84k

by Claire North

  On the canal Neila watched the flames, and was grateful to be on the water.

  A few trucks lumbered out of the processing plants with microwave meals and tins of food. No one was sure who was paying for this service, since the Company didn’t seem to be taking responsibility for anything much, but it seemed like someone ought to try.

  Philip Arnslade resigned.

  “Markse,” he whimpered as they led him to the helicopter. “Simon’s going to kill me. I’ve broken it all. He’s going to kill me. He’s going to …”

  “Now sir,” murmured Markse, “I’m sure it’ll all be …”

  The roar of helicopter blades drowned him out as he pushed Philip on board. The minister’s face was white as he stared out of the window, and on the ground below Markse felt he should almost be waving, smiling, a proud parent seeing a frightened child off to school. Markse was still watching the sky when, two minutes twenty-two seconds into the flight, Philip’s helicopter exploded mid-air.

  There were no survivors, and the spinning remains of a blade falling from the sky also killed a woman in the street below who was out looking for her cat.

  No one seemed very interested in spending money on an investigation, and the funeral was held in private, an intimate family affair.

  Chapter 73

  Theo cycled through a country on fire.

  The flames were distant, the paths were bumpy and rough.

  The air was frozen winter glory, the sky was crystal blue.

  In the morning the frost cracked underfoot.

  In the evening he huffed out clouds of breath, and watched the golden peach of sunset tangle in the moisture.

  Corn and Bea cycled with him.

  Corn carried a rifle, slung across his shoulder.

  Bea carried water, dried meat of uncertain provenance, a map and a torch.

  Occasionally they left the cycle paths, and paused on little country lanes where the birds sang in the hedgerows and the signs pointed to villages of a hundred people, or to the North, or to the South, and didn’t give distances for either of these ideas.

  Sometimes they passed food trucks guarded by local police, their Company insignia stripped, or by local men armed with shotguns and fire axes.

  Once they passed a doctor’s clinic. A paper sign hung on the door. ALL WELCOME.

  A woman pushed a pram away from the clinic, a child gurgling happily within. A woman with a Zimmer frame, bent into a right angle over her support, head bobbing up and down like a hungry deer to check her path as she walked, scowled at them as they passed by.

  A queue snaked around the block to a broken hydrant from which fresh water flowed. A couple of teenagers had broken out boom boxes and were entertaining the crowds with home-made raps about revolution, love and how lonely it was smoking cigarettes by themselves cos no girl would give them sweet sweet lovin’.

  The day before they reached the prison, they saw a TV on in a lit room, and passed a church hall where sleeping bags had been laid on the floor and tea was being served, and outside a wooden stake where a man had been hung to die of the cold, a sign around his neck: COMPANY MAN.

  He hadn’t been anyone senior, hadn’t done anything wrong or exceeded the remit of his job. But his bosses had been faster getting out of town, and people knew him as the man who’d refused benefits when people didn’t fulfil the economic productivity eligibility criteria, so when he’d vanished, no one had looked, and no one had come to take his corpse down for proper burial, until his wife found it two days later, and wept until her lungs spasmed in the cold, and she had to be helped home by her children, who understood only that they were big kids now, and everything had changed.

  When they came to the prison, the gates were already open.

  A wire-mesh fence enclosed a single-storey yellow-brick building laid out as a hexagon. Buddleia grew from the cracks in the wall, grass from the cracks in the concrete. A single basketball hoop stood at the back, never used. Small square windows, covered with white wire mesh. A guard post was a black-burned shell. The heavy blue-metal doors of the loading bay stood open, and a fox had already been inside and had a piss in the corner.

