Neila turns out the lights, and for a while they sit in silence, peeking through the porthole.
The convoy rolls past, trucks blazing with light, a hundred, a thousand bulbs flashing and blazing, rattling along the nearby road, turning the gently falling snow into a bubble of white. The revellers are dancing, writhing, kissing, falling, sleeping, shrieking, laughing, they crawl across the tops of the over-heavy vehicles and over each other, stepping in eyes and on bellies, glass bottles smashing on the tarmac below, they laugh and laugh and laugh
and keep on driving, no one entirely knows where, a wild hunt through the night.
Sometimes, secretly, Neila hears the people scream at the side of the canal and wants to raise her voice in chorus with theirs, to join the singing, the singing of the ones who have lost. But she knows that if she does, she will be an animal. Only animals howl at the moon.
In a dentist’s house in a village with no name, no walls and a church in a little square, Theo sat at the computer and slipped Dani’s memory stick into the slot.
There, laid out in neat little boxes, was the mother lode.
Flicking through files.
Video, taken from a strange angle: two men in a high-ceilinged room, or maybe it just seemed that way because of the plant pot the camera was hidden in. They drink port from little crystal glasses and behind them is a painting of a man with one hand resting on the turning globe, and they are Philip Arnslade and Simon Fardell, and Simon says:
“The problem with the excess is that…”
“I entirely understand.”
“Under these circumstances, for the sake of the business.”
“It’s a relief, really.”
“If they don’t pull their weight.”
“I’ve always said…”
“We can’t always guarantee…”
“The site at Wootton…”
“Entirely in hand. You’re doing the right thing, Phil. You’re doing the right thing.”
A door opened, someone came in, the two men switched immediately, golf and the weather, the camera stopped filming.
From the dentist’s studio next door:
“You can’t gargle what do you mean you can’t gargle look it’s NO THAT’S CHOKING NOT GARGLING IT’S LIKE THIS YOU…”
Photos on a screen.
A factory behind, a pit in front.
The bulldozer has nearly finished filling in. The sheer horsepower of the machinery makes the bodies seem like fabric things, easily bent, easily pushed, no sense that this was once human flesh.
On the canaclass="underline"
“Neila? Have I said thank you? Have I said… did I ever say anything which was… is there anything I can say which is…”
Neila turned over the final card and sighed, and looked up into the face of the man called Theo and smiled. “No,” she replied. “No.”
On the computer screen:
Finances. Data, numbers, they run down the screen projected profits margins of opportunity the number of…
A list of names.
Wootton.
King’s Badby.
New Roade.
St. Cecile on the Neve.
Lower Ayot.
Little Fife.
Twinmarsh.
He looks them up on the computer, and sees only the factory buildings and high walls of the patty lines.
Looks again and sees the long, dug fields of earth behind the factories, where fresh grass is beginning to grow.
The dead weren’t given names, but the last four digits of their National Insurance numbers were visible, along with the crimes for which they were indicted and the value of the indemnity they had failed to pay.
Theo washed his face in the bathroom sink, put the memory stick in his pocket, and let himself out of the back door of the house as the dentist berated a crying child.
Chapter 49
Following country lanes for a while, until he turned north and found the River Stour.
Long reeds tipped with black ends and sharp spines, slow-running waters through boggy marsh, midges, an apple orchard, a town where they sold hog roast and methane.
An empty village where the pub sign swung gently in the breeze.
Not tracking the river as much as he’d thought, the wetness of the land pushed him through little villages and around enclaves where sometimes the screamers screamed and the rich locked up their cars.
A tiny town, no name, no gate, where two people sat in their front garden, naked, and watched Theo go by. Another woman, naked, stood behind a living-room window, hands on hips, and in the full resplendence of an autumn sun shimmering cold across her bare, goosebumped flesh, glared at the walking man as he passed by.
Soon they’d have a party, soon there’d be another night for flesh and seeing what new flavours could be best licked off another man’s skin and it would be…
… but for now the sun was still up, so they waited for the evening and Theo walked.
He wasn’t sure if he would find the place he was looking for.
Doubted very much if the man he needed was still there, but still, sometimes you had to put everything on a wager.
He turned off the path where it met a slightly larger country lane, followed it down to the river’s edge, paused to wash his face again, dribble icy water down the back of his neck, listen to the swaying of the red-leafed trees, smell the mould behind the church.
Crossed a fat, belching A road, a railway line where the trains had stopped.
Walked up a hill to the valley’s edge, to a village of two houses and a corrugated-iron farm. There were gates on either end of the road, in and out of town. The gates were built in two parts, the outers heavy black metal, the inners swirling iron, reclaimed from a manor house, the date of construction still visible amid the roses blooming and songbirds soaring in metal, lovingly restored.
He knocked on an outer gate, and a panel swung back instantly, a man glaring through the peephole.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Pritchard.”
“He’s not here.”
“But he lives here.”
“No.”
A little sigh, a shifting of bruised, aching bones, flat, blistered feet. “I’m looking for Mr. Pritchard, it’s very important.”
The peephole slammed shut.
Theo knocked again.
The peephole didn’t open.
He called out, voice bouncing back at him from the high metal gate, “Tell Mr. Pritchard that I’m Mike’s boy. My name is Theo. Tell him I’m going to destroy the country, the government and the Company.”
No answer.
He slunk down, back against the concrete blast wall that encircled the little cluster of thatch-roofed houses, and waited.
Slept a while.
Woke hungry.
Slept a little bit more.
Stirred with the crunching of boots, the play of light against his eyelids, bright against the thick dark of cold autumn night bitten with the taste of winter.
A man in a green waxed coat, dark blue rubber boots and a pair of tatty blue jeans stood over him, face half-lost behind the glow of torchlight cutting into Theo’s face. A long-tongued mongrel dog sat patiently beside him, waiting for orders, tail beating slow and rhythmic against the ground, breath steaming a little in the air. Behind the pair, two more men stood, arms buried in black woollen coats, faces hard, ready to kick out against any who dared their disfavour.
“It is you,” mused the man with the torch. “You look like shit.”
Theo, shielding his eyes against the glare, squinted up. “Hello, Mr. Pritchard.”
“You’d better have a cuppa.”