The Water Tower - Books 4-5

Chapter 35-2

“Adam, we have to talk to her,” Hilda insisted. “We have to find out what happened. This is Victoria, for goodness sake!” She paused, lowering her voice before she added in a hushed tone, “Your Victoria. She wouldn’t just—”

VictoriaYour“I don’t want to hear what she has to say,” he bit back.

Hilda looked startled. He couldn’t ever remember snapping at her before. Then her momentary surprise melted away as her eyes settled on something over Adam’s shoulder.

“You might not have a choice,” she told him.

Adam spun round. Victoria was emerging from the side entrance of the Town Hall, cutting a brisk pace through the thinning crowd, many of whom had begun to retreat to their cars or commenced their despondent journey back to Little Bassington. He could hear her voice – the same captivating timbre that had first pulled him into the circle of her gravity all those months ago – calling his name, but he tried it block it out. He didn’t want to listen.

“Vics, wh – whut the f**k’s goin’ on? Wha’ you done?” he heard Madison ask.

ondone“Adam,” she said breathlessly. “I – need – to talk – Adam…”

“Vics,” Madison pleaded.

VicsVictoria held up a hand imploringly in a bid to silence the young mum. She wasn’t listening – she wasn’t seeing – anyone else around her. Only him.

seeing“Fine. f**k it. ‘M goin’ to find Clems,” Madison answered, and stalked off.

Adam plunged his hands into his coat pockets, in a vain attempt to keep out the creeping chill. Without a word, he turned away from Victoria.

“You talk to her,” he told Hilda in a low voice. “I want to be on my own.”

He walked on, crossing the street and heading for the park beyond. Behind him, the distant figure of Neil Marchant was still framed in silhouette beside his shattered windscreen. The doors to the Town Hall’s main entrance swung open and a string of familiar faces came streaming out, lost in the black cloak of their failure.

They were all there. Hugo and Elaine. Herbert and Vanessa. Jade and Paul. Anthea and Ray. Alma and Moira. Kayleigh and Si. Lucy and Hettie. Christine and Dean. Even Paula from the florists.

A wolf moon had risen over the deepening night, its sharp light howling through the clouds.

It shone over Adam, as he walked on.

* * *

The man was watching from the window.

He stood, almost perfectly still, his face lit only by the distant light of the near-full moon that crowned the night sky. He hadn’t turned on the lights. From his vantage point in the empty meeting room, he had an unspoiled view of Central Square, the edges of the park across the street and, crucially, the bustling congregations of people who were steadily spilling from the entrances and exits around the Town Hall.

They had come in hope, most of them, and left in desolation. It didn’t pain the man to think that most of them would spend the night fuelled by a sense of despair and despondency. There had to be sacrifices, after all. There would always be compromises that needed to be met.

He’d seen one such sacrifice made upon his own altar tonight. Before the s*******r, he’d maintained hope that some small reward, however slight, might have been bestowed upon the one who had offered herself as a sacrificial lamb in the pursuit of his cause. Not that she had had, ultimately, any choice, of course; but he’d felt her at least partially deserving of perhaps some minor token of goodwill in exchange for the sufferance she would now endure. A consolation prize. His way of showing magnanimity in victory. She would, after all, not simply lose her career, but the people she thought of as family – and, he suspected, the man she loved. That was a heavy price for anyone to pay.

But there would be no reward. No gesture of conciliation No pacification or appeasement. She had rejected them all. He allowed a slight smile to cross his face, then, as he imagined the turmoil she must now be enduring. That was, to his mind, penance for the embarrassment he had earlier suffered at her hands.

He waited in the room alone. One of the porters had been surprised to find him there, but he had reassured the stooped, scruffy attendant that he didn’t intend to stay long. Just until the Square had cleared. The last thing he wanted was to involve himself in an altercation. He had a reputation to maintain, after all. He wouldn’t quarrel with anyone who felt slighted by the events of the preceding hours; he would let matters take their natural course, allow them to follow their intended rhythm, and he would slide through the slipstream as he had always done – by saying the right things, offering the kinds of truths that people wanted to hear. He had been at pains to avoid the local newspaper; they would want his instant reaction, an immediate response. He never liked to give that. He preferred to bide his time, to stay secreted in the shadows until the opportune moment arrived. In due course, he would air his views; when he had finished carefully crafting the words, when he had thought through all the possible ramifications of what he might say. When he was ready.

He used his reflection in the window to adjust his tie. The suit was relatively new, and it shaped itself around his shoulders well. He felt more comfortable tonight than he had done in months, both in and of himself.

