It still powered through his arm, the force of that blow. The blade had half-disappeared in Moe’s back—it looked like he’d sprouted an extra limb—and then there was blood everywhere, some of it pounding through Curly’s ears. Larry’s mouth flapped, and maybe he’d shouted and maybe he hadn’t. It was hard to tell. It probably only lasted seconds. Moe coughed what remained of his life on to the kitchen table, and all through Curly’s arm the power sang.
But cutting his head off, leaving it there … Why had he done that?
Because it was legend.
Outside, rows of shops dawdled past. Even when their names weren’t familiar, they were knock-offs of ones that were: Kansas Fried Chicken, JJL Sports. Everywhere was like everywhere else, and this was the world he’d grown up in. Things used to be different. Gregory Simmonds, the Voice of Albion, was very clear on that point. Things used to be different, and if the natural children of these islands were to enjoy their birthright, they had to be that way again.
He checked behind him. There they were on the back seat: the digicam and its tripod; the laptop and all its cables. He wasn’t sure how that worked, but it didn’t matter. Getting it on film was the main thing. He’d work out how to post it to the web later.
The axe was there too, wrapped in a blanket. In videos he’d seen, they’d used swords; whacking great blades that sliced through bone like butter. Curly had an English axe. Different strokes for different folks.
A giggle escaped him.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Keep your eyes on the road.’
Legend. In the pubs and on the estates, on the internet, in all the places where people still said what they thought and weren’t afraid of being locked up for saying it, they’d be heroes. It would be a life lived in the shadows, one step ahead of the cops. He’d be the conquering hero, Robin Hood, famous for dealing this mighty blow; showing the foreign fanatics that they weren’t the only ones who could draw blood, that not all Englishmen were too frightened to fight back. That there was a resistance. That resistance would win.
He looked sideways and recognized the fear Larry was trying to hide. That was okay. All Larry had to do was what he was told, and he’d do that because he wasn’t currently capable of independent thought.
If he was, it would have occurred to him that they’d stand a better chance of getting away if there was only one of them doing it.
But Larry kept driving.
Chapter 13
This darkness was smaller than the last. Hassan was hooded again, with a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth, his knees tucked up to his chest, and his hands bound.
When he flexed them, the cord dug into his wrists. But even if it snapped, what would he do? He was in the boot of a moving car. His captors still had him. Two captors, because one was dead. His head had been left on the table in that house.
They’d brought him up from the cellar, into the kitchen, and there it had been, on the table. A human head. It sat in a pool of blood. What else could he say about it? It had been a head, and Hassan had seen films in which severed heads had been displayed, and had laughed at how ‘unrealistic’ they were, without it ever occurring to him that he had no frame of reference for the level of realism achieved. And now he did. And all he could think was that a real severed head was little different from a movie severed head, with one critical difference: it was real. The blood was real. The hair and teeth were real. The whole thing was real. Which meant that what he’d been told, We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web, was also real. Fucking Paki.
He had wet himself, and the jumpsuit clung to his legs. He wished he could remove it, and dry himself off. Wished he could have a shower, and change, and go to sleep, somewhere which wasn’t the boot of a moving car. If he were going to make wishes, perhaps that was the end he should start at. He should wish he were free and safe, and could worry about changing his trousers in his own sweet time.
The comedy voice in his head had fallen silent. There were issues that were not suitable for comedy. This argument had weekly been shot down in flames at the student stand-up society; try putting forward that point of view, and you’d be accused of fascism. Freedom of speech mattered more than notions of taste and propriety. Hassan Ahmed had agreed with that. How could he not? When the moment came, and he took his stand at the mic, it was all going to come out. Daring, edgy stuff. Nothing off-limits. That was the contract between stand-up and audience: they had to know you were baring your soul. Except now Hassan had encountered a severed head on a kitchen table, and had immediately understood that this was not something that could ever be the subject of a joke. And even if it could, it was not a joke that Hassan could make. Because it proved that the people holding him were capable of cutting off heads.
The thumps and jolts and crashings would not stop. The cord binding his wrists would not fray. Hassan would not find himself unleashed, but would lie suffering until the car reached its destination, and then he too would reach his destination. This was his last journey.
So even if he could. Even if he could make the best joke ever. Even if he could make the best joke ever, with its subject the decapitation of unwilling humans, this was not a joke Hassan could ever make, because Hassan was never going to make jokes again. Not that he had made that many to begin with. Because if he were to be uncompromisingly harsh on himself—if he were to tell the truth, observing the contract between stand-up and audience—Hassan would have to admit this too: that he had never been particularly funny. He could make jokes, yes. He could ride riffs. He could unreel a comedy thread and wrap it round the usual observation posts: quips about old people shopping, and teenagers texting, and how nobody smiles on buses. But only in his head. He had never been himself in public. And now never would be. Doing so would remain forever on the list of things Hassan had intended to do in his twenties; a list which would never grow longer and never grow shorter, for Hassan’s twenties were not going to happen.
Because these people were never going to let him go. Not without killing him first. We’re going to cut your head off and show it on the web. Fucking Paki.
The car bounced and bashed him, and Hassan Ahmed tried to make himself smaller. In his mind, he escaped in seventy different ways, but his body remained in the boot.
The common wisdom was that car-theft gave you a buzz, but that probably only held true if your evening hadn’t already involved blood, firearms and a severed head. The car was a beat-up Austin, taken from a sidestreet, and River guessed its owner’s reaction on finding it gone would be a sigh of relief. There were no spare keys in the glove compartment or behind the rearview mirror, but there was a mobile phone in the former; a chunky grey thing that looked like River’s own phone’s distant ancestor. Hotwiring took him seven minutes, which was probably six minutes fifty over the record. He’d driven back the way they’d come, crossed the river at Blackfriars, then tried to use the phone to call the hospital again, only to find it was pre-pay, and out of credit.
This, at least, gave him a buzz, but not a welcome one. Throwing the phone through the window would have relieved his feelings, but he settled for swearing heavily. Swearing was good. Swearing helped. It kept his mind off the possibility that Sid was dead; kept it, too, from flashing back to the head on the kitchen table, raggedly sawn from its owner.
But why had it been familiar?
He didn’t want to dwell on it, but knew he had to … The answer was buried within his subconscious and ought to be within his grasp. He stopped swearing. Remembered he was on a mission, and came to a halt at a junction, reestablishing his bearings. He was on Commercial Road; heading for Tower Hamlets, where he’d collect Kay White. Stationary, he was hooted by a car behind, which swung out to pass him. He swore again. Sometimes it was good to have a visible enemy.