Finds pen and paper in the desk.
Starts to write.
It takes eight pages to say what he wants to say.
When he’s done, he folds it, puts it in an envelope, writes his daughter’s name. The room is growing cold. There’s a fireplace against the eastern wall. He throws on some logs, pressing them down into the char with a black iron poker, sits back down at the desk, turns the TV on. The TV automatically goes to a financial news channel. There is a camera in the top of the screen for conference calls and so many buttons on the remote he struggles to find “Mute.” As he looks for it, voices blare out, announcing the latest turbulence, falls in stock prices, speculation, speculation, speculation you have to believe in the future, if you don’t then everything falls apart and right now the future is…
The noise disturbs someone in the house.
A light comes on.
Footsteps move.
Theo manages to coax the TV into obedience, and sits behind the desk, feet up, waiting.
The door opens.
Simon Fardell stands in the frame.
He looks at Theo, and is instantly afraid, and manages to hide it a moment later.
Looks round the room, and is confused.
Sees the open box on the desk, two guns in velvet, and does not move.
Theo said, “I’m here for my daughter.”
Simon licked his lips. To the wiser, richer man it seems for an instant that this moment in time has been coming his whole life, that there is mist rising by the River Thames that Theo Miller—the real Theo Miller—is dying at his feet that soon there shall be mist again and the sound of the fire in the hearth and that for just a moment there is something about time and this second which
But then the feeling passes because he’s got shit he needs to get on with, and people who depend on him, and no time for this kind of crap.
Simon stepped into the room, closed the door behind him so as not to disturb the house. Glanced towards the muted TV, looked back towards Theo, the box, the guns.
“I remember you,” he said at last. “I’ve been thinking about it. I remember you.”
Took a step towards Theo, stopped, testing the motion, discovered that moving didn’t cause offence, took another step, stopped again, a little over a metre from the desk.
“There are alarms,” he added. “Security are coming.”
“No, they’re not,” sighed Theo. “Markse has betrayed you. He attacked the convoy. Your wife has cut the alarms. She doesn’t like the fact you’re going to sell my daughter into a life of slavery. She doesn’t like my daughter either, but I think…” A smile crackled at the edge of his lips. “I think it might be the principle of the thing. No one is coming. The Company is dead, and all that’s left is tonight.”
Simon’s head turned a little to the side, lips thin and eyes narrow. He wore striped flannel pyjamas, done up to the topmost button, pushing against the pale skin of his throat, cuffs clinging to his wrists, as if flesh were toxic to the touch. He took another step towards the desk, and when Theo didn’t move, sat down in front of him.
For a while they watched as the TV danced with light behind them, silent. Then: “The Company is fine. A lot of jobs have been lost, a lot of investment gone to waste, but we’ll recoup. This is a global age. This is an innovative time. I remember you. The little coward, Theo Miller’s second. You were useless, I remember thinking, do I have to waste my time with this boy-child? but of course, I did. You have to put up with such things, for a little while.”
Theo smiled again, nodded slow agreement. “That was me. I suggested we put blanks into the guns. I thought you agreed that this was a good idea. I was wrong. If I hadn’t been so afraid, I probably would have been smart enough to know I was wrong. Amazing the capacity of the mind to convince itself of certain things, under pressure.”
“And now you’re here to kill me?” No fear; polite enquiry.
“I’m here for my daughter.”
“Your daughter is sleeping upstairs. I’ve already sold her to a company in Marseilles that specialises in girls like her. I thought maybe I could get a high-end deal, but actually she’s not worth it. She’s barely worth the cost of the flight.” Watching, face framed in firelight on one side, digital glow from the other, hot and cold mixing to strange shadows beneath his eyes, around his lips. “Do you think you’re going to stop it? I don’t think you can. The boy I remember from Oxford couldn’t do anything worth a damn.”
“Which one?” asked Theo. “The boy who lived, or the boy who died?”
Silence a while. Simon’s eyes ran over the guns on the table between them, box open, metal eating in the light.
Theo flicked the envelope around between his fingers, then laid it on the desk. Simon’s eyes darted to it, then away. Theo planted his feet, sat up straighter, lacing his fingers together on the desk in front of him, chin down, eyes up.
Then Theo said, “You shouldn’t let these things get personal.”
Simon raised an eyebrow, waited.
“Killing Philip… destroying Newton Bridge… you strike me as a deeply infantile man, if I may say so, so some of this probably won’t make sense. The patties whisper prayers to their goddess, a goddess without a name; a higher power—blessed is the water blessed is the moonlight between the bars blessed are they who cry out to the dark and hear no answer blessed is…
At the heart of it we find beauty in the darkness and the moonlight, and meaning in shadows because without that we really are just slaves to other people’s fortunes, crawling our way from the cradle to the grave and so…
Am I here to kill you?
I suppose in a way I am. Lucy might not even be my daughter, but I suppose… and I’m ashamed to admit it… that I can’t see any other way to…”
Simon lunged forward, grabbed the nearest gun from the box, sweeping it up off the desk, levelled it at Theo, fired.
He fired four times.
Theo flinched, frozen still, and waited.
Simon lowered the gun.
Lifted it again.
Lowered it again.
“Blanks, of course,” Theo mused. “Just so we’re clear, it was always going to be—that’s how these things…”
Simon looked down again, raised the gun, fired the last three shots at Theo’s head, clicked on empty, nodded once, put the weapon back down on the desk.
Theo pulled his gun from his pocket. Rested it on the edge of the desk, one hand on top of the metal.
Simon licked his lips. Murmured, “Killing me is… I have money, we can still settle this there are…”
Theo shook his head. “You shouldn’t have taken my daughter.”
“Your daughter!” A guffaw, half-hysterical, swallowed down into indignation. “You just said she’s probably not even your daughter you think this, for her, all of this for her it’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard it’s the most pig-headed selfish bloody thing and if killing her would save this country from someone like you then…”
Theo’s eyes flickered to the door, and Simon stopped speaking. Listened. Fire and steam, the hum of the TV, two people breathing, and two more by the door.
Simon turned in his chair.
Lucy, wearing pink pyjamas with teddy bears on, juvenile and absurd, she hated them, but Heidi hadn’t known what else to buy, didn’t know what teenage girls liked. Behind her, hands resting on the girl’s shoulders, protective, Heidi, leaning against the frame of the door, pale green nightgown stitched with thin yellow daisies, squinting a little without her contact lenses.
Time is