But the world had fallen together in this way, as it was bound to do, because the gradual unfolding of our selves over time was a condition of our existence. I had to be here, now. I had to go back to the Shard in just a few hours and look for ways to stop Blades, just as Blades had to do what he could to convince the world that foreigners were plotting against us. Lieve had to try and have her baby, just as I had to feel that she had broken my trust. But if Blades blew up the Shard tomorrow, with us on it, I’d never see her again. I looked at my watch. 10 p.m. I was due to be picked up at 6 a.m. If I cycled to Lieve’s house I could still get a few hours’ sleep. I siphoned off some of the GOMORRAH into a smaller spray bottle and slotted it into the sidekick holster, the escaped fumes as corrosive as a thousand onions. When I could see again, I picked up the grappling hook and the titanium scraper, which could serve as a blunt instrument if things got hairy. Tomorrow was going to be a big day.
19
Absent Without Lieve
I cycled as fast as I could to Lieve’s house. My thighs felt like they were disintegrating with heat. I cycled and cycled for what seemed like an age, switching down gears until I didn’t feel I was travelling any faster than if I had walked. It felt as though I was cycling uphill, though London was flat. Really, no more waffles. I’d have to find a healthier source of energy in the mornings. Cheese on toast or something.
I parked my bike and fumbled around in the dark with the chain lock, which rattled in protest. I was panting and clammy with sweat. More than clammy, in fact – I was sopping, my T-shirt several shades darker than when I had left. I stood by Lieve’s door trying to catch my breath, hands on hips like a folk dancer, and heard the rustle of key in lock. Lieve appeared, towering over the threshold, wearing her silk gown. She didn’t seem especially pleased to see me.
‘Did you predict my arrival?’ I panted.
‘Go away,’ she said.
‘No,’ I replied.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I was just locking my—’
‘At my house?’
‘I need to talk to you,’ I said.
‘No, Günter, I can’t have this. Do you even know what time it is? I need to sleep, and so does the baby.’
She made to close the door but I put my hand against the cool frosted glass. She was a powerful woman and could make sure it shut if she really wanted.
‘Please. Let me inside. It’s cold out here and I’m all sweaty.’
‘You always know the right thing to say,’ she sneered and backed off down the hallway.
I followed and she threw me a towel before clicking the kettle on.
‘I have something important to tell you.’
‘So important that you had to keep me up in the middle of the night?’
‘Yes.’
She glanced over, dropping her guard, poured out mint tea and came to sit with me.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘I wanted to talk to you about the baby issue, tonight, in case … In case …’
‘I don’t think this baby is an issue,’ she said authoritatively.
‘Well they always say the first step is denial.’
She put her hand on my cheek and kissed me. ‘When you see its little face, you’ll change your mind.’
‘I’m not saying I hate babies’ faces. Of course it’ll look loveable. And I think I might be a really good dad, one day. But I don’t think I’m going to be a very good dad in eight months’ time.’
‘Then you don’t have to be involved.’
‘What kind of a person would I be if I didn’t want to be involved?’
She hugged me tightly. ‘I knew you’d change your mind.’
‘No!’ I said, wriggling free. ‘I haven’t changed my mind. I still don’t think it’s a good idea for us to have a baby now. Why didn’t you ask me?’
‘But you’ll be there for it.’
‘If you decide to have this baby, I can’t turn my back on it, because a child needs love and stability, but I’d rather we weren’t having one right now, which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love it. I’m not saying you can’t be a single mother because there are lots of good single mothers but if you want the best for the kid then it’s preferable for it to have a mum and a dad. It’s not about just having a child to have one, it’s about having a child that feels loved and grows up happy. What if it grows up miserable and weird because I’m such a bad father?’
I thought I’d come off sounding quite reasonable, but rather than appreciating the soundness of my argument, she started to cry.
‘You don’t want to have a baby with me. You don’t want me to be the mother of your child.’
‘I think you’d be a brilliant mother,’ I cooed. ‘It’s just the situation. I’m not ready.’
‘I thought you’d come round, if I just waited. I thought you might actually want to have a baby with me. Here I am in this big, dusty house; half the rooms I don’t even use, and you’re still sleeping on the floor in some horrid shag pad—’
‘It’s really not a shag pad.’
‘—and I thought that you might eventually want to move in, maybe not now but soon, and we’d have a baby, and my life might be back on track again. But no, I’ll just kill it then, shall I?’
‘Well, it’s not alive yet but …’ I let the end of the sentence trail along, like wind under a falling leaf. ‘I suppose it just worries me a little that this might not be about us. That I might just be interchangeable. You want a family, but not necessarily with me. I just happened to come along. Should we really have a baby together just because our meeting was neatly timed?’
She wiped a forearm across her face like a builder on a hot day and her cheek shined with smudged tears. Her mouth hung slightly open and I could see the tip of her tongue. Something stirred in my trousers and I silently chided myself for losing focus. We were having a proper talk. We never had a proper talk. It was very important that I did not think about sex. Lovely, lovely sex.
