Roberto recalls their fireside conversation behind Justine’s back.
‘Bollocks,’ says Roberto, turning to the French blonde on his right. ‘That’s trash that is, hundred per cent, hundo p. Why you trying to act like you pied me? I never stuck one on you. You’re snakey. We’re done.’
‘FR,’ says Summer.
‘What’s that mean?’ says Roberto.
‘For real. You’re cancelled.’
‘You’re a sket.’
‘Wow, wow,’ says Zack.
‘Knew it,’ says Summer, full of vitriol. ‘The sort of guy that would call a girl that didn’t like him a whore. You’ve got a good one there, Just.’
But Justine says nothing. Her mind is silently ticking along.
‘Nah. That’s just you being a machi… villain. What is it, Si?’
‘Shut it! I’ve got a better question,’ says Lance, slamming down the book. ‘It might be one that lets Si here off the hook. But I’m not afraid of the answer.’
A sense of endgame fills the room.
‘Simon here tried to get a couple of people out before this all started. People too cray even for this project. Isn’t that right, Liv?’
Liv looks Lance in the eye. She’d rather they’d have kept this to themselves for tactics’ sake. But Lance seems to be playing a different game. Or has abandoned his game plan altogether.
‘He met with producers to tell them two people within the group had serious psychiatric issues. They weren’t close to the line, they were over it. He believed, that if we were to give a clinical assessment on them, these two people were devious, self-deceiving and single-minded enough, to do something desperate if put in a corner. Those were his words. Question is, who are they?’
Simon, with nowhere else to look, keeps his eyes on the ground as the others wait for Liv to squeeze him harder.
‘Judging by the way he describes one of them,’ she says. ‘The clues about their dual life. I would say one of them is—’
‘Already dead,’ says Simon. ‘That’s right. Sly.’
‘Can’t believe it,’ Summer mutters.
‘So who’s the one that’s still alive?’ Liv says. The others find themselves in another tier of unease they didn’t know was beneath the last. ‘She was referred to in your notebook as she. Who is she?’
Simon bows his head, a look that says it wouldn’t be fair to tell. Or else, that he’d rather keep it to himself.
Then he thinks better of that, raising his head and peering down at the women seated on the floor, one by one. And holding the gaze of one in particular.
London, Waterloo, Rennie Street…
Taroon Wakala speeds along the South Bank, watching the water from the Thames rise and occasionally spill over the sides of the barriers and onto the pavement. Heavy rainfall has lifted the river higher than normal and the fear of skidding on the dark fingers of the overspill is why the bike sticks tight to the grey concrete of the brutal buildings on the right.
This is the South Bank in the dead of night. Quiet enough to power along past galleries, a theatre, a cinema, without the fear of any heads or bodies in the way. The street sleepers have been moved on and drunks have been successfully stymied in the area in recent years. Taroon has made it here before the early risers; the only souls on view are the occasional lost soul ones as Taroon passes each bridge, contemplating a jump into the icy waters. Best not to approach them if you see one, Taroon’s boss once said. There used to be volunteers stationed along here at one time, all night, to stop them. It’s always been a popular spot for checking out, and these days it’s no different. Although what happens after the falls is. But I suppose they plan to deal with that when it happens.
Taroon pulls up outside Rennie Street, the moped skidding then finding its resting place outside the glass double doors. Taroon breathes a sigh of relief, because that could’ve gone very wrong and could’ve really hurt. A stamp down on the lock to fix the bike in place. There’d be time for its water cover if the circumstances weren’t what they are. Taroon has taken this route at this time many times over. But never in an emergency.
It’s twelve minutes from home exactly. Taroon made it in nine.
The pass clicks against the doors, which open and shut silently, letting Taroon through. No one has this pass, except Taroon, who needs to be able to come and go swiftly, as and when. High class, high privilege. The first thing Taroon notices is the doorman is nowhere to be seen.
