by Eliza Quancy
I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve already eaten and I’ve painted my nails. I open the fridge to see if there’s anything I can nibble on but all I can find is a punnet of mushrooms. I help myself to one and eat that. I read an article recently about how mushrooms are good for the brain and my brain needs all the help it can get.
Kandin is late but eventually, the buzzer goes and I go down to meet him.
‘Would you like a drink or something to eat?’ he asks with a grin as I step into his house, but I don’t bother to reply. He looks me up and down in that way he has of somehow making me feel admired. Other men do it and I feel like a piece of meat but when Kandin does it, I feel a sense of satisfaction and for a minute, I bask in the sensation before reminding myself about how unpleasant he is. And how dangerous.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ he says and hands me a bundle of what look like travel documents. I look through them and see a return ticket to Port Moresby. My passport is there, too.
‘How did you get that?’ I ask holding it up and Kandin shrugs without bothering to reply.
‘I’ll have to go back for some things,’ I tell him but he shakes his head. ‘And I’ll have to tell Layla.’ Again he shakes his head.
‘No, Auli. You’re not going anywhere until I take you to the airport tomorrow. We’re travelling together.’
I try ringing Layla but once again there’s no reply.
‘Where is she?’ I ask as realisation slowly hits.
‘Quite safe,’ Kandin replies. ‘I wanted to make sure she was properly occupied for 24 hours.’
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘To make sure she doesn’t get in the way.’
‘What have you got planned?’ I ask him.
‘You’ll see,’ he says. ‘It will work better if you don’t know in advance.’
I feel desperate. Somehow I’ve got to get in touch with Layla so that she can meet Faisal and send a message to Joel. Even if I don’t know exactly what will happen, I can warn him that we’re coming. I have an idea. If Kandin has somehow stolen Layla’s phone (which would account for her not answering) then there is one last way that I can get in touch with her. I’ll text Carolyn and get a message to Layla that way. The problem is how I can do that without Kandin finding out. If we went out, it would be easier.
‘How about an evening out?’ I suggest trying to sound casual. ‘It’s ages since you took me dancing.’
‘We can do it here,’ he says and attaches his phone to the speaker. The Gotan Project starts to play something rhythmic and Kandin starts to move. ‘Come on then, Lani,’ he says. ‘It takes two to tango. Come and strut your stuff.’ ‘Strut your stuff’? Where has he been lately? That’s not Kandin’s language. Except of course everything is Kandin’s language. He borrows with impunity and not only language. He reaches for me and pulls me closer, then stops.
‘Why so stiff, Lani?’ he says. ‘I don’t think tonight’s a good night to take you dancing.’
I’m not doing very well. I’ll have to think of something else. In the end, I’m forced to try and text from the bathroom. It’s the only place where I can go and lock the door and at least I can turn the tap on so he doesn’t hear any noises from my phone. I go and try.
‘Tell Layla to send warning to Joel,’ I text. I haven’t mentioned Faisal so if Kandin does intercept the text, at least Faisal will be safe. Two seconds later there’s a reply.
‘Layla here. Phone gone. Will do.’ I send back two kisses and wipe the messages. The tap is still running and I pray that Kandin is not monitoring my phone. Even if he is, it’s not much of a warning that I’ve sent. Kandin has told me no details at all of what he plans to do in Port Moresby. Only that there will be a death.
‘Whose death?’ I ask but he won’t tell me.
35
Kandin has thought of everything. Or nearly everything.
‘You couldn’t have packed better yourself,’ he says proudly after I’ve loaded in the underwear, jeans, shoes, shirts and jumpers he’s chosen for me for the trip. He’s even remembered toiletries and moisturiser. He’s got the shampoo right, too.
‘All except one thing,’ I tell him.
‘What’s that?’ I can hear that he doesn’t believe me.
‘Nail varnish,’ I say. ‘And remover. I need my nail varnish.’ Kandin is annoyed. He aims for perfection.
