“I… don’t believe you,” mumbled Theo. “I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t rat you out. Lucy’s your daughter—I’d never snitch, whatever you’ve done, I’d never snitch, I thought that maybe… she’s your daughter. Lucy is your daughter. She’s yours. I went looking for some way to bring her back, and you wouldn’t help me so I did it myself. Listen. I don’t have much time. There’s this woman, her name is Helen, she’s seen the pits, she’s got the…
Lucy is your daughter. I love her. I haven’t seen her for fourteen years and I still love her, how fucked up is that? They’ve been watching me. I don’t care what happens to me, but you’ve gotta use this shit, you hear me? You’ve gotta get her out before it’s too late.”
“Dani, it’s not—”
“I can prove it. I can prove that they broke it. They broke everything. They broke the world. Can you hear me? I know you can hear me. I know you’re there. I know you know it’s true. You knew the moment you heard her birthday you knew you just didn’t…
Lucy is your daughter. She’s yours now. Don’t fuck it up.”
He closed his eyes.
“Where are you?”
He cycled from Tulse Hill to Sidcup. The trains stopped at 23.45, and the taxi ride was more than he could pay.
He had to swing wide to avoid the New Cross Gate enclave, the marks of the tribes painted white in dark streets, the smell of gasoline, the cracks in the road. Some places just couldn’t get the corporate sponsorship, so people gave up, if they won’t, can’t, won’t, whatever—what do you expect from the scroungers, the whiners, the mums who shouldn’t have got pregnant, the dads who can’t be redeemed, the druggies who just need to get over themselves seriously, like, just stop taking the fucking drugs it’s not so hard it’s not so…
Everyone avoided the enclaves. Sometimes the odd journalist would go inside, or stand by the gates with armed security out of shot, and the desperate ones—the children with no family left to call their own, the old biddies who liked to dine on flash-fried cat, the sewer-crawlers and the ones who picked their way through the landfills—before those were sold off to the parole companies and patties brought in from the patty line to go through the waste—they would shuffle and lurch and glare at the camera, and by their cracked faces and their brutal ugliness it was very clear that they were not human any more, and only knew how to resent and hate the intrusion of beautiful people into their scurrying lives.
“You! Off the bike on the ground now!! Get down get down you…”
The men at Blackheath had come so hard and fast out of the reinforced steel gate, Tasers up and ready to fire, that Theo nearly fell off his bike as he swung to avoid them, skidding and dropping hard onto one leg, ankle buckling against the tarmac.
“I’m lost I’m just lost I’m not I’m just lost!”
“Identification!”
“I don’t have any I left it at home I’m going to see a friend my friend she’s going into labour she can’t afford the hospital she’s going into labour I got turned round please the child is mine the child is…”
Why did he use that excuse? He wasn’t sure, but clearly he sounded convincing enough because the men walked him back to the end of the street, pointed him at Sidcup and, quieter, wished him good luck and told him to be careful not to pedal too close to the gated communities, rare bubbles of wealth clinging to the railway lines, lest security take it personally.
Walls around the enclaves to keep the wild things in; walls around the sanctuaries, deluxe lifestyle housing estates and gated villages to keep the wild things out. These decisions had never been government policy. It had just worked out that way.
The lights of London stretched out behind, the brightness where the electricity flowed, the circles of darkness where the council didn’t pay its bills, the zones where the insurance companies wouldn’t go, rationed down to their mandatory six hours a day of illumination.
Flashes of light on the side of the road.
A Chinese takeaway, a golden cat in the window perpetually fascist-saluting a marching parade.
The off-licence, never closed, two boys outside trying to muster the courage to pinch a bag of crisps.
Bin-crawlers, tearing through the tips and overflowing plastic bins in search of things to burn, sell, melt or make.
A man ran out into the middle of the street as he pedalled down the final stretch towards the M20 approach, threw himself towards the bicycle—for a moment Theo thought he was in pain, needed help, he skidded to avoid hitting him and only then saw the other two men coming towards him, one on a low stunt bicycle that bounced and hugged the road, the other on foot, running to grab the handlebars, and with a snarl of unexpected fury he pushed harder on the pedals and kicked the man who’d lunged squarely in the chest as he pedalled by, outpacing his pursuers in a few streets of wind-blasted night.
There was no wall around the enclave where Dani lived, but three women guarded the entrance, hunkered down on a cracked bench by the main road, a barrier of rusted chain slung between two lamp posts, torches in their hands. As he approached one rose, shone a light in his eyes, grunted, “Who’re you?”
“My name is Theo. I’m here for Dani Cumali.”
“This is the women’s place. The men don’t come in here.”
“I’m a friend of Dani’s.”
“This is the women’s place!” she repeated, higher, angry. “This is our place!”
“She called me. She said it was urgent.” Then, feeling almost ashamed: “She has a daughter.”
A flicker, a scowl. “Wait here.”
The women communed, heads together like the closed petals of a thorny flower, opened, returned to Theo, barked, “You got a phone?”
“Yes.”
“Gimme the phone, wallet. We’ll look after the bike. You get ’em back when you’re done.”
“She called me, she…”
“You deaf? We guard them.”
Theo hesitated, then dismounted, let the woman take the bike by the handlebars, handed over his mobile phone and wallet. The woman pointed up a flagstone alley towards a low run of grey concrete buildings. “Cumali. She’s in there, with the faders and the ones who bite. Try not to make a ruckus, yeah?”
Theo nodded and followed the line of her finger.
At his back, he thought he heard her whisper, murmurs to the faint white stain against the clouds where the moon huddled. Blessed is the moonlight through the cage blessed are those who weave and those who break blessed is the mother as she walks upon the mountain stone blessed is…
There was a concrete patio in front of the long, low concrete building with a metal roof where Dani lived. A few cracked plastic pots contained the remnants of grey shrubs and the occasional burst of yellow-petalled marigolds. Someone had made the effort of sweeping the leaves from the nearby trees into a corner, but hadn’t had anything else to do with them, so slowly they blew back in tidelines. A privet hedge ran between the frosted-glass front doors of each apartment block. Very few lights burned. A generator grumbled somewhere behind low walls, scenting the air with diesel.
Theo found Dani’s door by the light cast from the tower block opposite it. A long glass window was dark on the ground floor; a flag hung across showed a faded image of a giraffe in yellow and orange, walking away from a setting sun, head turned towards the earth.
One light shone dull on the first floor, glowing from a cracked-open window, the head of the lamp tilted back into the illuminated room. An arm moved across the light, casting a tentacle shadow over a wall, before flickering back down to darkness. Theo knocked on the front door, inaudibly. He knocked a little louder, and instantly felt afraid, looked around, wondering who’d been woken by the sound. Nothing moved, no shadows stirred. He reached out to try again, and a flicker of light caught his eye. The light vanished. A moment later it appeared again, a square of blue-white within the biting grip of the privet hedge. A mobile phone, confused by its present condition, pressing against the net of twigs that supported it, slipping steadily downwards. The motion of its slow descent through the hedge was setting off a sensor, waking and sleeping the screen. He could see the hollow it had already carved, torn leaves and snapped wood. It looked like it had landed in the hedge with some force. It looked like it hadn’t been there for very long. He hesitated, then reached in. The screen was locked, the greasy journey a dirty thumb took across it clearly visible. He turned it over, glanced up and round and wondered if this was a test, couldn’t fathom what kind, put the phone in his pocket and, moving now a little faster, feeling his heart tap-dance a head-spinning rush, pushed on the front door, testing it.