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  Jimmy gives me a big welcoming smile, then he turns to Tone. “Hey, Tone,” he says, “here's your mate Leonard.”

  Tone draws himself up to his full height and looks around, like one of those meerkats on the David Attenborough program. When he sees me, he puts on this ugly, vicious-sidekick smile. Biding his time. Waiting till the pack leader gives his say-so. The more he goes on like this, the more ridiculous he's going to look. He's about as scary as custard.

  “Hiya, Leonard,” Jimmy says. “You following me, or something?”

  “Nah,” I say. “I'm visiting a sick relative.”

  Jimmy grins dangerously. “I thought you had one of those already,” he says.

  I smile. “Can't have too many sick relatives,” I say. “It's the healthy ones you've got to worry about.”

  Jimmy laughs at this, which is good of him. I'm feeling pretty lame, to be honest. I've been up all night, reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Fucking great book, once you get into it. I've come out to the plant for some peace and quiet, not to trade badinage with Jimmy and his scout troop. Jimmy looks around. “I don't think we've all been properly introduced,” he says. “I'm Jimmy. This is Tone. That bloke over there who looks like a girl is Eddie. The one who looks like something out of Jason and the Argonauts is more than usually earnest.”

  The fat boy squawks at this. “My name's not Ernest,” he says. He's got these odd eyebrows, one black and hairy, like he's got a caterpillar stitched to his head, the other almost invisible. It makes his face look all lopsided.

  Jimmy laughs. “I didn't say it was,” he says. “Can't you just lighten up?” He turns to me. “We've only just had lunch,” he says. “There might be some left, if you're hungry.”

  I look at the fire. There's something there, in amid the flames, something that used to be furry, all blackened now, with dirty-brown skin and bone showing through the singed fur. A cat, maybe; it's hard to tell.

  “No, thanks,” I say. “I'm not a big fan of nouvelle cuisine, if I'm honest.”

  Jimmy looks nonplussed. “OK,” he says. “Suit yourself.” He glances at Tone. “We're going hunting,” he says. “Tone here was wondering if you'd like to come.”

  I nod. “Love to,” I say. This could be a mistake, but I don't have any choice. Back out, and I've got wuss written all over me. Not to mention another insult and injury to stoke little Tone's fires.

  I'd heard stories about hunting before. Mostly bragging, the usual kids' bullshit, but I knew even before we got to where we were going that it was real with these guys. I wouldn't have expected anything otherwise with Jimmy, I suppose. I'll give him that much, he takes himself seriously. We head out toward the east side, Jimmy leading the way.

  It's Eddie who takes it upon herself to fill me in. As we lope along, heading toward the landfill, she gets in step with me. “It's just rats, mostly,” she says. “Not always, though. Sometimes you get a seagull, but they're usually too quick. Sometimes you get something special.” She pulls out a big hatpin, the kind that old ladies used to have and you only ever see in junk shops nowadays. “This one is yours,” she says. “It's my lucky pin.” It is, too. I can see it in her face. She's doing me a special honor. “I've got some big fuckers with that one,” she says.

  I slow a little and look at her. I'm quite touched. “I don't want to deprive you of your lucky pin,” I say.

  She grins. “That's why I'm letting you have it,” she says. “ ‘Cause it's lucky. Your first time and all.” Her face suddenly goes serious, as if she's just figured something out that she hadn't realized before. “Just this once, though,” she says. “I want it back after.” She stops walking altogether and looks a bit worried.

  I stop walking too. There's a terrible sadness about this girl that reminds me of the sick people I've seen at the clinic when Dad goes in for his tests. “Absolutely,” I say. I take the pin. I suddenly feel sorry for her. Maybe I even like her a bit. She's gangly and spiky and she's probably borderline nut job, but she's not bad-looking when you get up close. She shouldn't be hanging around out here with Jimmy and his boys, though. She should be at home, watching reruns of Dr. Kildare and swooning over Richard Chamberlain, or something. I can just imagine her swooning, and it's a strangely satisfying idea. I venture a smile. “Thanks,” I say.

