After ten minutes, the giant door creaked open and Hartmann appeared, dressed in the same outfit as his tiny bodyguard: black pants, a black top, black combat boots. Only Hartmann’s pants were stretchy and his jersey was the size of a duvet. Around his neck he wore a black scarf.
‘I am an early riser today,’ he announced. Loafer fussed around him, arranging his big chair. ‘Normally I get up at 2 p.m.’
She looked at him. He should have been consulting a talking animal, a magic dwarf. He should have been sipping from a jewelled goblet containing a foaming potion. Instead, he clapped his hands, and Loafer brought him a small tray on which were arranged two pills and a glass of water.
‘Pain relief,’ Hartmann explained. ‘For tennis elbow.’
Eloise waited and then said,
‘Thanks for seeing me. We just have a few extra questions.’
Hartmann smiled, showing his small pointy teeth. ‘Of course. No problem.’
She ran through a list, which he answered leaning back in the chair, his feet stretched out and his enormous hands steepled over his stomach. He was impressively articulate. At one point he said, ‘I have answered this already.’ To several other questions he said, ‘Refer this to my attorney, Lon Chasewell.’
They pressed on, until she’d reached the end.
‘So, Eloise,’ he said, ‘the sun has come out. Shall we go for a walk?’
They headed out into the grounds, Loafer following discreetly behind.
Eloise looked around, at the green estate, as well tended as a golf course, the lawns stretching away in gentle dips and mounds, the line of trees on the horizon, each straight trunk tipped with a plume of foliage, like a quill pen.
She said, ‘Did you mean it when you said you could be murdered?’
‘Sure. I’m supposed to have stolen hundreds of millions from Hollywood. The United States is after my ass.’
‘But murder?’
‘They carry out extra-judicial killings all the time. Using drones, assassins. I could be like the guy who was murdered in London with the tip of a poison umbrella. Or the guy they fed the cup of green tea and polonium in the sushi house.’
‘The Russians did those.’
‘Yes, but same principle.’
Eloise was trying to think it out. How would Arthur have approached this? What would he have told Hartmann — and not told him?
She launched in, with a reckless sense of unreality, ‘You’re a master hacker.’
‘Sure. When I was young, in my country, the government paid me to break into its systems, looking for flaws.’
‘Can I tell you about something?’
He paused. ‘This is for Roysmith?’
‘No, for me.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
But not long after Eloise had started to explain, he held up his hand. ‘On second thoughts, we will go to a place where it’s good to talk. And let us give Chad our phones. He will put them in the chiller, in the golf cart.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. Chad will look after your phone very carefully. And I must ask you, Eloise, to speak in a tiny little voice. I know I am tall, but you must do your best. You must whisper in my ear!’
While they were talking the rainbow appeared again, and behind it another shower, drawing a curtain of chainmail across the horizon. Over the Hartmann mansion, the sky was clear blue. It was hot down in the still air by the barn. They were wading among the chickens. Eloise admired the birds’ shiny brown and black feathers. Their eyes were like holes. As she and Hartmann spread the feed the chickens rushed and then were still, they pecked and paused, their eyes were tiny circles of blackness.
She felt awkward to be whispering, but every time she raised her voice he frowned, held up his big hand.
He said, ‘So you say there was a post-mortem. And someone made an unauthorised inquiry. From outside.’
‘That’s what I was told.’
‘You think someone wanted to know the results of the postmortem?’
‘I don’t know. I just wonder who inquired, and if there’s anything unusual.’
‘You think someone might have wanted to alter the results?’
Eloise stared at him. ‘Alter them. I hadn’t thought of that.’
Hartmann poured chicken feed from one palm to the other. ‘I have to tell you, I am in a constrained position right now. I am being spied on. You could be being monitored, because you have interviewed me. I must ask, Eloise, why are you telling me these things?’
She paused.
Arthur, help me out. What’s the best way to put this?
‘I just thought, Mr Hartmann …’
A magnanimous wave of the huge hand. ‘Please. Kurt.’
