The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 27

You don’t need weapons drawn to be threatening.

Fear grows in the face of unanswered questions. How far will Gauguin go, what are the tools at his disposal, will he kill me, when this is done?

They brought me a laptop and a bad cup of coffee.

They already had Tor installed; it was easy to return to the chatroom where Byron14 liked to play.

Byron14 wasn’t there.

“We wait,” said Gauguin, sitting on the sofa next to me. “We wait for Byron.”

We waited.

An hour, then two.

Gauguin watched the screen. I said, “Does this thing come with solitaire?”

“We wait,” he replied.

We waited.

I counted bricks in the wall.

Steps to the door.

Lines on my hand.

We waited.

The muezzins called from the minarets, Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest.

Sun cream dried on the diamonds; how disgraceful Leena would find it, that something so precious should be casually disregarded between the ashtray and a nine-month-old magazine about snowboarding.

I counted viable weapons in the room, things that were heavy, things that were hard, things that could puncture skin.

I counted hiding places, found only one that was any good.

After a while I said, as much to pass the time as anything else, “You and Byron — is it personal?”

Gauguin’s eyes snapped to me, fast and hard, before he looked away.

I shrugged, smiled at nothing much, said, “Thought so. Your boss know you’re pursuing a vendetta here?”

“My boss wants to see Byron drowned in liquid concrete,” he replied, without rancour. “My views are more complicated.”

“Would you have come after me if Byron hadn’t got in touch?”

“Yes. You stole the diamonds, you embarrassed my employer, deliberately, it seemed. That made you my problem. It made sense for Byron to contact you, for exactly the same reasons.”

“Byron’s got it in for Perfection?”

“What do you think?”

I shrugged, and turned my attention back to the waiting screen.

The sun, setting, orange-pink light tracking long and thin across the ceiling.

The man on the beanbag got up and went outside to answer his phone.

I was alone with Gauguin.

I looked at him and he seemed unaware of my attention, his concentration fixed on the screen of the laptop.

I said, “Here,” and reached out for the machine.

His hand lashed out, caught my wrist, held it hard. I fixed my face in an expression of wounded surprise. “I’m not going to break anything.”

“What are you going to do?”

“See if Byron’s in another room.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“Because you’re a fucker with a knife?” I suggested. “What’s the worst I can do?”

Slowly, Gauguin released my wrist. I picked up the machine, put it on my lap. He leaned in behind me to watch what I did. I opened a few more windows, checked a few more places, nothing untoward. How long had the guard been outside? Long enough to forget to come back? He may forget me, he might not forget his duty quite so fast.

I reached for my coffee cup, the third of the afternoon, and knocked it a little too hard. The coffee spilt across the table, soaking into the snowboard magazine, brown liquid mixing with sun cream. Gauguin’s eyes flickered to it, a slight intake of irritated breath, and in that moment I hit him across the side of his skull as hard as I could with the laptop. He crumpled back, still awake, still aware, and I hit him again, slamming it onto his forehead, between his eyes, and again, the plastic case crumpling, the screen going black, and one more time for luck, having to fight the urge to scream, swallowing my own breath, swallowing the animal sounds in my throat. He fell back on the sofa, blood in his eyes, and I grabbed the laptop and ran across the room, breath ragged and fast. I opened the cupboards beneath the sink; two with shelves secured in place, but one larger where once a kitchen bucket may have been, or bottles of bleach. I curled in, head to knees, arms to shins, locking my body so tight it was a struggle to breathe, smaller than a cat, smaller than a spider, eased the door shut with my fingertips, waited in the dark.

My breath conjured hurricanes, shook sleeping grizzly bears from their beds.

My heartbeat sent earthquakes across the earth, my skin melted metal.

I closed my eyes and breathed, breathed, breathed.

The heavens turned and the mountains fell, and I breathed.

Silence in the workshop.

A door opens; how lonely the sound seemed, when I could not see the man who pushed it.

A voice cried out; footsteps on concrete.

Boss, boss, help, help!

More footsteps, more people.

A commotion of moving men, Gauguin groaning, feet moving, a rattle above, a first aid kit being pulled from its place above the disused sink, legs moving against the thin light around the cupboard door.

Boss, what happened, what happened?

Footsteps run across the floor, above me, right above me, turning on the taps.

Gauguin’s voice, too faint to hear.

Civilisations are born and galaxies die, but has it been long enough?

A slow drip on my right shoulder, a leaking pipe from the sink above, I feel each drop roll down my skin like the first river across barren stones. The tap stops.

The cupboard next to mine opens, I catch my breath, wait for someone else to catch it too; but no. They are pulling out cloths, perhaps, tissues or tea towels to mop their boss’s bloodied head.

“What happened?” asks the woman who took my fingerprints.

“I don’t know,” Gauguin replies, and then, oh blessed then, sacred words in whose breath are goddesses born, “I don’t remember.”