‘I’ll deal with it,’ he says. ‘What is it called?’
‘Witch’s Blood,’ I reply and he can’t stop a smile.
The plane leaves at eleven so we have time for breakfast before we have to check in. I refuse to either eat or drink except from the tap at his house so he gives in and we set off early to have breakfast at the airport.
We are sitting with coffee, orange juice and almond croissants (that I like even more than chocolate ones) when someone comes up to Kandin and puts a large package on the table. I hope it’s not a drug deal but don’t believe that Kandin would allow anything suspicious to be openly visible.
‘Here you are,’ he says and hands me the package.
It’s the Witch’s Blood and a huge container of nail varnish remover. Don’t know where I’m going to put it so I hand the varnish remover over to Kandin. He can carry it. For once, he doesn’t argue. He leaves me eating while he goes to check in but comes back quite quickly saying I’ll have to go with him.
‘Let me finish this,’ I say reluctant to hurry such a rare thing as an almond croissant but he’s impatient. Kandin has supplied me with trolley luggage that is bright sky blue with large white polka dots. He obviously doesn’t care about attracting attention to ourselves. His luggage is navy, much more subdued. I’m surprised he didn’t me get some shocking pink luggage and say as much.
‘I nearly did,’ he says. ‘It was a toss-up between the pink one and this but I decided the blue was better. Don’t you like it?’ he asks.
‘Very discreet,’ I reply.
When we get to the check-in, I understand why he was trying to do it for me. I discover that we’re not going to Port Moresby at all. We’re flying to London.
It’s a reprieve. I feel a huge relief that I don’t have to face the showdown with Joel yet. Perhaps not at all? Hope sprouts like a weed.
‘What are we going to do in London?’ I ask, half expecting the answer I receive, but still not sure why it would be happening at Kandin’s instigation.
‘We’re going to Oxford,’ he says and my guess is confirmed. I try again to get some information out of him.
‘Why are we going to Oxford?’
‘Chrissie wants to see you,’ he replies. ‘And so does my father. Lucas.’
‘Any chance of telling me why?’
‘I think Lucas has got a project that he thinks might interest both of us,’ Kandin says carefully.
‘Does he know you’ve been hacking his research?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And what about Chrissie. Why does she want to see me?’
‘No idea,’ Kandin says, ‘but she keeps saying she likes you. Don’t see why she can’t like you in Melbourne, but no, she insisted she wanted to see you in Oxford. It’s Chrissie who paid for our tickets.’
‘Does Lucas know that Chrissie is going to see us there or what she wants?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Kandin replies and by this time I know as much as he does.
The flight passes in a long boring haze. Kandin has remembered to buy me a book for the trip but he’s got the wrong one. Something I would never choose to read. It’s sci-fi - the sort of thing that he would read. And I thought he knew me well. He notices that I’m not reading it and asks me why.
‘It’s fantasy,’ I say. ‘Not my thing at all.’
‘Well, you read Murakami,’ he comments.
‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘Murakami is different.’ Kandin gets his own book out and ignores me. His whole body is sending the message that he did his best but that I’m not satisfied with anything. He thinks I’m awkward. Well, I didn’t
want to come and he didn’t consult me. He can’t expect a prisoner to be good-tempered, however well looked after. But he does and is not at all pleased that I’m not grateful. Tough.
I watch films, sleep a bit, attempt to read the in-flight magazine which manages to be more boring than you might think possible. They’re all like that, Kandin tells me and points again at the book that he bought for me, but it’s become a matter of pride for me to ignore it so I go back to the magazine. We stop in Singapore and have to get off and then on again. After that, it’s straight through to London and we arrive on a grey day at 5.30 in the morning.
