by Sam Byers
‘Why trust them?’ said Jess.
‘Exactly.’
‘You think this is what The Griefers wanted all along?’ said Jess. ‘Like, not to release anything themselves, but just to create the perfect conditions for everyone else to release everything, with The Griefers conveniently taking the blame on everyone’s behalf? Maybe that’s what they mean by we are your face?’
‘Maybe,’ said Deepa. ‘Maybe it’s not about The Griefers themselves at all. Maybe they’re not the movement. They’re just creating the conditions for a movement.’
Jess nodded. ‘Or maybe—’
‘Fascinating though this speculation is …’ said Trina.
‘Sorry,’ said Jess.
‘The problem is, we can’t just leak the pics ourselves either,’ said Deepa. ‘One, because we’d be exposing ourselves, and two, because no-one would see them in time for it to help us.’
Jess shrugged. ‘Send them to a newspaper,’ she said.
‘And say what? Have some pictures of a politician we obtained completely illegally?’
‘So, what? You want to—’
‘We want to go through someone The Griefers might conceivably reach out to,’ said Deepa. ‘Someone with a platform. Someone with a degree of intellectual credibility. But someone who can’t themselves be compromised.’
‘Me?’ said Jess.
‘Kind of,’ said Deepa.
‘Oh Christ,’ said Jess.
‘And she’s there,’ said Deepa.
‘I’m not,’ said Trina. ‘What are we talking about here? Who are we talking about?’
‘Jess contains multitudes,’ said Deepa drily.
‘That’s not exactly an explanation,’ said Trina.
‘It’s a long story,’ said Jess. ‘Look, Deepa. I see your plan, OK? I do. It’s smart. It makes sense. But—’
‘Please don’t but me here, Jess.’
‘I just—’
‘I know. You don’t want to muddy the water. You want to keep Stroud pure for all the other stuff you’ve got him doing. But come on, Jess. The waters are already muddied. And don’t just look at this from the perspective of now. Look at it from the perspective of hence. Stroud’s getting some attention. After this, he’d be getting like ten times the attention. He’d have everyone’s ear.’
Jess was shaking her head.
‘It’s too risky,’ she said.
‘How is it risky? Jesus, Jess, you couldn’t ask for a more obscured trail. All people are going to see are the dick pics. The minute they drop, everyone will be clamouring at Bennington’s door. And you know something else? That’s just looking at it from the point of view of the Bennington situation. What if we do end up with more on The Griefers? What if this Field thing turns out to be something? We’d need someone who could get the information out there who—’
‘Already had a track record of getting the information out there,’ said Jess.
‘Look,’ said Deepa, ‘I could do the whole appealing-to-conscience thing. I could do the whole opportunity to really make a difference speech. I know you’re not immune to that stuff. But even if you think of this strictly from your own point of view, it’s a good thing. You could take Stroud to a level he’d never have been able to get to without—’
‘Without Bennington’s dick,’ said Jess.
‘Exactly,’ said Deepa.
Trina’s phone beeped with a message.
‘That better not be anyone other than your family,’ said Deepa sternly.
‘It’s Mia,’ said Trina, a flutter of panic at the edge of her voice. ‘Brute Force are at the estate with a load of townspeople.’
‘What?’
‘Hang on,’ said Jess. ‘Your family are OK, right? You said they’re in a B&B.’
‘Yeah,’ said Trina. ‘Flat’s empty. They’re getting this off Twitter.’
Deepa reached across the table and pulled her laptop towards her. A rattle of keys, a couple of searches, and she was looking at a grainy livestream, broadcast from someone’s phone.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she said.
Jess and Trina moved their chairs around the table and sat either side of Deepa, the three of them peering closely at the screen. The footage was shaky, the sound distorted. They could make out the jostle of a crowd, the tinny hiss of layered voices punctuated by duelling shouts.
‘That’s the stairway up to my flat,’ said Trina.
Deepa put her arm round Trina.
‘They’re safe,’ she said gently. ‘Just remember that.’ She looked round at Jess, her eyes hard.
‘Jess,’ she said.
