Cloud Cuckoo Land Read online

  He heard the intercom buzzer go off out in the office, so he kicked the door open a crack to hear.

  ‘Ah, Warden? It’s three o’clock.’

  He splashed his face and took a few deep breaths; he’d managed to pull himself back together.

  Warden dabbed his brow with a towel and came back out into the office. He picked up his walking stick and made it to the door.

  ‘Do excuse me, Leonard, but I’ve got interviews.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘If you want.’

  Leonard followed Warden out of his office. His secretary looked up at them as they passed; he rubbed his chin and watched Leonard help Warden shuffle along the corridor towards the lift.

  The old man hit the call button over and over until it lit up.

  ‘Leonard, I would prefer you to leave very quietly after the interviews. I haven’t decided what should happen to you yet, but I would like you to, at the very least, get out of my sight. You should make yourself scarce, you have made some enemies as you well know.’

  ‘OK, I understand.’

  The doors opened and Warden moved off with a bit more spring in his step. It seemed like the distraction of the interviews was the thing that kept him going.

  Leonard took the long staircase up to the mezzanine and went in through the door. The gallery was packed with strangers who were hogging the front seats. Leonard sat in the third row and looked down into the chamber.

  Warden was settling himself in his chair; he had a whispering chat with the stenographer and took a quick look at some paperwork she’d shoved under his nose.

  Then, without fuss, the door opened and an old woman walked across the floor and sat in the seat opposite Warden.

  Leonard picked up the pair of binoculars chained to the back of the seat in front and aimed them at the old lady. She was frail but beautiful; she’d added some blue-green to her eyelids and a very subdued red to her lips. There was a small brown stain on her forehead, but no added colour to her cheeks, she had too much class for that. The shape of her face told you how beautiful she had been, how beautiful she still was.

  Warden shifted in his chair, he had eye contact with the old girl now.

  ‘So then, Magda, I don’t know if you’ve realised but you are quite an old candidate, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, very.’

  ‘Is this not a moment for youth to come to the fore? After all, the next few months are going to be very hard physically?’

  Magda was sharp, her head was still, and she waited for the right place to speak and then spoke clearly and concisely.

  ‘I imagine they will be, yes. But I am tougher than I look.’

  ‘If you can, and in your own time, please explain why you would be a valuable addition to the survival programme?’

  Magda straightened out her dress.

  ‘I’ve had a good innings already but I am concerned and well, I just wanted to keep my eye out. It’s all very well having the fitness and energy of youth but dealing with so many unknown quantities requires another kind of strength.’

  ‘Go on, Magda, we are all listening, even if you are talking bollocks.’

  The use of ‘bollocks’ didn’t seem to faze her; she had obviously talked publicly before, because she turned her chair and spoke, not only to Warden, but to the whole gallery as well.

  ‘Well, what I could bring to the pot is the benefit of a lifetime’s experience. I know that doesn’t sound like much and I am not claiming higher knowledge. It’s just that I’ve been around, I’ve watched the sun come up and the days roll by, I’ve kept my eyes open and I’ve remembered. The hardest thing is that you really can’t understand until you’ve lived as long as I have. You can’t get things into perspective until you have a way to measure, until you realise what’s involved.’

  She stood up, crossed her arms then dropped them by her sides.

  ‘If I can be straight with you, the point is this; it isn’t bollocks. I mean, what life teaches you over the years! Maybe I should remind you all, for example, that life is just a bit of leasehold, some rented time and space, that’s all.’

  Warden had been holding his bottom jaw for a while, scratching his chin by flexing his forefinger over and over.

  ‘OK, Magda, OK. I’ll warn you that we’ve had a lot of advice from candidates in the past. A good few have proposed guides to new ways of living. What’s your pocket formula?’

  She turned to Warden and gave him a look that would have killed him if he had not been looking up at the ceiling. She carried on though.

  ‘I think several things are essential. I think we should set out goals and strive to achieve those goals.’

  She could see that he was ill. Warden smiled, he knew she knew. It was not difficult for the old ones to tell, to see through the false front. He liked the old bird though and honestly, if he had his way, he might well include her in any surviving society.

  A chair scraped and the court recorder stood. She walked to Warden and whispered in his ear. He then turned to Magda.

  ‘Ah, much as I’d like to extend, we have to leave it there. I have a pressing matter to attend to.’

  The court recorder held out a book for Warden to sign. He signed but the recorder didn’t look happy. She flicked back through previous entries, looking at Warden’s signature at the bottom of each page; it was the same name scrawled there but there was a problem.

  ‘Is that your signature, Warden?’

  He took the book in his hand.

  ‘Yes, I know, it’s a problem I’ve been having lately. Signature comes out different every time, I can’t help it.’

  He waved the recorder close again, he wanted her to repeat what she’d said, just to be sure he’d heard right. She handed him a fax and added, ‘I’m sorry, Warden, but we’ve just received information that Raymond has been killed.’

  Warden looked across at Magda.

  ‘We’ve got to leave it there, Magda, thank you. A pressing matter… a dear friend of mine, you see… I am required somewhere else.’

