State Sponsored Terror

by David Carter

  Jemima laughed. Schoolgirl pranks. It wasn’t anything new, not really.

  There were distractions at the fair everywhere, and yet Eve couldn’t forget the things her mother had said. Their own home being bugged. How unsettling was that? And where exactly were these bugs? Her sister had grassed on her father. Eve knew that Joss had some stupid ideas, but what on earth had made her do such a stupid and treacherous thing? And now her own mother feared arrest, and had arranged for her to go abroad, it just went on and on, and how scary was that? It all seemed like something from a crazy nightmare. And when she went away, she must take some papers with her. What papers? How had she described them? Symbolic documents. What the hell did that mean?

  They bumped into the unmistakeable aroma of hotdogs and onions.

  ‘Fancy a dog?’ said Jemima.

  ‘Mother! They are terribly unhealthy. Full of God knows what!’

  ‘Go on girl. A little of what you fancy does you good, occasionally. I’m having one.’

  ‘Oh, all right.... lots of onions, and mustard.’

  They ambled away from the burger stand a couple of minutes later, sucking their suppers, and a tall young kid whistled after them. Jemima and Eve smirked together like sisters again, and glanced around.

  ‘Someone likes you,’ giggled Eve.

  ‘It’s not me he is whistling at, you silly girl.’

  ‘Get away.’

  ‘I mean it. It’s you, kid.’

  Eve took another sly glance behind, as they dawdled away. Was it really her he was whistling at? There comes a day in every daughter’s life when she becomes more beautiful and more desirable than the mother. Daughters dream of the day, mothers are chilled by it. Eve hadn’t expected it to arrive so soon. Neither had Jemima.

  Half an hour before the VCS curfew, an announcement was broadcast over the public tannoy reminding everyone that they must be off the streets within thirty minutes; furthermore Becton’s Fairs could not and would not be held responsible for anyone arrested, staying out late. All rides would be shut down at a quarter to the hour to facilitate the prompt journey home.

  ‘Come on,’ said Jemima. ‘I think we’d better start making our way back.’

  ‘I’m glad we came,’ said Eve.

  Jemima turned and smiled at her daughter, a no teeth smile, and pecked her on the head, kissing her hair three times.

  ‘So am I, child. I love you so much.’

  ‘I love you too, mum. I always have, and I always will.’

  Thirty-Nine

  It was only when Joss began running away from the sugar beet truck that she realised the tip of Baz’s nose was still in her mouth. She spat it out, almost vomiting after it, and before it hit the ground, she booted it high in the air, her work boots sending it spinning into the undergrowth. Behind her in the truck, she could hear Baz screaming like a baby, as if he’d been circumcised.

  She ran from the yard, turned right, another run, another right turn. In the distance she could see the main road, and the traffic was busier than before. She reached the highway and turned left, heading for London. She strode out, southbound, and began hitching. Ten minutes later a car stopped. Inside, was a single woman, late thirties, nice looking, pleasant, smiley, English middle class, the kind of woman who would always buy a Big Issue, the kind of woman who would do anything to help anyone, within reason.

  ‘London?’ said Joss, as she leant down and peered hopefully inside.

  ‘Your lucky day, gal,’ said the lady, and Joss jumped in.

  The car was modern and smelt clean. Perhaps it was milady who was so clean and fresh. It had been terribly difficult to keep oneself clean back at the camp, and Joss was suddenly aware of the fact. No sooner had she scrubbed herself spotless, the next night she was filthy again. Some of the girls soon realised there was little point in making the effort. Joss had, but it had been a struggle.

  The woman was a publisher of some kind, so she said, though nothing too controversial. Knitting patterns, appliqué, home made dressmaking; that kind of thing, all of which had made a big comeback under the National Government’s economy drives. They promoted do it yourself at every opportunity, and even the blessed Mrs Bletchington had been seen the previous Christmas, sitting at home knitting a cardigan. It didn’t fool anyone. Everyone could see that the beloved Mrs B took a great deal of care over her wardrobe. She wouldn’t have been seen dead in a homemade cardie. Only the wealthiest of citizens could hope to match her for the quality and expensiveness of her haute couture garments, a fact that surprisingly, caused little resentment. The men drooled over her, as she pranced about in her tight fitting silk frocks, while the women looked up to her, and dreamt of being just like our Thelma. If only, chance would be a fine thing.