Jess nodded. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘Give me the pictures.’
Deepa smiled, patted Jess’s leg. As she did so, the hissing din from the laptop’s speakers seemed to order itself, the crowd-shout becoming rhythmic, based around a single word.
‘What the fuck are they saying?’ said Trina.
‘Submit,’ said Deepa. ‘They’re chanting submit.’
Trina had her hands on her head, as if seeking shelter or attempting to contain what was inside it.
‘Where are we with the other thing?’ said Deepa.
Jess dug in her pocket for her thumb drive and passed it to Deepa. ‘Her name’s Jasmine,’ she said.
*
Darkin watched the dial of his timer tick round towards the hour. Outside, he could hear Pete and Tel chatting. Sometimes, one of them had a cigarette and the smoke wafted in through the broken window, sharpening Darkin’s own urge and stirring in him the temptation to abandon the discipline of the timer. Checking his fag packet, though, he found that supplies were worryingly low. He was also out of milk and down to his last three or four slices of bread.
‘Oi,’ he called out to Pete and Tel.
‘Yeah?’ Pete’s head appeared again at the window.
‘How about one of you pops down the shops for me?’
‘Couldn’t do that,’ said Pete.
‘Why not?’
‘Abandoning our post, innit?’
‘Yeah,’ came Tel’s voice. ‘What if something happened while one of us was at the shops?’
Darkin decided not to push it. Outside, he heard Pete and Tel muttering about not having signed up to be carers.
‘Excuse me.’
The voice outside sounded both tentative and angry, as if not yet sure how concerned or annoyed to be. It came from a short distance along the walkway. It was a man’s voice, briefly unrecognisable, then reassuringly familiar.
‘Help you, mate?’ That was Tel – calmer, Darkin thought, than the person he was addressing.
‘I’m just here to see my friend.’
‘Hey,’ Darkin called. ‘Hey, Geoff.’
‘Darkin? Are you in there?’
Darkin pulled himself up from the sofa and made his way to the window.
‘It’s alright,’ he started to say. ‘I—’
Outside, he heard Tel say, ‘He’s busy.’
‘Easy, Tel,’ said Pete.
‘Geoff?’ said Darkin, now at the window and craning his neck to see along the walkway.
‘If Darkin lets me know he’s fine, then I’ll be on my way,’ Geoff was saying. ‘But I don’t think it’s up to you to—’
‘Not going to tell you again,’ said Tel.
‘Take it easy, Tel,’ said Pete. ‘Remember what we talked about.’
‘Get your … Get off me,’ said Geoff, sounding frightened now.
‘Easy,’ said Pete. ‘Easy now.’
Darkin had managed to angle himself across the sink so as to peer through the hole in the window. Tel had Geoff by the scruff of the collar. Pete was attempting to get between them.
‘It’s OK,’ said Darkin. ‘He’s—’
‘Don’t fuck with me, pal,’ said Tel.
‘Tel,’ said Pete. ‘Let’s calm this down, OK?’ Then, to Geoff, ‘He’s on a hair trigger, mate. If I were you I’d—’
Geoff caught sight of Darkin through the window and twisted a
wkwardly in Tel’s grip to try and get to him.
‘Hey,’ Geoff said. ‘Darkin. What’s going on? Why are these blokes—’
‘Let him go,’ said Darkin.
Geoff made a sudden, forceful push towards Darkin, stretching his hand past Tel’s shoulder, knocking Tel slightly off balance as he did so. Tel’s stance shifted. He dug in with his heels, got a better grip on Geoff’s collar, and then dashed the side of his head against the wall. The sound of bone on brick made Darkin’s stomach flip. When he tried to shout, his throat caught.
Geoff’s legs went out from under him. He hung briefly by his collar, held up by Tel’s fist. Then he righted himself and twisted away. Tel, at Pete’s insistence, loosened his grip and allowed Geoff to stumble a few steps back.
‘You shouldn’t have done that, mate,’ said Pete. ‘You’ve set him going now.’
Geoff had his hand up to the side of his forehead. A thick rivulet of blood had sprung from the edge of his hairline and was running down towards his eyes.
