84k

by Claire North

  And the world said, “Fuck right off thank you what we really want to know is what kind of implants you got for your tits and backside.”

  That had been confusing, for a little while, but she’d joined the rat race and got great tits and a great backside, and the world had seemed generally content with her, as long as she played the game.

  Right up to the moment when she hadn’t, and the friends she thought mattered to her, and made her whole, had told her that they didn’t like hanging out with someone who wasn’t like them, and what did she even think she was doing in those God-awful shoes?

  The years that followed had been hard. The Neila she had believed herself to be turned out to be more frail than she’d thought. The self-confidence and charisma she projected was only that, a veil draped over the gossamer of her soul, and when the veil was torn, so was she.

  She’d bought the Hector on a whim, with some romantic idea about life on the canals. She’d stuck with it, because having decided that this was a thing she cared about, the idea of admitting that she was wrong would be the last blow to any notion of who Neila was.

  Who she aspired to be.

  And over time she had found a certain something that kept her going, rituals and repetitions that drove her north and south, through the Midlands and along the old coal ways of the country.

  She was fine.

  She was alone, and she was among the communities of the water, and she was fine.

  Then she sailed with someone else and it was …

  easier

  simple

  different.

  Every hour of every day she’d sworn she’d throw Theo off at the next lock. She did not need another person. Other people would only make her world unsteady, rip apart without even meaning to the woven confidence she’d created around the frail cocoon of self. Other people were a goddamn mistake.

  She cranked the gate on the lock, her breath coming out in great huffing clouds

  Pushed her back against the long timber braces

  heaved

  heaved

  heaved

  paused to catch her breath as the gate swung open.

  Returned to the Hector

  started the engine

  sailed into the lock

  gunned the engine down to idle

  climbed onto land

  heaved

  heaved

  the lock gate shut

  waited

  cranked

  heaved

  drove

  heaved

  cranked

  drove

  After four lock gates the shirt beneath her jumper was soaked with sweat, and her fingers were blue and white at the tips, and more than anything she wished the man called Theo was there too.

  She sailed and did not see the man called Theo.

  A desperation a terror she

  Three of coins, king of coins, the Tower, nine of cups, ace of cups, knave of cups, the Priest, seven of swords, the Hanged Man (inverted).

  Seeing the Hanged Man land on her table, she nearly choked with relief, and kept on sailing.

  At Norton Junction she came across the Poet’s Rest. The coal barge was moored just before the turning into the Leicester Section and had no coal for sale except a couple of secret bags stored beneath the floor of the deck, which the owners gave to her at best discount because she was a friend, and they knew each other of old.

  Neila sat in the cabin and cut the hair of old Mrs. Lude, whose long white tresses hadn’t been touched for nearly two years, and who let only Neila cut them, and who burbled excited to see her friend and exclaimed:

  The flowers! So beautiful in the spring but first the snowdrops the snowdrops as they emerge the whiteness beneath the trees

  the bluebells in the forest

  the daffodils, first sign of spring, great fat bunches of daffodils getting everywhere how the bulbs spread how they

  the bees as they come to life for the lavender the …

  and Mr. Lude sat at the back and read his newspaper and smoked terrible, disgusting cigarettes that turned the roof of the cabin sticky and brown, and pretended not to enjoy his wife’s endless happiness.

  Once, Neila heard it said, Mrs. Lude caught a sexually transmitted disease which damaged her brain and left her perpetually upbeat, but if she caught it from her husband then it clearly hadn’t achieved the same effect on his disposition.

  Anyway, Neila didn’t believe a word of it. Some people were just delightful. Some people simply saw beauty in the world, even the winter, for the winter was nothing if not a promise of spring.

  Neila cut her hair, and did an okay job at it, and Mrs. Lude was ecstatic, and Neila returned to her own boat quickly, a bag of coal on her back, and sat up with one light on and watched the towpath, and did not see Theo.

  Lucy

  Rainbow Princess Lucy Cumali where are you now in his dreams the man called Theo watches the water and sees in its reflection …

  father and daughter there was so much he missed but in his dreams he holds her the day she is born he holds her and she is sleeping and so tiny yet oddly heavy too and there’s that thing that babies do that weird strength when they hold your little finger in their fist and they’re so strong it’s just incredible they’re …

  In his dreams Theo can skip over certain details. Someone else can clear up the baby poo. He heard that it can come in every imaginable colour, someone he knew once said her child’s poop was bright blue.

  In his dreams Theo pushes Lucy on the swings

  picks her up from school

  hides £1 under her pillow when her first tooth falls out, keeps hiding £1 until all her milk teeth are gone even though she long ago stopped believing in the tooth fairy

  helps her do her maths homework, he’d be good at that

  (very few fathers are good at that he knows this really but he’d be the exception because of how he’d respect her as a person as well as love her as his child)

  Someone else can tell Lucy about puberty all that business with sanitary towels and tampons. Obviously he’d help out if wanted, but not intrusively—by this time Lucy is becoming her own woman, she should be allowed to make her own choices and just know that her dad is there for her to love her no matter what.