  They left their bicycles at the main entrance, and walked inside. Speakers stood grey and silent. Cold morning light drifted through barred windows and frosted glass. Posters on the wall, torn in two, declared from loose beads of Blu Tack:

  WORK FOR

  REDEMPTION THROUGH

  THE FUTURE IS

  MAKING A BETTER

  A scuttle of feet, a noise in the grey. Corn swung his rifle round, holding it tight. Theo moved slowly down empty corridors, the bulbs dead, broken glass on the floor, doors knocked out of their frames. A workshop had already been gutted, the tools gone. A room of computers stood silent, screens shattered, the casings dented with hammers, chairs ripped in two, stuffing spread across the floor. In a dormitory a doll had been left tucked up neatly in bed, the only centre of calm in a world ripped apart. In a room of upended green chairs hung paintings in brilliant red and blue. Eyes, huge, gleaming. A child playing beneath a rainbow. A torn canvas where once there had been a picture of a house, smoke coming from the chimney.

  A scuttle of feet, a whisper of voices.

  Corn’s hands tightened on the rifle. The night before, three men had emerged from the woods by their campsite, and for a while they had just watched each other, no one moving, no one speaking, Corn with rifle in hand, and after a while the men had left, and since then Corn had stood never more than a foot from Bea’s side, and said not a word, and hadn’t put the rifle down, even when he wanted to sleep.

  Theo followed the sound.

  Pushed open another door, another dormitory of bunk beds, grey metal frames and thin stained sheets. Mattresses were toppled onto the floor, sheets torn up, blankets pulled free. In one corner, the furthest from the door, a small igloo of mattress and blanket had been piled up, encasing darkness. He approached it slowly, crouched down a few feet from the narrow black entrance to this bedding cave. Said, “Hello.”

  The darkness didn’t answer.

  “My name’s Theo. I’m looking for my daughter. Her name is Lucy. Is she here?”

  Silence, except for a slight shifting of sheets within the wall of mattress.

  Struggling to keep his voice calm, hold back the panic. “Her name’s Lucy Cumali. Lucy … Rainbow Princess. She was held here, she’s about fifteen years old. I won’t hurt you. I’m not angry. I just want to find my daughter.”

  “Gun!” whimpered a voice from inside the burrow. A child’s voice, hard to tell boy or girl, too young to have definition.

  Theo glanced back over his shoulder at Corn. “Would you mind waiting outside?” he asked softly.

  Corn scowled, looked at Bea, who nodded. With a barely audible huff, he spun on his heel, marched out of the room. Bea squatted down next to Theo. “I’m Bea,” she breathed. “We won’t hurt you.”

  A hurried whispering within the den. A muttering of voices in dissent. A final settling on agreement. A stirring of sheets. Then a girl, nine or ten years old, emerged slowly, crawling on hands and knees. She wore several layers of jumpsuit done up over each other, but her lips were blue and her face was bone. At her back eyes blinked and bodies shifted. The girl seemed to think about standing, then changed her mind, and plonked down, cross-legged, a chief guarding the entrance to her territory, and glared at Theo and Bea.

  “Food?”

  Bea hesitated, then opened her bag, handed over a wrapped package of dry dog meat, a packet of biscuits.

  The girl took it quickly, tried to hide her excitement, passed it back to hands that emerged greedily from within the tent, then turned to face them again, stiff as a sceptre.

  “Gates got opened week ago,” she barked. “Guards said they weren’t being paid to deal with this shit, they had families to look after, so they upped and went. Couple of parents turned up too, like, busting in and that, but they only took the kids what mattered to them. Some of us ran aw
ay. Lot ran away. I said they were dumb. They wouldn’t get nowhere. They’d just get into shit. So we stayed. We look after each other. That’s what we do.”

  Theo licked his lips, waited on his haunches, seeing if there were any more pronouncements from this tiny monarch. When it seemed there were not, he glanced at Bea, then back to the girl, and breathed, “Lucy? Did you know Lucy? Is she here? I’m looking for my daughter.”

  “I knew her.”

  “Knew? Is she … where is Lucy?” Bea’s hand on his arm, holding him down even as his voice began to rise. He bit his lip, stared down at the floor, let out a breath, tried again. “Please. It’s very important that I find her.”

