84k

  A further two bullets went astray. One severed the femoral artery of his colleague with the broken nose, who bled out in less than four minutes in the back of the truck. The other hit the wall of the empty, abandoned warehouse behind, and on the ricochet lodged in the ankle of the man doubled over his bruised stomach, who only noticed it five hours later and never walked the same again.

  With all the fuss, they didn’t properly bury Mala’s body, and a dog-walker found it nine hours later, the vat of tar cold and set to a solid cylinder next to her carcass.

  Somewhere from a castle in Wales, Philip Arnslade roars, “KILL ME KILL MY FUCKING MOTHER I mean she was an embarrassment, a problem yes, she was a real problem and I was embarrassed, I was personally embarrassed, I was …”

  Markse has given up trying to get a word in edgeways, so sits patiently, left leg crossed over right, and flicks through the pictures of the dead, the pictures of the vanished, as Helen Arnslade’s voice continues to drone its endless litany of corpses from the laptop on the coffee table.

  “When my mother started with her shit, Simon was furious. He’s always had a temper, don’t you believe the things he says, he’s always been a … but he was furious he said we should just have killed her when she betrayed us the first time, just kill my FUCKING MOTHER ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING TO ME?”

  Markse smiles, nods, and that seems to be enough.

  “KILL MY MOTHER so I’m searching the country and we stop it, we tidy things up, yes, there’s a scandal but it passes we shut it down by now Simon worries that I’m ‘unreliable’ and I think, hold on there matey, and then he PUTS A FUCKING BOMB IN FUCKING ASCOT fucking uses the SAME FUCKING LAWYER and the SAME FUCKING KILLER-BITCH to try and fucking kill me he doesn’t even have the decency to try and cover it up ‘liability’ he said ‘loose cannon’ well I’ll fucking …”

  It occurs to Markse, somewhere in the midst of all this, that his employers—whoever they are now—perhaps lack some of the temperament that he would otherwise wish of those in high office.

  Chapter 70

  Five days after the banks shut down, Theo found Helen Arnslade.

  The hospital was south of Greenwich, with a view up the hill towards the observatory and the green laser that shot out into overcast skies to mark the line of the Greenwich Meridian, dividing the world between east and west. He’d already searched every other likely hospital in London, and was about to try and force his way back into the Cotswolds when he stumbled on her, sleeping in a private, guarded room on the third floor, on a wing reserved for patients on life support, in comas or permanent vegetative states. She’d been signed in as Mrs. Danesmoor, and no further notes on her condition were kept. Theo waited for the late-night cleaners to go on shift, and whispered to a sallow-eyed man with a mop bucket and a limp, “Blessed are her hands …”

  And he grasped Theo’s arms below the elbows before he could answer and hissed, “Is it true? Is there a queen in the north? Will there be a rebellion? Are we going to be free?”

  Theo didn’t have an answer, couldn’t find anything good to say, so he lied. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes. It’s all true.”

  The man wept, and as he stripped out of his uniform and passed Theo his access pass, the tears rolled down his blotched, sponge-cake face, and he gibbered thanks and prayers to an unknown deity, and Theo thought perhaps he should offer comfort, and didn’t know what to say.

  Instead, he cleaned the hospital.

  He mopped floors, sprayed sinks, sprayed bleach around toilets, kept trundling up and down, shoulders hunched, feet shuffling the slow-motion shuffle of someone with nowhere to go, nothing to do, just going through the motions. It was a natural walk for him, he found, and comforting to a weary brain.

  There were very few doctors, and only a couple of nurses on shift. The hospital was owned by a company which was owned by a company which was …

  However that old song went. Somewhere at the top of the pile there was the Company. On the TV, Philip Arnslade faced the camera. The volume was muted, but subtitles took their best shot at an accurate rendition, lighting up his words in cyan on a black background.