  ◊

  Leonard got to his feet and made for the exit; this was going to be a useful diversion. If there were any plans to arrest him, it looked like they might be on hold. Something more pressing had just come up, but even so, Leonard would not leave the Administration building by the main exit. He didn’t take the stairs back to the ground floor either; instead he climbed up one more flight and stopped beside a window on the landing. He reached up, snapped the security locks off the double glazed unit and opened the window. Then he stepped out onto a flat area and ran along the cracked roofing felt. He jumped to a lower level; the wind was freshening and flooding into his lungs. The sky off to the east was dark and streaked with rain spilling from thick grey cloud. He grabbed the top rung of a fire escape, jumped down onto the ladder and descended as quickly as he could.

  He ran back past the front of the Administration building and up hill towards where he’d parked the car. He got to the corner of the street and stopped; up ahead he could see that the white Mercedes was crawling with cops. The kid cops, sitting inside and waving Reggie’s shotgun around. The electric aerial was extending and retracting, going up and down in time to outbursts of music.

  He turned and ran back the other way until he could take another route. He settled into a good jogging pace and tried to breathe evenly. He’d have to make it back to the Mirabelle on foot and it was raining hard, coming in at an angle over his shoulder and down his neck.

  ◊

  It was raining heavily. The driver held a big black umbrella above Warden’s head and walked him across the car park, opening the door and helping him into the limousine. As the door closed and Warden reached for his seatbelt, the driver finished flapping the umbrella and jumped in. Warden asked him, very softly, ‘What happened to Raymond?’

  The driver looked over his shoulder.

  ‘Sketchy details as yet, sir. Raymond’s body was found lying in a field out near a dairy farm.
Cause of death, strangulation.’

  ‘Oh, God. Get going, would you please.’

  The car taxied across the car park and stopped at the exit. When it paused before moving off, a figure appeared, opened up the back door and jumped in beside the Warden. The driver turned and screamed out.

  ‘Oi, what’s your game?’

  Ian smiled and said, ‘This is not an exercise. Everybody stay calm.’

  Warden found enough energy to offer a measured response.

  ‘I’m busy, Ian, I can’t see you now, whatever it is.’

  Ian hadn’t stopped smiling. He proceeded to pull a pistol from his coat pocket and aim it at the driver’s head.

  ‘Now, tell your driver to do as he is told. We are going back to your place and you are going to tag me.’

  ‘You are being very melodramatic, Ian.’

  ‘Drive on, you shit!’

  Warden nodded at the driver and the limousine pulled onto the wet ring road.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Leonard edged his way down the access stairs and into the boiler-room. He could see Lena asleep on her bed, with the covers wrapped around her legs and pulled up to her neck. He was soaked through; he shook himself off and moved out of shadow. The last of the daylight was shining in from above and bouncing off the back wall behind Lena’s bed. Bounced light is soft light, it caresses skin and cotton, so much so that Lena looked like an artist’s impression of who she was, lovingly painted into the corner of the room by an unknown apprentice of the Dutch school.

  He had to wake her, though. He rocked her shoulder gently.

  She woke with a sudden twist of her body.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s alright. Lena, listen, did you get the pistol?’

  She lifted the edge of the mattress to show Leonard that she had.

  ‘Well done! Where’s Beryl?’

  ‘She’s off with her friends, they’re delivering the newsletter.’

  Lena looked up at the pattern of raindrops settling on the skylight and smiled.

  ‘Are we going to get in trouble, Leonard?’

  ‘Yes, sooner or later I think we are bound to.’

  Lena jumped up off her bed and started to pull her coat on.

  ‘Wait, you’ve got to stay here.’

  She carried on zipping up her coat, then pulled on her hood and sat there ready.

  ‘I’d like you to wait for Beryl and I’ll come by later to see if you’re both OK.’

  Leonard picked up the pistol and put it in his jacket pocket.

  ‘But what if you get arrested?’

  Leonard pressed the pop-studs on her collar shut, closing the neck of her coat.

  ‘Ouch! That hurts!’

  ‘Look, I promise, I’ll see you later.’

  He kissed Lena and left the boiler room.

  It was quiet on the streets, just a couple of cars passing with their brake lights colouring up the wet roads. Leonard had what he needed in his pocket, all he had to do now was to stay at large, avoid capture.

  As he crossed a major intersection, he was aware of a uniform pattern to the litter on the pavement, the scrap paper was all the same. The same size and colour, the same news sheet with the same headlines reading: ‘Survival Programme Exposed - The Corruption of Hope: Gangsters, Bribery and the Warden’s Lies!’ It was the latest edition of Beryl’s newspaper, hundreds of copies strewn across the street, hundreds of cats let out of the bag all at once, all of them damning the Warden.

  ◊

  Warden had been called upon to tag a client three or four times. It was an official duty whereby the selection board would send him out to a corporate headquarters or to a private address. He’d have a four-man team escorting him through the tagging process. Ian’s armed assault was more like a bloody hijacking; he’d been taken against his will, out of his ‘high-security’ work-place. It was a bloody kidnapping, really. He had no desire to be difficult, all he wanted was a quick turnaround - get Ian tagged, and get back to his own life again.

