The Relic Keeper (21 page)

The skies were clear the next morning at 6 am when the cavalcade set off. The shouting of people and barking of dogs awoke Mathew from his light sleep and he watched the people pack the last of their belongings away and start the engines to the trucks, which groaned reluctantly into life. Trash was dumped and the refilled water-tanks stowed while the waste was jettisoned. Kids in brightly coloured shirts ran alongside the vehicles while men and women jumped into the cabins of the juggernauts. Horns sounded and flocks of seagulls circled waiting for the pickings of the scrap heaps. A thick dark liquid that everyone called coffee was circulated, although it bore no resemblance to any type of coffee that Mathew recognised, and then very slowly they moved out of the park and started to cross the city.

As they headed into the centre of the city and then west Mathew was surprised at how much of London he could distinguish. The neo-classical and Georgian façades were still in place, and the more grand buildings remained largely untouched. Although the skyline was taller, the one he could remember was still visible. He wondered what other places he’s known looked like now. What changes had occurred in Paris, Sydney or New York? These iconic cities must have changed over the last 70 years, as had everything apart from him. He inadvertently kept his face to the window, like a kid on a day trip. Parts of the Embankment looked the same, while large areas of west London had kept none of the landmarks he expected to see. What struck him most was the amount of people in the city. Every bench or stall seemed to be used as a bed, and makeshift wooden booths lined many of the streets. Some sold meats or fish, while others had tanks that steamed with sour smelling sauces. He watched folk buy noodles and sweets from the roadside and saw men pour strange coloured drinks into flasks for groups of people on their way, presumably, to work. Seeing the clothes he wondered if they worked in a factory or a bank. He had no way of telling here by their attire. It almost felt as if he were watching a travelogue about some strange country that he’d never visited. He remembered a group of college friends returning for their second year having spent the summer in Laos. He’d never even heard of the country and spent some time trying to locate it in an atlas. They had shown their photographs to him and his friends, who’d spent most of their summer in the pub. They were full of stories of this strange and alien country that they’d found, filled with bandits and temples, foreign suzerainty and national pride. He had been interested but had said at the time that this sort of adventure was not for him. As he trundled through the streets of London he wondered how they’d react to this foreign country of the future.

Eventually the houses became smaller and the roads less crowded and Mathew realised that they were finally leaving the city. How big was the urban sprawl now? They’d headed west and he’d seen no let-up in the buildings as they drove slowly passed signs to Reading and Newbury, but now they entered a greener and more rural world. Looking back at the towers that formed a titanic skyline of steel behemoths in the distance he questioned whether he’d ever enter the capital again, and found himself hoping that he would not. Although he’d been raised in cities, this very one in fact, he felt no affinity to the conurbation that they had now passed through and left. It was merely another aspect of the twenty-first century that felt cold and unfriendly, and held no fond memories.

The countryside seemed more familiar. It shared qualities Mathew recognised from childhood trips and holidays. He thought of images of his mother throwing a blanket on the ground and setting a picnic. He remembered how the triangular ham sandwiches were always slightly stale, and the smell of the coffee in the thermos. They would try to eat quickly before ants found their feast and the wasps descended on them. He recalled jumping in the river in the hot summer of 1976. Perhaps it had been the Mole as it meandered around Box Hill; he couldn’t be sure. Once or twice his father had taken him fishing, in the days when he had time to do anything with his son, that is. And he thought about the small churches that mother had liked to visit in the villages around Woking that they visited at weekends, or in the small mining towns of Cornwall where they spent summer holidays sometimes. Then they had driven west from London, albeit a London now decaying in the back streets of a very different city. Several times they had stopped in Beer and he’d chase paper boats down the stream that trickled merrily alongside the High Street. Yeah, maybe he’d actually always been a country-boy at heart and had never realised it. He viewed the countryside that they were now passing through. Superficially it seemed the same: the rolling green hills, boxed by fence and hedgerow into neat parcels of land where rape and mustard grew, and lined with oaks that waved gently as he passed. The great trees were perhaps the only living things he’d seen that he may have previously passed. But beneath all of this he knew that the world had changed to such a degree that virtually none of the things he remembered made any sense today. As he looked at the fields he became aware at how few animals he saw, and how many of the farm buildings that they passed were ruinous and overrun with weeds, as were the roads. He thought of the food that he’d been eating since waking in hospital. He’d noticed how much rice, noodles and fish he’d been given, but failed to really grasp the reason for it. The countryside was now obviously the wild area between cities, no longer a place of agriculture. He felt an uncomfortable tear and forced himself back to reality. His reality was a convoy of beaten-up trucks and the company of strangers. He had not only lost the halcyon days of youth, but also the comfort of a world that, for him at least, had existed as his living reality until a few weeks ago.

He felt Rei’s hand on his shoulder.

“Are you ok, Mathew?”

“Yeah, fine. Just daydreaming, you know.”

And the abandoned countryside continued to slip past them as bumped slowly west on the rough roads.

They stopped somewhere in Berkshire, although Mathew couldn’t tell where. The journey had taken an uncomfortable 8 hours, which would surely have got them to their destination in the old days of motorways and combustion engines, even allowing for the jams that had always plagued Mathew’s childhood trips. The trucks were driven into a field adjacent to the road and pulled into a large circle, and then the Roamers began their work, emptying the items that they needed for the remainder of the day. Cooking utensils, bags and transmission equipment were all unpacked carefully and gradually the empty field became a small village of chairs, umbrellas and canopies. Philip and Rei both busied themselves, but Mathew noticed how neither one acknowledged the other. He felt it prudent not to mention this. Philip set up his c-pac and eventually managed to get Karl to allow him to use a spare connection to let him to link it up. Satellite connections and mobile networks were evidently not what they were outside of the city. Then he spent several hours dictating notes and running searches. Rei, meanwhile was more interested in ensuring Mathew was ok. She ran a quick blood-test and seemed pleased that nothing untoward showed. Mathew, for his part, didn’t mention the tightness in his chest that seemed to come and go randomly.

The weather was fine and warm and the cabins cramped and smelly, so Rei suggested that they sleep in the open.

“No rain tonight?” asked Mathew.

“No, I think today and tomorrow will be dry and warm,” she answered without looking up.

“Is the weather always this changeable?”

“Well, normally in the cities of Europe it rains often, but this season in the country it can be bright and warm for days,” Rei replied. “Was the weather different in your time? Sorry, I mean, before you…before you were resuscitated.”

“I think it varies a lot more now. Two days ago we had torrential rain and now it’s like a glorious summer’s day. I don’t think we had changes quite as marked as that. Why would that be?”

“I’m not sure, I expect there’s a reason.”

“I may ask Phil. He tends to know things like that.”

“Yes I’m sure he’ll be able to tell you. He knows many facts, just not very much about people.” Mathew let the remark pass.

“Shouldn’t take long; the trip with these people,” Mathew commented, trying to keep the conversation flowing.

“No. Although I will be happier when we are making our own way. These people have their own ways of life and customs and I know nothing of them.”

“But they’re not dangerous are they. Are they?”

“I think not. Not unless you cause them a problem, anyway. The trouble is that we do not always know what constitutes a problem in their opinion, and that means that we are forced to trust them completely. They are motivated more through money than altruism as far as I see, and that worries me.”

“Are there any precautions that we should take?” Mathew asked, slightly concerned that Rei was displaying this lack of trust in human nature for the first time that he had seen.

She smiled half-heartedly at him. “Mathew, you have only to concern yourself with your problems. I take precautions as I need to. I am not as naive as Philip would like you to think. And while these Roamers are wary of us, they are more cautious still of the authorities. This at the moment is good for us.” Mathew wondered what precautions Rei had alluded to. He noticed that she carried a small bag with her at all times since joining the convoy, and he was tempted to ask about its contents, but Rei quickly changed the subject.