  Her face brightens, and now I see that she's really quite pretty. Sexy, too. I mean, I like Elspeth and all that, but if it came to it, I wouldn't mind a quick one with Eddie. I suppose my face betrays that thought, because she smiles real happy at me and blushes. Then she gets out another pin—a long, coppery-looking thing—and lopes off after the rest of the crew toward the landfill. The hunting ground.

  The landfill isn't officially a landfill. It isn't officially anything at all. There was a farm out here once, a long time ago. Johnsfield Farm it was called. The farmhouse itself, and quite a few outbuildings, are still more or less standing, though nobody has lived there for decades. The fields are just weeds and rubble, with the odd bit of machinery here and there, rusting in a stand of tainted willow herb or nettles. The actual house is off to the south of where we are, a ruin among newer ruins, but nobody ever goes inside, or if they do, they keep themselves well hidden. I've gone in there a couple of times, but it's dank and ugly inside, even in the summertime, and I didn't linger. There's nothing to see. Nothing to find. People in the Innertown tell a story about a gang of blokes who dosed some girl up with rum then took her out to the old farmhouse and did stuff to her, but I think this is all just talk to scare the little ones. They say she was raped and tortured for hours before she died. That girl's ghost is supposed to wander about the place crying and begging for mercy, but it's all too storybook to take seriously. If somebody tells that story, all you have to do is ask what the girl's name was, or when all this occurred, or what happened to the blokes afterward, and they don't know a thing.

  Still, that story might have something to do with Johnsfield ending up as an unofficial landfill, because it probably gives people permission to do whatever they like there and of course they've ruined it. It was probably a nice little farm once, but after the plant closed, and with that gang-bang story for backup, the people round about started driving out here years ago to dump stuff in the last field at the end of the dirt road that runs out to the Ness. They don't do it in the daytime, they only come at night, since officially it's illegal, what they're doing. Though I can't imagine that the authorities would ever prosecute them with the full force of the law for dumping more crap on a place that's already up to its eyes in poison and garbage. Better here than somewhere else. I don't know if the fly-tippers are locals, or if they come from outside; whoever they are, they know that it doesn't matter what they do. Nothing matters really. Those people probably tell themselves the place is past caring about, but it's still surprising to see what they leave out there, mixed in among all the usual household rubbish: rusted birdcages thick with lime and millet, dead animals, bags of needles and plastic syringes, swabs, old power tools, body parts. It's fairly open country out at Johnsfield, no pits in the ground, no fences, just a long jagged hedge that stays black till well into the summer, when it puts out a few thin, painfully tender leaves and the occasional miraculous, sweet-scented flower. I once saw a picture of an old wishing tree, like they used to believe in around these parts, a gnarled and twisted old rowan covered in notes and cards and cheap decorations fixed to the branches with scraps of ribbon or baling twine. That's what the boundary hedge looks like, like one long row of wishing trees dressed with blown plastic and calico and hanks of what might have been dog or cat skin. It's almost jolly, like Christmas at the mall. If we had a mall.

  Anyway, this is where we are and this is our hunting ground. These are our games. I'm pretty much in favor of the old Be Here Now way of going about things, so having got myself drawn into this particular folly, I decide I'm going to enjoy it. Maybe get to know Eddie a bit. Of course, it's just pointless scouting at first. Jimmy and his crew—with me along for the ride, t
hough I'm keeping just enough space between us so they don't start imagining I'm one of them—all of us, together and individually, wander aimlessly across the piles of rubbish, sinking in, bouncing out, sometimes tumbling into a nasty pocket of mush and fumes, bearing our simple weapons, looking for any sign of life. We can use what other tools we like, though the hatpin is de rigueur. The hatpin is the weapon of the right hand, and has to be gripped just so, to avoid losing it in the melee, but the others all carry their own specially prepared weapons for the left hand: Eddie has a double-edged knife. Ernest, or whatever his name is, has a long, possibly Teflon-coated fork, like one of those implements people have at barbecues. Tone brandishes a vicious screwdriver carefully sharpened to a point, and I can imagine him working on this, with love and care and anticipation, in his quieter hours. Best of all, Jimmy has a Chinese-made clasp knife with a six-inch blade, double-sided, in nicely tempered dark steel. He says it's a flensing knife, but it isn't.