  Joss liked the woman, the publisher, but was happy enough in the late afternoon to be dropped off just across from Big Ben. She still had no money, not a penny. She had thought of asking dressmaking Dilys for a sub, but had thought better of that after she had gone on for a good ten minutes about never giving money to begging layabouts. They should bloody well work for a living, like I have to, she had whinged.

  It was the rush hour. Dry but cold, with millions of people around, literally, but not a soul that Joss knew. London the lonely. She stood on the corner and opened her bag of Lickerarse. They blackened her teeth, but tasted good. She ate half the bag, standing there on the corner, pondering her next move.

  ADAM WAS ON THE RUN too, looking for somewhere safe to spend the night. He had murdered Inspector Smeggan in the SPATs own HQ, the hated senior SPAT, and there was only one sentence for a fatal SPAT attack, the rope, nothing less. It was as certain as the sun coming up, and the thought of it brought a shiver across his shoulders. His age wouldn’t save him, nothing would. Adam was at the gates of the last chance saloon and he knew it, as he headed down toward Canford Cliffs.

  He guessed that all the houses he had previously stayed at, or the homes of people he had been involved with, would be under surveillance. Martin’s mothers, that kind kid Eve Cornelius, who had kept him fed and watered, and then there was lilac cottage itself. He couldn’t go back there; or could he? One thing was for certain; Inspector Smeggan would not be darkening those doors again. I like a bit of variety. Not any more, pal, as Adam zigzagged across the city, smiling to himself.

  That dear old cottage, built in 1842, should not have to suffer the presence of evil twisted minds such as Smeggan’s ever again. Perhaps his women friends would be grateful too, always assuming it had been women, he had been taking there.

  Adam was heading for the cake-shop, and that other girl. He instinctively knew she liked him, and she was pretty pretty, and more to the point, he had nowhere else to go. It was all in the come-on eyes she had presented, and the gentle swaying she probably didn’t realise she performed. She liked him for sure, but did she like him enough, enough to take him in; enough to provide sanctuary, enough to break the law? He would soon find out.

  As he walked, he dashed into alleyways at every opportunity, took back jiggers whenever he could, cut through stores and parks and gardens, anything to keep him off the main streets and pavements that seemed to be infested at very turn with regular police, and SPATs. No doubt the word was already out. There was a SPAT killer on the loose; and no doubt the SPATs boss would have put up a triple litre bottle of malt whisky to the officer or officers, who apprehended their Most Wanted Man. That was a gimme. He wasn’t a boy anymore, not in their eyes, but a vicious, murdering killer.

  As he made his way west across the city he thought of that dagger. The idea had come to him when he had chipped one of his teeth a few days before, while snapping off the corner of the hard chocolate. It had been a cold day, and Adam had been amazed at how hard the bar had become. He possessed a secret, he was already armed, a weapon secreted on his person. He had carried it with him for months, though weapon might have been too strong a word for it. It was a miniature penknife, no more than an inch long; that had come to him, flying fro
m a yanked Christmas cracker the previous year. So successful had he been in its hiding, it had evaded a full bend-over strip search. The knife had been jammed between his big toe and second toe.

  As Eve had noticed in the boathouse, he had always been blessed with peculiarly long second toes. Not just that, they seemed to hug the big toe as if for comfort, and yet between the toes, out of sight to the casual observer, a perfect little pouch had formed. It was nothing knew. Adam first discovered he could hide items there in junior school ten years before, and he often did. Secret notes, small coins, cheat hints for exams, always easier to bring to hand during the summer examinations, via sandals. It was a different thing in the winter when the mock exams were held, covered in thick socks and heavy shoes.