Taroon paces around the desk and stares at the white phone. Everything is clean and clear, but nothing is as it should be. It’s impossible to contact the room upstairs from home, only this line does it. It all has to be done manually.
Is it time for that? Taroon thinks, reaching for the handset. Footsteps sound and quicken their pace, swelling in volume as they echo on the marble floor.
‘Ahh!’ says the man. Older. Another generation.
Taroon screams too. No stranger to being scared half to death. Because of those dark-dreaming nightmares.
‘Who are you?’
‘Taroon Wakala.’
‘Oh god. Jeez. That – that makes sense,’ says Mr Knight.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Running my checks. Is there a problem? If you’re here, there must be.’
‘Trouble,’ says Taroon.
Mr Knight’s teeth clench inside his mouth, his tense jaw rippling the skin. He wants to ask what kind of trouble, but knows that’s way beyond his remit. Production staff do appear from time to time, but that hasn’t happened on his watch for a long, long time. He stays silent, because everyone appreciates discretion. No matter what generation they’re in. He’s always prided himself on that. He keeps his lips stiff.
Taroon has been in production a couple of years and that’s quite a long time these days. Taroon’s advancement at an early age was something that the boss said was the future. Taroon knows the plans that have been put in place…
The boat is on its way. It takes some time to get there. Until then they just have to hold out. What they’re doing has always had its dangers. Never quite like this, but the world is becoming more and more extreme and Taroon’s boss told her to prepare for such things. People always find new ways to surprise and horrify you.
There’ll be a hell of a lot of fire-fighting to do once it’s all over. Recriminations. It could change the entire nature of the medium. The board will hear about it, obviously, and will have their moment of fury. Even though they’re the ones who were calling for the envelope to be pushed. Broadcasting has to keep evolving.
They’ve had their problems before. Taroon has been dragged out of bed because half the technical team had walked, because they’ve lost celebrities, because half of their equipment was stranded in the middle of the ocean on a ship without fuel. But it’s safe to say there’s never been a shit show like this.
Taroon wanted to be on the island but couldn’t be spared from keeping an eye on transmission from here. Taroon has been right there on the mark on other projects, watching it all go down. Taroon can play characters as well as anyone else. But all this has gone way too far this time.
Taroon’s lips open but it’s Mr Knight that speaks next.
‘I could tell there was a big problem,’ he says.
‘Do you have any idea what we do here?’ says Taroon.
‘I’ve had my guesses. Be strange if I hadn’t. I’ve had time on my hands. You wanted everything to be so secret, and you were in production. That was one giveaway. It could only be so many productions.’
‘But you don’t know anything for sure?’
‘I don’t,’ says Mr Knight, shaking his head to affirm it.
Taroon has to act fast, but could certainly do with a sounding board. Despite containment of information also being an issue.
‘I do value discretion. I’m known for it,’ says Knight. ‘What’s it come to?’
Taroon thinks. ‘Blood.’
‘Oh dear. That doesn’t sound good. That doesn�
��t sound like the plan. Not that I know what the plan would be. And I know you keep it authentic. Real. I mean, I know the whole thing’s not set up. I know anything can happen.’
‘It did. Now I need to put a stop to it,’ says Taroon. ‘Have you ever called upstairs?’
‘The only call I’ve ever got, is from you. I didn’t know there was anyone upstairs—’
‘You didn’t? That’s good,’ says Taroon.
Looking Mr Knight in the eye, Taroon reaches down for the white phone. Calls only ever come in. Mr Knight wasn’t even aware he could call out. His eyes give him away. He’s startled, excited, gripped in anticipation.
‘You’ve seen what’s going on in there then?’
Taroon’s hand pauses over the phone. ‘Where? Where are you talking about? Explain.’
‘In the chamber.’
Taroon’s breath dances. ‘In there? In there? What’s happened in there?’
‘Oh,’ Mr Knight says. ‘I thought that was what you were here for. I thought you’d have seen it on your little screen.’
