State Sponsored Terror

by David Carter

  ‘It will protect you from tropical diseases,’ repeated the woman calmly.

  She gently removed the first needle from the syringe; there were no brownie points to be gained from accidentally skewering oneself, slipped it into the spent sharps box, and carefully selected a second, like a fly fisherman choosing his or her hook, the fresh one being guaranteed sterile.

  ‘Ready?’ said Doctor Anderson.

  Doctor Urbanowicz nodded, and closed on the patient.

  Martin glanced around the room.

  Jason was skulking alone in the corner, looking away as if he wasn’t invited to the party. The doctors advanced on Martin, the woman holding the syringe carefully in the air.

  ‘What are you injecting?’ asked Martin.

  ‘You know what it is,’ said Jason, from somewhere behind Martin’s head. ‘Statutory requirement, before travelling to the tropics. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘The Falkland Islands are not in the tropics!’

  ‘You can’t get there by sea without crossing the tropics,’ insisted the woman. ‘Just relax; you will feel a small prick, that’s all. Soon be over.’

  In Martin’s experience whenever a doctor or nurse said: You will feel a small prick, it actually meant it was about to hurt like hell.

  ‘What is it?’ he yelled again.

  They didn’t answer. He saw the woman eyeing up a suitable point on his thigh. Nightmarish thoughts gushed into his mind.

  They are hanging people in secret!

  He recalled discussing secret executions with Colin. Could they be killing people by lethal injection too? Could they be executing him right there?

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Stop! Murderers!’

  Too late.

  Whatever had been inside that ampoule, inside that syringe, was now inside Martin’s body, swirling through his blood stream like a fog, attacking his nervous system, doing what controlled drugs do, confusing his mind, disabling his internal machinery, shutting down his signals, confusing the messages being transmitted to and from his brain. It didn’t take long.

  ‘Bastards!’ he said, his voice trailing away to nothing.

  It was the last word he said.

  They watched his eyes roll over, and his head fall to one side.

  ‘All done?’ said Jason.

  ‘Oh yes,’ confirmed Doctor Anderson. ‘Easy-peasy-Japanesey.’

  ‘He’s all yours,’ said Doctor Urbanowicz. ‘Sleeping like a baby. He won’t give you any trouble.’

  She returned to the bench and carefully slipped the debris into the sharps box, the needles, the empty ampoule, the broken off cap, and spent needle sheaths. The bench was clean, job done by the book, another day, another entry in the ledger; another guaranteed payment, another slice off her mortgage. Q14, the sterile room that kept on giving, would be shut down again, for the moment.

  Thirty-Six

  Baz belched for the third time. ‘Bloody bacon,’ he said, ‘always makes me burp.’ Joss didn’t say anything, returning to her policy of the morning, closed eyes, deep breathing, feigning sleep. She didn’t want to talk to the guy any more than she had to.

  The radio was tuned to the oldies channel again. Christ, she thought, how come there were so many God-awful songs that had been big hits. What sort of people had been pissed or stupid, or downright thick enough, to buy such dross? It wouldn’t happen to her generation, she told herself, though of course it would.

  The truck was carrying beet bound for the sugar refinery at Tilbury. Joss knew that because all through their late breakfast Baz had filled her in on the problems he had encountered loading up, mumbling about that when he wasn’t accidentally rubbing his knee against hers beneath the table.

  The rigid truck might have been old and fully loaded, but once it reached top gear on those flat straight roads heading for the capital, it built up a decent speed. She loved that too for in her mind she saw those huge wheels spinning round, and with each revolution putting another twenty feet between the truck and her tormentors.

  She almost really did fall asleep. She would have done so too but for the sensation of the lorry turning sharply, left off the highway. She squinted through closed eyes, not wanting to alert Baz she was awake. It was still rural, low trees on either side, adolescent pines of some kind, and little traffic, as if they were on a minor road going nowhere. He turned left again and picked up a narrow lane not much wider than a track. Then left for a third time, into a large concrete yard that sat in front of a low and abandoned former grain store. A painted and peeling sign said: Fillisham & Sons, Grain Merchants. Est 1912.

