84k

  and Dani saw and knew the truth.

  And she knew that she could destroy him, bring down the house of lies, fraud and deceit that he had built around himself, around his name that was a lie, around teamwork bonding experiences and work reports and progress assessments and pension plans and rental deposits and

  and the whole lie of his whole fucking life.

  She could tear it down with a single word.

  And in her eyes was the fire of the righteous and the sword.

  In the beginning.

  Chapter 4

  The man whose name was sometimes Theo Miller had been twenty-two years old when they abolished human rights. The government insisted it was necessary to counter terrorism and bring stable leadership to the country. He’d voted for the opposition and felt very proud of himself, partially because he had a sense that this was the intangible right way of things, but mostly because it was the first time his new name had been tested at the polling station, and held up to scrutiny.

  The opposition didn’t have any funding, of course, and everyone knew that the Company was backing the winning team. But any fleeting disappointment he may have felt when they crumbled to a crushing defeat and the prime minister declared, “Too long our enemies have hidden behind human rights as if they were extended to all!” was lightened by the fact that his identity had held. He had voted as Theo Miller, and it hadn’t made a difference, and no one had called his bluff.

  He’d still somehow felt it would work out all right in the end.

  When they shut down the newspapers for printing stories of corruption and dirty deals, he’d signed the petitions.

  When they’d closed the universities for spreading warnings of impending social and economic calamity, he’d thought about attending the rallies, but then decided against it because work would probably frown on these things, and there were people there who took your photo and posted your face online—saboteurs and enemies of the people—and besides, it rained a lot that month and he just needed a morning off.

  By then, of course, it was a little too late for petitions. Company men would run for parliament, Company newspapers would trumpet their excellence to the sky, Company TV stations would broadcast their election promises and say how wonderful they were. They would inevitably win, serve their seven years in office and then return to the banking or insurance branches happy to have completed their civic duty, and that was that. It was for the best, the adverts said. This was how democracy worked: corporate and public interests working together at last, for the greater good.

  When it became legally compulsory to carry ID, £300 for the certified ID card, £500 fine if caught without it, he knew he was observing an injustice that sent thousands of innocent people to the patty line, too skint to buy, too skint to pay for being too skint to buy. When it became impossible to vote without the ID, he knew he lived in a tyranny, but by then he wasn’t sure what there was left to do in protest. He’d be okay. If he kept his head down. He’d be fine.

  He couldn’t put his finger precisely on when parliament rebranded itself “The People’s Engagement Forum,” but he remembered thinking the logo was very well done.

  Chapter 5

  In the Criminal Audit Office, Dani Cumali clears away the remnants of a cucumber sandwich.

  In the ancestral home of his family, Philip Arnslade stares at his mother’s dribbling form and blurts, “Well so long as she’s happy!”

  On the canal, Neila is pleased to discover that she’s not actually squeamish about head wounds at all.

  By the sea, a man who may or may not be a father rages at the ocean.

  In the past the man called Theo cycles home from a team bonding experience, and is terrified of the face he has just seen. He didn’t try to talk to Dani. Didn’t meet her eye again after that initial moment of shock. Fled without a word, chin down, expression fixed in stone. Half ran to his bicycle and pedalled away without bothering to tuck his trousers into his socks.

  The queues at the Vauxhall Bridge toll weren’t as bad as he’d feared, and the walls of Battersea Power Station were a brilliant cascade of colour bouncing back off the clouds promoting the latest reality TV escapade, huge painted faces pouting brilliant crimson lips into the dark.

  He went the long way round, past the giant glass towers of the river, then south, towards houses growing lower and cracked, overgrown front gardens, laundrettes with beige linoleum floors, churches in sloped-roof sheds proclaiming a new Jesus of fire and redemption, a criss-cross of silent railway lines and budget gyms above kebab shops for the men with vast shoulders encasing tiny pop-up heads.

  He circled several times before pulling up at the stiff black gate in the crumbling red-brick wall. He couldn’t remember what Mrs. Italiaander, landlady folded in fuchsia, had said to him when he came through the door—she’d said something and he’d even replied, they’d maybe even had a whole conversation—but the memory of it slipped away in a moment.

  He sat on the end of his bed and looked around the room, and saw as if for the first time the paucity of character it contained.

  A wooden figurine of a woman dancing.

  A painting of light across a misty sea.

  A couple of 1950s films where everyone knew what to say and exactly how to say it.

  A fern that refused to die.

  With Dani Cumali’s face overlaying his vision, these things suddenly seemed trivial, pathetic. The revelation jerked him almost to laughter, as the man somewhere beneath Theo Miller, who still faintly remembered the real name he’d been born with, and the hopes he’d had as a child, stared at the farcical illusion of Theo Miller he’d created and realised that in all his efforts to be anonymous he had in fact ceased to be a person whatsoever. The laughter rolled through him for half a minute, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and he stared again at nothing.

