Matlock's System

by Reginald Hill

  Matlock’s System

  Reginald Hill

  FOR BRIAN AND MARGARET

  Introduction

  Nowadays hardly a news broadcast passes with a lead item about the Economy. A quarter of a century ago, to the non-political and non-politically correct economy was something practised by Scotsmen in jokes and inflation had something to do with Germans taking home their worthless pay in wheelbarrows back in the twenties.

  But things they were a’changing. The buoyant sixties had sunk, the punk seventies were rolling in, and people were beginning to be dimly aware that what the Chancellor did on Budget Day had consequences a little wider than the price of fags and beer. And I found myself fantasising, what if instead of balancing national income to cover proposed expenditure a government decided to regulate population to fit within national income?

  MATLOCK’S SYSTEM (first published as HEART CLOCK) was the result. It enjoyed a modest success. Naturally I wished it might have been a best-seller. Until the eighties, that is. Then, realising we now had a government to whom anything was possible, I spent a whole decade fearful that someone in one of the Think-Tanks might come across my book and think, Hey, I wonder if they've thought of this at No 10 …

  Perhaps they did.

  Reginald Hill

  Summer 1996

  I’ve travelled the world twice over,

  Met the famous: saints and sinners,

  Poets and artists, kings and queens,

  Old stars and hopeful beginners,

  I’ve been where no-one’s been before,

  Learned secrets from writers and cooks

  All with one library ticket

  To the wonderful world of books.

  © Janice James.

  The wisdom of the ages

  Is there for you and me,

  The wisdom of the ages,

  In your local library.

  There’s large print books

  And talking books,

  For those who cannot see,

  The wisdom of the ages,

  It’s fantastic, and it’s free.

  Written by Sam Wood, aged 92

  1

  Matlock looked carefully round the hall as the Chairman’s voice droned on. He had heard the introduction, or ones like it, too many times to listen any more. There had been a time when they flattered him, but that was long ago. Now he used these moments to take in the meeting, look for trouble spots, recognize old supporters, old enemies.

  The hall itself was as familiar as his own living-room. There were cobwebs in corners and a smell of damp stained the air. The cream-coloured walls (white originally, he seemed to remember, but now darkened by a patina of cigarette smoke and grime which invited brave fingers to trace slogans and abuse in it) were cracked and rutted. The whiteness of the powdery plaster shone against the dark background.

  There will be more cracks tonight, thought Matlock.

  The only advantages of this hall were not his. It was in the middle of the oldest, most decaying district of Manchester. It was several narrow, ill-lit streets away from the nearest transport-stop. It was in a curfew area.

  There were halls like this available to Matlock in every major population centre. Dingy. Unattractively situated. Scarred. More scarred after every meeting.

  Matlock had protested. He always protested. It was good policy to form patterns of behaviour. Sometimes the unexpected could work if the conditioning had been good.

  “You’re not suggesting that your freedom of speech is being interfered with, are you?” the Chief Constable had asked. “You’ve never been refused permission for a meeting in my area. This just happens to be the only hall available.”

  “Like last time. And the time before.”

  “You’ve been unlucky, Mr. Matlock. Still, you couldn’t hope to fill a larger place, could you?”

  Matlock had smiled.

  “With your own contribution, we might manage it, Chief Constable.”

  “I’m sorry you’re not satisfied. We like to co-operate. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll call an early meeting of the Watch Committee and put you on the agenda.”

  “That would be kind of you.”

  Matlock had halted as he left.

  “Do you remember a time, Chief Constable, when Watch Committees gave instructions to the police?”

  “Good day, Mr. Matlock. And please remember, no trouble. You’re getting a bad reputation. The Committee will have to take that into consideration as well. For your own sake, keep things quiet. You’re sixty-nine now, aren’t you? You might as well end your days peacefully.”

  At the back of the hall, which smoke and the place’s own miasma made an area of almost impenetrable shade, Matlock could dimly make out a row of figures on whose breasts glinted the silver circle of the police. He let his eyes drift slowly forward. It wasn’t a bad audience even when you removed the 25 per cent he knew to be provocateurs, plain-clothes men and layabouts looking for fun. There must be well over a hundred people present. Then he laughed inwardly and humourlessly at his estimate of a hundred as a‘good’ audience.

