“I found myself asking, what would make this ordinary man, this harmless individual, go to such extraordinary lengths? Principle? For a while I thought that was it. Just principle. You were the kind of man who—if you pardon me saying so—seemed enough of a socially isolated individual that principle, yes, you could compromise a lot for principle, but then I thought… all those years working for the Criminal Audit Office, surely there were other cases, worse cases, where your sense of morality would have been more offended this was hardly…
So I looked again, and I thought maybe I’d got it wrong. Maybe the man who stands up for principle is a lie, because there was no evidence that you’d ever stood up for anything before. None at all. You were, in fact, a moral vacuum. Oh, not in a spectacular way. You were no more or less evil than anyone else in society, and in fact evil isn’t even the operative word. Apathetic, perhaps. Yes, that’s it. You were as apathetic as everyone else, and to square that now with your actions, maybe everything I had concluded was false and in fact…
So what was left? There seemed nothing in you to hate, you hadn’t been rejected, didn’t seem unhappy at work, didn’t strike me as proud or motivated by irrationality, and when all these things were eliminated, at the very end the only thing it left room for was love. At the end it did do that. Of course my first instinct is love, when fear is discarded, the romantic angle, but when I met you that was clearly absurd. But as time went by…
Your acquisition of the Theo Miller identity was excellent. I couldn’t have done a better job and I’m…
It wasn’t that you made an error. It just that there had to be, there had to be something we’d missed.
We found his grave, in the end. The real Theo Miller. That led to the opening of the files and there he was, dead in Oxford, shot by Philip Arnslade, and I thought that’s it! That’s got to be it, but what does that have to do with Dani Cumali how does that possibly…
I still don’t know who you are. I still don’t. I thought perhaps someone else at the duel, someone else who… Simon Fardell says there was someone else there but can’t remember anything about him. A ‘scurrying nobody’ was how he put it. I thought… that sounds about right. A scurrying nobody who everyone forgets, that seems… and I thought, here’s this man who vanished and here’s this new Theo Miller who lived and I looked at the years and there was a moment, this instant where I had Dani Cumali’s life pinned to the wall and the life of the man who became Theo Miller on the other and there’s Lucy’s birthday, there she is and it’s…
shitting hell almost exactly nine months
practically to the day
after Theo Miller died.
And I thought no.
No.
It wouldn’t be—it can’t be that simple it can’t be that
But then how did you get Cumali’s information? She must have known you she must have trusted you there must have been some sort of pre-existing—some sort of…
You must have known her.
You must have.
And even if the girl wasn’t your daughter even if she wasn’t then
But she was.
She was.
I just
It made everything more
And even if she wasn’t I thought
I don’t have any children. My line of work, it wasn’t ever a thing which seemed… apt.
My office is funded by Simon. He sold a company that was owned by a company that…
But I suppose we’ve always been owned by them, really. And my boss said, after Philip died, tell it to Simon. So I did. It’s my job, it is required, I am a man, you see, used to a certain order in things. I told him about your daughter, and he was delighted. We picked her up that very day, took her to Simon’s home, he fed her like a princess, he fawned over her it was…
And I looked at him and thought, this man is going to…”
Stopped himself.
Looked, for the very first time, ashamed.
“I think that perhaps… there are some despicable things I’ve done, but perhaps… but Simon has a wife, Heidi, and I think she can sense what he wants, knows that there is something in the way he looks at Lucy, and Heidi has been… she’s always wanted a daughter.
I am good at my job. It’s important to be good at your job. It’s very important. It’s how we know we’re… good people. Because we work hard. We work hard and we do our best and… I am very good at my job. You were good at your job too, weren’t you, Mr. Miller? If we are both good at our jobs, then it doesn’t matter what these jobs are, because it isn’t the consequence that matters, just the doing.
Just the doing.
That’s how the world works. Everything is
I thought that
it’s how the world is it’s how
you just do
what you can when the world is
how the world works.
What else is there?”
Theo didn’t answer. He thought there was perhaps a moment when he might have had something to say, something about standing up and taking control and being…
But he can’t find it. It all seems very self-important, now.
“Are you Lucy’s father?”
No answer.
“You don’t even know her. It can’t mean so much.”
Theo looks for a moment like he might retch, fingers frozen mid-scrape along the damp heel of his foot.
“Maybe it is love,” mused Markse, staring at the ceiling. “Maybe it is at that.”
A while they sat, staring into their own places.
“Of course my work,” Markse breathed. “Sometimes I look at the actions I’ve taken and
if I had a daughter, and if she was in danger then…
The threat, you see. The threat is itself a beastly matter, even if you never follow through. Here is your daughter, safe in the house of your enemies. Come now, or we will hurt her. We’ll hurt her. We’ll hurt this child. It is the vilest sort of
But what has to be done.
A question of the value of the thing. Of the balance. Once you have life on the line, even a child’s life—especially a child’s life, if you are willing to go so far. To kill a child.
The vilest thing.
What’s your name, Mr. Miller? I’m curious I don’t think it’s relevant it won’t affect…
No.
Well.
I suppose—
that’s fair, in its way.”
At night the prison is cold and Dani Cumali sits next to him and says,
“Ow that’s my arm it’s ow mind where you put your backside you great”
Theo rolls over and stares at a concrete ceiling sprayed with seaside stars.
“And I’m going to get a better job, a new job, and then I’ll be able to move away from here and actually maybe I’ll move first to get a new job because around here there’s nothing it’s just getting the money you know getting the money to move so job first then”
He holds Dani close, and she stares up at the starlight with him and says:
“My bum’s gone to sleep.”
And he holds her closer still.
“Bloody mess, really. Don’t know how it got there. Don’t know what we did. Thought we had some control but actually I’m not sure we ever did not sure there was anything we could have done which someone else hadn’t decided it’s like when”
And does not sleep, as the sky turns, far away.
Chapter 78
He thought it was late at night, and it was early in the morning, and still dark.