The Fall (12 page)
‘You all right?’ Cole asked. She turned from the window. He was lying on the other side of the room, propped up on his good arm, watching her.
‘This was meant to be it. But all we’ve achieved is months – if not years – of bureaucracy and investigation committees. Who’s to say they won’t be corrupted like the Advisory Commission? Evelyn Knight obviously wanted the Pure test as much as David Taurell.’
Cole sat up and held out an arm. ‘Come here.’ She shuffled despondently across the room. He pulled her down to sit with him on the sleeping bags, took one of her hands and placed it on his palm, stroking her fingers with his other hand. ‘We’ve planted an idea. Today, across the country, people are aware of the fact that the Pure test was never an impartial undertaking. Today, thanks to the test, Knight and Taurell are two of the most powerful people in the country. It’s a seed, an idea now growing in people that all is not what it should be, preparing them for the truth.’
‘But what if there isn’t an absolute truth? What if the tests are partly right.’
And I’ve inherited the genes that might make me sick like my mum?
‘Maybe absolutes don’t exist,’ Cole said. ‘But there’s an aesthetic to the truth. Harmony, truth, beauty – they’re interlinked. Parts of the same whole. And you only have to look at the City to know the lies must be everywhere.’ His hand reached up and began twisting a strand of her short hair.
Unease and passion swirled inside her. Her palms grew sweaty. Was this the teachings of the Project? Jasper had carved a similar quote on the back of the star pendant she’d hidden the minister’s disc in.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty.
A coincidence? Or something else?
She couldn’t think of Jasper now. Or the shaman. Or the Project. She didn’t want to think at all. She dipped towards Cole, brushed her lips across the tattoo on his neck. ‘I want you to be my first . . .’
His hand stopped twirling her lock of hair. ‘There’s no rush.’
‘I just need to know, if we do . . .’ She blushed. ‘I don’t want to have a baby.’
‘There are ways around that,’ he murmured. His thumb and finger tilted up her chin. When she met his eyes, he gazed at her as though making sure she really meant it, and wasn’t simply doing this because she thought it was what he wanted.
Her skin prickled, raw, breathing, every cell reaching out for his touch. She leaned forward for his lips. His hand coiled around the back of her neck and then his mouth opened, pressing hard on hers. Warmth burst through her. She wrapped herself around him, pulling every inch of him against her. Their stomachs pressed together, their hips, their chests, their mouths. His fingers moved under her T-shirt and began to climb up her back. She closed her eyes, trembling, allowing the desire to feel him closer move through her whole body. His hands explored her breasts, then moved down her stomach and into her tracksuit bottoms. She froze. No one had ever touched her like this. Who was she kidding? No one had ever really kissed her. He began to withdraw but she slipped her arm down to stop him.
Slowly, gently, he continued. Her whole body shuddered. Their kissing grew harder, hungrier. She pulled at his T-shirt. Their lips broke apart as he helped her remove it.
‘There’s no rush,’ he said again, breathlessly.
In answer, she gently bit the soft skin on his shoulder and began kissing his chest. He groaned, and the sound of his desire burned away all thoughts and fear.
Ashby Barber woke to the ringing of his interface. He’d fallen asleep on the living room couch in a state of half undress. When he opened his eyes, the sun screamed into his head, making him close them again. He ignored the phone call – let whoever it was leave a message. He was thirsty, tired and irritated. But when the interface rang again straight away, he thought it might be news from Jack Dombrant and answered. He regretted doing so as soon as he heard the voice on the other end.
‘I’m on my way to pick you up.’
Evelyn Knight.
His eyes flipped wide. The stabbing pain in his temples sharpened. He hadn’t had any direct contact with the Chairman of the Board for years. Eight years to be precise. He hauled himself up to a sitting position. The empty whisky bottle rolled from where it had been wedged beneath his bare thigh and the sofa, onto the carpet.
‘Evelyn?’ he said carefully.
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ There was a pause and then she hung up.
In the kitchen, Ashby put on the filter coffee, downed a litre of water and splashed some of it on his face. While the coffee percolated he hurried upstairs, showered then dressed in a clean shirt and tie. Eight minutes later, he was back down in the living room, BBC News on the flatscreen, mug of black coffee in hand. He’d never recovered more quickly from a hangover in his life.
