‘Anyway,’ McCluskey went on in something slightly less than her usual booming volume, ‘just to say sorry and all that. About the accident. Commiserations … meant to write when I heard about it. Dreadful business.’
McCluskey was stirring extra sugar into her tea and looking very uncomfortable.
‘Accident? I don’t see it as an accident,’ Stanton replied. ‘It was murder.’
McCluskey looked up from her cup. ‘Murder, Hugh? Really?’
‘Well, what else would you call a mum and two kids getting wiped out in a hit and run? On a zebra crossing?’
‘Well, yes, put like that—’
‘As far as I’m concerned it was murder, and if I could I’d give each of them the death sentence and carry it out myself.’
‘And I’d hold your coat,’ McCluskey replied. ‘But they never found them? All four got clean away?’
‘Yeah. Back to whatever crack house or meth lab they came from.’
Stanton held out his mug. McCluskey splashed more brandy into it.
‘So you’ve just cut yourself off then,’ McCluskey asked, ‘from your previous life?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘What about friends?’
‘I never had a lot of friends. In my job it was easier.’
‘Family then?’
Stanton eyed McCluskey with a hint of suspicion.
‘Is there a point to this?’
‘Just making conversation, Hugh.’
‘I don’t think you are. I think you want to know.’
‘In that case,’ McCluskey replied sternly, ‘you might do me the courtesy of giving me an answer.’
Amazing, she’d turned the tables and put him on the back foot in half a second. He’d faced down bears in the wild but he couldn’t face down McCluskey over a cup of tea. You didn’t get to be the first female Master of Trinity without knowing how to run a conversation.
‘I know your mother’s dead,’ she went on. ‘Ciggies, wasn’t it?’
‘Lung cancer, yes.’
‘Good for her. If you’re going to get killed might as well get killed by something you love. And you’re an only child, of course. Father still around?’
‘Don’t know. Don’t care. Never knew him. Now come on, professor, what is—’
‘And your wife’s family?’ McCluskey ploughed on, refusing to be drawn. ‘Surely they’d be your family too now. United in grief and all that.’
Stanton shrugged, no point fighting it.
‘Tact never was your strong point was it, professor? All right. Since you insist. No, I’m not close to Cassie’s mum and dad. They’re New Agers, hippies really. They never came to terms with their daughter marrying a soldier, particularly one from Special Forces, who they think are just terrorists in uniform. And the webcast thing pissed them off even more; thought I was encouraging yobbos to kill endangered species. They never liked me, and Cassie dying didn’t change that. I haven’t seen them since the funeral.’
‘Excellent.’
‘Excellent? Why excellent? Where’s this going, prof?’
‘All in good time, Hugh,’ McCluskey replied. ‘The weather’s dreadful and we’ve got all day. So where have you been living in general? I know you haven’t been home and you can’t have spent three months on Loch Maree. Even you couldn’t have survived the deep freeze we had last November.’
‘Oh, I’ve been here and there,’ Stanton replied. ‘Guest houses, travel lodges. Bit of sleeping rough. I find moving on passes the time.’
‘Passes the time until what?’
‘Till I die, I suppose.’
‘So you’re just giving up?’
‘What’s to give up? The world’s a mess, I’ve got no interest in it and I’ve got no interest in myself either.’
‘And what would Cassie think about that?’
‘Cassie isn’t thinking about anything. She’s dead.’
‘You’re a soldier, Hugh. Even if they did chuck you out. Good soldiers don’t give up.’
Stanton smiled. That wasn’t the sort of sentiment you heard a lot these days. Even in the army old-fashioned notions such as courage and honour were viewed with deep suspicion. Not ‘inclusive’ enough.
There was a knock at the door. Breakfast had arrived.
‘There you go, Sally,’ one of the caterers said as the professor signed for the food. ‘Enjoy, Sal.’
Stanton had never heard McCluskey addressed by her first name before, let alone heard it reduced from Sally to Sal.
‘Ah yes,’ McCluskey remarked once the caterers had left. ‘I’m Sal all right. There are no exceptions in the new cultural egalitarianism. But the funny thing is that no matter how many times everybody uses each other’s first name, the rich still get richer and the poor still get poorer and nobody actually gives a damn about anyone. Ain’t life grand?’
‘Look, professor,’ Stanton said, accepting a plate of fried breakfast, ‘are you going to tell me why you asked me here or aren’t you?’
‘I’m going to try, Hugh, but when you’ve heard me out I think you’ll concede that it’s not a simple thing to explain.’
‘Have a crack at it.’
McCluskey helped herself to some bacon and eggs, on top of which, to Stanton’s disgust, she drizzled honey. ‘I knew getting into this was going to be difficult,’ she said through a mouth full of food. ‘Let’s start with this. If you could change one thing in history, if you had the opportunity to go back into the past, to one place and one time and change one thing, where would you go? What would you do?’
‘Professor, you know bloody well I’d—’
‘Hugh, not you personally. You can’t go back to the street in Camden and stop your wife and children from stepping into the road. I want an objective not a subjective answer. This isn’t about you and your private tragedy. It’s about us and our global tragedy. About humanity.’
‘Screw humanity. I don’t give the whole stinking bunch of us more than a couple of generations and good riddance. The universe is better off without us.’
‘But surely we’re not irredeemable?’ McCluskey suggested.
‘Aren’t we?’
‘Of course not. No race that could produce Shakespeare and Mozart is irredeemable. We’ve just lost our way, that’s all. But what if you could give us a chance to do better? Just one chance. One single move in the great game of history. What’s your best shot? What would you consider to be the greatest mistake in world history and, more to the point, what single thing would you do to prevent it?’
‘All human history has been a disaster,’ Stanton insisted. ‘If you want to fix it, go back a couple of hundred thousand years and shoot the first ape that tries to get up and walk on two feet.’
‘Not good enough. I won’t accept lazy apocalyptic cop-outs. I want a proper answer, argued from the facts.’
‘Missing your students, prof?’ Stanton asked. ‘Can’t survive the holiday without one of your “What ifs”?’
‘If you like.’
‘I don’t much. I’m not really in the mood for games.’
‘You’re not in the mood for anything. You told me you were just passing the time till you die so clearly you don’t have anything better to do. What’s more, it’s Christmas and it’s minus ten outside. Why not indulge me? Eat your brekkie. Have another cognac and do a favour to a lonely old bitch who fancied a bit of company and knew you’d be free because you’re even more lonely than she is.’