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by Claire North

  … but that would be wrong too, wouldn’t it, Mr. Miller? Because you’re not pursuing this out of some … neurological quirk that makes you so extra-extra-specially dedicated where everyone else would have just taken the money and run. You’re not digging because the only thing you know is dirt. It’s something else. My job is to find out what that something else is. I’m hoping that it’s harmless; I’m sure you understand.”

  Theo said nothing, staring down at his hands.

  Theo stared at nothing.

  “Do you mind if I …?” A nod, a gesture. Theo stood, held his arms out as Markse patted him down, found nothing, smiled, sat down again, gestured for Theo to sit. Theo didn’t.

  “Of course I had people watching Faris, in light of Ms. Cumali’s threats. You met him and then you ran. Why did you run?”

  “Two people chased me. I don’t know what else you’re meant to do when that happens.”

  “You could have assumed they were with the authorities.”

  “I am the authorities, Mr. Markse, and they weren’t with me. Given that you managed to work out who I was, why didn’t you just arrest me?”

  A little shrug. “Because as you say, Mr. Miller, you are the authorities. Why would I arrest someone who might be on my side? I’m going to search your room now. A couple of my colleagues are outside. One of them will sit with you downstairs while you finish your meal. We’ll try to keep disruption to a minimum.”

  Sitting in the living room, he finished his dinner because it would be a waste to leave it, and a man in grey tracksuit trousers sat silently with them, and they watched a TV programme about rebuilding ruined houses to rent them out as holiday homes and ways in which you could use an accent wall to really set off the space with a vibrant colour against neutral shades.

  After, when Markse was done, he stood in the living-room door as Mrs. Italiaander pretended she had something terribly important to do in the kitchen and listened with all her might, and Markse said:

  “We didn’t find anything Mr. Miller, but we appreciate your help on this, your cooperation. I do wish you the best.”

  And when Theo went back into his room, just before midnight, it was a turned-over disaster, bed against the wall, mattress torn and slashed open, pillows on the floor, the screen of the laptop cracked. In the end he slept in a bundle of dirty clothes piled up in one corner of the floor.

  Chapter 39

  “My daughter isn’t …”

  “He said your daughter.”

  “Why does he it’s not it’s not …”

  The closest Neila thought she had seen Theo to crying. She’s put him by the stove, fed him, given him water, tea, watched him drink, starving again, he’d run away and was starving what did he think would happen?

  As they bobbed in a nowhere place between towns, moored by spikes driven into the frozen earth with a heavy metal hammer, Neila gave him Markse’s card and now he paced, turned and twisted like smoke in the wind.

  My daughter, he said, my daughter why did he say my daughter how did he she shouldn’t be she shouldn’t

  And stopped, and sank onto the sofa and looked like an origami man crumpled at the bottom of a traveller’s bag.

  They sat a while in silence.

  And the time was …

  Neila put her hand in his, squeezed it tight.

  They sat.

  And the moment was …

  Theo closed his eyes.

  Spoke to the darkness.

  “I have failed so many people. I have failed … everyone who ever mattered to me. My father died on the patty line, my mother ran away from all things, I thought the bullets were blank and Theo died and my friend she was …

  … the patties burned they burned it all everything was ash and the lady ran towards her son and my daughter ran from me and …”

  Turned the card in his hand, one word printed and a telephone number, thick card, black edge.

  “When we get to Leicester, I’ll make the call,” he said. “I’ll … but you pretend that you didn’t—it’s important that you didn’t although I suppose now …”

  They sat a while, in silence.

  Neila held his hand.

  Later, she cut his hair by the light of an LED lantern on the kitchen table, and all things considered it was one of the better cuts she’d ever done.

  The phone rings in London.

  “Markse.”

  “It’s me.”

  “Theo?”

  “You said my daughter.”

  “We should meet.”

  “What about my daughter?”

  “Where are you?”

  “If I—”

  “Where are you?”

  “Leicester.”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow, 9 a.m.”

  “The woman I’m travelling with, Neila. She’s not …”

  “Theo. Listen to me. She’s not part of this. We can still—they haven’t found out what I did yet—we can still solve this.”

  “9 a.m.”

  “Yes, at Kings Lock on …”

  Theo hung up.

  The canal at night.

  In his dreams the man called Theo stands on one leg in the middle of the river, and still hasn’t caught any fish.

  Chapter 40

  At the office, the morning after Markse searched his room, even the security guard wouldn’t look Theo in the eye. When he went to access his email, a sign appeared saying his password was out of date and he needed to contact IT.

  IT were away for training. The entire department was on a surprise trip to Slough for a creative thinking and imaginative problem-solving development day, hosted by a manufacturer of face paints whose son had been done for child molestation and was looking to get a discount.

  Theo tidied his desk, took a few paper files down to the canteen and sat in the window to read. He hadn’t been in a window for a very long time. There had been no sunlight in his working life for nearly six years, and at this time of year it could become hard to remember what it felt like, washed to silver-white, playing through the glass, warming his skin. It was, in a way, one of the nicest days he’d had at work. No one questioned him and no one spoke.

