. His breathing was fast.

“This fucking road,” he mumbled, glancing nervously in the mirror.

He seemed angry and Callum was afraid that Dub hated him because of the mice. He thought back to Paddy at the cottage, worried, crying and not saying why, wanting him to leave. She said it wasn’t safe.

The car behind slid out to the side, peering around them, and slipped back, gathering speed, headlights growing in the mirror, shining a rectangle of blinding light into Dub’s eyes, before pulling out into the road and passing them in a flash.

“STOP!” yelped Callum, making Dub’s hands jump so the car swerved towards the grass verge.

“Fuck!” shouted Dub. “Don’t scream like that, this is hard enough.”

Frightened at the level of anger in his voice, Callum moderated his voice: “Stop the car.”

But Dub wasn’t listening. He wasn’t looking at him, he was watching the road, checking the mirror every few seconds, holding the wheel so tight his arms were pulling his body forward in a rigid curve. He slowed on the approach to the roundabout, the lights of the petrol station glistening in the dark.

Callum tried to explain. “I need you to stop the car. I need to go back. She said it’s not safe.”

Dub didn’t answer but pulled the car across the roundabout and veered left into the petrol station, blinking hard at the brightness and carrying on until they were around the side of the building, right around at the back, in the dark again. He slowed to a stop.

Callum was sweating. “This isn’t right. She’s not safe.” The words rattled around the inside of the car. The silence afterwards was suffocating.

Dub’s voice was barely a whisper. “She said she loved me. I don’t know how to handle myself. I’m not a violent man.”

Callum wanted Dub to think well of him, not because he could give him a good report or parole, just he liked the gentle way he had about him and how scared he was of the mice. “But I am,” he said quietly. “I am violent. I know how to handle myself. She’s on her own up there and she’s my family and I’m going back.”

Callum wouldn’t have thought someone as wet as Dub had it in him but his cheeks flushed a furious red and he leaned across the gear stick to press his face into Callum’s: “You fucking listen to me: you are a child.” He was pointing in Callum’s chest, poking his finger as if he wanted to stab him. “Sean Ogilvy didn’t take you to live with his family so you could get involved in rubbish like this, d’ye hear me? Paddy didn’t drive all the way up the fucking coast and take shit at her work so you could be a heavy for her. You are a child.”

“But I know how to-”

Dub leaned into his face, eyes bulging, as angry as Haversham. “If this guy does turn up and you batter lumps out of him, how fucking fast do you think they’ll whip you back into jail? You’ve been out for under a week, the world and his dog are looking for you, we’re all busting a gut to protect you. D’you think I’m going to let you wander up the hill to have a fight?”

“But she’s my family,” he said weakly.

Dub sat back, eyes still wide. “You’re not her dad, you’re not her brother, so what are you?”

Callum shrugged.

Dub made a little circle with his finger. “In this family, in our family, you’re a child. And in this family, in our family, the big ones look after the wee ones.” He opened the car door and took a step out of the car. “If you get out of this car I will never speak to you again.”

“You’ll need a weapon,” said Callum.

Dub looked back at him. “I’m going to the petrol station. To get a knife.”

He shut the door behind him and walked off around the corner to the shop.

Alone in the car, Callum blinked burning eyes. He thought he was a nuisance to them, a problem. It hadn’t occurred to him until Dub said it: they were protecting him. He was their child. He hadn’t been a child since the dark night and the baby. They weren’t hiding him, they weren’t tolerating him. They were looking after him.

When Dub came back around the side of the station Callum groaned. He was carrying a red plastic petrol can. He opened the driver’s door and looked in, and repeated his warning: “I will never speak to you again.”

Callum shook his head. “Ye can’t use a can of petrol on him. It’s soft, ye can’t hit with it, and don’t try to set fire to him because you’ll get her too. You’ll set yourself on fire, probably.”

Dub looked uncertain for a moment. “Well, what then?”

“Get a brick. Hit him there…” Callum fingered the top of his head, where he knew the skull was weak.

Dub looked at him, softer this time. “Promise me you won’t get out of the car, Callum.”

“OK,” he whispered. “I’ll stay.”

II

The grass had been cut short all the way through the field. Long stripes ran up the hill and back again, marks of a mechanical mower, scything the grass to no more than an inch high.

Dub had to keep to the ditch at the far side from the road to avoid being seen by passing cars. It should have been easy to follow: a trickle of water had carved a gentle cleft in the soft, rich land for him to run along, keeping low. But the farmer had used the burn as a line for fencing, four wires topped with razor tips, the stakes deep in the black soil, and he had to go slowly or risk sliding down the side and cutting himself. He didn’t know how much time he had.

The can in his right hand swung heavily, the petrol sloshing against the sides, following the rhythm of his walk.

Water in the burn trickled melodically, high-pitched and playful, jarring with the dark night and the fat seagulls cawing overhead. His ankles were taking the strain of hurrying along an incline. He stumbled on loose ground once or twice, always stopping to check he hadn’t hurt himself, and then carrying on. He couldn’t see the house yet but knew it was there, at the top of the hill, beyond the clump of bushes and trees.

Reaching the edge of the short grass, he came to a fence into another field and climbed carefully over. The ground was looser here, strong grass that was razor sharp at the tips. He ran in a crouch, skirting the summit, his hand sweating around the plastic handle of the petrol can, making it slippery. He arrived at a tumbledown wall, two feet high, made of old stones, the mortar weatherworn and crumbling. He raised his eyes.

He had reached the old wall around the garden of the cottage.

And there at the far end, the flare of a match, a warm orange target in the dark. She was there, sitting in a chair, in the dark, quite alone.

He let his eyes adjust to the thin light. He could make out her face in the glow of the cigarette. She was smiling.

He watched her as he squatted on his haunches and set the petrol can on the uneven ground. Listening, alert to any noise he might make, he unscrewed the plastic lid, working his fingers slowly until it was quite loose. He lifted it off and set it on the ground.

And then he waited.