  Funny thing. In his dreams, Dani isn’t there at all.

  Neila sailed, and out of the darkness there he was.

  A man sat on a bench by a lock, and did not smoke, and did not drink, and had no bag, and wore a coat very similar to the one that Theo wore, wool and fine and dark. For a moment her heart soared; but then look again. Not Theo. This man’s coat fitted him, and he had black leather gloves, and wore black leather shoes and he studied nothing much in particular until the Hector sailed into view, and then he studied it very much indeed, and studied her standing at the back, and as she approached he rose and called out, “Neil Madling?”

  Neila slowed as she neared the lock and didn’t answer. He stepped a little closer to the edge of the canal, watched patiently as she hopped down towards the low bollards, began to tie off, quick and sharp with the fraying blue mooring line.

  “Mr. Madling?” he repeated when the first rope was on. “My name is Markse.”

  “Neila,” she replied sharply, and the man called Markse looked again, and was briefly embarrassed, and nodded once.

  “I do apologise, ma’am. Is this your barge?”

  “It’s a boat, not a barge.”

  “A very beautiful vessel. Is there anyone else on board?”

  “No.”

  “Do you mind if I check?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. I’m afraid I may not have—”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “I am … still currently just with the Ministry of Security, I am—”

  “There’s no one on my boat except me.”

  “May I look?”

  “Why?”

  Markse hesitated, studying her face, watching as she tied off the second lin
e, stepped back onto the boat, one hand on the rudder, holding tight, an instinctive comfort. She glared into his silence, and for a while he seemed to contemplate several different answers before with an almost-shrug declaring, “Because in Northampton you helped a woman by the name of Marta, who stabbed one of the children in the middle of the night. You told the police you were alone, and Marta told the police nothing, but on the knife there were two sets of fingerprints. The second of these belong to a man called Theo Miller. I think he’s on your boat. May I come on board?”

  He came on board, starting at the prow and walking through to the stern.

  “Well, I do apologise for taking your time it would appear that—”

  “So get off my fucking boat.”

  He got off the fucking boat, stood on the bank, hands in pockets, smiling patiently. He was, Neila decided, a deeply ugly man, too tall, too thin, too pale. His hair was thinning on top, prematurely, and he didn’t have the grace to attempt a comb-over but just let the few limp strands that remained droop around his pale, pin-poked face. His nails were buffed and polished, a gentle vanity, and as Neila looked at him she realised she had seen him in the cards, and he was the Tower, and he was destruction, and he was the eye of the storm.

  They looked at each other and understood each other perfectly.

  “If you meet Mr. Miller will you tell him that I called? It concerns his daughter.”

  He held out a business card.

  It had his name and a telephone number on it, and that was all. She took the card, put it in her pocket and turned away.

  He waited a moment to see if she would look back, and when she didn’t, he nodded once and drifted back down the canal.

  Three hours later, she found Theo, sitting on the frozen grass by the water.

  He’d walked nearly fifty miles. In the end the cold had slowed him, and the thirst had brought him to a standstill.

  She slowed down, let the Hector’s momentum carry her past him to a stop.

  He looked up, slow and tired, saw her looking back and smiled.

  Wordlessly, she opened the stern door to the cabin, and he climbed on board.

  Chapter 37

  Nine days after Theo Miller’s body was buried in an unrecorded ceremony beneath a beech tree the headstone was removed and smashed.

  The boy who would be Theo watched, and didn’t speak, because this too was part of the discretion clause, this was what they had agreed to, no name, no body, no sign that Theo Miller had ever died.

  Fifteen years later the man called Theo Miller cycled to work and the work was:

  value of property stolen: £13,492

  value of life taken: £93,410

  value of rape: £8452

  value of sexual harassment: £3451.50

  value of

  the cost of doing

  he said go on, you know you want to you’re just playing hard to get you’re just

  victim’s impact statement was not as fluently written as we’d hoped so only £7590 for the price of

  the three kids obviously unable to pay and too young for sponsorship but the eldest was picked up by a private security force, they say they think he has a great deal of potential and want to see if he can handle an assault rifle before subcontracting him for special operations and …

  fifteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-two twenty-nine thousand four hundred and eighty-seven fifty-one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three

  It occurs to Theo that he has been selling slaves for the last nine years, and knew it but somehow managed not to understand that this was his profession.

  Chapter 38

  In the morning two men on motorbikes trailed Theo to work, and behind them a van idled in heavy traffic, and never quite seemed to get where it needed to be.

  Theo wondered how they’d found him, and thought that maybe Faris had betrayed him too.

  There wasn’t much to betray, but there were security cameras, credit checks, fingerprints on a linoleum table. He’d have found him, if he’d tried.

  He wondered why they didn’t just arrest him then and there, and when they didn’t, he began to pack.

  In the office no one talked to him.

  At lunch he ate alone, and took an apple to his desk to finish working while his corner was relatively quiet.

  When he cycled home, the motorbikes were on him again.

