‘Hey, there it is!’ yells Bethany. She is pointing ahead, her whole face alight with excitement. She looks almost innocent. ‘0 come all ye faithful, for the Lord himself will descend from Heaven with a shout! Halle-fucking- lujah!’
I stare.
It’s like contemplating a mirage.
The colossal ziggurat rears up from its man-made island, the shiny, tilted cliff of its outer wall dwarfing the crowds that swarm across the footbridges and filter inside, sucked through the porous skin of its flank.
We have arrived.
Chapter Sixteen
I’d forgotten its epic scale, its amalgam of practicality and grandeur, its seemingly endless capacity for absorption. A stadium is a shell into which human flesh must be poured before it can spring to life. Fathoming that complex, unassailable dynamic was part of what shocked me out of my misery when I watched some of the Para- lympics in rehab with a group of fellow-patients, all of us spinal injured, all in mourning for what we had lost. The neuropathic pain that racked my lower back and my dead limbs was so violent I knew it would tip me over the edge if I didn’t get a grip. That, and the open wound of my grief — for Alex, for Max, and for my legs — was vivid enough to turn every day into an inner conference on suicide. But during the few hours I spent watching other wheelchair- users barrelling along the track in a shining spin of metal, something happened to eject the pain from my consciousness. Afterwards there was a cruel reflux of anguish, and the days returned to their routine. But the experience led to an inner shift. Those athletes had offered some kind of hope, an idea to aspire to, concrete proof that the unimaginable was possible and that life could continue in some wholly different form. That the spirit might thrive. I knew enough to grab it like someone drowning, and cling on.
Somehow, that day changed me.
As for this one—
If I believed in God, I would request his help at this juncture.
As we enter the East car park, thin shafts of sunlight pierce the clouds and glitter on the roofs and bonnets of a thousand vehicles, refracting off them in kaleidoscopic fragments. From the distance, the acoustic thrum of prayer-music emanates from the stadium’s deep cradle, relayed on the giant screens illuminating its exterior walls. Droves of smartly dressed worshippers are surging towards the wide footbridges that cross the waterways encircling the island, their chatter lending the atmosphere the geniality of a friendly sports tournament. There are smiles and winks, whoops and waves, shouted blessings. A pretty woman in a yellow uniform with navy epaulettes directs us to follow a line of cars to a distant bay of the car park, and calls out after us, ‘May Christ be with you!’
We park, and I glance back at the concourse: the screen shows the banked tiers of seats within the stadium are filling steadily while five or six white-clad preachers, working as a team, are engaged in a vigorous warm-up on a raised white stage at one end of the stadium. On another screen nearby, BBC News 24 is running images under the heading
‘If we want the helicopter to reach us, we have to go in,’ I say. The sensation of confinement has been building like a slow torture. If I don’t get out of the car soon, claustrophobia will win. Frazer Melville is still pale. I can see the journey has taken its toll on him too.
‘Our names and faces and crimes have been broadcast to the whole nation. With your wheelchair, and the size of that news screen over there, I don’t imagine we’ll stay unnoticed for long.’
‘So let’s stay here and drown!’ offers Bethany cheerily. ‘We could all die together, like a family!’
I snap open the mobile. ‘I’ll try Ned again. If we can get a connection, we’ll know where they are, at least. And we can tell them we’ve arrived. They’ll have left the press conference by now, right?’ Frazer Melville nods. I dial but can’t get through. All around us, yellow-uniformed ushers are shepherding people towards the footbridge that leads to the wide concourse and the stadium. As I punch at the phone again, the TV shows more images of traffic and air chaos, then rejoins a live link to Buried Hope Alpha. In the pitch darkness of a North Sea afternoon the platform stands in a pool of light, its brightness pulsing outwards into the sky and across the churning ocean. An enchanted stronghold. The site controller, Lars Axelsen, is taking questions from a cluster of anoraked journalists who have flown out for a hastily arranged press briefing. It’s clearly freezing out there. Far below them, the sea shifts blackly. I dial again: still no connection. Axelsen and another Traxorac official say there is no indication of unusual activity on or below the seabed. The questions continue. I turn the volume down and leave the men goldfishing, the phone clamped hard against my ear. I’m failing to connect, but I can’t accept it. Lars Axelsen is showing the sub-sea robot Traxorac used to bring up underwater pictures of the drill-pipe, and indicating that the pictures it took show everything to be normal.
I’m dialling again when there’s a gasp from the back seat. I swing round. Bethany is shuddering, her eyes and nostrils flared wide. ‘It’s started!’ she whispers. ‘I can feel it!’ Her breathing is odd: laboured and ragged. She’s struggling to gulp huge mouthfuls of air.
‘Bethany?’ But she’s elsewhere. She has doubled up sharply as though something has jabbed her in the stomach. Her wrists are still tied together, but she grabs her head in both hands as if to protect it while her body bucks in frantic spasms. ‘Oh God,’ I murmur. ‘Please, Bethany. Not now.’
‘I’ll get her,’ says Frazer Melville. He leaps out. Bethany’s head jack-knifes back and she emits a high unworldly scream, like the hiss of a pressure cooker, her eyes rolling upward to reveal the bloodshot whites. Then she buckles again, rocking the whole car with her convulsions. I’m aware that Frazer Melville has pulled open the back door and is trying to pin her down with his weight. That they’re struggling on the back seat, half in and half out of the car. From the corner of my eye I see one of the ushers noticing the car’s movement. Signalling to his colleague, he points in our direction, then starts making his way over, weaving his narrow body between the parked vehicles. He’s young and big-boned, but as skinny as a colt: his uniform hangs loose. By now Frazer Melville has somehow managed to push Bethany’s feet to the floor and wrench her into a sitting position, then shove himself in next to her and slam the car door so they are trapped together on the back seat.
‘Quick, undo her wrists,’ I urge. The young usher is closing in. Swiftly, Frazer Melville frees them.
Peering into the car, the youth calls anxiously: ‘Everything OK there?’
Bethany’s spasms have now quietened to a tremble. Opening her mouth in a wide 0, she takes a huge gasp of air and swallows it down.
‘Fine,’ I say, rolling the window down a fraction. ‘Just one excited girl!’ But he looks wary. He can see something’s wrong. Maybe he’s recognised us from the news.
Bethany’s lips, which have turned completely grey, start to move. She’s trying to say something. She coughs. ‘I felt it start,’ she chokes. Her voice is so faint and distant it could be a ghost’s.
Frazer Melville is staring past her, at one of the huge TV screens on the stadium’s outer concourse. ‘She’s right,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘Look.’
On Buried Hope Alpha, the journalists are getting to their feet and shouting in alarm. Something has unsettled them. Something we can’t see.
‘I’m Calum. I’m on the stadium team,’ says the young usher. He isn’t giving up. ‘Do you need a doctor?’
‘She’s fine, thanks, Calum. We’re just watching the news,’ I say weakly, pointing at the screen. ‘Something’s happening.’
And it is. Suddenly, the whole picture trembles, as though being vibrated. Lars Axelsen grabs a chair to steady himself, but he’s jolted viciously in the other direction, hurled out of view like a flung cushion. The camera zooms out to a wide-shot, judders epileptically, then somersaults. It must have crashed to the floor. You see inverted feet, running. There are incoherent shouts. Then there’s a thud. Calum’s eyes widen.
‘A pre-shock,’ murmurs Frazer Melville.
A new image, taken from the air, now shows the entire lit-up rig bouncing furiously from left to right. Then it’s motionless again. But a second later, slowly and languorously, the angle of the whole edifice shifts, tilting sideways until it’s at an impossible, gravity-defying pitch. Then with the delicate, almost balletic elegance of a camel getting to its knees, the huge structure begins to sink into the surrounding sea. There’s a fierce flare of