  It resembled a miniature kangaroo’s pouch, and in that pouch slept, not a tiny marsupial, and no longer notes, not even adolescent love notes, but a knife, a weapon, albeit, one inch long. He had considered plunging the tiny steel blade into Smeggan’s eye, but worried the thin knife would buckle and break, and barely graze the scum’s face. His secret would be lost, his advantage gone forever, so he looked elsewhere. Sitting alone in that cell there wasn’t much else to do but think, and conspire. It was well into the night when the idea first came to him, from where; he had no idea.

  In the morning, he set about carving the most perfect medieval knife from the entire bar of chocolate. He had sharpened and honed the penknife on the rough breeze block walls to the n’th degree, and with it, he constructed his weapon of vengeance. When it was finished, he set it on the table and stared down at it. He could not have been more impressed, and he couldn’t wait to try it, to put it to the ultimate test.

  In the meantime, he needed to keep his creation cold, and thus, hard, a task easily accomplished due to the SPATs reluctance to heat the cells beyond anything other than Spartan. The broken window high on the cell wall, where the frosty November air chilled the dagger to stone, was one final bonus. Unlike the other inmates on the block, Adam adored the cold, for he knew what it could bring. Hardness. He sat back, and waited.

  He tested his dagger just the once, on himself. He found it worked well, for it brought blood gushing from his calf. One gentle prick, little force, much blood. How much more damage could it do with all the force of a young man’s body behind it? Time would tell, and it had, for it had worked perfectly, beyond his freakiest dreams. Inspector Jarvis Smeggan, the first man in history to be slain by a chocolate dagger. All those silly jokes about chocolate fireguards and chocolate teapots might have to be re-thought. Everyone knew you could cut yourself on paper, but chocolate? Adam laughed aloud.

  He turned the corner and entered the long straight road where the cake-shop lay, where the pretty girl worked, the girl with the longing eyes. Would they still be so longing for him? It was almost closing time. Adam hurried on, for he didn’t want to miss her.

  At the shop, an older woman was wiping out the window. The lights were still on and the door was open, but the shop seemed devoid of stock, and worse, the girl was nowhere to be seen. Adam went inside.

  ‘Sorry, we are sold out,’ said the woman, pre-empting his enquiry.

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ he said, ‘just the young lady who works here.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ said the woman, stopping her work and standing by the till, cuddling her cloth. It wasn’t unusual for young men to come calling, and some not so young too. She was at that age. She was a comely lassie.

  Adam said, ‘She’s not working today?’

  ‘Day off.’

  ‘I need to see her.’

  ‘Do you now? Leave your name and phone number and I’ll tell her you called.’

  ‘No!’ said Adam, ‘I need to see her today.’

  The woman smiled. She was old and past it, or so Adam would have said. In her fifties most likely, but she could still remember what it was like to need to see someone today, right now, that very minute. Not later, not tomorrow, not next week, but now! Need! Must! Now! Nothing else could ever be so important. Those were the days, now long gone.

  ‘Her name’s Susie,’ she said softly.

  Adam nodded, hoping for more.

  ‘She lives with her dad, but they won’t be home yet. They go shopping on her day off. They won’t be back till after six.’

  Adam nodded again and tried a smile, tried to look sensible. Isn’t that what older people always wanted to see in the young? Sensibleness. He guessed she was still weighing him up.

  ‘She lives in Hobson Street, number six.’

  Passed the examination!

  ‘Ta,’ said Adam, smiling again, and he turned to go, but hesitated. The shelves might have been devoid of stock, but the aroma of fresh bread and meat pies clung to the walls and floors of that little shop like yeast driven superglue. It reminded him of how ravenous he was.

  ‘Don’t suppose you have any stale bread left?’

  The woman looked into his suddenly lined face. Why did a lad of such tender years possess a lined face? It was the face of an anxious begging puppy, and she couldn’t refuse. He was skinny and pale and haggard and drawn, and looked as if someone had kicked him around the public park all afternoon. Worse still, she thought he might burst into tears.

  ‘Just a sec,’ she said, ‘I’ll have a dekko.’

  She went into the back. There was nothing there, not a thing, and she knew that; the little kids had already claimed the last stale things for the pampered ducks in Poole Park. The last edible morsels remaining were two bulging Cornish pasties in a paper bag, sitting on the warmer, that she intended taking home for her and her husband’s tea. She picked them up and carried them into the shop.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ she said. ‘Just these. Take ’em.’

