Afterlight (47 page)

He leant forward again, lowering his voice still further. ‘It’s for show, that’s all it is. To keep everyone busy, to assure them there’s a future here, that there’ll always be food for everyone.’

He was almost whispering now. ‘But there isn’t. It’s a fucking sham.’ He looked down at his bowl. ‘Only half of what’s in there came from the vegetable garden out front - the rest is tinned goods.’

Leona looked down at her own bowl and studied the grey liquid.

‘When we finally run out of what’s stocked downstairs, then we’re all going to be screwed. That’s when things will turn fucking nasty here. Maxwell knows that. The bastard has known that for the last ten years.’

‘Why . . .’ She pursed her lips, and felt an ache course across her face. ‘Why did he not . . . start growing . . . earlier?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose he started out thinking a decade’s worth of supplies was enough to see us through. That some relief effort would have come to the rescue by now.’

Leona remembered a conversation with Dad from a long time ago; asking him why the world carried on using oil if they knew it was running out. That was just silly, wasn’t it? He’d replied that people had a tendency to instinctively stick their heads in the sand; to expect to be rescued by someone or something else - technology, market forces, whatever.

Old habits: a hard thing to change.

‘I think he’s been expecting it all to fall apart at some point. His plan has been to delay that for as long as possible.’ Adam laughed. ‘A bit like the
Titanic,
really; assuring the second, third and steerage class passengers that all’s well, meanwhile organising a life raft for himself and his thugs.’

She recalled Dizz-ee’s grin again.
Shit, man, reckon we’ll
all
have a go at her.

‘Leona, where’s home?
Where
did you come from?’

Her eyes narrowed and she looked away.

‘Look, I’m not spying. I’m not one of
them
. I’m too old.’ He gestured at the two praetorians standing nearby, overseeing the long queues of workers, bowls in hand, waiting to be served from a steaming urn. ‘Maxwell trusts only the young ones. He only recruits young lads because he knows exactly how to control them. That’s how this whole fucking prison camp works. Those boys are being kept well fed, the rest of us he’s gradually starving to death. Look at me.’

Adam pinched the back of one of his hands. The skin bunched like parchment, then slowly settled back. ‘I really can’t fake that. I’m starving, just like everyone else here. Another year, maybe two . . . all the workers are going to be dead. And those boys, and Maxwell, will be having a big party at your place.’

‘Norfolk,’ she said. ‘We came . . . we came down from Norfolk.’

Adam stopped, smiled. ‘Seriously?’

‘What’s funny?’

He shook his head. ‘Not funny, just . . . just a coincidence. I used to be based in Suffolk, at least my regiment was. Up in Honington. You know it?’

She shook her head.

‘Royal Air Force regiment,’ he replied. ‘Back when the crash happened we were assigned to this safety zone to guard it.’

Adam began talking about his old life, a tour in Afghanistan, but her mind was filled with a nightmare; she saw hordes of orcs raping and pillaging The Shire. She saw young boys glistening with bling in their neon-orange jackets in a tightly packed, cheering crowd, like boys around a schoolyard fight; each of them taking their turn on her mother, then Dr Gupta, then Martha . . . and all of them with Dizz-ee’s leering, grinning face.

‘Adam . . .’

He stopped talking.

‘Can I . . . I . . . trust you?’

He stared at her silently for a moment. ‘Can we trust each other?’

‘I . . . have to leave. I have to . . . warn my mum. Those boys . . . I think they know where we came from.’

 

 

 

‘P
lease, Walter, please tell me you didn’t do it,’ said Jenny.

The old man was huddled on the floor of the paint storeroom. The only light came from a small wire-grilled porthole at the top of one of the walls. One of the panels of glass had cracked and wind whistled through the gaps between shards and wire, playing a bitter melody for them both.

‘Walter?’

She crouched down beside him. The wrinkled folds around his eyes matched the colour of his florid cheeks and his raspberry nose.

‘I didn’t do it,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t take Natasha.’ He looked up at her, his face wet with tears. ‘And I never hurt Hannah. I swear I—’

‘What about her shoe?’ she asked firmly. Her voice hard and accusing. ‘How did it end up on your boat?’

He shook his head desperately. ‘I . . . I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

She studied him a while longer. Looking into his face she could see the poor old man wasn’t lying to her. Guile was something he completely fell flat on. Being utterly unable to say what was untruthful in situations where it might be appropriate or even diplomatic was one of the reasons he’d never been the most popular member of the community. Walter couldn’t lie to save his life. He could do many things, but bullshit wasn’t one of them. She put a finger to her lips to hush him. ‘I believe you,’ she said softly.

The old man let out a strangled sob, his shoulders sagging with the release. ‘I’d do anything to protect her . . . to protect you.’

She placed an arm around his wide frame and hugged him gently as his body shuddered with tears. She knew he was innocent.

The tears finally subsided and she let him go, settling on the floor beside him, leaning her back against the storeroom’s cool wall. Outside the door, she could hear Howard shuffling on the stool in the hallway. On guard duty. The stool creaked under him as he moved, uncomfortable holding the weight of that shotgun in his old liver-spotted hands.

She’d been surprised when she’d first seen Howard on his way over to one of Latoc’s sermons. Howard, Walter and Dennis, the three stooges, hunched over a cribbage board on many a dark evening. She’d found it hard to believe that those two old boys had taken on Latoc’s nonsense; had turned on Walter.

‘He’s taken over,’ she said.

Walter looked at her. ‘What?’

‘There was a public meeting this morning and he proposed a vote to remove me.’ She sighed. ‘The only person who objected out loud was Tami.’

