by Claire North
I blew that too, you see. I couldn’t ever find anything to care about. I couldn’t understand why anything mattered at all. I didn’t think there was any point to me. Just keep going. Just … go through the motions. I have spent my life sending people into slavery, and freeing killers because they were rich, or because the person they killed was poor, or an immigrant, or no good for society, and it was … I did it because it was a job. Because all I ever wanted was a job, and to be safe, and not cause any trouble.
I have led a thoroughly despicable life. Or rather … not despicable. My evils have been ordinary evils. My sins against the world are daily, little sins that no one would question. I am a normal man, and have done no wrong, and there is a place in hell waiting for me. That’s
that’s what I have decided.
That’s what I think.
I want to get my daughter out. I’ve never met her. She’s in an institution writing online reviews for sales products. She’s never getting out. Kids like her don’t. They get lost in the system. Dani’s supervisor said … there’s a market for anything. There’s a market for my daughter. He didn’t know that’s what he was saying, but that’s all I could hear. She’s probably not my daughter. I want her to have a better life. Even if I die for it, it seems now of extreme importance that I do something in my life which matters. Our children matter. There we probably agree. I plan to destroy the Company, the government and the country. When there is nothing left except ashes, then I get my daughter out, and make a better world for her.
I am probably going to destroy your son. I came to find you because Dani told me to. She seemed to have some sort of … of centre, something in her that was … real, and mattered, which I didn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe she was just a better person than me. I have some ideas. Do you want to help?”
Chapter 57
Time is
The children play in the park, they run and play as the city burns because the fire is beautiful and the sky is huge and their eyes are full of light and
time is …
Neila moored the Hector a few miles outside Nottingham.
She said, without fear or reproach, “It’s an enclave town. My insurance makes it difficult to …”
They sat in silence at the back of the Hector, looking towards the place where fields ended and bricks began, the low edge of buildings rising towards the empty shopping malls in the centre. Finally Theo said, “The queen of the patties once guaranteed me passage. Her word might still hold.”
Neila bit her bottom lip, hand resting on the rudder, contemplating the river. Then: “Screw it.”
They sailed on, towards the town.
She chugged down the middle of the canal, listening for every sound, whisper, bump and thump over the slow rattle of the engine. Fat wetlands gave way to streets of close-pressed houses, white chipped paint and boarded-up windows. A lone wind turbine spun in the distance. In an office block of grey lines and black windows a single light turned one rectangle of glass yellow. A sudden burst of tall red houses emerged from behind the overgrown hedges that hemmed in the canal, blue-black tiles curving up into little ornamental cupolas, before collapsing back down again into bungalows and lanes of grey. At Beeston Lock the water branched, wide river laced with blue-balustraded bridges in one direction, canal criss-crossed by silent railway lines and black brick arches in the other.
Neila stood at the back of the Hector as the water rose in the lock, and in her mind she counted steps to the kitchen knife, listened to the tock-clock of the winch in the gate as Theo turned the handle, wondered if she should tell him, it’s heavy, iron heavy, the crank could be used as a weapon just in case, you never know, just in case it becomes necessary.
The boat rose, and she headed into the narrower, softer waters of the canal.
A bonfire burning outside Lenton Abbey, she couldn’t see what fuelled it, just odd squares and hard angles breaking through the inferno, hints of black behind the smoke, the shape of figures moving around it, none turning to look at her as she sailed by.
Four children sat on the railway bridge, feet dangling over the sides. She sailed beneath them, waiting for them to spit on her, throw stones, laugh, shout, run for help. They didn’t. They watched her pass, then scrambled to the other side of the bridge to sit and watch her emerge, waiting silently, kicking their heels, fingers spun together in their laps.
At Castle Lock there were seven people waiting for them. Two held battery torches; one held a makeshift flaming torch of rag and wood. No street lights burned. A generator rattled somewhere far off. The turbine eclipsed the moon. The night was silent as Neila gunned the engine down and drifted, out of reach of the first lock gate, watching the people on the bank.
For a while all were silent. Then a woman called, “North?”
Neila nodded, then realised the gesture might not be visible in the dark, so called back, “Towards Gainsborough.”
The woman nodded, swept her torch across the boat, her expression lost behind the beam.
“Petrol?” she asked at last, a tired lilt to her tone.
“Not much.”
“We’ll take half.”
“No.”
“You wanna pass; we take half the petrol.”
No antagonism, no shouting. A simple statement, the truth, two women discussing the hardness of stone, the wetness of water.
Theo emerged from the cabin, stood next to Neila, squinted as the light swept his face.
“We’ll throw you a line,” continued the woman. “Fill our buckets. Then we open the gate.”
“No,” repeated Neila, calm and ready. “I won’t have enough to get to the next pump, and I can’t pay for more than what I’ve got.”
A shrug.
“We’ll turn back.”
“You’re going north.”
“We’ll turn back,” she repeated, resigned. “We’ll turn back.”
The woman on the bank hesitated, sensing a bluff to be called, uncertain where the cards lay. Then Theo said, “I was at Newton Bridge.”
