The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

  His lips narrowed, then broadened again into a tight smile. “No,” he admitted softly. “Not really.”

  “But Byron14 is?”

  “As I said – Byron14 is a killer, a terrorist. The darknet is not infallible, as you know. I know you’ve been in communication; now I need to know what was said. Did Byron hire you to steal the Chrysalis?”

  “Why would he?”

  “You tell me.”

  I turned on my slow amble, walked the other way, paused by my chair, didn’t sit, walked to the walls, walked back to the chair, stopped. “Reina bint Badr al Mustakfi – do you know the name?”

  “The young woman who died; I heard of her.”

  “She was a cousin of Princess Shamma bint Bandar.”

  “That is why I heard; her death was flagged at a briefing.”

  “She had Perfection.”

  A half shrug, Gauguin waiting for me.

  “I stole the Chrysalis because it was a challenge. Then when she died, I stole it because I wanted to piss someone off, and the guys who make Perfection seemed about right.”

  “Why?”

  “She had Perfection.”

  “You said, but Perfection didn’t make her kill herself.”

  “Do you have Perfection, Gauguin?”

  “No, though I am familiar of course with its system.”

  I paced again, a few steps, stopped again, chose my words very carefully. “I think…” I murmured. “I think you’re wrong. I think it helped her die. She was nice. I liked her. Even though she didn’t remember, I felt… affection… for her. I think I might be prone to making these things more important than they are, but still, that’s my thing, it’s a side-effect of… everything. What’s the opposite of perfect?”

  “Imperfect?” he suggested.

  Synonyms: flawed, defective, faulty, bad.

  I looked at Gauguin, and didn’t see any sign that he cared or understood, so closed my mouth and kept on walking.

  After a while, a little shifting, a little sigh, Gauguin tried again. “Byron…”

  “Wanted to know if I had Perfection. Why are you so interested, Mr Gauguin?”

  “What did Byron want?”

  “To warn me about you.”

  “What else?”

  “That was all. I get the feeling you guys like to fuck with each other, more joy me.”

  “I need you to contact Byron14.”

  “Why?”

  “To request a meeting.”

  “You request a meeting.”

  “I don’t think Byron will talk to me.”

  “So you want me to be your stooge? I don’t think there’s much honour amongst thieves, Mr Gauguin, but even by my standards that’s a bit shit.”

  “Yes.” He sounded wistful, a good man in a dirty world. “I think it might be.”

  I paced again, walking it through. Walking helped thinking, thoughts without words for now, but words coming, ideas growing.

  I looked at Gauguin, watching me from his crooked plastic chair.

  I looked at the man on the beanbag in the corner.

  I said, “I need a laptop and a cup of coffee, please.”

  Gauguin smiled.

  Chapter 27

  You don’t need weapons drawn to be threatening.

  Fear grows in the face of unanswered questions. How far will Gauguin go, what are the tools at his disposal, will he kill me, when this is done?

  They brought me a laptop and a bad cup of coffee.

  They already had Tor installed; it was easy to return to the chatroom where Byron14 liked to play.

  Byron14 wasn’t there.

  “We wait,” said Gauguin, sitting on the sofa next to me. “We wait for Byron.”

  We waited.

  An hour, then two.

  Gauguin watched the screen. I said, “Does this thing come with solitaire?”

  “We wait,” he replied.

  We waited.

  I counted bricks in the wall.

  Steps to the door.

  Lines on my hand.

  We waited.

  The muezzins called from the minarets, Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest.

  Sun cream dried on the diamonds; how disgraceful Leena would find it, that something so precious should be casually disregarded between the ashtray and a nine-month-old magazine about snowboarding.

  I counted viable weapons in the room, things that were heavy, things that were hard, things that could puncture skin.

  I counted hiding places, found only one that was any good.

  After a while I said, as much to pass the time as anything else, “You and Byron – is it personal?”

  Gauguin’s eyes snapped to me, fast and hard, before he looked away.

  I shrugged, smiled at nothing much, said, “Thought so. Your boss know you’re pursuing a vendetta here?”

  “My boss wants to see Byron drowned in liquid concrete,” he replied, without rancour. “My views are more complicated.”

  “Would you have come after me if Byron hadn’t got in touch?”

  “Yes. You stole the diamonds, you embarrassed my employer, deliberately, it seemed. That made you my problem. It made sense for Byron to contact you, for exactly the same reasons.”

  “Byron’s got it in for Perfection?”

  “What do you think?”

  I shrugged, and turned my attention back to the waiting screen.

  The sun, setting, orange-pink light tracking long and thin across the ceiling.

  The man on the beanbag got up and went outside to answer his phone.

  I was alone with Gauguin.

  I looked at him and he seemed unaware of my attention, his concentration fixed on the screen of the laptop.

  I said, “Here,” and reached out for the machine.

  His hand lashed out, caught my wrist, held it hard. I fixed my face in an expression of wounded surprise. “I’m not going to break anything.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “See if Byron’s in another room.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “Because you’re a fucker with a knife?” I suggested. “What’s the worst I can do?”

