Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  And then she was back.

  ‘You left your… I don’t know, really, what you call it… a file of some kind. Legal, maybe?’

  So later that day – Wednesday the ninth – Jon dropped in to their Notting Hill flat to pick up his file, which was when the first accident happened.

  It was one of those spectacular autumn days that London occasionally managed to produce, with the sun and the sky making one final effort, and Jon felt bombarded by beauty: the day, the architecture, the girl…. they all looked gorgeous. Everything was exuberant and sparkling – the sun, the blue sky, her eyes. She was wearing a…. But it doesn’t matter what she was wearing, because he’d already been handed his file, they’d finished with the small talk, and he was leaving.

  ‘See you,’ he said as the heavy, black-painted front door closed, aware of the irony, because “seeing” her was exactly what he wouldn’t be doing. That poignant, inexorable feeling of finality, while no doubt destined to be short-lived, was unexpectedly acute. He stood there for a moment, clutching the file she’d given him: it was part of an old brief, no longer of any use, but it did represent the last of his things. As for her things, he’d noticed that some were, even now, already in boxes, in preparation for their eventual move to Sabine’s new flat over in Primrose Hill in a few weeks’ time. New flat. Bought by her father. Sabine’s father lived in Hamburg and part-owned a small shipping line – probably not strapped for cash in other words. Funnily enough, it was only now that the thought occurred to him: was one of the reasons she was attracted to him in the first place because his surname was Marriner? He pondered this as he stared at the brass numbering on the closed front door.

  He turned and made his way to the street and imagined he could feel the mild October sun on his back and its featherlight caress. Or maybe it was a push. He passed the squeaky gate at the top of the stairs to the neighbours’ basement flat one last time, stepped onto the unforgiving concrete footpath he knew so well, and headed off down towards Holland Park tube station, passing a pretty girl with red hair in a bright green dress who smiled at him. He turned the corner into Lansdowne Rise and then, for some reason, before he stepped out between two cars to cross the road, he happened to notice a bird – his favourite, an orange-breasted robin, a bit out of place, you didn’t usually see them in the street like that – and, just as unusually, it was standing on the roof of the car right next to him, unfazed, just staring at him. He stopped and stared back. Moments later there was a deafening crash as a car, that had silently appeared from nowhere on the wrong side of the road, flew past down the hill like a ghost, narrowly missing him, slammed into a parked car, and continued on its path of destruction before eventually jolting and grinding to a scraping halt.

  The bird flew away.

  As for the offending car, there was no-one in it. Unbelievably, it had, apparently of its own accord, come careering down the street and almost, so very nearly, taken him with it.

  A bird’s stare from oblivion.

  And thus, it had begun.

  Ascribing times and dates was easy. The real question was what had begun?

  3. Dark Oceans

  11.50pm South African Standard Time (21:50 UTC)

  Wednesday, 16 October

  Tiny points of brilliance – quartz-white, emerald-green and silver – sparkled under the overhead light, bright respite from the sombre hotel room, from the foreign night outside.

  This fine scintillation, it was reminiscent of a quartz-white and an emerald-green from earlier that day, in the Aquarium: sunlight on kelp. And the silver, too, recalled the silver of the fish, darting between the shadows, from light to dark and back again. Just like me.

  It was, as always, a pure, oceanic dream, sitting there, but then he had appeared again and the spell was broken. The Aquarium, a sanctuary no more.

  And this thing, this inexplicable prize, the cause of all this, what was it really? Other than a mystery? This thing with its beauty and its crooked lines and patterns, with its hundred oceans – some shimmering, some dark.

  Old friend or destroyer of worlds?

  Or both. It felt like both.

  Part One – Jon

  4.

  It’s not as if his life hadn’t been complicated or unusual enough to start with. London had always had its fair share of madness posing as sanity, and on top of that, the life of a barrister, by its very nature, lent itself to strangeness. So the life of the average London barrister was, ipso facto, doubly odd and that was without anything out of the ordinary happening. Not that Jonathon Marriner would ever have described himself as an average London barrister, but then again, what London barrister ever would?