The torch turned to his face, caught it in a tight circle of white. The figures on the bank were still, waiting.
“I served the queen. My name is Theo Miller. If she has a court …”
Silence in the darkness. Silence on the water.
“We’ll wait a little while,” he added, glancing at Neila for permission. “Then go back.”
Torches shone into their eyes.
Then three of the figures on the bank turned away and headed into the night.
Neila pushes the rudder this way and that.
Even the slow, tepid canal has energy, a life of its own. Take your eye off the current and you’ll drift, bump into walls, into locks, break against the ice she
holds the boat in the middle of the water and waits.
Theo brings her tea.
Holds her in his arms.
She puts her head on his shoulder.
Shivers a while in the cold, until she is a little warmer.
Holds them still, in the middle of the water.
Dawn pricked the eastern horizon with a hot needle of pinkish red.
The sun rose behind the low clouds, then emerged for a moment, glorious, between a band of low and high, before vanishing again into the greyness.
It started to snow.
Theo sat with one hand on the rudder, waiting, while Neila pretended to sleep inside the cabin.
After a while Theo realised that he too was sleeping, and jerked hard awake.
A man stood on the bank of the canal, flanked by a woman and another man. His skin was pale olive-brown, his eyes were flecked coffee, his hair was curly almond, exploding around his head. He stood bent to one side, favouring his left leg, and moved with a long, dragging limp. Wore oversized jogging trousers and a grey tracksuit top, and didn’t seem to feel the cold. He looked across the water at Theo and didn’t smile.
“So,” he grunted. “Still alive.”
They moored.
&nb
sp; Theo stood on the back, and didn’t help with the ropes like he usually did, and put his hands in his pockets
then took them out
put them back
watched the man and the man watched him, and Theo was afraid.
Neila hesitated, but the momentum of the boat was already carrying them to the side, too late to turn back now. She watched Theo’s throat, the involuntary curling-in of his lips, the way he turned his gaze away at last, unable to meet the man’s eye, and thought for a moment, as she tied off, that Theo wasn’t even going to get off the narrowboat, but they’d be stood there in the cold freezing their …
Then he looked up.
Seemed to reach a decision.
Stepped off the boat.
The man in grey walked towards him slowly, stood before him, thought about the world for a moment, lips twisting as if they might smile, then dipping as if they would scowl.
Reached a decision, and punched Theo in the stomach, once, hard and precise, a short distance to send the blow but placed to cause pain, and as Theo buckled forward, he reached out and caught the smaller man by the hair, pulling his head back, so his body contorted like a lightning bolt, every part bending away.
Theo didn’t struggle or claw at his attacker.
For a moment they stood watching each other’s eyes, before with a shrug the man let go of Theo’s head and turned away, letting him fall to the ground to pull in breath. Neila moved forward quickly, caught him under the arm, whispered, “The wrench, or in the kitchen there’s …”
He shook his head.
Put his hand on hers, grateful, warm, squeezed once, stood up, bending over the pain, and followed the man in grey along the canal.
The two men walked a little distance away, then turned into the city.
Neila stood on the stern of her boat, and watched the woman who watched her.
After a while the woman got bored, and flicked dirt out from under her nails with the stub of a dried-up stalk.
Neila watched.
The woman finished.
Cracked the stalk in two.
Threw it away.
Sat on the long beam of the lock gate, waited.
The two women regarded each other as the snow thickened, and Neila was shivering, and so was the woman.
Then Neila said, “For fuck’s sake,” and went into the cabin, and put the kettle on, and made two cups of tea, and offered one to the woman. “Want a cuppa?”
The woman hesitated, then smiled, nodded and followed her inside.
“Ever had your fortune read?” Neila asked as the woman made a direct line for the heat of the stove. “I’ll get the cards.”
Three hours later, the man in grey and the man called Theo returned to the boat. Theo carried a bag containing two tins of tuna, one tin of peaches in sugary liquid, a bottle of flat lemonade, a toilet roll, a biscuit tin and an object wrapped in oiled cloth.
The man’s name was Corn. He joined them for supper and ate voraciously, and said almost nothing, except for once, when dinner was served.
“Blessed is her name, blessed are her hands upon the water, blessed is she the mother who gives life to the children in the mist, blessed are her hidden ways. Let the bars be broken let the journey end there is nothing at the end except darkness and the quiet place where all things fade amen.”
The words, a headlong chant, a habitual stream. The woman whispered a silent “Amen” as they finished, and they ate, and when they had finished Corn stood and shook Neila’s hand, and said, “Thank you,” and walked away, and the woman followed, and they slept the night by the side of the canal, and no one bothered them.
In the morning.
Theo opened up the object wrapped in cloth and said, “It’s … wrong … to have it on your boat and not tell you. Only half of the ammunition is live, the rest is blanks—it’s easier for … I’m sorry I brought it on without your permission but with Corn there it was difficult to explain why the …”
“I don’t want it on the boat. What happened, why is there …”
“I’ll go. I’ll go now and …”
“I don’t want it on my boat,” she repeated, knuckles white as she clung to the table.
