U = They Ate the Truth part 21 - the end

I throw up in one of the sinks in the lab, there's a smell in the
air I don't like and I can't really get to grips with what I've done.
There's a sound of screaming and I don't know whether it is me or
Johann. I splash water on my face and dribble some down the back of my
neck. I've still got the gun in my hand and I put it back into the
waistband of my trousers, at the back. There's a sharp pain in between
my shoulder blades, up high, like when you swallow a chicken
bone.

I step over Lorrie and walk towards Bill in the wheelchair. It is
Johann who is screaming. He's still got hold of the jar.

For some reason, I've never felt so peaceful in my life. If I'm about
to die, then I'm ready.

I walk right up to the wheelchair and kick away the chock that Johann
stuck under the wheel. I start pushing Bill out of the room.

"Where do you think you're going? " screams Johann, "I've still got the
bugs. I could kill you now. "

I suppose I should stop and look at him. Instead I just keep on
pushing, feeling the weight like a shopping trolley full of boxes of
washing powder, listening to the noise of the wheels.

I say, "They can kill you, but we can kill you worse. I think your
buyer is going to be upset with you. Best you leave now. "

All the way out of the lab, I'm waiting for a sound of breaking glass
that I won't even hear before the bugs are killing me and Bill.

* * *

I suppose in the end this has turned out to be a story about regrets.
Having them, or not having them. Lorrie chose what she wanted in the
end. It isn't the choice I thought she'd make, or that I wanted her to
make, but that was what she decided.

She felt that she had to put right what had gone wrong. Even though it
turned out that she hadn't betrayed anyone, hadn't really been in love
with Johann at all. She was working for Chesterton right till the
end.

But I can't even be sure if that was such a good thing. If she hadn't
been working for Chesterton, she'd be alive, Alastair would be alive,
Chesterton would be alive. Some kid whose name I'll never know would
still be alive.

And Lafferty's mob, whoever they are, are they any worse than
Chesterton's? Who can say whether they are to be trusted any less with
the bugs and the power they bring than anyone else. Perhaps it was best
to do what Lorrie decided. Nobody gets the bugs now. In six months, the
last of them will die, and there's no Queen to breed new ones
from.

Of course, Johann could sit and build another Queen, and make the whole
sacrifice pointless. I won't know if it was worthwhile, if what she did
saved a single other life.

I open the bag and take out the racket, unzipping the black soft
leather cover, with a soft noise. I bend down to lace my Nikes, though
the laces aren't loose. I start hitting the squash ball against the
wall, moving slowly at first, then speeding up as my muscles loosen. I
hit back and forth, alternating backhand and forehand, trying to move
around the court, vary the shots to keep sharp.

Just like every week, I'm in this court, playing on my own. I keep
hoping that Bill will turn up, but he never does. He uses someone else
for his process serving now and watches football in other pubs, ones I
don't know.

Maybe he's mad at me because I put him through the situation he most
feared, being imprisoned. Maybe he feels bad that I chose him over
Lorrie. Most likely, he doesn't think much of a person who would betray
his lover like that and then shoot her in the eyes. I'm not the bloke
who he used to drink orange juice with after squash.

I saw him a while back and he didn't even return the polite nod I gave
him.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have gone to that lab at all. About what
would have happened if Lorrie and I had just stayed on the run. Perhaps
Johann wouldn't have killed Bill after all. Perhaps I should have let
him. At least I'd have ended up with something.

But then, I probably would have seen what I'd done to Bill every time I
looked at Lorrie and it would have just chewed up what we had. Learn to
live with it. Try not to replay that moment in my head in clear sharp
recollection more than forty times a day. Come off gradual. Whittle
down the number of times I bring that memory out to reconsider. It'll
never fade, but it might get less painful to look at.

In a way, it was the most liberating experience of my life. Part of
living with the Fear is waking up one morning a week and thinking
something awful, truly truly awful might happen that day. I've had that
day now. Nothing in the rest of my life is ever going to touch that.
I'm free of worrying about the future. Whatever happens to me from here
on out, it won't be so bad.

See, when I was a kid, I always wanted a black eye. I wanted to know
what it was like. I used to get into fights and not keep my guard up,
though my dad taught me a little of how to box. Then I wanted a scar,
something to make me look dangerous and mysterious. Then after that, a
past. I've got a past - sometimes that's all I have, but I know it
inside-out, no room for doubt. I wanted to be mysterious my whole life,
to have a reason to be a loner, to be tormented.

And I got what I wanted. What I deserved.

I've opened up the agency again. Put the golfball back in the desk
drawer. No more bugs for me. I wouldn't be safe to work with them
anyway. Hired Rachael back. Lord knows why she keeps coming back to
work for me - maybe because once a year I pay her wages up front for
three months and tell her not to come into work.

There's a note for her now in the diary, where she books in clients. A
new strict rule of business. Rachael follows it rigidly.

Only ugly clients.

The End

"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump
or in a marble tower on top of a hill? You were dead, you were sleeping
the big sleep, you weren't bothered by things like that. Oil and water
were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not
caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was
part of the nastiness now? On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and
had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they
did was make me think of Silver-Wig and I never saw her again"

Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep