Castles Made of Sand (16 page)

But it was definitely not okay for the PM to go cavorting around bonfires. Animal sacrifice was seriously illegal. The fact that it happened, the fact that there were secret networks, Countercultural and others, who gathered for these blood-daubed raves, was a national scandal. Thank God it couldn’t possibly be
true
. David Sale wouldn’t be such an idiot—

It doesn’t have to be true. My God.

‘Are you trying to tell me these are genuine pap-shots of the English Prime Minister at a so called “Celtic” animal sacrifice?’

‘Aye.’

‘Oh, give me a break!’ Ax dismissed the idea with a flick of his hand. ‘I can see just by looking at them that these images have been faked to hell. I don’t know who sold you this, but there’s nothing in it. This isn’t evidence!’

‘I niver said anything about
evidence
,’ said Fergal, with dignity. ‘I should think a public enquiry’s the last thing ye’d be wanting. I said a problem.’ He stared hard at the Triumvirate, as if still trying to decide if he could trust them. ‘I can’t tell yez how I got hold of these. I don’t precisely know where they came from, meself. But the pictures aren’t all. According to me informants, Mr Sale knows a place where it goes beyond killin’ animals, an’ I can tell yez the where and when.’

They stared back at him, straight-faced. ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Ax.

Fergal nodded. ‘Aye. I can understand that. An’ I understand how ye’ll feel about the messenger. But ye had to be told. I’m a mouthy old drunk, but everything I said the other night’s the truth. I have the greatest admiration for the Reich, and I’m not the only one. There’s a world out there, wanting to believe Ax Preston’s England isn’t going to collapse into a pile of shite—’

‘That’s nice to know.’

‘I was coming over to yez anyway. I wisht I hadn’t had to bring this. Or I wisht you had laughed in my face an’ said it was a pack of fockin’nonsense. But I see that’s not how it is. An’ now I’ll leave the matter.’ He stood up, delving in his pack again. ‘Didn’t bring me harp, I had a feelin’ no one would ask me to play. But here’s a present from Ireland. I couldn’t carry much,’ he added shyly. ‘I tried to think what yez’d really be missing.’ He put a gift-wrapped package beside the envelope and glanced diffidently at Fiorinda, who hadn’t said a word through the whole exchange. ‘Are they good to yez, these two? Jaysus, I hope they are.’

‘Oh yes,’ said the rock and roll brat, raising cool, merciless grey eyes. ‘They take me for walks, and I have my own bowl with my name on it and everything.’

Ax and Sage saw Fergal out. They came back and stood considering their babe. She seemed to be okay. ‘How about a guinea pig?’ said Sage to Ax.

‘People speak highly of those big furry spiders,’ said Ax. ‘Apparently they can be very companionable.’

‘Sorry.’

‘But what do you think of him?’ said Ax, sitting down again. ‘Truly?’

‘I think he’s genuine,’ said Fiorinda, at once. ‘He puts my back up, but I have to admit, I think he really wants to join your rock and roll band. I hope to God somebody’s using him to deliver loony disinformation, but I think Fergal himself is fine. Of course I could be wrong.’

‘You could be, but you’re not often. Well. Let’s see what we’ve got.’

He opened the parcel. They had three cans of Diet Coke, a cellophane package of black peppercorns, and a bottle of genuine, hundred per cent agave, Mexican tequila.

Of all the countries under the Internet Commissioners quarantine, in the wake of the Ivan/Lara virus disaster, the three nations of Mainland Britain had suffered most: and England worst of all, having neither Scotland’s connections with Scandinavia (where quarantine had already been lifted); or much benefit from the smuggling across the Irish sea. They’d lost not only e-commerce and financial services, but a crippling amount of foreign trade. It just wasn’t worthwhile fighting through the maze of data-quarantine regulations, for the privilege of doing business with the poverty-stricken English.

They laughed. The country was in more need of machine parts than peppercorns. But even after the news he’d brought, it was impossible not to be touched by Fergal’s bounty.

‘I don’t think we should decide anything until morning,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I’m going to practise. Soundproofing on or off?’

She often practised the piano late at night. It was the only way to find solid time, and she liked the echoing secrecy of those hours.