‘No, I came here because of other matters. Production matters. What’s going on in there?’
Taroon nods her head in the direction Mr Knight came from and they both stare at the darkness that leads the way to the corridor.
‘Well, you asked me to check it out. I walked down there. I saw a flickering light from a screen.’
‘Yes? That’s all as it should be,’ says Taroon.
‘But I didn’t look what was on it. Then, I checked the temperature.’
‘Yes?’
‘And I heard footsteps. Your footsteps.’
‘Yes. But—’
‘But before I came back here. I think…’
‘Yes?’
‘I think I saw something moving in there.’
A screaming, inside Taroon’s head. A wave of static. Trouble and blood rummaging around in there as it does. When that word comes. That word, stress, that really means fear. Dragging a shockwave of lifeless images with it. A baby with no eyes, just a long dent of forehead. A curled, blood-red finger open to the bone. A mouth gasping for breath in deep space. Taroon gasps.
‘Moving in there?’
And somewhere along the corridor, they both hear it.
A door slams.
01.33 a.m.
‘When I say, I may know more about you than you know about yourselves, please bear in mind, it’s not just a figure of speech,’ says Simon.
‘How’s that possible?’ says Tabs. ‘You have access to our deepest thoughts, do you?’
‘Of course,’ says Simon. ‘What year is it? 2019?’ It’s a little patronising glib, but they don’t want to stop him in full flow. ‘You do know data is kept on you, that decisions are made in unmarked rooms off long grey corridors, or by dead-eyed algorithms, which affect your lives. A decent hacker, let’s say a Russian for familiarity’s sake, can currently figure out your phone number, the name of everyone in your family and every password you’ve ever used on the internet in under an hour. And the passwords you lot use, probably half that.’
‘Credit ratings,’ Roberto says.
‘Yeah,’ says Simon, giving him a virtual pat on the head. ‘That’s the feel.’
‘Sorry,’ says Summer. ‘My password is not an insight into my mind. I picked it at random.’
‘Nothing is random,’ says Simon.
‘Mine’s well random. No one would guess it. Not if they were Russian or a Ukranian or an Azerb… no matter what their nationality is.’
‘Okay then,’ says Simon, with a gasp that’s really a laugh, exasperated by having to explain such simple concepts. ‘I’m really not supposed to do this. Look me in the eye.’
Summer shrugs and gives him a particularly passive-aggressive look.
What follows is a ritual in which Simon looks very closely at her body as he says different letters, smiling inwardly after her non-verbal response to each one, which to the untrained eye would seem to be no response at all.
‘Got it,’ says Simon. ‘It’s your name.’
Roberto bursts into laughter, not just at what is happening in front of them, but because of the abject weakness of her password strength.
‘Your password is Summer?’ says Zack.
‘No, total trash,’ she says, more than a little defensive. Then she yields. ‘It’s YourName. Capital Y, capital N. How did you do that?’
‘A magician never reveals his secrets. The point is, there are people online who can find things, there are people out there in the hard corners of the real world.’
‘How did you get me so wrong then, Si?’ says Roberto. ‘Sorry to spoil your theories, but there’s one thing you don’t know. I go to church every Sunday. I was even gonna go pro at 18. I was halfway to the seminary. My point is, how can a Catholic priest be a sociopath? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Hmm,’ says Simon. ‘But you’re not a priest, are you?’
‘I had my doubts, it’s true, but—’
‘You failed your first year of a theology degree, but tell yourself whatever you like, that’s what sociopaths do. You see, there are people who can gain access to all sorts of records. Police records, for instance.’ And one of their number flinches. ‘People who are well connected, whose job it is to find people. Here and abroad.’
‘I have nothing to say. One act doesn’t make you – make you…’
And if they hadn’t already noticed her squirming, now their attentions are all drawn to Justine, as she stands.
‘What? Say it? What’s your defence?’ says Simon.
She distances herself from Roberto and stands as the tears arrive. If they’re fake ones she’s the best actor here. But then, she really could just be the best actor here.