The automatic gate at the bottom of the driveway opened as Ashby approached it. Beyond, Evelyn’s saloon was parked up by the pavement. She waited in the backseat, a shadow behind dark tinted windows. Her driver opened the passenger door for Ashby. He got in and sat beside the Chairman, self-consciously straightening his tie. The door slammed shut. The driver’s shoes clipped the pavement as he returned to the front seat. Ashby ran a hand through his blonde hair. He felt Evelyn smiling at him beatifically.
‘Ashby,’ she said with a gentle laugh. ‘You look nervous.’ She placed ringed fingers over his right hand, which rested awkwardly on the leather seat. The saloon pulled out into the road, headed towards Hampstead Lane. Behind Ashby, the gates to his home automatically closed again.
He turned and examined the woman he’d avoided all this time. Evelyn still appeared young, closer to forty than fifty-five. She was as beautiful and prickly as ever. ‘I do hope we can be friends,’ she said.
He swallowed. ‘Of course.’ For a split second, a memory of Evelyn fuming with rage after he’d told her he wouldn’t be leaving his wife, flashed through his mind.
‘I need your help, Ashby,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you know about this minister’s recording that’s been leaked across the net.’ Ashby’s heart stabbed against him like his chest had shrunk.
She doesn’t know anything
. But when he looked at her, sitting so poised and self-assured, he couldn’t help but doubt. Why else had she called him?
They arrived at the Community’s easterly checkpoint.
‘I’m pretty sure,’ Ashby said, passing forward his ID to the driver, ‘that there’s nothing I could tell you about that meeting you don’t already know . . .’ he paused, ‘considering you were there.’ Evelyn’s kohl eyes sparkled. Ashby remembered how much she enjoyed playing cat and mouse and how much it unsettled him never quite knowing which one of them he was.
‘Oh you haven’t changed a bit,’ she said. ‘Eight years . . .’ She sighed. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your wife.’
The checkpoint guards waved them through. The car ascended the City road towards Highgate roundabout. Ashby retrieved his ID from Evelyn’s chauffeur, using the time to get his emotions in check. After his wife died, he’d lost his appetite for playing mind games with Evelyn. He didn’t have the constitution he’d had all those years ago when he and the Chairman had worked closely on the Pure genome research and the Pure split.
‘What are you hoping I can help you with?’
She didn’t miss a beat. ‘Peter Reed’s murder.’
‘Surely the Wardens can give you all the information you need?’
The Chairman scrutinised him without blinking.
Is there nothing this woman doesn’t know?
he asked himself. Still, she’d have to spell it out; he wasn’t about to divulge information about a secret government unit.
‘I presume your team searched the body?’ she asked.
Ashby raised his hand to his mouth and cleared his throat.
Her nostrils flared with irritation. ‘Did your team recover the disc, or not?’ she snapped.
‘No,’ he said.
‘No?’ Evelyn’s eyes glittered dangerously. She smiled. ‘Oh, Ashby, I remember why I liked you so much. I never could tell when you were lying to me. So mysterious.’ She patted her dark hair which was sprayed high off her forehead in an old-fashioned movie star way. ‘From what I’ve heard, your daughter has some of your skill.’
The Board’s monthly tests saw to that
, Ashby thought. ‘The young man,’ he said, veering the subject away from Ariana, ‘who was there the night Peter Reed attempted to leave his Community with the recording, must have intercepted the disc before my team arrived.’
Evelyn retrieved a bottle of ice-chilled spring water from the cup holder attached to the door. Ashby watched her unscrew the lid slowly, take a sip.
‘Cole Winter,’ she said. ‘The man the whole of Scotland Yard and the Wardens wish to question for Peter’s murder.’ She breathed in deeply and exhaled. ‘I heard your daughter was looking for this man at the Royal Academy of Music right after she joined with Jasper Taurell?’
Ashby felt beads of sweat form above his top lip. Evelyn was playing with him. But if she knew he was responsible for the leak, what did she really want? ‘There were rumours Jasper had got himself involved with the Enlightenment Project. My daughter was simply warning Mr Winter, one of its members, to stay away from her husband.’
‘That would suggest an awful amount of spirit from your daughter. It also leaves the unanswered question of what really happened to her when she was supposedly kidnapped, as well as what happened to Jasper Taurell. Your daughter leads a rather surprising and intriguing life for a seventeen-year-old girl raised in the Communities. In fact, she just turned eighteen, didn’t she?’
