84k

by Claire North

  The burst bubble of Bea’s head rolled back, one open eye staring up into Theo’s face, the other shattered in blood, ink and lead. Theo thought if he met that gaze he would puke, and then couldn’t look away, and didn’t puke, and on a-one-a-two-a-three, swung her body down into the pit, went back for Faris’s corpse, then for Queen Bess, then a few more were added to the tally: a couple of men who’d tried to fight, a couple of women who’d been caught with loaded guns. £83,000, less if they’d resisted arrest. £52,000 for the man who’d shot back. £145,000 for the woman who’d died with her child in her arms. At least one or two middle-management figures in the Company would have to forgo their annual bonus to pay the price of this, if it ever became known. If anyone cared. That was all. The rest would be written off against tax.

  Three black cars stayed in the car park at their backs as they moved the bodies, and the doors did not open

  and when they were finished, a bulldozer came and shoved a great pile of earth onto the gentle bump where the bodies were buried, and Theo didn’t understand why it did that because it disturbed one edge of the pit, making it all lopsided, and if the crows weren’t coming before, they’d definitely come now

  and the fire turned the midday sun pink and red, black smoke from the burning village spinning and twisting in the cold wind, making his eyes water, spit slick the inside of his mouth, and he wondered why he didn’t puke and didn’t cry and didn’t fall to the ground screaming and then they pulled him back to a car and put him in the back although this time they didn’t make him ride with Edward, who was a bit hysterical, and they drove away from the smouldering, flattened remnants of Newton Bridge, where the trucks were already grinding the dust to earth.

  Chapter 79

  Still alive.

  They kept him alive and he didn’t understand why he was

  still alive.

  And the question once asked

  is Lucy

  is she

  is Lucy is she

  where is

  is she safe is she

  my daughter where is

  He tried not to ask it before but now it comes again, it comes in the day it comes in the night it seeps into every part of him makes him rock and shake and pull at his hair he whispers it first then asks it out loud then paces muttering under his breath then slams his fists on the door hammers and punches and screams and

  WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?!

  and tears the sheets off his bed and wraps the pieces around his wrists until his fingers go numb and realises that he can imagine hanging himself hurting himself this is how it happens he knows he’s seen this before on the patty line you smear your own shit up the wall to get someone’s attention you throw urine across the mattress you cut yourself on the

  the first time he cut himself he used the smashed glass of the light above his head, and sat in darkness gently bleeding, and felt a bit better, and felt very good indeed when the guards came in and put his head in a sack because that was progress that was someone taking him seriously now

  WHERE IS LUCY WHERE IS

  Markse sat on a plastic chair opposite him in a pale green room without windows, and stared at the floor a while as the clock went tick tick tick tick

  tick tick tick tick

  and at the end looked up and said, “The Company is selling 85 per cent of its assets back to the government. They’re paying £781 billion for it all. We’re going to be bankrupt for years. Simon’s got a house up north. He’s going to sell it and move to Monaco. They have good tax laws in Monaco, he’ll be able to keep a few billion in profit and …”

  Stopped.

  Couldn’t raise his head.

  Said, “The Company has holdings in Monaco of course. They have an understanding with the Italian and French governments. Rehabilitation through labour is a popular way of making cheap goods for export and I believe they are going to take Lucy and—”

  They’d cuffed Theo to the chair, but he still managed to rip it from the floor and get halfway across the room, stretching out for Markse’s eyes, before the waiting guards kicked him down.

  A while, sitting in the dark.

  Rocking in the dark.

  They took away the lights because he’d smash them to pieces

  they took away the mattress the sheets

  they

  he can still hurt himself though he knows but now he sits in the dark and

  “She’s your daughter,” says Dani, knees huddled to her chin, arms wrapped across her shins, sitting next to him in the perfect blackness of

  “She’s your daughter.

  She’s your daughter.

  She’s your daughter.

  Don’t fuck it up.”

  Theo stared up at the place where the ceiling probably was, and in his mind he filled it with stars.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. “What are you going to do? Theo?”

  “Not my name.”

  “I know.”

  “Not my name.”

  “Name of someone better. Someone better. Be someone better. What are you going to do?”

  Theo closed his eyes, and watched the stars spinning across the vacuum of his mind.

  On a day without a name, like any other, like all the rest, they took him to a room with fake plastic flowers in a blue glass vase, and gave him a cup of bergamot tea, which he sort of liked despite himself, and handcuffed one hand to the side of his white wooden chair, and said, “Would you like a biscuit?” and when he didn’t answer, left a plate of cookies on the table anyway.

  He waited.

  A clock showing the time in three different places ticked away. He wondered what the other two places were, or if the clock was just there to screw with his brain. Somewhere, far off, women’s voices were raised in song. They were singing to their infant children, the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round, but the acoustics of wherever they were distorted sound, made it a distant prayer, priests crying out to an angry god, round and round, round and round.

  The door opened.

  Heidi Fardell stepped inside. He knew her from the photos, remembered her answering the door to Simon’s Kensington house.