‘Off,’ said Sage.

‘Mind if we join you?’ asked Ax.

‘As long as you don’t talk.’

Fiorinda played Bach, rapidly and carefully, frequently taking a phrase apart, building it up again, obsessively smoothing out the kinks. Ax lay with his head in Sage’s lap, watching her hands in the pearly glow of ATP lamplight. The music room, which was still their spare bedroom (are we ever going to get that guest room sorted?) was Fiorinda’s territory. Her favourite dresses hung on the walls, her treasures were displayed: her guitars (including that awful old Martin); the red cowboy boots he’d bought her when they were first together. It wasn’t easy to give Fiorinda presents. Those orange trees on the terrace, a triumph for Sage…but something you gave her joins the elect in here, you know you’re doing well. Most of Ax’s guitars were still in Taunton. Will I ever move them up here? If I do, will Jordan see that as my final betrayal of the band?

Fiorinda was right. Wait, sleep on it.

But he kept hearing Fergal’s question again. No, Ax did not
know
David Sale. He’d sometimes felt a great respect for the man. It was David Sale who’d refused to panic, who’d let the Deconstruction Tour happen, without pouring petrol on the fire. Who had kept his head when Pigsty Liver was running riot, who had kept the regulars out of the fighting in Yorkshire. Who had
created
, let it be said, the situation that had brought Ax to power. But Ax had never wanted to be in Sale’s confidence, too much dirty water under that bridge. There was the question of how far he’d been involved in the Massacre Night conspiracy. There were other questions… Things Ax had preferred not to know.

At the artshow in Trafalgar Square, he’d seen the PM with a shiny group of fashionable Greens, expensively dressed in the latest ‘Celtic’ style. David Sale with the identical, bright-eyed, eager grin, same as Ax remembered from the Think Tank days: the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary thrilled at themselves for hanging out with rebel rockstars, dirty dangerous brutes like Pigsty, but we love taking risks: how
cool
are we? Oh, shit.

He’d brought Fergal’s pap-shots to the music room, not meaning to look at them again, but… He sat up and studied the images: turned them over and found handwritten notes. Dates, locations. He pushed back his hair, rubbing his temples with calloused fingertips.

‘I’m going to try and send a couple of faxes. I won’t be long.’

Fiorinda went on playing, stubbornly, but in the end was forced to stop, turn her head and meet the gaze, blue and accusing. Sage had his hands in his pockets. He was wearing the masks less and less but the hands must still be hidden, if at all possible. One long leg crossed over the other, a sickle-shaped indentation by the left corner of his mouth, picked out very clearly by the lamplight.
He will be fifty
, she thought, with a shock. He will be this big, thin, middle-aged bloke, extremely used to getting his own way.

‘
What
?’

‘Fee, can you still do that trick of yours, with fire?’

Fiorinda’s grandmother practised witchcraft. Sage had accidentally discovered (or been allowed to discover, he wasn’t sure which), that Fiorinda could do some strange things herself. She’d made it clear that he was not allowed to tell anyone. Not even Ax.

‘You mean like this?’

She held out her right hand, palm upwards. A dot like molten copper appeared, quivered on her skin, and then a vivid leaf-shaped flame was there. He even thought he could feel the heat. But the brain loves to be fooled.

‘Is that an illusion?’

She moved her hand so the flame connected with the corner of a sheet of music lying on top of the piano.

The illusion continued to convince his senses.

‘Oh,
Fiorinda—
’

She resumed playing, having crushed the miniature blaze between her fingers. A wisp of smoke and the smell of scorched paper remained.

‘Look. You’ve had genetic engineering that means you can pump out energy from your fingertips, enough to light a room or boil an egg. Ax has a chip in his head that means he can tell me all the postcodes in Billericay, and what the Ministry of Defence plans to do in the event of a nerve gas strike on Coventry, without pausing for thought. Don’t talk to me about weird. I have unusual abilities that I was born with: I know about them and I’ve decided what to do, which is bury them. What’s the difference? I don’t see a difference. I don’t know why you’re raising the subject. I don’t see how what I can do has any connection with so-called “Celtic” animal sacrifices.’

