by Jon Lymon
The café outside of which so much had happened on the previous Sunday had people queuing out of the door for coffees and sandwiches and paninis and juices and croissants. Next door, the shutters were still down on DT’s jewellers, the blue and white striped police tape flapping in the breeze between a pair of saplings.
Remnant turned away from it all and headed down the pedestrianised section of Leather Lane and into the newsagents.
Sanj, the proprietor, looked up and didn’t so much nod in Remnant’s direction as stifle a snarl. They’d had their run-ins in the past. Stupid things Remnant had done, like walk out with a Sporting Life and a packet of Polos without paying, or claiming Sanj had already taken his money when Remnant hadn’t even had any cash. As a result, Remnant had frequently been denied entry to the shop but was currently in between bans.
“Sanj, can I put this in your window, please?” he asked.
The newsagent took the card and read it, slightly bemused by some of the spelling. He then looked beyond Remnant to the window. Despite the plethora of professional advertising and a sole postcard announcing the availability of a Claener (sic), there was plenty of space to fill.
“It’s five pound a week.”
Remnant pursed his lips and raised his cheek flesh.
“How about I give you a cut of my earnings?” Remnant nodded at the card. “Could be worth a fortune, millions.”
Sanj didn’t even bother to stifle a laugh.
“You think I was born yesterday? Five pound, Mr Sye.”
“Listen, I only need a couple of days. How about you give me the first couple of days free and I’ll pay you at the weekend?”
There were other customers in the shop who Sanj wanted to keep an eye on, and a couple of men getting impatient as they queued for cigarettes behind Remnant.
“OK. Two days. Put it in window on your way out.”
Sanj dismissed him and looked over Remnant’s shoulder at the first man in the queue behind him. Remnant nodded his thanks and left, pausing only briefly to see if there was anything new on the top shelf.
Once outside, he took great care to position his card in the middle of the window, levelling it up with sideways squints and tilts of his head.
He’d been forced to put his landline phone number on the card as there’d been another letter from the mobile company with red edges and threatening words.
Remnant returned to his flat feeling a little guilty about the carefully folded newspaper under his arm. But he consoled himself with the thought that if a victim of a crime doesn’t know a crime’s been committed against them, then they’re not a victim of a crime.
He settled himself in front of a picturesque documentary about the albatross and flicked through the newspaper’s eight-page coverage on the diamond asteroid. Amid all the reports of excitement and premature celebration, there was a centre page spread pull out of a bright white light and ovals on which you were to place your knees and a prayer to recite while you knelt.
Remnant was about to turn to the sports pages when the phone rang, causing a massive surge of blood through his veins. It could only have been in the window for ten minutes. Already his services were in demand. He cleared his throat and picked up the receiver.
“Hello, Mr Remnant of Remnant Diamond Mining Enterprises speaking.”
“You bloody what? I might have known you’d be cooking up some scheme to get up there.”
Even though she lived less than a mile away on Roseberry Avenue, contact with Elena had been minimal over the past five years. They’d seen and ignored one another on Leather Lane several times. And Elena once made the mistake of going for a drink in The Old Mitre as part of a girls’ night out. The visit ended in the smashing of several glasses, the spilling of Gates, and a lifetime ban for Elena and all her female party, meted out by a Gordon who demonstrated rage on a level none of his regulars had witnessed before or since.
Phone conversations between the two had been even more of a rarity, neither wishing to waste money they couldn’t afford talking to someone they couldn’t stomach.
“Chloe asked me to remind you about the 18th,” she said.
“What about the 18th?”
There was a pause which Remnant assumed was being filled by Elena gesticulating to her new fella, bemoaning how useless her old fella was.
“It’s a good job I called then, innit? The 18th is the wedding rehearsal.”
“Oh yeah, I know about that, Chloe called me.”
“Yes, I know she called you because she called me afterwards and asked me to remind you later in the week about it.”
“Fine, thanks, well, you’ve reminded me. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m expecting an important business call.”
“You’re not thinking about trying to get up to that asteroid are you?”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“Well, I imagine there’s a few millionaires having a serious think about it. But who’d want you on their ship?”
“I’ll have you know I’ve already had several enquiries which I’m currently checking out.”
“Bollocks, Simon. Remember who you’re talking to here, I can tell when you’re lying.”
“I’ve had enquiries, I tell you. Now if you don’t mind.”
Elena laughed into his ear, a laugh that stopped abruptly. “You should be thinking about what you can do for your daughter,” she said menacingly. “Not about how you can get your grubby hands on some diamonds. You’d better be there on the 18th or you’ll have me to answer to.”
Remnant hung up in an instant. That glimpse of the bad old days had set his blood pumping a little faster than was good for him. He washed his hands in the kitchen sink, dried them on a filthy tea towel and headed over to the window.
He looked down at the jewellery store on the opposite side of the road, his attention caught by a hand reaching for one of the display trays in the window. A necklace for that special person, a congratulations for passing those exams, or maybe a wedding gift for a much-loved daughter.
