King Rich (20 page)

It was Vince's idea to go to watch the hotel blown up.

‘You know you want to,' he said when he picked her up. And Annie acknowledged she was curious. Would it be formal, with a front row of dignitaries in suits, or would it be merely an entertainment for the ghoulish masses, a violent flip side to the memorial service?

Jess had been on night shift and was not to be woken. Annie felt mean for feeling relieved. But it was so much easier to leave a written note of thanks than to hug and say goodbye, even with her oldest friend. No dithering or awkwardness, no lapsing into dishonest formulae.

A fence-lined corridor had been let into the cordon, from Rolleston Avenue to the river. The crowd walking towards the Bridge of Remembrance seemed in a festival mood. It consisted mainly of fathers and kids, all clearly excited by the bang to come. An ice cream van had managed to get to the Durham Street corner and was doing good business in the Sunday sunshine.

The grandstand soon filled up. Importance was attached only to the theatrically mounted plunger and the little dais beside it. The kid in the wheelchair was already there, being wheeled about and greeted, his grin a slice of the purest joy. A man who was presumably his father pushed him up a ramp towards the grandstand and he waved like a film star to the crowd and those who were looking were delighted to wave back. Some called his name.

Most of the hotel was plainly visible, and the angle it was leaning at. Would it fall in on itself as the World Trade Center had done? The planes had flown out of just such a sky of late-summer blue as this one. On that extraordinary morning, now a decade past, Annie had spent hours in front of the television, held by something awful in the heart, the same thing as had drawn this happy holiday crowd to watch a demolition.

Between the grandstand and the central city the Avon came as a slight surprise, its shallow, spring-fed burble just going on its way regardless, ready to take the punts of finger-trailing tourists on whatever day they happened to return.

The doomed boy, still beaming, had been wheeled to his position. A local radio personality was calling the countdown to midday. Annie felt a nudge in her side. Vince was pointing to the end of Cashel Street, where a mongrel had appeared inside the fence. Others had seen it too. There was a slight buzz of chatter on the bleachers.

The dog was a safe distance from the explosion but Annie's heart still went out to it. The noise would terrify it. Perhaps an
official would fetch it out, or one of the security guards. But no one seemed to be moving. Then the dog went back up Cashel Street, disappearing behind rubble.

‘One minute!' cried the radio personality.

Annie half stood up but Vince put a hand on her arm. ‘It's a long way away,' he said.

Those in the crowd who'd seen the dog seemed already to have forgotten it. They snuggled in towards the climactic moment, grew quieter.

‘Thirty seconds.'

Annie wasn't looking at the hotel. She was scanning the fence for the dog. And there it was again, behind the fencing like a zoo exhibit.

‘Twenty seconds.'

The dog barked, one, two, three times. Annie heard the barks clear above the swelling countdown. No one else seemed to.

‘Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve.' Perhaps a thousand people were calling the numbers.

‘Eight, seven, six.' The dog looked across the river at the grandstand then it disappeared up the street again. The kid had both hands on the plunger, his little stick elbows raised in readiness like bat-wings, his face a mask of concentrated joy. Annie couldn't see the dog.

‘Three, two, one,' and the kid all but lifted himself from his chair with his vigour. Down went the plunger and innocuous puffs burst from halfway up the building, like bullet pocks. A
second or so later came the noise of the blast. The building teetered, ruptured at base and waist, was held airborne by the habit of inertia, then down it went in one accelerating rush. And it had gone, disappeared behind other buildings, a devastating conjuring trick. In its place rose a seemingly self-generating cloud of smoke and rubble dust, a brown and swelling bloom.

The dog was back against the fence, fear-struck by the blast, its ears flattened against its head, its tail whipped between its legs. The crowd was no longer looking. The radio celebrity thanked everyone for coming, announced how much the sponsored demolition had raised for medical research, said kia kaha and goodbye and people were gathering things and filing down the planking steps, talking excitedly. Annie stood and let them pass, as a squat security guard in a yellow jacket crossed the Bridge of Remembrance and Oxford Terrace.

‘We should get to the airport,' said Vince.

‘Hang on.' Annie watched as the guard unhitched two segments of fencing and knelt in the gap to attract the dog. The dog came cautiously but when the guard went to take its collar the dog withdrew. The guard followed.

‘Hang on,' Annie said again.

Moments later the guard ran back into view, talking urgently into the radio on his lapel, and beckoning as he did so and a pair of paramedics appeared from under the grandstand and went running across the bridge, their medical bags swinging. They followed the guard through the fence and out of sight. No sign of the dog. And almost immediately they heard the
siren and other security guards were clearing the fencing off Oxford Terrace to let the ambulance through and it drew up with fierce theatricality at the end of Cashel Street just as a paramedic emerged through the fence. She spoke to the driver of the ambulance. And though they still unloaded a gurney from the back and wheeled it up Cashel Street and out of sight, they did so without any sense of urgency.

* * *

A bright and frosty morning, and London sparkled as they flew in from the east down the silver worm of the Thames. In the Terminal 3 arrivals hall Annie picked out Paul almost immediately. She waved. When he saw her he performed a sort of comic shrug, his palms facing upwards at shoulder height, his head cocked slightly to one side, his eyebrows raised in unmistakable enquiry.

Annie smiled.

Finlay Macdonald and Jim Gill for their faith, and Anna Rogers for her peerlessly tactful editing.

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

First published in 2015

by HarperCollins
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Copyright © Joe Bennett 2015

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