  There were five million living within a radius of thirty miles.

  He let his drifting gaze halt when he reached the front row. There were only four people sitting there. Three of them he knew. More than knew. They were his, and he belonged to them. Colin Peters, his agent. Ernst Colquitt his chief assistant and heir-apparent. And Lizzie Armstrong, his secretary. She smiled broadly at him as his eyes paused on her. He drooped an eyelid in reply, then moved on to the fourth.

  He had never seen him before, but him he knew also. At least he knew him in general terms. Sitting two or three seats away from the others; dressed in a charcoal-grey suit, brilliantly white shirt, dark-blue tie split down the middle by a thin silver line; holding an elegant leather document case on his lap; he was present at all the meetings and sat as impassively as his fellows had under Matlock’s close scrutiny.

  The Chairman’s voice changed gear and Matlock brought his attention back to the figure beside him. Percy Collins was a few years younger than Matlock, but looked considerably older. In this day and age it was strange to see a man looking so old. Matlock’s own hair was still mainly brown, his face relatively unlined, his cheeks full, his teeth sound. Percy on the other hand looked like an octogenarian in the old days. His crown rose in wrinkled baldness out of a few wisps of white hair which clung round his ears and nape. His face skin hung in leathery pouches and his jaw-bone protruded like a loop of wire through muslin. But his eyes were clear and alight with enthusiasm, and as always they reassured Matlock when he felt doubts about the kind of image people like Percy gave to the movement.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. Matthew Matlock!”

  He had allowed his thoughts to drift again and was not quite ready, but years of experience in public speaking took him smoothly to his feet as applause, enthusiastic from the front rows, rippled back and lapped itself out in the shadows at the back. Matlock’s practised ear told him that things were worse than he had expected. He readjusted his estimate of the sympathetic audience to nearer seventy five than a hundred.

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for those kind words,” he began, smiling down at Percy. They were the only occupants of the platform. If I am to be a target, he had said at an early stage, let us at least put a premium on accuracy and award marks only for bullseyes, not for inners, outers and magpies.

  “Tonight I want to concentrate your attention on one thing and one thing only. Budget Day. In a few weeks’ time the Government will be bringing in yet another Budget, its thirty-fourth since it first came to power. Since then there have been nine years in which the Government did not feel it necessary to introduce a formal Budget and merely contented itself with using i
ts majority to bulldose through one or two more economically restrictive measures in the normal course of Parliamentary business.”

  “We elected them to make laws, Matlock. What’s wrong with that?”

  ” Matlock nodded genially at the interrupter.

  “I shall answer you in a minute, friend. But let me continue. This means that this Government has had forty-two years of uninterrupted power. It is forty-two years since the Unirads first won office. And it is thirty-eight years since the introduction of the measure which has been central to all Budgets since. I mean the Age Bill.”

  “That’s history, Matlock!” a derisive voice jeered.

  “How did you vote then, Matlock? You were keen enough then!”

  “Getting on a bit now, aren’t you?” “Anarchist bastard!”

  Something swung through the air and dropped at his feet. It was an egg. Matlock was unmoved. He didn’t mind eggs.

  “My friends,” he shouted. “Listen to me. In a few weeks we’ll get a new Age. And you know and I know which way it’s going. It can’t go up. It MUST come down. In a few weeks, Jack Browning, our beloved and ageless Prime Minister, will be covering up his mistakes with years of our lives. OUR LIVES!”

  There was a lull in the tumult building up below. For a brief and rare optimistic moment, Matlock thought he might get a hearing.

  The neat man in the front row, still impassive, straightened up and half- looked round.

