I put Byron14’s USB stick into my laptop, and had a look at what I had stolen.
Gobbledegook, unintelligible to anyone except an expert.
The base-code of Perfection.
Chapter 52
Parker opened a casino in Macau.
I watched the announcement on the news, saw him shake hands, smile for the cameras. He was famous now. Everyone knew his name, the one and only Parker of New York.
Rafe Pereyra-Conroy signed a deal with the royal family of Dubai, to jointly develop an Islamic version of Perfection, extolling virtues worthy of devout people
virtues such as generosity, kindness, charity, pilgrimage, duty, honour, loyalty, modesty
modesty codes
veils for the women
women not to be seen with unmarried men
no kissing in public
rape victims punishable by jail
etc.
I thought about turning round, going back to Tokyo, finding Luca Evard, telling him look, look, it’s me, maybe if you arrest me everyone will see that you were right, that you’ve been chasing a forgettable thief, and then you’ll be happy and then you’ll love me, really love me, because I know you would if you could only remember me!
Sat in Kyoto airport and didn’t move.
Rolled Filipa’s bracelet round and round my wrist, a journey without end.
And after a while, because there didn’t seem anything else to do, because nothing else that I did had any meaning whatsoever, I logged back into the darknet.
whatwherewhy: I have Perfection.
Byron14: Send it to me.
whatwherewhy: No. I want to meet.
Byron14: Unacceptable.
whatwherewhy: We meet, or you don’t get Perfection. I’ll be in Seoul in three days’ time.
Byron14: Impossible.
whatwherewhy: I’ll see you there.
Chapter 53
There are two exceptions to the circle of memory loss that surrounds me:
1. Animals. Perhaps it’s a smell thing? Perhaps if I wore a remarkable perfume people would remember me, nasal déjà vu. Perhaps one day I’ll get a dog. Maybe two.
2. The old, the ill or the mad. That’s how I met Parker, in the old people’s home in New York, talking to the old ladies and gents. They were used to loneliness, and smiled and put a brave face on it, and that made my condition easier, easier to smile because they did. The old folks never remembered me, save one, who had gently encroaching dementia, who always exclaimed, “It’s Hope! Hope’s come to visit us again!”
Then I considered becoming a care-home worker, just to be with people who remembered me, but she had no bladder control and didn’t want to eat, not now, not that, that’s disgusting, but I’m hungry! and so I visited her every year at Christmas and Easter instead, until she died, quietly in the night.
Walking through the streets of Manchester one day, out to rob a jeweller’s. Three months’ preparation, set to go in the middle of the jazz festival, the sound of sax and sousaphone to hide the very small but necessary explosive I’d primed for entry.
A voice cried out, “Hope!”
I ignored it, since it hadn’t been my name for so long, but there it went again, “Hope! Stop! I want to see Hope!”
A woman’s voice, young, shrill and urgent. A kerfuffle, a clatter of metal and rubber, another voice, chiding. I glanced back and there was a girl trying to rise out of her wheelchair, one arm crossed over her body, one side of her face loose from muscular fatigue, but eyes like mine, voice raised high and bright, “Hope!”
My baby sister.
I close my eyes and I count
breath
steps
cracks in the pavement
hairs on my head
stars in the sky
And there is my baby sister, Gracie, not grown-up but getting there, twelve, perhaps — no, thirteen by now, thirteen as of three weeks ago — being wheeled along in a little group of girls and boys. She is alert, awake, uncaring for her disability for what is it to her? Just life; whatever. My Grace, and she said, “Hope! Look! We’re going to the station!”
Holding out one hand, summoning me, imperious, to her side. Her carer, a woman with three chins and blonde curling hair sticking out beneath a hand-knitted grey hat, apologised profusely but I said no, it’s fine, I don’t mind, and knelt down in front of my sister’s chair.
She surveyed me, and seeing everything to her satisfaction said, “There was spaghetti for lunch, but I don’t like spaghetti so I had pizza instead.”
“Did you?” I asked.
“Yes. Tomorrow is Friday so there’ll be curry which is all right.”
“That’s… good.”
Again, a mumble from the carer, so sorry, you don’t need to, it’s not at all…
I didn’t listen. Gracie’s hand, shifting an inch, resting in mine. The carer stopped speaking, stared at Gracie, stared at me, her mouth hanging ajar. How often did my sister touch another person? How often was she silent with her hand resting in a stranger’s hand?
I said, “She reminds me of my sister; did you say you were going to the station?”
“Yes.”
“May I come with you?”
The carer looked at Gracie, her bottom lip turning uncomfortably, professional training coming up hard against the truth of this moment. “What do you think, Grace?” she asked, voice too loud, voice for someone stupid, my sister is not stupid. “Do you want this lady to come with us to the station?”
Gracie nodded, an awkward gesture, head heavy as it dropped, fast, and then slow, rolling back round and up into its erect position.
“It’s not a problem,” I said. “I’d like to come.”
We walked to the station.
Gracie chatted briskly, told me that she liked the colour blue, but not the blue on the bedroom door, that was the wrong blue, but she liked the blue of the nurses, that was a good blue, and she wanted more things to be that blue but never purple she hated purple especially cabbage, cabbage made her sick. And she had been learning to sing she liked singing but she liked painting more I should come and see some of the things she painted at school there were beautiful things she always used blue not purple of course but that was what made beauty, everything beautiful, just like me.
And they’d been learning about science. And animals. And she liked animals, and animals liked her, and when she was grown-up, she’d keep two cats and a dog, but not a zebra, because zebras were horrid things even though they were stripy.
And the carer said, Grace was doing very well, very well indeed, and the school were very proud of how well she was doing and she knew that she’d grow up and be just fine, and that she’d been reading better recently, and her favourite books were the ones where good defeated evil, and her favourite film was Star Wars.
Why Star Wars? I asked, my hand still in Gracie’s.
Because in Star Wars, my sister explained, everything works properly. People are good and people are bad and good people do good things and bad people do bad, and there’s a good Force and a bad Force and that’s how it should be.
She thought about it a moment longer, then added, and sometimes the bad become good, and that’s good too, because good is better than bad, obviously.
I found I was crying, just crying, just a girl crying, and the carer asked softly, where’s your sister now?
Not so far away, I replied. Not so far.
Chapter 54
Change of place, change of name, change of appearance. Plane to Incheon; air-conditioned coach to Seoul.