‘So you really believe that love is unique?’ she asked me. ‘Doesn’t it seem odd to you that, all through history, people have been fucking whoever is next to them, falling in love in tiny villages where they don’t meet anyone new? People just see who’s around them and pick. If two people get stuck on a desert island they still pair off. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you stick a load of men in prison together, even they pair off. What were you waiting for? This is what happens, Günter. You don’t know how you’re going to find someone, and then someone comes along, and if you’re sensible you make the best of it.’
I sat sullen.
‘Not very romantic,’ I mumbled.
‘No, Günter, it’s not. Maybe it’s different for you with your big ideas but life isn’t very romantic for me. To be perfectly honest it’s pretty laughable, what I’ve had to put up with. Everyone starts off believing in fairytale love. And you get over it, too.’
I tried not to sulk. ‘Can I put my hand on your stomach?’ I heard myself say.
‘What?’
‘Can I, um? Feel your stomach?’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’
She softened a little. ‘Fine.’
She undid her dressing gown. Her breasts had grown even bigger, and through her sturdy frame, I could see the beginnings of a swelling just above her pelvis. Perhaps I was imagining it. I reached out and tentatively put my fingers on her.
‘Cold hands,’ she said.
‘Well, I’ve been cycling.’
‘You have poor circulation. You need to do more exercise.’
I didn’t know why I was doing this. I knew I didn’t want to have a baby, not any time soon. I suspected that I was acting out of morbid curiosity, or masochism. I had seen fatherhood. It made people grumpy and boring and exhausted.
‘What is that?’ asked Lieve, sitting up.
‘It’s a grappling hook.’
‘What possible use could you have for a grappling hook?’
she asked.
‘Well, it … I don’t know. For climbing things.’
‘Were you going to break in?’
‘Oh no – don’t worry, nothing like that. No, it’s just that I think your ex-husband is going to try to blow up the Shard tomorrow.’
‘What?’
‘I think he’s going to try—’
‘What in God’s name makes you think that?’
‘Well, the racism was my first clue. He keeps talking about fascism.’
‘He reads a lot of history.’
‘Exactly. On his white board upstairs there are all these references to secret right-wing societies like the Cagoule—’
‘That’s my white board,’ she said.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘A year or two ago I helped some American academics solve the murder of my grandmother, Laetitia Toureaux.71 John didn’t care what I was up to then and I very much doubt he’s started to since.’
‘Okay, so that wasn’t him. But I have other evidence. He’s said things—’
‘Günter, you don’t know him like I do.’ My gut burned with jealousy. ‘He likes to provoke people. He doesn’t believe half the stuff he says, he just enjoys baiting liberals. It’s one of his less endearing habits. He likes the idea that people talk about him all the time; it’s as if he really believes that any publicity is good publicity.’
‘I can’t think of a better talking point than blowing up a building,’ I said.
‘He’s not a violent man,’ she said.
‘Maybe he’s changed.’
She picked up the grappling hook and put it in the cupboard under the stairs, next to the hoover. ‘You’re not having that back until after you’ve finished all those windows.’
‘What if he’s really planning something awful?’
‘I just don’t think he is,’ she replied.
‘Well, it can’t hurt to be vigilant, can it?’
I followed her eyes to the clock. I had about three hours until work. This was the danger zone. If I slept now, I’d probably be more tired, or even omit to wake at all. No, I had to stay awake at all costs.
‘I think I have to go,’ I said, taking my hand away.
‘What are we going to do about us?’ she asked.
‘Are you absolutely sure you’re going to have this baby?’
‘Yes.’
I nodded. ‘Then there is no point in us arguing. You are having the baby, so I’ll be there. I might be bad at it, but I will be there. I never know how to do the right thing. But I do know that I couldn’t bear to have a child that didn’t know me, or couldn’t call on me. Life is hard enough without losing a parent before you have begun. It is like trying to live with a chunk carved out of your innards. You don’t know how much damage it is doing, no one does. Nothing can take its place.’
‘Not until you have someone of your own to look after,’ she replied.
We stood up.
‘I wish I didn’t have to go,’ I said.
‘It’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow night.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Definitely.’
I opened the front door to the chill winds and Lieve pulled her gown tightly around her. I kissed her soft lips passionately – the last kiss I ever gave her – and stepped out into the dark.
20
In the End
I became aware of Archimedes nipping at my ankle, the little bastard, and hot rain falling on my head. I realised I was naked and vertical. I had fallen asleep in the shower. I stumbled out, taking out a couple of the shower’s curtain rings, and found my phone. Seven missed calls. I was very, very late.
I threw on my clothes, gathered up my equipment, strapped myself into my pouches and holsters and ran outside. Frank was outside, reading his little book.
‘Frank, I’m so sorry.’
‘That’s all right,’ he squeaked. ‘I’ve been doing some reading.’
‘What is that book you’re always reading?’ I asked.
‘New one every week. Police procedurals.’
‘Oh. Any good?’
‘Yeah. Reckon I could get away with a murder if I done one now.’
He opened the door and I sat inside. The seat hugged me, but my quads and bottom ached. Frank got in the other side and we took off, the acceleration forcing my head back onto the headrest. I let the orchestra wash over me as we sped down alleys and up one-way streets, just inches from skips and the sleeping homeless. I still found it amazing that he’d never hit anyone.