  A man sat on the other side of the café and stared at him

  just stared

  visitor badge around his neck

  and that was okay too.

  Theo went out for lunch, bought a coronation chicken sandwich.

  Afterwards, he returned to the office and went for a piss.

  While inside the toilet cubicle, he climbed up onto the top of the toilet bowel, pushed up a ceiling panel above his head, fumbled around between the loosely laid cables until he found Dani’s phone, retrieved it, put it in his pocket, flushing the toilet on his way out and washing his hands carefully with soap and water.

  On his way home, he cycled down to Westminster Pier, chained his bicycle—probably illegally—to a high iron lamp post, walked down to the wharf and caught the River Bus heading towards Blackfriars. He stood at the back, where the noise of the engine was loudest, turned on Dani’s phone and made a call.

  The station were slow to answer but got there in the end.

  “Paddington Safenight Policing, how can I help you?”

  “It’s Markse.”

  “Who?”

  “Markse,” he called out over the roar of water and foam and the lashing of the wind. “From the Nineteen!”

  Holding music. The same holding music as last time. Theo’s heart rushed as loud as the water foaming below, he didn’t turn his head, didn’t look to see the man on the deck above watching, just stared at the city moving behind him, stared and waited and listened.

  The superintendent, when he came on, was far more solicitous at the idea of Markse’s name than he had been when Theo had called as himself.

  “Markse? What’s that dreadful fucking noise are you …”

  A soar in his heart, a laugh in his chest. “Sorry, very loud where I am. Just needed to check on the files from Cumali’s
phone. Do you still have a copy?”

  “You said to—”

  “I know what I said, but do you still have a copy?”

  “Yes, but we were going to—”

  “Still do that, but first you need to send them to—and this is important are you—send them to this email address write it down then destroy it—so it’s gx7pp9—did you get that it’s gx7pp9 at …”

  Theo gave him the email address, barely bothering to pitch his voice to sound remotely like Markse’s own, letting the roar of the wind carry the sound away, letting it fill him with strength the smell of the river the cold on the air, and the policeman said:

  “Look, Markse, I don’t need you checking up on me like this I’ve got enough with the …”

  “Thanks for your help!”

  Turned off the phone.

  Counted backwards from twenty.

  Nearly laughed out loud.

  Leaned over the railing to see the vortex of water churned up below, the wake washing out towards the high stone walls of the embankment.

  Let the phone drop into the river, to be crunched by propeller and nibbled by grey fishes that dwelt in the spinning mud.

  Chapter 41

  Theo stayed on the boat to Canary Wharf, changed to the Underground, headed down to the bulbous white spot that had been the Millennium Dome, bought an overpriced ticket to the first thing that was on that night, waited in the queue, pressed in with bodies—mostly screaming young girls with huge bunches in their hair and boys in leather trying to be cool.

  Bought a wrap that tasted of salty goo and wet paper.

  Let the crowd heave him into the auditorium, blues and lightning-whites, lasers flicking through the smoke-filled air, a scream, a roar, ear-bending as the band came on stage. They were a Japanese girl-pop group, seven of them dressed in tiny black skirts, white socks up to their knees, they swung between covering their mouths when they laughed, little-girl giggles and shakes of their immensely long black hair, to thrusting their hips forward and exclaiming, “I ain’t taking no shit from this world!” to the adulatory screaming, whooping, shrieking, crying, frothing of the audience.

  Theo moved with the crowd, up and down, side to side, a motion of its own, let it carry him, let it spin him around the stage, flowed with the rhythm of the people until he found a boy with a mobile phone sticking bright and easy out of his back pocket, tears of joy running down his face, streaming through the UV paint drawn in whiskers from the corners of his lips

  stole his mobile phone very easy, really, his father would have been proud his father would have been …

  his father would have

  Drifted to a corner of the crowd, where the ecstasy of the moment was weakest and the floor was sticky with beer.

  Logged into an email address—gx7pp9—and the only email apart from the ancient “welcome to” was brand new and came straight from Safenight Policing Ltd, police force to the stars.

  Theo is

  maybe in his heart he was always a criminal, maybe he inherited something from his father after all, maybe he just likes it maybe he …

  He stayed until the end of the gig, left with the crowd, pushing, shoving, sobbing, laughing, let them spin and spin and spin, down to the station, a heaving mess on the Jubilee Line, got off the train at Stratford, got back on it and headed back to Canary Wharf, ran for the DLR, then changed his mind and ran for West India Quay, up the stairs three at a time, caught the DLR heading towards Bank, saw a man panting for breath running after him, saw the man miss the train …

  Got off at Westferry and ran.

  Ran for the canal, for the darkness, ran in the wrong kind of shoes but who even cared?

  Ran for the terraced streets of Victoria Park, where the CCTV cameras hadn’t grown.

