The Happier Dead (27 page)

“Isn’t it better that way? That way you’re both of you free.”

“You’re not free. You don’t mean anything that way.”

“I loved Anna as much as you did,” Lori said, “Sometimes it was like you were trying to make me feel guilty by being in so much pain. Like you felt I should be in more pain than I was, or I was a bad mother or something. Well I’m not a bad mother, I’m a good mother. But you can’t be a mother to the dead. When someone’s gone they’re gone and that’s it.”

“I can’t help thinking about her.”

“What’s come of all your remembering then?” Lori asked. “Has something good come of it? Have you done anything for Anna or for you or for the rest of us with all this thinking?”

The cat’s eyes flying under the wheels had taken on a hypnotic rhythm. Oates found he had to wrench his eyes away from them to look at his wife beside him. Lori had her forehead pressed against the glass, through which the city appeared darkly.

“Because it’s been pretty shitty for me, Rob. You spend more time digging up the dead than you do with your family.”

Oates did not reply, but after a few moments he put his hand on his wife’s leg. It lay there alone until, to his great relief, he felt her cold fingers come for it. Oates drove on, trying to keep from changing gear so that he could keep his hand there. Bright billboards appeared in the distance, approached through the darkness, grew and passed.

The traffic was heavy with refugees as they skirted around the top of London, and the journey took longer than he had expected. Their destination crept up on them. After more than an hour of driving, there was the dome of the Great Spa again, the vision greeting him as it had that morning in the dark. Only this time his approach was from the M25 itself, and Oates could see the fires burning around the perimeter on the plain, like the watch fires of some nomadic tribe in the desert. The Great Spa was the most state-of-the-art thing in England, but with those fires of human encampments around the base it looked like some ancient temple, built with technologies that had vanished from the earth, worshipped now by a race of men who together had come to an erroneous consensus on its significance. Oates could sense Lori’s silent awe beside him. A face appeared between them over the gearstick, still innocent with sleep.

“Are we there now dad?”

“Yeah, we’re there.”

“Oh good.”

The tailback of stationary traffic which had greeted Oates on his first approach had increased, and stretched now all the way to the exit from the M25. Whilst they were still on the motorway the siren cleared a path for them in the conventional way, but as soon as they turned off and into the sphere of influence of the spa itself it ceased to work. It was as if the suspension of the conventional order within Avalon that Oates had remarked on that morning, that he had to some extent set in motion by his acceptance of John’s order to respect the spa’s rules, had begun to spread outwards as the riots in London weakened the claims of the conventional hierarchy.

Many of the cars along the stretch of road had simply been abandoned, and others had found their way over the verge to become stuck in the muddy edges of the fields, or to prowl around the chain link fence. After a few seconds stood with the siren howling impotently at the back of an empty van, Oates pulled the wheel over and drove off the road. Lori put out her arm instinctively across the space between the seats to protect the boys from their father’s recklessness.

“They’ve got their seatbelts on,” he said, but she didn’t reply, and she didn’t move her arm.

The gentle bumping of the old suspension on the hummocks of grass woke Mike. They drove right up to the perimeter fence, and then moved along it to where a car had tried to ram its way through into the interior. Security and a few policemen were clustered around the breach, and it was here Oates parked the car.

“Stay in the car. I’m going to go and find one of the security guards and get us all inside. You’ll be safe in there. I’ll leave Bhupinder to look after you while I go and finish off this case.”

Oates went for what seemed to him the most senior man, the one shouting orders at his colleagues. He was one of Miranda’s special forces goons done up to look like a caretaker. He came at him holding up his badge.

“I need to bring my family in.”

“No chance.”

Oates drew his gun, and held it down at his side. The caretaker looked at it without expression, put both his fingers in his mouth and whistled. In answer, one of the searchlights atop the neighbouring guard tower fixed them with its gaze, flinging long shadows behind them. Oates couldn’t look up to see past the glare, but he could imaging the butt of the rifle snug to a broad shoulder, one eye closed and the other socket to the sight.

“You can wave that around as much as you like. I’ve got my orders and no one comes in or out of this place except on Miranda’s say-so.”

Oates looked behind him at the guards in the shadows, and then at the gunman in the tower to the right. He holstered his weapon.

“I’ll park them up in the car under the watchtower. If anything happens to them, I’ll come back out here and shoot you dead.”

