The Last Day

by Andrew Hunter Murray

  The ambulance swung onto Gethin’s street, slowing a little, but as they neared the right house, it did not stop or slow. Instead, it maintained its speed, cruising easily by. She saw a light on in the building, thought she even saw shapes of people moving around downstairs, and yearned for a crazy moment to wrench the wheel from the driver.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice strained.

  “Did you not see?”

  “See what?”

  “Three of them. In three cars. Waiting for you.”

  Hopper looked in the mirror.

  “No. Stop. Pull over. We have to go back. I have to speak to the man in that house. It’s urgent.”

  The driver shook her head. “If you get out now, you’ll be arrested. Whatever you’re trying to do, you need another way.”

  Then, as they cruised along the street, Hopper saw two police officers, waiting around the first corner they came to, leaning against a wall. They straightened up to observe the ambulance, and she was suddenly grateful for the smoked windows.

  “I’m not letting you out here,” the driver said.

  “I have to get to him.”

  “Worth your life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not true. Meet him another time. I can’t let that happen to you.” As she spoke the driver hitched up her left sleeve, revealing a long, ugly scar along the top of her arm, studded with welts. “See him some other time,” she repeated firmly. “It’s not worth your life. Nothing is.”

  Hopper sat back and stared out of the window as the ambulance carried her away from the last lead she thought she had.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “Come in, come in.” Thorne’s room was messier than she had ever seen it before. The bookshelves were half-empty, their contents spilling out of boxes interspersed with papers. On his desk, the ancient computer was alive and flickering.

  “Having a clearout?” Hopper moved a heap off one of the armchairs and sat.

  “In a manner of speaking. So? How did the exams go?”

  “I think bioengineering was the worst. I really do think I failed.”

  “I’d be surprised. You’ve got a pretty strong internal critic, Ellen. Any word on the placement?” She had been keeping this from him for two weeks, waiting for it to be properly confirmed. She supposed there could be no harm in telling him now.

  “I was accepted. I leave for Skye in two weeks.”

  “Oh, Ellen. Congratulations! And you thought it wouldn’t happen.” She had been interviewed by a panel of three, had been almost deliberately brusque with them, unsure whether she really wanted to go, convinced they would laugh her out. But they had not. They had been interested.

  “I know. I think it’ll be all right. Thanks for helping me with the application.” She smiled. He smiled back, expansively.

  “Your parents would be proud, Ellen. If they could see you now.”

  For a few seconds she was unable to speak. Eventually she managed to nod.

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

  “Nonsense. Just needed someone to light the fuse. You made all the running yourself.” He smiled. But as he did, she noticed for the first time the heavy bags under his eyes, and his skin, pale with exhaustion.

  “Is everything all right, Edward?”

  “Yes, absolutely. But as it happens, I may well beat you out of the building. I’m leaving too. At the end of this month.”

  “What? Why?”

  “University politics. Not hugely different from the real sort, it turns out. There have been interventions made on behalf of the college by some of its more reputationally minded members. They’re worried my presence affects its standing.”

  Hopper felt a stab of indignation. “That’s shit. What standing?”

  “Come now. The warden has been told by the rest of the council that my presence makes funding bids harder. They informed her that my teaching is outweighed by the—what was the phrase?—ah, yes, the ‘negative associative freight’ I bring.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Caroline did her best, but the tide’s running against her. Nothing she can do about it. She and you are the only two I will miss. One of my oldest friends and my newest one.”

  There was a lump in Hopper’s throat. “It won’t be the same without you.”

  “Of course it will. That’s the whole point of Oxford. You told me when we first met that it never changed.” He smiled.

  “You really can’t stay?” She couldn’t imagine spending another year studying here without his guidance.

  He shrugged. “It’s not fair on anyone I’ve worked with here to taint their careers through association with me. Not that their careers are worth very much, but they’re acting rationally, guided by self-interest. It’s all one can expect. That’s what Richard always used to say.” Hopper was surprised. He had never referred to Davenport in her hearing before.

  She looked at him, gripping the back of his chair as he stood behind it. “I was only ever a scientist for many years, and then . . . then I became involved in politics. But the change tarnishes one, Ellen.” He glanced at her. “Politics tarnishes what you did before.”

  She said nothing.

  “Everyone says they’re opposite endeavors, politics and science; that one deals with truth and the other with perception. It’s not really true. Science doesn’t change with perception, of course. Photosynthesis doesn’t alter based on public opinion. That much is true. But what we think possible, what is . . . acceptable to believe: that is another matter. Whether we explore this sea or that, whether we think we can support a hundred million people or only fifty: these are matters where perception counts.” Hopper wanted to interrupt, but he was speaking distantly, only half to her.

  “What about things that are true but unacceptable? Do we accept them? Of course we don’t. We are rational agents, acting with self-interest. That was what Richard—excuse me, the prime minister—always said to me. It was his mantra. And once you’ve persuaded people their self-interest aligns with yours, they’ll follow you like a river to the sea.