Then he saw him, walking past the shop.
Remnant reached street level in record time. The man had moved on, but Remnant had a good idea where to.
“Oi?”
DT spun around in the alleyway leading to The Old Mitre and looked displeased.
“I’ve had the police around thanks to you,” Remnant told him.
“Yes, look. I said the wrong thing, I’m sorry.”
“You can’t go around blaming people for stuff they ain’t done.”
“Yes, I know, I’ll retract my statement.”
“You mentioned me in your statement?”
“Well, yes. I was asked who was around the area and your name came up and they asked did anyone chase them and I said, well, yes, you did, but you came back empty-handed.”
“I’ve got Ramage on my back and I know what he’s like when he smells blood.”
“What can I say, my friend? Come on in and I’ll buy you a pint.”
“I can’t. I’m expecting a call. Back home on the landline.”
“I see I see. Well, another time, then. I owe you one.”
“One? I’m thinking five.”
DT’s eyes narrowed and he turned and walked down the alleyway.
Remnant semi-jogged back to his flat via the electrical store where he looked at the widescreen televisions on display in the window. The perma sale still didn’t bring any model within his price range, but that didn’t stop him marvelling at the quality of the image, which happened to be a picture of what looked like a fairly attractive journalist interviewing a trio of unkempt scientists.
A tap on the shoulder distracted him. He turned to see a smiling Sanj. “Come, come,” he said.
Remnant followed the newsagent round to his shopfront.
“It seems you have started new craze, Mr Sye. Since you left, every customer queue to put card in window.” He pointed to the shop window now full to overflowing with similarly sized postcards advertising handymen and doct
ors and scientists and plumbers and builders and experienced diamond cutters and miners and qualified pilots and unqualified pilots, all after a seat on a ship bound for the asteroid belt.
Somewhere amid them all was Remnant’s card, lost in a chequerboard of lies, exaggerated truths and blatant falsehoods.
“One more day free, Mr Sye, then you pay like they do, or your space goes someone else.”
9
Two strangers were sat on the barstools he and Edgar normally occupied when Remnant arrived at The Old Mitre a few days later. Gordon shot a cursory nod in his direction before pouring a Gates and waving away Remnant’s genuine attempts to pay.
“What’s up with Edgar?” Gordon asked. “He’s not been in for a few days. The quiz machine is pining.”
Remnant shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe he’s got himself a seat on a mission.”
“What do you think about all this asteroid business?” Gordon asked.
Again Remnant shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t really in the mood for conversation, yearning instead for the mental relief that accompanied a pint of Gates.
“They’re now saying it’s all a hoax,” Gordon continued.
‘What’s all a hoax?’ Edgar looked pale, like a man with worries on his mind, so he met the pint of bitter that Gordon poured him with gusto.
“That asteroid,” Gordon told him.
Edgar shook his head. “There’s too many people without possession of the facts dismissing it. As the scientists have said, given the number of asteroids in the solar system, the chances of one being made out of valuable stone is better than evens.”
“Maybe I’ll put a bet on.” Remnant felt a surge of excitement at the thought of re-entering the bookies, another of the local stores he’d had periodic bans from, some of them self-induced, others enforced by the police, including the last for destroying one of the televisions after his greyhound trotted home in sixth in the final instalment of a three-race accumulator that would have netted him a tidy four-figure sum.
“I think we can do better than that,” Edgar told him.
Edgar motioned to Remnant to finish his drink. They made their excuses and Edgar led Remnant back down Hatton Garden towards Leather Lane.
“Where we going?” Remnant asked.
Edgar was edgy, intermittently looking over his shoulder. A group of middle-aged men heading towards The Griffin strip joint on Clerkenwell Road caused him to grab Remnant’s forearm and pause.
“What’s going on?” Remnant asked.
Edgar waited until the men were gone.
“It’s vital we’re not followed,” he whispered.
He led Remnant into Baldwin’s Gardens, just off Leather Lane, then hung a right past a small square bordered by a dozen dirty garages to an area of larger lock-ups that Remnant hadn’t been near since he was a smoking teenager.
“What did you bring me here for?”
A jangle and flash of silver announced the appearance of keys. A minute later, Edgar was turning on the lights of a lock-up that was about the size of a quadruple garage with an array of greased tools hanging from the walls. In the far corner by a quarter smashed square window that looked onto a brick wall was a small desk and black leather chair with yellow sponge leaking through side slashes. Edgar pointed to a metallic, cylindrical object in the centre of the room that was about the size of a motorcycle.
“What’s that?”
“That is the most valuable object you’ve ever set eyes on.”
Remnant took another look. “Is it scrap metal?”
Edgar scoffed. “It’s a nuclear engine.”
Remnant instinctively covered his nose and mouth with his hand. “Where the fuck did you get that from, and why the hell is it here?”
“It’s mine. I made it ages ago. There’s nothing to worry about. Without liquid hydrogen it’s harmless.”