  “My friends,” said Matlock in a quieter tone, then gave a gasp of pain and clapped his hand to his face. A marble hurled from the back of the hall had struck him just below the eye. A cheer went up mixed with mocking laughter and suddenly there was a tremendous rattling as a shower of marbles and ball-bearings bounced on the bare boards of the stage. Matlock and Percy turned their backs on the audience and bent forward to protect their heads. This also had the effect, they had learnt from experience, of inviting the missile throwers to aim at their behinds. A politician’s arse can absorb anything, Percy was fond of saying, and besides it puts the audience in a good mood. The English have always found the backside comic.

  There was some more laughter now, but things were obviously planned to go further. A couple of dozen men were moving purposefully towards the platform, pushing chairs and their occupants to one side with equal violence. Others were tearing down pro-Matlock posters from the walls. Matlock’s own supporters protested vociferously. The neat man settled in his seat and relaxed.

  The hail of marbles eased off as the hecklers found other work to do, and Matlock turned round. Below him in the hall a small riot was developing. Much of it was still verbal and the noise itself was bent and twisted by the warped acoustics of the old room. Here and there pushes were changing into punches and already there was the splintering noise caused by the breaking of legs off chairs.

  Matlock took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and blew his nose.

  “MY FRIENDS!”

  The harsh, ear-shattering, metallic tones cut almost contemptuously into the hubbub and stilled action and noise alike.

  “MY FRIENDS, WHILE YOU ARE FIGHTING EACH OTHER, JACK BROWNING IS TRIMMING YOUR LIVES. IT IS NO SECRET THAT IF HE DARED HE WOULD GO BELOW THE SO-CALLED BIBLE BARRIER. EVEN THOSE OF YOU WHO BELIEVE IN THE AGE LAWS MUST BE DISTURBED THAT ALREADY WE HAVE THE LOWEST EXPECTATION OF LIFE IN EUROPE!”

  The neat man rose to his feet and looked round at the audience. The hecklers were puzzled, uncertain what to do. One tried a shout but the metallic voice, now clearly recognizable as Matlock’s, swallowed up the sound without trace.

  “BUT MORE DISTURBING STILL IS THE CRIMINAL INCOMPETENCE WHICH HAS PERPETUATED THE VERY CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH MADE AGE CONTROL ACCEPTABLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.”

  Some of the audience began to sit down again. The neat man nodded to someone in the shadows.

  “FORTY YEARS AGO THIS COUNTRY ALONG WITH MANY OTHERS WAS BANKRUPT. THE CAUSE, WE WERE TOLD, WAS OVER POPULATION. THE REAL CAUSE, THEN AS NOW, WAS UNDER PRODUCTION; THAT IS, BAD MANAGEMENT, AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS.”

  From the shadows at the very rear of the hall a line of policemen moved forward on a word of command. They wore crash-helmets and carried truncheons.

  “Come on now. Break it up, will you. Come on.”

  They picked their way methodically through the overturned chairs.

  “IT WAS THEN THAT THE PARTY WHICH HAS SINCE SPAWNED BROWNING PUT FORWARD ITS SOLUTION. I KNOW. FOR IT WAS MY SOLUTION.”

  Only the hecklers and the police were still standing. Even some of the former were taking their seats. Then Matlock saw one of their number, a swarthy, burly man he had already recognized as some kind of leader, turn to the nearest policeman and knee him viciously in the crutch. His agonized scream rose above even the recording and within seconds the police were full into the seated audience swinging their truncheons indiscriminately.

  Matlock rushed to the front of the platform.

  “Colin! Ernst! Get Lizzie out of here!”

  Even in speaking he saw he was too late. Already the fighting had reached the front of the hall. He reached forward to pull Lizzie up on to the platform but his own arm was seized by a fresh-faced youth who dragged him down to the floor. He lay stunned, his arms instinctively raised to protect himself from the blows the youth was raining into his face.

  “You old bastard — you old bastardyou want to live for ever — I’ll show you what you’ll get — what you deserve — you old bastard! bastard! bastard!”

  The youth was weak with hysteria, his rosy cheeks stained with angry tears, and his blows were losing force. For a moment Matlock saw Ernst trying to drag his attacker off him, but he in turn was seized from behind and disappeared backwards into the mèlée. Matlock carefully thrust his index fingers up the youth’s nostrils and rose with him, then gently deposited the screaming boy on the edge of the platform. He could hear his own recorded voice still booming out in the background — but very much in the background now.

