by John Booth
In the changing room, Mr Conner sat Peter on a bench and pulled up another one so they sat facing each other.
“For four years I’ve watched you trick the crowd and Jeremy into believing he was better than you. This time that selflessness almost cost you your life. Why were you doing it?”
Peter answered in-between gasps. “It mattered so much to him. It never bothered me what people thought and winning’s only important if your life depends on it.”
Mr Conner nodded in understanding. “Two of us saw what happened and if it was up to us, Jeremy Hawkins would be awaiting trial for attempted murder. Tom couldn’t see what happened, because Jeremy’s body blocked his view. That has given the Commandant the opportunity to use his authority to declare his son the winner. Phil and I made it clear we would take it up to the High Command if he tried to take any action against you.”
It was Peter’s turn to nod to show he understood.
Mr Conner looked serious. “The Commandant saw what happened. He also saw the speed you employed to save your life and he knows you’ve been letting his son win all these years. Some fathers would be grateful for that. I know I would if Jeremy was my son. The Commandant isn’t the kind of man to show gratitude. He’ll take any opportunity he can to destroy you, Peter. You must be careful from now on because you’ve made a powerful enemy.”
Peter nodded, because he did understand. Mr Conner stood up to leave and then changed his mind.
“I’d like to shake your hand, Peter.”
Peter stood with an effort and shook his teacher’s hand. Mr Conner took a step back, gave a short bow and walked out of the room like a soldier on parade.
The dream shifted as Peter knew it would. No, no, no, no, he pleaded with his subconscious, ‘please don’t make me see it again, please don’t.’
* * *
He was back in the gym again. It was two weeks after the contest. He was there in response to a terse note from Jeremy. The note read:
Meet me in the gym at one o’clock. Tell no one. Come alone,
Jeremy.
Peter looked around. He noted the surveillance cameras covering the room. He knew those cameras were on a twenty-four-hour loop and were recording him now. The cameras were the result of a request from Mr Conner and it turned out Mr Conner had influential friends.
Peter knew it was stupid coming to the gym. Whatever Jeremy wanted, it was unlikely to be good news. He decided to come anyway. It was all down to the hugs Jeremy gave him when he was four years old and needed a friend. He cared about Jeremy. It was that simple in the end.
Jeremy walked into the room in typical flamboyant manner. He swung on some wall bars as he walked past them and smiled when he saw Peter.
Jeremy voice rippled with irony. “I knew you’d turn up. A boy scout to the end, my sweet Peter. My father hates you, you know, almost as much as he hates me.”
“Your father loves you. I’m sure he truly loves you.”
“I want you to fight me, Peter. Defend yourself as though your life depends on it. For it surely does.”
“I don’t want to fight.” Peter started to back away down the side of the gym towards the emergency exit at the rear. If he could reach it, he could escape.
Jeremy smiled as he advanced. His body was already in fighting pose. He seemed to be rolling a piece of gum in his mouth, which struck Peter as odd. Nobody started a fight with something in his mouth. It was Rule Ten and they had been reciting those rules since they were in the infants.
Jeremy advanced quickly, making it impossible for Peter to reach the exit. He aimed a flurry of blows Peter struggled to deflect. Peter moved away from the wall to give himself room. He knew he had no choice but to fight. However, there were still lots of ways he could disable Jeremy without harming him.
Peter spent the next few minutes defending against a series of blows and moves that would have killed a lesser fighter. Jeremy fought better and with more determination than ever. Peter had plenty of opportunities to take him out, but all of them would have risked Jeremy’s life.
But you can’t fight purely defensively and not lose ground. Peter was driven towards the wall and once there he would be vulnerable. It was likely Jeremy would use the advantage to kill him.
Reluctantly, Peter prepared to use a dangerous blow on Jeremy. He would try and pull the force so he only injured him, but in battle, you could never be sure of the difference between a disabling blow and killing force.
It was almost as if this was what Jeremy intended. Certainly, Jeremy gave him outrageous opportunities to strike killing blows. Peter prepared and struck. Jeremy swallowed as though he expected to die and Peter changed the blow at the last moment so he pushed Jeremy gently on the forehead.
