What I Tell You In the Dark (7 page)

We've been walking for a few minutes now and I've yet to say a word. We've just passed the monolithic headquarters of Natalie's newspaper and are about to turn down on to the steps that will take us to the canal. She is patient, also quiet at my side.

‘I don't really know where to begin,' is all I can think to say.

I really don't. It's kind of overwhelming now that I'm actually here. Also, I'm feeling profoundly exhausted again. I'm not too sure that walking was such a good idea after all. I might look for a place to sit down.

‘Why not start by telling me what's on the USB you handed me?'

It's very gently put, like how you are with someone you know is trying their best but just isn't quite managing to get there. I wish more people would talk to me like that.

‘Okay, look: InviraCorp isn't the story. It's part of the story but it's not the really bad part. You need to follow the money to get to that …' I put a hand on her arm. ‘Do you mind if we stop here?'

The here in question is one of those heavily vandalised benches you tend to see at the side of canals. It has the look of a structure that someone has recently been murdered on. I flop down. She perches a little more gingerly on the edge. Next to us the canal is motionless, the colour of old silver.

‘Do you have any idea,' I ask her, ‘where it's coming from? The money, I mean – the tens of millions that fund InviraCorp's manufacturing and distribution?'

She looks slightly exasperated by this question. It's obviously something they've been hitting a dead end on, just as I knew they would.

‘The company's run through offshore vehicles – that's all we've managed to find out. You know what these places are like – it's impossible to get any information. So what are you saying? Is it government funding or …?'

‘No,' I wave that suggestion away. ‘I wouldn't even …' What? Wouldn't jump out of exile for something as footling as that? ‘No, it's much worse than government money. It's the church. And not just any old church – the Roman Catholic Church.'

I give her a second or two to start working through the gears.

‘The same people,' I continue, helping her along with it, ‘who spend all their time …'

She jumps in and completes it for me ‘… telling people in Africa that using condoms is a mortal sin. The same people who are fuelling the HIV pandemic.'

‘Exactly. With one hand they're allowing the disease to flourish, with the other they are milking enormous profits from its treatment.'

‘Can you prove this?'

I glance at her bag. ‘What I've given you there gives times and dates of meetings between key players at InviraCorp and members of the Vatican administration. Signed minutes of board meetings, placing those people together. Also, you may have noticed that the Vatican Bank decided to publish its accounts for the first time a few weeks ago. Some bullshit PR stunt to show the world how transparent they are …'

I shift forwards in my seat a little so I don't have to look anymore at a jagged acrostic in the graffiti across the water from us.
U fall
, it says.

Her attention is riveted on me.

‘… well, before I decided to send you that data last week, getting the ball rolling on InviraCorp, as it were, I printed off the Vatican accounts – the full version. There were offshore assets referred to in the annexes that I happen to know are trust vehicles for InviraCorp profits. But of course, if you were to look at those accounts now, you'd see that all mention of any offshore money …'

Again she completes it for me ‘… has been removed.'

I smile and sit back again in my seat. ‘Yup.'

She had shuffled round on the bench while I was explaining it to her, one leg tucked under the other, so she could look at me
straight on. Now, though, she sits round like me, staring at nothing.

‘This is a lot to take in,' she says.

Then she gets up and turns back in the direction of her work. ‘I'm going to need to have a good look at what you've given me.' She wants to be getting on with this now. Every moment that passes out here is a waste. ‘I'll need to take it to my editor.'

When I make no move to follow her, she tells me, ‘Will, you're going to have to come too.' I must look a little lost because she goes back to her gentle voice. ‘I'm going to need you to stay close.'

So I go with her, docile as a child.

‘Bloody hypocrites,' she says as we start climbing the steps.

I make no reply. I'm just pleased to be leaving the accusing graffiti behind us, and that glowering crow I saw just now, fixing me with its cocked head, putting a little of its darkness in me.

‘If this is God's work, I'd hate to see what the devil can do.'

The devil. Now there's another of my foolish utterances come back to haunt me. A few passing references to the
ha-satan
, that was all it was, and the next thing I know everyone's spinning yarns about the devil.

It was just a metaphor
I feel like yelling, although in fairness, she looks like she already knows that. There are people, though, I would like to yell it to – countless congregations of them. It's amazing really, when you think about it – the dark prince, the hoofed avenger, Old Itchy Scratchy himself … there really is no end to their nonsense. They'll be talking about drinking my blood next – oh no, wait …

‘There is no devil,' I tell her. ‘It's just people doing it to themselves.'

When we get to her office this precise point seems to leap from every page as I sit in the reception area leafing through the day's paper while she goes off to arrange somewhere quiet for us to talk.

When she re-emerges, my mind is fizzing with thoughts I'd like to try to get across to her (it can be a little over-stimulating reading through the news on a global scale – I find, anyway). There are so many different things happening at once and yet the common themes that bind these events are surprisingly few.

‘Okay, I've got us a meeting room,' she tells me, before I have time to begin talking about the article I was just reading.

Then by the time I've finished filling out the information in the visitor book, I've pretty much forgotten what it was I wanted to say to her anyway. That's how it is, I guess – the business of getting things done always pulls it back into a nearer focus. Who has time for the big picture?

Not me, not us, that's for sure, as we're whisked up the escalator surrounded by the light and glass and busy people of the atrium, where the bright autumnal sunshine is allowed in to fill every corner. Even as we move away into the guts of the building, the corridors remain bright and wide. You get the feeling that there is more than enough oxygen for the truth to survive in here. No need to be afraid that it'll be suffocated in a closed circuit of rooms and tunnels, like what I saw at Abelwood, the cloistered stage for Will's creeping paranoia.

‘In here.' She shows me into a small meeting room. ‘I'm just going to fetch a laptop. Do you want a drink of anything?'