  Barristers (or attorneys, trial lawyers, advocates, whatever one chose to call them) – those skin-of-their-teeth lawyers who frequented courtrooms, often in those outfits, and those wigs – had carved out an interesting niche for themselves over the centuries, which to a large extent explained, and justified, the strangeness of these undeniably abnormal members of humanity. Sole practitioners in many jurisdictions and in London, too, they practised alone, yet operated out of a set of chambers with other, similar-minded colleagues, sharing outgoings. And conversations. Working shoulder to shoulder with their friends and, technically, their competitors. A big ego was a prerequisite. And as a general rule, a sense of humour.

  A sense of humour though was always going to be subject to the vicissitudes of life and liable to erasure either in whole or in part. “Vicissitudes” being the operative word.

  After the runaway car incident in Notting Hill, Jon decided he’d spend the rest of the day working from ‘home’ and headed back to his hotel. The hotel was, putting it mildly, a few notches below his usual standard, but at least it was close to work. And the Covent Garden Travelodge in Drury Lane was only seven minutes walk from Gerrard Street, Chinatown, and all that went with that. A lot of roast duck, for a start. Let’s hope, he thought, the ducks never get the Bomb, never get their beaks on weapons-grade uranium. Robins, for example, seemed capable of empathy, and amenable to round table discussions. But ducks… There was too much water under the proverbial bridge. Putting it bluntly, he’d simply eaten too many of them for the relationship to be savable.

  In the evening, it was the usual: a quick meal, consisting of Peking duck, fried rice and a glass of white wine in his favourite restaurant whose Chinese name supposedly meant “Lucky Day”, and then back to his room to watch another episode of something on his laptop. His temporary new life.

  As soon as it was clear that he was about to become an ex-resident of Notting Hill, he decided to find a place to rent. Quickly too, as the novelty factor associated with staying at the Covent Garden Travelodge was rapidly fading, helped in no small measure by his neighbours’ loud arguments, not to mention a strange odour which he couldn’t quite pin down (and didn’t want to). He did own a cottage in Wiltshire and an interest in a house in Chelsea, but commuting from Wiltshire was out of the question, and he shared ownership of the Chelsea property with his ex-wife Romy who still lived there. As attractive as the idea was of telling Romy where to go, he still had a soft spot for her, and in any event, it was really only because of Romy’s family that they were able to afford the Chelsea house in the first place, so he was hardly about to turf her out or force a sale.

  So he’d signed a lease on a house in West Kensington and was due to move there in a few days. Not his first choice of areas but it put some space between him and Sabine. It felt like a good idea at the time.

  The next day Jon was back in his chambers, 29 Lincoln’s Inn, and chatting to the floor clerk, Tiffany. She looked happy. He told her of his close shave. She noted that he still looked a bit shaken up.

  ‘You could have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She still needed some convincing and was strong for both of them. ‘What doesn’t kill us…’ she offered.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘These things do make us
stronger.’

  Jon nodded and smiled. Tiffany loved clichés, it had to be said, loved their authority. They were like a religion to her.

  ‘And just remember,’ she added, ‘there’s nothing you can do to stop this stuff. When your number’s up…’

  ‘Your number’s up, that’s true. And it wasn’t. Thanks to that bird.’

  ‘Sabine?’

  ‘No, the… Never mind.’