  “If Richard can persuade enough people their self-interest is best maintained by living in the world he’s built, he’ll stay. But there are two ways of doing that. To persuade them their world is bright and good—that’s the first. But to persuade them the alternative is catastrophe—that’s even more powerful. Do people want to live like the poor bloody slaves on the Continent? No. So they’ll support him. Even if he’s wrong.”

  “Is he wrong?”

  After a long pause Thorne looked up, his abstraction dissipated. “Probably not. Anyway. You’ll be back in the autumn, I hope?”

  “I hope so. What will you do?”

  “I’ll start by going home, to London. After that, who knows? I’ll read a lot, I daresay.”

  “Why did they make you leave the government, Edward? Last year, before you came here?”

  She had never asked him outright before. He looked at her, and laughed. “That’s a pretty big question from nowhere, Ellen.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  He waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I didn’t mean to ask just like that, but I . . .” Her face was burning. So many times she’d pictured herself asking him, being let into his confidence, and she had blurted it out like a child. And now she was angry too, her question disregarded with such ease because of a little social awkwardness.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “I see.” She was frosty now.

  He sighed. “Just differences of opinion, that’s all. Working so closely with someone is rather like a marriage. Eventually the differences grow so broad you can’t remember quite how you found yourself in bed with these people in the first place, and once you’ve realized that, it’s tim
e to leave.” He looked at his watch. “Goodness. I had better be going. I’m visiting the warden to plan my leaving drinks, and I want her to feel so guilty that she doesn’t mind me drinking some of the bottles she’s saving for her own retirement dinner.”

  She noticed the way he moved effortlessly off the question, hated him for a moment, then felt suddenly sad once again. “I don’t want you to go.”

  “Thank you, Ellen. I don’t want to go either. I’ll miss you.” He smiled at her, and the pause stretched unnaturally. After a few seconds, he picked up his jacket and lowered the blinds, plunging the room into darkness. Then he saw her out, closed the door behind him, and turned at the end of the corridor to cross the quad.

  She waited in the archway for a full minute, to ensure he wasn’t coming back. Then she moved back along the corridor, tested the handle, and slipped back into his office.

  THIRTY

  Like all the others on the road, her brother’s house was closed for curfew—the shutters ranked against the sun, narrow white slats rebuffing the constant heat.

  The streets were quiet: curfew was observed faithfully, for the most part. It was another of Davenport’s innovations: much easier to govern if you could re-create the hours of darkness and reestablish control over your cities while the lawful slept. Ambulances were exempt, as Hopper’s driver had explained. And, of course, the police still kept their curfew wagons out, even though these days most of their victims were no more criminal than teenage partygoers or furtive adulterers.

  The hall of Mark’s house was dark, the only light coming from a lamp in the living room. Laura called it the “drawing room,” one of the little tics of propriety that convinced Hopper her sister-in-law would have been much happier in the 1940s than now.

  Hopper hung up her coat and moved to the living room to switch the lamp off. As she entered, she noticed a large bulk in the chair in the far corner, a form that suddenly pushed up into the room toward her. She jumped, her pulse racking up.

  “It’s me, Ellie.”

  Her brother walked over to the hall door, closed it, snapped the main light on. He looked disheveled: eyes crusted, shirt untucked. “Where have you been?”

  “Visiting a friend.”

  “Bollocks. Where did you go?”

  “You can’t push me around, Mark. I’m not a child.”

  “I thought you’d been arrested again. I’ve been ringing round police stations all evening. Do you know how worried I’ve been? I’ve been completely losing it since you didn’t come back. I shouted at the kids . . .”

  She suppressed a smile at the magical transformation of his bad parenting into her fault. “I’m sorry.”

  “Of course you’re not. I know you don’t give a toss about any of us, but it would be nice if you could just confirm you’re not dead of an evening. Some of us have jobs. Do you want a drink?”

  This was another of Mark’s curious features: the ability to switch in midstream from anger to pleasantries, with no acknowledgment and sometimes no change in his tone of voice.

  Hopper nodded, and he moved to the sideboard, poured two whiskies, and handed one over.

  She looked at the tumbler, a heavy crystal thing ornamented with a hundred delicate cuts. “These were Mum’s, weren’t they?”

  “That’s right. Used to take two everywhere in that little padded case. You remember?”

  “I do.” This had been on their first trip, before their mother had sent them home. The heat of the desert around them, living in a tent from night to night, guarded by those tall young brothers armed with rifles. And all the time, trudging from one rest station to the next, the column. The people walking under her mother’s care were among the last to leave, the ones who had stayed through stubbornness or lack of choice. And so now they trudged through a hot, dead landscape, a landscape unrelieved by cool or dark, along a path the vehicles had fled.

