…but that would be wrong too, wouldn’t it, Mr. Miller? Because you’re not pursuing this out of some… neurological quirk that makes you so extra-extra-specially dedicated where everyone else would have just taken the money and run. You’re not digging because the only thing you know is dirt. It’s something else. My job is to find out what that something else is. I’m hoping that it’s harmless; I’m sure you understand.”
Theo said nothing, staring down at his hands.
Theo stared at nothing.
“Do you mind if I…?” A nod, a gesture. Theo stood, held his arms out as Markse patted him down, found nothing, smiled, sat down again, gestured for Theo to sit. Theo didn’t.
“Of course I had people watching Faris, in light of Ms. Cumali’s threats. You met him and then you ran. Why did you run?”
“Two people chased me. I don’t know what else you’re meant to do when that happens.”
“You could have assumed they were with the authorities.”
“I am the authorities, Mr. Markse, and they weren’t with me. Given that you managed to work out who I was, why didn’t you just arrest me?”
A little shrug. “Because as you say, Mr. Miller, you are the authorities. Why would I arrest someone who might be on my side? I’m going to search your room now. A couple of my colleagues are outside. One of them will sit with you downstairs while you finish your meal. We’ll try to keep disruption to a minimum.”
Sitting in the living room, he finished his dinner because it would be a waste to leave it, and a man in grey tracksuit trousers sat silently with them, and they watched a TV programme about rebuilding ruined houses to rent them out as holiday homes and ways in which you could use an accent wall to really set off the space with a vibrant colour against neutral shades.
After, when Markse was done, he stood in the living-room door as Mrs. Italiaander pretended she had something terribly important to do in the kitchen and listened with all her might, and Markse said:
“We didn’t find anything Mr. Miller, but we appreciate your help on this, your cooperation. I do wish you the best.”
And when Theo went back into his room, just before midnight, it was a turned-over disaster, bed against the wall, mattress torn and slashed open, pillows on the floor, the screen of the laptop cracked. In the end he slept in a bundle of dirty clothes piled up in one corner of the floor.
Chapter 39
“My daughter isn’t…”
“He said your daughter.”
“Why does he it’s not it’s not…”
The closest Neila thought she had seen Theo to crying. She’s put him by the stove, fed him, given him water, tea, watched him drink, starving again, he’d run away and was starving what did he think would happen?
As they bobbed in a nowhere place between towns, moored by spikes driven into the frozen earth with a heavy metal hammer, Neila gave him Markse’s card and now he paced, turned and twisted like smoke in the wind.
My daughter, he said, my daughter why did he say my daughter how did he she shouldn’t be she shouldn’t
And stopped, and sank onto the sofa and looked like an origami man crumpled at the bottom of a traveller’s bag.
They sat a while in silence.
And the time was…
Neila put her hand in his, squeezed it tight.
They sat.
And the moment was…
Theo closed his eyes.
Spoke to the darkness.
“I have failed so many people. I have failed… everyone who ever mattered to me. My father died on the patty line, my mother ran away from all things, I thought the bullets were blank and Theo died and my friend she was…
…the patties burned they burned it all everything was ash and the lady ran towards her son and my daughter ran from me and…”
Turned the card in his hand, one word printed and a telephone number, thick card, black edge.
“When we get to Leicester, I’ll make the call,” he said. “I’ll… but you pretend that you didn’t—it’s important that you didn’t although I suppose now…”
They sat a while, in silence.
Neila held his hand.
Later, she cut his hair by the light of an LED lantern on the kitchen table, and all things considered it was one of the better cuts she’d ever done.
The phone rings in London.
“Markse.”
“It’s me.”
“Theo?”
“You said my daughter.”
“We should meet.”
“What about my daughter?”
“Where are you?”
“If I—”
“Where are you?”
“Leicester.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow, 9 a.m.”
“The woman I’m travelling with, Neila. She’s not…”
“Theo. Listen to me. She’s not part of this. We can still—they haven’t found out what I did yet—we can still solve this.”
“9 a.m.”
“Yes, at Kings Lock on…”
Theo hung up.
The canal at night.
In his dreams the man called Theo stands on one leg in the middle of the river, and still hasn’t caught any fish.
Chapter 40
At the office, the morning after Markse searched his room, even the security guard wouldn’t look Theo in the eye. When he went to access his email, a sign appeared saying his password was out of date and he needed to contact IT.
IT were away for training. The entire department was on a surprise trip to Slough for a creative thinking and imaginative problem-solving development day, hosted by a manufacturer of face paints whose son had been done for child molestation and was looking to get a discount.
Theo tidied his desk, took a few paper files down to the canteen and sat in the window to read. He hadn’t been in a window for a very long time. There had been no sunlight in his working life for nearly six years, and at this time of year it could become hard to remember what it felt like, washed to silver-white, playing through the glass, warming his skin. It was, in a way, one of the nicest days he’d had at work. No one questioned him and no one spoke.
A man sat on the other side of the café and stared at him
just stared
visitor badge around his neck
and that was okay too.
Theo went out for lunch, bought a coronation chicken sandwich.
Afterwards, he returned to the office and went for a piss.
While inside the toilet cubicle, he climbed up onto the top of the toilet bowel, pushed up a ceiling panel above his head, fumbled around between the loosely laid cables until he found Dani’s phone, retrieved it, put it in his pocket, flushing the toilet on his way out and washing his hands carefully with soap and water.
On his way home, he cycled down to Westminster Pier, chained his bicycle—probably illegally—to a high iron lamp post, walked down to the wharf and caught the River Bus heading towards Blackfriars. He stood at the back, where the noise of the engine was loudest, turned on Dani’s phone and made a call.
The station were slow to answer but got there in the end.
“Paddington Safenight Policing, how can I help you?”
“It’s Markse.”
“Who?”
“Markse,” he called out over the roar of water and foam and the lashing of the wind. “From the Nineteen!”
Holding music. The same holding music as last time. Theo’s heart rushed as loud as the water foaming below, he didn’t turn his head, didn’t look to see the man on the deck above watching, just stared at the city moving behind him, stared and waited and listened.