Innocent Blood

let us know who’s come here to blow us all to kingdom come.’

The delivery boy lowered his arm. ‘Alexander Sutter.’

‘OK. Do you mind if I call you Alex?’

‘Why? Are you going to pretend that you’re my friend or something, like all of those welfare workers and all of those shrinks?’

‘I don’t want to make friends with you, Alex. I’m sixty-two years old and I like golf and Tony Bennett records. I just want to persuade you that it wouldn’t be a very constructive thing to do, killing us. You see, we can understand why you’re feeling so angry. The world’s a pretty unfair place, when it comes to happiness. Some people, they’re born happy. They have loving parents and lots of money and whatever they do seems to turn out right. Other people, their whole life is unadulterated crap from start to finish. Imagine being born in some village in Africa where there’s nothing to eat and no clean water and you’re lucky if you don’t go blind.’

‘That doesn’t excuse you!’ Alex shouted at him, almost screaming. Lizzie and Mo could tell that he was terrified, as well as angry. ‘If I was born in Africa, I never would have known any better, would I? But I was humiliated and punished all my life and what did you do? You showed me what it was like to be happy. You rubbed my nose in it. Well, that’s never going to happen, ever again, to any other kid, ever!’

‘Look,’ said Mo, ‘why don’t you put down that detonator and we can talk it over? There has to be a much more sensible way to make things better.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come on, Alex. You don’t want to be an ex-Alex, even more than I want to be an ex-Mo.’

‘Dar Tariki Tariqat!’ Alex yelled at him.

Friday, October 8, 12:04 P.M.

Frank had almost reached the office door when the bomb went off. Three feet nearer and he would have been hit full in the face by a blizzard of flying glass. As it was, the door was blown across the corridor and the force of the blast knocked him backward so that he hit a framed poster for The Grapes of Wrath and cracked it right across.

Black smoke rolled out of the open doorway, filled with hundreds of fragments of burning paper. The stench of exploded Semtex and burned nylon carpet was overwhelming, and Frank found himself on his hands and knees, his ears ringing, his eyes streaming, whooping for breath.

The fire bell started ringing and he heard people shouting and screaming. He climbed on to his feet, leaning against the wall to support himself, and all he could think of was no, not Lizzie, not Mo, not Daphne. They were as much a part of his family as his father and mother, or Carol and Smitty. Closer, in a way, because he had spent every working day with them for three and a half years, laughing, arguing, writing and re-writing. He had probably known more about Lizzie and Mo than he had ever known about Margot.

Frank made his way to the office door, covering his mouth with his hand. Daphne’s room was relatively untouched, although it was full of smoke and her computer was lying on the floor. Her yucca plant, too, had been stripped of its leaves and stood totally naked.

Daphne herself was lying in the open doorway to the main office. She didn’t look as if she had been badly hurt. Frank crunched across the broken glass that littered the carpet, and knelt down beside her. ‘Daphne?’ he said gently, and shook her shoulder. She didn’t reply, so he pulled her carefully on to her back. It was then that he saw the triangular metal arm of a chair had embedded itself into her chest. She was staring at him intently, as if she were about to say something important.

He looked across the devastated office. Mo was lying in the opposite corner, one hand raised as if he were trying to catch Frank’s attention, except that the left half of his head had been blown away, and his left arm was a bloody, blackened tangle of bone and muscle and shredded skin. Lizzie was still sitting in her chair, surprisingly intact, her arms spread wide, her hair sticking up on end, and her mouth open in astonishment.

Frank circled the room, coughing. At first he couldn’t understand what had happened to the pizza delivery boy, but then he saw something that looked like a wet red raincoat hanging over the back of his chair. He didn’t want to look any closer.

He left the office just as three firefighters came bustling along the corridor. ‘Sir? Are you OK?’

‘Bombed us,’ he choked, with a mouthful of grit. ‘The bastards bombed us.’

Twenty-Two

‘But why us?’ he asked Astrid later that evening. He had hardly touched the Thai noodles she had ordered, and they lay congealing in their bowls. Why was it that, after a bereavement or a disaster, people always said, ‘I know how you’re feeling . . . but you mustn’t forget to eat?’

Frank had no appetite for food. He didn’t even feel like getting drunk. He was freshly bruised, and half deaf, and all he wanted to do was hunt down the man who had ordered Mo and Lizzie’s murders and beat him to death with a baseball bat.

Astrid was wearing a tight black leather jerkin and tight black leather pants and spiky-heeled boots. Her hair was gelled back and there were huge silver hoops dangling in her ears. She looked as if she had just walked off the set of a low-budget horror movie.

‘They said they were going to bomb the entertainment industry, didn’t they?’ she reminded him. ‘They said they were going to set off a bomb a day, every day for eleven days. You were just unlucky.’ Her voice sounded huskier than ever.

‘I know that. But that pizza delivery boy specifically asked for Bell, Cohen and Fries. He hadn’t come there to bomb Twentieth Century Fox. He came to bomb us.’

‘All right, he came there to bomb you. But think about it. If it’s true what your psychic detective friend was telling you . . . I mean, if Dar Tariki Tariqat are all abused people, trying to get their revenge . . . well, you can see why they went for a program like Pigs.’

‘Pigs is a comedy, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Yes, but it’s folksy and warm and it’s happy.’

‘It’s not always happy. Most of the time, Dusty and Henry are pretty miserable. And their dad is practically a manic depressive.’

‘I know. But things always work out in the end, don’t they? Every episode finishes up with that cheesy scene of the Dunger family gathered around the pigsty, laughing and hugging each other and scuffing the kids’ hair.’

‘Astrid, that’s supposed to be a parody. Like, you know, “goodnight, John Boy.”’

‘Oh, yes? Tell that to some lonely kid who was beaten with a belt buckle and sent to bed without any supper.’

‘So what are you saying? That TV families should always be dysfunctional, with dads who sodomize their daughters, and moms who drink, and kids who take crack and set fire to tramps, just so the viewing audience won’t think we’re being smug? For Christ’s sake, Astrid, we’ve never tried to pretend that the world is perfect. But people like to feel folksy and warm and happy, and why not? What harm does it do?’

‘You tell me. Look what happened to Lizzie and Mo and Daphne, and all of those other people. Look what happened to Danny.’

Frank covered his face with his hands, as if his hands were doors and he wanted them to remain closed for ever, so that he could stay in the dark. He was still shocked, and he still found it impossible to believe that Lizzie and Mo had been killed. He felt like crying, but he didn’t seem to have any tears. He kept picturing Mo, frowning at the end of his cigar, trying to make up his mind if it was worth relighting; and Lizzie, toying with her Ethiopian food and telling him to enjoy life while he was still above ground.

Astrid sat close to him and stroked his hair. He could smell her perfume and her warm leather pants. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine how bad you must feel.’

‘Tell me it’s still morning,’ he said, his voice muffled behind his hands. ‘Tell me I’ve just woken up and I haven’t gone to the office yet.’

Astrid kissed him. ‘When I was little, and something really bad happened, I used to pretend that it was only a movie, and that I was only playing a part. Somehow that made it easier to bear.’

Frank took his hands away from his face and looked at her. ‘Do you know something . . . that’s the first time you’ve ever told me anything personal.’

‘I’m always telling you personal things, Frank. It’s just that you don’t always hear me.’

‘All right. So what was so bad that you used to pretend it was only a movie?’