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by Claire North

By the fire, Jacob Pritchard said, “So?”

  Outside the churchyard, the unnamed grave of the real Theo Miller is cold and overgrown. The first winter snow has fallen, the grass is stiff and cracked with frost there and the body is just bone in the thin coffin.

  Jacob Pritchard shifts in his seat, wiggling an old ache in his lower back, and says again, “So? So what? Everyone knows this shit. This shit has been happening for years. This ain’t nothing new. So you got some shit. Funny—it’s funny, I like that, very funny—dead people, enclaves cleared, slaves locked up on the patty line, yeah, that’s a thing but what about it? I’m comfortable. I’m peachy. Most people are. Few thousands die … well shit. Most people are scared of the ones who aren’t like them anyway.”

  Silence on the canal.

  Silence in the firelight.

  And of course, there it is. There is the truth, the one that has been waiting for Theo, and the ghost of Dani Cumali, their whole lives.

  Everyone knew.

  So what?

  Then Theo murmured, “You’re right. Of course. Everyone knows. I’ve known. I send people to die, and I knew it. I’ve always known. No one ever says it. We stop before the hard things. We never finish saying anything that might matter at all. And you’re right. That’s how it happens. That’s how it always happened.”

  Looked up. Met Jacob’s eyes. Smiled.

  “My friend left me a message—save the mother. I thought she meant her, I thought I had to save her, but she was already dead. Dani went to a place called Danesmoor. There’s a woman there called Helen, she’s Philip Arnslade’s mother. Help the mother, Dani said. And sure, Dani stole stuff from the Ministry, but she’d been pinching things for weeks before she got herself sent to Danesmoor. That changed everything. Something there scared the Company enough to kill Dani. Kill my friend.”

  “Boo hoo hoo kill my friend; well bugger me, Hamlet.”

  Theo smiled at nothing much, nodding into the mesh of his fingers. Without rancour: “I don’t think bodies pushed into a field are enough to make people care. Or maybe … maybe that’s unfair. Maybe they care. But caring isn’t the same as doing something, and doing something is hard. It’s very, very hard. But the Company is made of people, and people are weak. They are cowards, like the rest of us. They wear a nicer suit. I’m going to destroy them all, one at a time, until there is nothing left, and the cities can burn and the sea can turn red with blood, and when it’s done I will make a better world for my daughter.” Thought through those words, looking to see if there was anything wrong with them. Couldn’t see it. “That’s all.”

  In the room where they keep the children before they’re strong enough to be useful or pretty enough to sell, Lucy Rainbow Princess clicks through to her next review. “Came in perfect condition and is everything I wanted. Would 100 per cent recommend.”

  Pauses, head on one side, thinks for a moment.

  Types at the bottom: “Until it broke, 24 hours after opening the box. Fucking shit.”

  Hit send.

  She’d be punished later. The night would be hungry and cold. Someone had said once that her sentence was nearly up, but then it hadn’t been, it had been extended for … she wasn’t sure for what. Someone said she should see a lawyer, but no one would come, so here she was. This was what life was. This was all that her life would ever be. But for now, in her own way, this was a little victory.

  By the sea, the screamers screamed at the waves, which foamed beneath the beating of their fists.

  In the prisons, the patty lines kept on rolling rolling rolling

  The golf club swung and the ball went wide, carried by the wind

  A child scratched the art on the wall, wicked child you wicked wicked

  The girl said, no, no, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, please, I don’t I don’t I just please stop please it’s not …

  By the fire, Jacob Pritchard weaves his fingers across his belly and thinks about his past, his future and the man before him, and murmurs, “Not sure I want to bring down the system, not sure I do at that. I do just fine, I do, I do just fine with my wall and my gun and my dog we are safe, see, men like me, the Company—it’d buy the petrol I brought in cos I never robbed them, nice cheap stuff, no VAT, they do right by me, I do right by them so you see …”

  Then the woman called Milly was in the door of the room, and Jacob looked at her and had nothing but a heart full of love, and saw that in her face which did not approve of this line of conversation, and sighed, and said, “You can sleep in the spare room, but if you get blood on my shit I’ll do you. Only bothering cos I liked your dad, a good man, him and me, we went way back, we went all the way.”

