Deep Fried: A Novel

by Beckett, Bernard

  ‘Right then, follow me.’ As if I wouldn’t. Lucinda leads us outside. The air is cool upon my face, and the ground soft beneath my booties. I don’t say a thing. There’s a way of reading their approval. It swirls about me in a cloud, and all I have to do is stay in the middle of it, following on, asking no questions. Marcus is close behind me, his footsteps muffled, the suit’s cap thick and warm. She leads us to a gate, through a paddock. The sky is clear; stars shyly fill it, looking away if you stare. There is a low hanging moon to the north, full enough to leave a silver trail on the water.

  The water. I can hear it below me now. We must be near to the edge of the cliff. Lucinda turns, smiles again. In this light her eyes are an endless black but still I stare.

  ‘Alright, Pete, I suspect you’ve played trust games before, but maybe none like this. Remember, at any stage, if you’re feeling uncomfortable, you can just say. Nothing we do here is compulsory. That’s up to you. Here’s what’s going to happen. Twenty metres below, when the tide is just right, is deep clear ocean. I am going to run and leap over the edge. You are going to follow me. Then Marcus. Here’s how you need to hold your arms, and this is what you should expect to feel.’

  She describes falling through the air, the dark cold collision of water, a moment of panic and disorientation. Letting go, drifting to the surface with the buoyancy of the wetsuit. I can hear waves down there, waves on rocks. I don’t want to ask. I want to do this without saying a word. It’s what they expect.

  ‘Which direction, to avoid the rocks?’

  I’m not stupid.

  ‘Here. Straight ahead.’ She takes me by the shoulders, lines up my body. Smiles again.

  ‘You ready?’

  I nod.

  Lucinda turns, runs, disappears into the night. I hear her screaming, whooping, before she hits the water.

  ‘Now you.’ Marcus’s voice in my ear. I close my eyes, breathe in deeply, open them again, rush forward, terrified.

  The land gives way beneath me and then there is only air. I remember. Toes pointed down, knees together, arms crossed on my chest. It is too dark to be sure of up and down, but the rush of air is unmistakable. I am close to passing out when the water hits, slams up into me from below. And insanely, it is unexpected. I let out a gasp as the coldness enfolds me, then closes up with a choke. Down, down, and the blackness is getting heavy. She is not wrong, about the panic. My arms and legs spasm about me, to push me up, but there is no way of knowing if it is the right direction. I could drown now. That realisation hits me clean and clear. There is nothing in place for my safety. Only the little she has told me, and the way the mind has of remembering the important things. This is it, as close as I have been, as frightened as I have been. I lie back, or what I think is back. My chest is bursting now. I starfish out, let the suit do the work.

  The light of the surface comes in from a crazy angle. I swivel towards it, swim the last metre. The air is beautiful, thrilling. To my left Marcus torpedoes into the water. There she is, Lucinda, grinning, floating on her back, as if there was no other way this might have gone. As if caring is impossible. How many of the others jumped? I want to ask her. And were you always this relaxed? So how did you know? How did you know none of us would drown? And if one had, then what would you have looked like? Then what expression would have clouded your pretty face?

  Marcus surfaces beside me, spits sea water into the air. All around is the crashing of water against rock: slowly, relentlessy – winning.

  ‘This way,’ he tells me. Lucinda has already struck out. They didn’t even ask me if I could swim. I turn on Marcus’s stroke and follow closely behind.

  The sound changes as we approach the cliff. I feel the weight of rock above us, the land standing firm. Crashing turns to echoes. We swim in through the entrance of a cave. Lucinda turns on a headlamp, and scrambles to the shore. We follow, and pull ourselves up onto a flat limestone shelf. I follow the scanning of her light. The cave is low and wide; an ancient past drips and bubbles from its smooth walls. We can not stand. It is impossible to say how deep the cave goes.

  ‘Well done,’ Lucinda says. ‘Sit close and say if you’re getting cold.’