  He went for a run and at the bottom of the hill a man sat reading a newspaper and the same man was there when he came back and it was …

  That night he made stuffed aubergine with feta cheese, lentils, tomatoes.

  While eating the doorbell rang, and Mrs. Italiaander answered. A few moments later: “Mr. Miller, there’s someone to see you!”

  He opened the door to his bedroom, fork still in one hand, looked down the stairs towards the man waiting in the corridor below.

  “Mr. Miller? My name is Markse. Might I have a word?”

  They spoke in Theo’s room.

  Markse, cramped, constrained from his usual presence by pressing walls, perched on the chair by the desk. Theo sat cross-legged on the end of the bed, a half-eaten aubergine on a bright blue plate on the top of the duvet; a single unwise motion could cause a disaster of sauce and cheese.

  Markse looked around the room, taking his time, trying to read some sort of personality into the closed wardrobe, the way Theo had arranged his keys and wallet next to the laptop, the bicycle helmet hanging up by the towels on hooks behind the door, the not-life, a room without a heart, just a place to sleep and eat, no more.

  Shook his head, looked away, smiled at the floor, and kept the smile on his face as he looked up at Theo and said, “Do excuse my visit, but …”

  “It’s not a …”

  “From the Ministry of Security, I work for the Nineteen Committee I don’t know if you …”

  “Anti-terrorism.”

  “Indeed, yes that is part of our—but terrorism is a broad remit these days. Anything which causes fear, in fact, and fear is … I read your report into Dani Cumali’s murder. I had no idea that the Criminal Audit Office was so diligent.”

  Theo shrugged. “I could tell that the case was more than it appeared. Auditor’s instinct.”

  “So not a personal interest?”

  “I dislike it when people try to pay less than their due.”

  A smile from Markse. He shares this view. This is clearly a meeting of noble minds. “The Nineteen Committee was investigating Ms. Cumali for a potential security breach. Documents stolen, dabbling in government business. She was in contact with certain elements who are not contributing to society. We think she had a second phone, contacted a man called Faris. Do you know a man called Faris?”

  Theo shrugged.

  “I’m afraid I’ll need an answer.”

  “I met him.”

  “In Vauxhall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “His name came up. I thought he might have useful background information about Dani Cumali.”

  “How did his name come up?”

  “In the course of my investigations.”

  Markse’s smile, again, a little wider. They understand each other now, indeed they do, and what bliss this knowledge brings. “Do you like your work, Mr. Miller?” A casual enquiry, eyes going to another place.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been very diligent.”

  “The indemnity system is much better than alternatives. Much more efficient.”

  “Cambridge, weren’t you?”

  Blood colder than the ice on the canal, time is time was time when

  it’s your fault

  a boy dying in a field shrouded in mist a time when

  “Oxford,” Theo replied, voice matching the stiffness in his spine.

  “Oxford of course, sorry. I went to Oxford too—you must have been there in …”

  “Fifteen years ago.”

  “Fifteen, fifteen … roughly the same time as Philip Arnslade, yes?”r />
  “We were on the same course.”

  “Really you were both …?”

  “Law.”

  “Law together in Oxford! Know him well?”

  “Not really. I was working, there wasn’t time for many friends, it was …”

  “But if I was to mention your name?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose it would be flattering to think that he remembered me. Do you know him well?”

  “We’ve met a couple of times.”

  “I didn’t realise that the Nineteen Committee and the Ministry were … is this connected to the case?”

  “Would it matter if it was? So long as the payment is made?” Markse shifted on his awkward chair, pleasantries passing by, back to business. “A phone was taken from the scene of Ms. Cumali’s murder. A phone and a memory stick. In the course of your remarkably thorough audit, did you find any sign?”

  “No.”

  “But you found Faris.”

  “Yes.”

  “I would have thought without the phone …”

  “As I said. I asked questions.”

  “And met in Vauxhall.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Faris say?”

  “That Dani Cumali believed she had information with which she could blackmail the government. That she was single-minded and determined to get her daughter … I can’t remember the daughter’s name … to get her out of some sort of place where she was incarcerated. That she kept on saying she’d found something big. It made me think that it was likely that Ms. Cumali had been assassinated in order to keep her silent, which I find frustrating in light of the manslaughter plea entered in the case. Assassination is an entirely different auditing process, through different channels.”

  “You’re very thorough.”

  “My work is important.”

  “So is mine. In normal circumstances I’d say you were a bit of a fruit loop, Mr. Miller. Is that fair? You earn a reasonable government salary but lodge in a house in Tulse Hill; you don’t have any friends except the occasional community gardening companion; you don’t interact with your colleagues at work; you almost never make a mistake except the occasional lapse towards overcharging for a crime; you went to Oxford with the leading lights of the day and yet have never sought promotion or played upon your connections, and your pursuit of this particular case borders on the … what does it border on? If I were to take you by your file, Mr. Miller, I’d say there was something almost autistic about you. Is that fair? Socially autistic, perhaps, the child bullied at school. No after-work drinks, no meaningful interactions, maybe you don’t understand how these things work, maybe you laugh because you hear others laughing but that’s not …