  Jon was leaning against the doorframe at the entrance to Tiffany’s office, the interior of which was plastered with dozens of photographs, most of them of creatures with four legs, all of them her pets (she lived in Barnes). But he wasn’t looking at the photographs. Nor was he looking at his untiringly enthusiastic clerk, kitted out today in her favourite dress: a slinky navy-blue number with an eye-catching décolletage. Jon wasn’t usually all that narcissistic – or at least not for a London barrister, he was well aware as a class they weren’t exactly known for their humility – but on this occasion he happened to catch a glimpse of himself in the glass door of a bookcase and in the flattering, half-light of the reflection, he couldn’t help but admire what he saw. Not just his tall frame, nicely athletic torso, not too stocky, not too thin, but his not unpleasant face too, framed, as it was, by his well-trimmed black hair and cold, blue eyes. He didn’t see himself as a cold person at all, but girlfriend after girlfriend said as much so he supposed it had to be true. An occupational hazard, he told himself, but deep down he knew it went way further back than his first days in a courtroom. He had to admit though, everything considered, he’d been blessed, at least physically. He could still see his toes for a start: not bad for a thirty-nine year old. He guessed though that sooner or later he’d need to begin a regime of exercise more regular than his weekly boxing classes and twice-monthly games of tennis. Maybe swimming? If he could find a clean pool somewhere. Not the gym, though, where everyone seemed to be middle-aged and desperate – desperate to find a way of jumping off the express train to the grave. You can slow it down, Jon thought, but you can’t get off.

  ‘What are you two plotting.’

  Greg Burnham QC. Corporate and commercial law specialist, and second-most senior barrister in the chambers. Booming practice and a smile – and a mouth – to match. ‘Hope you’re not offering this rogue any of my briefs, Tiff.’

  ‘Not likely,’ she said. ‘Your briefs? They seem to be popping up all over town as it is.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘So I hear. Falling into all sorts of strange hands. Female hands.’

  In fact Greg was a notorious pants man. And the pants only came off in the presence of a highly select few: females under the age of forty with large breasts and/or any female under the age of thirty. Which would be fine – each to his (and her) own, live and let live, it’s a free world, etcetera – except Gregory Nathaniel Burnham was fifty-eight, newly divorced and exceedingly unattractive. Luckily for him he had a taxable income of two million a year. Made it easier for him to sound like he meant it when he offered a new acquaintance a week’s holiday in the Maldives…

  It wasn’t so long ago – when Jon’s practice wasn’t as healthy as it was now, and when it suffered from a serious lack of activity – that Greg’s success, and that of others like him, provided Jon with a constant reminder of where he should have been but wasn’t. Moreover, he still hadn’t fully let go of a habit, acquired at the time, of maintaining a certain degree of secrecy. Because if he’d learnt one thing at the Bar, it was to never divulge the true state of play, never suggest things weren’t going anything other than gobsmackingly brilliantly. Because as Tiffany might have said: loose lips sink ships.

  It obviously paid off because Jon’s was a ship that was well worth keeping afloat. At last, he was raking it in. He was turning down briefs on account of being virtually fully booked. He had little free time and he was saying no to clients. Real clients and genuine briefs.

  Half an hour later, Greg was striding off down Serle Street towards the Royal Courts of Justice and another court engagement, his black robes billowing behind him – like they were unsuccessfully trying to keep up with this man on so many missions – while Jon, about thirty metres further back and out for a breath of fresh air, was ambling along at an easy pace, a man on one mission only for the moment: coffee.

  And as he ambled along – after being forced to cross the street to avoid a closed section of footpath – he took in, on a semiconscious level, the dark brick walls of the building across the road, housing various barristers’ chambers and shielding New Square behind it, and then, beside him on his right, the orange and beige stonework of the old Land Registry building. For some reason he looked up, and he noticed, perhaps even for the first time, the beauty of the building’s Dutch gables, decorative cornices, mullioned window bays and the polychromatic banding so typical of Victorian architecture…

  He wondered where his mind was trying to take him and wrenched it back to the far more important issue of how to stay fit. He had to do something. Whereas thirty-nine was a pretty good age for a single male, he was nevertheless on the wrong side of thirty-five and from now on, for the rest of his life, he would have to remain vigilant. For the rest of his life…