  All three of us sit together, watching the point below where Lucinda’s headlamp meets the push and suck of water. Their approval cloud swarms tight around me. I am doing well. Layered over the sound of rock and water is a clean, intense silence. In the moments when the water has withdrawn a single drip can echo all around. Even my own breathing is a loud, unexplained stranger.

  ‘I grew up in Masterton you know,’ is the way she chooses to break this noisy quiet. ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Um, yeah, yeah it does.’

  ‘Where would you have expected me to have grown up then?’

  I think about that for a moment.

  ‘I can’t imagine you not being grown up.’

  It’s a truth that’s fading. There’s a little girl in the voice behind the light, and this is what I think. I think I wish I could have known you then. I wish you weren’t born too early, or me too late. I could never have had you, probably, but I would have tried.

  ‘Funny,’ she says, ‘I feel the opposite. I feel a little bit like a fraud. You know, when my mother was my age, I was seven. And I still don’t think I’ll ever be as old as she was then. It’s an alright place to grow up though, a small town. The world is close to you. You can learn a lot, if you watch carefully.’

  A pause. Marcus doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. There is more.

  ‘I hated my neighbour. He had a swimming pool. Well, it was a whole family really, but I always thought of it as just him. We didn’t have a pool, or a new car every two years, or a beach house or a boat. But he did. And he would always offer, loudly, over the fence. If we ever wanted to come out fishing with him, use the bach one weekend, just say. But Dad never said. The rest of them hassled him, told him not to be so proud. Not me, even though there were plenty of times, as a teenager in Masterton, when having a bach to escape to would have been wonderful. You know why I didn’t? Because I hated my neighbour.

  ‘I was four. It was hot, proper February heat. Mum was melting and Dad was out at work, and I was grumpy with the temperature. Mum got me all dressed up in my togs, and took me over next door, to ask if we could use the pool. And even at that age I could tell how much she hated doing it. He came to the door, dressed in his own togs; there was wiry black stomach hair sprouting at exactly the height of my eyes. He smiled when Mum asked, and then said sorry, no, but he was having people around that night, a bit of a party, so he needed to keep it clean.

  ‘Mum took me back and sat me under the sprinkler, and that night the party came in through my open window, and I swear he had the music up just a little bit louder than he usually would, and I can tell you now that I learned more in that single day than I learned in twelve years at school.’

  I tried to imagine her at four, or any age really, before now. Any age when she wasn’t perfectly formed, in control. It was beyond me.

  ‘So that’s my thing. That’s what I hate. I hate a person who has to do that, who has to find a way of making a mark. That’s the strangest thing about this scholarship. We’re looking for people who do things because there’s value in the doing. Who understand how small you’d have to be, to need a house and a boat and big car to stand on, before the world could see you. You get that, don’t you Pete?’

  So what do you think I do? I nod and hope it’s true. I imagine her neighbour. In my head he wears dark glasses, and blue Speedos, and smokes because it keeps the weight off. I hope that he and I are opposites. That only me, Lucinda and Marcus, and maybe one or two other people in the world, understand this. That I am one of them.

  ‘There are two ways out,’ Marcus tells me. ‘If we jump back in the water and swim across to the other side of the entrance there’s a chain ladder to climb up. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, there’s a vent further along in the cave. You can climb right up to a paddock.
It’s hard work, but sort of cool. Your choice.’

  ‘Ladder,’ I tell him. I’m ahead on the scoreboard, and exhausted.

  I want to sleep but Marcus makes me stay up with him to play computer games on the big screen. A car racing thing he’s found on the internet. It’s good but I’m fading badly. We talk, but not about much that’s important, just giving each other shit really.

  At the end he leaves me to shut down, but it’s a strange system, and I can’t find my way around it. He comes back out to rescue me, doesn’t make too much of it, but I see Lucinda standing in the background, watching too. I hope it wasn’t a test. I hope they aren’t holding my lack of computer skills against me.

  16 APRIL

  There was a new file on my desktop. Left where I would find it. I stared at it a while, trying to remember when I’d created Warning. Why I hadn’t put it in a folder. Opened, the words were bolded, 36 pt. Read this now. His name is Gideon. Heard it before, doing the rounds. Notorious. Not above working for a price. Contracted by a company, couldn’t say who (didn’t have to) to trace a hack. Confidential information inappropriately accessed. Traced it back to me. And I thought I was invincible.

