The superintendent, when he came on, was far more solicitous at the idea of Markse’s name than he had been when Theo had called as himself.
“Markse? What’s that dreadful fucking noise are you…”
A soar in his heart, a laugh in his chest. “Sorry, very loud where I am. Just needed to check on the files from Cumali’s phone. Do you still have a copy?”
“You said to—”
“I know what I said, but do you still have a copy?”
“Yes, but we were going to—”
“Still do that, but first you need to send them to—and this is important are you—send them to this email address write it down then destroy it—so it’s gx7pp9—did you get that it’s gx7pp9 at…”
Theo gave him the email address, barely bothering to pitch his voice to sound remotely like Markse’s own, letting the roar of the wind carry the sound away, letting it fill him with strength the smell of the river the cold on the air, and the policeman said:
“Look, Markse, I don’t need you checking up on me like this I’ve got enough with the…”
“Thanks for your help!”
Turned off the phone.
Counted backwards from twenty.
Nearly laughed out loud.
Leaned over the railing to see the vortex of water churned up below, the wake washing out towards the high stone walls of the embankment.
Let the phone drop into the river, to be crunched by propeller and nibbled by grey fishes that dwelt in the spinning mud.
Chapter 41
Theo stayed on the boat to Canary Wharf, changed to the Underground, headed down to the bulbous white spot that had been the Millennium Dome, bought an overpriced ticket to the first thing that was on that night, waited in the queue, pressed in with bodies—mostly screaming young girls with huge bunches in their hair and boys in leather trying to be cool.
Bought a wrap that tasted of salty goo and wet paper.
Let the crowd heave him into the auditorium, blues and lightning-whites, lasers flicking through the smoke-filled air, a scream, a roar, ear-bending as the band came on stage. They were a Japanese girl-pop group, seven of them dressed in tiny black skirts, white socks up to their knees, they swung between covering their mouths when they laughed, little-girl giggles and shakes of their immensely long black hair, to thrusting their hips forward and exclaiming, “I ain’t taking no shit from this world!” to the adulatory screaming, whooping, shrieking, crying, frothing of the audience.
Theo moved with the crowd, up and down, side to side, a motion of its own, let it carry him, let it spin him around the stage, flowed with the rhythm of the people until he found a boy with a mobile phone sticking bright and easy out of his back pocket, tears of joy running down his face, streaming through the UV paint drawn in whiskers from the corners of his lips
stole his mobile phone very easy, really, his father would have been proud his father would have been…
his father would have
Drifted to a corner of the crowd, where the ecstasy of the moment was weakest and the floor was sticky with beer.
Logged into an email address—gx7pp9—and the only email apart from the ancient “welcome to” was brand new and came straight from Safenight Policing Ltd, police force to the stars.
Theo is
maybe in his heart he was always a criminal, maybe he inherited something from his father after all, maybe he just likes it maybe he…
He stayed until the end of the gig, left with the crowd, pushing, shoving, sobbing, laughing, let them spin and spin and spin, down to the station, a heaving mess on the Jubilee Line, got off the train at Stratford, got back on it and headed back to Canary Wharf, ran for the DLR, then changed his mind and ran for West India Quay, up the stairs three at a time, caught the DLR heading towards Bank, saw a man panting for breath running after him, saw the man miss the train…
Got off at Westferry and ran.
Ran for the canal, for the darkness, ran in the wrong kind of shoes but who even cared?
Ran for the terraced streets of Victoria Park, where the CCTV cameras hadn’t grown.
Ran for the bustling traffic, Vietnamese takeaways, evangelist churches and frozen-food shops of Mare Street.
Ran for the hipsters’ coffee shops for the sodium lights for the squirrel bulbs hanging with bare, twisted filaments of life, for the place where the enclaves and the sanctuaries bumped almost nose to nose, the darkness of those who couldn’t pay pressing up against the floodlights and barbed-wire walls of those who could.
Railway arches and trains that screamed and screeched in the night, flash pops of ultraviolet fire off the wheels
the used-metal yards
the yoga studios and vegan cafés
the drug clinics and trash yards for those who had nowhere else to go
boarded-up windows and fresh new signs—it was the perfect place to be as the night settled into the cold.
Theo Miller ran, leaving his followers far, far behind.
An all-night internet café near Dalston Kingsland. The market a few doors up had been caught selling dog, rat, monkey and bat meat again. Several arrested stallholders objected to the charges, saying it was part of their culture, it was how things were.
(Indemnity of £17,820 for the initial crime plus for the repeat offence they could be looking at… )
The internet café windows were pasted with posters for a dozen different plays and gigs. R ‘n’ B, rap, music from the Congo and Nigeria, songs of freedom, songs of love, something by Chekhov, a show by kids, a panto starring that woman off the breakfast shows, you know the one, not the weather lady the other one yeah with the really big…
Theo opened the email from the police service and went through the life and times of Dani Cumali.
They’d taken her phone, dug through her files. She’d managed to borrow a laptop pinched by a kid in the enclave, they’d torn it apart and now here it was, a full report from the cyber division complete with emails, photos, phone calls, text messages—far too much for him to digest in a single night.
But he had a feeling he knew where he was going.
He read.
And for a moment Dani Cumali was alive again, and sitting at his side, speaking the words that were on the screen, watching him, her hand on his shoulder, a guardian angel painted in blood, a ghost who whispered, she’s your daughter, and every time he thought he might drift towards sleep, she squeezed, and it hurt, and he jerked awake and kept on reading.
There weren’t any videos of Philip Arnslade.
No records of crimes committed or corruption planned.
Just the odd email from the Company, a few photos.
You fucking bitch. You fucking speak a word and I’ll fucking kill you.
A text from Seb Gatesman.
You’re safe, she replied. Touch me and you won’t be.
Messages in and out, nothing from Faris, nothing that would have been anything other than places to go, people to see there was nothing but…
(The man called Theo is aware that time is growing a little peculiar, things which he thought were in the past turn out to have some pertinence after all and there was a time when he sat on the bench with his best friend, two children by the sea drinking the cheapest beer they could buy, the only beer they could buy, canned hangover with flat fizzy bits.)
You just make like a heron and maybe one day you’ll catch some fish.
A cormorant can count to seven. Put a ring around its neck and send it catching fish and it will remember that the seventh it catches will be its to feast on.