The burst bubble of Bea’s head rolled back, one open eye staring up into Theo’s face, the other shattered in blood, ink and lead. Theo thought if he met that gaze he would puke, and then couldn’t look away, and didn’t puke, and on a-one-a-two-a-three, swung her body down into the pit, went back for Faris’s corpse, then for Queen Bess, then a few more were added to the tally: a couple of men who’d tried to fight, a couple of women who’d been caught with loaded guns. £83,000, less if they’d resisted arrest. £52,000 for the man who’d shot back. £145,000 for the woman who’d died with her child in her arms. At least one or two middle-management figures in the Company would have to forgo their annual bonus to pay the price of this, if it ever became known. If anyone cared. That was all. The rest would be written off against tax.
Three black cars stayed in the car park at their backs as they moved the bodies, and the doors did not open
and when they were finished, a bulldozer came and shoved a great pile of earth onto the gentle bump where the bodies were buried, and Theo didn’t understand why it did that because it disturbed one edge of the pit, making it all lopsided, and if the crows weren’t coming before, they’d definitely come now
and the fire turned the midday sun pink and red, black smoke from the burning village spinning and twisting in the cold wind, making his eyes water, spit slick the inside of his mouth, and he wondered why he didn’t puke and didn’t cry and didn’t fall to the ground screaming and then they pulled him back to a car and put him in the back although this time they didn’t make him ride with Edward, who was a bit hysterical, and they drove away from the smouldering, flattened remnants of Newton Bridge, where the trucks were already grinding the dust to earth.
Chapter 79
Still alive.
They kept him alive and he didn’t understand why he was
still alive.
And the question once asked
is Lucy
is she
is Lucy is she
where is
is she safe is she
my daughter where is
He tried not to ask it before but now it comes again, it comes in the day it comes in the night it seeps into every part of him makes him rock and shake and pull at his hair he whispers it first then asks it out loud then paces muttering under his breath then slams his fists on the door hammers and punches and screams and
WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?!
and tears the sheets off his bed and wraps the pieces around his wrists until his fingers go numb and realises that he can imagine hanging himself hurting himself this is how it happens he knows he’s seen this before on the patty line you smear your own shit up the wall to get someone’s attention you throw urine across the mattress you cut yourself on the
the first time he cut himself he used the smashed glass of the light above his head, and sat in darkness gently bleeding, and felt a bit better, and felt very good indeed when the guards came in and put his head in a sack because that was progress that was someone taking him seriously now
WHERE IS LUCY WHERE IS
Markse sat on a plastic chair opposite him in a pale green room without windows, and stared at the floor a while as the clock went tick tick tick tick
tick tick tick tick
and at the end looked up and said, “The Company is selling 85 per cent of its assets back to the government. They’re paying £781 billion for it all. We’re going to be bankrupt for years. Simon’s got a house up north. He’s going to sell it and move to Monaco. They have good tax laws in Monaco, he’ll be able to keep a few billion in profit and…”
Stopped.
Couldn’t raise his head.
Said, “The Company has holdings in Monaco of course. They have an understanding with the Italian and French governments. Rehabilitation through labour is a popular way of making cheap goods for export and I believe they are going to take Lucy and—”
They’d cuffed Theo to the chair, but he still managed to rip it from the floor and get halfway across the room, stretching out for Markse’s eyes, before the waiting guards kicked him down.
A while, sitting in the dark.
Rocking in the dark.
They took away the lights because he’d smash them to pieces
they took away the mattress the sheets
they
he can still hurt himself though he knows but now he sits in the dark and
“She’s your daughter,” says Dani, knees huddled to her chin, arms wrapped across her shins, sitting next to him in the perfect blackness of
“She’s your daughter.
She’s your daughter.
She’s your daughter.
Don’t fuck it up.”
Theo stared up at the place where the ceiling probably was, and in his mind he filled it with stars.
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “What are you going to do? Theo?”
“Not my name.”
“I know.”
“Not my name.”
“Name of someone better. Someone better. Be someone better. What are you going to do?”
Theo closed his eyes, and watched the stars spinning across the vacuum of his mind.
On a day without a name, like any other, like all the rest, they took him to a room with fake plastic flowers in a blue glass vase, and gave him a cup of bergamot tea, which he sort of liked despite himself, and handcuffed one hand to the side of his white wooden chair, and said, “Would you like a biscuit?” and when he didn’t answer, left a plate of cookies on the table anyway.
He waited.
A clock showing the time in three different places ticked away. He wondered what the other two places were, or if the clock was just there to screw with his brain. Somewhere, far off, women’s voices were raised in song. They were singing to their infant children, the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round, but the acoustics of wherever they were distorted sound, made it a distant prayer, priests crying out to an angry god, round and round, round and round.
The door opened.
Heidi Fardell stepped inside. He knew her from the photos, remembered her answering the door to Simon’s Kensington house.
She wore a bright blue jacket and matching skirt. She wore flesh-coloured tights and a white scarf. The red nail polish on her right hand was beginning to chip. When she had applied mascara, her fingers had shivered, and she sat as far away from Theo as she comfortably could, without removing her chair altogether from the vicinity of the table.
Thin lines crinkled in the nooks of her eyes. The red lipstick brought out the hatched contours of her lips. Her voice, when she spoke, was at first broken and inaudible, then stronger, ready for command.
She said, “Lucy is well.” Theo stared until she looked away, swallowed a lump of tepid weight in her throat, then looked up again, matching his gaze. “I thought it was important that you knew that. I thought it was…