“That’s your business.”

He walked back to the car, where Lori was peering anxiously up at him through the windshield. He shook his head quickly as he approached.

“I’ll be fifteen minutes. Take my gun. It’s loaded, this is the safety, okay? If you shoot at someone, expect to miss.”

“I love you, Rob. Come back to us quickly, okay?”

“I love you too. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

H
E WENT BACK
to the caretaker. There was screaming and the sound of a shot being fired as Oates approached.

“Warning shots. Over their heads,” the caretaker said by way of explanation, and Oates looked back over his shoulder into the darkness, back to where Lori and the kids were holed up in the car. He wondered if by bringing them here, he had placed them in more danger than they would have been in at home. The Great Spa had seemed an obvious haven, but when enough people thought they’d find salvation in the same place, they destroyed it by their gathering.

He remembered the way his children had been when he left them that morning, sleeping in their darkened bedroom, safe under the fake stars. He trusted Lori to look after them. She was a resourceful woman. She might not know how to use a gun, but she would know when to use it, and that was more important. He couldn’t let his resolve crumble now, when he was so close to the end. When he had finished his business with Miranda, he would come back and collect them. He followed the caretaker back to the gap in the perimeter fence. A couple of men had wheeled the car off the bent stanchions and in to the space between the dome and the fence, but their efforts to repair the damage had been unsuccessful. The wire mesh itself was pressed almost horizontal to the ground, but still intact, its crown of barbed wire glinting in the arclights. The posts were set into the ground with concrete, and had buckled. They would need heavy machinery to clear the wreck, let alone repair the damage.

Oates and the caretaker climbed awkwardly over the flattened barricade, and the armed guards on the other sides held the barbed wire down with their boots as they hopped onto the grass inside the perimeter. The walk back around to the carpark at the front of the building took about five minutes, and all along the way Oates could see glimpses of disturbances out beyond the wires. From the guard towers, the arclights moved like fingers through the dark, stopping suddenly to pluck a single scene in their bright beams. He saw one alight on a ring of cars arranged around a primus stove about a hundred metres out in the fields, over which a huddled figure had hung a kettle. It wasn’t clear to Oates what was the purpose of illuminating this moment, unless it was simply for the edification of a distant spectator, like a spotlight in a theatre. No command came from the tower, and the man by the kettle simply held his hand up in front of his eyes, until the beam of light grew bored and recommenced its restless movement.

When they arrived at the gates, Oates understood where the warning shot had come from. The masses were now pressed up against the guns of the security staff, held in parallel between them to hold back the people pushing to get in. Some of them were refugees, some of them were protestors. There were people carrying banners for Mortal Reform, mixed together with Nottingham employees and newsmen. Along with security, Oates could see men in police uniform. John had diverted some of his own men from the riots in London to protect Avalon.

He went in through the double doors, and the porter told him that Miranda was waiting for him in the headaster’s lodge. He didn’t offer to change his clothes, and he wasn’t asked. He moved through the reception area, with its conference rooms and marble foyer, and passed through the airlock into the spa itself.

09:00 HOURS

SATURDAY 30 JULY

1976 (THE GREAT SPA)

B
EING INSIDE
S
T
Margaret’s for the first time in his proper clothes gave him a feeling of empowerment. The old-fashioned suit had been a slave costume, the symbol of the capitulation of the rule of law to the interests of the rich, and the heavy body armour of his profession made Oates feel as if his own priorities were on the rise. Hived off from the chaos of the winter night, the peaceful summer morning in the school seemed like the purest complacence. Neither scream, nor gunshot, nor news bulletin could penetrate the shell, and so the inhabitants continued their lives in blissful unawareness.

Only the groundsmen showed any consciousness of the events unfolding on the outside. They were alert. They still smiled in their avuncular way at the students filing back from a late weekend breakfast in the dining hall, but they were more numerous than before, and were placed like sentries. Oates noticed three of them standing outside the college gates, and glimpsed a fourth on the roof behind the ornamental crenellations.

As he walked across the main court, he heard the sound of music coming from one of the open windows, borne on the warm breeze. It was Demis Roussos, singing his long ago hit. The heat of the day was coming on, but the flagstones were still pleasantly cool, and when Oates rang the bell of the headmaster’s lodge he could smell the scent of the flowers rising from wooden tubs that flanked the door.