The word Fergal used was
magic
, he thought.

‘Of course not. Never said there was. You have to tell Ax, that’s all.’

‘Yes, okay, but not now,’ Fiorinda temporised, cunningly. ‘Not right now. Let’s get over David and the blood-cult thing.
Then
I’ll tell him. As soon as there’s a good moment. Honest.’

Two weeks after Fergal’s visit to Brixton, Fiorinda was in the dead centre of England, on the border between Leicestershire and Derbyshire: on her way to an extra date on the Festival Season’s royal progress, and taking a side trip to inspect a derelict property for the Volunteer Initiative.

The weather had changed. The sky was baking blue, heavy with heat and silence. She climbed a flight of mossy steps, from the fishponds lost in reeds and rushes to a weed-smothered rose-terrace. Neglect, but no crumbling ruins: how strange that seemed, and yet seven years is not such a long time. She sat on the top step, her back to the apricot-tiled, ambling façade of the old house. It was here, she told herself, feeling nothing.

This is where it began

Roxane Smith came up the steps and sat beside her, arranging the summer version of hir trademark flowing garments.

‘What were you expecting to find?’ s/he asked. ‘Ghosts? It’s a pity the country around this charming lost domain is still soul-free potato fields as far as the eye can see, same at it was in Rufus’s day. But we must feed ourselves.’

‘Nothing. I wanted to see it again, that’s all. Since we were passing.’

‘Hmm… Is the manor still your father’s property?’

They hadn’t broken in, the gates at the road were falling apart, but the visit was unofficial. Time enough to trace the owners of an empty property if they decided the place looked useful for something or other.

‘I’m not sure who it belongs to. It might be mine.’

Chip and Verlaine were inspecting the swamp that had been Rufus O’Niall’s fishponds; feeling uneasy. What would Aoxomoxoa say about this visit? Verlaine spoke of the afternoon when, in a moment of dire folly, he had given Ax a dodgy neurological drug…and Sage had come looking for him. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember a word his hero had said. The encounter played in his mind like a sunlit, horrible silent movie. ‘You think you’ve seen him angry, Merry: you haven’t. He didn’t touch me—’

‘Commiserations.’

‘Lay off. You’re the one that lusts after him, not me. My feelings are pure. He didn’t touch me because he knew if he touched me he’d kill me.’ He glanced up at the terrace. ‘Are we sure she’s okay?’

‘Never in doubt. Look at them, aren’t they great? Our court philosopher and the young queen, in stately conclave.’

‘Cool,’ agreed Verlaine. ‘Don’t you
love
the way this is turning out—’ A moorhen chugged from between stands of flowering rush, breasting mats of green. The water she revealed didn’t look too malarial, it was brown and clear.

Chip got interested. ‘D’you think there are
newts
? Let’s have a look.’

‘It might be yours?’ prompted Roxane. ‘Oh? How’s that?’

Fiorinda rested her chin on her hand, gazing ahead of her. ‘After I started singing with DARK, and someone outed me as Rufus O’Niall’s daughter (It’s okay, Rox. I’ve forgiven you), I got a lawyer-letter offering me money. The deeds of this house were in it. The band helped me deal with it, because I hadn’t a clue, and his lawyers got a lawyer-letter back saying I don’t want your money. With the deeds in it, torn up. I never heard anything more. I suppose you could say he was trying to make up, but I didn’t feel like playing.’

‘I was once raped by a stranger myself,’ said Rox. ‘Long ago. As I recall, the hardest part was convincing myself to let it go. That I should forgive myself, if I couldn’t forgive the bad guy, and get on with my life. It took several years.’

‘I wasn’t raped. I was just taken, like a piece of fruit.’

When you can call what your father did by its name, thought Rox, you’ll be free. Not until—

Fiorinda was thinking that she owed Fergal a debt of gratitude. He had knocked away a crutch that she no longer needed. It had been a shock to hear her father’s name again, so casually spoken: but she was over that, and a shackle had fallen from her. Who’s Rufus O’Niall? Just an ageing celebrity with nasty habits, who once did something to me that is unfortunately public knowledge. He doesn’t matter, he can’t hurt me now.