Sufferance

by Thomas King

  “Stop us at any point.” Locken puts me at one end of the table. She takes the other end. “Ask any question you like.”

  After all this time, I don’t plan to start talking now. Locken will figure it out soon enough.

  “Or you can just listen.”

  And so it begins. First up is a young woman.

  “Mona Bradley,” she says, without preamble. “I have Fabrice Gloor. Gloor was Swiss. Sixty-three. Principal home in Zurich. Additional homes in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, and Monaco. Married three times. Two children by his first marriage.

  “Mr. Gloor controlled the Suisse-Baer Group. Key holdings in robotics and artificial intelligence. He was driving from Monaco along the Moyenne Corniche on his way to have lunch with friends in Nice when his car went off the road.”

  The bank of monitors on the wall light up.

  It could be a travel film. High cliffs, ocean views, lush vegetation, winding roads. And then police cars, roadblocks, ambulances, men running back and forth, a crane, a car dangling off the end of the cable like a fish on a line.

  The car swings lazily in the sky, its front end a crumpled wad of metal, the windshield blown out, driver’s door torn away by the impact.

  “According to the official autopsy, Gloor was within the legal limit for alcohol and no drugs were found in his system. The inquest concluded that he either lost control of his Maserati or he went to sleep at the wheel.”

  Bradley brings up a series of documents on the monitors.

  “Suisse-Baer had little interaction with the Locken Group. There are no outstanding lawsuits and the areas of competition between the two companies are not significant. Aside from the usual events and galas, Thomas Locken and Fabrice Gloor did not socialize.”

  Bradley takes us through everything from Suisse-Baer’s stock market history to their newest acquisitions.

  “The only overlap with Locken and Suisse-Baer is a biotech company called Ankh Technologies. We have no idea what the company does. No record that it is anything more than a name.”

  Mona Bradley sits down and is replaced at the podium by a Michael Zhao, who has been given Amanda Cho’s dossier.

  “Amanda Cho,” he begins, “head of the Phoenix and Dagon Consortium. Fifty-two years old, Chinese national with strong ties to the Central Committee. Residences in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, London, and Vancouver. PDC is heavily vested in generic pharmaceuticals.

  “Amanda Cho’s death was ruled a heart attack. At the autopsy, there was an anomaly noted in the blood work, but Cho’s family had her body flown to Singapore before a second test could be performed.”

  Zhao stands to one side as corporate documents appear on the screen along with a chart of quarterly profits.

  “There is a series of emails that discuss investment possibilities in Ankh Technologies,” says Zhao. “But it is unclear whether PDC ever took a position in the company.”

  FOR THE NEXT three days, Locken’s geniuses take me through each of the names on the list. Two in the morning. Two in the afternoon. Three days of listening to researchers crawl through the lives of dead people. Three days of combing through expenditures, profits, annual reports. Three days of looking for something that all twelve had in common.

  Three days of searching for the patterns.

  On the afternoon of the third day, a tall Black woman in her early fifties takes the podium. Dr. Alisha Brown.

  “Twelve names on a list,” Brown begins, “and the only point of shared interest is an entity called Ankh Technologies. So far as we can tell, the company is simply a name. A ghost. We have found nothing to suggest that Ankh Technologies was anything more than a working idea, a suggestion that never took form.”

  Brown’s presentation is short and succinct.

  “Which brings us back to where we started. A list of twelve names, five of whom have died in the last year. Fabrice Gloor, Amanda Cho, Jonathan Weston, Arjun Char, Oleg Baranov. Six, if we add in Thomas Locken.”

  Brown turns off the large screen behind her and brings up the room lights.

  “Statistically, natural causes and accidents will not explain all these deaths in such a short space of time.” Brown pauses, looks directly at me. “The evidence we currently have would suggest that, as improbable as it seems, a serial killer is targeting billionaires.”

  THAT EVENING, Locken joins me for dinner. She comes into the room with a tablet.

