by David Carter
‘Oh Jesus! In what way?’
‘Many of these kids are fragile and pampered. They are just not used to such a rigorous regime. Some of them have never been away from their mother’s aprons before. The tough ones, the very kids the scheme was specifically designed to discipline, sail through, for the most part, for they bully the pampered, weaker kids. Steal their food, and belongings, and whatnot, and....’ Martin hesitated.
‘And what? What is it? And.... what?’
‘Well there is no easy way to say this, Col, but I was going to say: take their bodies as well.... so I have heard, in some cases.’
‘Oh.... my.... God. Jemima must never know anything about this.’
‘Course not! Just between you and me, remember. It is the good kids that take the strain, and suffer the worst. Result: mental breakdowns are pretty common. The loony bins have never been so full.’
‘So you are saying the EWP doesn’t work?’
‘Of course it doesn’t freaking work! It is just window dressing. Yes, the hooligan element is off the street, but for how long? Out of sight, out of mind. For now. But not cured. It’s the good kids you should be worrying about.’
‘Like Joss?’
‘Precisely. And there has been some other trouble on these programmes too.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Some of the brighter kids have refused to comply. Some of the weaker, bookish kids, at that. There have been cases of mutiny.’
‘Mutiny? Oh Christ! What happened to them?’
‘Not so good, Col. Some of them have been charged with precisely that offence: mutiny.’
‘I have never seen any cases in the press or in the courts of mutiny. Come on.’
‘You won’t, because they don’t call it by that name. They are charged under the Terrorism & Subversion Act. Though to all intents and purposes it is the same damn thing.’
‘So what do they get, these mutinous kids? What kind of sentence?’
‘In short, Col, the book is thrown at them. I have heard eight years hard labour is about the norm, and since they re-opened Dartmoor prison to handle the hard-labour cases, it ain’t no doddle that’s for sure, but some have landed worse than that, sent to Blackpool, so I understand.’
‘Sent to Blackpool,’ whispered Colin, whistling through his teeth. ‘Sent to freaking Blackpool!’
‘Now you know why I wasn’t so keen to talk about it in the pub.’
‘Yeah.... I see.’
‘Hold on a moment,’ said Martin, ‘you said earlier when I said Sent to Blackpool,’ you said or worse, or something like that. What did you mean by that?’
‘There is a new punishment regime coming on stream. Worse than the Blackpool thing,’ said Colin.
‘Worse? How worse?’
‘The Falkland Islands.’
‘What!’
‘Listen, you know they have been bringing all these people home from the Falkland Islands,’ said Colin.
‘Yeah. After that nuclear leak thing. Nothing else they could have done about that, I guess. What of it?’
‘I don’t think there ever was a nuclear leak,’ said Colin
‘So why bring all the people home?’
‘Because they are using the islands to deport people to. Persistent criminals, terrorists, troublemakers, shit stirrers, the whole lot of them, the whole shebang. Someone in the government had the bright idea that if all the hotheads and terror freaks were swept up and dumped on the Falkland Islands, thousands of miles away, with nothing much more than an army tent and poor rations to keep them company, everything back here would be hunky dory.’
‘I can see the potential merit in that; I’ll be honest with you. Doesn’t seem such a bad idea. Kind of transportation all over again?’ said Martin.
‘That’s about it. Seems to work too, so they say. And it will be popular with the masses when it’s finally made public. More solid evidence of the government’s determination to restore law and order, blah, blah, blah. Can’t you just hear the official spokespersons bleating it out, time and again?’
‘Yes,’ murmured Martin, ‘I can. Splashed across The Messenger too, no doubt. So the Falklands Islands are a kind of modern day nineteenth century Australia?’
‘Got it in one, except the Falkland Islands are a bloody hellhole at the best of times compared to Oz. Windy, wet, cold, and there’s bugger all there, bugger all to do, and absolutely no way of ever getting back, no scheduled air or sea services, and the only visitors you are ever likely to see are angry Argies with a grudge.’
Martin sniffed. ‘Christ it would be funny if it weren’t so serious. So the FI’s are becoming a huge prison?’
‘You could put it that way. I wouldn’t like to go there meself, I know that, and Mister Reamse, we are risking exactly that punishment if anyone ever discovered we were having this conversation.’
That made Martin think, and laugh. There was a brief silence, and then Martin said, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound. Now come on my old China, what do you know about this Tinbergen Papers business?’
It was Colin’s turn to sniff.
‘Now you really are on dodgy ground, pal. This is dangerous. Are you sure you want to know?’
‘Course,’ said Martin, ‘it’s the only bloody reason I am sitting here.’
‘OK. I will tell you everything I know, Mart, but it is for your ears only, and if you ever mention that I told you this, I will deny it to my dying day. Don’t expect any support from me on this one, ever. Understand?’
‘Got you, Col. I see where you are coming from.’
In the darkness, Colin could just about make out Martin nodding, and that was all he needed to begin.
‘The Tinbergen Papers are probably the most important file the SPATs are currently dealing with.’
‘The SPATs?’