  He sat in muddy clothes on the end of his bed, hands in his lap, and waited to be arrested. In the room next door, Marvin, Mrs. Italiaander’s teenage son, wannabe rock star, wannabe movie star, wannabe private detective wannabe martial artist wannabe somebody in a nobody world, played drum and bass far too loud and wondered if his mum had known all along that he’d stolen that fifty from her purse.

  Downstairs, Nikesh, the other flatmate, who did something for the Company, something in insurance or actuarial or—he was never very good at explaining—cooked chicken so spicy it could burn the top off your mouth and listened to radio with the volume turned right down, too low to really hear, but it was the sound of the voices that Nikesh enjoyed, more than the words they spoke.

  After a while—after the first twenty minutes of not being arrested—Theo lay back on his double bed, nearly always slept in by one, and stared at the ceiling. His room was five metres by six metres, luxurious by lodging standards. Theo had lived in it for nearly three years. He’d been renting in Streatham before, but his flatmate had got a job in something that paid more, been given a resident’s permit to Zone 1 and moved in with his girlfriend. Theo’s civil service salary didn’t stretch to a mortgage, not with prices being what they were. Not with times being so …

  … besides, he didn’t have the papers to live in Kensington or Chiswick or anywhere like that, let alone the cash, so Tulse Hill it had been, two lodgers, a mother and a child pushed into a house built for three. Mrs. Italiaander had never raised Theo’s rent. She liked the way he cleaned the oven once a month and the new shower rail he’d installed. He was a nice, quiet tenant, and that was a rare thing indeed.

  It struck Theo as likely that in three years’ time he would probably be in this same bed, on these same sheets, staring at the same crack running to the ceiling rose. This made him feel

  … nothing.

  He was masterful in feeling nothing. It was what he did best. He had cultivated the art over nearly fifteen years.

  He checked his bank balance for the fifth time in the hope it was something better.

  Wondered why the cops hadn’t come for him yet.
>
  Realised he had no idea what on earth he was doing with his life, or what the hell he was meant to do now.

  Having no idea what to do with himself, he did as he always did and on Monday morning went to work.

  The fact they let him through security was strange. He sat at his desk in the Criminal Audit Office, patiently expecting handcuffs. For nearly twenty minutes he slouched there, fingers hooked on the edge of the desk, staring straight ahead without seeing, and waited.

  No one came.

  After twenty-five minutes an automatic alert appeared warning him that his productivity levels appeared to be slipping and that he was ten minutes away from being put on notice.

  He stared at the pop-up message in amazement. In nearly nine years of working at the Criminal Audit Office, he’d never seen such a thing. He took a paracetamol, obvious and slow for the benefit of the camera on top of his screen, and set to work.

  The cops didn’t come.

  Men in black didn’t burst through his window.

  Dani Cumali didn’t laugh like a banshee as they dragged him down, pointing and howling with mirth at the lie that only she could have broken.

  Nothing changed, so Theo did his job.

  This is the daily diet on which Theo Miller is fed:

  murder

  theft

  fraud

  burglary

  rape

  Guidelines on rape vary depending on whether it is felt that the woman may have dressed in a provocative manner or appeared to be sexually enthusiastic prior to the act of penetration. A woman who does not dress modestly is more likely to be a victim of crime and as a consequence we recommend indemnity in the low-to-mid £30,000 as a starting point for assessing the …

  corporate espionage

  libel

  slander

  assault on a corporation

  anti-corporate profit activity

  By acting against corporate interests, individuals show a complete disregard for society and are harming all, not merely a few. Starting indemnities of £400,000 are a viable place to commence negotiation …

  riot

  trespass

  protest

  Once he heard the minister for social responsibility explain: “Crime has huge financial cost on our communities. It is only right that we acknowledge its economic impact in a blue-skies thought-dynamic way that puts society back in the driving seat.”

  Theo remembered that phrase clearly—“put society back in the driving seat”—because he found it inherently confusing.

  “It is time to hero the narrative of personal responsibility!”

  The Criminal Audit Office had emerged some seven or so years before human rights were judged passé, from the outdated monolith of the Crown Prosecution Service. This was when the Company was still trading under many different names, a mess of loans and investments, debts and boards, but after they’d started investing in security. Prison was a deeply inefficient way of rehabilitating criminals, especially given how many were clearly irredeemable, and despite privatisation efficiencies overcrowding and reoffending were a perennial problem. Rehabilitation through work was an excellent and scientifically provable way of instilling good societal values. The first Commercial Reform Institute was opened when Theo was seven years old, and made meat patties for hamburgers.

  Shall we go, shall we go to the patty line?

  I kissed my love, she swore she was mine,

  But they took me to the patty line.

  Theo hums a half-remembered tune from his childhood under his breath, doesn’t notice, reads a report.

  Semen was discovered but the victim was unwilling to pay £315 for the DNA test and thus we are unable to say whether the semen came from the accused. In light of this we would suggest a reduced charge of sexual harassment.

  Theo checked the database. Sexual harassment had various subcategories, but the most he could levy was £780 for a first-time offence.

  At first a lot of people had been excited by the indemnity system, until it emerged that the profits raised from prosecuting crimes were almost entirely eaten up by administrative costs from the various companies contracted to manage the cases.

