by Claire North
This is the place where survivors of the attack at Lefevre’s book launch would have been taken. I tie back my hair, pull my coat tight around my chest, and head inside.
Easy to find the room of Louise Dundas; it’s the only room with a police guard outside. I steal scrubs, ID badge – hospitals like this are big enough that there’s always something that fits the bill – smile at the policeman, he asks me what I’m doing, I say, “Checking fluids,” and he hears something medical, so waves me through.
Louise Dundas lies, as Meredith did, handcuffed to the bed, asleep. Her heart rate is 72 BMP, her BP is 118/79, she is as fit and healthy as you would expect of any woman who had Perfection, who could afford her own personal trainer and to-your-door delivery algorithmically constructed vegan diet plan. A girl, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five, who simply went insane at a poetry reading and attacked seven other guests before she was restrained, as Byron watched.
No sign of Byron now, of course, but that is to be expected. No sign, alas, of Dundas’ phone or personal belongings, blood-splattered as they would be. Taken away by the police. I gently try to wake the girl, but she’s fast out. I wonder if any drugs will be of use, but the door is opened before I can go far in my quest, and in come a man and a woman, she someone unknown, he…
… a face I know very well indeed.
“Good evening, ma’am,” his French is perfect, of course, newsreader-flat, “how is Mme Dundas?”
A moment in which I stumble on my lines, but it’s all right, it’s okay, he’s a stranger in a police-guarded room, though curiously the cop is gone from his chair outside; I’m allowed a moment to count quickly backwards from five and say,
“Sedated, but her stats are good. You are…?”
“My name is Mr Blanc,” he replied, offering me his hand, which of course, I shook, for why wouldn’t I, I’m a nurse, he’s a polite stranger enquiring after a patient’s health, of course I shook it, hygienically iffy though it is.
“You are not a relative?”
“No – we work for the insurance company.”
He doesn’t say which insurance company, and doesn’t offer ID. The woman is already moving round the bed, examining the girl’s face, her nails, her hands, her fingers. I nod and smile, making quickly for the exit, then hesitate by the door. And why not? I stop, I turn, I smile at Mr Blanc and say, “Is it Perfection?”
The woman looks up fast, an answer far more expressive than Mr Blanc’s slow smile, half turn of his head, gentle shuffle of his feet to bring his body, a little bit at a time, into full alignment that he might look at me. “Why would you say that, Mme…?”
“Jouda. Mme Jouda.”
“What about Perfection, Mme Jouda?”
“Do you work for it? I know Mme Dundas used it,” I said with a shrug, a slight tilt of my head, nothing to be concerned about. “I know she received treatments.”
“And how do you know that?”
“She said as much, before she was sedated.”
“Did she? Did she say so?”
The woman, frozen like a wading bird, uncertain if death circles above, or food swims below. Do you feed and die, your back exposed to the enemy, or stand still and starve?
The man who calls himself Mr Blanc has gone by a few other names before: mugurski71, Matisse, Gauguin, a fixit man for Rafe Pereyra-Conroy, ex-spy, sometime lover of Byron14, of course it makes sense for him to come here. He would be looking for Byron too.
He watches me, and I watch back. I don’t mind making an impression.
Does he remember me?
No, but like Byron perhaps he has words filed away in the back of his mind, mantras, repeated actions and hazy concepts which declare, there is a woman you cannot remember, these are her qualities…
If this were a hospital in Iceland, or rural Russia, he would absolutely be asking those questions now, wondering how a woman of my description came to be in this place. But this is Nîmes, and the French have a colonial history as long and ignoble as the British, and the south is full exiles who crossed the waters from Algeria in the 1960s, of travellers from the west coast of Africa, of women with my hair and my skin who are French to their very bones.
So he watches, and I watch back, and at last he smiles and says, “Has she had an MRI?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“A psychiatrist…”
“Is scheduled to see her.”
“I would like my own psychiatrist to attend.” He hands me a business card, M Blanc, no company listed but a telephone number.