  It was with these superfluous, vain and melancholic thoughts in mind that he happened to notice, walking towards him, pounding the pavement in a gleaming battleship-grey pinstripe suit, the perpetually self-satisfied, consistently happy, Martin Nevers. Or, to be precise, Sir Martin Nevers, Lord Justice of Appeal and, lately, hotly fancied to fill a forthcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land. Sir Martin was a man who always seemed on top of the world. As if his horse was always winning, his case was always finishing, his children were always coming dux of their class. Maybe they were, all of those things. And, Jon had to admit, Nevers always seemed to go out of his way to be friendly. To Jon in particular, that is. Was he gay? Jon doubted it, he’d seen him ogling (and for that matter manhandling) too many attractive women over the years: if he was gay, it would’ve had to have been one hell of an act. Nevers was, perhaps, just one of those people who had no use for rudeness. They did exist, such people, although mostly they worked in churches and homeopathy practices. They did not, however, as a rule work in courtrooms, where rudeness was frequently regarded as a skill rather than a character flaw.

  Tagging along with him today though, like a sucker fish, was the worst of legal sycophants, the barrister Tony McCroogan who wore a navy suit a shade too light and the trouser hems two inches too short revealing M&S socks bearing a playing cards emblem (the suit du jour was, it would appear, clubs). McCroogan was one of the few barristers Jon truly despised, he was as bad tempered as they came. What was he doing with Nevers? The two them were chalk and cheese – or sweet and sour, speaking of Chinatown – although today, together, they looked more like Batman and Robin. Nevers didn’t look happy though, for once, and this made a certain amount of sense at least. In fact the closer they drew, the angrier Nevers appeared. It was all very strange indeed. Jon even heard a snippet of their conversation. It was just one word, a name: “Irwin”.

  They were moving quickly, even faster than Burnham (who’d already swept past them in a whirlwind of dust and other, no doubt, poisonous detritus), and just when they were almost upon him, Nevers looked away from McCroogan and straight at Jon. A nod of recognition, and then a smile. So there’s my smile, Jon thought. It was a relief, in a way. The sun would rise in the east again after all.

  ‘Lord Justice,’ Jon said, nodding back at him.

  He’d barely walked another ten paces when everything seemed to explode.

  His first, fractured thought: a bomb under the footpath. Maybe improvised. Or someone had simply lobbed a grenade in front of him.

  It was an explosion of stone. Leicester red clay brick and Derbyshire Stancliffe sandstone to be precise, the composition of the old Land Registry building next to him. The blast though was not caused by any explosion in the usual sense. There were no ex
plosive materials involved, but simply gravity: a large gargoyle-sized chunk of masonry – a cornice possibly – had chosen that moment (or that moment had chosen it) to plummet from the top of the building, downwards and slightly outwards – it must have hit a ledge – towards the middle of the footpath below. It was a miracle no-one had been underneath it. It was certainly a miracle Jon hadn’t, it must have missed him by a matter of feet and inches. Even the pieces of exploding brick and sandstone shrapnel managed to miss him despite scratching, denting and, in one or two cases, embedding themselves into the paintwork of a shiny, Vapour Grey XJ-series Jaguar parked nearby, self-evidently in the wrong spot.

  What was that? he wondered. A miracle? Or something else?

  He quickly crossed the road, to the relative safety of the dark walls of the New Square building – the orangey-brown clay of the London stock bricks had long been discoloured gunmetal grey by the sooty air of a lost era. Almost history himself, his heart was pounding in his chest.

  The next thing he knew Nevers was back, at his side, in his shiny suit, resting a friendly hand on his shoulder and talking to him about “luck”.

  And then he was gone and Jon was continuing his journey past the dark bricks, turning the corner into Carey Street. He looked up to see a sight that he saw nearly every day of his life but had hardly ever registered, a sculpture of a learned-looking man carved into the white-grey Portland stone, along with words commemorating the martyrdom, in 1535, of Sir Thomas More, the faithful servant of both God and the King…