  It had once been used for Intervention bought wheat, but there was no need for such structures anymore because European Intervention Prices for cereals in Britain had long since ceased to exist. The vast stocks of grain that had slumbered there had been whizzed from the warehouses and sold on the open world market in exchange for hard currency. Baz drove round to the back of the store, out of sight, and cut the engine.

  Joss pretended to wake. She stretched her arms and yawned.

  ‘What are we doing here, Baz?’ she muttered.

  ‘Felt like a break,’ he said. ‘Felt like a nap.’

  ‘Come on, Baz,’ she pleaded, ‘I need to get to London.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ he snapped back. ‘You’re a runaway brat from that camp. I’ve seen hundreds of girls like you hanging around that place. I wasn’t born yesterday. I should report you. You should be nice to me. I could turn you in.’

  ‘I’m not from the camp, Baz! Honest, I’m not!’

  The trucker scoffed. Behind them, within the cab, was a closed blue curtain. He pulled it roughly back, revealing a queen size bed, neatly made up, and ready.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said.

  ‘Good innit,’ he said, grinning. ‘Saves me a fortune on guesthouses, and stuff. Most of the street girls love it.’

  ‘I’m not a street girl!’

  ‘So you say. Get in the back!’

  ‘In your dreams, pal.’

  Baz slapped her face.

  ‘Bugger off!’

  Tears were not far away. She staunched them on willpower alone.

  ‘I am not getting in the back!’

  Baz came at her. He was a big man, out of condition, it was true, but he was strong. He grabbed her round the midriff and manhandled her high over the back of the seats. She fell awkwardly onto the mattress and rolled onto her back. He almost dived over the seats in his haste to get at her. He grabbed her arms and held her down and tried to kiss her. Joss turned away. He grasped her head and forced her to face him. She smelt the greasy bacon and stale tobacco on his breath. She could smell his filthy body, his halitosis and grubby clothes, and what little of his dirty hair remained. She wanted to puke; yet against all her instincts, she let him kiss her. He grunted and relaxed. He was winning her over. In the end, he always did. They were all the same, those tramps.

  Joss reached up and bit off his nose.

  AT THAT MOMENT SHE could have had no way of knowing that her father had been found guilty of conspiracy charges, and that he had been sent to Blackpool, nor that at that precise second, he was being repeatedly questioned by Sergeant Devlin, though why the authorities should entrust an idiot like him to interrogate anyone, was a mystery to Colin Cornelius. The man was not only an idiot, but a drunken idiot. His breath reeked of yesterday’s beer. His blotchy face was pockmarked and his eyes were red and watery.

  ‘Tell us about your wife and daughters?’ slurred Devlin.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Are they pretty?’

  ‘Course they are.’

  ‘Are they good in bed?’

  Colin grimaced. ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  ‘No, no,’ persisted Devlin, ‘this could be important, you see. I have been looking at your notes. When you were picked up you said, and I quote, Is it just me you want? It says here, you said those exact words in a guilty fashion, as if you expected us to want to
talk to the whole family. Why is that, do you think, Colin? Why did you say that, exactly?’

  ‘Do you have a family?’

  ‘Not any more, thank Christ.’

  ‘Then you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘It’s called looking after one’s family. Loving and protecting them. That is what parents do. That is what Christians do.’

  ‘Bible basher, are we?’ Devlin said, smirking at Evans.

  ‘Not at all, but in these peculiar times it is hardly surprising there is a revival of interest in the church, a boom in attendances. You should try it sometime.’

  ‘Won’t last,’ he said, ‘they’ll soon get fed up with all that preaching crap.’

  ‘I beg to differ.’

  ‘Suit yourself. Tell me about your wife?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Does she work?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘She has a couple of small part-time things that earn her a little pin money.’

  ‘You mean she is working in the black economy and not paying any freaking tax!’

  ‘Not at all. Why do you always have to twist things?’