‘Fuck,’ said Pete.
‘Fucking thugs,’ said Geoff, backing unsteadily away. ‘I’m calling the … Darkin. Darkin? I’m calling the police, OK? Don’t worry. Just hold on there and—’
‘That’s right,’ said Tel, ‘call the fucking police when we’re the ones here to help your mate, you little prick.’
From across the square, the sound of more people could be heard – massed footsteps on one of the stairways.
‘Back inside now, mate,’ Pete said, turning to Darkin. ‘Told you they’d be here, didn’t we? Bet you’re glad we turned up now, aren’t you?’
‘Why did you do that?’ said Darkin.
‘Heat of battle,’ said Pete. ‘These things happen. He’ll be fine.’
‘What’s that noise?’ said Darkin.
‘Just like Bennington said,’ said Pete. ‘Only a matter of time before they got your address and came looking for you.’
‘But I haven’t done anything,’ said Darkin. ‘I don’t even know—’
‘You just sit tight,’ said Pete. ‘We’ve got this.’
Darkin backed away towards the sofa but then thought better of sitting down. The only room with a lock was the bathroom.
*
Whatever the complexities and intricacies and, frankly, even the realities of what was happening, Hugo reminded himself as the car pulled up to the edge of the Larchwood Estate and he took in a pleasing vista of strobing blues and pig-penned protesters, one thing was certain: a full-blown shitshow was in effect. Everything else was just details, all of which could be unpicked or further obscured over time. He had, very successfully, brought chaos. Now he could appear to bring order.
His arrival was anything but impromptu. He and Teddy had sat for a considerable time in the back of the car several streets away monitoring the entire unfolding fracas over social media so as to arrive at the most perfect possible moment: tensions still high, anger not yet drained from the protesters, but the police very much on scene; physical violence and unchecked aggression already definitively in the past.
Watching Teddy load up forum chat, rolling news, and livestreamed social-media footage of the Larchwood on his tablet, Hugo’s sense was that things had gone better than he ever could have imagined. This was the reality of seeding chaos: you could initiate, you could trigger, you could marshal key elements with a reasonable degree of control, but all you could really do after that was watch and hope. Hugo had done a lot of hoping in his life. In the main, circumstances had tended to fall short of expectations. Today, the near-impossible had occurred. From the tangle of Hugo’s loyalties and obligations, the mess of triangulations in which he could no longer confidently locate himself, a pattern had emerged that even Teddy, with his graphs and diagrams and prediction engines, could not have foreseen. The people of Edmundsbury had taken Hugo’s outrage about the genocide woman on one hand, and their unsettled paranoia about The Griefers on the other, and drawn a conclusion that now seemed obvious: that the genocide woman should be the one to submit. Because where was the fairness, someone had pointed out in a particularly emotive Facebook post highlighted by Teddy, in some innocent member of the public exposing themselves to potentially global scrutiny, against their will, despite the fact that their internet behaviour had harmed not a single soul, when all the while, right under everyone’s noses, this woman, this extremist, was using the internet in ways no-one could possibly defend? Here, as if confirming Hugo’s previous concern that certain forces could never truly be controlled, Ronnie Childs had stepped in. The people of Edmundsbury, he’d said, having created a Facebook group specifically for this discussion, should not only rally at the Larchwood to protect the old man, they should also, while they were there, gently, peacefully, suggest that this woman turn herself in. Even if she refused, he said; even if, with half the town non-violently beating down her door, she still somehow managed to resist, The Griefers, who, Childs reminded everyone, saw everything, would understand what was being said: that the people of Edmundsbury had, democratically, selected someone to submit. Within minutes, perception of both The Griefers and Brute Force had shifted. Before, they had been merely a threat. Now, they could help the people of Edmundsbury purge their town of a radical and unwanted element.
