Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

First published in Great Britain in 2011

by Orion Books,

an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House, 5 UpperSaint Martin's Lane

London WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

13579 10 8642

Copyright Andrew Pyper 2011

The moral right of Andrew Pyper to beidentified as the

author of this work has been asserted in accordancewith

the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of thispublication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in anyform or by any

means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without the priorpermission of both the copyright owner and the

above publisher ofthis book.

All the characters in this book arefictitious, and any resemblance to

actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library.

ISBN (Hardback) 978 1 4091 2254 8

ISBN (Trade Paperback) 978 1 4091 2255 5

Printed in Great Britain by

Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

The Orion Publishing Group's policyis to use papers that are natural,

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For my Guardians then

Jeff, Larry, Mike, Robin, Alan

And for my Guardians now

Heidi, Maude and Ford

Entry No. 1

Wewatched them come.

A lonepolice cruiser at first. The officer's shirt straining against the bulge aroundhis waist. A look of practised boredom on his face, a pantomime of seen-it-allmasculinity performed without an audience. We were the only ones who saw himwalk, pigeon-toed, into the house. The only ones who knew he wouldn't be boredfor long.

Whenhe came out he wasn't wearing his cap anymore. His thin hair, grey but darkenedwith sweat, was a greasy sculpture of indecision, pointing in severaldirections at once. (Later, we wondered about the cap. Had it fallen off in thefirst jolt of shock? Had he removed it himself in a reflex of some sort? A showof respect?)

Hetumbled into the car and radioed in. We tried to read his lips, but couldn'treally see his face through the willow boughs, swaying reflections over thewindshield. Was there a numbered code for this? Or was he forced to describewhat he'd seen? Did he recognize, even in the shadows that must have left himblind after entering from the bright outside, who they were? However he put it,it would have been hard for anyone to believe. We weren't wholly convincedourselves. And we knew it was true.

Soon,two more cruisers pulled up. An ambulance. A fire truck, though there was nofire. Some of the men went inside, but most did not. A scene of grimlyloitering uniforms, sipping coffee from the Styrofoam cups they brought withthem. The last of history's union-protected, on-the-job smokers flicking theirbutts into the street in undeclared competition.

Therewas nothing for most of them to do, but they stayed anyway. An only partlyhidden excitement in the way they scuffed their shoes over the cracked sidewalkand rested their hands on their belts, knuckling the handles of holstered guns.It was a small town. You didn't get this sort of thing too often. You didn'tget it ever.

Westood together, watching. Unseen behind the curtains in the front room of theMcAuliffe house across the way. Our noses grazing the diaphanous material thatsmelled of recently burned bacon and, deeper still, a succession of dinnersscooped out of the deep fryer. When the paramedics and bearded man in a suitwho must have been the coroner finally emerged from the house with the blackbags laid out on gurneysone, and then the smaller otherwe held our breaths. Agulp of french fry, onion ring and chicken finger that, to this day, is thetaste of loss.

Weremember all this, though still not everything.

Andsome of the things we remember may not have happened at all.

Thecall comes in the middle of the night, as the worst sort do.

Thephone so close I can read the numbers on its green- glowing face, see theswirled fingerprint I'd left on its message window. A simple matter of reachingand grabbing. Yet I lie still. It is my motor-facility impairment (as one of myfussily unhelpful physicians calls it) that pins me for eighteen rings before Imanage to hook the receiver onto my chest.

"Idon't even know what time it is. But it's late, isn't it?"

Afamiliar voice, faintly slurred, helium-pitched between laughter and sobs.Randy Toller. A friend since high schoola time that even Randy, on the phone,calls "a million years ago." And though it was only twenty-fouryears, his estimate feels more accurate.

AsRandy apologizes for waking me, and blathers on about how strange he feels"doing this," I am trying to think of an understanding but firm wayof saying no when he finally gets around to asking for money. He has done itbefore, following the unfairly lost auditions, the furniture-stealinggirlfriends, the vodka-smoothed rough patches of his past tough-luck decade.But in the end Randy surprises me when he takes a rattling, effortful breathand says, "Ben's dead, Trev."

Trev?

Thisis my first, not-quite-awake thought. Nobody's called me that since highschool, including Randy.

"How?"

"Arope," Randy says. "Rope?"

"Hanging.I mean, he hung himself. In his mom's house."

"Henever went outside. Where else could he have done it?"

"I'msaying he did it in his room. Up in the attic where he'd sit by thewindow, you know, watching."

"Didhis mom find him?"

"Itwas a kid walking by on the street. Looked up to see if that weird McAuliffeguy was in the window as usual, and saw him swinging there."

I'mquiet for a while after this. We both are. But there is our breath being tradedback and forth down the line. Reminders that we aren't alone in recalling thedetails of Ben's room, a place we'd spent a quarter of our youth wasting ourtime in. Of how it would have looked with the grown-up Ben in it, attached tothe oak beam that ran the length of the ceiling.

"Maybeit's for the best," Randy says finally.

"Takethat back."

"Ididn'tit's just"

"Takethat stupid bullshit back.''''

"Fine.Sorry."

Randyhas led the kind of life that has made him used to apologizing for saying thewrong thing, and the contrite tone he uses now is one I've heard after dozensof defaulted IOUs and nights spent sleeping on my sofa between stints in rentedrooms. But then, in little more than a whisper, he says something else.

"Youknow it's sort of true, Trev."

He'sright. It is sort of true that with the news of Ben McAuliffe's suicide therecame, among a hundred other reactions, a shameful twinge of relief.

Benwas a friend of mine. Of ours. A best friend, though I hadn't seen him inyears, and spoke to him only slightly more often. It's because he stayedbehind, I suppose. In Grimshaw, our hometown, from which all of us but Ben had escapedthe first chance we had. Or maybe it's because he was sick. Mentally ill, aseven he called himself, though sarcastically, as if his mind was the lastthing wrong with him. This would be over the phone, on the rare occasions Icalled. (Each time I did his mother would answer, and when I told her it was mecalling her voice would rise an octave in the false hope that a good chat withan old friend might lift the dark spell that had been cast on her son.) When wespoke, neither Ben nor I pretended we would ever see each other again. We mightas well have been separated by an ocean, or an even greater barrier, asimpossible to cross as the chasm between planets, as death. I had made apromise to never go back to Grimshaw, and Ben could never leave it. A pair oftraps we had set for ourselves.