  “I’ve made arrangements to have you taken home first thing tomorrow morning.”

  The sooner the better.

  “But before you go, I want to share one last piece of information with you, something I have yet to share with the rest of the team.”

  Locken sets the tablet up on the table so I can see the screen.

  An aerial view on the move. Coming in low over a jagged coastline of towering cliffs and thunderous waves beating against the margins, all under a bleak and hammered sky.

  “Auckland Island. Five hundred kilometres off the southern tip of New Zealand. Average temperature between two and thirteen degrees centigrade. Rains most days. High winds much of the year. Home to albatross, penguins, petrels, sea lions, and fur seals.”

  Locken taps the screen and the image switches to a black-and-white still of a squat concrete building, late-1940s bunker style. Practical and ugly. With a telecommunication array quivering on the roof in the wind like the quills of a porcupine.

  “Mostly it’s an uninhabited chunk of basalt in the middle of Ocean Nowhere. Main structure on the island is a decommissioned weather facility. This is an archives photograph, taken fifteen years ago.”

  Locken taps the screen again. “This is what it looks like now.”

  The building is gone, reduced to a pile of rubble.

  “For the past eight years, the facility on Auckland has been leased by a subsidiary of the German conglomerate Oberste. Can you guess the name of the subsidiary?”

  Ankh Technologies.

  “Oberste is owned by the Vogel family.” Locken lets the image of the blasted building linger on the screen. “Did you ever meet Gunther Vogel? He and my father were great friends.”

  Gunther Vogel. Blockish, bald, with a penchant for sailboats. Even in a world of impossible wealth, Gunther Vogel was memorable. A brutal narcissist who used money and power the way butchers used knives and cleavers.

  “We have it on good authority that Vogel and his son Wolfgang were in the Ankh facility when it exploded.”

  The debris from the weather station is scattered in a wide circle. Natural or man-made, impossible to tell from this height.

  “Gunther Vogel’s training was as a geneticist. His speciality was deep-ocean organisms, with a focus on Siphonophorae. They’re clever little creatures.” Locken smiles as though she’s just told a joke. “Evidently, they can live forever.”

  I watch as the video zooms in to show the extent of the destruction. It is difficult to imagine that the explosion was an accident.

  “I know my father bought that property for you. The old school, the graveyard, the land. I don’t know why he did it, but I have to guess that it was payment for a forecast. A forecast my father felt he needed.”

  Locken takes an envelope out of her jacket, slides it to me.

  “Now I find myself in the same position. Like my father, I need a forecast, and like my father, I’m willing to pay for it.”

  Locken waits.

  “Before he died, my father told me that a good forecaster could see into the heart of humanity, but that you could only look so many times.”

  Locken stands and straightens her jacket.

  “Is that what happened? Did you look once too often?”

  Locken waits. I wait.

  “Someday,” she says, “you’ll have to tell me what you saw.”

  I DON’T STAY UP. I go to bed early. I don’t dream, and I don’t wake until the alarm goes off.

  And when the helicopter arrives the next morning to take me home, I’m already on the pad waiting fo
r it.

  16

  Oliver Flood and the Tesla are in the field when we touch down. He’s alone. Spot and Rover must be off chasing rabbits. It’s less than ten miles from here to the old school, and I seriously consider walking back.

  “Don’t be puerile,” Flood tells me. “If you walk, you won’t be able to tell me what happened.”

  Flood takes the long, slow way back to town.

  “You ever drive an electric car? Great acceleration. Mind you, with the traffic what it is, there’s not much call for it. But when you put your foot down, the damn thing flies.”

  I HAVE FLOOD drop me off in front of Swannie’s bakery.

  “You!” Swannie throws her arms over her head.

  I can see four brownies left in the display case.

  “You are sick? Four days I am waiting. The brownies are here, and you are not.”

  I buy two of the brownies.

  “Four days we wait. Poof. Poof. Poof!”

  I buy the other two as well.

  “And now you see,” says Swannie, “the brownies, they are gone. Poof.”