‘I just thought of telling you about it, Kurt, because it concerns Ed Miles. The person Arthur called just before he died was staying at Rotokauri with David Hallwright. And David Hallwright’s other house guest at the time was Ed Miles. The police looked into the phone calls, but didn’t go any further with their inquiry after they got the postmortem results, which said Arthur was drugged with sleeping pills when he went over the wall.’
Hartmann said slowly, ‘Mr Ed Miles, Minister of Justice.’
Minister of Chustice.
‘Yes. Back when he was police minister. And David Hallwright was prime minister.’
‘Ed Miles. My nemesis.’ He smiled, showing his wicked little teeth. The smile made him look so different.
Eloise took a breath. ‘So I thought maybe you’d be interested, and, I don’t know, have some advice. Anything.’
Hartmann stooped, and held out a palm full of chicken feed. He said, ‘Mr Ed Miles, Minister of Justice, is a serious problem for me. He has done a great deal to facilitate my extradition. I have a feeling he talks directly to the White House. On a regular basis!’
Eloise laughed along nervously, watching the chickens. The way their heads shot out as their legs, swathed in feathers like big skirts, jerkily carried them over the dusty ground.
Sudden dizziness. When had she last eaten anything, apart from Hartmann’s lollies? Last night? She said in a glazed tone, ‘Ed Miles is going after Jack Dance’s job. He wants to be prime minister. The PM is low in the polls. Ed Miles is backed by Hallwright. Hallwright’s come back from France, and has been meeting with Miles. Like, plotting.’
Hartmann considered this. ‘Jack Dance is in need of currency,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
Hartmann smiled. ‘And so am I.’
‘The thing is,’ Eloise said, ‘when Arthur died, I didn’t ask any questions.’
‘Well. We must question. It is our duty, as citizens. I, of all people, know this, Eloise.’
She nodded. How would you describe his tone? It was hard to pin down. Compulsively tongue-in-cheek, yet also searching, sharp. She was reasonably certain he was taking her seriously. Wasn’t he?
The dust whirled in the shining air, catching in the back of her throat. Her cheeks were hot; she’d got sunburnt walking over the estate to the barn. Sweat stood out on Hartmann’s face.
He waved out to summon Loafer, and Eloise was abruptly convulsed with such a paroxysm of sneezing she staggered about in the hay, raising more dust. Then Hartmann sneezed, a staccato series of small eruptions, surprisingly delicate in such a big man. He sneezed like a cat.
‘Gesundheit,’ he kept saying, ushering her across the grass towards the golf cart. Loafer opened the chiller and gave them back their phones.
She sat under the canopy, Hartmann’s huge thigh pressed against hers as they trundled over the bright grass towards the house, the sneezes running between them in a relay.
They walked through dim rooms filled with black furniture. In many of them the curtains were drawn. ‘There are eyes everywhere,’ Hartmann whispered, laying a theatrical finger to his lips.
In a vast kitchen, tropical fish swam in an aquarium above the stove. There was a black bench, a black table. A silent woman in a smock silently left
the room as they entered.
‘I need,’ Hartmann said, ‘a snack. Would you like a snack, Eloise?’
He called out. ‘Raquel! Precious! Are you there?’
Raquel or Precious emerged, winding her hair into a bun and fastening it on top of her head.
‘Snackaroodles,’ was Hartmann’s command.
The woman turned smartly to the sink, opened the faucet with her elbow like a doctor, and soaped and washed her hands. She drew open the double doors of a giant fridge.
Hartmann squirted hand sanitiser on his palms and rubbed them vigorously. He offered the bottle to Eloise, who used it, lest he be offended.
‘Over here,’ he said, and led Eloise to a black table by the window, from which they could see the estate stretching away in a rolling series of grassy knolls.
‘I joke all the time, Eloise,’ he said, ‘but I am serious about being watched. I must warn you, it’s best not to discuss business in the house. Tell me about Roysmith. He is a charming man.’
