Lucy by Paul Pickering

Author:Paul Pickering
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salt
Published: 2024-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Kells woke with the rain pattering down on him in a small depression filled with pinecones and needles at the side of the road. He was conscious of the bus speeding away along the long straight road through the forest, but in the background was the sound of a siren. A two-note German police siren. The green and white police car with the siren and flashing light passed before he managed to lift himself up and fall back again into the puddle.

The siren sounded in every cell of his brain.

The water felt very cold.

He was naked. He was really naked.

They had left him almost nothing. His clothes were gone. His father’s wrist watch. His school ring. All his clothes and his wallet and his military ID. It was all gone. The small Walther automatic pistol that he had in his pocket of his jacket was gone too. Much fucking use it had been.

All they had left was his life and his ridiculous military hat, with its gold eagle holding an olive branch in one claw and thirteen arrows in the other, which lay, squashed by a boot, on the ground in front of him.

There was straw scattered all over the place too. He was not sure of the meaning of that.

By a tree there was blood on the straw and slowly, he got to his feet. There was an awful lot of blood, as if an animal had been butchered.

There was nothing for it but to start down the road and hope he ran into someone.

He picked up the hat and debated whether to put it on. In the end he did. He did not look any more ridiculous than completely naked and at least his head was warmer. In the end he was stepping out almost confidently, marching along, trying to whistle, and failing. There was no other traffic on the lonely road.

It took until nightfall, shivering, to reach a small hamlet where there was an inn. The door was locked and he banged on it and at first a small man who spoke only German would not let him in, even in his army hat, especially in his army hat. A woman he took to be the man’s wife rushed out of the side of the house and ran off down the street and then came back with a very fat man.

“Why are you naked in our village?” asked the very fat man in English, but not in an unfriendly way.

Kells tried a smile. He was not going to argue the point because of the hat. It was summer, but he was freezing because of the rain and his nakedness.

“I was robbed,” he said. Then in German, “Räuber …?”

There was a furious explosion of conversation between the innkeeper and his wife and the very fat man. More slanty, rickety-boned, mediaeval people came out of the slanty, mediaeval hovels and began to join in and shout. A blanket was put around his shoulders.

The very fat man then grasped him by both arms.

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