‘That’s the one.’
‘Your brother was different. He used to come to my office to work through figures and details with me, and I suppose we developed – well, I’d call it a quiet friendship of sorts. He was an unusual man, wasn’t he?
Cass nodded, once again feeling that twinge of shame which always came with any mention of Christian. The one thing he’d learned recently was that he really hadn’t known his little brother at all.
‘He had a brilliant head for figures,’ Marlowe continued, ‘but what I liked about him was that he saw past them. Most accountants, men like Asher Red, for instance, they can only understand the sums – they can only see the cash value of something. They assess risk or gain purely in numbers. Your brother wasn’t like that. He also factored in the people. He was honest at his core, and I don’t think he knew how to be anything other. He was a curious choice to work so high up in The Bank.’
Cass kept his face impassive. He hadn’t told anyone about The Bank’s shady background figures and their interest in the Jones family, and he wasn’t going to start now, even with this man who professed himself Christian’s friend. It wasn’t his business, and anyway, as far as Cass was concerned the whole thing was over. His father and his brother had both got themselves involved with Mr Bright, and it had done neither of them any good. He intended to stay well away.
There is no glow
.
‘He didn’t value people in terms of money,’ Marlowe mused. ‘And that’s very unusual, wouldn’t you agree?’
His own thoughts of that morning came back to Cass: Christian’s life insurance, the bonuses …
‘Sometimes my brother could be a little naïve.’
‘Yes.’ Marlowe smiled. ‘But there is a charm in that. I liked him. I liked him a lot. I was very sorry to hear what happened to him and his family.’
‘Could you get to the point?’
Marlowe flinched a little, and Cass could read his expression clearly.
This brother has none of Christian’s goodness. This one is cold
. Marlowe would be right.
‘Your brother came out to meet me when I got my final diagnosis.’ Marlowe didn’t speed up; he was obviously determined to tell this in his own way. ‘It’s funny how, as you get older, you suddenly find you barely know anyone at all. When you’re at school the lists of friends you have is endless, and it’s the same at university.’ He smiled. ‘But then suddenly you’re forty and the circle around you has shrunk so much sometimes it’s barely there at all. You marry, you divorce, and then it’s easier to leave the joint friends behind than work through all that awkwardness. Personally, I chose to drink through the awkwardness. To be honest, since I was about twenty, I found drink to be the best way to get through
most things.’ He looked down at his clipped fingernails. ‘I suppose that’s how I found myself calling Christian’s office when I was told I was going to need a liver transplant. He’d been in the office the day before and we’d gone for dinner and when I needed a friendly voice, his was the only one I could hear in my head. Slightly pathetic, I suppose. But there was something about Christian that made you feel he cared.’
Cass listened to this new snapshot of his brother’s life and found himself drawn in, despite his disinterested expression. Christian was the good brother; that he already knew. He’d always known it, even when Christian was still alive and their separate existences had seemed relatively normal. But he was always surprised to hear stories of his little brother’s quiet ‘care’. Cass had no patience for people. Most of them he didn’t like, and even those he did, he didn’t always trust. How had Christian managed to be so different?
‘Anyway, the point I’m making is that we bonded. He’d been there for me, and I trusted him. He pushed his superiors at The Bank, to see if they could do anything to get me up the transplant list more quickly, but it appeared that they couldn’t.’
For the first time Cass saw a hint of bitterness in Marlowe’s smile.
‘Or wouldn’t,’ he added. ‘My liver disease is apparently my own fault, and that tends to make people less sympathetic.’
Cass said nothing. The man was sick, but that wasn’t Cass’s problem. He didn’t know Edgar Marlowe, and he didn’t care – he wasn’t Christian. He didn’t feel the suffering of strangers.
‘Anyway, about seven months ago I got a call from your brother. It was perhaps three weeks or so before he died. It was from a payphone, which I found odd, and he sounded
quite unsettled, which concerned me even more. He wanted to meet me, and I went, of course. At that point I was feeling quite good about things. I’d been told that the prospect for a transplant was good, and that I was moving quickly up the list. I’d stopped drinking. I was feeling positive about the future.’
‘What did my brother want?’
‘He gave me this.’ Marlowe pulled a sealed envelope from his pocket. ‘He told me that if anything should happen to him or his family, then I was to give it to you. He was a bit drunk, I think, and he said some things that I really didn’t understand. He said that he didn’t know what to do about it. He said he wasn’t sure he could change anything, and that it wouldn’t be fair on either of them if he tried. But what I did understand was this: Christian said that if anything ever happened to him, then you’d know what to do about it. He said you were good at things like that. And he said I was the only person he could trust to make sure you got it.’ He paused. ‘I never saw him again after that.’
Marlowe had been speaking slowly as he replayed the memory, as if determined to get it exactly right. Cass leaned forward and carefully took the envelope from him.
‘Did you look inside?’
‘No.’ Marlowe shook his head. ‘I might not have your brother’s integrity, but I am a lawyer. I’ve handled many sealed envelopes in my time, and I’ve learned that often they are Pandora’s boxes. Sometimes they shouldn’t be opened at all.’