  I have nothing, of course, having come unprepared. But I don't care. I don't really want to be chasing little furry animals around with a hatpin and a fake flensing knife, not at my age. We're not going to catch anything edible. There are rats, seagulls, hedgehogs, maybe a few feral cats living among the rubbish, and, to be honest, I'd rather just leave them to get on with it. They've been breeding out there for years, those cats. If you come down this side at night, you can hear them wailing, females in heat, toms fighting, and you'll see them wandering about, all scrappy faces and vicious scars, missing ears, torn fur. Some of the kids come down here to play games not that different from what we are doing now, just wandering up and down looking for animals and birds to torture with blades and matches and burning oil. The only difference is, those kids set traps and nets to get their prey, while we are hunting. All the same, it feels like a childish game, especially the hatpin rule, and I'm a bit embarrassed about it.

  Finally, Eddie spots a big rat and we all set off in pursuit. Ernest isn't much use to anybody, he just jumps about waving his weapons and shouting tally-ho, but Eddie really throws herself into it, scrambling across the garbage, her hatpin hand lunging at the little furry body—and then there's more of them, a whole family of rats, big ones and little ones, all fat and healthy-looking, plump bodies full of blood and organs, just begging to be skewered. Only they're too fast, and nobody gets anywhere near them. They just disappear into all the rubbish and we just keep toppling in after them, getting ourselves covered in wet and slush, snagging on old bed frames and defunct Silver Cross prams, dangerous little nicks appearing on our knuckles and wrists. Pretty soon, I'm ready to give up, but Eddie keeps on, and she's more than making up in enthusiasm for what she lacks in stalking skills. Finally, she lunges and sticks her hatpin right through something that squeals and struggles, then hangs, well and truly speared, twitching, but silent now, the life running out of it a little too quickly. She looks at what she's got, then she shows it to me.

  “It's just a baby,” she says. I look at it too, but I'm not sure what it is. Up close, it looks pale and fake. “It's only little,” Eddie says. She seems sad now, though I'm not sure whether this is from pity or disappointment.

  “Not much meat on it,” I say.

  “Yeuch!” She looks at me like I'm some kind of crazy person. “I wasn't going to eat it.” Then she grins and holds it out to me. “You want it?” she says, and I can feel something starting now. It's like when a cat brings you a bird or a mouse it's caught. That's a sign of affection.

  “So,” I say. “What else do you catch out here? Other than baby rats?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You said you sometimes got something special.”

  “Oh.” She grimaces. “All kinds of stuff,” she says.

  She gives me an odd look and I wonder if she's offended about the baby-rats dig. I don't want her to think I'm putting her down, so I soften it up a bit. “Like what?” I say. The way I say it, though, it still comes over as a challenge, and I have to backtrack a little more. “Really,” I say. “I'm interested.”

  She's been thinking all the time and she jumps in then, all bright and excited. “I got a mooncalf once,” she said.

  “A what?”

  “A mooncalf,” she says. She's not sure, now that she's telling it to me, but there's a part of her that wants to be and she gets all defiant. “It was huge. With these big saucery eyes, and a pointy snout.” She looks back fondly at the image of whatever it was she once caught—and I believe right away that she's telling the truth. She's all tender and excited, so I'm absolutely certain that she caught something.

  “What did you do with it?” I ask.

  She thinks a moment, then shakes her head. It's like air going out of a balloon. “I killed it,” she says.

  “Really?”

  “I didn't mean to. I just—”

  “A mooncalf?”

  “Yes.” She gives me a sad look. “That's what it was,” she says. “There's mooncalfs all over, out here along the shore.” She gazes at me expectantly. When I don't say anything, she looks sad again. “I'm not making it up,” she says.

