Various Pets Alive and Dead (42 page)

When he gets in there, he notices a used condom, slipped down behind the toilet bowl. Somebody’s been lucky.

Otto’s voice on the phone sounds weightier, less jumpy than before. Fatherhood has given him gravitas.

‘Man, there’s any number of ways he could hack into your account. What about that memory stick you found? It could have had a rootkit on it. You thought you were spying on him, but he was really spying on you. Heh heh.’

‘Shit!’

‘Or he could’ve just cracked your password. All it would take would be for someone to watch your keystrokes as you were logging in.’

‘Not possible.’

‘Are you sure? People must be walking past your desk all the time.’

‘Yes but –’

‘
But you know, Sergei, I am here only with student visa
.’

The words slam into his brain. She was standing right behind him, looking over his shoulder when she said it. She could have noted his fingers on the keyboard. And he was wittering on about the Iranian War. Was it before or after they kissed? He can’t remember. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, does it? He feels a cold hand like a touch of death on his heart.

‘Yeah, I’ll have to think about it. Thanks, Otto. How’s Flossie?’

‘She’s good. She’s just learning to smile. Though she usually pukes up afterwards. One day Free Open-Source Software’ll win back the world from Microsoft. By the way, I keep getting little parcels from Doro. She’s taken up rainbow crocheting. Have you told her yet, about your job? Because Molly said she came up to Cambridge.’

‘Not exactly. I’m getting there.’

Though maybe there’ll be no need, if Molly has already done it for him. Maybe he’ll soon be on his way to Brazil.

‘No stress, man. Come and see us again one day.’

‘Sure, I will.’

He switches his phone off, noting another missed call from Clara.

Doro has shut herself in her room and refuses to come out, and Marcus is staying in to give her moral support, so it falls to Clara to take Oolie up to see the start of work on the site of her new home. Oolie can hardly contain her excitement as she hops and slides along on the snow, which is already turning to slush, on their way up to the allotments.

‘It’s got six bedrooms for residins. And I’m gonner have me own bathroom and toilet. It’ll be reyt good. Mr Clemmins showed me t’ pictures. And Mum says when I move into me new house I can ’ave a babbie.’

Clara reels, starts to slip, and has to steady herself by grabbing a railing.

‘Are you sure she said that?’

‘She said mebbe if I’m good. Cos I’m gonner be reyt good.’

‘I was thinking you might like a pet hamster to start with.’

‘Yeah! I wanna ’amster!’

She squeezes Oolie’s hand. Her sister’s spontaneous all-inclusive enthusiasm is one of the things she loves most about her.

The allotment is still covered with a thin fall of snow over the vegetable beds and fruit bushes, making it look like a fresh sheet on which anything could be written. There’s a bulldozer roaring away, shovelling the earth into mounds and flattening out a central area where the construction site will be. A couple of blokes with shovels are piling the topsoil into the back of a truck which, oddly, has a small SYREC logo on the door. A gang of kids from the Greenhills Estate is hanging around idly and trying to distract the shovellers with remarks such as, ‘Hey, mister, can I lend yer shovel?’, ‘Give us a fag, mister’, ‘My sister wants to shag you!’

She spots Jason Taylor and Robbie Lewis among them. They hail her arrival as a welcome diversion.

‘Hiya, miss!’ yells Jason. ‘I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on!’

‘Ha ha.’

‘Give us a fag, miss.’

‘I don’t smoke,’ she lies.

At that moment, a Mini pulls up and a young woman in high heels and a pencil skirt gets out, notepad in hand. Then a red hatchback rolls up and discharges a young man with a camera around his neck.

‘Is this the Greenhills Allotments site?’

‘My sister wants to shag you!’, ‘Give us a fag!’, ‘Can I ’ave a go wi’ your camera, mister?’ the kids chorus.

While the photographer fiddles with his camera, lining up the bulldozer in shot, another car draws up, a black BMW with darkened windows. A fat man in a shell suit gets out of the driver’s seat and two men in suits emerge from the back. One is a big beefy man with a shaved head and a tattoo on his scalp; the other is Councillor Malcolm Loxley. The photographer starts snapping. The councillor walks over to the bulldozer, swaps places with the driver, straps the man’s safety helmet on and waves at the photographer, the kids and a few other locals who’ve come out to gawp. The men with the shovels pose with the councillor. The camera clicks away. Then the councillor reverses the bulldozer, revs up and takes a run at a stubborn little fruit tree that is sticking two branches up out of the churned-up snow and mud, yanking it out by the roots, tumbling it over with the debris of a shed, some mangled bean canes and a few old chairs at the edge of the site.