One of the blue-suited men came to answer.

“Detective Chief Inspector Oates?”

“I’m here for Miranda.”

“They’re expecting you. Upstairs.”

“They?”

“Miranda, Mr Golden and the Superintendent.”

“Where’s Sergeant Bhupinder?”

“What? Oh, the Indian bloke. He’s gone back to London. They’re having a bit of trouble down there, in case you hadn’t heard.”

They stood staring at one another for a moment, before the groundsman nodded his head and pursed his lips as if to say,
Well here we are then
, and exited the hall. Oates mounted the stairs to find that the door to the room where he had had his first briefing on the workings of St Margaret’s was open. There they were, the three of them. Miranda was standing by the window, gazing out on the interior of the court. She must have watched him coming all the way across. John was beside her, and Charles sat sprawled at one of the desks, his legs open and his heels on the floor, his toes pointing at the ceiling. He was playing cat’s cradle with a rubber band.

“How was your trip to London, Rob?” It was John who spoke, but he seemed to speak for all three of them. Oates had the impression of having entered upon a consensus, as if some weighty matter had been discussed between great minds, and they had only that moment come to a difficult but total resolve.

“It took a bit longer than I thought to get things sorted.”

“And have you got them sorted now?” John asked.

“I reckon I have.”

“Well, perhaps you could tell us?” John looked at Miranda, a smirk on his lips. But she was staring straight at Oates.

“Ali killed Prudence Egwu.”

“I told you that myself four hours ago,” John said.

“Ali is Capability Egwu, Prudence Egwu’s brother.”

Oates had not admitted it to himself, but he was terrified to see the effect of this statement on the assembled group. It seemed such an incredible thing to say out loud, and the implications were almost greater. To say such a thing was not only to assert the existence of a technology which belonged to the realms of science fiction, but also to accuse his boss and two powerful figures of conspiracy. He half expected to be greeted with outrage, incredulousness, hilarity, and he would almost have welcomed such a reaction, for he would prefer his own madness to the world’s.

No such reaction came. John was looking at him with something close to pride. It was the look a father might give a son who stood accused of beating another boy in the playground, the requisite condemnation of the act mixed with implicit approval of the powers behind it.

Charles’s hands continued to toy with the rubber band, but his eyes regarded Oates with a similar respect. There was not a trace now of the idiot jollity which was his default mood. The esteem he accorded Oates was expressed in part by this new seriousness, and in doing him the courtesy of dropping the charade of matey incompetence. His slovenliness however was no act, and he stayed slumped. Only Miranda’s expression remained inscrutable.

“You see, Miranda? You asked for a clever policeman, and I sent you one of my best.” John said.

She ignored him, and continued to stare at Oates.

“How did you come to that conclusion?” she asked him.

“It was Ali really,” Oates said, “Everything pointed his way. Only thing was, he was left handed. The killer was right handed. I had him for an Eddy. The evidence against him kept piling up, all except DNA. When someone bribes an Eddy and has access to the crime scene, they plant blood, hair. With Ali there was nothing, someone had done a clean up job. Why would someone want to do that? It didn’t make sense, not until I started to look into Capability’s research. Capability Egwu had found a way of forgetting your sins. Forgetting everything about yourself. Changing everything, even your accent. Even your dominant hand. This research was the future of the Treatment. So I started thinking, what would make Prudence Egwu come visit the people he holds responsible for his brother’s disappearance? Why was it that every time I spoke to Ali, I was certain he was giving a false confession, but every time I looked at the evidence, it pointed to him? Why wouldn’t you want any of your Eddy’s DNA at the scene? It all came together when I spoke to the Mortal Reformers. The point of MRT is, you don’t know what you’ve done. You forget your sins. Ali seemed guilty because he’d done it. He seemed innocent because he didn’t know he’d done it. Nottingham couldn’t have it getting out that their shiny new therapy has homicidal mania under the side effects. So they sorted the best cover up they could - send the real man down so there’s no loose ends. But don’t leave him with any of the real secrets. And there wasn’t any DNA because you knew we’d screen for the victim’s and you couldn’t risk us noticing the similarity between the two brothers. But if you were going to manage all that, you’d need a bit of help from inside the investigation. Isn’t that right, sir?”