‘Are you saying that after all the effort you’ve gone to find me that I shouldn’t even open it?’
‘No, not at all.’ Marlowe smiled, his lips whitening as they stretched. ‘That’s entirely up to you.’
Cass looked down at the envelope. Expensive. It felt like
linen between his fingers. He’d felt paper like that before.
‘Did you tell anyone about this?’ He’d seen the way The Bank operated. They demanded one hundred per cent loyalty from their employees.
‘I should have done. And I did think about it.’ Marlowe’s smile twisted bitterly. ‘Why do you think it’s taken me so long to bring it to you?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Things change – my diagnosis for one. It appears that things are worse than the doctors thought.’ He paused, and then went on, ‘I’ve got two weeks left, maybe three at a pinch. A transplant won’t save me now.’
‘So there’s nothing they can offer you in return, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Perhaps. Life is a healthy bartering tool. But I think I’d made my choice already. Even back then when Christian gave it to me I think I knew I’d be here one day. Some things should be left to unfold uncontrolled.’
Marlowe pushed away from the desk, flinching slightly at the effort of getting up. He held out his hand. ‘I doubt we’ll meet again. Good luck.’
His palm felt cool and greasy, and Cass thought the lawyer would be lucky if he made it through the two weeks. They walked in silence to the front desk and Cass nodded a silent goodbye to the dying man. As he watched him move slowly down the front steps the envelope felt heavy in his hand. What could Christian have found out that he didn’t want to tell Cass while he was alive? And why didn’t he want to do anything about it himself?
It wouldn’t be fair on either of them
. On whom?
Instead of going back up to his office he headed into the toilets and locked himself in a cubicle. The sudden silence buzzed in his ears as he stared at the envelope. He didn’t
have to open it; he could tear it up and flush it and let the past lie – the lawyer would be dead in a couple of weeks and no one would be any the wiser. Cass looked down at his shoes. For a brief second, he thought he saw red splashes on them.
‘Fuck it,’ he muttered. Not knowing something wouldn’t change the truth of it. He tore the envelope open and tugged out the contents – a piece of notepaper, folded in half, the size paper used to be when people wrote letters with the lined sheet underneath to make sure the writing stayed straight and even. His heart thumped so hard he was sure his shirt was moving with the beat. He unfolded it. One sentence stood out in black ink against the white, printed in Christian’s neat writing.
THEY took Luke
.
And the world shifted again.
L
ucius Dawson was the last one in, ten minutes after the briefing had started. The Prime Minister hadn’t waited for him, and Abigail wasn’t surprised. The mood had changed since the bombs, and as Alison McDonnell’s previously firm hold on the country was loosening, so the tension that surrounded her slowly tightened. People were grieving, angry and afraid, and the disruption caused by the damage to the Underground system was not helping the already fraught economic situation. And then there was the cost of repairs: Britain might have reached an agreement with the French about leaving the Chunnel closed, but London needed her tube lines working.
Now that the initial mourning period was over, the vultures on the Opposition benches were gathering, even after the explosions in Russia, and the PM was going to have to come up with some answers soon. Russia was too far away for anyone to care about. Since the world economy had begun to crumble, people had become more selfish. Charity began at home. The noose might not yet be around her neck, but McDonnell knew it was dangling above her somewhere, and she’d lost a little of her natural calm.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said now, barely acknowledging the Home Secretary as he took his seat beside her. ‘All of
this CCTV footage is time-coded and date-correct. There couldn’t be a mistake?’
‘No,’ Andrew Dunne answered. ‘It’s correct.’
‘Run it again. More slowly.’ She flashed a look sideways to Dawson. ‘I don’t think this is going to cheer you up.’
The head of Special Branch typed something into his laptop and the images on the screen started moving again.
‘Okay, this is Ealing Broadway at 1.04 p.m. Security camera footage from the bank opposite and the Pri-Maxx clothes store where the first bomb went off both show this man exiting the store and heading left. Two minutes later the explosions started.’
‘He’s a big man,’ Dawson commented. ‘Moves well, though.’
At the back of the room, Abigail didn’t look. This wasn’t her business, and she was tired. Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she took it out. She stared at it for a second before the name registered. Hayley. What could Hayley want? Without answering, she put the phone away. It would have to wait.
‘Yes, too well,’ Fletcher added. ‘That’s the problem.’
‘This is footage from Goodge Street at 1.09 p.m.’ Dunne played a second clip. ‘One minute before three carriages of the Northern Line train exploded just as it pulled into Tottenham Court Road Station.’
‘But that’s the same man,’ Dawson said.
‘That’s what I just said,’ McDonnell added. ‘And this is where you came in.’
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t end there.’ Fletcher leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. ‘CCTV evidence also places him outside Liverpool Street Station minutes before the explosions there. And he’s seen leaving the 37 bus one stop
before Ealing Broadway, one minute before cameras picked him up leaving the Pri-Maxx store.’