‘Course, we are not talking about ordinary coppers here, Mister Reamse, no way; we are talking heavy heavy pressure. Special Police Against Terror. The SPATs are not taking any prisoners on this one. They are charged with bringing all those involved to justice in any way they can, and they are determined that everyone with any knowledge of Tinbergen will be brought to book. And if we go any further, that will include you. Are you sure you want cross the line into this horseshit?’
Martin sat back on the bench and closed his eyes and thought of Liz Mariner, the woman he had set his heart on marrying, and the strange youth Adam Rexington, or was it Goodchild, who had entered their private domain, with tales of mother murdering, and bits and pieces of unlinked information that centred on something called the Tinbergen Papers.
‘I want to know,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to know. There will be no peace in my life until I get to the root of this.’
‘Then on your head be it, Mister Reamse.’
Ten
Colin took a deep breath and clasped his hands together and leant forward and began speaking in a whisper. ‘Ever since the National government was elected there have been rumours of cells of organised opposition, but the government has scoffed at such rumours. And because of the unparalleled public support they, the government enjoys, or perhaps enjoyed, might be a better word, the security services have revelled in their free rein to crush any such opposition.’
‘65% of the popular vote in a general election was unheard of, we all know that,’ muttered Martin.
‘Yeah, and we all know why,’ added Colin. ‘The present government, under our charismatic leader, won that landslide victory by pursuing popular, or should I say populist policies. Finally pulling out of the European Union, reinstating the pound, reinstating the death penalty, introducing conscription, albeit by the EW Programme, restoring law and order on the streets, restricting alcohol consumption, taxing obesity, abolishing all incoming immigration, sweeping all unnecessary vehicles off the road, nationalising public services, abolishing private health clinics, and putting pressure on the National Health Service to get its house in order, abolishing buy-to-let schemes, and forc
ing what they called, greedy landlords, to sell their properties to ease the housing shortage. All these policies had the vast support of the huge majority of the population, and that led directly to the landslide victory the government enjoyed. We all supported it, well most of us did, and we all voted for it. Right Mart? We voted for it because we believed it to be right, the best thing for the future of the nation, for our families and for the country. We did it because everyone could see the country was sinking into an abyss of hopelessness, lawlessness, and violence.’
Even in the darkness, Colin could detect that Martin was nodding, slowly and repeatedly, like a horse staring from its box.
‘Not to mention the crackdown on organised crime, on drugs, and guns, and the wholesale fiddling of the benefit systems,’ Martin added.
‘Yeah, that too, in fact that was probably what started it all. But things began to go horribly wrong,’ continued Colin. ‘It wasn’t as if it was difficult to imagine the ramifications. Now look what has happened. We can’t get our exports into Europe, they treat us as if we are an island of lepers; we are falling behind with our standard of living, and this is only the beginning; it’s bound to get worse. Since the general election was cancelled the Americans don’t want to know us either. They say we are no longer living in a democratic society, for Christ’s sake. Britain is no longer a democracy, yet the Americans are still splashing their own blood across the globe in an effort to bring democracy to people a couple of generations away from the Stone Age; here in the cradle of the damn thing, we are being shunned, especially now we don’t give them any help. No general election means no American support, and bang goes another export market down the tubes. The balance of payment figures must have gone the same way too, though no one knows exactly what the figures are, leastways not outside the Treasury, or the government, because they are suddenly deemed a state secret. Gradually, all the media has become rigorously controlled, now even the Internet is going the same way, phone calls are routinely tapped under the guise of hunting down terror, CCTV cameras are everywhere, and anywhere they aren’t, you can expect to see them pop up near you soon. They will be in your bloody bedroom next. Private car use is severely restricted by the ever-tighter personal mileage allowance. The police have unlimited powers of stop and search and detention, the courts are under pressure to dish out ever harsher penalties, jury trials have been abolished under the guise that jurors were open to pressure from terrorists, and now we have this hideous three man, or three person shenanigans, tribunals of people, magistrates, call them what the hell you like, who are almost certainly members of the National Party themselves, mouthpieces in other words, open to pressure. A simple phone call from the local Party office. Mister Smith’s guilty you know that, don’t you? Make sure he gets 15 years minimum; there’s a good chap or chap-ess. How is anyone opposed to the system ever going to get a fair trial? And as you know....’ continued Colin in full flow, ‘they have brought back hanging, though thankfully there have only been five or six cases where that horrific punishment has been carried out, and in all those cases, no one could really say the punishments weren’t merited.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ mumbled Martin.
‘What do you mean? You think those guys should have got off?’
‘No, not that Col, I mean I wouldn’t be so sure there have only been five or six. I am beginning to pick up rumours that the real figure could be way higher.’
‘You mean they are hanging people in secret?’
‘I can’t prove it,’ said Martin, ‘but I am pretty certain.’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me, not when you think it through.’
‘You still haven’t mentioned Tinbergen?’ said Martin, growing impatient.
Colin glanced at his watch.