‘Have you been working with Blades for a while?’ I asked as we passed Monument.72
‘Years.’
‘Would you say you know him pretty well?’
‘Better than he thinks. I overhear a lot. He doesn’t take much notice of me because I’m black. He’s a bit of a prick like that.’
‘Oh.’ I let the thought hang for a moment. ‘Has he ever talked about, ah, fascism? Getting rid of foreigners, that sort of thing?’
‘Yeah, it’s his favourite party piece. Mostly when he’s drunk.’
‘And it doesn’t bother you? Working for a guy like that?’
‘Why would it bother me? I’ll take as much of his money as he wants to give me.’
‘You know what I like about you, Frank? You’re imperturbable.’
He nodded appreciatively, and we said no more.
When I arrived at the Shard, the sun was already up and I could see the platforms out like little magnets stuck to the side of the building. There were almost no clouds and, even through my glasses, the world seemed drawn in crisp lines, the angles and shadows of the building sharp and clear.
I went in on my own to see the site manager, who gave me a pass. It was a long and lonely lift to base camp, where everyone’s bags and lunch boxes sat in heaps on the floor. There was no point in trying to get out there now, I could hardly shimmy down a cable and commence work. I looked around the newly furnished floors, watching people sweep up dust and fit mirrors behind drinks bars.
One of the gondolas was stationed where I was, so I decided to go out. I waved my pass at a nosy cleaning lady and wandered up to the sixty-sixth-floor maintenance deck. It was the second day that we’d had no wind, and I could see the steel mesh cables that were holding the cradle below, taut and near vertical. It was a beautiful day. From here, the higher part of the building mirrored the sky, a cool blue with one lone lamb of a cloud drifting in to meet its reflection. The sun was really up now, and soothed my goosebumps. I took a great breath, and soaked it all up. Perhaps I would go and get a glass of water.
I was just on my way back in when I spotted one of the video cameras, lying on its back, as if sunbathing. Someone had obviously forgotten to take it with them and left it there. I picked it up and looked at the screen. The video timer was running down, and not up, as I would have expected. And why would they have been recording the sky?
It was really heavy. And there would be tens of other cameras, all the same, stationed around the whole building. All of them heavy. All counting down. Ticking down towards zero. Heavy, ticking electronics, all over the building. Ticking.
My first instinct, when I realised that the camera was a bomb, was to throw it over the side, but I obviously couldn’t do that. I ran back in, grabbed a spare sheet of cardboard and wrote, OUT OF ORDER. I taped the sign to the inside of one of the lifts and put the camera inside. Then I gathered any others I could see, and took the lift up as far as it would go, to the highest level where there were offices. Above it, there were only stairs up to what was once supposed to be a radiator system, but had already been repurposed. I went up to the roof and found another camera there. There were a couple more on what would become the tourists’ viewing platform, and a few in the service lift. I took the cameras I’d found and rode to the ground floor. I explained what I could to Frank. We carried the cameras out together, leaving them in his car boot.
‘What are we going to do with all the bombs?’ I asked frantically.
&n
bsp; ‘Loads of time before they go off. You go back up there and keep him distracted,’ said Frank, waving his little book. ‘He might have some kind of remote control trigger. He’ll be going on his break now. I’ll phone the muck once you’re back out on the cradles, he’ll be helpless by then.’
I looked back up at the summit, and true enough, it looked like they were all coming in for lunch. I went back inside and made for the lift.
At base camp, the people were just coming in, chatting excitably. I didn’t know who was in on the plot, so I thought it best to steer clear of the cameras-are-bombs issue entirely. People ate sandwiches and drank tea from thermal flasks. Generally the mood was upbeat, but I kept looking out for signs that one of them might be preparing their last rites. Someone handed me a coffee which I gulped down. I’d had almost no sleep and hadn’t eaten since the previous night. Come to think of it, all I’d had then was a whisky and half a steak.
Blades found me and split me off from a cluster.
‘What happened this morning? I thought you were a team player.’
‘I’m sorry, I …’ I couldn’t believe I was apologising to the man.
‘Forget it. So,’ he said, slapping me hard on the back, ‘did you see the Palace game last night?’
‘Oh. Um, yes. Yeah. It was good. A good match.’
Blades smiled, showing off his canines. ‘There wasn’t a Palace game last night, you kiss-ass. Don’t think I can’t see through you.’
He moved off to talk to others, and I was left alone.
‘You all right mate? You look a bit white.’ Pete was getting a bottle of Lucozade from his holdall by my foot. He looked up at me with a childlike concern.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine thanks. How about you? Have you got anything fun planned over the weekend?’
‘Nah, nothing much mate. Gotta live in the moment. Anyways, after today I’ll probably be out for the count. You?’
‘Might catch up with relatives,’ I said. Out for the count, eh? I’d had him down as a good guy.
I got a text from Frank, telling me he was taking the cameras out of range of Blades and whatever happened, we should rendezvous at 3 p.m. Where should he meet me?
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