The Burning (14 page)

Ronald swung the huge, refrigerated juggernaut round a roundabout and down a slip road towards an industrial area below them, where many more white trucks were parked, lit up by banks of floodlights. Rachel felt uneasy, having spent half the night blinded by spotlights, outside in the cold. She felt queasy and her tongue tasted bitter in her mouth. In the dark, Adam squeezed her hand and, seconds later, Gabriel squeezed the other one, reassuring her.

“This is where we stop,” Ronald said. He swung the truck through a barrier and under a vast yellow canopy with a sign that said:
BILLINGSGATE MARKET

Adam and Gabriel helped the weary younger twins down from the bunk and out into the air, where they shivered and blinked in the white light. The smell of fish hit them all like a powerful gust of sea air. Ronald handed down their bags and then jumped from the cabin.

“Thanks for the ride, Ronald,” Rachel said, holding out her hand and shaking the Dutchman’s firmly.

“No worries,” Ronald said. He took a chewed ballpoint from the pocket of his shirt and scribbled down a number on a scrap of paper from the dashboard. “And if you ladies are ever in Rotterdam, give me a call. I’ll show you around; we’ll have a good time!”

“You bet!” Rachel said, dragging the twins away, waving. Adam and Gabriel waved too as Ronald began to open the tailgate of his truck.

“Ladies?” Adam said, affronted.

“Let him see what he wants to see,” Gabriel said. “I convinced him that we were American air stewardesses on our way to the airport.” Gabriel winked at Adam as Ronald had winked at them, then laughed.

The source of the fish smell became evident as the five children walked across the lorry park towards a steel shed the size of an aircraft hangar. They saw hundreds of men in wet, white coats stacking polystyrene crates which rattled with overflowing ice. The plastic sides of refrigerated trucks advertised their countries of origin: France, Spain, Holland. Smaller vans, with pictures of fat-lipped dolphins, mermaids and scallop shells painted on their doors, displayed addresses in Devon, Cornwall, Lowestoft and Hull. All were either disgorging or loading up with fish. There were big, silver fish with dead bug eyes; smaller red-skinned fish with spiny fins; slimy, long ones; flat, black ones; crabs and
lobsters, their claws shackled with rubber bands; and tangles of squid and octopus, their suckered tentacles curling and trailing over the edges of the crates, as if in a failed attempt to escape.

Rachel did not like fish at the best of times – not to eat, at least. She found them alien somehow, mysterious and scary, and was more than happy for them to remain undisturbed at the bottom of the sea. Now, the stench of thousands and thousands of dead ones, catching at the back of her throat after a greasy cooked breakfast, was making her nauseous. As they approached the hangar, she saw men in plastic aprons gutting massive cod from throat to tail with long knives and watched as wet, red guts spilled into big plastic vats at their feet.

Rachel was suddenly, and violently, sick.

Adam rubbed her back as she wiped her mouth with a tissue and spat on the wet asphalt. Gabriel looked at her with an expression of sympathy and curiosity.

“Are you OK, Rachel?” Morag said. She joined Adam in stroking her back. Rachel nodded.

“We’ve got to move on,” Adam said.

Gabriel pointed to a track several metres above them. Against the pink, dawn sky a red train with brightly lit windows was slowly coming to a halt at a station somewhere over their heads.

The train did not appear to have a driver. A robotic voice advised them to mind the closing doors as they sat in seats
looking out of the front, where the driver’s cabin ought to be. Their few fellow passengers, wearily texting or reading papers, completely ignored the children and the unfolding cityscape that developed around them. The train followed a narrow electrical track and burrowed into the undersides of the skyscrapers, revealing a stainless steel and glass underworld of supermarkets and coffee shops, each getting ready to open for business.

“It’s like
The Matrix
,” Adam said.

“Like what?” Gabriel asked.

“It’s a film,” Adam said.

