‘I’ll do my best. Is that green dress of yours getting another outing?’
‘You betcha.’
55 The Unburying
BROCHU, CHILE, SOUTH AMERICA
Tradition had it that the young woman overseeing the ceremony should be transported through the streets of Brochu to the unburying by carriage. This tradition had to be updated when the barn where the carriage was kept burnt down. For the last twenty years the woman had been collected from her home and taken to the ceremony at the graveyard in the back of a white Oldsmobile convertible. Soledad sat alone and unsmiling on the back seat, her long white gown pooled around her. The role she was required to play demanded a certain solemnity, but Soledad’s stony face was no act. She considered the ceremony an anachronism and her role in it an embarrassment. Although perhaps this year it might perform a useful function, if she could remember the lines she’d learnt and hold her nerve. Jags followed the crowd, walking at the very back of the parade of people who were marching behind the slow-moving Oldsmobile. He found himself wondering what this car could be used for when it wasn’t being some sort of Chilean Popemobile. He had read about the unburying, but this was the first time he would get to see it. Each All Souls’ Night, the people of Brochu would gather outside the town graveyard. Inside, a group of volunteers had been busy for most of the day, supervised by Father Victor and the head gravedigger. Half a dozen corpses had been disinterred, studied and, if deemed suitable, wrapped in fresh white shrouds. Each year different bodies were selected and the families of the dead were invited to take the body and carry it around the town. The idea was that loved ones and ancestors – some buried for mere decades, others for centuries – should be shown the scraps of land that were still being farmed and the modest homes in order to convince them that everything was well. That the place they had left was still being properly looked after. This unburying drew a crowd. The entire town was there, of course, but in addition several dozen outsiders. Not tourists exactly, but guests, sprinkled in among the people of Brochu. Some of these were anthropology students from America or Europe, whose colleges or parents had agreed to pay the priest or the local council leader enough money that they were invited to attend. It was a cold evening; most of the spectators were wearing several layers and, as she climbed from the back of the car outside the dark little church, Soledad looked freezing. She was escorted to the top of the graveyard and up onto a small podium covered with the same fake grass the diggers used to flank the unfilled graves. The wind was stronger here and her long white gown fluttered at the hem. The moon was bright. Her voice shook slightly as she started to speak.
We are here
Standing with our forefathers and our mothers
Be silent and hear it
The songs of the ancients
Her mother was gesturing to her daughter to raise her voice. The belief was that both the words spoken now at the beginning and the music that was played later needed to be loud enough to waken the ancestors and call them back. She spoke again, louder now.
We are here
Here with a sincere and tender heart
We take them like the bride and hold them near
We are one in two ways
The unburying was a well-choreographed affair.
Violetta Rojas
The first family moved to the front of the crowd and to the first open grave. A middle-aged man and woman lifted the shroud-covered corpse that was lying alongside the hole and the woman took the long bundle in her arms and held it rather as you might hold a small child. The crowd parted for her as she walked back down the path, past the church and in the direction of the dead woman’s old home. A group of musicians began to play, quietly at first, then with more confidence and volume. They were a three-piece outfit, brothers by the look of them. One played a handheld wooden and leather bass drum, the second a lute-like stringed instrument that Jags had seen played a lot in this part of Chile, a charango they called it. The back of the thing was often made from armadillo skin. This one thankfully was not – the sight of the skinned animal being plucked and played had a strange effect on Jags – it sickened him. The third and oldest member of the band blew through his grey handlebar moustache into a long, rather wheezy-sounding flute. They were not good musicians, but the music they were making was profoundly, almost unbearably, sad. More names were read, more families came forward and carried or in some cases slowly danced their ancestors away down the path. When the first woman returned, Soledad spoke again.
Sleep peacefully with serenity
We leave you with a flower, to thank you for your kindness
The corpse was placed back alongside the grave and Father Victor strode forward and crossed himself somewhat theatrically before placing a single añañuca flower on top of the shrouded bundle. Most of the families had returned and the ceremony was reaching its close when Soledad suddenly went off script. The first thing Jags noticed was the perplexed look on her mother’s face as she stepped down from the podium and began pointing at individual, unopened graves. First she named the occupant: ‘Joaquin Martinez’ and then, more loudly, the cause of death: ‘accidente de dinamita’. Next: Gerardo Bustos … roca cayendo … and so it went on. Buried by rockfall … dynamite accident … mine shaft fall … grinding machine … silicosis, silicosis, dynamite. Circling the crowd, her voice becoming hoarse, but still loud, she named a dozen names before moving back past the podium, in the direction of a recently dug grave. Jags saw Soledad’s mother shaking her head slowly, begging under her breath but Soledad was undeterred.
‘Mi padre. Pablo Mistral. Depresión. Suicidio.’ She paused. ‘All these men here … and many of our women too … they have died too young. They deserved longer lives. And a different death.’
Jags looked at his feet; he could feel Soledad’s eyes on him. He kept staring down until he was sure she’d turned away, then he glanced around the crowd. Several of the anthropology students had their phones out; some held them surreptitiously at their sides, others were more blatant. It didn’t matter, all of them had been filming everything. He shook his head.
