Danny hid his face in his knees. He thought of Lucas’s body being stuffed into a coffin. He saw himself in that coffin, a gear buried in his chest.
“They don’t blame you,” Brandon assured him. “Not really. You wouldn’t blast apart a tower that could’ve saved your dad. But you did hit Lucas, mate.”
Danny stared at his apprentice until his words made sense. “You think I would kill Lucas?”
“No, frankly, I don’t. The Lead’s saying it’s far more likely the protesters had something to do with it, and anyone that’s been seen outside the office is to be found and interrogated. That’s all I know.”
Brandon opened the door. “All the mechanics and apprentices are invited to the funeral. You’d best come.” He lingered in the doorway. “D’you need anything?”
Nothing you can give me.
“No,” Danny whispered. “Thank you for telling me.” And for not looking at him the way the others had.
Brandon nodded once and left.
Danny wanted to stay tucked away in this corner forever. If he didn’t move, nothing would happen to him. His mother would go about her life, his father would stay trapped, Enfield’s clock tower would go on ticking, and no one else would blame him for anything. A lifetime of regrets and fears ended. His thread uncut, his destiny unfulfilled.
The light in the room faded into the blue and gray bruise of dusk by the time he could stand. He thought he might retch again, but his stomach was hard and hollow.
Lucas was dead. The new Maldon tower—all of their hard work—destroyed. Bombs planted, but by whom?
He touched the scar on his chin. The shape and promise of a nightmare.
The funeral was held two days later in Highgate Cemetery, a sprawling place overcrowded with trees and ferns. It looked more like a forest than a graveyard.
He hadn’t wanted to come, but he wanted to get away from his mother. The fragile hope she insisted on carrying had shattered when he told her about the tower. He had heard her sobbing long into the night, and in the morning, he couldn’t convince her to leave her bed. He’d made her tea, but it had gone untouched.
“Mum, you have to eat something,” he had told her in the dim light of her bedroom.
But she had just stared at him as if he were the ghost of a bad dream, as if this were somehow also his fault.
He had to escape that look, had to stop the sharp stone of guilt from reforming in his stomach.
So here he was, in his best suit and standing with his eyes lowered. He tried not to pay attention to the people around him, but someone came and stood on his right.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” Matthias said.
A flare of anger licked up Danny’s ribs at the sight of Matthias, but it was weak and dissipated quickly. Danny watched mourners congregate around the recently dug grave. Lucas’s parents stood at the front, their faces pale and expressionless as though carved from stone, like the weeping angels throughout the cemetery.
“Didn’t think I’d come, either,” Danny said, looking away. A mechanical raven was perched on a tombstone nearby. Come nighttime, it would be alert for grave robbers.
Danny swallowed painfully. “Matthias … who would do this? If it was the protesters, how did they do this? They—They killed someone.”
Matthias’s breath caught, and when Danny turned, the man’s eyes were brimming with tears. Danny had never seen Matthias cry, and it made him avert his eyes again.
“I don’t know.” Matthias swallowed hard. “The Lead might try to build another tower.”
“After this? Unlikely. Besides, you heard what they said. The tower didn’t work.”
“The towers are a lost art,” Matthias agreed. “I wonder …”
He trailed off, and Danny glanced at him. But the man now had his eyes fixed on the coffin being carried by pallbearers to the grave, and they said nothing more.
The dark wooden coffin was lowered. Lucas’s mother sobbed loudly as she watched what was left of her son disappear under the earth. Each sound tore a new hole in Danny’s chest. He wondered if the clocks in their house were all stopped at Lucas’s time of death, the time the tower had fallen, the exact moment a dream had ended.
Lucas was in an accident. He didn’t get out. He’s dead now.
“Be careful, Danny,” Matthias whispered as the priest uttered words of blessing and tossed the first handful of dirt into the grave. “Until these people are caught, no clock tower is safe.”
People.
“Matthias,” he said slowly, softly, “what sorts of bombs were found at the tower?”
Danny wasn’t sure where the question came from, but Matthias’s knowing expression told him he’d been waiting for it.
“Pipe bombs.”
Those two words possessed him.
Danny stood in the hospital entrance, blocking foot traffic. Those who passed shot him dirty looks and jostled him to get by.
Maybe this was a bad idea.
But he needed answers.