“But he is my son. Granddad? Can I call you Granddad? He’s my son. He’s my son. He’s my…”
But Lord Arnslade was just paint and canvas again, the harsh light of the overhead chandelier bouncing off his thick dark curves, the spaniel still waggy-tailed and wide-eyed leaping for ever at his feet, and there was blood in her mouth, and Lady Helen realised she needed to wash her hair.
Chapter 51
Theo Miller drives.
He sleeps in the back of the car.
Eats egg-and-cress sandwiches.
Reads on the old laptop of Jacob Pritchard’s younger son, who long since upgraded and fled abroad to Spain, where things were a different kind of easy.
Records of deals done, of lives sold.
He wonders where Lucy is.
For a little while thinks about praying, and realises that he is praying to his daughter. She should not be God, she is not God, and yet he feels this urge to bend his knees and pray, pray for…
It’s a stupid instinct, so he gets back into the driving seat and keeps going west.
“Hi, Edward Witt, Criminal Audit Office, I’m… yes that’s—no I can…”
He sits in a service station off the M40 and enjoys being his boss, for a little while.
“No, still here thank you—yes it’s about Lucy Cumali that’s right Cumali you might also have Rainbow Princess it’s—that’s the one thank you. Criminal Audit Office, yes so I’m looking at a request from a lawyer on behalf of a corporate entertainment company enquiring as to the value of her indemnity is it… I see. I see. Yes. No that’s more than I think they were expecting it’s… can you send me that file? Thank you yes my email address is…”
He read Lucy’s file while eating a kebab in the passenger seat of his car, pulled up in a high street that sold birthday cards, burgers, scones, second-hand mattresses and not much else.
A corporate entertainment company was interested in buying her parole.
The governor warned that she had an attitude problem.
Not a problem, replied the company. Our girls get to be very pliable, very soon. It’s all part of the training.
A road, sweeping down a V carved between two chalk cliffs, breaking out into crimson-leafed forest, pillowed mounds of darkness, hammer ponds and running brooks through hills where the sun only sometimes managed to peek out from between the leaves.
He ate at a pub and rode their Wi-Fi connection and the menu was red cabbage and wilted spinach and Chantilly carrots and roast lamb and giant Yorkshire puddings and after twenty minutes the community Company officer came and asked him for his ID and if he worked nearby because you see the people here had paid their Company tax and there was a surcharge for visitors.
In the night he sat on a hill looking down towards the village, and saw a flash of firelight as the first torch was lit, followed by another, and another, and another.
The Company support team stood by with sand buckets, health and safety you see, but otherwise didn’t intervene as the people of the town walked out in robes of black, flaming torches held aloft, went down to the edge of the town and circled its boundaries three times, twice clockwise, once anticlockwise, and spoke their prayers.
Protect us, Lord, from the evils that come in the dark protect us from the world that claws at our edges protect us from change and from pain and from evil and from…
After, they went home to play Xbox.
Theo didn’t have the paperwork to enter the Cotswolds.
He hid the car on the Oxfordshire border, driving down the path to an abandoned industrial estate and tucking it into the deepest corner of the dark. Then he waited for the grey hour before dawn, and sneaked across on the footpaths with a pair of kids, dodging into the hollows of great-bellied trees to evade the patrols who swept the area in beams of white, looking for intruders.
His guides, fourteen and sixteen, brother and sister, made their living by taking strangers across the border. They knew where the motion sensors were, and the flight paths of the drones. For only two hundred quid they could get you a month pass to the Cotswolds, complete with 5 per cent discount at this big manor house where once a president had stayed, or maybe a military dictator, they weren’t sure. They were all the same anyway.
He paid fifty quid for their skills, and didn’t ask if they had family or if they’d be okay getting home. By early morning he’d reached a village of old stones and running water, a mill silent by the stream, narrow stone bridges criss-crossing through the village, a manor house offering spa experiences and corporate dining.
He washed his face in the stream, waited for the sun to climb higher, descended to the tea room to order a scone and a pot of Earl Grey.
“You’re here for the walking are you?”
“Yes, the walking. My family have a cottage in Chipping Campden.”
“Beautiful around there, beautiful. So how long have you been…?”
“I entered a few days ago. I like to come here at this time of year—fewer people. You can walk for hours and not see…”
“Of course! It’s not like the Lake District around here!”
An entrance pass to the Lake District was sometimes affordable even by people who weren’t on the Company payroll, and there were some corporations who still insisted on sponsoring Boy Scout trips up the mountains too. Not that anyone had any problem with Boy Scouts, not really, it was just that people like that… cluttered things. They made everything feel terribly…
…cluttered.
“I was thinking of visiting Danesmoor. I heard that the paintings are…”
“Remarkable, yes, remarkable do you know the…?”
“Arnslade; of course. I work at the Ministry—he’s such a good boss, I mean you’ll know of course, but such a pleasure and…”
His hostess, blue and white striped apron, green beads at neck and wrists, beamed, and topped up Theo’s cup with a little more steaming tea, milk in first.
One cream tea later, a family of three arrived, bright blue matching hi-tech jackets, matching red walking sticks, matching immaculate, mud-free boots. Theo watched them from the corner of his eye, waited for the child, a boy of seven, to be particularly obnoxious and vile, then stood up, swept by, and stole the father’s travel bag. The entire exercise was ludicrously easy.
Sat on the edge of town, he rifled through the contents, stealing clothes, water bottle, money, credit card, papers.
Threw the rest into a gully, kept on walking.
A flock of grouse scattered down the side of the hill; a horse with wide brown eyes trotted to the edge of the field, inviting nuzzling, sugar cubes, company.
A town where a single church sang out a joyful peal of bells to the rising day.
A village with an autumn fête in full swing, the children laughed and played and spun around the maypole, there was face painting, giant bubbles drifted through the air, home-baked goods for 50p to raise money for a local charity, a fair for old cars, polished to perfection, 1930s two-seaters, tops down, men sat on the shining black leather seats exclaiming, without being allowed to actually drive, “Parp parp parp!” giggling with childish delight.
As he moved on, he passed a red phone box which had been converted into a station for CPR defibrillator panels.
A tourist shop selling hand-painted china, a thousand whiskered cat faces.
A security post manned by a member of the Cotswolds Appreciation Corporation, who scurried out as Theo passed and blurted, “Can I see your pass, please?”
“Of course just…”