The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘Only how to clean up after the engineers.’

Colin laughs. I had just summed up the symbiotic nature of our partnership in Lowe Inc. over the last fifteen years.

‘Entropy,’ says Colin, and looks out over the city’s skyline, a jagged silhouette against a sun that is about to disappear into the sea. ‘Entropy means that, in a closed system, over the course of time everything will be destroyed. When you leave a sandcastle it will be changed the following day by the weather and the wind. Not replaced by something even more fantastic but just flatter, greyer. Lifeless, soulless. Nothing. That’s entropy, Will. It’s the most universal natural law of them all.’

‘The law of lawlessness,’ I say.

‘Thus speaks the lawyer.’

‘Thus speak the philosophers. According to Hobbes, without laws, without a social contract, we’ll be thrown out into a chaos worse than the worst dictatorship. And the way things are looking now, he was right.’

‘Leviathan is here,’ Colin concurs.

‘What’s Leviathan?’ asks his daughter Beth. Without our noticing it she’s come over to join us. She’s seventeen, three years younger than her brother Brad, who is out there somewhere. She looks so like my own daughter Amy, but that isn’t the only reason I feel the tears welling up when I look at Beth.

‘It’s the story of a sea monster that doesn’t exist,’ I tell her when Colin doesn’t reply.

‘Then how can it be here?’

‘It’s just an image, darling.’ Colin pulls his daughter close. ‘A famous philosopher used it to describe a society without law and order.’

‘Like this one?’ she asks.

A man in military uniform approaches. Colin coughs. ‘Go and keep Mum company, Beth, I’ll be along soon.’

She obediently runs off.

‘Lieutenant?’ says Colin.

‘Mr Lowe.’ The uniformed man has thick, short grey hair and a crackling walkie-talkie from which an agitated voice seems to be trying to contact him. ‘My man on the ground floor tells me they’re having trouble keeping people out. Should they use live ammunition if...?’

‘Are they gangs?’

‘Mostly ordinary people hoping to board the helicopter, Mr Lowe.’

‘Poor sods. Only shoot as a last resort.’

‘Very well, sir.’

‘How long until the helicopter gets here?’

‘The pilot says in about twenty minutes, sir.’

‘OK. Keep us posted when it comes so that everyone is ready to board as soon as it lands.’

‘Very good, Mr Lowe.’

As the lieutenant moves away from us I hear him answer the voice on the walkie-talkie. ‘I know, sergeant, but our orders are not to use more force than is necessary. Understood? Yes, maintain your position and...’

His words fade, leaving behind the soft tapping of the halyard and the siren of a police car that rises up from the dark streets below us. Colin and I both know it isn’t the police — it’s been over a year since they dared patrol the streets after nightfall — but probably four young men armed with automatic weapons and doped up enough to leave their reflexes intact and hopefully intensified but their inhibitions dulled. Although inhibitions aren’t just dulled, they’re more or less gone. And not just among these predators but among the population in general.

And maybe that’s the only excuse for what I’ve done.

I can still hear that motorcycle. There must be a hole in the silencer or whatever it’s called.