  AUTUMN DARE is in the plaza with her kids and a couple of dogs.

  “Wes got some day work at the lumber yard,” she tells me. “It’s not much, but anything’s better than nothing.”

  One of the kids kicks a ball to me, and I kick it back.

  “Mayor met with the band council. About putting us in the empty trailers.” Autumn scrubs at the side of her face. “Didn’t go all that well.”

  I give Autumn three of the brownies. She breaks them into pieces and places them on the blanket.

  “And a construction crew has started to put up a fence around the old box factory. In a week or so, we’re going to have to find somewhere else to live.”

  There’s a shout. Two of the kids are on the ground. The boy has a bloody nose and is starting to cry. One of the older girls tries to comfort him, dabs at his nose with a piece of paper towel. The dogs crowd around for moral support.

  “Kids and dogs,” says Autumn. “They look after one another. More than can be said for adults.”

  THE PIGGY IS NOT the same place I had left. Someone has scrubbed the restaurant clean, put plastic cloths on the tables, and turned on the lights. Even the jukebox looks as though it’s been run through a car wash.

  On the end of the counter is a stack of menus.

  Florence is in her usual place, and the espresso machine hasn’t moved, so perhaps not all is lost.

  “About time,” she says. “We thought you’d fallen down a hole. Sent Roman by the school to make sure you hadn’t decided to drop dead.”

  There’s a blackboard menu on the wall. The special today is eggs with cou-cou and bacon.

  “Ada’s girl is back from Winnipeg,” says Florence. “She wants to get the café up and running again. Going to start off with Reggie’s old recipes and move forward.”

  Or you can have cornmeal porridge.

  “Not sure I like the idea, but I figure I’ll give it a try.”

  I set the brownie on the counter.

  Florence gives me a nod. “Guessing you’ll be wanting a macchiato.”

  Louis and Enola and Wapi are sitting at a table with their coffee and hot chocolate. Wapi is folding napkins.

  “What do you think of the new look?” Louis pats the checkered tablecloth. “If you didn’t know better, you’d think the place was a restaurant.”

  “Grand opening is in a week,” says Enola. “Wapi and me are the official menu tasters.”

  “You got to try the jerk goat,” says Louis.

  “Jerk,” says Wapi.

  Florence grinds the beans and packs the basket.

  “But Emma’s lamb chili’s even better,” says Louis. “Three kinds of beans. Anaheim and jalapeno peppers. You don’t expect that lawyers would know how to cook.”

  I wait for the macchiato to arrive. It’s going to take a little time to get used to the new-look Piggy.

  “You went into the city, didn’t you.” Florence tries to turn me to stone with a stare. “Thought you gave that up?”

  The macchiato is a shock.

  “Emma’s trying out a new bean.”

  I’ve only been gone four days.

  “The perfect blend of bitter and acid, fused with the sweet notes of blackcurrant and a vanilla aftertaste.”

  I stop in mid sip.

  “That’s what the bag says.” Florence leans on the counter and lowers her voice. “As you get older, change can be difficult.”

  The new macchiato is not the old macchiato. It’s not bad. But it is different.

  “Wait till you meet her little girl,” says Florence. “Melt your heart.”

  I’m not sure that I like the new Piggy. It’s a bit too bright and a bit too clean. I miss the shadows and the gloomy corners, the sense that you’ve crawled into a cave. A dark shelter. A quiet sanctuary.

  And the new Piggy could well develop a more abundant and vigorous clientele.

  “The widow Wegman came by.” Florence waits for me to fall over. “She’s got a petition going. Save the crosses. Already got over five hundred signatures.”

  “We didn’t sign it,” says Louis. “We want to see the bonfire.”

  “Bonfire,” says Wapi.

  “And the mayor is back at it.” Louis brings the empty cups to the counter. “Just after you disappeared, he shut down the garbage service for the reserve, even though we still have two years left on the contract.”

  Maybe Florence can keep two espresso blends on hand.