  In the morning Jacob Pritchard gave Theo a car, stolen, plates changed, a Tupperware box of egg-and-cress sandwiches, five hundred quid in used notes. “Don’t come back,” he explained, affably, as Theo climbed into the driver’s seat. “Come back and I’ll drown you in tar.” And smiled, and shook Theo’s hand cordially, and watched him on his way.

  A bouncing plastic toy wearing the colours of Watford FC by Hairworks swung from the front mirror, thumbs up and right foot raised to boot a ball towards victory.

  It was annoying for a time, and then, after a little while, it wasn’t any more.

  Part 2

  Chapter 50

  Lady Helen Arnslade, Marchioness of Mantell, seventeenth of that name, sat before the portrait and said:

  “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?”

  Her great-great-great-great-great-grandfather-in-law, who’d served under the Duke of Wellington and damn well shown those pesky Indian natives whose flintlock-fuelled culture was morally superior thank you very much, shifted uneasily against the stiff wooden frame that held him high above the unused fireplace of her tower room. Flakes of oil paint drifted down from his mighty whiskered face as he considered the problem.

  “I suppose,” he mused, “that it’s much the same as the divine right of kings …”

  “Precedent,” she agreed, pulling open and shut, open and shut the white dressing gown that swathed her grey, thin body. “Or do I mean proportionality?”

  “Is the monarch the state, is the state greater than the sum of its people, are the people really the best judges of the value of the state and …” pondered Lord Arnslade, eleventh Marquess of Mantell, one hand resting on the turning globe, another on the golden handle of his sword, his favourite spaniel frozen, eyes wide and frightened, mid-gambol at his feet. His family had earned its title, so the rumours went, not for mighty military service but for questionable sexual liaisons with a monarch who probably should have known better. Several centuries later he knows these things are all culturally relative, but still …

  “I do still love him, of course,” mused Helen. “But can love not be loving by going against his wishes? Can you not …” She paused to scratch at the eels coiled in her hair, which, while perfectly acceptable guests, still sometimes got on her nerves when she was trying to concentrate on more important matters.

  “You’re talking about making decisions for other people,” the Most Honourable Marquess concluded sagely, feeling on safer ground here—making decisions for other people was something he excelled at.

  “I suppose. But then isn’t that the whole point?”

  “The moral framework …”

  “… well yes there’s the …”

  “The whole issue of how …”

  “Are my ethics of an acceptable standard to …”

  “Having conviction is more than most people ever really achieve, of course.”

  Lady Helen hesitated, staring up at her long-deceased, paint-frozen relative, and for a childish moment realised she was chewing her fingernails, a disgusting habit that had been ground out of her decades ago, ridiculous that it was back now. “I don’t think I have conviction,” she said at last. “I used to, but I don’t think I have anything like that any more.”

  Lord Arnslade strained, wishing that the painter who’d captu
red him in oils hadn’t given his chin such a haughty upwards tilt, it was giving him a right crick in the neck now, and though his eyes could naturally follow anyone around the room no matter where they wandered, most of the time he was most comfortable studying the cornicing, which upon consideration he considered to have been rather poorly done. All this made thinking about the serious issues—the deeply concerning matters—that were now before him that much harder.

  At last he concluded, a little shower of dust trickling down from the back of the canvas with the effort of it: “Action is belief.”

  He felt very proud of himself for having expressed this, essentially condensing his entire life story to three deeply sage words.

  Lady Helen looked less convinced, and he felt the globe turning beneath his fingers slow as her confidence waned. Hastily, before the moment passed him by, he added, “Also he is a total shit, if you think about it, and probably has it coming.”