‘Now we’re screwed.’
56 An Invitation
PUBLIC SQUARE HQ, CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA
Fred studied the brown paper package, tied together not with tape or ribbon, but old-fashioned white cotton string. He liked how she’d done it. The package had been opened already, of course. Opened and poked and prodded and scanned, but once they’d told him who it was from, he’d ordered that it be rewrapped and sent up. He read the card first, which she’d signed Christy. Her surname was underneath in closed brackets and next to that a kiss. The parcel contained one of the blue Cloud Chancer sweatshirts. It was a large and Fred was more like a medium, but it didn’t matter, there was no way on earth he would ever wear the thing. He hated everything about it, apart from the fact that it was her who had sent it. She’d written her personal mobile on the card – one of the several contacts of hers that he had already. But now he had a reason to call it. More than a reason – an invitation. Cloud Chancer were demo-ing the latest version of their voice recognition software to new investors soon and Christy would absolutely adore it if Fred could come.
The electronic mail also brought good news, with an encrypted message from Beijing letting Fred know that they had successfully managed to retrieve one half of the Skype conversation from local storage. They thanked him for his advice and complemented him on his team’s professionalism. They wondered whether he might be interested in hearing the material too? He responded immediately – congratulating them on their good fortune, thanking them for their courtesy and confirming that he would indeed like them to send him the material.
57 The Moonlit Flit
CAVERSHAM, ENGLAND
Carver managed to get up off the lumpy single bed on his second try. His head hurt, the result of one glass too many of unwatered whisky. He moved stiff-legged to the window and looked out onto the street. The car didn’t leave second gear; it d
rove slowly down the narrow road that began at the postbox on the corner to just outside McCluskey’s front door, where it slowed to a virtual standstill, then drove on. A minute later it was back, doing the same slow loop. Twice could have been a taxi driver looking for a fare, but three times? He doubted it. Carver pulled the bedroom curtains all the way back and stood in the centre of the first-floor window, watching. It was still early, still dark and whoever was driving had the headlights off, so it was difficult to be sure, but it looked like a Mercedes, one of the boxy old models. He liked this kind of car – generally speaking – but not this one, this one had woken him up and now it was pissing him off.
His feet were cold against the bare floorboards and he was only half dressed, white shirt and boxer shorts. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt tail and when the car came by again, he squinted. It was an odd registration number – three numbers, one letter then three more numbers: 269 D 700 maybe? Or 268? He stepped back from the window, got his notepad and pen from next to the bed and wrote these possible combinations down. When he resumed his watch, the car was making another pass, definitely an old model Merc, but well-kept and black as wet coal. This time the car practically stopped outside the house. Carver muttered under his breath.
‘Idiot.’ It was the worst surveillance job he’d ever seen. So then the chances were it wasn’t a surveillance job.
He took his trousers from the back of the folding chair and pulled them on. He would go down and confront the driver, stand in the road if necessary. He couldn’t leave McCluskey when there was this sort of rubbish going on. First some weird woman hanging around outside her kitchen window and now strange cars with D plates driving up and down.
By the time he’d made his way downstairs and out into the street the Merc was gone. He waited a while, but it seemed that whatever message the driver had wanted to send had been sent. Back in the hall, McCluskey was waiting for him, wearing tartan slippers and a floral nightie.
‘You woke me up you eejit, all that shuggling about.’
‘I’m not going to Hong Kong or anywhere else while these idiots are staking out your house.’
McCluskey shrugged.
‘I appreciate the thought Billy, but don’t worry yourself.’
‘I mean it Jemima, I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re going to be all right.’
She paused.
‘I’ve got a sister I can go stay with. She lives down in Brighton. I’ll pack up the war room tomorrow, throw some things in a suitcase and do a moonlit flit in the evening. I want you to do what you need to do. You don’t have tae worry about me.’
Carver was halfway through slathering the buttered crumpets with a layer of marmalade when McCluskey walked into the kitchen.
‘You found yourself some breakfast then?’
‘Yes, sorry ’bout that, do you mind?’
‘Not a bit. Unless you’ve eaten the last crumpet in which case I’m going tae gut you like a fish.’
‘I think there’s one or two left.’
‘Super.’
Most days McCluskey listened to World Service dawn ’til dusk, but this morning, as a concession to Carver, she retuned to Radio 4. During the eight o’clock bulletin they both stopped chatting and listened. Hong Kong continued to dominate the news, both the protests and the international response, then there were a few mundane domestic stories. At the end of the bulletin, the and finally story was about a letter that had been published in several newspapers this morning, announcing an ambitious partnership between BBC News and the American technology giant Public Square. McCluskey tutted.
‘I don’t like it when the BBC does stories about itself. Especially not this story.’ The newsreader read into a clip of Elizabeth Curepipe extolling the virtues of the new arrangement. Carver tried to listen above the sound of McCluskey’s tutting. ‘That wee girl could sell a bag of party ice to an Eskimo.’