  He said he could hide the trace for 12 hours max. Give me time to wipe my files, cover my tracks. Do a better job than I have so far. It wasn’t just a hacker’s courtesy. It was more desperate than that. Get right out of there. Disappear. I mean totally. This is serious shit and they’re not just playing.

  But I have seen enough. I am ready to believe. In conspiracy theories and mystery strangers and corporations prepared to kill. Yes, he said. People die. This is not a joke. People disappear. I’ve seen their files. He said, they really want to find you. He said, you’re in too deep. You don’t know what you’re doing. Get out. Please.

  It was the please that did it for me in the end. Made up my mind. Sent me across the room onto the bed, backed into a corner with hand over mouth. They kill people. For less than what we’ve found. Pete and I. And now it’s only me left. Twelve hours to save Pete.

  I set up the hotmail cracker to run overnight. Too long to wait. Watching flicking green numbers on my clock, finger tracing round the grooves of the keyboard. Go outside. Start to walk. To take my mind off waiting. Blank. Just feet on concrete. Only one way to go. Pete’s curtains still pulled back. Streetlight shining off the glass. Down at the park, air snapping like spun sugar. Feet catching on the black matting under the swing whining back and forward, never off the ground. Lights over the other side of the harbour blurring.

  I was not surprised. I wanted to be. The scholarship exists, but only as a cover. An insurance policy. Mocked up letters and schedules. They’ve thought it through. Interviewed some others, so it all checks out. Dread sitting low in my stomach. Prince of Burgers. Prince of Darkness. Got my second chance though, a way back in to their accounts.

  It is interesting. They know where to go to find a hacker to do their dirty work, but still they are this sloppy with their security. Maybe they think that they’re untouchable. That they are clever. They are not, for which I am grateful. Marcus used the same password for his hotmail and his work account. I’m not the only amateur.

  Not enough time to look at everything. Only a couple of Gideon’s hours left. Just enough to get the gist. The locations. Copy and save. Hiding. They have been scrupulous in their recording of details, deleted of course, but still sitting there. They don’t learn. A dirty little plan. Flattery, flirtation, money. As if the truth can be conveniently forgotten. Smothered, amputated.

  They do not know Pete. I cannot believe that he will succumb. He can’t just forget what got us here, he can’t just shut his eyes again.

  One of the latest emails was full of photos. I was going to skip it. Thought it was some happy family snaps. But in one there was a girl, a cafe somewhere, taken over someone else’s shoulder. It was in the raising of an eyebrow. The dark hair curling past her chin. Looked about 20. The right age. Scrolling through the rest, they were all her. Holding a book over her head against the rain, laughing, bending down to talk to someone in a car. Confident, striding up a path to a front door. Same doorway, same silhouette. Night outside, light from within staining the step, looking sideways, frowning.

  Jennifer. Pete’s sister. The more I look, the more I realise it can be no one else. Last photo is dark, takes a while to work out the lines. The photo becomes a room. A bedroom. There’s someone in the bed. Long dark hair, the eyelashes straight black lines. It isn’t taken through a window. I feel sick. A note attached. Only use these if you have to. Poor Pete. He isn’t going to have a choice.

  I wonder if he knows, my father. Mr bigboy64. Mr Yes I’m working late darling but don’t wait up. Mr Loyalty to the company is everything. He wouldn’t have thought of it, isn’t that clever, that cruel. But I bet he knows. And doesn’t see anything wrong with it. This is what PBs has turned him into. I know you are meant to love your parents. Liking has no part in it. Just love and loyalty. I remember the day I stopped loving my father. End of last year. Exam time. Sun hot enough to melt the tar on my way home.