Remnant slowly moved his hand away from his face. “Why are you showing it me?”
Edgar had learnt to be patient with those who didn’t share his technical knowledge, although the urge to berate Remnant’s lack of appreciation for the object in front of him was immense.
“A ship with a nuclear engine like this could get you to the asteroid belt and back in nine months. Way faster than normal rocket propulsion.”
If Edgar was hoping for an epiphany in Remnant, he was to be disappointed. “Right. I see the engine. Where’s the rest of the ship?”
Edgar threw his keys onto the desk in the corner and slumped into the chair. “That’s where I was hoping you could help.”
“Mate, I’m struggling to build bridges with me daughter. I can’t build a ship.”
Edgar turned to face Remnant. “If someone gets me the parts, I can.”
Remnant then experienced something of an epiphany. He didn’t know much about the technicalities of spaceship construction, but he had seen a documentary about an unmanned trip to Mars, and the ship on that looked complex, certainly not made from of the sorts of things you’d find lying around in central London.
“What sort of parts we talking about?”
Edgar pulled out three sheets of tightly folded paper from his breast pocket and handed them to Remnant. There was neat but small writing on both sides of each page, and as Remnant scanned the list, he felt a familiar sense of uselessness return.
“There’s got to be a couple of hundred items here. It’ll take me years to find them all.”
Edgar snatched back the list.
“That’s what I thought you’d say. I just thought I’d check with you first, to see if you were interested.”
Remnant snatched back the list.
“How long we got?”
“Well, I expect the first vessels will be launching any day now. They’re likely to be crewed by amateurs though. Most won’t make it out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Those that do will have to be seriously lucky to make it to Mars to refuel. The big players will take more time to plan their missions. But I suspect they’ll be ready to roll next month. We’ll want to launch before then if we’re to stand a chance.”
“You’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
“I’ve thought of nothing else.”
“Is a month long enough to build a ship?”
“Nope. But it’s all we’ve got. I’ll rustle up something. It won’t be NASA spec, but, we’ll see. So what do you say?”
Remnant looked at the list again and pulled the kind of face builder’s do when they’re assessing the scale of a job and are preparing to tell the customer it’s going to be big and expensive. “As I’m not busy pretty much for the rest of my life, I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Edgar smiled for the first time that evening.
“You’re a good man, Sye. I knew I could rely on you.”
10
Haygue received the expected summons from the powers that be in the wake of a messy news conference that failed to quell excitement or dampen spirits.
Before he left the SEC centre, he phoned his wife to tell her he’d been booked on a flight to Houston and wouldn’t be home as planned that weekend. She had resigned herself to not seeing her husband for a long while ever since news of the diamond asteroid broke.
“I hope they’re not working you too hard.”
“Well, the big thing is to stop people getting too excited,” he said. “The last thing we need is amateurs clogging up space. Listen, I best go. Love to you and the dogs, and remember, not a word to a soul.”
The building Haygue had been summoned to was as unremarkable as the guy on the security desk’s nasal hair was remarkable. Haygue signed in, clipped on his lanyard and waited on a black leather sofa, standard issue for office waiting areas these days. The windows ran from ceiling to floor rendering Haygue vulnerable to recognition by people on the busy street outside. Having recently been the focus of a televised press conference, he turned away, not wanting anyone placing his face, tapping the window and asking difficult questions, like the guy on the plane who said he
was flying home so that he and his brother could get to work on building their own ship.
“My bro majored in astrophysics, so he knows what’s what. And I got a licence to fly, a pretty brutal combination, you think?”
“Look, I said my piece to the press. There’s nothing up there to get excited about, but I’m not in the business of spoiling anyone’s fun. If you and your brother want to kill yourselves trying to launch a trip to the belt, then I’m powerless to stop you.”
“Sure, thanks,” the guy said smiling as he peered through the gap from the seats in front. “Any tips for space travel? I mean, what kind of shit do you eat up there? And speaking of shit, how do you shit in space?”
“These are all things you and your brother will just have to figure out for yourselves. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on.”
“More pictures of that diamond asteroid to ridicule, huh?”
The guy laughed to himself and finally turned away, but Haygue had to endure a knowing smile from him as they disembarked at the airport.
The meeting room Haygue finally entered after a twenty minute wait on show in reception was plush enough. Orange juice that was once fresh, croissants that never were and an array of prawn and quartered sandwiches that were destined never to be started were hardening on silver foil platters in the centre of the table as resolve hardened in the hearts of those around it.
There were three men, a bald and a black one sitting, and a blond one standing in the far corner of the room. There were two women, one the wrong side of fifty, the other the right side of thirty. Both dressed like men, wearing their hair thick and high, face stern not smiling because that betrayed weakness and they wanted to show they belonged in this place of strength, that they could be trusted to make the big decisions, and have a say and a share of the responsibilities. They weren’t babymakers who were going to come in one day and announce their pregnancy to a pissed off table of penises who’d be calculating how much extra work the maternity leave would generate for them.