  The car screeched to a halt. Ian waved his firearm at the driver and locked him into the boot. He then manhandled Warden into the lobby of the apartment building. They stood close and quiet while the lift ascended.

  As soon as he’d unlocked the door, Warden limped along the hallway and headed for the bar.

  ‘Would you like a drink, Ian?’

  ‘Get me a stiff one, a bourbon.’

  Warden gulped down his own glass and closed his eyes. A warm shiver, the most pleasant sensation of the day by far, crept around his back and up over his shoulders. When he opened his eyes, Ian was leaning against the wall with his hands stuffed into his jacket.

  ‘OK, Ian, let’s get this over with. Follow me.’

  They made their way through to the study and Warden pointed out where Ian should sit down. Ian perched himself on the edge of the chair and started wringing his hands.

  ‘How does this work then?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts.’

  ‘Don’t get smart, just answer the question.’

  ‘It’s a simple procedure and it won’t hurt. The upshot of it being, that you are numbered for survival.’

  ‘Get on with it.’

  Warden bent over and felt the tendons in the back of his thighs tighten up and begin to shake. He felt as if he was on his last legs and when he opened up the CD cabinet and looked for a second time into the strongbox, he felt quite ready to die. After absorbing the fact that it was empty, he felt a numb tingling spread across his body. He laughed as he said, ‘Oh dear, this is interesting. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do much for you today.’

  Ian watched and waited for the clues to the truth of the matter leak out of the atmosphere.

  There was no point at all in bullshitting, so Warden carried the strongbox to his desk and sat the thing down with the lid open, showing just how empty it really was.

  ‘The piece of equipment I need to tag you has been removed from this box. I don’t know how, or by whom. I cannot guarantee your inclusion on the survival programme without it.’

  Ian sat back in his seat.

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Ian’s disappointment was like a third year drama student doing disappointment.

  When he lifted his head he was having a go at outrage and anger.

  ‘I will have to kill you, you see that, don’t you?’

  Warden could see that.

  ‘Give me a few days and I will correct what has gone wrong!’

  ‘Don’t fuck me around, Warden.’

  ‘I’m not, Ian. To be quite honest, I’d like to, but I’m not.’

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘I don’t know. You got any ideas?’

  ‘Yes, take a pull on your drink.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  Warden gulped some down. Ian bent forward, pointed the gun barrel at the toe of Warden’s training shoe and pulled the trigger twice.

  ◊

  The temperature had dropped sharply after sunset, then the rain had tightened into a hard, dry hail. As Leonard looked along the lamplit street, he could see how it was falling in vertical sheets, pimpling up off the road surface, rolling along the black camber.

  On a whim really, he ran through the middle of it. It cheered him up and put some oxygen back into his blood.

  He was thinking, ‘So now what?’ He had the instrument in his hot little hand but he felt that his luck might be running out. He was sticking to the back alleys, slowly zigzagging his way back across the city. A patrol car slowed and turned in, Leonard looked for an escape route. Further along the alley, halfway up the next turning, he could make out a strip of red fluorescent tubing which had been artfully twisted into the shape of a pint glass. It was a beer ad, up above a yellow door. As he approached he could hear music; he knew the tune, it was Frank Sinatra singing, ‘Fly me to the Moon’. Leonard poked his nose in and listened to the peeling laught
er and ripples of applause welling up from the basement.

  He climbed down and found himself an empty table by the side of the floorshow. He picked up the shaker from the table, poured out some sugar onto his hand and licked the stuff off.

  The guy under the spotlight was familiar; he was short and square-shouldered with curly hair. The radio was at his feet, with the music blasting from it. He had ridiculously long fingernails and he was inexplicably blowing up balloons. The audience were very amused and Leonard remembered he’d seen the man’s interview with Warden. It was Newman, how could anyone ever forget a man like Newman? He inflated a long, skinny balloon with a single breath, then tied it off and twisted it, to form a dog’s back legs. He’d already twisted together five or six, they were placed around the stage and Leonard could see that he’d been working on his act. He’d improved it by getting hold of different coloured balloons for the different breeds. All white for the Poodles, black and white spots for the Dalmatians and black and tan for the Doberman Pincers.

  ‘Newman!’

  Leonard climbed a couple of steps and squeezed round the back of the stage platform. He called out again and this time Newman turned. As he turned, he got a surprise and the air he was forcing into the next balloon blew back down his own throat.

  Leonard placed the barrel end of the compressed air pistol against Newman’s upper lip and squeezed the trigger. The pistol went off with a sound like a truck slamming on the air brakes. Newman reeled away, tripping on his own feet and falling onto his own dogs. There was some panic in the crowd, people stood and knocked over glasses, most everyone backed up to the walls and let Leonard scamper away back up the stairs.

  As Leonard ran back through the alley and up onto the main road, the hailstones stopped falling. It had settled, though, so that all the parked cars looked like they’d been salted from above. He stopped and had a look at the pistol. He was worried because there wasn’t a numbered readout, no way of knowing how full or empty the pistol was. It was a completely sealed unit, factory moulded.