The Age of Zeus a-2

by James Lovegrove

  "We didn't see or speak to each other much, and then after Ethan was gone, we didn't have a reason to see or speak to each other at all any more. She moved back to be with her folks in Gary, Indiana, where, far as I know, she still is. Short question, long answer. How about you, while we're on this subject? No other half? No, of course not. Would you be here if there was? But were you ever married?"

  "No. I was… not quite engaged. My partner and I lived together. We'd talked about marrying. We were definitely going to. It just didn't have a chance to happen."

  Ramsay waited. Sam didn't offer anything further.

  "That's all I'm going to get, isn't it?" he said drily. "All anyone's going to get out of you, Sam. You know something? This enigmatic schtick, this whole keeping-it-all-to-yourself thing — I tell you, it's getting real old. What you don't appear to realise is that, whatever you're holding inside you, not talking about it doesn't make you heroic, it just makes you seem…"

  "Seem…?"

  "Like not a normal person. Normal people talk about stuff. Normal people open up."

  "Just because I don't yammer on all the time about — "

  "No." Ramsay stopped her with a jabbing index finger. "It ain't yammering. It's being human. It's accepting that bad things have happened, not trying to act as if they never did. It's being the same as everyone else, not imagining you've somehow had it worse than everyone else and that that somehow makes you superior in some way, privileged 'cause life took a bigger shit on you than it does on most folk and it's beyond your ability to express how much you've been hurt. Hell, we all get shit on, and us Titans got shit on particularly heavily, but I don't believe your pain is worse than the pain I've suffered or Fred has suffered or Dez has suffered or any of us has suffered, and I dare you to prove otherwise."

  "You're trying to piss me off, aren't you?"

  "Figure I've got nothing to lose."

  "Goad me and I'll lose my temper and drop my guard and blurt everything out?"

  "That's the general idea."

  "And then what? I'll feel better? I went to a counsellor twice a week for nearly a year, Rick. I talked and talked with him. And after a hundred hours of that I didn't feel one ounce better. What makes you think it'll be any different, talking to you?"

  "Because, Sam Akehurst," Ramsay said, chidingly, "I'm your friend."

  "Oh, right. And maybe you're hoping I'll confess all and then fall sobbing into your arms and you can comfort me and next thing you know, hey presto, we're shagging like rabbits."

  "Yeah, that's always been my technique with women. I only sleep with the crying ones. Distraught's such a goddamn turn-on. Those puffy eyes, that runny nose…"

  "Ha!" said Sam. It was both a laugh and a victory cry. "Watch this, then. No tears. Dry-eyed, Sam Akehurst delves deep and comes up with the goods. This is what happened. You want to know? I'll give it to you in two sentences. My boyfriend was killed at Hyde Park, July 25th, coming up for three years ago now. I was pregnant with his baby and I miscarried. There." She looked at him, hard. "What do you think? How does that rate on the 'life shit' scale? I'm thinking it's a good nine, maybe even a ten. You would probably downgrade it, though. Not as bad as Fred, who lost everybody he knew. Not as bad as Nigel, who was actually married and whose daughter was, you know, a child and not just a foetus, which gets him extra points. But better at least than Kerstin — husband but no child. And way better than Anders, because it wasn't even relatives of his who died, just comrades, fellow soldiers."

  Her voice was a low growl. She could hear the throb of resentment in it, resentment that was simply pain that had taken a wrong turn.

  "You just don't get it, do you, Rick? You can't compare tragedies like they're scores on Top Trumps cards. Everyone feels grief in their own way. What I lost was… was everything. Everything. Ade getting killed, the baby — it destroyed me. It was apocalypse. Does it matter to me how well or badly I got off next to other people? No. All I care about is me, what happened to me and how huge it was, how unbearable."

  "Ade. His name was Ade," Ramsay said gently.

  "Adrian Walters." Sam couldn't recall the last time she'd spoken his name aloud and in full like that. It felt strange, like trying on a pair of old boots from the back of the cupboard that were once comfy and snug but had stiffened with disuse. "Constable Adrian Walters."

  "Cop, like you."

  She nodded. Damn him, how was he managing to get this stuff out of her? More to the point — why was she letting him?