The onlookers clap and cheer. Oolie joins in with gusto. Clara stuffs her hands in her pockets.

He jumps down and shakes hands with onlookers. The notepad lady minces around him in her pointy heels, writing down the words as they tumble from his lips.

‘It gives me great pleasure to initiate this resource for the vulnerable disabled folk in our community, alongside a modern retail development for decent, hard-working Doncaster families …’

All the while, his eyes are darting around. There is a patter of applause from the crowd. Clara feels her mouth tighten into a cynical smirk. Doro was right to stay away.

‘… instead of frittering council tax payers’ money on politically correct twaddle.’

What’s that supposed to mean?

Then, just as quickly as it started, it’s all over. The big shaven-headed man standing over by the BMW nods at the man in the shell suit, who comes over and whispers something in the councillor’s ear. The councillor waves at the crowd, climbs into the car and is gone. The driver climbs back into the bulldozer and revs up the engine, the shovellers resume their shovelling, the journalists drive off.

As the crowd drifts away, she notices a tall fair-haired young man standing on the far side of the former allotment, beside the truck. Oolie spots him too, and waves with both hands. Mr Clements picks his way around the edge of the site towards them, his feet sinking into soft churned mud.

‘They’ve made a start,’ he says. ‘Are you excited, Oolie?’

‘Yeah. Cos Mum says I can have a babbie when I move in.’

He laughs uneasily.

‘Or a hamster,’ adds Clara quickly.

‘Apparently it’s not a council development at all,’ he says. ‘It’s a new private outfit that’s running it. South Yorkshire Residential Care. SYREC. They’ve been awarded several residential contracts around here. This sheltered housing scheme is a new departure for them. I don’t know what your mum’ll say about that. She has quite strong views, doesn’t she?’

‘It has been known,’ says Clara.

‘Am I still gonner ’ave me own toilet?’ asks Oolie.

They walk along together towards Hardwick Avenue. The temperature has dropped, and the pavement is treacherous with frozen slush as dusk approaches. Oolie slips, and he grips her hand to steady her. Then Clara, on the other side, takes a slide too. He walks in the middle, both of them hanging on to him.

After a while, he squeezes her hand and says, ‘
Iron Man
’s back on at the Odeon. It’s meant to be quite good.’

‘I’ve already …’

She stops herself.

‘What’s the eyeing man?’ Oolie butts in.

‘It’s a film,’ says Clara.

‘I like filums! Can I come?’

‘No,’ says Mr Clements.

Serge is deep in thought as he walks home through the half-melted slush down dark empty streets, vaguely recalling the buoyant feeling with which he set out this morning. The age-old human rhythm – one foot before the other – helps him put his thoughts in order as he tries to make sense of today’s conversation with Maroushka. She didn’t exactly threaten him, but she pointed out, with that funny twelve-year-old grin, that given his role in Green Shoots, and his own off-the-books trading, it would be in his best interests to keep quiet. As if he had any choice in the matter.

He chooses quiet roads and backstreets, where the shops and offices are closed, and treads carefully, because the pavements are treacherous; only the occasional taxi swooshes past him through the dank December night, leaving a scorched taint of diesel on the air long after it has disappeared from view. The cold death-hand is still prodding his heart.

‘… I am here only with student visa. When study is finish I must go back to Zhytomyr …’

His way takes him around the back of Moorgate, across Chiswell Street and up Bunhill Row, where the righteous dead sleep in tidy graves, lightly sheeted with snow. He used to enjoy walking through here sometimes in the daytime – it reminds him a bit of Mill Road cemetery in Cambridge – but at night it seems faintly spooky, or maybe it’s just his state of mind that’s spooked.

‘But Chicken is apply for permanent work visa for me …’

She has her visa now. And what did you give him in return, Maroushka?

Her personal betrayal seems more terrible, more deeply appalling than just sleeping with Chicken would have been. Though she probably did that as well.