‘Have you been to London before?’ I ask and Kandin nods. I haven’t, of course, and can’t help being excited to be landing in a place that I’ve heard so much about. I’ve read novels set in London and I’ve seen the old Inspector Morse series set in Oxford. Some of the movies I’ve watched were set in London and now here I am. If I think about movies, it seems that they’re all set either in the USA or the UK. Occasionally in Australia. Hardly ever anywhere else. I’ve never seen a movie set in PNG and I remember Saul complaining about the lack of our people on tv. When I think of him, I seem to remember the old kind-hearted Saul. The torturer has largely disappeared. Buried, I suppose. Kandin would be surprised to know that I’d killed a man. He thinks he knows me.
It’s cold and grey when we step outside but it’s supposed to be summer. A light rain is falling but we’re soon marching through miles of corridors and walkways that stretch between the plane and the customs area. If you include the long shuffle through the passport queue, it’s nearly an hour after the plane lands before we’re through customs and out into the airport proper. I’m tired so I’m grateful for Kandin taking charge and leading the way down tunnels and into lifts until we finally emerge into the air again at a coach station. There are coaches to Oxford every twenty minutes at this time of day so we don’t have to wait long. In a short time, there I am sitting next to Kandin on what’s called the Oxford Tube (except it’s a bus) in a daze of unreality. In about an hour and a half, we arrive in Oxford city, but it passes in a blur. We get off at Gloucester Green and Kandin gets a taxi to take us to Lucas’s house.
When I get out of the taxi, I finally start to feel nervous. Kandin checks the door number against info he has on his phone, but the taxi has got it right. The place where we are standing is Princes St and it’s the correct address. Kandin leads the way up the short path and bangs on the door knocker. I stand behind him so am able to hide my shock when Saul opens the door. It isn’t Saul of course. It can’t be, but this man looks more like Saul even than the man I saw in the photograph.
36
‘Welcome,’ Lucas says to both of us. ‘Come in.’
He sounds like Saul as well as looks like him and I can’t get used to hearing his voice. A voice that I had never thought I would hear again. Lucas and Kandin talk to each other in the kitchen while I collapse on the sofa and try to take in my surroundings. Lucas pops his head around the corner and asks me if I’m all right? Would I like to go and lie down? His smile is the same as Saul’s. He really does seem to be the same man, not somebody similar. Perhaps I’ve landed in an alternative world.
The house is lovely. Small but with interesting shapes. It’s old. I expected a tiny flat like Carolyn’s but Lucas is sharing a house with other students, so it’s the whole house and we’ve got it to ourselves at the moment because his house mates are away. It’s just off the Cowley Road apparently. Lucas says we got off the coach at the wrong stop. Should have got off at St Clements just around the corner. He puts on a pot of coffee for us. Good coffee. Not instant.
There are pictures all over the walls and underneath my feet, there are polished floorboards and a rug. Quite different from the floorboards in Kandin’s house. These are old boards. I’m too tired to look properly and don’t know if it’s a good idea or not to be drinking coffee but it smells excellent and I gratefully accept. We are offered food, too, but neither Kandin nor I are hungry. It feels as though we’ve been eating non-stop since we left Melbourne and all I want to do is to drink and rest.
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep but I urgently need to be alone to cope with the shock of seeing Lucas who looks like Saul, so I accept the offer of somewhere to lie down. Lucas shows me upstairs to a tiny bedroom that is next to the bathroom. It’s painted dark pink and there’s a fig tree in the corner of the room in a pot. The small green leaves look lovely against the dark pink wall. I look out of the window and see a large tree dominating the back gardens and when I look closer, I see that it’s full of cherries. There are sheds right at the back and a ginger cat sitting on top of a wooden box. Nobody around. I can hear birds singing. Not the same as Keroko. Or Melbourne. These are Oxford birds.
I think I won’t sleep, but I do and when I wake up, it’s the middle of the night. I must have slept the whole day and halfway through the night. All I remember is getting up a couple of times and going to the bathroom. I peer at my watch and see that I’m right. It’s nearly 4 am. I’m thirsty so I decide to go down to the kitchen and get something to drink. I try to walk quietly but every stair creaks. It looks as though someone has left the light on downstairs but when I get down there, it’s Kandin. He’s sitting at the table doing something on his laptop. I wish I’d got mine here, but mine’s in Melbourne. At least I’ve got my phone and I remembered to put it on charge before I went to sleep.