“I’ll go.”
“Why do you have to have it?”
“To get my daughter back.”
“You’re going to kill … you’re going to kill someone.”
“You always knew what this was. You always knew. You always knew why I came here, you—I’m sorry, that’s unfair that’s making this … it’s not about … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …”
“Give me the gun.”
He gave her the gun.
She’d never held a gun before. She was surprised how heavy it was, how cold the barrel was in her hand. Theo watched it for a while then blurted, “There’s a woman. Her name is Heidi. She loves my daughter. She took her but she’s married to this man, he took her, took my daughter too, and Heidi, she said that they had to protect her but he only agreed in order to
Heidi never had a daughter, you see. She never had a daughter and now she’s got mine and that’s …”
Neila stood up without a word. Went to the back of the boat, turned on the engine, held the gun over the water and
In the evening that bloody goddamn cormorant was still bloody bumping its bloody head against the side of the bloody cabin why couldn’t it just
Theo made supper, and she didn’t really eat, and conversation was stilted, and she didn’t check the cards as they sailed north.
In the land of the dead
in the place where the dead people lie
the real Theo Miller
the one who actually fell on the field by the river
looks up at the world of men and is, in his own quaint, deceased, skull-grinning way,
mildly amused at the way things have panned out.
Chapter 58
Three days after arriving at Kirsty’s house, Theo and Helen sneaked across the Cotswolds border at night.
They got out in the back of a horse trailer.
The trailer was owned by Kirsty’s sister. She had two horses, one doing quite well for the season. Whenever the horses left the farm, a sheep called Mitts would stand by the gate bleating piteously for her companions to return, her own species ignored until at last the horses came back and the sheep would snuggle up against the legs of its favourite runner, which tolerated the intrusion as a lazy cat might tolerate the nuzzling of a toothless pup.
Theo and Helen hid under blankets at the back of the trailer, sheltered from the door by the horses as they rocked and swayed down the soft hills of the valley. At the border fence they were stopped, papers examined, a torch shone briefly into the back of the trailer, illuminating animal, tack and hay, and waved on.
In Oxfordshire Kirsty blurted, “I’m not sure about this, I don’t think this is …”
“This is necessary. This is what I need to do.”
“But what about Philip what about the hall I mean Danesmoor is—if you leave now it’ll be …”
“This is important. This is absolutely what needs to be …”
“There are people out there. It’s not safe. It’s not safe out there you’ve seen the news you know that they don’t even show the bad things—everybody knows!”
“I have to do this,” she repeated, firmer. “It’s what is required.”
Theo watched in silence, huddled beneath a tree as the cold morning rain thickened to sleet, and Helen waited to watch as Kirsty and her sister drove away.
Theo tried to steal a car.
Stealing a car proved harder than reading about it in Audit Office reports. He remembered something clever about chips and Wi-Fi networks and maybe hijacking …
… and then there was this thing you could do with a coathanger, wasn’t there, but that was only on certain models and …
Pull out the key socket somehow you sorta popped it out and then twisted the green and the red or maybe the yellow and the bl
ue or maybe just maybe twisted everything together or did something with a hairpin to make a connection and …
In the end Helen stole the car keys from a vicar she spotted putting them in his far-too-baggy jacket as he parked in his private space beside the church. Bumping into him and exclaiming, “Oh, my, sorry!” as she dipped a hand into his pocket turned out to be incredibly easy, and she was glowing with self-satisfaction for nearly ninety miles, until the wail of a police siren just outside Birmingham brought them back to reality with a hard thump.
Theo pulled onto the hard shoulder as the police car approached, M6 traffic rushing by.
Helen said, “Isn’t that going to …”
The policeman pulled up fifty yards behind, got out, walked along the edge of the turf, knocked on Theo’s window, which he wound down.
“Excuse me, sir, do you have any—”
Theo slammed his foot onto the accelerator, leaving the policeman cursing and puffing, running back to his own vehicle as Theo pulled away into the traffic, peeling around the streaming cars before turning late and hard onto the slip road off the motorway.
The police car followed, but as Theo tore across the roundabout at the top of the exit ramp, their pursuer vanished from the mirror, and another sharp turn pulled them into a petrol station a hundred yards further up.
“Out,” hissed Theo, and Helen was already halfway out, scampering for the pavement.
They walked briskly together, away from the petrol station into the small, scraggly mess of single-storey white-walled houses that clung together on the edge of the motorway, shaggy temporary homes which had become permanent, with a tin-roofed church and Portaloo school, marching stiff and upright as if they belonged. Behind the sirens wailed and the police car swept into the garage to find their abandoned vehicle.
They walked, a village with no name, as the skies drizzled, then sleeted, then drizzled again. On a hill above were silent concrete chimney towers. A gate led to a public footpath climbing towards a mobile-phone mast. They followed the muddy route in silence. A golf club to the left, blue lights behind, and after a while a helicopter overhead. Theo gripped Helen by the arm, felt her flinch, hadn’t realised he was holding so tight, relaxed, whispered, “Just walk. We’re just walking.”
