84k

by Claire North

  In a rare fit of humour he decides that the cause of his death is “murdered in jealous sexual rage,” and laughs into his fingers, and still can’t make the value of his life worth more than a bedsit in Holloway, excluding stamp duty.

  Chapter 29

  The Hector spent a night in Cosgrove. The boat they’d seen before was moored next to Neila’s, but the lights were off, generator silent and no one home. Neila went to the water pump and found it iced up. When, after a few hits with a wrench, the handle began to move, air chunked and water did not flow. No one was manning the diesel station, and the hoses were dry.

  Wrapped in scarf and hat, glove and coat, they went looking for someone in charge, knocking on the shut door of the brick house that guarded the lock gates. No one answered. Neila sucked in breath and said, “Let’s tie up properly and come back later.”

  They tied off to bollards, hunkered down by the stove to eat and listen to the radio.

  Next morning went to look

  no one home.

  As the sun went down went to look

  no one answered.

  At 8 p.m. Neila stepped outside to get another log off the roof from under the tarpaulin and saw a light burning in the house by the lock.

  “Theo!”

  They nearly ran, Theo clutching his side beneath his coat, back up to the lock gate, hammering on the door.

  A woman, thin white beard beginning to sprout from between the squashed plum of her chin, answered.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello ma’am good evening ma’am we’re looking to buy some water and diesel and also to empty the waste tank ma’am …”

  “Now?”

  “We’re heading north, Nottingham, it would be—”

  “It’s two quid a litre.”

  “For the …”

  “Water.”

  “Ma’am, two pounds for the—”

  “It’s better than what you’ll get further up the canal. I’m fair. Others aren’t fair. I’m fair. Do you doubt me?”

  Neila hesitated, blinking in the light of the door, Theo a huddled shadow behind her. “And how much for the diesel?”

  Daylight robbery I have never I have never been so in all my days it’s not how it’s not

  Theo strapped the lock-box shut on the roof of Neila’s boat and let her talk, snapped the padlock in place

  what does she even think charging that much we’re a community we treat each other as—she can’t set prices like that it’s absolutely

  Neila’s rant paused only briefly as she popped open the waste tank, the flood of shit and chemicals slamming into her face, making her eyes water as she slid the pipe in.

  And the way she spoke, the way she looked at me did you see the way she looked at me—well if she’d said something I would have just given her a piece of my mind

  Theo flinched as the stench of liquid faeces hit him, carried by the faint southerly breeze.

  Around the boat thin ice was beginning to form, millimetres clouding into centimetres, he prodded it with a stick and it buckled and cracked into thin wedges.

  Never coming here ever again never even going to bother to

  “You all right?”

  The woman from the hut, she-who-sold-overpriced-diesel, stood behind the beam of her torch, looking down the towpath towards the Hector and its ranting captain.

  Neila rose, the pipe in her hand vibrating as waste sloshed through it, mouth open mid-expletive. “I brought you ginger biscuits,” added the woman, shuffling towards the boat. “Keep you strong.”

  She laid a foil packet on top of the boat next to Theo and patted it fondly, like a baked pet. “Well,” she added. “There it is.”

  Walked away.

  Neila and Theo stood in silence as the stars burst out across the sky.

  In the morning the ice cracked easily when Theo poked it from the stern of the boat with the end of a broom handle. Neila hummed and hahhed and wasn’t sure if they should stay and wait for it to melt or whether they risked being trapped here if it thickened and in the end

  they stayed

  and ate ginger biscuits.

  By two in the afternoon the ice had retreated a little, and Neila took three starts to get the engine going, and insisted on steering just in case, just because, and they headed towards Northampton.

  Chapter 30

  Time is

  There was a Theo who lived in the past; there was this man alone whose life is worth no more than a single bed in north London and he is …

  not the man who Theo is now.

  Because the man called Theo is

  walking to school with his baby girl, her hand in his

  the first day at school she comes back and babbles, babbles about all that it was and he is a little sad when she’s not looking she’s so grown-up already it was so

  and the man called Theo is

  disappointed in her first choice of boyfriend, but that’s fine these things happen, it’s not fate or destiny she can make her choices and learn from her mistakes and he will be there for her if he is needed without forcing her to choose and

  All these things, of course

  are not real.

  Lucy Rainbow Princess was sold to a fashion company specialising in parties for parents who knew their kids were destined to be on the stage and have million-dollar smiles and be the envy of all the other children at school

  Lucy Rainbow Princess was arrested while drunk when she was twelve

  spent her days forging five-star reviews for online retail companies

  burned the gym to the ground

  laughed at the flames

  there’s a market for

  Lying awake in the dark, Theo Miller tries not to do maths, and can’t stop himself.