  Ran for the bustling traffic, Vietnamese takeaways, evangelist churches and frozen-food shops of Mare Street.

  Ran for the hipsters’ coffee shops for the sodium lights for the squirrel bulbs hanging with bare, twisted filaments of life, for the place where the enclaves and the sanctuaries bumped almost nose to nose, the darkness of those who couldn’t pay pressing up against the floodlights and barbed-wire walls of those who could.

  Railway arches and trains that screamed and screeched in the night, flash pops of ultraviolet fire off the wheels

  the used-metal yards

  the yoga studios and vegan cafés

  the drug clinics and trash yards for those who had nowhere else to go

  boarded-up windows and fresh new signs—it was the perfect place to be as the night settled into the cold.

  Theo Miller ran, leaving his followers far, far behind.

  An all-night internet café near Dalston Kingsland. The market a few doors up had been caught selling dog, rat, monkey and bat meat again. Several arrested stallholders objected to the charges, saying it was part of their culture, it was how things were.

  (Indemnity of £17,820 for the initial crime plus for the repeat offence they could be looking at … )

  The internet café windows were pasted with posters for a dozen different plays and gigs. R ‘n’ B, rap, music from the Congo and Nigeria, songs of freedom, songs of love, something by Chekhov, a show by kids, a panto starring that woman off the breakfast shows, you know the one, not the weather lady the other one yeah with the really big …

  Theo opened the email from the police service and went through the life and times of Dani Cumali.

  They’d taken her phone, dug through her files. She’d managed to borrow a laptop pinched by a kid in the enclave, they’d torn it apart and now here it was, a full report from the cyber division complete with emails, photos, phone calls, text messages—far too much for him to digest in a single night.

  But he had a feeling he knew where he was going.

  He read.

  And for a moment Dani Cumali was alive again, and sitting at his side, speaking the words that were on the screen, watching him, her hand on his shoulder, a guardian angel painted in blood, a ghost who whispered, she’s your daughter, and every time he thought he might drift towards sleep, she squeezed, and it hurt, and he jerked awake and kept on reading.

  There weren’t any videos of Philip Arnslade.

  No records of crimes committed or corruption planned.

  Just the odd email from the Company, a few photos.

  You fucking bitch. You fucking speak a word and I’ll fucking kill you.

  A text from Seb Gatesman.

  You’re safe, she replied. Touch me and you won’t be.

  Messages in and out, nothing from Faris, nothing that would have been anything other than places to go, people to see there was nothing but …

  (The man called Theo is aware that time is growing a little peculiar, things which he thought were in the past turn out to have some pertinence after all and there was a time when he sat on the bench with his best friend, two children by the sea drinking the cheapest beer they could buy, the only beer they could buy, canned hangover with flat fizzy bits.)

  You just make like a heron and maybe one day you’ll catch some fish.

  A cormorant can count to seven. Put a ring around its neck and send it catching fish and it will remember that the seventh it catches will be its to feast on.

  Owls are actually very stupid birds, but when something moves! That’s when evolution does its thing.

  Chugger chugger chugger goes the boat.

  “You want to swap?” asked Neila. “You must be freezing.”

  “I’m all right, but thank you.”

  “More tea. Peppermint or ginger?”

  “Peppermint, please. How far are we now?”

  “A few more hours. We’ll moor on the edge of town give me a shout when you see …”

  jerking back to reality, Theo reads as the sun comes up, another three quid for another hour, he reads and this is all that there is to be done now this is all that …

  At 8.45 a.m. he found it.

  An unsent email, sat in the drafts, no address at
the top.

  Dani wrote it twenty minutes before she died.

  She’s your daughter. Save the mother. Go home.

  Theo stared at it for a while, then shut down the computer, walked to the nearest cashpoint, took out all the cash he was allowed, pushed his credit card down the nearest drain and went to find a train home.

  Knave of coins, the Devil (inverted), the Priest, seven of wands, three of coins, the Fool, three of cups, king of coins, the Hanged Man (inverted).

  Neila said, “I don’t like the word ‘mister.’ It’s weighted down with this idea, this baggage like you say ‘Mr. Smith,’ and there’s this idea isn’t there in your head immediately of what Mr. Smith must be because the word, the gender identifier, it imposes so many cultural ideas about strong and right and reliable and …”

  Theo made pasta with spinach and mushroom sauce.

  “… once stopped at customs—this was when I could afford holidays—and they said ‘We are going to search you’ and I asked why. They didn’t give me a reason, but they took me to the men’s room. The men’s. I was so … I said I’m not … And I begged them I was crying I was just—but what the system says matters more and I …”

  They ate in silence, counting down the hours until the morning. Low brick houses, white window frames, roads without trees, pawnbrokers, betting shops, a bit in the centre of town for the parents to take their kids shopping for £1 water pistols and a pot of paints that the baby would eat in the car back home. A theatre, abandoned, squatters sleeping in the place where the fly bars once had been, cardboard mattresses laid across metal beams and in the musty, mousy warmth of the orchestra pit.