  “But he is my son. Granddad? Can I call you Granddad? He’s my son. He’s my son. He’s my …”

  But Lord Arnslade was just paint and canvas again, the harsh light of the overhead chandelier bouncing off his thick dark curves, the spaniel still waggy-tailed and wide-eyed leaping for ever at his feet, and there was blood in her mouth, and Lady Helen realised she needed to wash her hair.

  Chapter 51

  Theo Miller drives.

  He sleeps in the back of the car.

  Eats egg-and-cress sandwiches.

  Reads on the old laptop of Jacob Pritchard’s younger son, who long since upgraded and fled abroad to Spain, where things were a different kind of easy.

  Records of deals done, of lives sold.

  He wonders where Lucy is.

  For a little while thinks about praying, and realises that he is praying to his daughter. She should not be God, she is not God, and yet he feels this urge to bend his knees and pray, pray for …

  It’s a stupid instinct, so he gets back into the driving seat and keeps going west.

  “Hi, Edward Witt, Criminal Audit Office, I’m … yes that’s—no I can …”

  He sits in a service station off the M40 and enjoys being his boss, for a little while.

  “No, still here thank you—yes it’s about Lucy Cumali that’s right Cumali you might also have Rainbow Princess it’s—that’s the one thank you. Criminal Audit Office, yes so I’m looking at a request from a lawyer on behalf of a corporate entertainment company enquiring as to the value of her indemnity is it … I see. I see. Yes. No that’s more than I think they were expecting it’s … can you send me that file? Thank you yes my email address is …”

  He read Lucy’s file while eating a kebab in the passenger seat of his car, pulled up in a high street that sold birthday cards, burgers, scones, second-hand mattresses and not much else.

  A corporate entertainment company was interested in buying her parole.

  The governor warned that she had an attitude problem.

  Not a problem, replied the company. Our girls get to be very pliable, very soon. It’s all part of the training.

  A road, sweeping down a V carved between two chalk cliffs, breaking out into crimson-leafed forest, pillowed mounds of darkness, hammer ponds and running brooks through hills where the sun only sometimes managed to peek out from between the leaves.

  He ate at a pub and rode their Wi-Fi connection and the menu was red cabbage and wilted spinach and Chantilly carrots and roast lamb and giant Yorkshire puddings and after twenty minutes the community Company officer came and asked him for his ID and if he worked nearby because you see the people here had paid their Company tax and there was a surcharge for visitors.

  In the night he sat on a hill looking down towards the village, and saw a flash of firelight as the first torch was lit, followed by another, and another, and another.

  The Company support team stood by with sand buckets, health and safety you see, but otherwise didn’t intervene as the people of the town walked out in robes of black, flaming torches held aloft, went down to the edge of the town and circled its boundaries three times, twice clockwise, once anticlockwise, and spoke their prayers.

  Protect us, Lord, from the evils that come in the dark protect us from the world that claws at our edges protect us from change and from pain and from evil and from …

  After, they went home to play Xbox.

  Theo didn’t have the paperwork to enter the Cotswolds.

  He hid the car on the Oxfordshire border, driving down the path to an abandoned industrial estate and tucking it into the deepest corner of the dark. Then he waited for the grey hour before dawn, and sneaked across on the footpaths with a pair of kids, dodging into the hollows of great-bellied trees to evade the patrols who swept the area in beams of white, looking for intruders.

  His guides, fourteen and sixteen, brother and sister, made their living by taking strangers across the border. They knew where the motion sensors were, and the flight paths of the drones. For only two hundred quid they could get you a month pass to the Cotswolds, complete with 5 per cent discount at this big manor house where once a president had stayed, or maybe a military dictator, they weren’t sure. They were all the same anyway.

  He paid fifty quid for their skills, and didn’t ask if they had family or if they’d be okay getting home. By early morning he’d reached a village of old stones and running water, a mill silent by the stream, narrow stone bridges criss-crossing through the village, a manor house offering spa experiences and corporate dining.