  If Lucy Cumali was born in March, at full term, she must have been conceived in July of the previous year. These things aren’t exact, so +/− two weeks either side of her actual conception date to account for premature or delayed birth, that’s a four-week window of opportunity. Assuming that Dani was having sex with Andy the national average—once a week, rising a little for the age range or the fact that Scotland seemed to do it more—call it 1.4 times a week, adjusting for menstruation

  odds were that during the likely conception window Dani Cumali could have had sex at least 4.2 times

  4.2 is a ludicrous number how do you have sex .2 of a time although there’d been some encounters back in the day but …

  Call it 4 times within the probable window of conception.

  And only one of those times had been with Theo and he was so certain …

  Even though memory is not always …

  Four times. That means there’s only really a 25 per cent chance that Lucy is his daughter.

  In Tulse Hill, Theo Miller, the one who did maths and then pretended to do law, stares at the ceiling and does not sleep.

  On the canal, Theo watches the reflection of fire on water and knows that if he does not find Lucy Cumali, he will waste away to a shadow, and there will be no colour in the sky, and he will never feel the touch of rain on his skin again.

  Chapter 31

  At the Ministry of Civic Responsibility the security man said:

  “Ah here we go, Dani Cumali, cleaning staff, outside contractor, worked the night she—yes yes here it is logged in on and logged out on all here all written down proper proper as they say.”

  And Theo said, “I’m auditing her murder, there’s financial irregularities in the assessment—we have to cover ourselves against liability for a misfiled claim against the prosecution if …”

  They gave him access to the CCTV records because he seemed a nice man, utterly harmless, and why wouldn’t they?

  Sitting in a booth behind the security office.

  Fast-forwarding endless film of working day.

  Stop talk cup of coffee machine is playing up again and

  oh my God he said she said he said shall we go to the

  WHY DOES THIS ELEVATOR ALWAYS T
AKE SO LONG hey it’s here now bing!

  holding hands

  letting go

  Lives lived at high speed a moment of tenderness is

  gone

  a flaming shouting match you stupid stupid how could you how could you be so

  sorted now smile on the way to the

  For a few weary moments Theo finds himself fixating on the potted plant in one corner of the screen. If he watches it long enough, will he see it grow?

  Then he realises he’s drifting to sleep, and shakes himself, and stands up and gets bad coffee from the bad coffee machine, and returns to the desk, and forces himself to sit right on the edge of his chair and try again.

  topping up the fruit bowl

  sneaky playing with the phone under the desk no one will notice if

  laying down the law on a matter of

  lights go out

  lights turn on somewhere else

  go out

  turn on.

  Dani walks in.

  Here she is.

  Alive.

  Dani is alive, only a few weeks in the past, right in front of his eyes.

  He leans in so close his nose skims the screen, slows everything down to half speed, watches her turn on the spot, swimming through a digital fog.

  She wears cleaning uniform, a new badge pinned to her chest.

  The uniform is blue, but Theo only knows this because he’s seen it before. On the screen it could be anything, any different shade of grey.

  For a moment she looks at the camera, she might be looking at him, and the shock of it is so great he falls back in his chair like a man punched in the chest

  and realises he wants to look away

  and forces himself to watch.

  Dani arriving at the service entrance, filling in paperwork on her first day, yes she’s been checked she’s got the—hold on it’s right here it’s …

  Big duffel bag full of clothes to change into and cleaning products because she likes to bring some of her own she often thinks the stuff you have here is, well …

  The security guard searches her bag on the first two days, then gets bored and gives up and smiles her through, known now, how you doing luv how you

  Dani cleaning.

  Desks.

  Computer screens.

  Taking the trash out.

  Scrubbing the toilets.

  Scouring the sinks.

  Emptying the grounds from the coffee machine. Who’d have thought something that made a drink that bad had anything organic in it?

  She leaves the trash bags by the lift, to take downstairs with her in a big bundle of white.

  Collects them as the last act of her work.

  Goes into the lift

  downstairs

  emerges

  vanishes off screen

  reappears a few seconds later on a different camera

  vanishes

  reappears

  puts the trash in big green bins round the back of the building and is

  the same

  the same

  the same

  three—four—days

  Theo’s nose drifts back towards the screen. Even the face of Dani cannot keep him awake, dead Dani dead, he didn’t actually see her die he didn’t see her face with the bullet in it until the photo came but he knew and still has a place to doubt the truth

  dead Dani dead.

  On the fifth day she gets into the elevator with three bags of white trash

  leaves the camera

  emerges

  vanishes

  emerges

  goes to the bins with

  two bags of trash.

  Theo sits up, head foggy, mind adrift, looks again.

  Two bags of trash.

  She puts them in the bins and vanishes.

  Stays out of camera shot for nearly five minutes.

  Re-emerges, swiping her security badge out at the service door and

  does not look at the security camera and

  leaves.

  Theo scours the cameras.

  He can’t see can’t find any sign of

  the third bag.

  Looks again.

  Arrives, cleans, collects the trash, gets into the lift, gets out of the lift, turns the corner with her three bags of

  re-emerges into the camera shot carrying only two.