  “Lizzie!” he called, “Lizzie!”

  There was no sign of her in the mass of struggling, wrestling, punching bodies. He tried to force his way forward to where he had last seen her, but found it impossible to make any progress. Women were screaming all over the hall and he was certain he recognized her voice in one of the screams. Leaping forward again, he began dragging men out of the solid heaving wall in front of him and casting them to one side. He seized a uniformed figure by the shoulders and pulled him back. The man turned round with great agility and swung his truncheon. Matlock’s arms were trapped against his sides by sheer pressure of bodies and he watched the truncheon’s back swing with helpless horror.

  But before it could descend, a delicate white hand touched momentarily on the policeman’s wrist.

  “Not this one, thank you, Sergeant. Come along, please, Mr. Matlock.”

  It was the neat man, unruffled by the violence. He guided Matlock through the crowd with no more difficulty than he would have found moving through a well-attended cocktail party.

  “In here, please, Mr. Matlock,” he said opening a door. They stepped out into the corridor and he closed the door behind them which cut out most of the noise except Matlock’s voice booming out of the hidden loudspeakers.

  “WHAT HAVE WE LEFT TO FEAR? WHAT HAVE WE LEFT TO PREVENT EVERY ONE OF US LEADING A USEFUL, ACTIVE, COMPLETE LIFE TILL NINETY? TILL A HUNDRED? WE NEED HARDLY FEAR DISEASE. MEDICAL SCIENCE CAN CURE THEM ALL. WE NEED FEAR ACCIDENTS, I SUPPOSE. BUT CARE CAN PREVENT THEM.

  NO. ALL WE REALLY NEED TO FEAR IS … ”

  The sound ceased without preamble. The silence fell strangely on Matlock’s ears.

  “The recorder must have been well hidden. It has taken us rather too long to find it,” said the neat man with a pleasant smile.

  He moved forward along the corridor and stopped outside a room marked ‘Private’.

  “After you, please.”

  Matlock went in. Seated beside an electric fire, smoking a cigarette, was Lizzie.

 
“Thank God you’re safe!”

  She rose and flung her arms around him.

  “How are you?” asked Matlock. “How did you get out?”

  “The Inspector kindly removed me.”

  Matlock turned to the neat man. “

  “Thank you for that.”

  The Inspector smiled and nodded.

  “It is our job. Now, Mr. Matlock let us get down to business. I have here …” The door burst open and Colin rushed in. His face was bloody and his tunic tom so that it flapped down behind him like a tailcoat.

  “Matt,” he said, and staggered against the wall.

  Matlock stepped forward and took his arm.

  “OK Colin. Come and sit down.”

  “No, Matt. It’s not me. It’s Percy. He’s been hurt — badly I think.”

  Matlock left the room without a pause and ran down the corridor.

  The hall was almost empty now except for the police and one or two casualties. But lying near the edge of the platform, his head cradled in Ernst’s lap, was Percy. His bald crown was a ruin of congealed blood but his face was relaxed and almost content.

  Ernst looked up at Matlock and did not seem to see him for a moment.

  Then, “He’s dead, Matt,” he said. “He’s dead.”

  Matlock looked down at the face which had always seemed strangely old but now seemed strangely young.

  “Leave him be, Ernst,” he said, then spun round to confront the Inspector.

  The neat man had been handed a chair leg, brown with blood and a few white hairs sticking to it. He examined it unemotionally then returned it to the sergeant.

  “I am sorry we could not prevent this, Mr. Matlock.”

  “Prevent it?” said Matlock. “I believe you have caused it. Chair-legs, truncheons, they’re all the same, except that one used to go with an honourable profession.”

  The neat man reddened, but his voice was still pitched on the same even key as he replied.

  “As you will realize, however, this unfortunate death is merely the most serious of a succession of serious incidents, Mr. Matlock, most of which can be traced back directly to the deliberately provocative tone of your own meeting.” He opened his document case and extracted a typewritten sheet.