  The girl thought for a moment, then nodded once, uncrossed her legs, rose to her feet and scampered past them, a light run, habit dictating speed. Theo uncurled and scampered after her. Corn jumped as they belted past him, but didn’t leave his post at the door. The girl ran, knowing every twist and turn of the shattered prison, her domain, broken windows and broken doors, smoke stains up the walls from the kitchen, furniture overturned and cupboards stripped bare. She ran until she reached another dormitory, the door open and undamaged, and pointed, triumphant, proud of her success.

  Theo followed the direction of her finger inside. Bunk beds, less damaged than those where the children huddled.

  Sheets in disarray, thin and torn.

  An explosion of polystyrene beads across the floor, from packaging ripped recklessly apart, he wasn’t sure how long ago.

  A photo on one wall.

  The photo was new, stuck in place with masking tape.

  Lucy glowered at the camera, daring it to make anything of her blotchy face, acne-pocked and starved of sun. Theo peeled the photo carefully away, turned it over.

  On the back someone had written in neat biro.

  MARKSE

  Theo marches from the prison as the children look on and

  Corn is all what the hell what

  And Bea silences him and

  Theo strides past the gate past the bicycles makes it to the road outside

  And the children are clustered outside now, five of them, what’s happening why is the man sad why is he angry there is

  Neila has a compass on her boat, it points north. Somewhere in the north there is her soul, there is the centre to which all things return, there is the fall there is the sky there is

  “I did my best,” she whispers as the world spins and the cards tell only lies. “I did my best. I did my best. I did my best.”

  Mala Choudhary’s kids are taken out of school now that Mummy is gone we can’t pay for these nice things you see we can’t afford to have music but it’ll be all right it’ll be

  The real Theo Miller lies in an unmarked grave and laughs and laughs and laughs at the funny old way of things and

  Theo made it fifty yards before falling down.

  It wasn’t a sideways tumble or a face-down flop.

  He was standing, and then he was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the street, a sack of potatoes dumped from tired hands. Corn followed, still trying to understand. Bea shushed him with a hard slice of her hands, then shuffled up to Theo, sat down by his side.

  Held his hands in hers.

  Whispered, “Theo? Theo? What does it mean? What does it mean?”

  The picture of Lucy, crunched to a broken tube in his fist.

  “Theo? Talk to me. Tell me what it means?”

  He looked up at her, and cried, and didn’t say a word.

  Theo didn’t speak for two days.

  He obeyed commands, and they cycled, and he did not speak.

  And one night Bea lay down next to Corn on the frozen ground, and Corn held her tight, and that was good, and they didn’t talk about it, and kept on cycling.

  And then

  When one of the TV stations was broadcasting again, its crew paid in vegetables, beer and promises, and the pundits were beginning to pundit and there was sometimes cabbage in the shops again, Simon Fardell held a press conference, and announced that the Company was going to commence a major restructuring programme resulting in the dissolving of several major assets and that all things considered he was grateful for the opportunity to reassess the corporate structure of

  and there was Lucy.

  There was Lucy.

  There was Lucy.

  There was

  Lucy.

  They watched it on the one working TV in Newton Bridge.

  Theo hadn’t spoken, and did not speak when he saw his daughter’s face, and Bea thought she recognised it from the photo but couldn’t be sure, and everyone else cheered and said it was great, it was the beginning of something amazing, and there was a party that night complete with bad singing and home-distilled alcohol that bypassed the digestive tract and went straight to the retina.

  And there was Lucy.

  She was

  Lucy.

  For a while Theo thought it wasn’t her, but knew it was, and knew her face and there was

  Lucy

  Glaring at the camera, dressed in a silly duck-blue dress with a white collar

  Heidi Fardell’s hand resting on her shoulder

  Lucy

  Lucy who is my

  SHE’S YOUR DAUGHTER

  who is my

  Lucy who is

  who is

  obviously there are the usual words there are

  love heart soul burning fire ice pain guilt grief there is

  And Theo sees his daughter’s face and walks into the bathroom and locks the door and kneels and prays to a god who isn’t there he prays and prays as the tears flow

  Blessed is her name, blessed are her hands upon the water, blessed is the shadow at the door forgive me forgive me forgive me forgive me

  After

  He went to find Bea, who lived in an attic above what had once been the undertaker’s. And he sat on the end of her bed as she huddles, knees hugged to her chin, wrapped in wool and dirty cotton, and he says:

  “I’ve got to go to London.”