He’d spent nearly half an hour gazing from the window, watching the world go by. He’d studied the crowded Square as it had filled with a mass of bodies that looked like worker ants. He’d seen them knotting together, dispersing, then knotting together again in disparate bunches; angry clusters of disaffected, wounded soldiers trying to find reason amidst the chaos.

He’d seen the two hooligans racing away from the scene of their crime. They had vandalised something. He’d heard the sound of glass breaking, observed the slow wave of attention that the incident had gained as the chatter of the crowd muted for a few moments while the hooligans screamed obscenities. He’d imagined that the damage itself had been an act of tokenism; that whatever they had broken had not been targeted specifically, but had been chosen because it represented everything they had come to rage against. Its destruction, no doubt, had provided them with an outlet for the anger they’d kept contained for months. Before tonight, they’d had something to channel that anger towards; a goal in sight, an outcome within reach. Now there was nothing. Their aspirations lay in tatters at his feet.

Soon after, he’d become aware, vaguely, of a figure in the distance, trailing away from the others. It was someone the man thought he’d recognised; the young journalist, the one who seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. He’d been marching away from Central Square towards the park where, minutes earlier, the two hooligans had fled. He’d been followed.

Followed by the man’s very own sacrificial lamb.

He wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t expected her to simply let go without a fight. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would sit back and let her life fall apart.

The moonlight reached through the panes, his only source of illumination as time wore on. He kept watching. Steadily, the crowd thinned. There were still people coming and going, but they were ebbing away now; there was, after all, nothing more they could do here. The game had reached its end.

The blustering fat butcher had spent some time raging at the bottom of the stone steps. The man had watched his animated display of incandescence, but he couldn’t make out any of what the butcher had been saying. In the end, even the butcher had had to admit defeat and head home, scurrying away with the rest of the worker ants. It was over.

The man could hear little from outside the room; the main foyer beyond appeared silent and deserted to his ears. So he was surprised when the door creaked open slightly and a figure stepped inside. She walked tentatively across the threshold, uncertain of her surroundings. She glanced around the room, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, peering through the gloom until she found him. He was momentarily surprised by her presence; he hadn’t expected anyone else to still be inside.

“Hullo?” the figure said.

She was slight and scrawny of frame; noticeably underweight in fact. Her black hair was tangled in places, its greasy and rumpled strands entirely in keeping with the grey hoodie and scruffy jeans she wore. She looked unappealing to him, but he tried to keep his feelings at bay, never allowing even the vestiges of his contempt to show on his face.

Pitiful. Unclean. A wreck.

Pitiful. UncleanA wreck.“S-sorry,” the figure muttered, “I were lookin’ for Cl – oh. ‘S you.”

Her roaming eyes settled upon him. When her brain processed what she’d seen, when at last she’d identified him, the man detected a note of— what was that in her voice? Fear? Or just a healthy respect for power?

what was that in her voice? Fear? Or just a healthy respect for power?The man turned away from the window and clasped his hands behind his back. He painted on the most inviting smile he could muster and welcomed her.

“Hello Madison,” said Robert Grainger. “Come in.”

* * *

Victoria had followed him to the park.

“I told you – I want to be on my own.”

She quickened her pace to keep up. He could hear the ragged breaths that accompanied her pursuit; but as she knew all too well, his legs were longer and she was struggling to match his lengthy, decisive strides.

“Nice try, Adam,” he heard her saying, “but that’s not how this whole relationship thing works. Being on your own isn’t what you signed up for. You’re stuck with me forever.”

“I don’t want to know,” he snapped.

“Where are you going?”

going“As far away as I can get.” In truth, he had no idea where his footfalls were taking him. He’d left the Council chamber and just kept on walking; passing by everyone else in a blur of indecision as he’d marched on, directionless and alone.

“Will you – slow – down,” she panted. When he didn’t answer, she raised her voice. “Adam, there are things you need to understand. I need to tell you—”

“I don’t want to hear any of them. Go home, Victoria.”

“Will you just listen—”

listen“No!”

“Listen to me, you bastard!”

Listen to me, you bastard!”He stopped then, beside a bench identical to the one he’d seen the two vandals vaulting after their attack on Neil Marchant’s car. He cast his mind back to a time when she’d screamed those same words at him once before; then, like now, he’d been lost in a haze of disconnect, blind to everything except the torturous roiling of his mind and a striking sense of betrayal.

He wondered whether Hilda had tried to talk to Victoria before she’d come charging after him, or whether she’d just let her go. He knew that Aitch would want answers too; the same answers that his own mind searched for, but which he was simultaneously afraid to hear.