By the time the Cabinet met fully at 2.40 a.m., they had all received the same file. They’d seen it before, of course, on the day it was released on the internet. Helen Arnslade, reciting the names of the dead. Names of places. National Insurance numbers. Bodies tumbling into graves. Severed limbs and walking skeletons. There was nothing new in this. Even those who hadn’t fully appreciated or suspected weren’t as surprised as they wished they had been.
What was surprising was that this time the file came from Philip Arnslade.
The Company tried to kill me and my mother, he explained. This has gone too far.
The debate on whether to unfreeze Company assets and reopen the banks raged on until 9.45 a.m., by which time the files had been re-released to the internet, and the search blockers appeared not to be working any more. Cabinet chose not to act at this time. It seemed the least dangerous course.
Nine hours later, Philip Arnslade resurfaced in Wales, where he had taken temporary residence in a castle, along with thirty armed men and a news crew.
Chapter 69
The phone call that evening between Simon Fardell and Philip Arnslade wasn’t recorded, but no one in proximity to either end of it could have missed the basic gist.
“Philip, it’s Simon, and what the fuck do you think you are fucking doing? I will fucking burn you I will fucking… I DIDN’T FUCKING TRY TO KILL YOU OR YOUR FUCKING MOTHER WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU all right all right. Okay. Let’s just… think this through, shall we? Let’s just talk about this, let’s just… okay…”
There would be no trial for either Seph Atkins or Mala Choudhary.
Seph Atkins confessed, cleanly and precisely as she always had.
“I was hired to kill Helen Arnslade. I was given a time and a place. I received payment from Mala Choudhary. No, I never spoke to her. That is all I have to say at this time.”
For her own protection she was transferred to a high-security prison where the inmates made concealer sticks and foundation for fair and pale skin. Seph Atkins said not a word as they loaded her into the truck, not a word as they took her through the prison gates. She made no sound as she was strip-searched and dressed in the inmates’ yellow jumpsuit branded with the logo of the cosmetic company and inspiring brand slogans—“Be the true you!” and “Inner beauty, outside.”
On her second night someone tried to beat her up, just because that was how they showed who was boss, and their body was found face down in a vat of boiling pig fat. Seph was put into isolation, and transfer orders came from somewhere, and a van came to collect her, and some time after that the paperwork was lost, and she was not seen again.
Mala Choudhary said, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t hire her. I DIDN’T HIRE HER. I don’t know how the money left my account. I’ve been robbed. I don’t know how the Company money came into my account either. THIS IS A SET-UP can’t you see this is a set-up you stupid fucking…”
And two days later she said, crying, “I did it. It was me. I did it alone. Will my kids be all right? They’re at this great school, they really love it, and there’s all these extracurricular activities they both really love music camp they really love it, they love music camp please don’t take them away from the school. Please don’t take them away from it.”
She too might have vanished, but at the last moment, as they led her towards the edge of the pit on the outskirts of Dagenham, freshly dug and ready to be sealed over with a skimming of hot tar, she remembered that she was the South London Women’s Flyweight MMA champion three years in a row, and she roundhouse-kicked the nearest guy in the gut and smashed another man’s nose against her kneecap, and only as she turned to deal with the final bloke did he have the nerve to shoot her, twice in the leg, once in the belly, once in the chest, his arm sweeping up in an uneasy, jerking arc as he fired.
A further two bullets went astray. One severed the femoral artery of his colleague with the broken nose, who bled out in less than four minutes in the back of the truck. The other hit the wall of the empty, abandoned warehouse behind, and on the ricochet lodged in the ankle of the man doubled over his bruised stomach, who only noticed it five hours later and never walked the same again.
With all the fuss, they didn’t properly bury Mala’s body, and a dog-walker found it nine hours later, the vat of tar cold and set to a solid cylinder next to her carcass.
Somewhere from a castle in Wales, Philip Arnslade roars, “KILL ME KILL MY FUCKING MOTHER I mean she was an embarrassment, a problem yes, she was a real problem and I was embarrassed, I was personally embarrassed, I was…”
Markse has given up trying to get a word in edgeways, so sits patiently, left leg crossed over right, and flicks through the pictures of the dead, the pictures of the vanished, as Helen Arnslade’s voice continues to drone its endless litany of corpses from the laptop on the coffee table.
“When my mother started with her shit, Simon was furious. He’s always had a temper, don’t you believe the things he says, he’s always been a… but he was furious he said we should just have killed her when she betrayed us the first time, just kill my FUCKING MOTHER ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING TO ME?”
Markse smiles, nods, and that seems to be enough.
“KILL MY MOTHER so I’m searching the country and we stop it, we tidy things up, yes, there’s a scandal but it passes we shut it down by now Simon worries that I’m ‘unreliable’ and I think, hold on there matey, and then he PUTS A FUCKING BOMB IN FUCKING ASCOT fucking uses the SAME FUCKING LAWYER and the SAME FUCKING KILLER-BITCH to try and fucking kill me he doesn’t even have the decency to try and cover it up ‘liability’ he said ‘loose cannon’ well I’ll fucking…”
It occurs to Markse, somewhere in the midst of all this, that his employers—whoever they are now—perhaps lack some of the temperament that he would otherwise wish of those in high office.
Chapter 70
Five days after the banks shut down, Theo found Helen Arnslade.
The hospital was south of Greenwich, with a view up the hill towards the observatory and the green laser that shot out into overcast skies to mark the line of the Greenwich Meridian, dividing the world between east and west. He’d already searched every other likely hospital in London, and was about to try and force his way back into the Cotswolds when he stumbled on her, sleeping in a private, guarded room on the third floor, on a wing reserved for patients on life support, in comas or permanent vegetative states. She’d been signed in as Mrs. Danesmoor, and no further notes on her condition were kept. Theo waited for the late-night cleaners to go on shift, and whispered to a sallow-eyed man with a mop bucket and a limp, “Blessed are her hands…”
And he grasped Theo’s arms below the elbows before he could answer and hissed, “Is it true? Is there a queen in the north? Will there be a rebellion? Are we going to be free?”
Theo didn’t have an answer, couldn’t find anything good to say, so he lied. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes. It’s all true.”
The man wept, and as he stripped out of his uniform and passed Theo his access pass, the tears rolled down his blotched, sponge-cake face, and he gibbered thanks and prayers to an unknown deity, and Theo thought perhaps he should offer comfort, and didn’t know what to say.