84k

by Claire North

  They headed, quiet, away from the crowds, towards the emergency exit.

  Theo stopped fiddling with his phone and dialled the only number saved on it.

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  “Gotcha,” muttered Corn and hung up.

  Theo waited for the group to be almost through the emergency exit before ducking under the rope that cut off their route from the main throng, following them. The door at the end of the corridor led to a grey concrete stairwell, brutally practical against the fascinators, ice buckets and soft velvet of the main event. He could hear footsteps descending, voices muttering into radios. He followed, moving no faster than Helen could, keeping at a distance.

  The stairwell gave out to the service car park, caterers’ vans and patty transport buses. The brightness of the winter’s day was harsh after the half-gloom of fluorescents. Clouds scudding across the sun promised snow later, but only seemed to fracture the light, not dim it. Theo looked across the car park and saw the huddle of security, Helen and Philip already moving towards an exit, where two black cars were pulling up, ready to collect their passengers.

  He looked through the parked vehicles, and saw Seph Atkins because he knew she had to be there, a shape more than a face clouded in grey, smoke drifting through the inch-open window of her car. Looked beyond her, thought he saw Corn move behind a floral delivery van laden with wreaths of holly and yew.

  Thought he saw someone else moving on the edge of his vision, and knew it was probably Dani, or maybe Theo—the real Theo, the one who’d died by Philip Arnslade’s hand—and realised he was going to fuck this up again, just like he’d fucked up everything he’d ever done his whole life.

  Helen was a few metres from the black cars, trying to say something, half-turning to look back the way she’d come. The security guard who held her arm tried to guide her forward, but her walk was unsteady, her will absolute. She mouthed something vague, words slurring, craned her neck, and saw Theo.

  Their eyes met, and she raised her head a little higher, smiled.

  Corn detonated the bomb.

  The bomb was under a six-seater car that had brought dish washers from the local prison to the racecourse.

  The dish washer who’d built the bomb had been put inside for arson, but that was only because the explosives had started a fire. Because of his special skills, he’d been sent to a chemical factory. When he lost an eye and the tip of his nose to acid, the inmates held their traditional party, a feast of scavenged tinned food and banging of fists on walls. He was one of them now, for ever disfigured and welcome in their tribe, and he was surprised to discover that he wanted to live.

  He wanted to live, and concluded that this could only be because there was something left to live for.

  At night he whispered prayers to the lady in the north, to her blessed hands, to the breaking of the cage.

  He’d really enjoyed putting the bomb underneath the car. He’d enjoyed it so much that he’d scratched FUCK U into the tin-can housing, still smelling faintly of tomatoes through the ammonia, a little act that only he would ever appreciate. He liked blowing things up generally. Blowing things up for a cause felt …

  … like something new.

  The bomb, as bombs went, wasn’t as spectacular as Theo had expected. Cleaning products weren’t as good as the proper shit, its maker might have said. The sound of it hurt his ears, and the shock wave was a hot blast in his face like an air-conditioning vent for a big office building. But there wasn’t fire. There weren’t licking yellow flames, and though the security men went down to the ground, they dragged their charges down with them rather than being thrown off their feet, covering Philip’s head with their hands, pushing him beneath the shrapnel of metal that splatted out from the wreck of the car.

  For a moment Theo thought that was it, and hoped it was enough.

  Then Seph’s bomb, the much larger, much more professional bomb she’d put in the boot of her target Volvo, stirred into life by the shock wave from the less competent device, also detonated. Philip and his escort were already halfway to the ground, which is why the ball bearings as they flew through the air ripped apart only one of the guards, the slowest, the one who’d been last to comprehend his environment. The blast knocked Theo back against the emergency exit, slamming the breath out of him, and the three cars nearest the bomb didn’t have time to wail before glass, chassis and pipe were ripped to pieces, the poked frames lifted up and turned sideways, rolled over until they hit their next-nearest neighbours, which howled and shrieked, lights flashing and black smoke tumbling from broken, greasy valve as rubble and shattered metal began to drift down around them, soft against the singing in Theo’s ears.

  For a few moments there was only the howling, the metal rain, black smoke.

  Theo crawled upright, leaning against the wall, looking through biting acrid smoke for signs of life. One of the black cars that had been waiting by the car park gate had been knocked on its side. As he watched, a door opened at the top and a man, groggy and struggling to get a grip, scrambled up through what had now become the roof of the vehicle, swinging his legs round and flopping like an overweight fish onto the ground.

  Of the security on the ground, one was dragging the shattered body of his colleague towards the waiting vehicles. Two more, crawling, bloodied, clothes burned, dragged Philip Arnslade, who staggered and blinked and seemed not to see or understand. A third crouched over Helen and didn’t know what to do.

  A grunt of engine, out of time, unearthly in Theo’s muddled senses. Seph’s car zipped by, her fingers as white as her winter coat where she gripped the wheel. There was a thing on her face which might have been panic, and if she saw Theo as she rushed by, he did not seem to register.

  Corn, slinking away.

  Bea, upstairs, watching from a window, turned her face from the scene.