  When people collapsed, her mother’s teams tried to intercede, but there were too many collapsing and not enough helpers. The escort tried to take them in their pitifully few jeeps to little improvised hospitals along the route. They had started in Kenya, she remembered, northern Kenya, and the air had been thick with a horrible sharp tang for hundreds of miles in every direction. After a few days, they reached the cities, where the transport became mechanized, and where one stood a better chance of getting out, but only one in ten made it there. And even then, Britain’s borders had already been shut to those without passports.

  She drank the whisky. It tasted good, that delicious burn sliding down her throat and settling with a dull warmth in her stomach.

  “Funny, really. Mum spent all that time trying to help people getting out of the Hotzone, and I work for the people who devoted themselves to keeping the same people out of Britain. Wonder if she’d see the funny side.” He was looking down into his own tumbler. She wondered how many drinks he’d had before she got back, sitting in a dim house, his family disordered, his colleagues growing suspicious of the man with the seditious sister.

  “Yeah. Pretty funny.”

  “What are you doing, Ellie? I’m sure you’re working on something terribly clever. You always are. But I don’t want them to kill you, and I’m afraid, if they want to, they will. So, indulge me. What is it?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t say.”

  “Thought you wouldn’t. But it’s about that man Thorne.”

  “That’s where I started.”

  “Take my advice: Leave it alone and go back to your rig. You’ve got a man there, haven’t you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “That’s you, Ellie. The queen of the sort-of.” He was definitely drunk, Hopper could tell. The words were thick on his tongue. But he had always been the type of drunk to keep his eloquence longer than his inhibitions. “You’re going to stay in the sort-of all your life if you’re not careful. But it’s better than what my colleagues will do if you don’t pack it in. So take my advice, and leave it.”

  “I can’t.”

  He snorted at that, and a little fleck of saliva stayed at the corner of his mouth. “You don’t understand, do you? You don’t get the things people have to do in this life, just to survive. It’s not anybody’s fault, sis. It’s the planet. It would be lovely to treat each other well. But that’s not the world we’ve got.”

  “I don’t want to bother you anymore. I should leave.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “I’d stay with a friend.”

  “You have friends still, do you? Someone from school? Or university? Or maybe one of the many, many friends you’ve made in your job?”

  “Mark, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’d just like to sleep.”

  He stood. In his absence she never remembered how big he was; some inner smallness in him mitigated against it. But he was five inches taller than her, over six foot, and broad. On his wedding day, she remembered, his suit had hardly fitted, the jacket stretching in broad lines across his back. He put his hands on her shoulders, gently. “Ellie. Go home. Go back to the rig. You can’t do anyone any good if they put you in the Breadbast—Breadbasket.”

  He moved past her to the door. Before he pulled it open, his hand resting on the handle, he said, looking down, “I won’t help you. If they come again, I won’t help. I’m sorry.”

  He left the room, closing the door behind him, and she reflected that he had probably been waiting all night, drinking, to build up the courage to tell her something she already knew.

  THIRTY-ONE

  His heavy tread disappeared upstairs, and she heard the door of the bathroom open and close behind him. A few minutes later, it opened again, and the bedroom door opened and shut. The ceiling above her creaked for a few seconds, and then was still.

  You’ve got a man there, haven’t you? That was what Mark had said. But she had never told him about Harv, had told him nothing abou
t her life on the rig. Perhaps he had just been guessing. But it hadn’t sounded like it.

  Hopper waited another ten minutes, sitting on the leather couch, trying not to make it squeak. Then she stood, crossed the hall, and tested the door of the ground-floor room where she had heard Mark speaking last night. It was locked. It must be some private study of his.

  At least she could guess where the keys might be. When they had lived together in her third year at Oxford, Mark had put his keys in the hall cupboard, at the top. She moved to the front of the hall, quietly, and opened a few cupboards until she found them, high up, and pulled them out, gripping them tightly to stop them jangling.

  Standing in the dark hall, she was painfully aware of each noise she made. Every rustle of her clothes sounded magnified, every movement grew in her ear. The first key didn’t work, and neither did the second. There were only two left for this sort of lock. The third didn’t work either, and she began to panic. What if he kept the key for this room elsewhere? What if the door had sensors on, triggered an alarm that would sound in his room?

  The fourth key worked, and no alarm sounded as Hopper opened the door.

  The room was as dark as the hall, the shutters firmly closed, and the light switch snapped horribly loud as she turned it on. The place was as neat as she had imagined it would be: one wall of books, a filing cabinet opposite, between them a desk, which lay under the window overlooking the neighboring house. The carpet was thicker in here. Odd: she had not had her brother down as a household elitist.

  What was she looking for? She wasn’t sure. Better start with the filing cabinet. It was easily opened; the small metal key took little finding on the bunch. The topmost drawer contained brown folders, arranged alphabetically. In front of them was a folder marked INDEX. She pulled out the first file. Inside, in Mark’s crabbed, neat hand, too cautious even to take up the entire height of a line on the page, was a contents list: