The facility, p.23
The Facility, page 23
Rachel is at his shoulder. She sets a cup for him on the corner table at his elbow. ‘What?’ Graves says. ‘No, I . . .’
‘You do.’ Rachel is smiling. She sits. ‘It’s fine. It is small. It’s ridiculously small. Two hundred and fifty grand doesn’t go very far, does it?’
Rachel springs to her feet and dashes back into the kitchen. She emerges with a tea towel. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry about the table. It’s all over your suit. It’s my fault, I filled the cups too high. Oh, look at your suit!’
Graves lifts the tea towel from his lapel and tugs it from Rachel’s grip towards the table. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry about my suit. Your table . . .’ But in truth he is not thinking about the table. Although he is, now. He is thinking, how many tables – how many suits – could you buy with two hundred and fifty thousand pounds? Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
He had no idea he was quite so out of touch. So out of touch, and so old. It is like every year beyond his fortieth has counted double.
They clear up the mess and they sit. They sip. Graves places his cup back on the coaster with surgical care.
‘How long are you in town?’ his daughter asks.
‘Just a night. I’ll be heading back some time tomorrow.’
Rachel nods. If she is considering whether to ask where he has travelled from, she resists. ‘Where are you staying? You could sleep here, if you like. It wouldn’t be any trouble.’
Graves’s eyes sweep the flat. Where? he does not ask. ‘It’s kind of you,’ he says instead, ‘but I have a hotel room. Just around from the station. I left my things,’ he adds, even though the briefcase at his feet is the entirety of his luggage and he has not yet settled on where he is staying.
It seems to satisfy Rachel, however. She drinks into the silence.
‘Where’s Nick?’ says Graves. ‘I was hoping . . . I was hoping to see him.’
Again the face, slightly tempered this time. ‘He’s working. He’ll be home soon.’
‘He’s working? I thought he was – ’ Graves endeavours to keep his tone even ‘ – studying.’
‘He works for BAE,’ says Rachel. ‘He’s a research consultant. He has been for the past six months.’
A research consultant. It sounds to Graves like just another euphemism for student. BAE, though. He cannot find fault with BAE. ‘Good on him,’ he says. ‘Tell him from me: good on him.’
Rachel smiles. ‘I will,’ she says. Then, ‘Thanks, Dad.’
Graves nods. There is a silence and it seems an opportunity. He clears his throat. He opens his mouth, then closes it again. He scratches at an unseen mark on his trouser leg. He attempts again to say what he came to say but diverts his words at the last. ‘How’s your mother?’
‘Fine,’ says Rachel, ‘I think. I haven’t actually spoken to her for a while.’
‘You should call her. She worries when she doesn’t hear.’
‘Sounds like you know how she is better than I do.’
‘Rachel,’ Graves says, in a tone he has forgotten he possessed.
Rachel lifts the tips of her fingers from her knee. ‘I know, I know. I should call her more. I should call you both more.’ She slides forwards on her chair. ‘Listen, Dad. I’m sorry I’ve been so slack. It’s no excuse but . . . I don’t know. It’s been busy. With work and the flat and with Nick’s new job. Time just seems to . . .’ She opens a hand, gives a grimace.
It takes a moment for Graves to process what Rachel is saying. She is apologising, he realises. He did not expect her to apologise; he did not expect her to feel any need to. ‘It would have helped, I’m sure, if I had given you a number on which to reach me. If I had told you I was leaving in the first place.’
Rachel gives a wry smile. ‘It might have.’ She glances at her father and then at her lap. This is it then: Rachel has got there before he could. Graves is shaking his head already as Rachel starts to speak. ‘Listen, Dad. Can’t you tell me at least—’
‘I can’t. Don’t ask, Rachel, please.’
Rachel smiles again but this time when she smiles she looks all of a sudden like a girl again – like someone young and innocent and not a little frightened. ‘Okay. It’s fine. If you can’t tell me, don’t feel you have to.’ Again she lowers her gaze to her lap. ‘But I watch the news, you know. I’ve heard about this fac—’
‘Rachel! Don’t say it! Don’t even think it!’ Graves snaps before he can stop himself. Rachel stares as though he has slapped her. ‘You don’t know, Rachel. I mean it. You couldn’t even guess if someone asked you to. If someone . . . If someone forced you to.’
‘Dad, I—’
‘I’m not kidding, Rachel. I’m not messing about.’
‘Jesus, Dad. No shit.’
‘And don’t talk like that. We brought you up better than that.’ Graves regrets saying it even as the words pass his lips. He tightens his jaw and stares at his hands and waits for Rachel’s rebuke.
It does not come. When Graves looks up, the little girl he saw before has been replaced by the forbearing adult: the one who has learnt over her short years to endure the tantrums of her juvenile parents.
Graves shuts his eyes, opens them again. He should have stayed away. Coming here was a risk anyway, given what else he still has to do. It was selfish and short-sighted and most of all it was unfair.
He stands. ‘I’m sorry, Rachel. I have no right to . . . It’s not my place to . . .’ He struggles to finish his sentence. Rachel speaks before he has to.
‘Sit down, Dad. Please. Don’t go.’
‘I think perhaps I should. I have to get on and—’
‘Stay for dinner. Have dinner with us.’
‘Dinner? No, I . . . I really can’t.’
‘At least finish your coffee. Please, Dad. Sit down.’
Graves hesitates. He lowers himself to the edge of the seat. Rachel is silent again. She tries to say something but Graves forces himself to speak in order that his daughter does not have to.
‘Rachel. Listen. I wanted to see you. That’s why I came. But . . . But I wanted to warn you as well. To prepare you. It strikes me that you are perfectly prepared to deal with just about anything but I didn’t want you to think . . . That is, I didn’t want you thinking . . .’ Rachel is the little girl again. It is her expression, Graves realises, one facet of her expression: the furrow that appears between her eyebrows whenever she is on edge. ‘You’re going to hear some things about me,’ Graves says. ‘On the news, in the papers. I can’t tell you what exactly but it’s to do with where I’ve been.’
‘What things? What do you mean?’
‘Just . . . stories. They will not be pleasant.’
‘Made-up stories? Lies, you mean?’
‘No,’ Graves says. ‘Not lies. And that’s the point, Rachel. I can’t explain. It really is vitally important that I don’t. I wanted to see you, though. It was selfish, I suppose, but I wanted you to see me. I wanted you to hear from me that . . . That I was wrong. That I was wrong and that I know I was wrong. And that . . . Well. That I’m sorry.’
Graves tries to hold his daughter’s eye. He cannot. He hears her instead: not speaking, not moving, barely breathing. He said he cannot explain but an explanation, in all likelihood, is hardly necessary. If she was unsure before it will be plain to her now. She will understand all she needs to.
She stands and Graves glances. She is not the little girl any more. She wears an expression that might be resolve; that might just as well be revulsion. She crosses the room and Graves assumes she is walking into the kitchen: a signal that, just as Graves suspected, she knows exactly what the stories will be about and that perhaps it is time for her father to leave after all. But she stops at his chair. She settles on the arm. She reaches a slender hand around his shoulders and she bends and she kisses him on the cheek. ‘Okay,’ she says.
Nick’s keys are in the lock and his hand is outstretched and it seems they have plucked the keys from his grip. He beams through the open door. ‘Mr G!’ He is suited and – aside from the unfastened collar, the tie knot so constricted it must surely never have been unravelled – he looks almost like a man who works for a living.
‘Nick,’ says Graves, nodding.
‘Hey, honey.’ Nick leans to plant his lips on Rachel’s. Rachel turns her cheek at the last moment, so that Nick meets the corner of her mouth. She glances at her father and she blushes. Graves looks to his feet.
‘You’re not going?’ says Nick to Graves. ‘We bought some whisky. Did you have a glass? It’s a single malt, twelve years old. Recommended by a colleague of mine.’
Graves wishes now he had accepted some. It is clear that between them they have gone to some trouble to select a reasonable bottle. And, given his next stop, a nip of whisky might have done him some good. ‘Rachel offered,’ he says. ‘Thank you, Nick. Perhaps next time. We’ll have one together, shall we?’
‘Absolutely,’ says Nick, as though a drink together were the highest honour his girlfriend’s father could bestow.
‘Congratulations on your job, by the way. It sounds . . .’ Graves finishes the sentence with an enthusiastic nod.
‘Yeah, thanks. It’s good. It’s going well. It’s just like uni, if I’m honest. Lots of, you know—’
Drinking? Sleeping? Partying? Don’t ruin it, man.
‘—reading.’
Again Graves nods. ‘Good. Well. Stick with it.’ He lifts a hand and, to his surprise and Nick’s, it would seem, it settles on the boy’s shoulder.
‘Er . . . Thanks. I will. Good seeing you, Mr G.’
Rachel walks her father to the pavement. She has not brought a coat and she wraps her arms around her middle and hunches her shoulders against the cold.
‘Get inside, Rachel. You’ll catch pneumonia.’
‘Are you sure you won’t stay, Dad? Nick was going to make a curry.’
‘Nick cooks?’
Rachel nods through a shiver. ‘Most nights.’
Graves hesitates. He studies his daughter’s smile. ‘He . . . You seem happy. The two of you, I mean.’
‘We are, Dad. You should get to know him. You’d like him, I know you would. Why don’t you stay and eat with us?’
Graves reaches to button his coat. ‘I can’t. I would but . . . I have an appointment.’
‘Next time then. Any time, in fact. I mean that, Dad. Let’s not leave it so long.’
Graves takes hold of Rachel’s shoulders and kisses her on the cheek. ‘Get inside. Go and eat curry.’
Rachel nods and shivers again but she lingers. Graves can sense her watching as he begins his walk towards the high street. She calls after him.
‘Dad,’ she says. ‘Take care, won’t you?’
Graves raises a hand. He walks on.
‘Graves. Henry Graves.’
Katherine shakes her head. ‘Never heard of him.’
‘There’s no reason why you should have. Not unless there’s something in your past you’re keeping secret from the rest of us.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Never mind,’ says Tom. He is babbling. He knows he is. He pulls out the chair from behind Katherine’s desk and thinks about sitting down. Instead he grips the back, taps the fingers of his good hand against the upholstery. He beams; he cannot help it.
‘Tom? Are you sure you’re okay? I said to Amy, tell Tom to take all the time he needs.’
‘I’m fine. A bit tired. A bit wired. This bloke: he drinks a lot of coffee. I was matching him cup for cup and I didn’t exactly get much sleep.’
‘You met him? Face to face?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘And? What did he tell you?’
Tom leans closer. ‘Everything,’ he says. ‘He told me everything. This is it, Katherine. You said I needed more and I got more.’
Katherine reclines in her seat. She regards Tom for a moment, then tips her chin towards the empty chair across from her. ‘Sit down. Wait. Shut the door first.’
Tom crosses the room to close the door, then returns and slides into the seat. He is still smiling, he realises. He attempts a more sober expression but his features, the moment he stops concentrating, rebound.
‘I don’t need to ask you what you were doing on Dartmoor, do I?’
Tom shakes his head. He feels, and imagines he looks, like a schoolchild who has been caught doing something foolish but who has escaped the lesson he might have learnt.
‘Is that where you made contact with Graves? Did you . . . did you find the facility?’
‘Not exactly. We came close.’
‘Hell, Tom. What were you planning to do? Walk up to the gates and lift the knocker? You realise what might have happened to you had you found it?’
He does. Although not to him so much as Julia, Casper. His smile falters.
‘So you didn’t find the facility but you found Graves? Is that it?’
‘No. Graves found me, really. I only met him last night. I only spoke to him for the first time a few days ago.’
A light on Katherine’s phone begins to flash. She ignores it. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Who is he exactly? What did he give you?’
Tom shuffles as close to the desk as his knees will allow. ‘He’s in charge, Katherine. Not of the policy but of the place. The facility. He runs it. He practically built it. And the things he told me . . . I don’t know where to start.’
‘Pick somewhere. Pick a headline.’
‘All right,’ says Tom. ‘How about this: government interns uninfected.’
Katherine raises an eyebrow.
‘Okay,’ Tom says. ‘Maybe the headline needs work. My point is, there are at least eighteen people being held who have been tested for the disease and have come back clear. Including Arthur. You remember Arthur Priestley? The government knows, Katherine, but it won’t let these people go. And Graves can prove it.’
‘How? I mean, it’s new, right? So how do they know their tests are accurate? And there’s a thing. Isn’t there? A window period. Isn’t that what they called it?’
‘It’s a smokescreen. It can’t hide the fact that there are people locked away who are no more infected than you or I.’
Katherine exhales through her nose. ‘I don’t know, Tom. The authorities could say they were just being cautious. Which, given the risk to public health, is entirely justifiable.’
Tom’s expression curdles. ‘Justifiable? You think it’s justifiable that eighteen perfectly healthy citizens have been snatched from their families and thrown into a dungeon in the middle of Dartmoor? I mean, ignoring the fact that none of the others should be there either – that everything about the government’s policy belongs to the dark ages.’
‘A dungeon? Is that how Graves described it?’
Tom shifts. ‘Not exactly. But it’s a prison, Katherine. It’s not a hospital. Just because these people aren’t chained to a wall doesn’t make it right.’
‘I’m not disputing that, Tom. But it’s my job to pick holes. If we’re going to run it, it has to be watertight. This, what you’re telling me: it’s a bucket made of paper. It won’t hold.’
‘But with Julia’s side of the story . . . With the background she’s given us on Arthur . . .’ Tom sees Katherine about to interject and he raises a hand. ‘Never mind. That’s just for starters anyway. Wait till you hear about the testing.’
Tom outlines what Graves has told him, about Dr Silk’s arrival and the trials that followed. He explains about the death of the first eight inmates the doctor selected and Silk’s determination to keep their fate hidden from the other prisoners. ‘And he’s operating with a direct government mandate,’ Tom says. ‘Just think about that. This programme: it’s sacrificing lives on the say-so of some self-aggrandising charlatan.’
Katherine, for a moment, does not react. She taps a fingertip noiselessly against the surface of her desk. ‘Tom,’ she says and immediately Tom is wary of her tone. ‘Don’t think, even for a moment, that I am condoning what you have just told me. But—’
‘Jesus Christ, Katherine! You’ve got to be kidding me!’
‘But,’ Katherine continues, ‘you told me yourself: they signed their consent. Probably I would have too. Probably, if I knew I was going to die anyway, I would give my consent regardless of what happened to the people before me.’
‘You wouldn’t know! If you were there, you wouldn’t know what happened to the people before you! You would be tricked, manipulated, lied to. Jesus, Katherine . . .’
‘It’s unethical. I don’t dispute that. But, Tom: remember what I said. If we’re going to run this, we need to be one-hundred-per-cent right. We need a story they can’t counter, can’t spin, can’t comment on without digging themselves deeper into a hole.’
Tom sits back. He leans forwards again. He looks at Katherine and he stands. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Fine.’ He paces. He tells himself Katherine is only doing what she is supposed to be doing. She is the editor, after all; probably she is right.
She is not right. She is wrong. But in fact it does not matter. ‘Forget the testing for the moment,’ Tom says. ‘Forget about the people there who don’t have the disease. You want a headline.’ He stops pacing. ‘Right? You want a story they can’t spin. How about this,’ he says. ‘How about the home secretary standing up in front of the British public and lying to save her career? How about senior government ministers colluding to conceal their negligence? How about,’ Tom says, only vaguely conscious that he is talking too loudly, ‘scores of British citizens dying of a disease they only contracted because the government let them?’
Katherine says nothing. The light on her phone is flashing once again and she watches it until it dims. She looks up and Tom thinks for a moment she is trying to gauge just how big a knock he took to his skull. But then she shakes her head, a fraction of a movement that is almost no movement at all. ‘Talk me through it,’ she says at last. ‘But, Tom, keep your voice down.’
Tom glances behind him. The door is still shut but the walls of the office, Tom knows, are thinner even than those in his apartment. More than once, from his desk twenty paces away, he has heard Katherine tear apart a sub-editor, a sales executive, a politician who is refusing to co-operate with one of her reporters. It is not as though there is anyone in the newsroom that Tom does not trust but there is his arm, there is Julia: evidence enough of the price of being indiscreet.
