Edge (9 page)

bloodstains, for he was a criminal now.

    The world had changed.

    Last term, Ms Simms had talked about "phase transitions", the change from ice to liquid water to gas, the same molecules involved, their relationships snapping into new and different configurations. While some changes, like a broken egg, can never be reversed; and you can state the Second Law of Thermodynamics like this: You can't ever go back.

    He had destroyed his life.

Someone was talking to Jayce outside the college. Had the police had found him already? But the man's silhouette was a little familiar – one of the men from Khan's shop. Maybe he was only a shop assistant; but the look that swivelled in Jayce's direction was dark and cold, then the man was stalking away, not looking back.

    "Do me a favour, man." Jayce's hand trembled, holding out a pen. "Write this, will ya?"

    The pen was a felt-tip, chewed and sticky. Jayce pulled up his sleeve and offered the pale inside of his forearm.

    "Write, uh…" Jayce's eyes jiggled, dancing to ghost music. "Arches, Wandsworth, 9 o'clock Thursday."

    A discarded sweet wrapper lay curled on the ground, containing no trace of green powder.

    "Uh, how do you spell Wandsworth?"

    "Shit, man. How it sounds."

    Richard wrote:
ARCHES WONZWORTH 9,
thought for a moment, then added:
PM THURSDAY.

    "Great." Jayce pushed down his sleeve. "Yeah. Wow. Oh, wow."

    He tilted his head to one side, eyes like slits.

    "What?" Richard looked round. "What is it?"

    "That light, man." Jayce pointed at a streetlamp. "You gotta squeeze your eyes nearly shut. See the pattern? In like your eyelashes?"

    "Diffraction."

    "Say what? You're mad in the head, pal."

    But when Richard started to walk on, Jayce followed, his gait bouncing. Chemical springs in his heels.

    "So where we going, man?"

    "You tell me," said Richard.

    Adrenalised fear was seeping away from him, his body staring to slump in on itself. The surrounding night was chill.

    "Let's go up the West End. See what happens, right?"

    "I was thinking of somewhere to sleep." Standing upright was becoming hard.

    "Man, you want to sleep in the dark? Around here?"

    A spurt of fear came back, a short-lived boost of energy. But if he didn't find someplace, he would end up sliding down and closing his eyes, fatigued, with no other options.

    "I know a doorway." Jayce flicked his fingers at Richard's sleeve. "Come on."

    "A doorway?"

    "Better than it sounds. And look." Jayce pointed to a wheelie-bin in front of a house, filled with black bags for tomorrow's collection. "Take that."

    "The bin?"

    "That cardboard box beside it."

    "Oh, right."

    Insulation. Thermal insulation using cardboard.

    
Hey, Ms Simms. Physics can save your life.

    "Tip the rubbish out, you moron. Quietly."

    "Uh. Right." He did what he was told.

There was a doorway in shadow, part of some old building, not a house. Tucked in the corner of a cold porch, he was invisible from the road. Opposite him, Jayce spread his blanket on concrete.

    "You really going to sleep, man?"

    "Yeah." Invisible fingers were pushing down on Richard's eyelids. "Sorry."

    "I'll keep watch, like. You're safe."

    His chin dipped. It was too cold to sleep, but Richard slipped into a grey dream regardless, shivering but no longer fully conscious, while some minutes passed… until he trembled into wakefulness, and saw the dark green edge to the night sky. This was pre-dawn, and hours had slipped by, while Jayce must have gone, taking his blanket, for the porch was empty.

    Richard slipped back into pseudo-sleep, trying to dream of a warm world and luxury, where enemies did not lurk in the night, and reality was no longer alien and hard.

 

Josh clapped and cheered along with the others.

    "Come on, Paula. You can do it!"

    She adjusted her hair, tugged at the jacket of her trouser suit, then settled her stance. Not bad, on the basis of ten minutes' instruction. The cheering filled the corporate classroom: twenty-two delegates and four instructors, including Josh, while Vikram and Pete held the smooth plastic "board" ready for breaking. A vertical hair's-breadth line bisected the plastic, almost invisible, for it was designed to split apart under the same force as one-inch pine, all very traditional.

    Paula twisted and thrust out her palm–

    
"Ha!"

    –while the two halves clunked apart and fell as the guys let go.

    "Yes!"

    "Way to go, Paula!"

    Whoops and backslapping, fists pumped in the air. Paula's face flushed beneath a shining lamina of sweat.

    "Good work." Tony raised his thumb, nodding to Josh as well as Paula. "Well done, team. So, let's sit down for the wrap-up."

    The delegates had filled in their online feedback forms after the afternoon break, when they were relaxed, not rushing to get home. Tony was a professional, and knew exactly how to direct corporate training.

    "So." He spoke as they took their seats, and a list of checked-off bullet-points appeared on the wallscreen. "There's our objectives from the start of the week and, well… those ticks or check-marks might be a little hint" – he smiled at the delegates' laughter – "that we've achieved them all. So this is like the finale of special forces selection, and I hereby declare you all special operatives in systems development. Well done, everyone!"

    There was applause, the pushing back of chairs on carpet, then the shaking of hands and the delegates slipping out, chatting and laughing as they went. Tony, Vikram, and Pete went with them, saying final farewells in the corridor. At last there was quiet, as Josh turned to regard the empty room. A last tidy-up, and they were done.

    "Fuck it."

    He had wanted the training to finish. Now there was an empty weekend to face. Going forward felt awful; going back in time was impossible.

    
Sophie. I could have saved you, if I'd been there.

    There were six board-halves lying on the floor, the relics of three teams breaking simultaneously, boosting their self-belief, the confidence they could achieve anything they wanted. (
Like Sophie, whole and well.
) Slotting pieces together, he created three unbroken boards, then tossed them into the air. Lightning flew through his nerves as his fists cracked
one, one-two
and the shards were down once more.

    "Not bad." Tony had returned. "Braced at the edges is one thing, but boards in the air? Good focus in those punches, well done."

    Josh did his best Bruce Lee voice: "Boards… don't fight back."

    "Uh-huh. So you're OK, then?"

    "Sure am."

    "Lying sod."

    "Sure am."

    "You know," said Tony, "Vikram could teach your course next week."

    "I thought he was teaching genetic algorithms."

    "Sylvie can do that."

    "I don't know…"

    "If it's the money, we can come to some arrangement. You bill me for next week as course development, and I'll pay you. You can actually write a course later. What do you say?"

    In the end Tony would probably want more than five days' effort for the money, but this was still was a favour, and a big one.

    "When do you need to know?" asked Josh.

    He really didn't feel like teaching next week, but what else could he do?

    "Sunday lunchtime, latest."

    In the Regiment, before a mission, you came clean about any weakness, told the commander in private necessary, because the boss needed accurate information to obey the Seven-P Principle: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

    "OK. Good."

    "So what are you up to this weekend, mate?"

    Josh found himself wincing. He stared out the window over Docklands.

    "Going to Hereford."

    "If there'd been a change, you'd have told me, right?"

    "Sophie's the same. I'm going to see her teacher, not sure why. Other than she asked."

    "A good-looking lady teacher?"

    Josh, not knowing the answer – Kath was female but he had no opinion about her looks – ignored the question.

    "She wants me to meet the parents of another boy injured in the… When it happened. I think she's trying create a mutual support group."

    "Maybe she's got the right idea. You ring me anytime, all right?"

    "Yeah. Thanks."

    "And call me lunchtime Sunday for sure."

    "You got it."

Josh arrived twenty minutes early, but Kath Gleason was already sitting there, at a clean aluminium table in front of a café, at one end of a colonnade.

    "Hello." She looked up from her milky tea. "I thought I'd get here in plenty of time."

