I started the engine and cruised down the hill. Three minutes later I entered the village of Hockton and pulled up outside a row of cottages, each one quaintly bonneted with a thick mantle of snow.
A light glowed behind the mullioned window of Marianne’s front room. Lucy would be watching a DVD of her latest favourite film.
I pressed the horn twice, my signal to Lucy that I was here, and climbed out.
Lucy had hauled the door open before I reached the gate, and only the fact that she was in her stockinged feet prevented her rushing out to meet me.
She was a beautiful skinny kid, eight years old, with a pale elfin face and long black hair. My heart always kicked at the sight of her, after an absence of days.
She seemed a little subdued today: usually she would launch herself into my arms. I stepped inside and picked her up, her long legs around my waist, and kissed her nose, lips, neck in an exaggerated pantomime of affection which made her giggle.
“Love you,” I said. “Bag packed?”
“Mmm.”
“Where’s your mum?”
“I think in the kitchen.”
“Get your bag and put some shoes on. I’ll just pop through and tell her I’m here.”
She skipped into the front room and I moved towards the kitchen, a psychosomatic pain starting in my gut.
Marianne was peeling carrots at the draining board, her back to me. “You’re early again, Daniel,” she said without turning. She knew I disliked the long form of my name.
I leaned against the jamb of the door. “I was in the area, working.”
She turned quickly, knife in her hand. “You mean to say you have a body with you?”
She was a small, pretty woman, an adult version of Lucy. In the early days of our separation, alternating with the anger, I had experienced a soul-destroying sorrow that all the love I’d felt for this woman had turned to hate.
I should have seen what might have happened before we married, extrapolated from her beliefs—but at the time my love for her had allowed no doubt.
Lately she had taken to wearing a big wooden crucifix around her neck. Her left temple was not implanted and neither, thanks to her, was Lucy’s.
“Not all my work involves collection,” I said. “What time should I bring her back on Thursday?”
“I’m working till five.” She turned and resumed her peeling.
I pushed myself away from the door and moved to the lounge. Lucy was sitting on the floor, forcing her feet into a pair of trainers. I picked up her bag and she ran into the kitchen for a goodbye kiss. Marianne, the bitch, didn’t even come to the door to wave her off.
I led Lucy to the Range Rover and fastened her into the middle section of the back seat. When I started collecting her, a year ago, she had said that she wanted to sit in the front, next to me. “But why can’t I?” she had wailed.
How could I begin to explain my paranoia? “Because it’s safer in case of accidents,” I’d told her.
I reversed into the drive, then set off along the road back to Oxenworth, ten miles away over the moors.
“Enjoying your holidays?” I asked.
“Bit boring.”
I glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. “You okay?”
She hesitated. “Feeling a bit rough,” she said, and to illustrate pantomimed a hacking cough into her right fist.
“Did mum take you to the doctor’s?”
I saw her nod.
“And?” I asked.
“He gave me some pills.”
“Pills?” I said. “What did he say was wrong?”
She looked away, through the window. “I don’t know.”
“Do you have the pills with you?” Perhaps I’d be able to determine her ailment from the medication.
She shook her head. “Mummy said I didn’t need them.”
I decided to ring Marianne when we got back, find out what was going on. Or was this yet another manifestation of my paranoia?
We drove on in silence for a while. Cresting the snow-covered moorland, we passed the glittering obelisk of the Onward Station. It never failed to provoke a feeling of awe in me—and I saw the Station every working day. Quite apart from what it represented, it was perhaps aesthetically the most beautiful object I had ever seen.
I wondered if it was the sight of it that prompted Lucy to say, “Daddy, the girls at school have been making fun of me.”
I glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. “Why’s that?”
“It’s because I’m not implanted. They say I’ll die.”
I shook my head, wondering how to respond. “They’re just being silly,” I said.
“But if I have an accident,” she began.
“Don’t worry,” I said, marvelling at the fact that she was only eight years old, and yet had worked out the consequences of not being implanted. “You won’t have an accident.”
Then she asked, “Why aren’t I implanted?”
It was the first time she had ever mentioned the fact, and it was a while before I replied. “Because mum doesn’t want you to be,” I said.
“But why doesn’t she?”
“I think you’d better ask her that yourself,” I said, and left it at that. I changed the subject. “How about a meal at the Fleece when we get back? Would you like that?”
“Mmm,” she said, without her usual enthusiasm for the idea, and fell silent.
We were a couple of miles from home when the onboard mobile rang. I cursed.
“Dan Chester here,” I said, hoping the collection would be nearby.
“Dan.” It was Masters, the Controller at the Station. “I’ve just had a call from someone over in Bradley. This is most irregular. They’ve reported a death.”
I slowed down, the better to concentrate. “I don’t understand. Was the subject implanted?”
“Apparently so.”
“Then why didn’t it register with you?”
“Exactly what I was wondering. That’s why I want you to investigate. I’m sending a team from the Station straight away, but I thought that as you’re in the area…”
I sighed. “Okay. Where is it?”
Masters relayed the address.
“Right. I’ll be in touch when I’ve found out what’s going on.” I cut the connection.
Bradley was only a mile or two out of my way. I could be there in ten minutes, sort out the problem in the same time, and be at the Fleece with a pint within the half hour.
I glanced back at Lucy. She was asleep, her head nodding with the motion of the Rover.
The Grange, Bradley Lower Road, turned out to be a Georgian house tucked away in a dense copse a mile down a treacherous, rutted track. The Range Rover negotiated the potholes with ease, rocking back and forth like a fairground ride.
Only when the foursquare manse came into view, surrounded by denuded elm and sycamore, did I remember hearing that the Grange had been bought at a knockdown price a few years ago by some kind of New Age eco-community.
A great painted rainbow decorated the facade of the building, together with a collection of smiley faces, peace symbols and anarchist logos.
A motley group of men and women in their thirties had gathered on the steps of the front door, evidently awaiting my arrival. They wore dungarees and oversized cardigans and sweaters; many of them sported dreadlocks.
Lucy was still sleeping. I locked the Rover and hurried over to the waiting group, a briefcase containing release forms and death certificates tucked under my arm.
A stout woman with a positive comet’s tail of blonde dreads greeted me. I was pleased to see that she was implanted—as were, so far as a brief glance could tell me, most of the other men and women standing behind her. Some radical groups I’d heard of were opposed to the intervention of the Kéthani, and openly hostile to their representatives.
“Dan Chester,” I said. “I’m the ferryman from the Station.”