“You have your paperwork?” I suggest. “The P77, your proof of policy; you’ll need to take it to reception.”
No idea if these bits of paper are real, but he has no idea either. “Of course,” he replies. “The hospital is aware of my visit. Mme Dundas is being moved, at the family’s request, to a different facility.”
“I wasn’t informed.”
“You’ll find all the paperwork ready.”
“She’s still in a…”
“All the paperwork,” he repeated, the smile still fixed to his face. “The ambulance will be here soon.”
I matched his smile with my own. He was Gauguin, a servant of Perfection, he will smile all the way to the apocalypse. I rolled his business card between my fingers, and went to find a motorbike to steal.
Modern technology makes it both easier and harder to steal cars. Harder, because electric locks and digital codes now all too often require higher levels of technology to beat. Easier, because digital codes and electric locks, once beaten, make it easier to do everything clean, a press of a button, a flick of a switch and hello those open doors, those warm, running engines. There is nothing human ingenuity cannot make which human ingenuity cannot break.
In the South of France, however, the Italian fashion for little farting bikes, barely a scooter with an engine, was still in vogue. Three minutes with a screwdriver did the job, and I was waiting outside by my stolen vehicle when the private ambulance arrived to take Louise Dundas away.
They didn’t wake her, but wheeled her out flat on a gurney, up the ramp into the van. Gauguin and the woman walked a few steps behind; the woman signed papers for the accompanying medic, Gauguin watched the street, saw me, noted me, looked on by, forgot. He was no Byron. I saw no sign of Louise’s family.
Following the ambulance through the night-time streets of Nîmes. I didn’t have a helmet. The air was freezing cold through my coat, my toes growing numb. I’d learned to ride a bike in a ten-hour intensive course (is there any other kind?) in Florida, but it had been a while, and every bump rattled up through my tailbone. Tailbone: connected to the sacral nerve. Kneebone: medial plantar nerve, lateral plantar nerve. Hit the knee in the right spot, it stimulates the plantar nerve, triggering the famous knee-jerk reaction. Elbow: ulnar nerve, possibly referred to as the funny bone for its link to the humerus; perhaps because of the sensations induced when struck.
Knowledge trickled through my mind, and I found it was simply… knowledge.
Not words to calm, not thoughts to focus, not fuck-you knowledge, not knowledge-as-freedom, knowledge-as-pride, knowledge-as-the-place-where-a-soul-should-be, just…
thought.
Where are we?
Straight French roads built on top of their Roman ancestors, trees rising up and curling in, the branches battered to a curve describing the size and shape of the highest and widest lorry to venture down these roads, a tunnel of leaf that cuts out the moonlight, the glow of the main road far away, the ambulance stops suddenly, hard, and I drive by, too close to stop without making a scene. A hundred yards, stop, turn off my headlights, wait, look back to see why the vehicle stopped – but it was for an owl in the road, a curiously stupid animal that sits in their path, blinking, wondering why this machine won’t get out of its way. The passenger door opens, and Gauguin climbs out. He walks towards the creature on the tarmac, kneels down a foot from it, reaches out slow, so very slow, his face caught in the headlights of the
ambulance, kindness written on it – but the bird flies away before he can touch it, and a moment more he remains kneeling, before getting back into the vehicle, driving on.
I let them pass me, and know I will have been noticed, and count to twenty to let them forget, before switching my headlights on, and following.
Chapter 81
A place which had once been a school, in a hamlet which had once been a village. A small river rolled down from the mountains of the Massif Central, decelerating and widening out as it plummeted towards the sea. A bridge spanned it at its highest point, and on the bridge were wrought-iron streetlamps decked with flowers, and within each hanging basket of winter-whites and purples, a speaker had been hidden which played, even at one in the morning, childish folk songs sprinkled with happy messages from the mayor.
The shop shutters were down, the hotel overlooking the river was shut up for the season, the graffiti on the wall of the bank said, “nous sommes morts”. At the top of the hill, a gothic Victorian mansion was nearly all boarded up, a vampire’s dream of spiked towers, cracked weather vanes. High walls surrounded sprawling, overgrown gardens, all black slate tiles and red curved bricks. On the gate hung an à vendre sign, eaten away by rain and time. Gauguin hadn’t bothered to remove it, figuring perhaps that no one would come – that no one ever came – but a man in a grey hat opened the gate as the ambulance approached, closed it behind them, and snapped the padlock into place.
Some lights were on behind the chipboard-covered windows. I circled the place a few times, once on bike, twice on foot, looking for cameras and signs of life, but only the lights in the eastern wing were on, and there was no sign of anyone patrolling.
I went over the wall by an old, leafless fig tree, slipping down the grey bark to a muddy floor of mulch on the other side. Irritating to have to do the work without proper preparation or the usual tools of the trade, but exciting too. A breathless speed in my lungs, a racing in my heart, I counted my steps, I counted the pulse in my neck, forced it to slow, stood still for a moment beneath the shade of the trees, my back to the wall, and let the cold and the darkness fill me, bringing my body back under control.
Pieces of the life of the mansion, watched for an hour and a half from the darkness of the grounds.
• A man in a white tunic, a panel crossed over his chest and pinned tight, like a chef, or a pharmacist, sits outside for a while to smoke a cigarette and stare up at the cloud-scudding sky.
• A woman in a grey suit and pink trainers steps out to speak down a mobile phone. She is comforting, consoling, promising to be home soon, yeah, babe, I know, I know, yeah. She speaks English, not French, an Essex accent, and her eyes are sharp even in the gloom.
• Two voices are briefly raised behind a chipboard window, arguing in French, it’s not, unacceptable, no, the tests, you said, unacceptable, unacceptable! A third voice hushes them, shush, not now, not the place…
• The ambulance which came with Louise Dundas, having deposited her, drives away.
• A woman in blue, alone, and shaking. Not with cold, or fatigue, but a deeper vibration that comes from within. She raises her head to look at the morning stars, then pulls out her phone, thumbs it on, her face illuminated grey by the light from its screen, and calls a number on speed dial. “Salut,” she whispers. “I know it’s late – I’m sorry. I just wanted… yes. No, it’s fine, it’s… yes. No, I know. I know you do. I love you too. I just… wanted to hear your voice. Yes. No, go back to… love you. I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
This conversation done, she hangs up, and sits shaking a little while longer.
A scream, sudden and furious, high enough to make the crows burst from their nests, shrill enough to drown out the quiet tinkling of the town’s relentless, chirpy folk music. It is 1950s horror movie, B-movie intense, but it is real, full of saliva and blood, veins bursting against the skin, eyes bulging, tongue rolling, it is the scream of someone who perhaps wants to die, or kill, or both. It doesn’t stop – it doesn’t stop, she keeps on screaming, barely pausing to pull in breath, who would have thought that human lungs had such power in them? (A human baby’s cry can reach 122dB. 120dB is the threshold of human pain, 130dB is a machine gun being fired, 150dB a jet plane, focus!)
The scream dies. There are voices murmuring, wondering. I am against the walls of the mansion now, looking for a hole in the chipboard to peer through.
A door opens to my right, a figure emerges, fast, a man already on a mobile phone, speaking Spanish; no, no it’s not – no, another – well, yes, of course he can but – ugh!
His words dissolve into an animal sound, he throws his hands in the air, turns the mobile off, looks for a moment tempted to throw it hard against the wall, to smash a thing for the joy of smashing, but no, it’s an expensive handset, £320 if he got it new (and of course he did), so for a moment, venality trumps the raging bull, and he storms back inside, leaving the door open for a woman to step out instead, Gauguin at her side.
He holds coffee in a plastic cup, and so does she, though neither drink. The steam blows off the surface of the liquid and the two stand there, staring at nothing much, before at last he says, “I have to tell him something.”
The woman, thick black tights, knee-length grey skirt, her hair pulled back into a bun, no rings on her fingers or jewels at her throat, nods at nothing much, and I know her too, remember her name, her smile, sharing noodles in Tokyo, is it you?
Is it you, Filipa Pereyra-Conroy? Is it you?
“Until we know how far—”
She stops him with a nod, eyes fixed on nothing much.
“I’ll make the call,” he says, but is slow to go, hesitating, doesn’t want to leave her alone.
“Go,” she replies, seeing his doubt. “Go.”
Gauguin goes, and only Filipa remains.
I watch her a while, from the shadows, and for a while that is all there is between us. Thought without words, silence without meaning, we stand and the stars turn and this moment is for ever, she and I, and I’m okay with that.
Then she turns without warning, and sees me, and jumps, spilling hot coffee over her hand, and gasps at the pain and steps back, face opening in surprise, then tightening in fear, before opening out again in curiosity. I step forward, hands empty, and say, “Filipa?”
A moment, as coffee drips off her hand, in which she stares into my face and tries to solve me. She takes in my eyes, my lips, my neck, my shoulders, my coat, my arms, my wrists – and sees silver, a Möbius strip rolling for ever into its own geometrical form, and recognises that, both the thing itself, and the meaning of the item, imbued long before I came along to wipe her memory clean.
A realisation.
A revelation, she is brilliant, after all, Filipa is nothing if not brilliant.
“Is it you?” she whispers. “Is it you?”
“You won’t remember me, we met in…”
“You’re the one people forget, you’re…”
She stopped, mid-sentence, turned to look over her shoulder, suddenly aware of the time, the place. Then marched towards me, grabbed me by the sleeve, pulled me away from the door, away from the light. “Is it you?” she breathed again, wonder written on every part of her. “Did you come here for me?”
Not the reaction I’d been expecting. There is something about her tonight that has always been there, a headlong wildness, a speed of words and brightness of eye, but larger, hovering on that tipping point between brilliance and something else entirely.
“Filipa,” I whispered, “I stole Perfection.”
“I know! I know you did! Rafe was furious. He doesn’t believe you exist, but I’ve seen the footage, I know everything – why did you steal it? Was I part of your plan, did I say something to you?”
There wasn’t any rancour in her voice, merely curiosity, a woman trying to puzzle out a thing she has no great emotional connection to. “I stole it for… money,” I lied. “And no, you were not part of my plan. I enjoyed your com
pany.”
“Did you? I thought perhaps I had enjoyed yours too, I seemed very happy in the footage they showed me, and I remembered the night with warmth and assumed that an emotional memory might not have been erased even if the visual pathway was severed, and that therefore maybe you were good.”
No malice, no fear, what the hell is wrong with her? I grabbed her by the tops of her arms, held her tight, looked into her eyes. “Filipa,” I hissed, “you told me that Perfection was the end of the world.”
“Did I? Was I drunk? Rafe doesn’t let me drink, but sometimes…”
“You weren’t drunk.”
“No, I can’t imagine I was. It is, of course. It is the end of the world. And now you’ve made it worse. Although thinking about it, I think maybe it’s a necessary step, the correct plan, a good response to the situation…”
“What’s happened? What’s happening to Louise Dundas?”
Her head, bird-like, tilting a touch to the side. “Don’t you know?”
“No, I don’t. I saw a woman in America, Meredith Earwood…”
A flicker of a frown, a biting of her bottom lip. “I don’t know her.”
“She went nuts, the treatments…”
“You know it’s my fault?” she interrupted lightly. “Although the science is only what people make of it really, split the atom and get the bomb, save the planet, kill the planet, save people, kill people, it’s all the same really fundamentally unless human thought makes it something else…”
She was babbling, her eyes drifting away to somewhere I couldn’t see, my fingers tight in her flesh, trying to hold her in this place. “Filipa,” I whispered, “I can help. What the hell is going on here?”
“Do you want to see? Will the people inside forget you? Will they forget that I was with you?” A tiny giggle at a sudden, happy idea. “Rafe would be so mad!”
“Are there security cameras?”
“No.”
“Then yes; everyone will forget.”
“Good. Good good!”