“Whatever problems we face with these people, we shall not starve. I’ve seen them preparing the food.” And she motioned for him to follow her to the centre of the camp where the smells of cooking chicken filled the air.

Karl’s wife Rowena cooked a meal for most of his family and the people of his entourage, including Mathew, Rei and Philip. Then the women packed the food away and the men began drinking and sharing stories about their travels. Some of the women grouped on the far side of the truck and recanted their own tales, but the three outsiders felt like joining neither group, and were certainly not invited to do so. Feeling the tension between himself and Rei, Philip announced he had work to do and sauntered off to set up the c-pac on the portable communication stand that was required this far from real connectivity. There he again searched through files and old stories, trying to piece together the story concerning the Walden Centre. Somewhere in all this, he thought, would be the reason for Mathew’s current predicament. He had probably seen the relevant information; but he had yet to recognise it. He heard Mathew approach him in the dimming light.

“How’s it going with the story?”

“At the moment it’s not. Somewhere here there has to be an answer as to why a clinic’s ruthless chief executive should want to ruin his own business. This is a man renowned for his business sense, even if his scruples leave something to be desired, but he’s wrecked the company in one stroke.”

“Maybe he just made a mistake,” offered Mathew.

“I think you really need to see this for what it is, pal. Warwick has all but announced your death, and don’t think that he was going to let that be a dormant issue. I really believe that Rei was right. If you didn’t die naturally they were going to do it for you. Now I don’t want to disappoint you, but I don’t think you, as an individual, were the important factor here. He wanted to do something he knew would almost certainly destroy the business he’s worked on for most of the last 10 years.”

“Well perhaps it’s something to do with what Deon said.”

“Which particular pearl of Deon’s infinite wisdom was this then?”

“About the protests and the religious communities not approving of the work undertaken there. In the 1980s and 90s people were worried about saying or doing anything that might upset the Muslims. There were death threats sent to authors ’cos people didn’t agree with their writing. Now there’s Christians claiming they’ve been wronged. Maybe it’s something like that. Perhaps Warwick just realised that he had opened a Pandora’s Box and wanted to distance himself from it.”

“Yeah, it’s possible, but I don’t buy it. I’ve spoken to Warwick, he’s unpleasant, obsequious and deceptive, and he has a deeply disingenuous character, but he’s shrewd too. I’d bet that he was well aware of all of the possible repercussions before he ever tried to resuscitate anyone. And I really don’t think he’d give a rat’s fuck about it.” He turned to face Mathew. The guy was naive, but Philip was beginning to warm to him because of it. “Pal, this is about money, not morals. There’s a lot of people around like Deon, but no one listens to them. It may be wrong, and it may end in violence – it has before – but that’s how the world of people like Warwick works. I’m certain that this is financial.”

“Ok,” said Mathew, clearly thinking something through while he sat down next to Philip. Normally he’d have taken this as an interruption, but now he was glad of the company and offered Mathew a cup of scotch from his flask. “Cheers,” said Mathew and they clinked the metal cups together.

“Cheers,” echoed Philip, mimicking Mathew’s accent with a laugh. “Come on then; you’ve obviously thought of something.”

“Well, perhaps it wasn’t Warwick.”

“Hmm?”

“What if Warwick was the victim, rather than the instigator. Have you considered that someone else has somehow turned him over and now he’s just covering his tracks?”

“What does ‘turned him over’ mean?”

“You know, scammed him, ripped him off, set him up… ‘Revolved’ him.”

“Oh I see. Well, no, I haven’t looked at that at all to be honest. Somehow it doesn’t sound right, but I see what you mean. And if he was screwed he sure as shit would cover it up. The only thing more important than his company is his reputation.”

“It was just a thought, you know. It may help.”

“Well I’ve got nowhere on the angle that I’m using now, so it’s certainly worth looking into.

“By the way, I just got a report through, there’s been another bomb blast in London. Bit more prestigious this time, they bombed St Martin’s-in-the-Field about 30 minutes ago.”