‘OK, OK, I know, time marches on. Oscar Tinbergen was a Norwegian psychiatrist, a pioneer in his field, and between the wars he wrote groundbreaking papers that moved the entire science forward, big time. After the Jerries eased Quisling into power, Tinbergen remained in Norway and continued writing papers in favour of democracy, personal liberty; resistance to the Germans, the whole works. He had a way about him; the things he wrote caught the public imagination and he inspired an entire section of the country. Of course the Germans hated him, and set out to hunt him down. Tinbergen went into hiding, living day to day, moving from one safe house to another, and not one of those people who sheltered him gave him away, until a young man was taken by the Gestapo, and tortured dreadfully. Only after they had burned out one of his eyes with a red-hot poker did he give away Tinbergen’s whereabouts. It didn’t save the kid. He was shot soon afterwards, and Tinbergen was taken back to Germany. That is where the trail goes cold. No one knows for sure what happened to him, but his precious documents were smuggled to Britain....’
‘The Tinbergen Papers, right,’ said Martin.
‘None other. Like him, the trail went cold until long after the war when his only surviving relative, an ageing niece who lived in Bath, made it known that she now possessed the papers. God knows how she got them. Her family had the foresight to come to Britain in 1939 when things were growing dark. In her final years she moved to the coast, as people have for hundreds of years. Christchurch as it happened, Friars Cliff, to be exact, that old people’s home on the sea front, to be totally accurate.’
‘Within nodding distance of here, on the far side of the harbour.’
‘Correctamundo. When she died not so long ago she left the papers to the Priory, and it was the Priory that was raided by the SPATs five weeks ago. Apparently some anorak in Whitehall remembered those damn papers, and the mythical power they were supposed to generate in disparate groups, and someone thought it would be a good idea to seize the bloody things with a view, so the rumour mill says, of burning them.’
‘And?’ said Martin. ‘What happened to them?’
‘Couldn’t tell you. Rumour has it they have never been found; a fact that is driving the SPATs crazy, and that has sparked all kinds of crazy ideas and actions. People being killed, deaths covered up, a million pound reward for their return, no less, rumours of underground opposition cells in every town, every street. Talk about paranoid, no one knows what to believe.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Martin. ‘Why are a few old papers that important?’
‘It is said that anyone who reads the Tinbergen Papers was so inspired, they would do anything for the free and democratic cause. Unquestioningly. Don’t forget, this guy was a top trick-cyclist. He spent his entire life working out what makes people tick, what goes on in the darkest halls of the mind, and particularly in people under great stress. He was one of the first and most committed people to speak out against an oppressive dictatorial regime. Everyone who came into contact with his work began taking him as an example. I have no idea if it is true or not, but the movement in this country, whatever that might consist of, are believed to have established a code of honour, like-minded individuals who have pledged to overturn the government, and restore parliamentary democracy, that precious little thing that we all seem to have lost, or have had surreptitiously stolen from us, in our headlong pursuit of law and order. It’s as if we haven’t noticed it has gone.’
Martin sniffed and said, ‘So you are saying: there is an organised underground movement actively working to overthrow the government?’
‘I don’t know that, but I think so. I don’t even know if the SPATs really know for sure, but I do know they are briefed to crush anyone who has come into contact with the people who they believe have been tainted by these Tinbergen Papers.’
‘So where do you think these papers are now?’ asked Martin.
‘I don’t know that either, I haven’t a clue, but I do know that no resources are being spared from the project of rooting out sympathisers and supporters wherever they might reside, and believe you me, Martin, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of these characters, because they will act first, and ask questions later, maybe.... if
you are very lucky.’
‘Like they did with Mrs Goodchild?’
‘Who?’
‘There was an incident in Brockenhurst the other day,’ said Martin, ‘a shooting, a middle-aged woman was gunned down in her own back garden in the middle of the afternoon.’
‘I heard something about that, she was killed, right?’
‘That’s right,’ said Martin. ‘A single mum. Adam’s mum.’
‘Who is Adam?’
‘A young lad I have come to know, it’s a long story.’
‘This woman was reported on the newswires to have been an armed terrorist,’ said Colin. ‘She had been involved in some way with a bombing up at Basingstoke earlier in the day, that’s the official line.’
‘I don’t know whether she was in Basingstoke or not, or involved in anything there, but I do not believe she was armed, or dangerous.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Her son says he is certain that she has never in her entire life picked up a weapon, never mind used one, and I believe him.’
‘So why was she shot dead in broad daylight?’ asked Colin.
‘You tell me. That is what I am trying to find out. Could it be because she had something to do with these blessed Tinbergen Papers?’
‘It’s possible, I suppose. As I say, I hear some of the SPATs are like gun toting outlaws at the moment, they are under tremendous pressure to get results, at any cost.’
‘I am not sure I like the sound of that,’ said Martin.
‘It stinks!’ agreed Colin. ‘I just wish I knew what we could do about it.’
‘Aha!’ said Martin, in mock joviality. ‘That is easy enough.’
‘How so?’
‘The Leader is coming to Bournemouth. It’s the Party conference next month. Invited, aren’t you? Surely you, with all your press passes will be able to wangle an invite, and get yourself inside the hall. You could make your reservations known there.... if you really wanted.’
‘Don’t be thick! I value my skin too much! Though in reality, I would be interested in going along. You?’
