Theo, matching his gaze, and at the back of his mind a few words blurted by Dani while he tried to pretend she didn’t exist, and they hadn’t been children together, and that her daughter wasn’t also his.
I’ve got this boss. Gatesman. I got dirt, and now he’s fucking scared of me. Embezzling from his bosses, naughty. He’s scared and I can ask for any job I want, and I said—I want into the Ministry. Get me into the Ministry.
The Company has no problem with Seb sleeping with his charges, using them for his own power and sex. In many ways, that just makes it easier to turn a profit, get them used to the idea that this is it, all that there’ll ever be, break them early. They’re just patty-line whores and anyway, using women, it was a story as old as time, no point punishing natural instincts, not when Seb’s performance indicators were so positive.
But corporate embezzlement… for such a crime Theo had handed out indemnities that cost more than murder.
And Seb looked Theo in the eye and saw the truth of it, and looked away, remembered the phone in his hand, put it back in his pocket, and was for the briefest of moments afraid.
“So uh… not sure I can get you the last two months but I could maybe see if…”
“Her pay record should include details of her shifts, yes?”
“Yeah I guess that…”
Theo’s head turned a little to one side, and the other man didn’t meet his eyes.
“Did Ms. Cumali ever request a specific shift?”
“Yeah. Sometimes she asked for stuff.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“I respect my employees,” intoned Gatesman—shutting down now, fear will have that effect, “so if I could help her I would.”
“What shifts?”
“Some office stuff. Cleaning after hours. Said she liked the quiet.”
“Which office stuff?”
“Government buildings, that sort of thing.”
“Which buildings?”
“Ministry of Civic Responsibility, mostly.”
“Doing what?”
“Cleaning.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really.”
“Anything leap to mind, small details, it can be so easy sometimes for these things to be…”
“She wanted to be sent to this swanky do, couple of weeks ago. Big house, something corporate.”
“Did she say why?”
“No.”
Her exact words were in fact: You don’t fuck with me, I won’t fuck with you, you fucking get me?
Seb Gatesman had understood and given her what she wanted. For now. One day he’d make her pay—he’d make her fucking suck his—but not yet not until he’d found where she was keeping the pictures he needed to get the photos off the bitch before he could
“And where was this corporate event?”
“Some place… Danesmoor Hall.”
“And this was recent?”
“Coupla weeks ago. You know it’s a busy job, we’ve been really… you know. You know. Dani murdered. Murdered. It’s not every day that you get—I mean you hear but you sure she didn’t top herself?”
“Very sure.”
“I guess it can happen to anyone and a patty I mean more than others you’d think wouldn’t you—who’s paying for the funeral?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Company isn’t liable for that stuff, you know. We don’t do flowers or nothing.”
“You’ve been very helpful. If you think of anything then…”
“Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course. Like. Yeah.”
That was the only eulogy Dani Cumali would receive.
Time is
time was
Theo closed his eyes and tried not to think too much about time
Walked away from Seb Gatesman because there was nothing to be done, and that was how the world was.
Theo Miller sits on the bus and despite himself, no matter how hard he tries to stop it, words well up from a burning place inside, and in his mind’s eye he sees—
Lucy’s face, he doesn’t have a very clear image, it’s mostly fantasy really, but whoever she is, she’s just a child and there’s Seb Gatesman standing over her, a biter a screamer there’s a market for everything there’s a market for…
Theo Miller watches the still surface of the canal in the dead of winter night, hands in his pockets, and nearly turns the engine back on at the thoughts he cannot stop from
sees his father, when they took him to the patty line
his mother, getting on the train to Dorchester, I think I’ll have a better life somewhere new, it’s not much but I just don’t want to be part of this any more it’s not
Somewhere in the north there’s a place where they lock up girls like Lucy Cumali, worthless patty-line whores who’ll never amount to anything and they’ve got to help pay their way haven’t they, there’s a market for everything, there’s a market for…
Lucy, Lucy come on it’s for the cost of things you want to help us pay for the cost of things and he said he’ll be gentle since it’s your first time since you’re so young he’ll be so…
Dani: she’s your daughter.
She’s your daughter.
She’s your daughter.
SHE’S YOUR
Sitting on the bus, Theo Miller puts his head in his hands, closes his eyes and in an instant finds himself auditing the value of his own life.
In a rare fit of humour he decides that the cause of his death is “murdered in jealous sexual rage,” and laughs into his fingers, and still can’t make the value of his life worth more than a bedsit in Holloway, excluding stamp duty.
Chapter 29
The Hector spent a night in Cosgrove. The boat they’d seen before was moored next to Neila’s, but the lights were off, generator silent and no one home. Neila went to the water pump and found it iced up. When, after a few hits with a wrench, the handle began to move, air chunked and water did not flow. No one was manning the diesel station, and the hoses were dry.
Wrapped in scarf and hat, glove and coat, they went looking for someone in charge, knocking on the shut door of the brick house that guarded the lock gates. No one answered. Neila sucked in breath and said, “Let’s tie up properly and come back later.”
They tied off to bollards, hunkered down by the stove to eat and listen to the radio.
Next morning went to look
no one home.
As the sun went down went to look
no one answered.
At 8 p.m. Neila stepped outside to get another log off the roof from under the tarpaulin and saw a light burning in the house by the lock.
“Theo!”
They nearly ran, Theo clutching his side beneath his coat, back up to the lock gate, hammering on the door.
A woman, thin white beard beginning to sprout from between the squashed plum of her chin, answered.
“Yes?”
“Hello ma’am good evening ma’am we’re looking to buy some water and diesel and also to empty the waste tank ma’am…”
“Now?”
“We’re heading north, Nottingham, it would be—”
“It’s two quid a litre.”
“For the…”
“Water.”
“Ma’am, two pounds for the—”
“It’s better than what you’ll get further up the canal. I’m fair. Others aren’t fair. I’m fair. Do you doubt me?”
Neila hesitated, blinking in the light of the door, Theo a huddled shadow behind her. “And how much for the diesel?”