To Peter’s surprise, Jeremy fell back poll-axed. The back of his head struck the floor with a sickening thud as though he had forgotten to fall properly. Peter moved towards Jeremy cautiously, convinced it must be some kind of trick.
Jeremy’s eyes were wide open and they stared up at him lifeless. Peter ran to the wall, smashed the fire alarm, and punched the button. As the fire bell rang he knelt beside his friend and started to give him the kiss of life.
Peter woke up, kicking and crying in the little bedroom. He rolled over and sobbed into his pillow.
The video recordings showed Peter acted in self defence and that his final blow should not have killed Jeremy. The Commandant used his authority to refuse an autopsy.
The Commandant couldn’t prove Peter tried to kill Jeremy, but it didn’t stop him from beating Peter viciously until Mr Conner arrived to stop him. It didn’t stop him expelling Peter and his mother from the Establishment, and it hadn’t assuaged Peter’s feelings of guilt and loss in the slightest.
Chapter Nine
Grimms
Peter woke when his mother came into his room to kiss him before she went off to work. He fell back into a deep lingering sleep after the nightmares that plagued him through the night.
He didn’t hear the alarm clock going off at eight and he slept fitfully through its five successive attempts to wake him. Finally, he opened bleary eyes at nine fifteen and tried to focus it on the clock. He kept seeing an impossible time and blinked to get his eyes to read it right.
At nine-thirty, he woke up properly, took one look at the clock, and swung frantically out of bed. It was already half an hour later than when he was supposed to have started work in the shop. Assuming he still had a job. Peter hadn’t mentioned the problems at Solly’s to his mother. When she came home the previous evening, Mel was so happy her day at work went well that Peter hadn’t wanted to upset her. He decided his problem could wait until after he got to the shop and found out whether he was still employed.
Mel had enthused about her new job the previous evening. Apparently, her boss was wonderful, all the people she worked with were wonderful, the office they worked in was wonderful, the computer on her desk was wonderful. All in all, Peter came to suspect his mother might be happy in her job.
He would have liked to have gone out looking for Sal that night, but it didn’t seem fair to leave his mum alone when she was so eager to tell someone about all her experiences during the day.
By the time he went to bed, Peter felt confident he knew exactly how many steps it took from Mel’s desk to the toilet and how many windows her office had. He hadn’t seen his mother so happy since before the fight contest and her happiness was worth a great deal to him. He felt guilty his misdeeds had taken them from the safety of the Establishment and the comfort of their home.
Peter threw on his clothes, not bothering with any underwear when he couldn’t find where his mother had hidden his clean boxers. He ran down the flights of stairs so fast, it felt like flying. He wasn’t sure his feet touched any of the steps on the last flight. He staggered as he hit the floor and bounced out of the door.
The day was well under way outside. Cars hooted and people in business suits hurried down the pavements. After the rain and gloom of the
previous day, the bright warm morning sunshine felt marvellous. The activity and energy around Peter brought him to a halt for a few seconds. There was nothing as dynamic as the city in the village he grew up in, not even the horse parades.
Catching a deep breath of car fumes mixed with fresh intoxicating air, he dived for the doors of Solly’s Furniture Emporium and came to an abrupt halt for a second time. Both the shop doors were locked.
Peter felt a rush of adrenaline run through him and tried to calm down as he stood back from the doors. The sign that usually read open for business, now read closed. There were no lights on in the shop and he couldn’t see much of the interior because sunshine was reflecting in the windows. Peter put his hand over his brow to form a shade and tried again, but all he saw were stacks of furniture.
He stood in front of the doors and forced himself not to cry. It was nearly quarter to ten and it looked like he’d lost the best job he ever had. The fact it was his first and only job did little to console him. He felt terrible.
Taking his hands from the big metal handles, Peter turned away to walk back to the flat. He reached the corner of Hellport Lane when a familiar voice shouted at him.
“Peter! What kept you? You’re very late. Come along now or we’ll never get anything done.”
Peter turned around to see the short fat bald form of Solly standing in the open doorway of his shop. He waved at Peter to get a move on and Peter ran towards him.