“About the future,” Rachel added. She lifted her pale face from the window and gave Gabriel a sickly smile.

Gabriel looked out of the window as the train hummed to a halt at a station signposted
CANARY WHARF
. He looked at a pair of men sweeping the platform, their heads down, brushing in opposite directions without acknowledging each other. He looked around the carriage at the weary workers and waved his hand at the labyrinth of offices that towered way above them.

“If this is your future,” he said, “I don’t think I like it. Let’s get off. We have to change here…”

B
rakes squealed as the black London cab pulled into the cobbled bay at the side of St Pancras station.

“Enjoy your holiday,” the cabbie said cheerily. He pocketed the wad of crumpled paper Gabriel had just handed him, believing it not only to be the fare from Bank Underground station, where they had got in, but also a handsome tip. “Nice to meet you all!” He grinned at what he perceived to be a pleasant young family with two small children and a nanny, clambering out of his cab on their way to France. He switched on his “For Hire” light, pleased that his day had got off to such a good start, and pulled away to look for his next fare.

“We’re looking for the Eurostar,” Gabriel said. “It goes to Paris.” He led them into a vast, airy concourse, now bustling and crowded with morning commuters.

“Paris?” Adam said, impressed.

“I have … friends there. I’ll check on the departure board to see when—”

“The next one leaves in twenty minutes,” Duncan said in a monotone. “07.28 hours. The journey takes approximately two hours and thirty-five minutes. Platform 14A.”

The others stopped and looked at him in astonishment. It was only the second time that Rachel and Adam had heard Duncan speak at all, and the first time, it had taken several thousand volts to get him going.

“Duncan remembers things like that,” Morag said. “He only has to read something once.”

They walked towards the ticket office, weaving through crowds of people dressed for work and others pulling suitcases on wheels, all of whom seemed intent on running over their toes at every possible opportunity. They squeezed past a statue of a small, fat man in a hat who appeared to be looking up at the glass-domed roof high above their heads. The long queue for the Paris train trailed back from the platform entrance, slowly passing through a ticket barrier and the arch of a metal detector.

“We’ll never get on,” Rachel said, walking towards the queue. “We haven’t even got tickets yet.”

A jogger wearing wraparound sunglasses, apparently oblivious to the outside world – earphones plugged in and determined in his trajectory – clipped Rachel’s shoulder as he ran by. Rachel spun round, holding her shoulder more in shock than in pain.

“Hey!” Adam called after the jogger, instinctively leaping to his sister’s defence. But the man was already gone. Rachel
watched the lycra-clad figure disappear and was about to move on when someone else caught her eye. It was a man in a black biker jacket, putting in his own earphones as the jogger passed. He glanced at Rachel, then, quickly breaking the eye contact, fumbled in his pocket and put on a pair of glasses. Rachel was relieved to see him pull out an MP3 player and apparently adjust the volume.

She let out a long sigh of relief. She was tired, she had been sick, and now she was feeling paranoid.

“Here are our tickets,” Gabriel said. He tore up what looked like the back of a cereal packet and handed them a piece each. “Let’s get on the train.”

At the barrier, the guard, having spoken to Gabriel, seemed happy to let them through. Those at the front of the queue smiled indulgently at the young people pushing past who appeared to be helping their ancient grandmother through the turnstile and on to the train for her ninetieth birthday treat in Paris.

“I still don’t know how you do it,” Rachel said to Gabriel as they climbed aboard the train. “It’s like they look at us and see something else.”

“It’s just a knack,” he said. “You’ll pick it up.”

The train was almost full as it pulled out of St Pancras and shot across London, through tunnels and underpasses, emerging five minutes later into the sprawling suburbs. Rows of identical Edwardian houses became a blur in the
window as the train sped past. Within another few minutes, the houses had been replaced by trees as they moved on into the countryside.

Rachel breathed deeply, and allowed herself the luxury of shutting her eyes and relaxing back into the velvety seat of the train.