  Bea’s head tilted a little to the side, waiting.

  “They have my daughter, they … I have to … I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I thought maybe I could be a hero and then they … so I’m not. It turns out I’m not after all.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll cut across to the railway line. If they don’t arrest me on the train, they’ll get me in the city. Bess will try to stop me.”

  She shrugged.

  “I think … when I’m gone, this place won’t be safe. Tell Bess. Tell her it won’t be safe.”

  “Bess won’t leave here.”

  “She might have to.”

  “She won’t.”

  “Please, I …”

  Stopped.

  Stared at the ceiling.

  Stared at the floor.

  Stood up.

  “When I get to London,” he said, “they will tell me how they’ll hurt my daughter. And I’ll do anything to keep her safe. Anything.”

  Walked away, without another word.

  Chapter 74

  Theo sneaked out of Newton Bridge in the middle of the night, and no one stopped him.

  He crawled through bracken, and when no one came shouting, he walked down the side of the road, and when no vehicles passed, he walked down the middle, following white broken lines. Once a drone passed overhead, scouring the countryside for runners, screamers, ragers, ready to shoot, or maybe just flying because it still had power and it pleased its owner to fly, and Theo just kept on walking, reasoning that there was no hiding from this eye in the sky, and so he may as well not bother. And if they saw him, he wasn’t interesting enough, not a runner, not a screamer, so it buzzed on by.

  In the morning he came to a motorway fenced off on either side to guard against the world. Two or three cars passed in ten minutes, and he followed it until he found a smaller road bending off to the west, towards a town with an empty market square and a hotel
that offered Thai massage and Sunday roast. Two cars were pulled up outside, bare concrete between the door and the empty square where once there had been stalls selling bruised bananas and replacement phone screens. Theo looked for any sign of other life, and couldn’t see any, save for a single woman, hair wrapped in a white towel, body swathed in dressing gown and flannel slippers, who stood on the balcony of the hotel and looked out and seemed astonished to see him.

  He drifted to the station.

  There was one train a day. By 4.17, when the train came, the empty town had produced forty or fifty travellers, waiting in silence on the platform. Theo couldn’t pay for a ticket, but there wasn’t a barrier, and no one at the counter to sell him anything or call him out for his crime.

  The train smelled of broken toilet and diesel. He stood, face pressed to the glass, swaying as it rattled south towards York. No ticket inspectors boarded, and at York he changed to a larger train, growling engine and less pee, heading towards London, and waited to be arrested. People stood pressed armpit to armpit, nothing to hold on to except each other. An old woman had a duck in a bag. A young man held a baby, no carrier or straps for support, wrapped up in his jacket, pressed to his chest. No one spoke, no one met anyone else’s eye, no ticket inspectors came.

  At Peterborough there wasn’t enough room for people to get on, and a fight broke out. The train began to pull away before it was resolved, leaving a woman howling on the platform, a door open. A man was pushed backwards out of it as the people crammed on board reached a collective decision, landing with a bone-crack on the platform below.

  No one was waiting to arrest Theo in London, and he shoved through the open barrier behind a mother and her child and didn’t even bother to feel guilty.

  Walked.

  Sat a while by the river.

  Maybe even slept, until the cold started him awake again.

  Walked again, to the Kensington toll. It was manned not by people in Company uniform, but men in suits, local residents who, as this service had lapsed, had decided to take up the burden themselves. Theo almost laughed at the absurdity of it, and approached the pedestrian gate. “My name is Theo Miller. I’m here to be arrested.”