And looked at where his muster point should have been, and saw only wreckage, and was for a moment not sure what to do.
“Sir please… please make your way calmly to the front car park, where there will be… will be… do you need medical attention do you…?”
He’d only ever been taught one procedure for an evacuation, and it hadn’t involved there being a bomb round the back. His mouth went numb, lips stopped moving. Theo stared into his face, and thought he looked very stupid, and felt very sorry for him, and looked back to where Helen wasn’t moving, and said, yes, yes. I’ll go. I’m going. I’m fine. Yes.
And went back inside.
And followed all instructions to proceed calmly and quickly to his designated exit.
And did not answer his phone.
And knew he had not failed, and thought that Dani walked with him, and that his daughter would be ashamed of who he had been, and who he had become.
Chapter 67
Seph Atkins phoned the police eight miles outside Virginia Water.
She’d reached the conclusion it was the smart move. Making them give chase would only increase the value of the indemnity, and whatever had happened, she would be safe.
She would be safe.
She would be…
The racecourse put on complimentary transport for anyone who needed it, to their destination of choice. If you had passed through the Ascot cordon, you could expect a certain level of service, of discretion and respect. This wasn’t the first time people had targeted them. People were so resentful, they just lashed out, lucky really that more guests weren’t hurt, it was all so deeply unpleasant.
Bea and Corn took a taxi to Victoria Station.
They couldn’t find Theo in the crowd, and he didn’t answer his phone.
Five hours after Seph Atkins was taken into custody, the police came to Mala Choudhary’s door.
She said, “But this is ridiculous, get your hands off me—get your hands off me!” and was for a moment so shocked that she forgot she was a lawyer, and punched a policeman instead. That got her Tasered and put in handcuffs, but at least the cop wound up with a broken jaw. She’d have been disappointed in herself if he’d got away with anything less.
On the canal Theo is ice he is ice there is ice around the boat there is ice in the morning which they crack with a hammer there is ice and the snow turns all things black and grey it cuts down vision it reduces the land to silence to
In the prison Lucy Cumali writes:
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Last night her bunk mate was put on half rations for not complying with company-standard review practices. Her bunk mate is twelve years old, and weighs five and a half stone. They say she’s a burden; a real economic burden.
Seph Atkins said, “I want my lawyer.”
And Seph Atkins said, “I want my lawyer.”
And Seph Atkins said, “I want my lawyer.”
And when her lawyer came, she said, “This is the wrong lawyer,” and he replied:
“I’m afraid Ms. Choudhary has been arrested. There were funds found in your account which appear to have come from her. This impropriety renders her unable to conduct your defence and so…”
Corn and Bea went back to the house in Archway, and turned on the TV, and discovered that a wonderful celebrity couple were looking forward to twins—twins they’d be so adorable!—and that the price of Marmite was rising again, if you liked that sort of thing, but it was all right because there was strong growth in the banking sector for the ninth consecutive quarter.
Theo did not answer his phone.
In the police station Seph Atkins said, “Okay. Okay. Yeah, I was hired to do Helen Arnslade. I was given a time, a place where she’d be. They said she’d go to the races, and then leave by the back, through the car park. They gave me the number plate of the car she’d be driving. Said she was having a meet there, all hush-hush, and to do her when she left. That was my brief.”
And her lawyer said, “And the money?”
“It came from Choudhary.”
“I’m afraid Ms. Choudhary is denying that she ever sent you a penny.”
A shrug.
“You do see how this situation is complicated…”
Another shrug.
Three cells down:
“No check again—check again! Yes, I represented Atkins but I never hired her, I never… do my kids know what’s going on? You don’t tell them, you don’t… you don’t fucking tell them!”
In the hospital room Philip Arnslade stares down at the sleeping form of his mother and is for a while silent as the choices of his life, the mad, headlong rush of recollection—no, of something worse; of introspection, of that terrifying reliving of the past in the present, of looking back and asking the questions now that perhaps should have been asked then—floods upon him.
And at the end of it, a thought strikes him, and it is certain, and it nearly sends him onto the floor, but his security man is standing right behind him, and puts a steadying hand on his arm, and always seems to know what Philip needs.
“Fuck,” whispers Philip Arnslade as revelation dawns. And then: “Fuck!” And one last time, to make sure that it’s real, to run the question again and see if it returns the same response. “Fuck. It was meant to be me.”
Later, it started to snow.
Chapter 68
Neila and Theo sat together on the roof of the Hector as the snow fell, and in the distance watched Scunthorpe burn.
Neila put her head on Theo’s shoulder. He wrapped one arm around her, pulling her close. The smoke was a beacon drifting off to the south, pulled high and thin by the wind. The flames were a spinning orange dance in the sky on the horizon.
At last Neila said, “So you did that?”
“In a way.”
“You burned it all?”
“Not that place per se…”
“But you burned the country?”
“I suppose.”
“And killed people?”
He didn’t answer.
“To get your daughter back?”
No reply.
Neila shuffled in a little closer, enjoying his thin warmth, and for a little while longer they watched the flames.
“Cool,” she breathed, letting her eyes drift shut as if she could feel the heat of the fire from the water’s edge, warming through to the bottom of her soul.
Three days after two bombs went off at Ascot the British government froze the assets of the Company.
Philip Arnslade, minister of fiscal efficiency, made the choice unilaterally. It was within his power, after all, and the civil servants who made the call were surprised to discover that they actually could make this happen.
The banks said: are you kidding me no way that’ll destroy everything the Company is the banks the banks are the Company we can’t just stop trading their assets this is…
So the minister of fiscal efficiency ordered the Nineteen Committee to exercise its emergency powers, which it did, and shut down the banks’ computer systems.
The Cabinet, when they found out, exploded, and demanded in fairly short order that the computers were unlocked, the assets unfrozen and that Philip Arnslade resigned. Unfortunately, by that time Philip Arnslade had vanished for a vital meeting somewhere—Birmingham, perhaps, or was it Hull?—and the calls they made to his phone went straight to voicemail.