  The Company

  Abused its responsibility

  Government forced to

  Reconsider its relationship with

  Revoking contracts to

  A few minutes later Simon Fardell’s face appeared.

  The stoppages

  Hospitals

  Banks

  Schools

  Buses

  Trains

  Supermarkets

  Farms

  Food

  Water

  … all the government’s fault. If they seize our assets let’s see who folds first let’s see who’s really …

  The TV station was owned by a company which was owned by a company which was …

  And at midnight it too went offline, when the video techs realised they weren’t going to get their salary for the week, and they had to get to the shops before the last of the petrol and food went.

  At 2.17 a.m. the man guarding the door to Helen’s room in a hospital in Greenwich fell asleep, and Theo let himself in.

  The light through the half-open blinds on the window was a pink-orange reflection of street light. A car passed below, the sweep of its beams running like a clock hand across the ceiling. Fresh yellow flowers were beginning to droop a little in murky water by the bed. A flask of water was empty on a tray, a bowl of stewed pears had not been touched, the custard solidifying to yellow concrete.

  Helen lay, one arm stretched by her side, the stub of the other arm wrapped in pristine white bandage. An accordion of blue plastic and clear tubes rose and fell by her side, supplementing the progress of her lungs, the end of the machine plugged into a careful incision in her trachea. Her face was rounded, purple-brown; she wore surgical socks beneath the blue blankets, her toes peeping out the end. A sac of clear fluid was nearly empty on its hook by her head, the line running into a needle hidden somewhere beneath her loose green robe.

  Theo leaned his mop against the wall, pulled up a huge padded beige armchair covered with plastic that stuck to skin and held the white tidemarks of previous sweaty inhabitants. The pump by her bed inhaled, clicked to full, exhaled in a long whoosh. Her chest rose, fell. At the foot of her bed yellow fluid drip-drip-dripped out of a tube into a plastic litre-jar, nearly full, of faintly bloodied amber liquid. Theo watched her.

  The packaging said that this was a revolution in a box, and it didn’t lie! I really know what it means to make a difference now! *****

  Lucy has a new bunk mate, after Moira became too thin to work and was taken away for reassessment. Hanna doesn’t know who her mum is. By day she tells Lucy that she’s a stupid slag and even the men wouldn’t bother to rape her. By night they lie together, holding each other tight, sharing warmth against the winter, and never speak of these things, and are silent, and it’s okay to be afraid.

  Blessed is her name, blessed are her hands upon the water blessed is the mother who gives life to the child blessed is the moonlight through the bars blessed are the whisperers of the hidden truths blessed are those who stood before the fire blessed is the heat of the ash blessed is

  Neila said, “Navigating the Trent to the Ouse requires a licence. It’s tidal where it meets the Humber, there’s a two-day transit on the lock it’s …”

  Theo sat in the cabin of the Hector as she put his hand on the deck of cards and said, “Ask a question.”

  “I don’t know what to ask.”

  “Think of something that matters. Think of Lucy.”

  A flicker of a frown, anger almost, which went as quickly as it had come. He closed his eyes, hand below hers, and let out a breath, and held the tarot pack tightly.

  They waited

  He cut the cards

  dealt the top nine.

  She turned them over.

  He studied the arrangement on the table. “What does it mean?” he asked at last.

&nbs
p; “Nothing,” she replied, heart leaping, tears of relief and gratitude pricking the corners of her eyes. “Nothing at all.”

  Stood.

  Went to the locker above the sink.

  Opened it.

  Removed the gun from inside, still wrapped in the same plastic bag it had been when Corn gave it to Theo in Nottingham. Said, “I was going to throw it overboard. I wanted to. I was so angry with you I was so angry. But I think …”

  Put it in his hand.

  “I think this is maybe where you get off.”