  Corporate Police, much more reliable than the tiny rump of Civic Police accessible by the uninsured or through NGO charity funding, had shareholders to consider when they invoiced for an investigation. The TV always showed the glamour, never the paperwork—forensics was expensive, best deployed only on really profitable cases.

  Corporate rehabilitation centres had a similar problem. As corporations bought up local communities, transforming towns into Winchester by Visit the Soul or Bath Spa Deluxe Healthy Living, local judiciary fell under their purview and great savings were made all round and there was much rejoicing, except for the scroungers who were unable to pay their corporate community tax, clearly weren’t contributing to society and thus couldn’t ask society to support them.

  Raising the price of manslaughter in line with inflation …

  … a deduction in lieu of a promising corporate career …

  Added fees: £480 for putting down victim’s cat.

  £48,912 for the first offence, reduced to £38,750 for prompt payment …

  The victim transpired to be illegally resident on a student visa, and thus the indemnity must be reduced by £4500 to reflect that it was assault on an alien, rather than a UK citizen.

  Impaled on a garden fork added hospital costs of …

  Theo audited the cost of murder, mayhem and destruction, and when 5.15 p.m. came, he cycled home as the sun went down, made macaroni cheese, and ate it in his room and listened to Marvin’s drum and bass through the wall, and waited for the men to come to take him away.

  And no one came.

  After the first three days, the failure of the powers-that-be to swoop down and arrest him left Theo slightly annoyed. The least you can ask when your life is about to be ripped apart is to get on with these things, rather than be left in suspense.

  And no one came.

  And a week became two.

  And two weeks became three.

  And for a moment Theo permitted himself to think that he’d imagined seeing Dani Cumali at all.

  And at the end of the fourth week he was intellectually certain that it would be fine, absolutely fine because that was how these things were, and on the Tuesday of the fifth week, she found him.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Dani.”

  They stood in the place behind the building where they chained the bicycles. Once he’d seen a rat scamper between the bins at the back. One early evening in summer he’d met a fox. The fox had sat and watched him, and he’d watched it, and neither had moved for a long time. Neither had been afraid. They had simply looked, to learn the nature of the other’s gaze. And when the fox got bored, it stood up and walked briskly away, and there was nothing more to it.

  She was waiting by his bicycle. He saw her too late to pretend he hadn’t seen her, but didn’t want to leave the bike, thought it would be stupid to just run away.

  Going to the bicycle forced him to stand a little closer than he would have wanted, face angled away from the security camera, one hand resting on the seat protectively. She wore a faded blue raincoat, white cloth shoes, a tiny moonlight smile.

  “So.” This word seemed to take some thinking about, a gathering of the weight of the world, a slow orbit round the burning centre of the universe. “So,” she repeated, trying out new ideas, studying his face. “It’s Theo now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh.”

  They stood a while, and Theo remembered the fox and felt almost relieved that all this would soon be over.

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and he huddled against a wall, and for nearly a minute they were silent. Then she said, “I saw you at that party. Or whatever it was.”

  “Team bonding experience.”

  “Right. Well. There.”

  They wavered, avoiding each other??
?s gaze. Finally Theo mumbled, looking at some place a few hundred miles above and a little to the left of her forehead, “Are you …”

  “Catering.”

  “Right.”

  “The catering company bought my parole.”

  “You’ve been …”

  “I’ve got a shift starting at 9 p.m., near Sloane Square. It’s a market. They’re selling the paroles of the pretty girls to rich geezers. Maids. Cleaners, nannies. That sort of stuff. If you’re rich enough, you get to pay less tax if you turn yourself into a company, and if you’re a company you can buy a parole. It’s all sex. I mean that’s why they … but I’m catering. I just clean the glasses.”

  “Right.”

  Her head bent down, then up, a curious cat not sure if the object before it is food or threat. The more he tried not to catch her eye, the harder she stared until finally his gaze met hers, and she held it with a frown. “We’re gonna talk now,” she explained, cold and flat. “That’s what’s happening. In case you’re wondering. It’s … that’s what happens now.”

  He tried to look away, couldn’t, nodded once, mouth dry, and followed her.

  Chapter 6

  Later, on the canal.

  Her name is Neila.

  These are the cards that she drew when she did her reading that Friday morning:

  Seven of staves, the Chariot, three of cups, nine of staves, king of swords, the Tower, eight of swords, the Fool, the Hanged Man (inverted).

  She stared at the layout before her, and for a horrified moment realised she had spread the cards without focusing on a question. There had been something at the back of her mind but then …

  On the couch behind her, the man rolled over a little, his head turned towards the wall, the grey light of day shining round the foil circles Blu-tacked to the portholes to keep the heat in, and today there was no fresh blood on the floor.

  Neila folded the cards away, returned the pack to the walnut box beneath her bed, put some baked beans on the stove. As they warmed, she went outside and discovered that in the night something had smashed the pots of geraniums she grew on the front of the boat, thin magenta petals spilt across the water, black soil across the deck. She sighed and set to cleaning, and no one passed on the water or on the land.