A Cursed Place

by Peter Hanington

  ‘Of course, of course. But as the parable tells us – Mateo Thirteen Twelve I believe it is: “Whoever Hath Shall Give More”. Soledad shook her head; this didn’t sound quite right. ‘And as I say, the collection box has been very light in recent months.’

  ‘Yes well these are difficult times for—’

  ‘Which reminds me, I have not seen you or your family at our Sunday mass for some time now.’ Soledad silently cursed the priest and listened as her mother made her excuses. Her leg had been troubling her, the pain beyond agony. It made movement impossible. Father Victor responded by explaining how regular church visits, attending mass in particular, would ease the pain. Soledad decided to leave them lying to each other and go. It was time. She put the hairbrush down and hurried through the living room and out of the front door with the briefest and least respectful farewell she could manage.

  She began walking and then changed her mind and decided to take her eldest brother’s bike. If Augusto had a problem with that then he could take it up with their mother – Soledad was the breadwinner now. She cycled slowly down the street and up the hill that led out of town. This route to the mine took her out to the north of Brochu and up and around the dam. Soledad did not cycle regularly and the hill soon grew uncomfortably steep. It was hard going, even with the bike in its highest gear. Her legs began to ache and she could feel her hair starting to stick to her forehead with sweat in spite of the cool morning air. She didn’t want to look too neat in front of the miners, but nor did she want to look like she had been pulled through a field by a horse. She got off and walked the bike up the steepest stretch of the road.

  At the top, a small group of workmen in orange fluorescent tabards was working its way along a stretch of the dam wall, patching up leaks with buckets of sand and gravel. Soledad stopped.

  ‘The wall is leaking worse than usual?’

  The oldest of the workmen stubbed his cigarette out and hauled himself up. He was shaking his head and smiling.

  ‘No more than usual.’ By the look of him, this man was the foreman, self-appointed perhaps. Soledad wheeled her bike closer and studied the tiny hairline cracks in the dam; thin trickles of water dribbled from some and zigzagged down the wall, pooling on the floor. There were more cracks in the dam wall than when last she’d been up here. More than she’d ever seen. The foreman stood beside her. ‘No need to worry your head girl.’ He gave the side of the dam a firm kick with his steel capped boots. ‘This wall is as solid as a rock. It’s not going anywhere.’ He proceeded to explain exactly why Soledad needn’t worry. This dam was a tailings dam, formed from the sludge-like mining waste known as tailings. There were scores of them all across South America and they were one of the safest types of dam there was. ‘The waste material – metal and mud and rock – it sticks together to make a wall you see …’ he kicked again, ‘… and solidifies. Now and then there’s the odd little leak, but we plug those. No problem.’

  Soledad checked the time on her phone. She didn’t have time to debate with this old man right now.

  ‘Be sure to fix it well then. You guys don’t live in Brochu. We do.’ She pointed at one of the men. ‘What’s he doing?’ The workman in question was attaching a small black plastic box to the base of the dam wall.

  ‘That’s one of the new water pressure monitors.’ He grinned. ‘More safeguards for you good people of Brochu. Courtesy of the company.’

  ‘Does it work?’

  The man fitting it turned and looked up at Soledad, grinning.

  ‘Sure.’

  Soledad climbed back onto the bike, wished the workmen a good day and left. She knew more about this dam than these men, she knew very well how a tailings dam worked. And what happened when it didn’t. Her father had been obsessed by the dam, he dreamt about it when he slept and talked about it often when awake, especially when drunk. The only bedtime stories Soledad remembered her father ever telling her or her eldest brother, Augusto, were horror stories about the Brochu dam.

  How the semi-solid waste that held the dam in place would suddenly liquefy, for no apparent reason and with no warning. The consequences of such a collapse were so horrific that most locals preferred not to think about it. Soledad had never had that luxury.