  Laughter in the living room. Stopping at the sound of the front door closing. Briefcase and pair of heels by the mat. She was sitting on the sofa, legs tucked under her, skirt riding up to give a glimpse of sheer stockinged knee. My father, next to her. You don’t sit there if you’re just talking to someone. Turned halfway round awkwardly, a blush starting beneath his beard. They had glasses of wine, coldness frosting the rims. It was honey coloured, and matched her shirt. I would not be surprised if it was deliberate. He stood quickly with a sentence that began Sophie! and never got to the I didn’t know you were going to be home this afternoon he was really thinking. She looked up at him, slightly amused by his panic. Introduced herself. Legs unfolding, arm stretching out perfectly fluid to shake my hand. She put her glass on the coffee table. Didn’t use a coaster. That’s when I knew. She said I’m Lucy. Tilted her head to make the sun shine sideways and sparkle through her irises. Smiled engagingly. At my silence looked over to Dad. A look that said Takes after her mother? You poor man.

  When she left she held onto his shoulder to pull on her shoes. Said something to him. So low that even I, just behind the kitchen door, couldn’t hear. The front door closed. He walked upstairs. And I stopped loving him.

  There is no way I can give up. They have Pete. I have surprise, and access to everything that’s passed through their accounts. We are on an even footing.

  And I have the truth. I have to trust that for Pete, that’ll be enough.

  8

  I sleep too well and resent the waking. The weather has changed. I can hear the wind, and smell the sea’s new mood.

  ‘We need to get going’ Marcus tells me, pulling back a blind, ‘or the chopper won’t be able to take off.’

  Or the chopper won’t be able to take off. I live in this world now, where people say these things, and they fall as naturally as or the dairy will be closed. I know it isn’t real, not in the solid way of lasting that real worlds have. I could blink, or turn away, and it would be gone. But that is for later. First there is a chopper to deal with.

  ‘There’s something beautiful about a storm,’ Lucinda says as we rise up through the weather. Beneath us, the Strait is ripped into white caps. We fade into cloud.

  ‘Been in a helicopter before?’ Marcus asks me. I shake my head.

  ‘Not thinking of making me jump out of it are you?’ I ask, only half joking. I am tired this morning. Tired of being watched, keeping all the fear and uncertainty from their view. But I want to win this. I want to be the most together, the most impressive. I want to be the one they talked about last night. I want the low bass of conversation that vibrated through the wall, before I fell asleep, to have been about me. The helicopter rattles through me. Marcus smiles.

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Whether you gave me a parachute.’

  ‘That’s reas
onable.’

  Later. The helicopter has outrun the weather and the view below is clear. We fly over snow. Somewhere on the central plateau, I suppose. I watch our shadow slide across the white ground.

  ‘So how are you feeling?’ Lucinda asks, breaking 20 minutes of silence.

  ‘Alright,’ I reply. It’s like being a tourist, struggling with the language. Watching for any sign that might help with the meaning.

  ‘Ready for another test?’

  ‘I guess,’ I shrug.

  ‘Good on you.’

  The helicopter touches down and we are nowhere. The mountain that minutes before had spread across the sky has somehow disappeared. The landscape is ragged, rendered in black and white, a jumble of rocks and tightly gnarled tree trunks, calmed by thick, untouched snow. There is no building that I can see; no track, no sign of life. I am not dressed for this, but Lucinda climbs out, then Marcus, and I follow their lead. Marcus carries a small bag on his shoulder. Apart from that it is just us.

  The sound of the helicopter lifting off behind me isn’t mentioned.

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘A little,’ I admit.

  ‘Best we get moving then.’

  Maybe it’s too much reality television, one too many episodes of Survivor, but I trust them. Trust this. Some time, no matter what the script demands of me, the cameras will stop rolling. The helicopter will return. This is the thought I take with me as I lift my knees high to avoid the snow sucking the strength from my legs.

  Lucinda leads the way. I follow in their ice-crunched footsteps to make it easier. We walk quickly. The air is thin and I feel it cold and sharp in my lungs. We go 30 minutes by my watch. I’m checking all the time, noting every landmark, convinced that their plan is to run off and leave me, to see how I cope. And I wouldn’t mind. Not if it was my chance to show them. Not if it meant winning.