Abigail’s phone buzzed again in the silence that filled the room. Hayley. She cancelled it quickly, but even as she waved an apology at the PM, her sister’s name stayed in her head. There was no reason for Hayley to call her – it had been a long time since her little sister had called her for a chat, and if something had happened to one of their parents, Abigail would have heard first. There was a nine-year age gap between them, and although Abigail blamed Hayley’smove to London and starting university for their distance as she started growing up and leading her own life, deep down she knew that wasn’t the case.
She
was the one who had grown distant – she’d grown distant from all of them. Suddenly she felt sad, as if remembering a place that had once been special, and yet could never be returned to.
‘It’s impossible,’ McDonnell said. ‘He can’t be everywhere. There must be another explanation. There must be more than one of them.’
‘That’s the theory we’re working on,’ Dunne said.
‘They look identical.’ Dawson stared at the screen. ‘Even down to the clothes – and the way they move. It’s uncanny.’
‘Where do they go?’ The Prime Minister looked at Dunne. ‘Have you traced a route, either to or from any of the sites?’
Fletcher and Dunne exchanged a glance. Abigail forgot the phone call; that look intrigued her. Dunne often showed his feelings, but never Fletcher. They looked like men who knew they were in trouble and there was nothing they could do about it.
‘Unfortunately, we can’t.’
‘What do you mean? Not even for one of them?’
Silence hung in the air until Fletcher finally broke it.
‘No. The one link we have is that they all go into the
nearest Underground station – and then we lose them as the cameras transfer. In one frame they’re there, and then in the next they’re not. And we’ve had teams trawling the footage of people leaving the stations that day. There’s no evidence of even one of these men coming out of the Underground system at all.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Yes,’ Fletcher agreed, ‘it is. And so there must be some explanation. We just haven’t found it yet.’
‘Have you got enhanced images?’ Dawson asked. ‘Can you bring them up through the overhead? I want to see two of these men side by side.’
Dunne started tapping and a few moments later the large LCD screen on the wall burst into life. Abigail stared, ignoring the phone that was now vibrating persistently against her leg.
‘I know him,’ she said, the words tumbling straight from her brain to hang in the silent room.
The four heads who had so far ignored her turned her way. She stared at the screen. The suit fitted neatly in both images. His skin looked sickly, mottled and shiny, on his face and neck. His eyes were dark, beyond brown, the pupils leaking out into the surrounding irises like black ink soaking into blotting paper. The images were undeniably identical. One man. Not two.
The PM spoke softly. ‘You know him?’
‘No,’ Abigail said, ‘I’ve seen him.’
‘Where?’ Fletcher was on his feet. ‘When?’
‘The night of the bombings. He was just standing in the street when I ran home. Near my flat.’ Her words felt like water trickling down a drain. Her insides cooled. For a moment she was back there, out of breath and sweating, feeling again that blissful sense of emptiness she’d had when
he looked at her. She remembered his finger rising to his lips. Her own pupils dilated and she bit the side of her tongue to shut it up.
‘What do you mean, just standing in the street? What was he doing?’
Abigail moved closer to the screen and frowned. ‘Maybe it wasn’t him. It might have just been a fat man …’
‘Did he speak to you?’ Fletcher asked.
‘No.’ Her phone buzzed again and this time she reached for it. ‘Can I take this? It’s my sister. She keeps ringing. Maybe something’s wrong?’
‘Be quick,’ McDonnell said.
She felt all four sets of eyes watching her as she slipped out into the corridor. She’d lied, and she was going to keep on lying, and she didn’t even know why. It
was
the same man; she knew it. She remembered the rise of his finger. There was a promise in that, just as there was in the empty Hotmail account. One day both would deliver something, she knew that deep down somewhere in a part of her she didn’t understand. But not if she told. If she told, then whatever it was would never happen.
‘Hayley?’ Her voice sounded calm, normal. It surprised her. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I saw it all.’ The breathing at the other end was wet and heavy.
‘Hayley? Is that you?’ Abigail stared at the closed door. They were waiting on the other side for her lies.
‘I remembered.’ It was Hayley, but the words were strained, as if she was having trouble forming them.
‘What did you remember?’ Abigail frowned. She really didn’t have time for this. ‘Are you stoned, Hayley?’
‘Chaos in the darkness.’ Hayley’s voice was barely above a whisper. ‘That was it. Chaos in the darkness.’
‘Hayley?’
The phone clicked off at the other end.
The door opened. Fletcher looked at her. ‘All okay?’
‘I’m not sure. I’ll call her later. Maybe she was drunk or something. She’s a student.’
‘This man you saw—’
‘It wasn’t him,’ Abigail said, cutting him off. ‘I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have spoken like that without being sure. The suit’s all wrong – and I think the man I saw had brown hair.’
‘You sounded pretty sure in there.’ His eyes were evaluating every move of her face, looking for some kind of
tell
.
Abigail didn’t underestimate the man. ‘I can take another look if you’d like, but I’m pretty sure it’s a different man. It was the size of him that made me think I’d seen him before.’
‘Maybe we should do that,’ Fletcher said, ‘see where the differences lie.’
‘Sure.’ Abigail smiled. ‘Now?’
‘Why not?’
She tucked her phone away. It didn’t ring again.