‘She did.’
‘Well, I’d like to meet her.’
A chill descended over Ashby. So that’s what this was all about. He hadn’t seen it coming. ‘She would be honoured,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we could organise something for next month. She and Jasper aren’t really up to socialising yet.’
‘I was thinking more along the lines of dinner tomorrow night. You remember where I live, don’t you?’ Ashby could barely move his head to nod. ‘Lovely. I’m so looking forward to meeting her and Jasper. Driver—’ She leaned forward and tapped the divide between her and her driver with ringed knuckles. The jewels clinked against the window. The saloon pulled over to the edge of the road.
Ashby glanced out of the window, aware of their surroundings for the first time since he’d got into the car. They were in a down and out area of Tufnell Park: shanty houses and roadside fires. He sighed inwardly. It would take Nick his weekend driver at least twenty minutes to get there. If he’d been thinking straight, he’d have called Nick right after he’d got off the phone to Evelyn and asked him to follow them.
Evelyn’s hand brushed against his fingers. One of her rings pricked him hard. He pulled away.
The woman has claws,
he thought.
‘What do you intend to do about the possible riots?’ he asked.
‘You were always so black and white. People just need reassurance, kindness, understanding. Once they realise that the recording is a fake, they’ll settle down.’
‘A fake?’
‘Of course.’
Ashby opened the door and ducked out, stepping into a stream of litter so thick he couldn’t see the gutter from the pavement.
‘Pleasure seeing you again,’ he said.
Evelyn ticked her finger at him. ‘Ah, you’re letting yourself down, Ashby. Lost some of your touch.’
Smiling thinly, he closed the door. The electric window descended.
‘Your forties don’t suit you at all,’ Evelyn said. ‘I’m rather glad I’ve mostly missed them.’ Ashby listened to the buzz of the window ascending. The dark tinted glass moved up Evelyn’s body, blocking out her neck, her chin, her high cheeks, and lastly her dark eyes.
‘I’m rather glad you missed them, too,’ he muttered as the limo swam shark-like back into the road.
He swung a hand in front of him to activate his interface, then used the hand gesture for making a telephone call. If his daughter wasn’t at Evelyn’s dinner tomorrow night, giving the performance of her life, the Chairman of the Board’s interest in Ariana would become obsessive. She would discover Ariana was missing, had never been abducted, was responsible for the minister’s leaked recording. Evelyn would make his daughter her business. And if she found out the truth, she would be out to destroy Ariana.
The thought crossed his mind to use a stand-in. He’d got away with it twice before. But Evelyn wasn’t some random Board member. She’d met Ariana years ago and even if the physical differences didn’t give it away at once, she’d sense something was wrong. No, either he showed up with Ariana tomorrow night, or his daughter would become the Chairman of the Board’s enemy number one, and he wouldn’t be far behind on that list himself.
Smoke poured through cracks beneath the closed barn doors. From inside, there came banging. She tugged the exterior latch. The hook was stuck.
‘Hang on!’ she shouted. She ran around the outside of the building, searching for a way in. The olive-green walls seemed to go on forever. No other doors. No windows. She sprinted back to the front. A metal bar lay in the bright grass. She picked it up. Struck the door. Over and over. Her lungs were beginning to fill with smoke. Heat scorched her face.
A muffled pleading came from inside. A child whimpering. She slammed the pointed end of the bar into the wood. Her mother had died in a barn like this. Exactly the same colour. Except the paint on these walls was faded and peeling, as though years had passed. She glanced around. Had years passed? Was she home?
Her throat was dry. Her head spinning. She mustn’t stop. She had to find a way in.
Far off in the distance sat a shrunken cobbled farmhouse. Colourful fields. Bright blue sky. And behind the barn a forest with a presence, silently watching her.
‘Help me!’ she screamed at it. ‘Help me!’
*
Ana kneeled a couple of feet from the water’s edge, scooping handfuls of mud from the ground and flipping them to one side. Early morning light washed the flats a pale yellow. On the grazing marshes to her left, islands tufted with grass peeked up from dark pools.
Scoop, flip, scoop, flip.
Slowly, the hole she was digging filled with fresh water. Once it was deep enough to submerge her saucepan, she waited for the sediment to settle.