  "Uniform," she said. "Beat copper. The best kind of beat copper. He enjoyed it. He actually enjoyed getting out there, being on the street, being visible, high-profile, wearing the tit-shaped helmet, trying to make a difference in the community he served."

  "Nice guy."

  "Through and through. Too nice, I sometimes thought. We girls aren't supposed to fall for the good boys. We're supposed to like a bit of grit in our oyster. That's how you get a pearl, after all. But after the crap and slog of work I liked coming home to a stable, dependable, reliable man. Ade wasn't dynamic in any way. He was my antidote to the poison of the world, and not only that but he could understand what I went through on a day-to-day basis, because he went through something similar, so we were on a par in that respect. Only, he always dealt with it better because he was just… better. A better person than me. Sometimes I'd have it up to here with all the sleaze and the wrongness that I had to deal with, and I'd start bitching and whining, and he'd talk me down, all quiet and calm. And — and he always brought me tea in bed in the mornings. Every morning, without fail. Even if our shifts were different and I had to get up at sparrow-fart and he didn't, he always made sure he was awake and could bring me my cup of Earl Grey, milk, one sugar. Such a small thing, but it meant so much."

  "Was he looking forward to being a dad? Sounds like he'd have made a good father."

  "He never knew. I didn't get the chance to tell him. I planned to. In fact, the day he — the day he was killed, I was going to tell him that evening. I was only a couple of months into the pregnancy. I was sure I was pregnant, I just hadn't been sure enough yet. But that evening, I had it all worked out. I was going to make Ade dinner. He usually made the dinner, so he'd have realised something was up when he came home to me burning saucepans."

  "You can't cook."

  "I can cook like elephants can tap-dance," Sam said. "But it's the thought that counts. I was going to put something charred and inedible in front of him, uncap a bottle of his favourite lager, and then, when he was good and intrigued, I was going to break the news."

  "How do you think he would have reacted?"

  "Ade? Over the moon. He'd have grabbed me, squeezed me tight, then let go because he was scared that squeezing me tight might harm the baby somehow. He always wanted kids. He was dying to be a dad. Dying." She laughed hollowly. "I know that that's how it would have gone. I've played the scene out so many times in my head. I can see him running round and round the kitchen, whooping like a loon, then getting on the phone to his parents in New Zealand — they'd emigrated. Never mind that it'd be about five in the morning there. He wouldn't be able to wait to ring them. But instead, I was the one who had to ring them and wake them up. With something very different to say. That was after a friend had called and asked if I'd heard."

  "Heard…?"

  "About the protest. About Apollo and Artemis. About the stampede they'd caused. I was aware Ade was helping police the march, but I couldn't imagine anything bad was going to happen, certainly not to him. As a rule, the Olympians don't go for cops, do they? We're all on the same side, allegedly. We all belong to the forces of law and order. So I assumed even if the Olympians decided the protest shouldn't be allowed to continue, Ade would be OK. All the police there would be. But what I hadn't factored in was Ade being Ade. One of his fellow PSU officers, the friend, guy called Trev, he phoned me from the scene. There was chaos, I could hear it in the background. Shouting. Screaming. Ambulance sirens. And Trev told me Ade was dead
. Just like that. Came right out and said it, his voice quivering: 'Ade's dead.' I said I didn't believe it, and Trev said he didn't believe it either but it was true. He'd watched it with his own eyes, he'd held the body, attempted mouth-to-mouth, for all the good it had done. The rally'd been completely peaceful, he said, up to the moment the Olympians appeared. He and Ade and a couple of hundred others were waiting in vans along Exhibition Road, togged up in their Code Two gear, shields but no sticks, just in case trouble started. Hermes teleported the twins into the park, everything went to hell, the Code One regulars radioed for assistance, and the boys rushed out there to help sort out the mess. That was Ade's thing, why he sidelined with the Police Support Unit, because he believed wholeheartedly in the public's right to peaceful protest and he saw the job of the PSU as helping to facilitate that and keep the protestors safe."

  "Didn't work out so well for himself, though."