  Theo sat by Helen’s bed, and Dani was there too, and so was the real Theo Miller, the one who died, and it seemed to Theo that the past was just a present-tense thing that happened in his mind as he thought about it, not real at all, and that the future could only really be experienced in the present too and thus probably wasn’t real enough to worry about and that …

  That he was very tired and that

  Dani forgive me Dani forgive me I don’t know any way to I will always be there is no forgetting there is no forgiving I just stood there I didn’t listen I didn’t think forgive me forgive me there was there isn’t I shall never

  Theo stopped praying when he realised that he was talking out loud, and looked down at the floor, and wondered if anyone had heard him, and when he looked up again, one of Helen’s eyes was open and fixed on him.

  For a moment they sat together, watching each other.

  Helen blinked, slow, once, twice, waiting.

  Twitched, with her one good hand, tried to move it, couldn’t.

  Twitched again.

  Made a sound.

  Uh—uh—huh.

  The sound broke away against nothing.

  Theo flapped, muttered, what do you … what can I …

  Felt useless and dumb.

  Rummaged in the bedside table. Found a piece of paper, a pen.

  Put it carefully under Helen’s hand, balanced on the back of a dustpan.

  She took an age to write, and every second was an eternity, and it was over in a moment.

  END

  Theo folded the piece of paper over.

  Put it in his pocket. Pulled another piece of paper from the pad. Put it under her hand. Her one good eye narrowed, and again she wrote.

  END

  Theo sat back in the armchair, and stared at the ceiling.

  Realised he hated hospitals.

  Hadn’t known that until this moment.

  At his feet the bottle of amber fluid was full, beginning to back up into the drain. No one came to change it. A pair of bellows inhaled, clicked, exhaled, and so did Helen.

  He thought he should say something profound.

  Thought he should find words that mattered.

  Nothing came to mind.

  He reached over, and unplugged the tube that ran into Helen’s throat. Air whistled from the plastic. Her body rose, sank.

  She didn’t die.

  For a while she lay there, and gasped.

  Gasped, eye wide, fixed on him, blinking.

  Gasped.

  Wheezed.

  Shuddered.

  Gasped.

  Didn’t look away.

  She took nearly an hour and a half to die.

  For a little while Theo was terrified.

  Then he was hopeful, because she wasn’t dying, so maybe she would live.

  Then he thought he should plug the tubes back in, and nearly cried because he didn’t.

  Then he was angry, because she was dying, and no one came, and no one cared.

  Then he was bored, and was immediately guilty that he was bored.

  All the time she watched him, and she struggled to breathe and did not look away from him, and after a while he held her hand in his, and she squeezed it once, and did not die, and did not die, and did not die, but lay a wounded shell.

  And in the end, she died.

  There wasn’t even a heart monitor to beep, an alarm to sound.

  She exhaled, and a little foam popped around the hole in her throat, and she exhaled no more, and she died.

  Chapter 71

  Neila moored in an inlet of Keadby Junction, stood on the prow of the Hector, and watched Theo walk away.

  In the afternoon that fucking cormorant finally pissed off too, stupid bloody bird.

  It’d be back.

  That was just the way things were.

  Theo—the boy who would be Theo—sat by the sea with Dani Cumali, and she said:

  “I’m gonna change things. This whole system is so fucked up, you know? It’s so fucked up, and people are just like, you’ll grow up and you’ll learn, and I’m like, fuck yeah, like you’ve learned yeah? but you know what people are like. Patronising wankers. You gotta remember what matters, you’ve gotta …”

  Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe Theo’s making it up, now that time is becoming a little … now that his memories are more confused than they were, now that he might have a daughter who probably isn’t his and now that the life he built from a lie isn’t anything that matters at all, everything is sort of …

  And Dani Cumali dies at Seph Atkins’ hands, and her daughter’s name isn’t on her lips.

  But as she dies it occurs to her that things would have been better if she had whispered Lucy’s name, it would have been a proper way of doing things, and she is briefly annoyed that she was so busy being scared and in pain, and didn’t manage to fit it in.

  Not least because, now she’s here, she finds nothing else really matters as much after all.