  Theo, in the door, looked and looked, and waited for Helen to move, and she did not, and the smoke began to clear and the sounds of the world began to return, the sirens and the shouting and engines and now an alarm inside the building, evacuation, the racecourse evacuating, and Theo couldn’t move, and couldn’t see, and Helen did not get up.

  Did not stand.

  Did not move.

  The phone was ringing in his pocket, and he didn’t answer, and Helen didn’t move.

  The fire door opened at his back, and a man in a black suit with white gloves was there, a yellow bib hastily thrown over his jacket. He looked at Theo, and didn’t seem to understand, and growled through a world gone mad, “Sir we’re evacuating please make your way to …”

  And looked at where his muster point should have been, and saw only wreckage, and was for a moment not sure what to do.

  “Sir please … please make your way calmly to the front car park, where there will be … will be … do you need medical attention do you …?”

  He’d only ever been taught one procedure for an evacuation, and it hadn’t involved there being a bomb round the back. His mouth went numb, lips stopped moving. Theo stared into his face, and thought he looked very stupid, and felt very sorry for him, and looked back to where Helen wasn’t moving, and said, yes, yes. I’ll go. I’m going. I’m fine. Yes.

  And went back inside.

  And followed all instructions to proceed calmly and quickly to his designated exit.

  And did not answer his phone.

  And knew he had not failed, and thought that Dani walked with him, and that his daughter would be ashamed of who he had been, and who he had become.

  Chapter 67

  Seph Atkins phoned the police eight miles outside Virginia Water.

  She’d reached the conclusion it was the smart move. Making them give chase would only increase the value of the indemnity, and whatever had happened, she would be safe.

  She would be safe.

  She would be …

  The racecourse put on complimentary transport for anyone who needed it, to their destination of choice. If you had passed
through the Ascot cordon, you could expect a certain level of service, of discretion and respect. This wasn’t the first time people had targeted them. People were so resentful, they just lashed out, lucky really that more guests weren’t hurt, it was all so deeply unpleasant.

  Bea and Corn took a taxi to Victoria Station.

  They couldn’t find Theo in the crowd, and he didn’t answer his phone.

  Five hours after Seph Atkins was taken into custody, the police came to Mala Choudhary’s door.

  She said, “But this is ridiculous, get your hands off me—get your hands off me!” and was for a moment so shocked that she forgot she was a lawyer, and punched a policeman instead. That got her Tasered and put in handcuffs, but at least the cop wound up with a broken jaw. She’d have been disappointed in herself if he’d got away with anything less.

  On the canal Theo is ice he is ice there is ice around the boat there is ice in the morning which they crack with a hammer there is ice and the snow turns all things black and grey it cuts down vision it reduces the land to silence to

  In the prison Lucy Cumali writes:

  ♥♥♥What I love about this product is that it does so much more than what it says on the packaging. Really transformed my skincare ritual!!! ♥♥♥

  Last night her bunk mate was put on half rations for not complying with company-standard review practices. Her bunk mate is twelve years old, and weighs five and a half stone. They say she’s a burden; a real economic burden.

  Seph Atkins said, “I want my lawyer.”

  And Seph Atkins said, “I want my lawyer.”

  And Seph Atkins said, “I want my lawyer.”

  And when her lawyer came, she said, “This is the wrong lawyer,” and he replied:

  “I’m afraid Ms. Choudhary has been arrested. There were funds found in your account which appear to have come from her. This impropriety renders her unable to conduct your defence and so …”

  Corn and Bea went back to the house in Archway, and turned on the TV, and discovered that a wonderful celebrity couple were looking forward to twins—twins they’d be so adorable!—and that the price of Marmite was rising again, if you liked that sort of thing, but it was all right because there was strong growth in the banking sector for the ninth consecutive quarter.

  Theo did not answer his phone.

  In the police station Seph Atkins said, “Okay. Okay. Yeah, I was hired to do Helen Arnslade. I was given a time, a place where she’d be. They said she’d go to the races, and then leave by the back, through the car park. They gave me the number plate of the car she’d be driving. Said she was having a meet there, all hush-hush, and to do her when she left. That was my brief.”

  And her lawyer said, “And the money?”

  “It came from Choudhary.”

  “I’m afraid Ms. Choudhary is denying that she ever sent you a penny.”

  A shrug.

  “You do see how this situation is complicated …”

  Another shrug.

  Three cells down:

  “No check again—check again! Yes, I represented Atkins but I never hired her, I never … do my kids know what’s going on? You don’t tell them, you don’t … you don’t fucking tell them!”

  In the hospital room Philip Arnslade stares down at the sleeping form of his mother and is for a while silent as the choices of his life, the mad, headlong rush of recollection—no, of something worse; of introspection, of that terrifying reliving of the past in the present, of looking back and asking the questions now that perhaps should have been asked then—floods upon him.

  And at the end of it, a thought strikes him, and it is certain, and it nearly sends him onto the floor, but his security man is standing right behind him, and puts a steadying hand on his arm, and always seems to know what Philip needs.

  “Fuck,” whispers Philip Arnslade as revelation dawns. And then: “Fuck!” And one last time, to make sure that it’s real, to run the question again and see if it returns the same response. “Fuck. It was meant to be me.”