‘Scott’s great. He’s the most principled journalist I’ve ever met. And he’s nice to work for. I love his wife, too. She’s a photographer. She’s cool.’
‘I watch his show, Roysmith. He cares about social issues, about the poor. He uses that word all the time, what is it?’
‘Splendid. Only I think he’s cut down on that a bit.’
‘He wears nice suits. Tell me, where does he get those suits?’
‘Someone called Ronald.’
‘Where do you live, Eloise?’
‘On the Starlight Peninsula.’
‘Where they demolished the old Starlight Hotel? Did you know STARLIGHT is a computer programme used by spies? It’s a force multiplier.’
‘Oh … What’s that?’
‘It turns data into actionable intelligence.’
The smocked woman arrived with club sandwiches and small bottles of Coke.
‘I do not drink alcohol,’ Hartmann said.
‘Oh God, no. Me neither.’
They clinked bottles.
The woman watched from the kitchen door, silently removing the plates when they’d finished. Hartmann said he was due for a conference with his lawyer. He saw her to the door.
Out in the courtyard, under the rinsed blue sky, Eloise said in a low voice, ‘If you’re so watched, how do you contact people?’
‘I have the best encryption, naturally.’
‘Okay.’
He smiled. ‘Don’t worry, it’s very straightforward. I can easily contact people without anyone knowing.’
‘Oh.’
‘Of course. This is my business. At the moment, I’m working on a system for encrypted Skype. One that is totally secure and works through the internet.’
‘Wow. Great.’
‘Anyone I want to talk to privately, I can send a message and we can meet if we need to.’
Eloise said, ‘It’s ridiculous, I’ve had the feeling lately that I’m being followed.’
Hartmann put his hands together. He pursed his lips, giving her a priestly, knowing look. ‘It would not surprise me.’
‘But why? I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not up to anything.’
‘Aren’t you?’ Hartmann said.
Silence.
‘You are now,’ he said.
‘But I haven’t …’
Hartmann looked thoughtful. ‘In my experience, it is hard to say when something starts. You’ve started something coming to see me. But when you look back, it may be that you started it some time before.’
She sighed. ‘I really don’t know what that means.’
‘Sometimes you take action, or start asking questions, before you realise what you are doing. And sometimes you find other people are asking too — the same questions.’
‘I still don’t know …?’
‘Put it this way. I believe there is such a thing as Collective Consciousness. Information runs through the world and, in certain circumstances, our minds can tap into it. The internet is a man-made construction of a phenomenon that is already there. So if there is an unanswered question, you may find others are moving towards it, too. That is why it is so hard to say when something has actually begun.’
‘I’ve been wondering about ESP.’
‘ESP? Call it Collective Consciousness. The information is out there. Sometimes more than one person will read it, or start moving towards it, at the same time.’
‘It doesn’t really explain why I might be being followed. To be honest, it’s just as likely I’ve been imagining it. I’ve been living alone.’
‘My guess would be you are not imagining it. Events are merely coming together. Put it another way: our actions are more instinctive than we think. You believe you have free will, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘But really, many of the things you do are automatic, instinctive. And sometimes as a group, as a society, we move in a certain direction instinctively. We are all animals.’
She said, ‘The idea’s been coming into my head lately: a layer of the world has been hidden from me.’
‘And now you are alone, you are starting to make it out, to glimpse what has been hidden. You are not distracted. Your vision has cleared.’
They looked at each other. He raised both palms. Voilà.
Eloise frowned, smiled. She looked at him, searchingly. ‘Do you really believe all this?’
‘Sure. I love this kind of shit. I totally believe in it. By the way, do you play DroidWars? Or Tank Fighter? Not to blow my own horn, but I am world champion in both.’
‘I don’t really play computer games.’
‘What philistinism. I am shocked. Next time you come, I will show you my gaming room, Eloise. I will teach you all you need to know.’
