value of
the cost of doing
he said go on, you know you want to you’re just playing hard to get you’re just
victim’s impact statement was not as fluently written as we’d hoped so only £7590 for the price of
the three kids obviously unable to pay and too young for sponsorship but the eldest was picked up by a private security force, they say they think he has a great deal of potential and want to see if he can handle an assault rifle before subcontracting him for special operations and…
fifteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-two twenty-nine thousand four hundred and eighty-seven fifty-one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three
It occurs to Theo that he has been selling slaves for the last nine years, and knew it but somehow managed not to understand that this was his profession.
Chapter 38
In the morning two men on motorbikes trailed Theo to work, and behind them a van idled in heavy traffic, and never quite seemed to get where it needed to be.
Theo wondered how they’d found him, and thought that maybe Faris had betrayed him too.
There wasn’t much to betray, but there were security cameras, credit checks, fingerprints on a linoleum table. He’d have found him, if he’d tried.
He wondered why they didn’t just arrest him then and there, and when they didn’t, he began to pack.
In the office no one talked to him.
At lunch he ate alone, and took an apple to his desk to finish working while his corner was relatively quiet.
When he cycled home, the motorbikes were on him again.
He went for a run and at the bottom of the hill a man sat reading a newspaper and the same man was there when he came back and it was…
That night he made stuffed aubergine with feta cheese, lentils, tomatoes.
While eating the doorbell rang, and Mrs. Italiaander answered. A few moments later: “Mr. Miller, there’s someone to see you!”
He opened the door to his bedroom, fork still in one hand, looked down the stairs towards the man waiting in the corridor below.
“Mr. Miller? My name is Markse. Might I have a word?”
They spoke in Theo’s room.
Markse, cramped, constrained from his usual presence by pressing walls, perched on the chair by the desk. Theo sat cross-legged on the end of the bed, a half-eaten aubergine on a bright blue plate on the top of the duvet; a single unwise motion could cause a disaster of sauce and cheese.
Markse looked around the room, taking his time, trying to read some sort of personality into the closed wardrobe, the way Theo had arranged his keys and wallet next to the laptop, the bicycle helmet hanging up by the towels on hooks behind the door, the not-life, a room without a heart, just a place to sleep and eat, no more.
Shook his head, looked away, smiled at the floor, and kept the smile on his face as he looked up at Theo and said, “Do excuse my visit, but…”
“It’s not a…”
“From the Ministry of Security, I work for the Nineteen Committee I don’t know if you…”
“Anti-terrorism.”
“Indeed, yes that is part of our—but terrorism is a broad remit these days. Anything which causes fear, in fact, and fear is… I read your report into Dani Cumali’s murder. I had no idea that the Criminal Audit Office was so diligent.”
Theo shrugged. “I could tell that the case was more than it appeared. Auditor’s instinct.”
“So not a personal interest?”
“I dislike it when people try to pay less than their due.”
A smile from Markse. He shares this view. This is clearly a meeting of noble minds. “The Nineteen Committee was investigating Ms. Cumali for a potential security breach. Documents stolen, dabbling in government business. She was in contact with certain elements who are not contributing to society. We think she had a second phone, contacted a man called Faris. Do you know a man called Faris?”
Theo shrugged.
“I’m afraid I’ll need an answer.”
“I met him.”
“In Vauxhall?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“His name came up. I thought he might have useful background information about Dani Cumali.”
“How did his name come up?”
“In the course of my investigations.”
Markse’s smile, again, a little wider. They understand each other now, indeed they do, and what bliss this knowledge brings. “Do you like your work, Mr. Miller?” A casual enquiry, eyes going to another place.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been very diligent.”
“The indemnity system is much better than alternatives. Much more efficient.”
“Cambridge, weren’t you?”
Blood colder than the ice on the canal, time is time was time when
it’s your fault
a boy dying in a field shrouded in mist a time when
“Oxford,” Theo replied, voice matching the stiffness in his spine.
“Oxford of course, sorry. I went to Oxford too—you must have been there in…”
“Fifteen years ago.”
“Fifteen, fifteen… roughly the same time as Philip Arnslade, yes?”
“We were on the same course.”
“Really you were both…?”
“Law.”
“Law together in Oxford! Know him well?”
“Not really. I was working, there wasn’t time for many friends, it was…”
“But if I was to mention your name?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it would be flattering to think that he remembered me. Do you know him well?”
“We’ve met a couple of times.”
“I didn’t realise that the Nineteen Committee and the Ministry were… is this connected to the case?”
“Would it matter if it was? So long as the payment is made?” Markse shifted on his awkward chair, pleasantries passing by, back to business. “A phone was taken from the scene of Ms. Cumali’s murder. A phone and a memory stick. In the course of your remarkably thorough audit, did you find any sign?”
“No.”
“But you found Faris.”
“Yes.”
“I would have thought without the phone…”
“As I said. I asked questions.”
“And met in Vauxhall.”
“Yes.”
“What did Faris say?”
“That Dani Cumali believed she had information with which she could blackmail the government. That she was single-minded and determined to get her daughter… I can’t remember the daughter’s name… to get her out of some sort of place where she was incarcerated. That she kept on saying she’d found something big. It made me think that it was likely that Ms. Cumali had been assassinated in order to keep her silent, which I find frustrating in light of the manslaughter plea entered in the case. Assassination is an entirely different auditing process, through different channels.”
“You’re very thorough.”
“My work is important.”
“So is mine. In normal circumstances I’d say you were a bit of a fruit loop, Mr. Miller. Is that fair? You earn a reasonable government salary but lodge in a house in Tulse Hill; you don’t have any friends except the occasional community gardening companion; you don’t interact with your colleagues at work; you almost never make a mistake except the occasional lapse towards overcharging for a crime; you went to Oxford with the leading lights of the day and yet have never sought promotion or played upon your connections, and your pursuit of this particular case borders on the… what does it border on? If I were to take you by your file, Mr. Miller, I’d say there was something almost autistic about you. Is that fair? Socially autistic, perhaps, the child bullied at school. No after-work drinks, no meaningful interactions, maybe you don’t understand how these things work, maybe you laugh because you hear others laughing but that’s not…