‘Hello, Auli,’ he says and I note the Auli. It feels as though he likes me more when he calls me Auli rather than Lani. ‘Are you making a cup of tea?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘I just want a glass of water or orange juice or something.’
‘The fridge is through there,’ he says pointing towards the kitchen which leads off the living room at the back of the house.
‘Did Lucas talk to you about his project?’ I ask.
‘No, he wanted to wait to talk to us both together and he said I should let you sleep.’
‘I can’t believe I slept the whole day and most of the night,’ I say. ‘Have you slept much?’ Kandin shrugs as though to imply that he’s superior and doesn’t need to sleep.
‘I don’t get jet lag,’ he says, but I don’t believe him. I raise my eyebrows and leave it at that.
‘I can’t imagine how I could possibly contribute to any of Lucas’s projects,’ I say.
‘Neither can I,’ Kandin says brutally. ‘You haven’t even graduated from high school.’
‘That doesn’t make me stupid,’ I shoot back.
‘No, but you’re probably quite ignorant,’ Kandin says, ‘and you don’t have any computer skills.’
‘It’s true that I don’t have any special computer skills,’ I say, ‘although I’m sure I could learn how to do anything that you can do.’ At this point, Kandin pulls a face at me. It’s clear that he considers his hacking skills second to none and is sure that his father is going to ask him to use them for the project. He’s probably right, but I don’t like his judgement that I’m stupid and ignorant because I haven’t finished high school.
‘I’ve read a lot,’ I tell him. ‘I bet I’ve read more than you have. All you do is play on your computer all the time.’
Kandin smiles his usual arrogant smile. I’d give a lot to remove it and one day I will. I take my juice and go back upstairs. Go to the toilet and almost die when the flush sounds loud enough to wake the whole street never mind just the house. Then I remember that there’s only Lucas here apart from us so I calm down a bit. Later on, after breakfast, Lucas takes us on a brief tour of the city. He’ll show us more later he says. Just wanted us to feel where we were. Feel? Centuries of history he says as we walk through the narrow streets and look at gargoyles and old buildings, mostly yellowish. It’s the local limestone Lucas tells us. We go for a walk by the River Thames until we get to a pub called The Head of the River and while we’re sitting outside with a beer and some pommes frites that the English call chips, Lucas starts to tell us about the project
that he thinks we might like to be involved in.
Kandin is right that Lucas is interested in his hacking skills but not merely his hacking skills. What he wants is for Kandin to experiment to see if he can do more than extract particular sets of data.
‘What else would you want me to do?’
‘No details yet, but one thing would be to explore program vulnerabilities and find ways to secure them.’ Lucas looks at Kandin who nods.
‘That’s fairly standard,’ Kandin says. ‘What are the project aims?’
‘They are not yet clearly formulated,’ Lucas replies, ‘but it will be an investigation into how belief systems are constructed and maintained. What strengthens them and what makes them weaker? How pre-set are people’s predispositions to certain types of behaviour in their pre-birth neural circuitry? Could these predispositions be changed?’ He stops and looks at us. ‘Does that sound interesting?
‘Yes,’ we both say together and once more Kandin looks at me with a kind of irritation. He can’t understand why Lucas would want to talk to me about it at all.
Lucas turns towards Kandin.‘You have impressive skills,’ he tells his son and I watch Kandin swell (literally) with pride. His chest sort of puffs out and he sits differently. ’I’d much rather have you on my side than hacking my research like you did last time.’ I see shock skim over Kandin’s face.
‘What do you mean?’ he asks.
‘You know what I mean,’ Lucas says. ‘I don’t want to discuss it at the moment, but I do want you to be aware that I know about it.’ He gives Kandin no chance to reply because he turns quickly to me and starts to explain how he thinks I might be able to contribute.