What Childs couldn’t possibly have known, of course, flushed with pride though he no doubt must have been at his own political brilliance, was that Hugo had no intention of letting him act on anything like his own reconnaissance, and even less intention of allowing him to gain any hint of localised power. Instead, Hugo regarded Childs as little more than bait. Much as Hugo wished he lived in an England where the plight of an ageing white man and the demonstrable presence of a hostile race vigilante were enough, in themselves, to galvanise the general public, he knew, with regret, that one thing was certain to attract violent protest more certainly than any other: the presence of Brute Force. Already enraged by Hugo’s inflammatory TV appearance, he thought, local do-gooders would be on a hair trigger when it came it to the Larchwood. The arrival of Brute Force would stir them into rash, undignified action. And just to be sure they knew Brute Force were there, he’d taken the precaution of tipping them off. Anyone these days, it seemed, could set up an account in a forum or two, alerting the rabid antiright to the arrival of a few neo-fascist thugs on their doorstep. And so it had proved. Who won or lost, which causes were or were not represented, was irrelevant. All that mattered was that Hugo was able, as he now would be, to use the words he wanted to use: clash, violence, unrest.
And so, perhaps prematurely, Hugo was treating this little excursion into the Larchwood as a victory outing. No, the situation was not entirely wrapped up, and yes, there were still one or two variables that might play out in unwelcome ways, but the signs, as far as Hugo could see, were very good indeed. Now, as what was admittedly a strategic self-fulfilling prophecy came true, the smug liberal media that for so long had treated him as a sort of besuited monkey hammering away at politics and only occasionally making sense through blind chance alone, would be forced to accept that his vision of the future was one that needed to be acknowledged. Moreover, once the dust had settled and it became clear that Hugo had not only concretised the conditions required for his particular brand of politics to be successful, but also both cleared the more stubborn tenants from the Larchwood and established a public perception that would now greatly favour its re-evaluation and ultimate destruction, Jones would be forced into a deferential position from which he would find it markedly more difficult to be a self-satisfied prick – a position Hugo very much intended to exploit.
‘OK,’ said Hugo as the car eased up to the kerb and he took in the scene, ‘I’m seeing an ambulance.’
Teddy didn’t look at the ambulance but instead checked his tablet for news of it.
‘I’m not seeing anything that would suggest an ambulance,’ he said.
‘I’m literally looking at the ambulance, Teddy.’
Teddy tapped around. ‘Looking a
t it doesn’t tell us anything,’ he said.
‘It tells us it fucking exists,’ said Hugo.
‘Right. An ambulance exists. I could have told you that without seeing one, no? It’s irrelevant. That ambulance could just be there as a matter of protocol. Visual confirmation of its presence is, like, literally useless at this point.’
‘Maybe we should briefly speculate,’ said Hugo.
Teddy looked up, nodding. ‘You’re saying: let’s quickly explore the possibilities of that ambulance.’
‘Very quickly. As in, before I go out there and potentially look like a literal ambulance chaser.’
‘Possibility one: it doesn’t mean anything. Possibility two: someone has been hurt.’
‘What if that someone is the old man?’
‘Basically great. That’s the best possibility.’
‘What if he’s seriously injured?’
‘Tragic, but you saw this coming.’
‘But if it’s the genocide woman?’
‘She brought this on herself. It’s a lesson.’
‘OK. I’m going to get out of the car.’
He opened his car door and stepped smartly out. Exiting cars in public was something, Hugo thought, he was going to have to get used to. This particular exit could have gone better. It took him a couple of undignified shuffles to get fully upright. But still, it wasn’t bad, and there would be many more exits from many more cars in far more public settings in the future.
It was exactly the right degree of shitshow. A few press had arrived, at least two with TV cameras. A handful of lefty protesters had been contained behind some police tape and were bleating weakly about fascism. A few yards further down the road, a second cordoned area housed a group of protesters holding signs saying things like Darkin Is All Of Us, and We Are The Darkins Of The World. Beside them were the rather sheepish-looking Submit brigade, who weren’t saying anything at all, and who looked, Hugo thought, thoroughly uncomfortable – beset, he assumed, by a post-adrenaline moral hangover. In the middle of these factions were two police vans and an ambulance, their lights still flashing in such a way that Hugo could, he saw, opportunistically position himself in front of the universal visual shorthand for unfolding drama.
