‘I am Jack. Before, there was another Jack. I worked for that man, carried messages. I know everything because no one pays attention to me. I know how it works. Then he Left with his money and now there is me. I trade. I do business. No one can find Jack. I make silly voices down tubes. I am analogue. I am a shadow. Without Jack, nothing can happen. So they must deal with me. But someone did not want to. And they found me.’
‘Someone?’
The boy shrugged. ‘The Fleet. Someone. The photograph is me, not Shola. I am the target, the bullseye.’
‘Do you know who?’
The boy nodded. ‘Yes. It is the same, you see? Something had to be done, so it was done. I must die, so an attempt was made. That is the Fleet. There are no people. No one breaks the law! It is just what is necessary and very sad. Shola was collateral. Great shame. The island will burn and my mother will die. Very sad. Film at eleven, drinks and dips.
‘But Jack is Jack. In Jack’s world there are orders and people who give orders. It is personal. You want to know who? The Fleet. The Fleet killed Shola. And Jack does not forgive. So I will kill the Fleet. Shola was my friend and there was no reason…’ He blew air through his teeth in a hiss, tried again. ‘There was no reason for that! No reason at all, just stupid! Why would anyone—’ He swallowed. ‘You stopped it. You saved my life and I saw you and I knew. I knew everything then. I had another plan, before, but it was weak. Tigerman is full of win. Tigerman is everything.’
‘Tigerman is a joke. Here today, gone tomorrow. A madman in a funny hat.’
‘Not so. Tigerman is everyone. He fights crime! He walks through fire and saves the innocent. He burns up drugs. He stops riots.’
‘Your riots.’ Dog-killing, because it would upset the English in particular, and the BBC would have to cover it. And because Sandrine hated dogs, he realised, remembering the cobblestone and the mongrel. She was afraid of them, the way some people are afraid of spiders. Everything serves twice. Three times. Nothing is one thing. Everything is the story.
‘Not mine. Mancreu’s. You cannot make riots. Only make the possibility. You cannot control them. Real riots, real fire.’ The boy stretched out his hand for a moment. ‘Real Tigerman.’ He left the hand there for a moment as if he hoped the Sergeant would take it, but it did not come within reach. Then he straightened and drew his hand back. ‘And tonight he will expose the Fleet. He will show the world. Live on TV! We interrupt this programme! It will be known: this is what is done here, under the cloak of law! Made possible by the nice countries, in the name of the good people. This place is a convenience for killers and torturers and tax evaders and drug bankers, for scum of the earth. But Tigerman will not stand for it! He will not back down! Because he knows what is right.’
‘They’d blow my fucking head off!’
The boy nodded. ‘Yes. They would. Lester Ferris, the hero of Beauville many times over, killed by his own side for being a good man. Close-up pictures. Scandal! He gave his life for a cause, for a people who had made him their own. You see? That is a story! And there is continuity. There is shape. First the cave, then the footrace, now this. And then I would say you gave me something for if this happened, and I would read Inoue’s report. “Mancreu need not burn.” Tigerman’s last will and testament. “This mess was made to order. It is a lie from the beginning. The island need not burn, but if it might burn then it is an un-place and all the dirty deeds can be at home here.” Two weeks ago, no one would care. Today, from Tigerman? It is the greatest show on Earth! Now tell me they would carry on! Tell me they would dare, after Tunisia and Egypt and Libya, after Khaled Saeed and Mohamed Bouazizi! No. No. People would march around the world. Tigerman for ever! For Mancreu! They would. It is a great story. Everyone wants to touch that kind of story.’ He punched the air, then slumped. ‘Already there are shirts. Shirts, and a band in Kentucky. By tomorrow there will be dolls. In six months, a movie. And it would have been an Oscar winner, too.
‘I was going to buy my island with your death, you see. But now, not.’
The Sergeant dragged air into his lungs. He felt as if he was carrying the whole island on his chest. ‘Why not?’
The boy threw his hands in the air. ‘Because White Raoul tricked me! And then he tricked you! He is a wicked, deceitful old man who thinks he is wise, and now words have been spoken and it is impossible to unhear them!’ And then his voice caught, with emotion or puberty or a little of both, the Sergeant could not be sure. ‘Why couldn’t you come before?’
‘I’m here now.’
‘Too late.’
‘It doesn’t have to be.’
The boy nodded as if this was a perfect statement of despair. ‘I am a leaf on the wind,’ he intoned.
The Sergeant had no idea what this meant. He said so.
The boy looked at him as if he were a barbarian or an idiot. ‘Stay here. I will show you.’ He walked to the door through which the Sergeant had come in, and closed it behind him.
A few moments later the Sergeant realised he had locked it and taken the car.
His first reaction was a sort of weary resignation. He was, genuinely, not cut out to be a costumed hero. This proved it. You’d never see the pros in this situation. Batman would never have managed to get himself locked into a dilapidated hotel lobby while someone nicked his car, any more than Superman ever woke up and found that Lois Lane had sold naked pictures of his body to the tabloids. Not even the Blue Beetle had ever had to deal with that sort of crap. But here he was, and the person who had created him, the evil boy genius who was both his herodaddy and his nemesis, had turned the key and left him standing by a plastic fern like a pillock.
It occurred to him that he was upset about this because for as long as he concentrated on it his heart would not actually break into a thousand pieces and kill him.
And then it occurred to him to wonder where the boy was going with his vehicle. Away, obviously, although there was nowhere which was away enough for a moment like this, for discovery and revelation and the end of a friendship.
Some part of him objected that they had never truly been friends, they had been something else, and the distinction was important. But leave that aside for now, the car was worrying at him, and the locked door. Away, yes, was a fine place to go when you were in pain, but where away? The boy was escaping in possession of a car full of explosives and equipment. Well, so. A child driving a load of military gear was no more likely to crash than a child driving anything else.
Not friends. Something else.
And the boy was not fleeing with the nearest vehicle to hand. He was answering a question. The plan, after all, was still a good one. It lacked only a sacrifice, a lynchpin. Would ‘child-criminal emperor slain by Fleet’ clinch the deal? It would certainly create a story, hours and hours of coverage, endless debate. Dead children always lead, always require soul-searching by organisations which on most days cannot locate their soul, let alone interrogate it. But someone would still need to deliver the coup, to accuse and to interpret.
Say, a heroic non-commissioned officer, recently seen in action helping fleeing refugees. And if that NCO also happened to reveal that he was the mystery man who had quelled a riot, who fought crime on those outlaw streets…
He stared in horror at the nearest table, at the papers spread out upon it like a map drawn for an idiot. Stages of a media campaign. And documents, too, showing his adoption of the boy, needing only his signature.
Not friends. We were never friends.