An explosion. You idiot! You bumbling buffoon! This is the Company we’re talking about do you really think you can get twenty-two million out of them do you really think that you’re that man that you can take on the corporate lawyers and win you’re such a I don’t even know what kind of give me the file!
But Mr. Witt…
Give me the goddamn file you absolute…
Theo gave Edward Witt the file, and ran away, heart pounding.
Two days later, he slunk back into the office.
“Mr. Witt? I’m sorry to intrude but…”
“What is it?”
“I left a USB stick with you a few days ago and I realise now that it still has some documents on it which are…”
“Bloody hell, Miller!”
They found the USB stick in an empty dagger case that Edward kept in his middle desk drawer. It hadn’t held a dagger for years but the plush velvet interior had always appealed to the manager, and he liked to throw things inside that offended him.
“Thank you, Mr. Witt, thank you…”
“Get out, Miller!”
That night, on an open Wi-Fi network in a café in Battersea, Theo puts the USB stick into his laptop, dials the office through a VPN, and uses the keystroke recording program buried within the antiviral software to retrieve Edward Witt’s username and password.
He instinctively audits the cost of this crime in his mind—approximately £12,000 so far, rising with every minute he spends contemplating the data that he’s illegally gathering—and feels not insignificantly pleased with himself.
Search: Lucy Rainbow Princess/Cumali.
Born on
mother arrested on
taken into
caught shoplifting on
alcohol abuse
arrested by
sent to
imprisoned at
They met in a different café, down in Limehouse. Dani read in silence, turning through the stolen pages. Theo had printed them on used paper, didn’t notice until too late that behind Lucy’s life story is advice on how to prevent damage from hyper-mobile knees and relaxation techniques for the busy office worker.
Lucy Cumali barely existed any more. Only Rainbow Princess, part-property of Princess Parties Gold, remained in the system.
Three years old, the care home where she’d been placed got sponsorship from a kids’ party company. Lucy Rainbow Princess had been judged suitably cute, and the first fashion shoot had her dressed up in a rainbow tutu with a plastic crown in her hair, posing with the rest of the most winsome kids with the tagline “Make Your Child a Princess for the Day!”
It was cheaper to use kids from the home. Parents could be so pushy these days.
For the next few years, the kids were hired out for photo shoots, as extras in adverts needing a background of cute tots, and for bespoke party events in mansion houses that needed more children, preferably with semi-celebrity marketing kudos, to help make up the numbers. The money they brought in meant the home could afford two meals a day and a Victoria sponge cake at Christmas. The rest went towards management fees. You had to be careful to keep talented people happy.
When she was seven, Lucy Rainbow Princess was diagnosed with malnutrition. The cost of feeding her up to minimum standard required extra appearances at parties and ads to make up the budgetary shortfall, but as she began to put on weight, fewer advertisers wanted her. When she was eight, Lucy burst all the balloons at a party; three weeks later she stabbed a stuffed unicorn with a cake knife, leaving tattered shreds of polyester on the floor and the younger guests in tears. The care home withdrew her from the sponsorship scheme, put her on the third floor on the basic care package and didn’t spot when she dropped out of school four years later.
The cops, when they arrested her aged twelve and a half for drunk and disorderly behaviour, had to give her a lift back to the home when no one came to collect her. On her thirteenth birthday she was picked up, stoned, booze on her breath, standing in the middle of the street not knowing where she was. One of the girls had taken her to the house of some friends of hers, older, all men, who’d put something in her drink and told her to smoke more, more, they had more mates coming come on it’d be great it’d be…
But Lucy Rainbow Princess had a decent head on her shoulders, even when her face had gone walking elsewhere, and told the men to go fuck their mothers and stormed out of the flat and later
in the hospital
couldn’t press charges because she didn’t know where the flat had been or what the men were called.
And by the time her older friend came forward to tell the cops everything, the world had lost interest.
On her fourteenth birthday Lucy Cumali punched a cop in the nuts for trying to take her beer away while drinking in the square. The indemnity was set at £546—a very low rate, given her crime—but no one was willing to pay it. She was sent to juvenile detention, where she worked copying and pasting five-star online reviews for sports products.
CAME IN PERFECT CONDITION REALLY HAPPY WITH MY PRODUCT
FAST RELIABLE SERVICE IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED
OMG ITS JUST PERFECT I’M GOING TO USE THIS IN ALL MY WORKOUTS
And so on.
The day before she was meant to receive parole, she set fire to the unused gymnasium, and her sentence was extended. This seemed to cause Lucy a great deal of satisfaction.
Chapter 11
Dani cried, and it wasn’t pretty crying. It was gasping, sort of asthmatic crying, all puffy-cheeked, dribbling transparent snot and little half-whistles of indrawn breath as she tried and failed to calm down. People were staring at them and Theo felt really, really awkward and got her some more paper napkins in the hope that was sort of helpful.
Somewhere between the snot and the tears she gasped: help me.
Theo said: how?
I need to get Lucy back I need to get her out of there she needs to be
I can’t help you
She needs to be I can if I can get her out of there then
There’s nothing I can do
But you’re part of it you’re part of the system you work for
I can’t do
I NEED TO GET HER BACK I NEED TO
I’m going now
SHE’S THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS NOW SHE’S WHY I’M HERE SHE’S WHY I’M OUT WHY I’M CLEAN SHE’S
Don’t contact me again.
FUCK YOU YOU’RE A FUCKING COWARD YOU’RE
Goodbye.
COWARD YOU PIG FILTH YOU MOTHER FUCKING
He left her mid-flow. She ran after him, crying, begging, and he got on his bicycle and pedalled away as she screamed abuse, and lay on his back on his bed in Tulse Hill and wondered what the fuck he was doing with this fucking stupid excuse for his fucking life.
Chapter 12
In the time before
before the patties, before the wild things and the beautiful things and the things that need more things always and for ever
When the boy who was not yet called Theo Miller was sixteen years old, the police came to arrest his dad. They came at three o’clock in the morning, which was ridiculous, cos his dad had been in since 6.40 and they’d been watching the house for weeks. There wasn’t any reason to break down the front door, smash the glass in the garden porch, wave their guns and shout “Move!” or “Down!” or sometimes “Don’t move!” or a combination of all three in a confusing cacophony.
There wasn’t any reason to put a gun against the boy’s head as his mum screamed and screamed and cried because her son had a fucking gun against his fucking head are you fucking