  I shake my head. “I know,” I say. Everybody has a theory about the secret fauna of the headland. People tell stories about all kinds of real or imaginary encounters: they see herds of strange animals, they catch glimpses of devils, sprites, fairies, they come face-to-face with terribly disfigured or angelic-looking mutants from old science-fiction programs on late-night TV. And it's not just animals they see. You hear all kinds of stories about mysterious strangers: lone figures stealing through the woods, gangs of men roaming around at night, a criminal element who come in from the shore side to see what they can steal from the plant, troublemakers and pikeys, sex perverts and terrorists. John the Librarian says the buildings down by the docks provide a perfect hiding place for insurgents to lay up and store their weapons. Or maybe they're counterinsurgents, he'll say with a twinkle in his eyes: revolutionaries, agents provocateurs, terrorists, counterterrorists—who can tell and, anyway, what's the difference?

  “They have them in books,” Eddie says. “They used to be all over, but now they hide in places where nobody ever goes. Like squirrels.”

  I nod.

  “They're in Shakespeare,” she says.

  I reach out and touch her arm. “I know,” I say, softly. I want her to believe that I believe her, but I don't think she does.

  We haven't seen Jimmy in a while. Ernest and Tone are just standing about on a firm island among all this crap, standing up on the highest point, scouting their little horizon, and my mind goes back again to that meerkat film on TV. Finally, Jimmy turns up, and he's got this huge rat on the point of his Chinese knife. He grins at us all as he waves it in triumph. “He shoots, he scores,” he says. Then he looks back and forth to Eddie and me curiously. “You catch anything,” he says to me, and I can see he's not talking rats.

  I don't say a word.

  “I got one,” Eddie says. “It's just a baby, though.”

  “Never mind,” Jimmy says. “You got something, at least.” He gives me an amused look.

  After we finish killing stuff, we flop down on a grassy bank and Tone and Ernest start building another fire. Jimmy has gone back out into the sea of rubbish, searching for bigger game. I can see he wants a special kill, or maybe an especially disgusting find to mark the occasion of my first outing, but he's not coming up with anything. I sit down with Eddie. I've noticed two things about her: first, she's got this really sexy mouth, real blow-job lips, but sweet with it, and her legs, in her tight black jeans, look almost impossibly long. I saw a John Singer Sargent portrait in a book once, where the girl had long slender legs like this, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. Still, I don't push anything. I don't think it would be wise to make Eddie blush twice in one day. Instead, I do the old conversation deal. Playing catch-up.

  “So what happened to Ernest?” I say. He's just out of earshot, helping Tone with the fire.

  “Who's Erne
st?” she says. She's already forgotten the introductions. I nod at the fat kid. “Oh, Mickey,” she says. “His name's not Ernest, it's Mickey.” She gives me a puzzled look.

  OK, I think. Not the sharpest toothpick in the box. Sweet, though. “So,” I say, “what happened to Mickey, then?”

  “How do you mean?” She looks over at the guy a bit worried, as if she's expecting him to have his arm hanging off, and she hadn't noticed it before.

  “His eyes,” I say. “I'm assuming he wasn't born like that.”

  “Oh,” She puts her hand to her mouth and giggles, cute as anything. You have to wonder if she does things like this on purpose. “He got his eyebrow and his eyelashes blown off,” she says. “With a firework. They haven't grown back yet.”

  “How did he manage that?”

  “Oh, just mucking about.” She looks back to the page in her head marked Guy Fawkes Night. It isn't a big book, but it is clearly labeled. “He lit a banger and threw it at Tone. But nothing happened. So he goes over and picks it up and puts it to his eye. Like he's trying to figure out what's wrong with it. ‘This things's a dud,' he says and then—BANG!—it goes off.” She grins happily. “We all thought he'd blown his eye out.”

  “Nice,” I say.

  She settles down and looks a bit disappointed. “He hadn't, though,” she says. “He just blew his eyelashes off. And his eyebrow.” She thinks for a moment. “It hasn't grown back.”

  I nod. “You said,” I say.

  “Maybe it never will,” she says, continuing in her reverie. She seems to be trying the idea out for size. Having one black eyebrow might be OK on a temporary basis, but it's obvious that, to her mind, forever is a different thing altogether.