Suddenly, up ahead near the gate of the graveyard, in the shadows where the trees overhang the railings, a small white shape springs on to the pavement some twenty metres in front of him, and crouches there, looking at him. It’s about the same size and shape as a large white rabbit. He stops. He rubs his eyes. His heart is banging like mad. Is it a bad dream?

A lone car sweeps by. The shape doesn’t run away, but it trembles slightly. It seems to have just one ear. He starts to walk again, but more slowly now, keeping his eyes fixed on the creature. It doesn’t move away, but it sways from side to side; its form seems to change, to swell grotesquely. What the … ?

Aah! He stumbles.

A violent wrenching pain shoots through his knee as the full weight of his body twists over the foot which is snared between a pedal and a bicycle wheel on the ground. Some idiot left a bike chained to a railing. As he falls, the white shape leaps at him. He gasps, puts his hands out, and now he sees it’s just a carrier bag full of crumpled paper and takeaway scraps that some scumbag chucked away. Shit! His knee is in agony. Why can’t people leave bloody pavements clear? It’s not a lot to ask, is it?

‘You all right, mate?’ A small man in a woollen hat has emerged from the Artillery Arms across the road.

‘Sure. Fine. I just need a taxi to get home.’

Tears are pouring down his face as the pain takes over, blotting out everything else, and he finds himself sobbing and giggling at the same time on a roller coaster of agony and elation. Everything that was complex before has become beautifully simple, like when you solve a theorem. Like when you’re released from a treadmill.

He knows for sure now that he’ll never go back to FATCA. A huge wave of floaty lightness lifts him off the pavement, lifts him above the pain, lifts him beyond shame and regret and fear, and carries him curled on the back seat of a black cab to the place he calls home, but which he knows he will soon say goodbye to as well.

By the time he hauls himself into his bed – he takes the lift up, no racing up the stairs this time! – his knee is painfully swollen. He’ll have to see Dr Dhaliwal tomorrow.

But before he turns in for the night, there’s just one more thing he has to do. He pours himself a glass of Barolo, takes a couple of Ibuprofen and switches on his laptop. He pastes in the URL of the Brazilian property. It’s still there, winking at him from behind the palm trees, all $499,000 worth. When he logs into the Dr Black account, he sees his holding has crept up to £1.21 million. He sets up a transfer to his personal account of the whole lot.

The laptop makes a long chuntering noise, like it’s grinding its teeth. The screen goes blank. Then, after a few moments, an error message pops up: ‘Transaction denied.’

He tries again, for half the amount. ‘Transaction denied.’

Shit! He knows the money’s in there – he’s seen it. Or rather, he’s seen big numbers that purport to represent money. Maybe it was all just a mirage, fairy gold, not real money at all. But if he contacts the bank, they’re bound to ask questions. Call in the Fraud Squad. His heartbeat kicks up – boom! Boom! Boom!

He tries a third time, for just enough to cover the Brazilian property. The message pops up: ‘Transaction denied. Please contact your local branch.’

Ah well.

‘Are we gonner see Santa in Oxfam Street?’ asks Oolie.

The train is crowded with shoppers heading for London in the pre-Christmas rush, all clutching their bags and gabbling into their phones, but Doro has a more solemn purpose.

‘No. We’re going to liberate Serge.’

She doesn’t mean literally of course, but the way an enchanted dreamer in a fairy tale is freed from a magic spell. The City seems somnolent compared to the festive bustle of the West End. She’s printed the map off Google, and she has no trouble finding the tall glass tower where her son is imprisoned.

She enters a high halogen-bright atrium. On one wall there’s a motto in ornate gilt letters.
AUDACES FORTUNA IUVAT
. She dredges up her grammar school Latin. ‘The audacious enjoy fortunes.’ Too bloody true.

‘Can I help you?’ asks one of the pretty blonde girls on reception.

‘I’m looking for my son, Serge Free.’

‘He’s called Sausage.’ Oolie grins at the girl, who smiles back.

‘If you’d just like to take a seat …’

Just then, a tall dark-suited man waves his pass and goes through the security gate. Doro grabs Oolie’s hand and barges through behind him, waving airily at the receptionist. They follow him into the lift.

‘We’re looking for Sausage.’ Oolie tries her grin again.