He smiled.
‘You think this partnership’s a bad idea too?’
‘Giving away your journalism for nothing? To them? Course it’s a bad bloody idea. Public Square want tae eat our lunch and we’re running around laying the table for them.’
Carver paused.
‘I never told you, she came to see me.’
‘She? Curepipe?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How come?’
‘About this letter of hers. She wanted journalists from right across the board to sign it.’
‘And?’
Carver looked up from his breakfast and saw the mischievous grin on McCluskey’s face.
‘Very funny.’
‘I hope you told her where to stick it. What did you say?’
‘I said no of course.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ She passed him another toasted crumpet. ‘It’s good to know that your bullshit detector is still fully functioning.’ McCluskey pulled herself to her feet. ‘You should warn your woman Naomi off this whole Public Square thing when you see her – though it sounds like it’s already too late.’
‘It might not be.’
‘How come?’
‘I’m going to see someone else up at Broadcasting House at the same time as I see Naomi. You know?’
‘Your numbers fellow?’
‘Yeah. I asked him to have a little look at Public Square’s accounts for me. He messaged me to say he’s got some stuff for me to read.’
Carver ate another mouthful of hot buttered crumpet. The whisky hangover was gone and despite the early morning interruption from that black Mercedes, he felt well-slept. The day ahead would be busy in a way his days had not been for quite some time. But he felt fine about that.
58 The Fourth Floor
THE HEADLAND HOTEL, HONG KONG
Viv heard her phone buzz. She picked it up and checked the message. Dan was sitting on the floor opposite her, separated by a coffee table piled high with half eaten takeaway.
‘Don’t tell me, lemme guess … That’s our buddy Patrick saying he’s not going to join us after all?’
Viv nodded. Patrick had cried off the drinks before this takeaway meal, then said that he’d rather Viv and Dan ate elsewhere since he was still working. Now he wasn’t coming at all.
‘He’s got more work to do, he says he’s really sorry.’
‘Sure.’ Dan took a slug from one of the miniatures they had lined up next to the tin foil takeaway cartons. ‘His loss. Shame though, I was hoping he might drop by. You want some more food?’
Viv shook her head.
‘I’m stuffed.’
‘What’s he working on? You never said.’
‘He’s got Brandon doing something a little left-field. That’s probably why it’s taking so long. I’m not sure John knows where left field is.’
‘What kind of a thing?’
Viv poured the remains of the miniature vodka into the purplish-coloured concoction in her plastic cup.
‘Do you remember that kid, Sammy Kwok? We all reported that he died from an asthma attack.’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Apparently there’s more to it than that.’
‘I see.’ Dan glanced around his room. ‘We’ve kinda trashed this place. Here’s an idea – how about you have that bath you’ve been dreamin’ about having while I do the clearing up?’
Viv smiled. She was slightly fuzzy-headed from the Long Island iced tea that they’d made by mixing the contents of Dan’s minibar together. She’d mentioned several times how much she missed having a bath. Her room was significantly smaller than his and shower only.
‘Really? You’re sure you don’t mind?’
‘I insist. There’s new towels in there. And I promise I won’t come peek.’
Viv ran the bath almost to full and used half a bottle of bubble bath to get it as foamy as possible before pulling off her tights and green dress. She was about to finish undressing and climb in when she remembered that she had a hairband in her coat pocket. She wrapped a towel around herself, opened the
door and stepped back into the bedroom. Dan was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her laptop open in front of him. She stopped.
‘What are you doing?’ He ignored her. ‘Hey, I asked you a question. What’re you doing with my computer?’ There was still a slight lightness to her voice, incredulity rather than anger.
‘I’m just checking a couple of things out.’
‘Like what?’
‘Some stories I was interested in, some other stuff. It’s not a big deal Viv. You go have your bath.’
‘I don’t want the bath.’
‘Have another drink then.’ He waved at the row of miniature bottles lined up on the coffee table.
‘I don’t want a drink either Dan, I want …’ She took a quick step forward and grabbed the laptop from underneath Dan’s hands, ‘… my computer back. This has got BBC stuff on it, confidential stuff.’
Dan sighed.
‘You shouldn’t have done that Viv.’
‘Why?’ She glanced down at the screen and saw why. ‘How come you’re looking at …?’
Behind her, in the bathroom, a phone started ringing, her mobile. She clasped the laptop to her chest with one hand and stepped backwards, picking up the phone from beside the sink with her other hand. ‘Hello?’ She paused. ‘Hey there Patrick, how’re you?’ She took another step back, putting some more distance between her and Dan, who had moved off the bed and was walking towards her. ‘Yeah, I’m okay …’ She paused. ‘I’m still here in Dan’s room. What can I do for you?’ The American was edging closer, staring at her. ‘Sure, Paddy you can have Brandon for the rest of the night, he’s all yours …’ Dan had stopped at the bathroom door.
‘Finish the call.’ The words were whispered. ‘Just tell him goodbye. You and I need to talk …’ She edged further back, past the sink, the back, of her legs against the side of the bath. She needed to think.
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