  Adam peered inside the bag.

  ‘You sure?’ he said. ‘They look fab,’ and his mouth watered, ‘but I haven’t any money.’

  ‘Fuggedaboudit,’ she drawled, as if she had been transported to the set of an American gangster movie.

  Adam laughed, and the woman laughed with him.

  ‘Pay me when you make your fortune.’

  ‘I will,’ he said, ‘I damn well will. Six Hobson Street you say?’

  ‘You got it, kid.’

  ‘Ta,’ he said, looking down at the greasy paper bag, ‘Ta, loads.’

  ‘Get out of here, before I change my mind.’

  LONDON ON A DARK AND cold night is no place for a penniless teenage girl. Not many places are. Joss had hurried across the bridge by the Houses of Parliament, crossing the Thames, and on towards Waterloo railway station. It was growing cold, and the homeward bound crowds were thinning. The terminus was crawling with cops, and seemingly every line of outgoing and incoming passengers were having their ID cards scrutinised. It was only a matter of time before she was challenged for hers, a card she did not possess. She had toyed with the idea of bumming onto a Bournemouth train, but that proved impossible.

  She went outside again and began walking away from the centre of the city, following the railway tracks. She had no idea where she was heading, or what she was doing, but she was clever enough to realise that she had to keep moving. Some way ahead, two scruffy teenagers were larking about, a boy and a girl. They were walking the same way as her, but because they were mucking around, she was catching them, and as she caught them, she noticed they were dirty and drawn, a little like herself, pale faced and hard-eyed, and she guessed they were users. She had seen enough of them in her time to recognise a junky when she saw one.

  They had noticed her too, though they were still laughing and joking, and not paying her much attention. The lad was running close to the girl, and ruffling her hair before flitting away, while she did her best to land a conjured up gobbing of spit onto his face. He laughed and teased her, and then laughed at Joss too, and after that, she kind of became a piece of the party.

  ‘Where you going?’ said the girl to Joss.

  ‘Dunno. I’ve nowhere to stay.’

  ‘Come wit
h us,’ said the lad, ‘if you want.’

  ‘OK,’ said Joss. It was the best offer on the table.

  ‘Got any money?’ said the girl.

  ‘Nope,’ said Joss. ‘Not a bloody bean.’

  ‘Ne’a mind,’ said the boy. ‘You can always sell your soul down at Blackfriars Bridge. You’ll never starve; not with a face like that.’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ said Joss.

  ‘They all say that.... to begin with,’ said the girl.

  ‘They all change their minds later on,’ finished the boy, with a sly and knowing grin.

  ‘Not me,’ said Joss. ‘No way. Not ever. Never’

  ‘What’s your name?’ said the girl.

  ‘Eve,’ said Joss.

  ‘He’s Stig, and I’m Petal.’

  ‘Nice to meet you Stig, nice to meet you Petal,’ and they all giggled like fools.

  They ambled to the end of the road where the girl said, ‘We are staying in here.’

  To their left were heavy stone arches over which the Waterloo trains continuously rumbled. One arch had been boarded up using thick ancient timbers that had been painted dozens of times, latterly, vile green. Set within the timbers was an old door. Stig pushed it open and stepped inside. Petal followed, holding the door open for Joss. She stepped in too and once inside, Stig closed and bolted the door.

  ‘Don’t want any filthy buggers in here, do we?’ he said, as he hiccupped and spat.

  Inside, it was pitch dark.

  ‘Stand still for a sec,’ said Petal. ‘It’s like going into the flicks; your eyes will soon become accustomed.’

  Joss began to make out figures, perhaps nine or ten; maybe more. Some were lying down, sleeping something off, four more were sitting on fruit crates set around another larger crate, and it looked like they were eating something from their makeshift table. The place reeked of rotten life.

  ‘If it isn’t Dettol and Pig,’ shouted one of the sitting guys. ‘And if I am not mistaken, a new recruit too.’