  "There was a kid. This girl, twelve, thirteen, something like that. She was in the Serpentine River in the middle of Hyde Park. It's called a river but it's actually a lake. Lots of people were in the water, desperate to get away, trying to swim to the other side. Apollo and Artemis were just laying into the crowd indiscriminately, Apollo shooting his arrows, Artemis lashing out with her spear. I saw a video of it on TV some time later, and they were wolves among sheep, foxes in the henhouse. Slaughtering. Just… slaughtering. But anyway, the girl, she'd waded into the Serpentine, waist-deep, and she got knocked over by someone shoving past her. She tried to get up but other people kept jumping in, trampling her, pushing her under the surface. Soon as Ade saw, he went to help. Didn't think twice, according to Trev. Battled through the crowd to the bank, dived in, got to the girl, pulled her up from the water, shielded her from the stampede with his own body, started trying to help her back to dry land.

  "But he was so concerned about her, he wasn't looking out for himself. Got knocked over by someone, and then people were trampling him, pushing him under. Blind panic. They didn't even see him there. All they wanted to do was get out of the Olympians' way. Ade thrashed around. Never a strong swimmer at the best of times, and his Code Two kit didn't help. Cotton overalls impregnated with flame retardant, leg guards, thigh guards, arm guards, Alt-Berg Peacekeeper boots — all waterlogged and heavy, weighing him down. He tried again and again to get up, get air, and couldn't… and then he couldn't even try. They drowned him. People. The same civilians he'd dedicated his life to looking after and protecting. Drowned him. The girl, far as I know, managed to get away. She was OK. She lived. So that's something, I suppose. It wasn't a completely pointless death."

  "You felt numb then, didn't you?" said Ramsay. "That's how I felt when I got the call from Ethan's principal. 'Mr Ramsay? Steadman Block here. I have something to tell you.' First I was like, 'Oh no, what's Ethan done? Flunked a math test?' But Block asked me if I was sitting down, and that's when I knew something bad was coming. And as I listened to what he had to say, I could feel a part of me shutting down. I could feel myself just sort of locking into autopilot. A robot took over and started doing everything for me, acting like me, saying everything I needed to, and I was happy to let it. Kinda like being in the battlesuit. Safe, shielded. I was inside me, far away, deep in this shell that looked and sounded exactly like I did, could pass for me but wasn't, not really. I stayed there for quite a few weeks."

  "Yeah, that was it. Me too. Only it was longer than a few weeks. A lot longer. Sometimes, in fact…"

  "Sometimes you feel like you haven't altogether come out of it."

  Sam picked up a branch and tossed it on the fire. Sparks danced up from the crackling flames, twinkling then gone like fairies when people stopped believing in them.

  "Or ever will," she said. "The miscarriage came the next day. I was in hospital, rather conveniently. In the morgue, ID-ing Ade's body. Suddenly there was this… Well, I'll spare you the gory details."

  "I thank you for that."

  "Gory is the word, though. The strange thing was, I wasn't surprised. It just seemed natural. I remember thinking, Yes, of course. Ade isn't here any more. Why would his child want to stick around either? And then later, much later, I came to the conclusion that it was my fault. I'd been dreading motherhood, I can't deny it. I could see how it was going to mess with my career. Terribly. I'd had this whole path mapped out for myself — DI by thirty, Chief Constable by forty — maybe an unrealisable dream, but I was well on my way there, and having a baby was going to derail the Sam Akehurst ambition express, perhaps for good, so afterwards I had myself believing that I'd somehow willed the foetus to abort itself."

  "Whereas in fact it was down to shock and stress, you know that."

  "Cognitively I know that. No one can make themselves miscarry just by wishing for it. But you start falling prey to all sorts of strange ideas when you're traumatised, when your whole world has been shaken to pieces. I'd been in that state before, after my parents died, only not as bad. That was the past being taken away from me, which is sort of what's supposed to happen. This was the future being taken away, which isn't. My mind wasn't right. It kept insisting I'd jettisoned the baby on purpose, so I could be free to carry on clambering up the career ladder. The irony is, by that stage I didn't have much of a career left. I was on disability leave, on account of I was a basket case, half an inch away from a total nervous breakdown, or maybe half an inch into one, and it really didn't look as if I'd be coming back from it to any kind of meaningful employment. Even if I did eventually rejoin the Met, I knew they'd have had me on permanent desk duty somewhere in Traffic or Fraud for the rest of my time. I'd be no good to my guv'nor, my DI, any more. Prothero said he'd have me back soon as I was ready, but I knew he was only saying that to make me feel better, and he knew I knew. The whole detective thing was over for me. Dead and buried. So that was why it didn't seem to matter if one day I was over as well. Dead and buried as well. And that was when I started thinking about killing myself."