‘I'm fine thanks.'

I sit down in a chair that turns out not to be as comfortable as it looked.

She puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Thank you, Will.' The heat of her hand radiates through me, softening me with its understanding. ‘Thank you for everything.'

When she's left the room, the afterglow of her touch remains. Her scent too, like a summer orchard. I find it deeply comforting. All this time, I've longed for physical contact. Abandoned like that in the shadow of His disappointment, I felt so little warmth.
If it hadn't been for you, for my watching of you, I would have cracked.

But it pulls too. I'm here, and I have no right to be. Will showed me something I couldn't turn away from. Not the worst thing I've seen, not by any means, just the last in a very long line of things.

Everyone has their point they need to reach. That much we know. It's a knowledge we all share, a knowledge we have drawn from the earliest light of His universe. Electrons clamour for the nucleus, their nature drives them to it. And yet, not all of them manage it. Some find themselves jostled to the perimeter.

It is here, too distant from the nuclear centre, that they become susceptible to detachment.

All that's required is a conductor strong enough to pull them away.

4

She closes the lid of her laptop and rests her elbows on the table. The tip of the memory stick continues to glow hopefully in the machine's side.

‘I don't think there's enough here – not yet,' she adds, wanting to keep it upbeat.

Looking at the pieces Will has scraped together, I have to agree with her. It's suddenly all seeming a little thin.

‘But it's a starting point – an
excellent
starting point,' she reaches across and folds her hand over mine. ‘We just need to work it up a bit.'

I can barely be bothered to speak. I'm beginning to wonder why I even bothered at all, to do any of this. I can't begin to imagine what it's going to cost me with The Boss.

‘What would it take?' I mutter. ‘What more do we need?'

‘Look, Will,' she gives my hand a little joggle, like you do with the mouse of a sleeping computer, ‘none of this has been a waste of time. This is invaluable data – we just need to attach some hard evidence to it, that's all.'

Her hand is alive on my skin, a part of her on a part of me. The contact is working its way through to me. There's that Maryam vibe about her again. It's a kind of
We can do this
, with a bit of something else added in. Something thrilling.

‘I'm going to need some material that's concrete enough to satisfy our lawyers.' She smiles apologetically, as it seems to me anyone should at the mention of a lawyer.

‘Primary material you mean – direct from the source?'

She sighs. ‘Ideally, yes – but I don't see how that would be
possible.' This is obviously a familiar cul de sac. We know what we know but proof isn't easy to come by. I can relate to that. ‘Unless you know someone on the inside? In the offshore side of the operation?'

I do a kind of non-committal thing with my eyebrows.
Maybe I do
.

She perks up a bit at this.

‘If you could get me solid proof, Will, that those trusts in Jersey really are paying out to the Vatican, then … Let's just say we'd be able to eviscerate them with something like that.'

Eviscerate, now there's a word you don't hear very often. Nor, for that matter, do you come across the thing itself anymore, or very rarely anyway. Horrible business – seen it done a few times.

‘That, to answer your question, is what it would take. Something on that scale. I can't file on what you've given me here. Don't get me wrong, it's compelling stuff, but at the end of the day, what's in these accounts, what you have references to in all those emails, they're just offshore assets – they could be for anything. They don't
prove
anything. I mean,
I
believe you, one hundred per cent – I'm with you on this. But as far as my editors are concerned – as far as the lawyers are concerned – it could mean anything.'

She removes her hand from mine.

‘If we tried to run with this – even supposing the lawyers would green light it – InviraCorp would knock it out of the park in a second. You know that better than I do.'

I grin at her. ‘You mean some PR asshole would get to work on it with his asshole PR messaging?'

She looks a little uncomfortable.

‘I'm
joking
,' I tell her.

I push back my chair and get to my feet.

‘Look, if it's proof you need, I'll get you proof,' I find myself saying. ‘Don't you worry about that. Just sit tight and wait for
me to contact you. Tomorrow,' I declare, plucking a time out of thin air. ‘I'll have it for you tomorrow.'

‘Will, hang on for a second.' She's up on her feet too. ‘Just slow down. How are you going to …?'

‘Seriously, don't worry about it. I can fix this.'

Can I? I have absolutely no idea. All I know is I want to. More than anything I have ever wanted. I already have the door open and am halfway out of it.

‘O-kay.' She says it in that slow, decoupled way that means it is in fact a fair way off okay. ‘But don't you think it would be a good idea to hang around here, just for a little while longer? I want to bring the news ed in on this, maybe even the boss. I'd like you to be there.'

‘No, you do that,' I tell her, more or less over my shoulder. ‘I don't have time for any more talking.'

She follows me out.

‘Will?' Her left hand is on my arm, the lower part, my forearm – is that a word? It muddles me, her being so close. ‘Be careful.'

I nod.

‘The substance of things hoped for,' I whisper, like it's the only secret I know. ‘The evidence of things not seen.'

And with that I'm gone. Back out in the world.

I don't like walking these streets. If anything, the situation is getting worse. There is almost nowhere I can look.

At a clogged roundabout I come across the ghastly sight of workmen in the road, besmirched with filth, standing expressionlessly in their hole as if wakened from death. Blinking in the pit of their grave. It has the quality of an omen, a scene from one of those Tarot cards – one of the bad ones.
Il Giudizio
.

Don't stop, don't look. That's the secret. Just shake it off and move on.

Around the corner from Will's flat I get a text message from Natalie.

Ed meeting @ 5pm
, it says.
Will call after. We can make this happen
.

Yes. Exactly. I tuck the phone back in my pocket. We
can
make this happen. I step off the kerb.

Something hits me, hard, slamming me face first on to and off it in the same second.