“I want a wee,” a voice piped up from the seat next to her. Rachel opened an eye and saw Morag’s cheeky face, refreshed by a few hours’ sleep, beaming at her. This is what it must be like to be a mother, Rachel thought to herself. She winced as thoughts of her own mother flooded back. She prayed that Gabriel was right; that their mum would remain safe.

“I said, I want a—”

Rachel got to her feet and ushered the little girl back along the carriage.

Walking towards the toilet, she glanced to her left and felt a fierce jolt of panic. Sitting two seats behind them was the man in the biker jacket. His eyes were closed beneath his glasses and he was still wearing his earphones. Rachel told herself to stay calm. He was just a traveller; another passenger going to Paris. He did not stir as Rachel guided Morag past him and pressed the button on the curved, automatic door of the toilet. It slid open.

“You OK by yourself?” Rachel asked. Morag nodded and the door closed behind her. “Don’t lock it!” Rachel shouted.

She waited and looked back down the carriage, just able
to make out Adam’s tousled head, above the seat opposite hers, lolling with the movement of the train as if he were asleep. Rachel felt conspicuous standing outside the lavatory and walked a few steps, through the sliding door at the end of the carriage, and looked out of the window. Fields rolled by and the train passed without stopping through an old red-brick station, not unlike the one in Triskellion.

That seemed like a very long time ago.

Mesmerized by the passing landscape, Rachel was only vaguely aware of the hiss as the toilet door opened, but reality came flooding back in an instant, with a shrill scream.

“Help!” Morag squealed.

Rachel spun round to see the jogger who had barged her on the platform. He held Morag round the waist with one arm, his other gloved hand clasped across her mouth. He wrestled the child forward towards Rachel as one or two other passengers craned their necks to see the source of the commotion. Unable to see clearly, they quickly returned to their laptops and papers, not wanting to become involved; sure that someone else would deal with whoever,
whatever
, was making the noise.

Rachel stepped through the doorway into the path of the man. He barged her with his shoulder for the second time that day, and this one was far from accidental.

Rachel fell back against the window, banging her head. The door to the next carriage slid shut, leaving them in a muffled airlock and giving Rachel a second to swing back
her leg and deliver a hard kick to the man’s shin. He grunted in pain and slammed his body into Rachel again, with Morag still writhing in his arms.

Rachel knew that if she made too much noise, the train would be stopped. The police would be called and they’d be delivered back to where they started. Every fibre in Rachel’s body screamed out for Gabriel, but Morag’s panic alerted her own brother first. The doors slid open again and, like a small dog, Duncan few through the opening and sunk his teeth into the back of the jogger’s leg.

The man yelled and dropped Morag.

Then, as if appearing from nowhere, Gabriel was on him. The long index and middle fingers of his left hand pushed under the jogger’s dark glasses and into his eye sockets, his thumb pressed deep into the soft flesh under the man’s jaw, keeping his mouth shut. With his other hand flat, Gabriel delivered a stiff-fingered jab hard underneath the man’s ribs. The door of the toilet hissed open again, and Gabriel pushed the jogger back into it, releasing his fingers from the man’s face. The man’s eyes were clenched shut in agony and his mouth flapped open and shut, gasping for air like a dying fish. As he writhed on the toilet floor, the door closed and Duncan, reaching up to the electric lock, made sure that it would not open again.

A few people had gathered at the end of the carriage and, with Adam helping a tearful Morag back to her seat, Rachel reassured the gawping passengers, telling them the little
girl had become stuck in the bathroom and was upset. The guard gave Morag a pack of chocolate buttons as she sat back in her seat.

“Told you that you could do it,” Gabriel said, wiping his hands on a napkin.

“Do what?” Rachel asked, her own hands still trembling on the tabletop.

“Convince people,” he said. “Make them think what you
want
them to think. Make them see what you
want
them to see, by suggesting it to them.”