  Devlin smiled at his oppo. ‘It’s what we are paid for.’

  The pair of them shared a knowing grin.

  Twisters, thought Colin; that just about summed them up.

  ‘You have been a really bad boy, haven’t you?’

  ‘I have not.’

  ‘Your own daughter testified against you!’

  ‘She was confused.’

  ‘Not any more, apparently. She is on the EWP, isn’t she?’

  ‘That’s correct. Serving her country. Doing her national service.’

  ‘I am sure while they have her, they will well and truly sort her out. We used to supervise one of those programmes. You would not believe what went down with those kids,’ said Devlin, leering at his mate, ‘especially with the girlies’ platoons.’

  ‘You’re sick, you know that,’ blurted Colin, his blood pressure going north. He wanted to reach across and club the bastard.

  ‘Why is it that whatever you say, Colin, it always comes out like lies?’

  ‘I am not lying. Check the detector tests.’

  ‘I’ve been looking at those too,’ said Devlin, pulling hairs from his nose and ears in turn, ‘but I also notice you were big buddies with another former inmate of ours, one Martin Reamse, the same Mister Reamse who is supposed to be an expert in evading the LIDA experiment. Funny that, don’t you think?’

  ‘I wasn’t lying then, and I am not lying now. I have never discussed such equipment with Martin. We never had the need.’

  Devlin coughed gutturally. ‘I think that’s for us to decide, and I also think, fish breath, that we have finished with you today, but we will want to talk to you again tomorrow.’

  ‘I am not going anywhere.’

  ‘That’s the first truthful thing you have said all day. An old friend of yours is coming up from the south especially to talk to you, one Inspector Smeggan. Something to look forward to, eh?’

  Colin smiled and said nothing.

  ‘No doubt he will want to take you into town, show you round, show you the Tower, that kind of thing.’

  It wasn’t the first time Colin had heard strange references to the Tower. In the past they had always been accompanied with stupid knowing grins. He couldn’t imagine quite what they meant, but either way, he didn’t like the sound of it.

  ‘Perhaps Inspector Smeggan will finally come to the correct conclusion,’ said Colin, mustering new confidence, ‘that I am perfectly innocent.’

  ‘Yeah,’ laughed Devlin, ‘like Doctor Crippen.’

  ‘I am totally innocent, as I suspect that deep down, you really know.’

  ‘The whores on Blackpool promenade are more acquainted with innocence than you are, pal,’ and he turned and glanced at his mate, ‘Corporal Evans, show this prick back to his accommodation.’

  The corporal grunted and shook himself and stood up.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Colin, standing too.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere, darling.’

  ‘I have no plans to.’

  After he’d gone Devlin flicked through Colin’s file. On his incarceration record, a sideways printed canary yellow A4 card, there was a square box at the bottom right corner, headed Interrogator’s Recommendation.

  Devlin scrawled two letters into the box. BC, and signed it.

  Eventually, Colin would follow his friend to The Bletchington Clinic, though that was still a little way in the future.

  Thirty-Seven

  Smeggan appeared in Adam’s cell at ten in the morning. ‘Do you want me to stay too, sir? asked the guard. Smeggan glanced dismissively at him, and Adam in turn. Of course he didn’t need the protection of a guard while in the company of a weakling of a kid. Wasn’t it obvious?

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not necessary.’

  ‘As you wish, sir. Buzz me if you need anything.’

  Smeggan nodded and didn’t add a thing until the guard had left the cell, and the floor. Adam was sitting at the table, his well read Messenger before him. Smeggan sat opposite.

  ‘We meet again,’ he muttered.

  Adam stared into the face of his mother’s killer, and sniffed.

  ‘Funny how you keep turning up like a bad penny,’ continued the SPAT.

  Adam had nothing to say to the creep.

  ‘One by one all your friends and family are being rounded up and brought to book.’

  Adam aggressively scratched his head.

  ‘First your mother, then that prick who worked at the BBC, Martin Reamse, you knew him too, didn’t you? Then there was that guy at the college, right little cottage industry going on down there, peddling his computer shit.’