  Slowly, Gauguin released my wrist. I picked up the machine, put it on my lap. He leaned in behind me to watch what I did. I opened a few more windows, checked a few more places, nothing untoward. How long had the guard been outside? Long enough to forget to come back? He may forget me, he might not forget his duty quite so fast.

  I reached for my coffee cup, the third of the afternoon, and knocked it a little too hard. The coffee spilt across the table, soaking into the snowboard magazine, brown liquid mixing with sun cream. Gauguin’s eyes flickered to it, a slight intake of irritated breath, and in that moment I hit him across the side of his skull as hard as I could with the laptop. He crumpled back, still awake, still aware, and I hit him again, slamming it onto his forehead, between his eyes, and again, the plastic case crumpling, the screen going black, and one more time for luck, having to fight the urge to scream, swallowing my own breath, swallowing the animal sounds in my throat. He fell back on the sofa, blood in his eyes, and I grabbed the laptop and ran across the room, breath ragged and fast. I opened the cupboards beneath the sink; two with shelves secured in place, but one larger where once a kitchen bucket may have been, or bottles of bleach. I curled in, head to knees, arms to shins, locking my body so tight it was a struggle to breathe, smaller than a cat, smaller than a spider, eased the door shut with my fingertips, waited in the dark.

  My breath conjured hurricanes, shook sleeping grizzly bears from their beds.

  My heartbeat sent earthquakes across the earth, my skin melted metal.

  I closed my eyes and breathed, breathed, breathed.

  The heavens turned and the mountains fell, and I breathed.

  Silence in the workshop.

  A door opens; how lonely the sound seemed, when I could not see the man who pushed it.

  A voice cried o
ut; footsteps on concrete.

  Boss, boss, help, help!

  More footsteps, more people.

  A commotion of moving men, Gauguin groaning, feet moving, a rattle above, a first aid kit being pulled from its place above the disused sink, legs moving against the thin light around the cupboard door.

  Boss, what happened, what happened?

  Footsteps run across the floor, above me, right above me, turning on the taps.

  Gauguin’s voice, too faint to hear.

  Civilisations are born and galaxies die, but has it been long enough?

  A slow drip on my right shoulder, a leaking pipe from the sink above, I feel each drop roll down my skin like the first river across barren stones. The tap stops.

  The cupboard next to mine opens, I catch my breath, wait for someone else to catch it too; but no. They are pulling out cloths, perhaps, tissues or tea towels to mop their boss’s bloodied head.

  “What happened?” asks the woman who took my fingerprints.

  “I don’t know,” Gauguin replies, and then, oh blessed then, sacred words in whose breath are goddesses born, “I don’t remember.”

  I find that there are tears in my eyes, and I am shaking. I bite down on my own wrist to muffle the sound, remember, remember, the sand beneath my feet, the sun above, lines in my skin, I am now, I am Hope, breath and hope and now and…

  Words fly away from me.

  I push my awareness into my toes.

  I am my toes.

  The effort makes my head ache, but the shaking recedes.

  Trees grow, pyramids are built, flowers wither and die upon the vine, the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail.

  I am the wood of the cupboard that presses against my back.

  I am the darkness.

  In the room around me, people try to make sense of the scene.

  See diamonds on the table, covered in gunk.

  See blood on the floor.

  What lies are they building, I wonder, to justify this picture?

  A suitcase on the table, women’s clothes; clearly they found the thief’s baggage, but not the thief. Yes, now they concentrate, they can remember meeting the plane as it landed, but the seat next to Gauguin was empty, the bird had flown. They remember driving through the city streets, searching the thief’s baggage, finding the diamonds.

  And now?

  Someone had crept up behind Gauguin and hit him over the head, clearly, in order to rob them. Yes: that must be what happened. How did the thief get in? How did he get out? Why did the diamonds remain?

  Minds strained under the effort of making sense of this scene, and confidence began to crack.

  When confidence fails, routine kicks in.

  Search the building, search the streets!

  I am the wood.

  I am darkness.

  “Did you see who attacked you?” demands one man.

  “No,” replied Gauguin. “I didn’t.”

  His men searched the building, but not enough, nothing to see, nothing here, just some old pipes, broken cupboards, the thief long gone.

  Footsteps move across the concrete, the tap runs above my head.

  I am water.

  Cars come, cars go.

  I get pins and needles in my feet and want to laugh; cramp in my back and want to cry.

  I am my vertebrae. I do not mind the pain.

  And slowly, everyone forgets.

  They do not forget that Gauguin has been attacked – that is a bloody reality that cannot be shaken. Nor do they forget the diamonds on the table, the passports they have taken from me, the credit cards in my name. They might remember my fingerprints too, but perhaps in their minds they are prints lifted from my luggage, DNA sweeps from my clothes, the details blur, imagination fills in.

  I think the light might be fading outside, but it could be my imagination, eyes changing in the dark. I read a study once of people who were confined in perfect, silent darkness for forty-eight hours; some took only a few minutes before they began to hallucinate.