  The crowd of men waiting to hear Soledad speak outside the mine was much larger than she’d expected. Perhaps the company had ordered them to be here? It seemed unlikely that so many would voluntarily give up their half hour lunch break to listen to her. The miners had placed a wooden pallet, reinforced with planks of wood, next to the mine entrance for her to stand on and gave her a pair of oversized white rubber boots and a battered yellow helmet to wear as the safety regulations required. The men stood and stared and waited for her to begin. Fearful of losing her nerve, and with it her words, Soledad had written some notes on a piece of paper and she held this in her shaking hand. Looking down she saw that she had at least one ally – a small stray dog with wiry hair and a blunt muzzle had taken a liking to her and was standing sentry alongside the wooden pallet as Soledad began to speak.

  ‘I am not very old, but I remember when the water in our river was as clear as glass. It would shine in the sun … and the fish we caught there …’ She let the men fill in the rest. The people of Brochu had been proud of their river in the past and particularly proud of the plump, perfect trout that swam and splashed around in it. ‘Now it is different, our river is dirty, if you walk down there today you will see fish that have jumped onto the bank, leapt clean out of the water because there isn’t enough oxygen in the river for them to breathe.’ She paused and looked up from her piece of paper. The men were listening, standing as still as stone, their faces the colour of the copper they mined.

  33 The Collection

  KING CHUNG INTERNET CAFÉ, CENTRAL HONG KONG

  There was a ballet school upstairs from the internet café in Central where Patrick went to Skype McCluskey. Patrick had noticed a sign for the place on the street outside and now he could hear the rapid tap of tiptoeing feet as the first class of the morning got underway. Staring out past the computer terminal that he’d rented for the next half hour, Patrick looked up at the building opposite and saw a fat man standing in the second-floor window, a pair of binoculars in his hand.

  ‘Ah yes, that gentleman over there is a big fan of the ballet.’ The café manager handed Patrick his change. ‘Sometimes the police come and take his binoculars away or him away, but he will not stop.’ Patrick took the money.

  ‘Thanks, am I good to go then?’

  ‘All good.’

  Patrick got the piece of paper with McCluskey’s new Skype address out from inside his wallet. He knew it was important not to mess this call up. He hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory so far and he had to assume that an account of his general incompetence would reach William Carver sooner or later. This thought stung Patrick; it was time to start acting like he knew what he was doing. He plugged his headphones into the back of the machine and dialled the Skype address. The tinny theme tune had barely begun before it was replaced by the sound of a deep hacking cough.

  ‘’Scuse me, I’m a bit bunged up. So … do me a favour son and tell me you’re sat in the middle of Hong Kong’s busiest internet café.’

  ‘I am. You can see for yourself if you like …’ He moved his head out of the way of the pinhole-sized camera at the top of his screen.

  ‘No thanks, no cameras.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I’m not too happy with my make-up. Sweet Jesus, son, did Billy Carver teach you nothing? We don’t need the cameras so we’re not using them. Cover yours up will you?’

  ‘I’m switching it off.’

  ‘Not good enough. Cover it up.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Whatever you’ve got, William generally uses whatever food he happens to be eating. Use what you like, just cover it.’

  Patrick reached into his jeans pocket for his wallet. Tucked among his collection of old receipts was a book of s
econd-class stamps. He peeled the Queen’s familiar profile from its backing and stuck it over the camera’s eye.

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘So we’re okay to talk openly now?’

  ‘We’re as okay as I can make us, given the circumstances …’ She paused. ‘… that’s assuming you’ve not got any dodgy-looking individuals hanging around earwigging where you are?’

  Patrick leant back in his chair and glanced at his neighbours. A boy with a bowl cut hairdo two chairs down was machine-gunning zombies; on the other side and also two seats away, a teenage girl with pink hair was hurling whispered abuse at a surly-looking kid in a leather jacket. Outside the café window in front of him, the people rushed by in the rain and a blur of headlights and brake lights glistened in the early morning gloom. Everything was in motion and no one showed any interest in giving this nervous-looking westerner a first glance, never mind a second one. The only dodgy-looking individual was the large man up on the second floor in his string vest and pyjama bottoms, but his binoculars were trained firmly on the ballet class and nothing else.