‘You can know everything. But I want to be the one to tell it. I’d like to be in control of my own story. And it’s my only request,’ she chokes out.
Simon infers ‘go ahead’ through sheer passivity. And she opens her mouth to sleepwalk into foregoing the strength of silence.
‘I ran away from my home in Cassis after what happened the night of my graduation. In the days of, how is it said, rite of passage? I was 17. I had decided to defer college and take a year travelling. It was a year I would need. I went into Italy and kept moving, putting more space between myself and my past as I went, never using my real name. And while I did, my parents moved to a small town in England. Kent, near the sea. They were eventually able to tell me the police were looking for me. My parents told them I had disappeared. I gained a fake passport from a man offering them at high prices for migrants. So like all other immigrants with a little money, I got on a plane using the passport, flushed it down the toilet mid-flight, then approached the immigration office on landing and asked to claim asylum. Then I fled. They don’t expect that. They expect all those in the system to want to stay in it so they can take all the handouts they can. France makes it hard to extradite citizens to other countries and other countries in turn do not make it easy for France to find people. I fled to my parents. The authorities never came for me. This was eight years ago. Some would say it was foolhardy, insane, cray? To go on television. I suppose, in part, I wanted to know it was all over. That they were no longer looking.’
‘You’re doing what’s called bridging,’ shouts Simon. ‘Enough of the prologue, give us the blood.’
Roberto offers Justine a hand she bats away as she speaks.
‘The night of this graduation, my boyfriend and I were to drive out to a secluded beach alone. We toyed with each other a lot. We flirted with other people in each other’s eye view. You must understand we played with each other’s feelings because we were so very assured of our love for one another. I was horribly, impractically in love with him. And he had lived for my every glance, we even planned to marry.’
‘Get to the point!’ shouts Simon.
‘Give her a chance, Si,’ Roberto seethes back.
‘That night a rumour shot around the bar our graduati
ng class went to. I was asked if I knew who Eve was. But, of course, I replied, she was a petite girl from the year below. I remember splashing my face in the toilet. There was a dark energy around me. A foreboding. Then when I stepped outside I saw him and Eve kissing. I had been known to smash things at home, pull posters from the wall. I believe I broke his nose with my first punch. Then beat the broken cartilage further. My father taught me how to fight for self-defence and I felt this was all in defence of myself, all reasonable force. This Eve, she ran. I imagine he thought at that time, that when the wounds healed he could use them to tell the story of his crazy ex. But then I punched his throat, and kicked him off the dock and he fell down into the water below, hitting his head on a rock in the shallows. A terrible blow. And as he disappeared under the water, I ran.’
‘Christ,’ whispers Roberto.
‘I never stayed to find out what happened. I closed my ears, ran, and kept running. I was quite sure that this was a story of murder. I knew it at once. I lost control of every part of myself. And have been trying, every day since, to never let go of myself ever again.’
Even Lance seems chilled by the frankness of the telling, and withdraws towards the kitchen island.
‘So we know it’s not Justine then,’ says Roberto. ‘Right?’
Love can do strange things to logic, Liv thinks.
‘She wouldn’t tell us all that if she did this, would she?’ he affirms.
‘She had no choice,’ says Zack. ‘Simon knew it all.’
Yet Simon grabs a little victory in his deeper parts, because he didn’t know as much as she told.
‘Best to be safe,’ says Lance, coming towards Justine with gaffer tape and a plastic bag.
‘Oi,’ says Roberto, grabbing Justine’s hand and pulling away her away, towards the corner of the room, between the fire and the patio door. ‘What the fuck are you going to do with that?’
‘Chill out for fuck’s sake Rob. I can make a makeshift restraint with this, and then she’s safe.’
‘Okay,’ says Roberto, his eyes glazing as if someone has momentarily turned him off. ‘She’s safe? How d’you figure that?’
Beach Bodies, Part 3 Page 5