  In a hospital in Greenwich, Helen Arnslade dies.

  She does not smile, and as her body turns from a living thing into limp biology in a bed, Theo adds up the value of her life.

  Approximately £5.8 million, give or take.

  Assuming she wasn’t hiding any undeclared medical conditions or didn’t give excessively to charity.

  He waits a little while longer, then gets up, and walks away.

  And on New Year’s Eve Theo Miller walks away from the canal, a gun in his hand, Neila at his back, the sun hidden behind snow-threatening clouds, and has only one destination in mind, and only one thought in his trigger finger.

  Chapter 72

  Nearly fourteen days after two bombs went off in Ascot, Theo returned to Newton Bridge.

  The men came out of the woods with guns and shouting and rage and hunger in their eyes, and he let them shove him from one side to the other and kick and roar, and this time they didn’t dump him in a cold, grey room, but dragged him straight up the hill to where Good Queen Bess was making an especially disgusting cup of camomile tea.

  And she looked up as he was thrown onto the floor at her feet, and tutted and said, “You look like shit. Dog?”

  It took Theo a little while to understand what she meant, until the strips of dried spaniel meat were produced, which he ate with his fingers off a blue and white willow-pattern plate.

  In London, Markse said:

  “There is good reason to think that Simon Fardell didn’t order the hit on you or your mother, Mr. Arnslade. There is footage of individuals at Ascot, including Mr. Miller, which implicates them in the crime. Further, there is reason to believe that Ms. Choudhary was not lying about having her financial information stolen …”

  To Markse’s surprise, this information didn’t induce the gibbering relief he’d been expecting from the minister of fiscal efficiency. Instead, he found himself in the awkward position of having a grown man kneel at his feet, clutch at his trousers, exclaim:

  “Oh Jesus oh fucking Jesus oh God I froze their fucking assets I froze their assets I thought Simon tried to kill me I did the only thing I could oh God oh God he’s going to kill me!”

  Markse wondered what he was meant to do next. In a career spanning the mundane through the petrifying, he’d never before had his employer cry onto his polished leather shoes, nor did he know quite what to make of this development.

  Moreover, he hadn’t been paid for ten days, and suspected he wasn’t about to be
paid any time soon. It had become apparent that the Company’s contract for the collection of taxes hadn’t included lump-sum payments to the government, but rather a constant trickling-in of weekly finances controlled and carefully managed to maximise the efficiency of investment over …

  … he hadn’t paid much attention to the details.

  He was beginning to wish he had. The kitchen cupboard was getting quite bare, and the companies who delivered food to his local supermarket were owned by companies which were owned by …

  And all things considered, the world was a mess.

  And Markse couldn’t abide mess.

  Twenty-four hours later, Philip Arnslade unfroze Company funds.

  The action came too late.

  Of the estimated thirteen thousand people who had died in the electricity blackouts, water cut-offs, transport breakdowns and failure to get access to clean drinking water and food, nearly nine thousand had been over the age of seventy, too old, frail or weak to make it to the resources on which they’d depended.

  Another seven hundred and twenty had died when the police opened fire on rioters in Manchester and Birmingham.

  Fourteen were Company Police, burned alive when their station was attacked. The crowds had danced around the building as they smoked and screamed, and kicked the still-burning bodies of those who’d thrown themselves from the windows, just to be sure they were dead.

  In Shawford, formerly of Budgetfood, the ragers raged at the sea.

  In the enclaves, the safe spaces on the cliffs, a man beat his wife to death for hoarding food. His indemnity would probably have been less than £100k, all things considered, but the police never came, and neither did the ambulance, and no one seemed to care.

  At the Cotswold border the man babbled, “But the sheep are for the aesthetic the rural aesthetic they are part of the expected aesthetic of the—”

  A woman hit him over the head with a shovel, and they left him for dead as they burst across the cordon to feast on fresh mutton and blood.