  Theo went downstairs, following half-seen geography captured on CCTV, stepped into the dead zone in the lower corridors, pipes overhead, foil wrapped around the heating units, walls that had once been painted green, then yellow, and were now a chipped collage of both.

  Walked through the place where the cameras didn’t see.

  Found the room on his second sweep.

  Inside: a shredder, a photocopier, a stool and a sign showing the price of postage and packaging for oversized letters nine years ago. Very little of the equipment had been used for a long time. A single fluorescent tube shone overhead, flanked either side by two broken friends. A big green bin behind the shredder contained the soft tattered strings of graphs and documents long ago destroyed, letters and numbers forming strange dunes as he ran his fingers through them. He dug down into the paper, not for any particular reason other than the pleasure of sensation, and found the newspapers.

  He pulled them out.

  Trashy tabloids, free at the local Underground station, 40 per cent advertising, 50 per cent celebrity pop-talk, 8 per cent sport and 2 per cent rumours of death and environmental catastrophe in less important places than here.

  affair scandal actor pop icon party drunk exposed footballer pregnancy sex naked downturn argument divorce

  He pulled out a wedge and checked the date. The last was from a few days ago, and once he dug deeper, he found nearly thirty copies.

  He drifted back to the security booth, replayed Dani’s movements on that date.

  Arrive

  upstairs

  clean

  vacuum

  take the trash down

  three bags in the elevator two when she

  He froze the image just as she vanished out of frame, thought about what he was seeing. Her entrance and her exit both took her past the room with the shredder. He zoomed in on her arriving, exiting, looked at the duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

  Bulky both ways in, but on the way out the shape had changed.

  Sat back to think.

  Began to laugh, and had to stop himself abruptly when a guard popped his head inside the booth to make sure he was all right.

  In the evening.

  He looked up “Danesmoor” from an internet café in Bermondsey.

  Ancestral home. Nice garden. Areas open to the public four days a week, guided tours on the first and third Sundays of the month. Family seat of the Marquess of Mantell, title currently held by Philip Arnslade son of Helen Arnslade wife of …

  He stopped.

  Got himself another coffee, even though the first was still buzzing through his mind.

  Sat back again. Looked up Helen Arnslade. A picture of a woman, mid-sixties, posed formally besides a bust of her dead husband, pearls at her neck, hands clasped, proud of her home, dedicated to her duty. The captain read: “Lady Helen Continues to Set the Standard for the Shooting Season.”

  The photo was from several years ago. On the next page was an image of her son, proudly sporting a double-barrelled shotgun and a felt cap. He couldn’t find anything more recent. No interviews, appearances, social media; just silence and a formal picture of a woman with sealed lips who knew how to throw a party for men who liked their meat bloody.

  There’s this woman, her name is Helen, she’s seen the pits, she’s got the …

  Dani hadn’t said anything more about the woman called Helen. It was a common enough name. In its way.He looked at the picture of her son, forced himself to stare.

  The face was familiar to everyone, in the distracted way of someone everyone knew without knowing how. The minister of fiscal efficiency had long been tipped for t
he top job; tipped so long that people were beginning to speculate he had other plans altogether. Something in the Company, perhaps. He’d worked for the Company before politics. The Company liked to share its expertise with government; things were so much easier when you spoke the same language.

  Light brown hair on a face of long curves drooping down towards a winning, stapled smile; a swell of forehead above the eyes, a sudden drop into sallowness, another burst of bone below at high cheekbones, a long droop into the cheeks and a final, triumphant protuberance of expression at his lips, as they danced, delighted, around phrases like:

  “The ongoing strong economic growth in the services sector is a direct consequence of cutting taxes to those ordinary decent working middle-class people who give so much to the nation.”

  Theo had seen that face when it was younger. It had been the face of a man who couldn’t understand why a woman whose education had been paid for by his father didn’t appreciate the full nature of her commitments.

  Philip Arnslade pulls the trigger by the river, and a boy dies, and as he dies, the boy who will be Theo thinks he falls too, watches the sky wheel overhead, feels the bullet in his lung, drinks blood and cannot breathe, the grass is wet and the earth punches into his back as he hits the ground and he cannot move can’t believe that he cannot move as Philip Arnslade of Danesmoor Hall walks over and

  Philip Arnslade is a king, born to rule, and nothing stands in his way.

  As the night settled

  Theo returned to Sidcup.

  Three women guarded the estate, as always. One had a child on her lap, another lost in thought, or prayer.

  “Who are you?” demanded one, and immediately another:

  “I remember him. He was here when Dani died.”

  Hostility, plain and clear, one woman reaching for her pocket, the child sat bouncing on her mother’s knee glaring, her face a fixture of compressed concentration and dislike, he had no idea one so young could find such depth of feeling in her soul.

  “I was Dani’s friend,” he replied, hands folded in front of him, back straight, head down. “I knew her from Shawford.”

  “Could be anyone”

  “Can’t trust”