The women had shouted her down. Quite an ugly scene. She was jostled as she spoke up from the crowd, and then baying voices had drowned her out. Valérie calmed them down to silence with a gentle wave of his hand and then Jenny had tried to speak.

‘I told them it wasn’t down to a bloody vote. I said this place was our home; you and me, the kids and the others that first set it up . . . our home. And that everyone else were guests that we’d allowed to stay. My house, my rules.’ She laughed sourly. ‘They just loved that, didn’t they?’

The mess had erupted with angry cries, and Alice Harton’s foghorn voice over the top calling her an ‘arrogant bitch’.

‘They voted Latoc as the leader. It’s all over, Walter.’

‘What’s going to happen?’

‘I think he’s going to evict you. He’ll probably evict us both. He won’t want me around causing him trouble.’

Walter shook his head. ‘He’s going to turn this place bad. Ruin everything we’ve built.’

Jenny nodded tiredly. ‘I know.’

‘You can’t let him do that.’

‘I can’t stop him, Walter. It’s done. Everyone’s chosen him to lead the community.’

There was something quite appealing about the idea of taking a boat ride ashore and walking away from all of this. Just a long walk through Bracton and out the other side into the summer countryside and whatever overgrown silent villages and towns lay beyond. Find some nice quiet leafy meadow to lie down in and give up.

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the wind whistling through the crack, Howard shuffling outside, and the moronic clucking of the chickens a deck above. The smell from the slurry room, along the dark passage outside, was still strong, even though the melted plastic containers had been pulled out weeks ago.

‘I think . . .’ said Walter finally, ‘I think it was Valérie Latoc who took Natasha.’

She turned to look at him.

Presented with the evidence of her shoe on Walter’s boat, Jenny had allowed herself to believe, at least until now, that he was guilty. She’d turned her back on nearly seven years of trust between them. Seeing the truth in his eyes, she realised how stupid and unfair she’d been. Natasha could plausibly have been playing on his boat as it dangled from the davits, even though she knew she wasn’t allowed on there. A strong gust would have set the boat swaying and she could quite easily have tumbled over the side.

She was surprised the possibility had never even entered her mind.

‘Latoc?’

‘I think he killed her, Jenny. I think he killed her then put one of her shoes on my boat.’

She tried to see it in her mind. Tried to imagine his calm impassive face attached to a killer’s hands. Tried to imagine where . . . how . . . he could do it. This small world of theirs was surely too crowded to do something like that. Especially on the compression rig where the majority of his people were camped up in that teeming maze of hammocks, bunks and laundry lines. A voice would carry; a voice crying out in pain or fear, it would reverberate around the hard metal walls of that module like a stone on a snare drum.

The top floor, the monitoring suite.

And Natasha and her mother were amongst Latoc’s faithful.

Jenny tried imagining again, and this time she could see him quietly enticing the little girl upstairs. In her mind’s eye she could see everyone outside at work in the sun spread out on the walkways, on the decks, on the terraces of other platforms, and Valérie Latoc, encountering the girl alone in one dark corner of that large cathedral-like space. Natasha bunking class as she sometimes did. So wilful, just like Hannah used to be. Jenny could see him offering the girl a warm, friendly smile . . . and her smiling back. Absolutely nothing to be concerned about.

She could see him holding out his hand, her grasping it and him leading her up metal stairs past floors of hammocks and towels and rugs and dangling laundry. She could see him smiling down at her, the glint of a predator in those warm brown eyes as they headed along the walkway to his rooms.

‘I think he killed her,’ said Walter. ‘And he tried to set me up at the same time.’

She looked at him.

‘Two birds with one stone, Jenny. I’m in charge of the guns,’ he said gesturing to his chest, a thatch of grey-white bristles where once locker-room keys had nestled on a chain. ‘Or I was. He’s got those guns now.’

‘Jenny.’

‘What is it?’

‘There’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘Do you think Hannah was dead already when we arrived?’

Jenny tried to remember the last moments before the blast. It was at best a tangled jumble of images. A rising sense of panic . . . fear they were never going to find her because she’d disappeared into the surging sea below.

‘I . . . I can’t remember.’

‘What if that was him, too?’ he whispered. ‘What if he took her there . . . did things . . . killed her, then pulled the methane pipe free to cover his tracks? He could have known something would set off the gas . . .’

He was talking some more, but she was no longer listening. She could see the scenario. She could actually see it because . . .

She remembered seeing Latoc with Hannah on quite a few occasions, him talking quietly to her. She’d visited him countless times in Dr Gupta’s sick bay. Jenny wondered if those dark eyes she’d found so attractive had all the while been busy making plans from the moment he’d first come round.

‘Jenny?’

Walter had been saying something to her.

‘Jenny?’

She stood up. ‘I have to go,’ she told him.

‘Where are you going?’

She knocked on the storeroom’s door. ‘Howard! I’m coming out now.’

A bolt slid noisily and the door creaked open. ‘All done, Mrs Sutherland?’

She smiled at Howard standing in the dim corridor outside holding the shotgun uncertainly in both hands. Although Valérie Latoc was now in charge, the old boy still nodded deferentially at her.

Without thinking about it, she stepped swiftly out of the storeroom and snatched the gun out of his unready hands. He stared down, goggle-eyed at his empty palms. ‘Uh, Mrs Sutherland, could I have the gun back, please?’

‘In,’ she said, nodding at the storeroom.

‘In?’

‘Yes, in there with Walter.’

He nodded and stepped inside.

‘Jenny? What the hell are you doing?’ called out Walter as she swung the door shut on both men. She rammed the bolt home, locking both of them in. She didn’t need Walter trying to wrestle the gun off her. Trying to stop her.

‘I’m going to kill the bastard,’ she replied evenly.