  I am goosebumps.

  I am a fusion of flesh. My arms are my legs, my legs are my chest, my head is my neck, my neck is my knees. I doubt I shall ever move again.

  Why do these men not find me?

  Because they are not looking.

  Footsteps in the workshop.

  A door shutting.

  A car driving away.

  I wait.

  I wait.

  A smell intruding on the senses, so gentle as to be barely noticeable at first, a trick of the mind, a manifestation of my own inertia: burning toast.

  I wait.

  The smell gets stronger.

  A hint of petrol.

  A moment where the rational mind says that a thing cannot be so, and the more intelligent, unconscious brain replies with a bang-on retort of “fuck that shit; of course it fucking is”.

  Of course the fucking workshop is on fire.

  I push the cupboard door open, flop out onto the floor. The smaller of the two fires has been started in the sofa, accelerated by a can of petrol, but is growing fast. The larger, more impressive threat is in the far corner of the building, fuelled by an unknown propellant, and already licking at the ceiling, smoke filling the top of the room. Squatting at the sink, I throw water over myself, soak my arms up to the shoulders, push my head beneath the tap, cover my face with my sleeve, crawl on my hands and knees along the floor beneath the pall, reach the door, push it, find it’s locked.

  Standing up, the smoke makes my eyes water.

  I drive my shoulder into the door, throw my full weight against it, but it will not budge, and I cannot breathe.

  I drop back down onto my hands and knees; haul in air. Steam rolls off my sodden clothes.

  I look for another way out, but it’s getting hard to see.

  Fire procedures, what did I remember about tackling fire?

  wet clothes, wet face

  cloth across the mouth

  percentage of deaths from smoke inhalation, 50 – 80 per cent

  Cause of death

  respiratory trauma

  poison

  thermal damage to lungs

  I feel the hinges of the door, run my fingers over the lock, concentrate.

  carbon monoxide poisoning

  CO bonds with haemoglobin in the blood, giving it its red appearance

  Two locks, one a fairly simple mortise lock that I could beat with a fork and a bit of time, the other heavy-duty, need a knife or a piece of metal, something to get leverage with

  unlike O2, CO will not separate from the haemoglobin, continues circulating

  treatment for CO poisoning and smoke inhalation: hydrated oxygen

  Can’t see, the black smoke throws the light of the fire around

  oxygen toxicity: too much oxygen in the body tissues

  central nervous system damage

  retinal damage

  pulmonary damage, only really a problem in a hypobaric chamber

  or undersea

  or in

  pressurised conditions

  My fingers fall away from the lock.

  I am

  the fire

  I am

  my fingers

  I am

  crawling

  Climb on a table away from the fire, window furthest from the fire, smash what’s left of the glass

  eyes closed

  breathe

  smoke running out

  my face

  my skin

  can’t open my eyes, just darkness

  cold air

  hot smoke

  breathe

  the tiny hairs in my nose are burning, I feel the air scald my throat

  I am

  breath

  I am

  fire

  I am

  darkness.

  The darkness is me.

  Chapter 28

  I dream, and I dream of a fantasy that could be Parker.

  It must be fantasy, since
I cannot remember a thing about him. What do I actually know about this man from Maine?

  The me-that-met-him wrote some impressions down, as we shared pancakes and coffee in a café off Seventh Avenue.

  Parker: Who Is He?

  Surprisingly funny, talkative (he talks because the alternative is silence), passionate about music to the point of obsession, kind to strangers. Today I have seen him chat to a homeless man from the Bronx for half an hour, grill a waitress about the history of her tattoo, perform coin magic for a pair of marvelling five-year-old twins on the train, entertaining them while their mum comforted a shrieking baby. A show-off. Fearsome in his hatred of the news in the US, dismissive of politics.

  Flashes of melancholy, sometimes laughs too loud, too high. His opinions often flare into certainties – an insistence that the Tale of Genji was written during the Kemmu Restoration, and he sulks, proper sulks, for ten minutes when I prove him wrong. Envious of celebrity to the point of contempt, bitterness inflecting his words. “They’re just people,” he says, “just fucking people”, and yet his knowledge of who said what and who was seen at what party is encyclopaedic.

  Erudite, to the point of obsession. Am I the same? I can’t help but measure myself by him, the only equivalence I have ever met. Constantly on his phone, constantly double-checking the world around him. We order pancakes; he looks up the history of maple syrup.

  Nanabozho, he says. Trickster god of the first peoples, credited sometimes with the invention of maple syrup. At the Sugar Moon, first full moon of spring, the tribes of the north would celebrate the coming of warmer days by tapping the trees, collecting sap until the rising temperatures of the forest made the sugars less sweet, unpalatable.

  “How many cultures,” he muses, “so far apart, have gods that delight to play tricks.”

  More letters, memorabilia. A menu from the diner where we ate the pancakes – I remember eating a lot of pancakes, until my belly ached with it, which was not my normal pattern of behaviour, and now I think about it, perhaps it does make sense that some figure I can’t remember was there too, encouraging gluttony.