  So Marcus had run his course, pondered Adam. He wasn’t surprised to hear that.

  ‘What was his name again?’ continued Smeggan. ‘Marcus, that’s it, Marcus Cross. He was a bad bastard, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘I think you know well enough. Clever though, I’ll give him that. Inventing tricksy dicksy little computer programs all by himself to by-pass important government legislation. How bad is that?’

  ‘I admire Marcus.’

  ‘You would, because you are a fool. A complete tosser like you would admire anyone who was breaking the law. He’s doing a twenty stretch now. Well deserved in my opinion. I don’t think we will ever see Marcus Cross on the streets again, thank Christ. You’ll go the same way, boy, unless you pull yourself together.’

  Boy, boy, why was it that some adults thought they had the right to belittle a teenager by calling him boy at every opportunity?

  ‘Then there was your own mother. Gee whiz, your whole stinking family was rotten to the core. Mired in shite from top to toe.’

  ‘My mother was a decent and honourable woman.’

  Smeggan laughed. ‘Yeah, sure, right. She was up to her neck in conspiracies that even you couldn’t imagine. She was a high-ranking terrorist, your sweet ma. A cell leader, no less. I have seen the proof. Far too sensitive stuff, far too important information to share with the likes of you, but take my word for it, boy, your mother was no angel, my friend, no angel at all, and though it may seem a harsh thing to say, you are better off without her. We all are.’

  ‘You’re a knob!’

  Smeggan laughed, ignoring the insult.

  ‘But of course I forget, you were there weren’t you, in the cottage, cowering under the bed, or wherever it was you were hiding, shaking like a little girly.’

  ‘I wasn’t under the bed.’

  ‘Would you care to share with me where precisely you were?’

  ‘In the pantry.’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘There is one thing I should be thankful to your filthy family for.’

  ‘Yeah. What?’

 
‘It is a nice little bolthole, isn’t it? Get my drift. I have a steady line of ladies who all happen to owe me favours, funny thing that. Lilac cottage is where they like to repay me. Ideal it is. I move about too, I like a change of scenery, me. Sometimes your room, sometimes your ma’s, occasionally the bathroom, variety is the spice of life, so they say.’

  ‘Do you think I care?’

  ‘Oh, you care all right. I will tell you one little thing you don’t know though,’ continued Smeggan, milking the moment with an overlong pause.

  Adam nodded for him to continue.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone else, will you,’ whispered Smeggan, leaning across the table. ‘Just between you and me and the bedpost, I killed your father.’

  He sat back in his chair, a satisfied expression creeping over his face.

  Adam’s jaw fell down, as he replayed the words in his head.

  I killed your father.

  I killed your father.

  ‘You can’t have. That was years ago.’

  Smeggan leant forward again, clasping his hands together and setting them on the table.

  ‘You are right, Adam, it was. Before the National Government came to power. Before the SPATs even existed. Your father and I were already mortal enemies. Hated the sight of one another, we did. I was a young copper back then, but I could see what was what, where the country was heading, where we were all heading, down the shithole, and that’s a fact.

  ‘Carnachan Goodchild was a communist agitator, always had been, if you care to study the records. Up to no good. Fermenting strikes, building up a network, Irish Catholic revolutionary roots, but you must know all that. He possessed a rebellious streak, like so many of that race, the kind of lowlife who should have been strangled at birth. Him and his gang didn’t hesitate to use the filthiest violence against our people. They did so at every opportunity, all the while chanting: Death to the pigs, and: Death to scabs, and shite like that.

  ‘One night, after him and his cronies had beaten two of my colleagues so badly they almost died; I decided to do something about it. Myself, me, Jarvis Smeggan, all alone. I hid in the shadows, close to one of the pubs where I knew he drank. It was almost midnight when he came out, illegal activity again, you will note, late night after hours drinking, seems to run in the family. Cold night it was too, my breath coming out like loud hailers, but I was ready for him. I’d come prepared.