I find that there are tears in my eyes, and I am shaking. I bite down on my own wrist to muffle the sound, remember, remember, the sand beneath my feet, the sun above, lines in my skin, I am now, I am Hope, breath and hope and now and…

Words fly away from me.

I push my awareness into my toes.

I am my toes.

The effort makes my head ache, but the shaking recedes.

Trees grow, pyramids are built, flowers wither and die upon the vine, the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail.

I am the wood of the cupboard that presses against my back.

I am the darkness.

In the room around me, people try to make sense of the scene.

See diamonds on the table, covered in gunk.

See blood on the floor.

What lies are they building, I wonder, to justify this picture?

A suitcase on the table, women’s clothes; clearly they found the thief’s baggage, but not the thief. Yes, now they concentrate, they can remember meeting the plane as it landed, but the seat next to Gauguin was empty, the bird had flown. They remember driving through the city streets, searching the thief’s baggage, finding the diamonds.

And now?

Someone had crept up behind Gauguin and hit him over the head, clearly, in order to rob them. Yes: that must be what happened. How did the thief get in? How did he get out? Why did the diamonds remain?

Minds strained under the effort of making sense of this scene, and confidence began to crack.

When confidence fails, routine kicks in.

Search the building, search the streets!

I am the wood.

I am darkness.

“Did you see who attacked you?” demands one man.

“No,” replied Gauguin. “I didn’t.”

His men searched the building, but not enough, nothing to see, nothing here, just some old pipes, broken cupboards, the thief long gone.

Footsteps move across the concrete, the tap runs above my head.

I am water.

Cars come, cars go.

I get pins and needles in my feet and want to laugh; cramp in my back and want to cry.

I am my vertebrae. I do not mind the pain.

And slowly, everyone forgets.

They do not forget that Gauguin has been attacked — that is a bloody reality that cannot be shaken. Nor do they forget the diamonds on the table, the passports they have taken from me, the credit cards in my name. They might remember my fingerprints too, but perhaps in their minds they are prints lifted from my luggage, DNA sweeps from my clothes, the details blur, imagination fills in.

I think the light might be fading outside, but it could be my imagination, eyes changing in the dark. I read a study once of people who were confined in perfect, silent darkness for forty-eight hours; some took only a few minutes before they began to hallucinate.

I am goosebumps.

I am a fusion of flesh. My arms are my legs, my legs are my chest, my head is my neck, my neck is my knees. I doubt I shall ever move again.

Why do these men not find me?

Because they are not looking.

Footsteps in the workshop.

A door shutting.

A car driving away.

I wait.

I wait.

A smell intruding on the senses, so gentle as to be barely noticeable at first, a trick of the mind, a manifestation of my own inertia: burning toast.

I wait.

The smell gets stronger.

A hint of petrol.

A moment where the rational mind says that a thing cannot be so, and the more intelligent, unconscious brain replies with a bang-on retort of “fuck that shit; of course it fucking is”.

Of course the fucking workshop is on fire.

I push the cupboard door open, flop out onto the floor. The smaller of the two fires has been started in the sofa, accelerated by a can of petrol, but is growing fast. The larger, more impressive threat is in the far corner of the building, fuelled by an unknown propellant, and already licking at the ceiling, smoke filling the top of the room. Squatting at the sink, I throw water over myself, soak my arms up to the shoulders, push my head beneath the tap, cover my face with my sleeve, crawl on my hands and knees along the floor beneath the pall, reach the door, push it, find it’s locked.

Standing up, the smoke makes my eyes water.

I drive my shoulder into the door, throw my full weight against it, but it will not budge, and I cannot breathe.

I drop back down onto my hands and knees; haul in air. Steam rolls off my sodden clothes.

I look for another way out, but it’s getting hard to see.

Fire procedures, what did I remember about tackling fire?

wet clothes, wet face

cloth across the mouth

percentage of deaths from smoke inhalation, 50–80 per cent

Cause of death

respiratory trauma

poison

thermal damage to lungs

I feel the hinges of the door, run my fingers over the lock, concentrate.

carbon monoxide poisoning

CO bonds with haemoglobin in the blood, giving it its red appearance

Two locks, one a fairly simple mortise lock that I could beat with a fork and a bit of time, the other heavy-duty, need a knife or a piece of metal, something to get leverage with

unlike O₂, CO will not separate from the haemoglobin, continues circulating

treatment for CO poisoning and smoke inhalation: hydrated oxygen

Can’t see, the black smoke throws the light of the fire around

oxygen toxicity: too much oxygen in the body tissues

central nervous system damage

retinal damage

pulmonary damage, only really a problem in a hypobaric chamber

or undersea

or in

pressurised conditions

My fingers fall away from the lock.

I am

the fire

I am

my fingers

I am

crawling

Climb on a table away from the fire, window furthest from the fire, smash what’s left of the glass

eyes closed

breathe

smoke running out

my face

my skin

can’t open my eyes, just darkness

cold air

hot smoke

breathe

the tiny hairs in my nose are burning, I feel the air scald my throat

I am

breath

I am

fire

I am

darkness.

The darkness is me.