  She wore a bright blue jacket and matching skirt. She wore flesh-coloured tights and a white scarf. The red nail polish on her right hand was beginning to chip. When she had applied mascara, her fingers had shivered, and she sat as far away from Theo as she comfortably could, without removing her chair altogether from the vicinity of the table.

  Thin lines crinkled in the nooks of her eyes. The red lipstick brought out the hatched contours of her lips. Her voice, when she spoke, was at first broken and inaudible, then stronger, ready for command.

  She said, “Lucy is well.” Theo stared until she looked away, swallowed a lump of tepid weight in her throat, then looked up again, matching his gaze. “I thought it was important that you knew that. I thought it was …

  Simon wanted you to see her, of course, next to him. Wanted you to know that … Were you Theo Miller’s second, in Oxford? What was your name?

  He wants to burn it all, of course. He was so angry he was just so … he had to kill his best friend, he had to kill Philip, good business, but the queen of the patties, he just said she needed to die she needed to be, for what she’s done you see, for trying to … stamp out dissent now so that when the Company comes back, and it will, and he’s just so very …

  Lucy is … when they first told me about her, I thought maybe, actually, she’s being used by these men, but I’ll look after her, I’ll make sure she’s happy and doesn’t know that there’s this …

  that they’ll

  I don’t think they’d ever have hurt her not really I don’t think they

  But you clearly think that they …

  My husband isn’t a bad man. The Company isn’t bad. It’s still run by people. People are good. People are good. They’re all good people. My husband is …

  Then she arrived, and I had to look after this �
� vicious child … so that her father would see, and understand, and realise that he needed to surrender. Your daughter is vile. She is … rude and disrespectful and stubborn and angry, I’ve never met a child so angry she is

  I never had a child I once there was …

  And I always imagined that it would be and I thought it was me but actually it’s him. It’s him, though he still says that it’s just something to do with my uterus. Those are his words—‘Your uterus, darling, you have this very special uterus’—and I thought fuck you, nearly had a fucking affair just to get myself knocked up and prove a point but then he …

  Lucy is fine.

  She doesn’t really understand what’s happened to her. She was in prison, and now she’s with us. Simon wants to sell her. Get the paperwork sorted and put her on a plane out to somewhere where he can get a good price for …

  A good price for her.

  The day you came to my house, after they took you away I sat with her and just

  just sat with her for a while and

  I thought perhaps I could mould her. Make her better. That’s something I can do, I mean, with children. They have such problems, and if they just understood that they were being ridiculous! I wanted to tell her that just because she felt trapped, she was just stuck inside her own mind—there are breathing exercises which can help with that kind of thing.

  Breathing exercises!

  I thought I could give her some breathing exercises and I was thinking that and then I thought

  breathing exercises, to help her deal with the fact that my husband ordered her mother killed

  her father taken away

  is going to sell her to …

  Breathing exercises!

  Maybe some serum to massage into her temples too. A nice Chinese mint smell.

  And I suddenly thought

  I just don’t know anything about people, do I? I started laughing and she looked at me like I was insane and of course I was and I told her

  I told her that I thought her troubles could be fixed with breathing exercises

  and she looked very angry for a moment but then she saw that it was

  and for a little while she was laughing too.

  She was

  she’s just a child.

  I don’t pretend there’s a connection there I don’t pretend that we’ll ever have but

  The vast majority of parenting appears to be ghastly. Poo and crying and refusing to eat things and breaking things and yet you ask a mother what the most important, wonderful thing in her life is and she always says ‘my child’ and you look at the wriggly little wretch in its smelly little buggy, dribble falling out of its mouth and snot out of its nose and you think, seriously, darling, because if that’s your joy and that’s your wonder then …

  Well.

  Maybe it would be easier to have a puppy. Or a cat. Lovely self-cleaning things, cats are.

  I wanted to talk to you, Mr. Miller.

  I thought that perhaps

  in its way

  I owed it to you. Or maybe no, not to you you aren’t

  but to Lucy.

  I owe it to Lucy, to this child who is

  she’s only a child she’s

  I owe her, monstrous though she is. To tell you, to tell her father—she’s going to be all right. I’m going to, and I don’t care what Simon says I’m going to

  she’s going to be all right. I’ll make sure of it I’ll make sure she’s …”

  Theo’s heads fell into his hands, and from his mouth came a sound, an animal groaning, a grunt of physical pain a roaring a loss of everything a howling a

  “Oh my is that um …” blurted Heidi, jumping to her feet. “Well yes I suppose it must be …”

  staggering away

  leaving the father behind.

  And then

  “Up! Move!”

  He couldn’t be buggered, and let the men carry him down the hall.

  New grey tracksuit.

  Wash face.

  Wash hands.

  Have a piss.

  Eat cereal. His stomach couldn’t handle it, he had to go straight back to the toilet, blurgh, just

  down to a cluster of three cars, engines running.

  The middle black car, tinted windows, heavy doors, into the back into the middle seat seat belt on!

  They drove away.