  He washed his face in the stream, waited for the sun to climb higher, descended to the tea room to order a scone and a pot of Earl Grey.

  “You’re here for the walking are you?”

  “Yes, the walking. My family have a cottage in Chipping Campden.”

  “Beautiful around there, beautiful. So how long have you been …?”

  “I entered a few days ago. I like to come here at this time of year—fewer people. You can walk for hours and not see …”

  “Of course! It’s not like the Lake District around here!”

  An entrance pass to the Lake District was sometimes affordable even by people who weren’t on the Company payroll, and there were some corporations who still insisted on sponsoring Boy Scout trips up the mountains too. Not that anyone had any problem with Boy Scouts, not really, it was just that people like that … cluttered things. They made everything feel terribly …

  … cluttered.

  “I was thinking of visiting Danesmoor. I heard that the paintings are …”

  “Remarkable, yes, remarkable do you know the …?”

  “Arnslade; of course. I work at the Ministry—he’s such a good boss, I mean you’ll know of course, but such a pleasure and …”

  His hostess, blue and white striped apron, green beads at neck and wrists, beamed, and topped up Theo’s cup with a little more steaming tea, milk in first.

  One cream tea later, a family of three arrived, bright blue matching hi-tech jackets, matching red walking sticks, matching immaculate, mud-free boots. Theo watched them from the corner of his eye, waited for the child, a boy of seven, to be particularly obnoxious and vile, then stood up, swept by, and stole the father’s travel bag. The entire exercise was ludicrously easy.

  Sat on the edge of town, he rifled through the contents, stealing clothes, water bottle, money, credit card, papers.

  Threw the rest into a gully, kept on walking.

  A flock of grouse scattered down the side of the hill; a horse with wide brown eyes trotted to the edge of the field, inviting nuzzling, sugar cubes, company.

  A town where a single church sang out a joyful peal of bells to the rising day.

  A village with an autumn fête in full swing, the children laughed and played and spun around the maypole, there was face painting, giant bubbles drifted through the air, home-baked goods for 50p to raise money for a local charity, a fair for old cars, polished to perfection, 1930s two-seaters, tops down, men sat on the shining black leather seats exclaimin
g, without being allowed to actually drive, “Parp parp parp!” giggling with childish delight.

  As he moved on, he passed a red phone box which had been converted into a station for CPR defibrillator panels.

  A tourist shop selling hand-painted china, a thousand whiskered cat faces.

  A security post manned by a member of the Cotswolds Appreciation Corporation, who scurried out as Theo passed and blurted, “Can I see your pass, please?”

  “Of course just …”

  “Where did you enter?”

  “I prepaid at Blenheim. It was part of the tour, I have the receipt somewhere just here for …”

  “If you don’t have the proper paperwork then you can’t—we have to protect the Cotswolds for the residents, for paying visitors, the purpose of the …”

  “Here.” He handed over the stolen paperwork, smiled and waited.

  “Says you’re with a family,” the man muttered at last, cautious.

  “Yes; they’re still in town, enjoying the fair.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We parked the car back on the hill. I’m going to pick it up; my wife and son don’t want to walk it’s …”

  He stumbled on the words, picked himself back up, smiled.

  The man returned his papers. “Have a good trip, sir. The Cotswolds are the perfect place to enjoy the English countryside without anxiety or bother!”

  Theo nodded, and kept on walking.

  After a while it started to snow.

  He looked down on a land turning from green to white, and it was beautiful. It was one of the most beautiful things he thought he had ever seen, and as he stared across the slow slopes he said out loud, “So Lucy, you may not like walking holidays but surely even you can appreciate …”

  And stopped himself.

  Put his hands in his pockets, lest they grow cold in the empty, biting air.

  Kept on walking.

  “Hi, Edward Witt again. Yes, the Cumali case—I was wondering yes I was thinking could I maybe talk to her, it’s just

  no.

  no I understand of course.