  "Ah." Ramsay's mouth downturned at the corners. "Well now. You can stop there if you like. You don't have to go on."

  "No, you asked for it, you wanted it, you're getting the lot, all of it. I drove down to Beachy Head a couple of times. That's a cliff on the south coast of England. It's a beauty spot and also where dozens of people a year throw themselves off. Don't ask me if the two things are connected. I stood there looking out to sea, but I couldn't quite do it, couldn't quite step over the little barrier and then take the next step, right off the edge. So that was a washout, but I had pills at home. Sleeping tablets. I was needing them at the time, and one night I laid out ten of them in a row on my bedside table instead of the usual one, and I placed them all in the palm of my hand, and I even got as far as tipping them into my mouth. But I spat them out. I didn't fancy just falling asleep and not waking up. I wanted to feel my death. I wanted to experience it. So then, the final time, there was a hot bath and the blade from Ade's razor. Ade liked a proper blade. Not one of those clip-in multi-head ones with bits of wire across them for extra safety — a proper old-fashioned thin bendy metal blade with two cutting edges. I lay in the bath and I held the blade at the crook of my elbow. You have to slice down along the inside of the forearm, open up as much of the length of the ulnar artery as you can. I'd seen the body of a young woman who'd topped herself like that, done it the way it should be done. She was anorexic, a heroin addict, in an abusive relationship, and she'd 'ridden the Gillette train out of the station,' as Prothero said. I couldn't understand at the time why she'd done it. Her life was shit, yes, but I thought she'd just been a coward. Why didn't she ditch the bastard of a boyfriend, get into a rehab program and just try and sort herself out? Make an effort, the stupid, self-pitying cow. But I got it later. When I was on the brink of killing myself in the exact same way, I understood. It was the only form of control she had left over her life, the only decision she could still make that would have any effect. Everything else had got the better of her. This was the one way she could still score a vic
tory. Self-pity didn't come into it. It was all about recovering some small shred of dignity while she still could."

  "Slashing your wrists in a bath ain't dignified."

  "But when you're in that particular mindset, it is. And there's also an element of 'There. See? See how truly miserable I am?' You're leaving your body as a message to the world: life hurts, it hurts too much to bear, this is the only sane solution."

  "But actually the sane solution isn't to end it all, it's to go on living," said Ramsay. "Stand up and say 'fuck you' to the pain and bludgeon on."

  "I realised that. At the very last moment. Look." She rolled up her sleeve and showed him the inside of her left elbow. "You can just see it. There. Tiny little scar. That's how far I got with the razor blade. Less than a centimetre. It stung like fuck, and I just couldn't continue. That pain was sharper, more real, than the other kind of pain, and it brought me to my senses. The way out, I realised, was worse than the situation. The cure was worse than the disease. It seems trite, looking back, but it honestly was a revelation. I was clearly not suffering as badly as I thought I'd been, if I could be deterred by a little bit of 'ouch' and a trickle of blood. That put things into perspective. I didn't climb out of that bath any happier than when I'd got in, but I did climb out knowing I'd troughed, I'd found rock bottom, and the only way from there was up."

  "Wanna know something?" Ramsay said. "Something I've never, ever told anyone else?"

  "OK."

  "I tried it too. Suicide. Just me, the bathroom mirror, and my Marine-issue pistol. After Ethan, every morning for about a month I'd stand at the sink and look at myself and put the barrel of a MEU(SOC). 45 in my mouth and almost nearly pull the trigger. Morning after morning. After a while, the taste of gunmetal and grease got so familiar, I couldn't get rid of it. There on my tongue the whole time. Everything I ate or drank seemed to have the tang of it. In the end, it started to make me feel sick. That was why I stopped wanting to blow my brains out, after a month of repeatedly trying to summon up the guts to and failing: I hated eating a breakfast that tasted of sidearm. It was a small thing, a stupid reason for going on living, but sometimes a stupid reason is enough, especially when the alternative is nothing. At least it's a reason."