‘And someone who will listen to them.’
Ben turned to him surprised. ‘Yeah, exactly.’
‘It’s just something the moron said. Where is he, by the way? I thought this sleep-out thing was his idea.’
‘I know.’ Ben pulled out his phone once more and checked his texts. ‘Nothing.’
‘Should we be worried?—because that’s not something I associate with him being missing. More relief? Elation?’
Ben didn’t dignify this with a response, only tucked his phone away and leaned closer with a shudder. ‘I get a really weird vibe in this place.’ Aleksey gave him an incredulous glance. It was a particularly un-Ben-like comment. Ben shrugged. ‘The old buildings. Look, it’s like they’ve all got eyes watching us. And the decay, the sense of everything falling apart. It’s so depressing.’
Aleksey looked around, for the first time really taking in their surroundings. He supposed he and Ben had very different experiences of such places. Ben had met him when he was only twenty-four and for the eight years before that he’d been in the army. Although he had grown up on a council estate in Yorkshire, he’d spent most of those years running wild on the moors that swept down to his little township. He had not really experienced squalor and decay. Harsh environments, yes, but not urban apocalypse on this scale. He, on the contrary, had lived in Russia all his formative years, and although much of that time had been as the son of a very wealthy, influential man, much of it had not. When he’d been in military intelligence in Moscow, doing things he now wished to forget, he’d lived and worked surrounded by filth—metaphorical and otherwise. So he got what Ben meant. Both sides of the canal were lined with the warehouses that had once supported a shipping trade which had given Exeter its prosperity in previous centuries. Now these vast redbrick buildings were deserted and decaying, the visual death-throes of an uncared-for history.
It did look as if the windows were soulless eyes. Some were smashed, and thus appeared to be winking at him, but others were whole, opaque and observant. Leering with spite, he might have concluded, if he were overly imaginative. Fire escapes appeared more like metallic centipedes crawling up the outsides of each of these silent edifices, rusting, dangerous, and only adding to the overall sense of abandonment and dissolution. The canal was murky, and Aleksey could see a wheel sticking up from submerged detritus, pram or a shopping trolley, he couldn’t tell. At one point, for one heart-stopping moment, he thought he saw a baby floating on the oily slickness, but it was only a doll. Or he hoped it was: it was missing its eyes and one leg.
He slid his arm around Ben’s waist although they were already tethered by a warm hand tucked into his jeans, and Ben gave him a lip quirk of amusement, possibly triumph. Definitely possession. They both enjoyed the fact he was long past his no-public-displays-of-affection days.
Just as Aleksey was admonishing himself ruefully for his weakness, whilst at the same time enjoying some self-congratulation that he’d chosen a particularly good spot for such romantic nonsense (as there was actually no one around at all and it was dark), they heard a rustle coming from one of the warehouses that sounded furtively human. There was then a rumble of menace they were both familiar with and a husky voice added to this warning with, ‘She’s not friendly. Keep your distance.’
Just out of sight of the canal path, behind the outer perimeter wall of a warehouse, was a small shelter, and a man and dog were squatting outside it, the man holding a German shepherd by its collar. The dog gave warning again.
Ben had removed his hand and now held it out a little, smiling. ‘No probs, mate. Sister Agnes sent us down here. Pot’s all filled up, and you know what she’s like if it gets cold.’
The man then smiled, also revealing badly kept teeth, although he didn’t look as old as Ben. Aleksey stepped back a little, letting Ben take the lead. He was surprised and impressed how quickly Ben had bent the truth to ease the situation, although if put to the rack, he couldn’t quite work out where the lie had been. Ben was quick and agile in ways that mattered, he supposed. He’d been concentrating more on the dog. Well, its teeth, anyway.
Thinking this, he asked, ‘Does she like Bonios?’
The young man eyed him up with awhat fucking dog doesn’tkind of expression. Aleksey quirked his lip and plundered the stash in his pocket. With a mental note not to mention this disloyalty to Radulf, he chucked over the biscuits, and the young man caught them. ‘Ta. She loves a treat, don’t you, old girl.’
He let the dog go, and she immediately slunk over to them both, sniffing, then when she was satisfied they presented no threat, returned and lay down beside the tent to crunch her snacks.
Ben squatted down. ‘You okay? Got all you need?’
‘Oh, aye. Don’t need much, just Misty here.’
‘You had her since a pup? We’ve got two. Not shepherds though.’
‘Nah, she was assigned to me. Her previous handler got killed. She got kicked around by a mob and was a bit of a wreck, and they was gonna put her down, but she stepped up and carried on, good little soldier that she is.’
Ben picked up a stick and began drawing small patterns on the ground. ‘You left but got to keep her? That’s…unusual.’
The man laughed. ‘Taking the piss, mate? Nah, she got too arthritic to work; was for the old chopping block. Can’t rehome ‘em—not the guard uns. Too dangerous. So I took ‘er along to the vet as ordered, good as gold, only we did a bit of a detour on the way, didn’t we, girlie?’
Aleksey frowned. ‘You just…left with her?’
‘Sure did. We detoured our way here. No one’s fucking gassing my Misty.’ He rubbed the dogs head. ‘Reckon this old girl’s still saving me life.’
Ben held his hand out and the dog came to him. He rubbed around her ears. ‘You have trouble from some of the other guys out here? I’m Ben by the way, and this is Aleksey.’
‘Lee. Nice to meet you. Not so many of us out here now. They didn’t have a Misty tellin’ them to fuck off. Pardon my French.’
Aleksey was still picturing the young handler just up and walking out of the barracks with his dog, but this comment brought him back to the suggestion Harry had made about asking those who see. ‘There are fewer people sleeping rough recently?’
Lee nodded. ‘Yeah, lots of bloody do-gooders getting them into their fucking programmes and the like, I reckon. Misty don’t do signing up for things. She had all the bleedin’ volunteering she could take, thanks very much. Fucking army.’ He stared wistfully out to the canal. ‘Used to be a nice place this—social like. Lots of blokes. Not all vets, but most. Few lassies, too. They had fuckingly sad stories, I can tell ya. We looked out for each other. Now I don’t hardly see no one.’
‘Have you tried to find a shelter or some housing?’
The young man made a scoffing sound once more at Ben’s suggestion. ‘Not with the Misty-girl. Ain’t possible. An’ I can’t get work without an address, so you fucking tell me what we’re supposed to do. But we’re good, aren’t we, my love? Hey?’