  Later, it started to snow.

  Chapter 68

  Neila and Theo sat together on the roof of the Hector as the snow fell, and in the distance watched Scunthorpe burn.

  Neila put her head on Theo’s shoulder. He wrapped one arm around her, pulling her close. The smoke was a beacon drifting off to the south, pulled high and thin by the wind. The flames were a spinning orange dance in the sky on the horizon.

  At last Neila said, “So you did that?”

  “In a way.”

  “You burned it all?”

  “Not that place per se …”

  “But you burned the country?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And killed people?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “To get your daughter back?”

  No reply.

  Neila shuffled in a little closer, enjoying his thin warmth, and for a little while longer they watched the flames.

  “Cool,” she breathed, letting her eyes drift shut as if she could feel the heat of the fire from the water’s edge, warming through to the bottom of her soul.

  Three days after two bombs went off at Ascot the British government froze the assets of the Company.

  Philip Arnslade, minister of fiscal efficiency, made the choice unilaterally. It was within his power, after all, and the civil servants who made the call were surprised to discover that they actually could make this happen.

  The banks said: are you kidding me no way that’ll destroy everything the Company is the banks the banks are the Company we can’t just stop trading their assets this is …

  So the minister of fiscal efficiency ordered the Nineteen Committee to exercise its emergency powers, which it did, and shut down the banks’ computer systems.

  The Cabinet, when they found out, exploded, and demanded in fairly short order that the computers were unlocked, the assets unfrozen and that Philip Arnslade resigned. Unfortunately, by that time Philip Arnslade had vanished for a vital meeting somewhere—Birmingham, perhaps, or was it Hull?—and the calls they made to his phone went straight to voicemail.

  By the time the Cabinet met fully at 2.40 a.m., they had all received the same file. They’d seen it before, of course, on the day it was released on the internet. Helen Arnslade, reciting the names of the dead. Names of places. National Insurance numbers. Bodies tumbling into graves. Severed limbs and walking skeletons. There was nothing new in this. Even those who hadn’t fully appreciated or suspected weren’t as surprised as they wished they had been.

  What was surprising was that this time the file came from Philip Arnslade.

  The Company tried to kill me and my mother, he explained. This has gone too far.

  The debate on whether to unfreeze Company assets and reopen the banks raged on until 9.45 a.m., by which time the files had been re-released to the internet, and the search blockers appeared not to be working any more. Cabinet chose not to act at this time. It seemed the least dangerous course.

  Nine hours later, Philip Arnslade resurfaced in Wales, where he had taken temporary residence in a castle, along with thirty armed men and a news crew.

  Chapter 69

  The phone call that evening between Simon Fardell and Philip Arnslade wasn’t recorded, but no one in proximity to either end of it could have missed the basic gist.

  “Philip, it’s Simon, and what the fuck do you think you are fucking doing? I will fucking burn you I will fucking … I DIDN’T FUCKING TRY TO KILL YOU OR YOUR FUCKING MOTHER WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU all right all right. Okay. Let’s just … think this through, shall we? Let’s just talk about this, let’s just … okay …”

  There would be no trial for either Seph Atkins or Mala Choudhary.

  Seph Atkins confessed, cleanly and precisely as she always had.

  “I was hired to kill Helen Arnslade. I was given a time and a place. I received payment from Mala Choudhary. No, I never spoke to her. That is all I have to say at this time.”

 
For her own protection she was transferred to a high-security prison where the inmates made concealer sticks and foundation for fair and pale skin. Seph Atkins said not a word as they loaded her into the truck, not a word as they took her through the prison gates. She made no sound as she was strip-searched and dressed in the inmates’ yellow jumpsuit branded with the logo of the cosmetic company and inspiring brand slogans—“Be the true you!” and “Inner beauty, outside.”

  On her second night someone tried to beat her up, just because that was how they showed who was boss, and their body was found face down in a vat of boiling pig fat. Seph was put into isolation, and transfer orders came from somewhere, and a van came to collect her, and some time after that the paperwork was lost, and she was not seen again.

  Mala Choudhary said, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t hire her. I DIDN’T HIRE HER. I don’t know how the money left my account. I’ve been robbed. I don’t know how the Company money came into my account either. THIS IS A SET-UP can’t you see this is a set-up you stupid fucking …”

  And two days later she said, crying, “I did it. It was me. I did it alone. Will my kids be all right? They’re at this great school, they really love it, and there’s all these extracurricular activities they both really love music camp they really love it, they love music camp please don’t take them away from the school. Please don’t take them away from it.”

  She too might have vanished, but at the last moment, as they led her towards the edge of the pit on the outskirts of Dagenham, freshly dug and ready to be sealed over with a skimming of hot tar, she remembered that she was the South London Women’s Flyweight MMA champion three years in a row, and she roundhouse-kicked the nearest guy in the gut and smashed another man’s nose against her kneecap, and only as she turned to deal with the final bloke did he have the nerve to shoot her, twice in the leg, once in the belly, once in the chest, his arm sweeping up in an uneasy, jerking arc as he fired.