  ‘I think I’m good.’

  ‘Belter. Let’s try and keep this as short and sweet as possible. So what did you make of that little library of information I sent you yesterday?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Aye, it is.’

  ‘So many different things happening in so many different places.’

  ‘Yep.’ Patrick could sense that he was already trying McCluskey’s patience.

  ‘But I read through it a few times last night and it seems to me that all this stuff you’ve found and the material I’ve been collecting are two sides of the same coin.’ There was silence at the other end of the line. ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m here. All the material you’ve been collecting? What’s that exactly? Do you mean the pieces I hear on the radio?’

  ‘No, there’s much more than that. Hours more. Some of it’s the more technical stuff. A bit boring.’ Patrick told McCluskey about the scores of interviews he’d done with individuals at the forefront of various protest movements across the Middle East, North Africa and now Hong Kong. Interviews dating back nearly three years now. He explained how he’d seen protest leaders in one country attempting to learn lessons from what worked and didn’t work elsewhere. ‘And obviously the regimes they’re trying to remove, they do the same.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But I don’t think that’s quite what your collection … your investigation is saying. Is it?’

  ‘What do you think it’s saying son?’

  ‘It suggests to me that the pushback in all these places … it isn’t just similar. It’s practically the same. It’s almost like there’s some kind of playbook.’ There was a throaty laugh at the other end of the line. ‘Am I making any kind of sense?’

  ‘As much sense as there is to be made out of all this, you’re making it son. What’s more, you’ve helped persuade me that I’m not losing my mind. If the camera was on, I’d kiss ya. So count your lucky stars it isn’t.’

  Patrick looked again at the piece of paper with McCluskey’s Skype on it and at the Chinese characters he’d transcribed above it.

  ‘There’s one more thing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘That note you wrote, next to those chunks of untranslated Chinese text. You asked me to check if it was similar to the Arabic word, er, maslih?’

  ‘Oh, aye, good old maslih. That was more a note to self, but go ahead. It means something like reform does it? Or restoration? I’ve seen it mentioned all over the shop, in Arabic, Turkish, Russian …’

  ‘It’s not as vague as that, at least not in those bits of Cantonese and Mandarin conversation you sent through. It’s not vague at all, it’s a straightforward request.’

  ‘Fer what?’

  ‘For the repairman.’

  34 Red Flags

  SAND HILL ROAD, CALIFORNIA

  Fred left the keys for the Tesla at the hotel reception with an instruction that a member of Public Square staff would come and pick the car up first thing the following morning. He was driven home by one of the Cherrywood’s drivers in a car almost identical to his own.

  ‘The New Fallingwater House, sir, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fred didn’t want to talk, he’d talked enough for one evening. He wanted to get back home, do the work he needed to do on the computer and then rest. It was often this way; he’d be at a social engagement of one sort or another, either with Elizabeth or by himself and appearing to be having a good time. Until suddenly he wasn’t. Just like tonight; halfway through the main course it became clear to Fred that Christy had said everything that she had to say. Everything that he found interesting anyway. He could feel his restless attention turning to other matters – more pressing matters – and there was no point pretending otherwise. She agreed to stay and finish eating, he had paid the bill and left. She’d insisted on giving him a hug before he went, a long and close embrace. More would surely have followed if he’d chosen to stay, but he had to go.