  “Says he has public safety concerns,” says Louis. “Now he wants the Ministry of Health to inspect the reserve.”

  That way, people would have a choice.

  “Says that we’re a ‘hazard unto ourselves.’”

  Two espresso blends wouldn’t be unreasonable.

  “Unto ourselves?” Louis gives a quick snort. “Who the hell talks like that?”

  THE NEIGHBOURS are still on the grass. I stay to the far side of the plaza. I don’t need any more human interaction. I’ve had enough. All I want to do now is get back to the school and lock the door.

  The walk along the river path helps. There is no one else in sight. Even the crows are off doing whatever it is that crows do. The sun is shining. The air is warm. I’m starting to regain my equilibrium.

  And then I get to the graveyard.

  Florence was right. Maribelle Wegman has been busy. Someone has wrapped yellow crime-scene tape around the perimeter and posted signs declaring that the site is now protected under a heritage bylaw. The crosses I had left in a pile at the edge of the graveyard are gone.

  I don’t waste time. The tape comes down easily enough. I pull up all the bylaw signs and stack them in a pile. Then I pull up half a dozen crosses for good measure.

  I sweat as I work. I don’t have my gloves, and the rough wood chafes my hands. I pull up one last cross, and when I do, I see the girl standing among the graves. If I had Father Hinch’s map on me, I might be able to figure out who this is.

  A Moosonee, perhaps. Or a Kenosha. Or a Stillday. Maybe even a Camp.

  I take a book of matches out of my pocket. The ghost child watches me patiently as I ruin half a dozen while trying to get one to light. The old phosphorus-headed matches had been easy enough, but the new and improved safety matches are almost impossible.

  What is the point of having a match that you can’t light.

  I finally get one to work, set the match to the corner of an official notice. The city’s caveats and cautions make excellent starter, and the flames hit the new wood and the old crosses like a lightning strike.

  I want to reassure the girl that there is no danger, that all of this is a useless gesture, that all the fires in the world will not burn history clean.

  But when I turn back, she is gone.

  17

  I stay in the graveyard until the signs and the crosses have been consumed. It doesn’t take long. The wood is dry. The flames are hot. I half exp
ect the widow Wegman and her historical preservation committee to show up in red helmets, swinging axes and dragging fire hoses along behind them.

  But through the whole of the conflagration, I’m an audience of one.

  And then the crows show up.

  They don’t land in the trees, as you might expect. Nor do they hop around on the ground. Instead, they circle overhead, calling out to one another. They don’t know what to make of me or my bonfire, and even after the fire is little more than a smouldering pile of ash, they stay in the sky, out of harm’s way.

  Now, I stink of smoke. And I notice that some of the sparks have burned tiny holes in my jacket.

  The wages of sin.

  The price of enthusiasm.

  The cat is not going to be pleased with my return to school in this condition, but here I am.

  The prodigal son.

  The return of the Native.

  I stop on the porch to get the mail. There’s not much, and it’s all junk, including an official-looking letter from the Gleaming town council. If I had thought about it, I would have stopped here first before I started the fire.

  The old school is quiet and cool and dark, and as I walk down the corridor, I find that I’m suddenly and utterly exhausted.

  Dead tired.

  I leave the mail on the kitchen counter, head upstairs. And I’m asleep before I remember getting into bed.

  THE CRADLE RIVER RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL.

  Originally, the school and the graveyard, along with twenty-five acres of farmland and river frontage, had been part of the treaty that Cradle River had signed with the federal government. But in the early 1900s, Ottawa unilaterally split the property off from the reserve proper and gave it to the Catholic Church with the understanding that they would build a school where Native students from the surrounding area would be educated.

  And given spiritual guidance.

  After the school closed and the Catholics had moved on to more lucrative ministries, the property had sat abandoned. The band petitioned the federal government to return the land, and after due consideration, the petition was ignored. So the band began a formal land claim, arguing that they had never agreed to the severance and that the partition had been illegal.