    "In case I came early, then changed my mind?"

    "No, I just thought… you'd be super-punctual, and all."

    Most often, Josh had missed parent-teacher evenings, while Maria had attended. Had she and Kath Gleason talked about his military service, and the itinerant life of a corporate trainer? Or perhaps, since this was Hereford, Kath had drawn independent conclusions, for many of the ex-Regiment guys continued to live in the area, unable to tear themselves away from the life.

    "You need another coffee, Ms Gleason? I mean Kath."

    Lightning cracked somewhere in the distance.

    "Jesus."

    "Are you all right?" asked Josh.

    "Electric storms worry me. Do you know we've had more this month already than the whole of last year? Which was more than the whole decade before that."

    "Really?"

    "Yes, and I–I'm sorry. Did you see Sophie last night?"

    "This morning." He had driven from London before dawn. "Still the same."

    "I'm so sorry."

    "Drinks," said Josh. "I'll just be a minute."

    This was such a bad idea.

Twenty minutes later, in Kath's car, they drove into a plain residential street, and pulled up before a house coated in pink pebbledash, the front door inset with amber glass. No sign of an alarm system; trusting to the high-mounted neighbourhood watchcams.

    "Don't worry about what to say." Kath switched off the engine. "I'm sure they'll be nervous too."

    The doorbell had no fingerprint recognition, but the door opened straightaway, pulled back by a blank-faced man.

    "This is Carl, Marek's father." Kath gestured. "This is Josh."

    Entering the front room, Josh scanned from near to far, and above, checking the overstuffed furniture and cluttered ornaments, the photographs on shelves. Then a thick-waisted woman came through from the rear, holding out her hand.

    "Hello, I'm Irina. Good to meet you." She looked at her husband. "Carl, you want to offer our guests drinks?"

    "Um, would you like something? Beer, vodka, tea?"

    "I just made a pot," said Irina.

    Josh and Kath chose tea; Carl, head down, went out back.

    "I'm sorry about Carl." Irina gestured. "Please sit."

    The placement was not tactical, but ordinary people had no thought of preventing clear shots in through their living-room window. Not liking it, Josh sat down. Kath blinked at him, then turned back to Irina.

    "Marek's at home, I presume."

    "In his bedroom. He spends his time there."

    "Is he seeing someone?"

    "The GP, every Thursday." Irina turned to Josh. "I'm sorry about your daughter. So sorry."

    "Thank you."

    Kath said, "Everyone's devastated. And our safety record is good, had been so good."

    "So." Irina's expression closed in. "The boy who started it, from St Joseph's, not even the same school, but he was hanging around and no one cared."

    "The pupils have siblings who attend other schools. At the start or end of a day, it's not unusual–"

    Carl came in with a laden tea tray: mugs, teapot, milk in an open carton, a packet of plain chocolate McVities. Irina shook her head. Perhaps she had expected a milk jug and nicer cups. After Carl handed around the mugs, he stood looking down at his own tea, then walked out saying nothing, closing the door behind him. A clink sounded, and everyone waited, Josh expecting the crash of shattered crockery or glass; instead, there was nothing.

    "Would you like to meet Marek?" said Irina finally. "I mean, if it would help."

    "Sure." Josh put down his mug. "Are you going to call him down or–?"

    "You could go up." Irina pointed to the hallway. "Upstairs on the right. You'll see."

    "Just me?"

    "Better than all of us." Kath tucked in her lower lip. "Don't want to look like a delegation."

    Josh breathed with conscious control, getting ready.

    "Upstairs. Right."

    He felt disengaged from his body, almost floating on automatic up the stairs, not knowing how he felt about meeting the boy – the other victim of the incident that turned Sophie, his beautiful Sophie, into a small warm body with no mind. Beneath a bright graffiti notice – Marek's Room – he knocked.

    "Hey, my name's Josh. Can I come in?"