  Nevertheless, he would see her again. He’d offered to take a proper look at her company’s prospectus and its projected growth figures. If he liked what he saw there, then maybe he’d invest in Cloud Chancer. Fred had offered this not because he thought Christy and her partner’s new company was something special – the chances were it was just another over-hyped flash in the pan. The company might well be a waste of time, but Christy Newmark wasn’t. She had absorbed and understood everything Fred had told her. She understood the work he was doing in a way that neither his clients, nor even Lizzie could understand. She understood it instinctively. So if a twenty-something-year-old kid could get it, then why couldn’t the people he was working with? Working for, technically speaking. All that his current slate of clients were interested in was Fred’s help to do the same things they’d always done: bugging and burgling. Rounding up the usual suspects, just using slightly more sophisticated techniques. Once they’d identified these suspects … again they did the only thing they knew how to do; stuck them on watch lists, chucked them in prison. He glanced out of the window at the glittering lights of the McMansions all along Sand Hill Road. Fred didn’t need to know what else they did, he didn’t want to. None of his clients could see the real potential that the technology had to offer. The prize was so much bigger. Fred’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out and glanced at the screen. It was his secretary.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hello sir, the bee guy …’

  ‘The apiarist?’

  ‘Yeah …’ she paused, ‘… the apiarist. So he’s had a quick look at the hive already, he went straight over there, he says he thinks he knows what the problem is. He wants to check things over once more in daylight, then he’ll write something up. He says whatever happens he’ll get the problem sorted in the next couple of days – before Mrs Curepipe gets back.’

  ‘Fine.’

  The drive back to Fallingwater did not take long. Fred told the driver to drop him just outside the perimeter so he could walk the last few hundred yards for the exercise. The jagged arrangement of square-sided stone trays looked particularly dramatic at night, lit subtly and surrounded on all sides by thick dark trees. Fred was proud of the house; he enjoyed it even more when Elizabeth was travelling and he had the place to himself. It also meant that he didn’t have to listen to her complain about the stink of chlorine wafting from the waterfall, which was particularly strong tonight. He let himself in, flicked on a couple of lights and walked directly to his office and the main computer. This machine was linked to the computer that sat on the desk at Public Square headquarters, the twin in fact, as any activity undertaken on one of the computers was visible on the other. Fred clicked on the black pad next to the keypad and the screen lit up. He checked recent activity to confirm that no one had touched either machine since he’d logged off at headquarters. No one had.

  Fred checked th
e red flags first, although there weren’t many to check. Over a dozen employees had accessed a variety of porn sites during the day on their laptops or phones, but that was standard. A few had been looking at political material, but again it was pretty harmless stuff. Half a dozen Public Square employees had spent more than an hour reading or sending messages that had been identified as non-work-related. All of these individuals would receive a warning. Reoffending was rare since most people at Public Square knew that a second warning usually resulted in dismissal.

  Fred switched from the list of red-flagged employees to the Public Square home page and typed in Christy’s name again. In the half hour since he’d seen her, she’d changed her profile picture to a photograph taken that evening. She was sitting at the table where they’d sat together. She must have asked the waiter to take the photo just after he’d left. There were no obvious clues as to where she was sitting and she made no mention of the Comma Club or of Fred in her latest posts. The last entry was only one line long:

  ‘The most inspiring, exciting evening since … Ever. @TheCherrywood’

  Subtle, Fred liked this. He liked her. He typed in the password needed to increase his access rights and went again to her deleted posts. Christy had been busy, binning several dozen old posts in the last half hour. Most of them related to past relationships or included photos of her with a variety of square shouldered boys, sporty types, on romantic breaks in and around California. Fred dug deeper, back to the college and high school photographs that he’d seen earlier. He selected a few and put them somewhere safe. He unbuttoned his shirt collar and loosened his tie. It was late and he should sleep, just one last chore. He clicked on a non-descript looking icon in the centre of a screen full of similar icons. A map of the world appeared, stretching the entire length of the oversized monitor. He pinched his thumb and forefinger on the pad at the centre of his keyboard, focussing first on the several dots of light distributed across his own continent, then China, Myanmar, across to North Africa and the Arabian peninsula, Southern Europe. Finally to the UK – he zoomed in closer. And closer still. Central London, then a few miles west. Fred leant forward and studied the screen for a time before panning back, way back, until once more the entire world filled his screen. The sprinkle of silver dots that spanned the map looked like stars in the night sky – constellations, visible only to him.