  Chapter 80

  Theo Miller sits at the centre of the universe, on the way to his execution, and knows that time has no meaning.

  A convoy of three black cars, no number plates, no police interested in asking questions, rushes through a city still spewing smoke into the sky. The hospitals are running emergency services only, the supermarkets are guarded by a ragtag remnant of armed police who aren’t sure where their next pay packet will come from but sort of assume that if they do what they did before, maybe it’ll be okay eventually.

  And as the convoy passes, Neila is in a mooring basin just off the River Thames, she sailed from Maidenhead three days ago. She’s been coming to this moment her whole life, and didn’t know it, and didn’t have the right questions to ask the cards. Checks her fuel line, checks the water. Her breath freezes in the air her hands are strong her back is straight, she is fine. She is fine. She is always fine, when she is by herself.

  She lays out the cards

  three of wands, the Magician, the Hermit, the Empress, two of cups, six of cups, the queen of wands, the knave of swords, the Hanged Man (inverted) and if only she knew the questions to ask of the future

  if only her questions weren’t tied up with

  —happiness, hope, love, loneliness, dreams—

  if only her questions weren’t in some way seeking to undo the present, to deny the present, to pretend that maybe the present will make something better of itself even though in her heart she knows that the present just keeps on rolling it keeps on keeps on keeps on

  maybe she would see the truth in the cards and on the water

  as she sails towards the bridge and the north.

  and time is

  Corn has found the place where the bodies were buried. He hid and now he has left his hiding place there is a hand reaching up through the soil it could be anyone’s hand but of course it’s hers it’s

  Theo walks through a winter forest, a gun in his hand, and in his memory his father lives and his daughter grows up beside him and Dani Cumali isn’t dead in the bed and Seph Atkins does not pull the trigger and all of this all at once is real and now in his mind and he knows no sense of the past and no sense of the future, lives it all now in this instant all of it lives in him and time is

  The truck rammed the first car in the convoy, spinning it a hundred and eighty degrees so its bonnet slammed into the front of the car behind. In this second car Theo’s teeth crunched into the top of his skull, before his whole body slammed down and forward, neck and chest bouncing hard against the seat belt, cutting bone-deep before the car bounced back on its suspension, momentum knocked from its wheels. An instant later, the third and final car scraped across its boot as the driver turned hard to avoid a collision, and outside someone opened fire. Hands pushed Theo’s head down, holding him by the back of the neck. The driver opened the door, ducking behind its shelter to shoot at the lorry in front, while behind, another scream of brakes announced the arrival of a van adorned with images of swirling flowers and summer leaves, stolen from a florist’s. Something was thrown that burst open with a smoke-roaring bang, filling the inside of the car with an acrid stench, clawing at the back of Theo’s throat, then the back doors of the florist’s van opened and three men in balaclavas scrambled out into the street, one with a rifle, two with handguns, firing fast and wild at the convoy.

  The driver of Theo’s car fell hard, without a sound, didn’t seem to understand that he’d been hit or why he couldn’t move. The rear windscreen popped and cracked, buckled at another scattering of shots across the reinforced glass. The car in front tried to reverse, rolled a few inches into th
e wall of the lorry skewed across its way, bumped back, tried again, couldn’t get momentum, bumped again before another man, face hidden behind motorbike helmet and mask, leaned out of the passenger window of the lorry and shot out the back wheels of the car in a pop-bang of rubber and gas.

  Somewhere against the din Theo heard swearing, cursing, frightened men who’d trained for this but actually the training was only four hours long, cost-saving they called it cost-fucking-saving and now there are these fuckers with actual fucking guns and

  A man screamed and fell, and kept on screaming, clutching at his stomach, he’d probably never screamed like that in his entire life, he thought maybe he could keep the sound in and he couldn’t, being silent was so much worse and this wasn’t even a choice thing, it wasn’t choice it was just

  Then someone in the car, someone who intended to survive, put a gun against the back of Theo’s head and roared, “I’ll fucking kill him! You want him, I’ll kill him!”

  Slowly, popper-pop-pop, the gunfire went out.

  Sense returned, slow, spinning through the boil of blood and adrenaline that blurred Theo’s sight. He became aware that someone was trying to push him out of the car, and it was awkward. He had to do a sideways shuffle, realised he was still wearing his seat belt, struggled to find the buckle even as the man hissed, “Move, move!” seemingly oblivious to the strap that held him in place. He didn’t seem able to press the button hard enough, earning a knock across the back of the head that bounced his eyes in his skull. When he managed to unclasp the belt, he found the driver’s seat pushed back so far he couldn’t really get his knees into the space, had to twist and wriggle to swing his legs out of the open door, feet slipping on blood as he touched tarmac. At his back, the man with the gun, a security guard, petrified, full of bravado, on the verge of crying, also struggled to move, tried to manoeuvre his body out of the car while keeping the gun pressed into the base of Theo’s neck. It was, Theo decided, a very inelegant way of doing business, a terrible way to die, half in and out of a car, too dumb for a dignified exit.