TWENTY-THREE
When Eloise dropped the Sparkler at Iris Roysmith’s birthday party she felt a certain familial pride. The Sparkler was not only beautiful, with her smooth brown skin and her dimples, she had, what would you call it, poise? Little Iris, who was in the Sparkler’s class at the poshest state primary in the city, was a magnet for the children in her year, because her father was Roysmith. They all wanted to be friends with Iris, and their mums and dads wanted to be friends with Scott and Thee. It was the power of television. Eloise felt that the Sparkler had something over all the other Western Bay girls, except for Iris herself, who was also impressive: a thin, intensely intelligent child. She was Scott and Thee’s youngest, a late arrival after their much older daughters.
‘Rachel Margery!’ Scott boomed, throwing open the door. ‘And her Aunty Eloise!’
Behind him, the slew and slum of a children’s party; amid the trashed furniture the floor was strewn with balloons, blowing crazily this way and that in the breeze from the deck. From an upstairs window came a series of piercing screams.
Eloise held the box containing the giant Bionicle, allowing her eyes to adjust to the sight of Scott suitless. He was looking, by his standards, super casual, in jeans and a baggy T-shirt with a chocolate stain on the shoulder.
The Sparkler held her present for Iris against her shoulder like a spear. It was, she had explained in the car, a swingball set. She and Iris were interested in sports. They were both sprinters, and tennis players, and swimmers. The Sparkler was a left-hander, like her father Giles, which gave her, in Eloise’s opinion, a different and interesting body language, something to do with having learned to move in a right-handed world. She hunched over the page when she wrote, and her handwriting sloped backwards. She was well co-ordinated, could smash a ball batting left or right, and moved with a kind of angular, boyish grace.
‘How’s it going?’ Eloise said.
Scott had a hand to his forehead. ‘Bedlam. And we’ve got hours to go.’
Eloise came in long enough to hand over the present to Iris, and to talk to Thee, who was gamely supervising a violent session of bullrush on the back lawn.
‘I should have bought some damned earplugs,’ Thee said. ‘Oh, did Scott tell y
ou? We found a lovely man for you. You’ll like him. He’s Irish.’
‘Really?’
‘Scott, the Irishman.’
From the deck Scott said, ‘He used to work for the BBC.’
‘That sounds good.’
‘We’ll go on a double date, if you like,’ Thee said. ‘He’s really nice. He’s only got one leg.’
‘One leg.’
‘Yeah. We didn’t ask why, or how. I mean you can’t just come out with it. But he’s very good-looking. Christ, what’s with the screaming? Quiet, kids!’
Scott said, plaintive, ‘E, can you blow up some of these balloons? Before I pass out?’
She blew up a few balloons, greeted Scott’s glamorous older daughters, sardonic Sophie and sharp-eyed Sarah, admired Sarah’s new hair (blonde dreadlocks) and arranged to pick up her niece in a few hours. Then she got out of there.
In the car, Silvio was waiting, his nose pressed to the glass.
Eloise watched Simon Lampton leave the house in his running gear. Silvio had just followed a scent from the crater, over the lip of the hill and down the western side of the mountain. He appeared far below her, running, his nose to the ground, alongside a boundary fence. She hurried after him, calling, shaking the leash. Not looking where she was going, she stuck her foot in a hole and went over sideways into the warm, dry grass.
Klaudia, everything is going wrong today. In the bathroom this morning I dropped the soap dish and it smashed on the floor. In the laundry, the bag of Silvio’s despised dog biscuits slipped from my grasp, and the pungent pellets (no wonder he hates them) shot in all directions. Carina rang to ask if I would take the Sparkler to her party; talking to her while sweeping up dog biscuits I smashed my head on the open cupboard door.
Where was the dog? They needed to get down the hill, so as not to miss Lampton. But Silvio’s head appeared above her, blocking out the sky. He loomed, panting, threatening to drool on her face.
She hurried him down the hillside, through the pedestrian path that led between the gardens. The fences sagged in places under the weight of milkweed and bougainvillea, the gardens were lush and silent under the sun, vegetable patches laid out in the black soil, divided by bamboo markers. The cicadas sawed and the bougainvillea petals made a red carpet along the path.
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