Once inside the shop Solly walked off towards the storeroom. Peter stopped when he got inside the shop, as he needed to confirm he was still employed. He found it hard to put a sentence together. Solly turned towards Peter with anger written on his face, but when he saw how upset Peter was, his look changed to one of concern.
“You’re not worried about what happened yesterday, are you?” Solly asked in a dismissive tone. “It was my fault for assuming you knew your father was dead. Can’t we put it behind us?”
“But I knocked over all the furniture and …” Peter stopped talking as he noticed there was no sign of the chaos he had caused. The tables and chairs on the stairs were perched every bit as precariously as they had been the day before.
“No damage was done. Peter, we have to go. I have an important appointment at the docks and I want you to come with me. Come, we can talk in the lorry.”
Solly walked to the storeroom and Peter followed. Peter increased his speed until he was just behind Solly. Solly took him through the storeroom and out onto the loading bay. A dirty old flatbed lorry stood parked up against the bay. Its bed was at the same level as the bay so Peter could have stepped straight onto the truck. Solly locked the back of the store and climbed into the cab, indicating to Peter to follow him and sit in the passenger seat.
The big ugly pair of gates stood wide open. Solly started the lorry. It vibrated alarmingly as its ancient diesel engine burst into life and Solly drove the vehicle through the gates. He stopped the vehicle a few yards up the access road.
“Go and close the gates for me.” Solly said. “There’s a padlock. Make sure you lock it properly, it needs quite a bit of force to get it to lock.”
Peter jumped out of the cab and ran to shut the gates. He had no trouble getting the padlock to close, but it took him a few seconds to figure out how to climb back up to the cab. Before Peter managed to shut the cab door, Solly stuck the lorry into gear and they were off, bouncing down the narrow access road at an insane pace.
Peter had never ridden in the cab of a lorry before and was surprised how empowering it was to be sat so high above the cars. It was a beautiful day. The sky was clear blue with just a hint of white.
When they left the access road, they turned onto roads lined with ancient trees, which exuded a rich heady perfume in the morning sun.
They drove into the heart of the city. Shops and houses gave way to white stone-faced buildings and small public gardens dotted with tall trees. The road ran alongside the river for a while, its stone and steel railed promenades shining in the sun.
From the height of the cab they could overlook the embankment and see river traffic cutting its way through wide muddy waters and under impressive bridges with massive symmetric stone arches. The power of the river water moving relentlessly through this dynamic human hive gave Peter a buzz of excitement. There had been absolutely nothing like it in the village.
They passed statues of soldiers on horseback and admirals in full regalia. Peter had no idea who any of them were, but he knew they were people who once performed great service for their country. Peter wondered what it would be like to be so admired that people out up a statue to remember him. The idea gave him goose bumps.
They drove out of the centre and into the commercial district. There were wonderful buildings that companies built to show how successful they were. Round, square, boat shaped buildings and even one looking like a gherkin shone in the clear light. There was a real sense of pride about the city. ‘We are someone important,’ the office blocks shouted out to the world.
They drove into a manufacturing district. The streets grew darker and the buildings were dirtier and more run-down. Lorries and white vans, some so dirty it was difficult to be sure of their colour, moved relentlessly up and down the streets. Despite the gloom, Peter discovered he liked this place. Factories have a sense of purpose and even the closed ones seemed to have ghosts of past achievements lingering about them.
Solly pulled the lorry off the road and onto the driveway of what looked like a scrap yard. Tall chain-linked fences protected the junk from thieves, though who would be interested in stealing rubbish defeated Peter. As they approached its massive gates, two men pulled them slowly open and Solly drove through without even a passing nod.
They travelled down a long internal road and when they passed beyond the tall piles of junked vehicles and old fridges, they approached the river once again. A small dockyard with a single crane awaited them at the end of the road. A large concreted area gave Solly an opportunity to turn the lorry around and reverse into the loading bay of the dock.
The dock was only big enough for one vessel and it was occupied with an ocean-going barge. At least Peter assumed the barge must be ocean-going because its registration said Rotterdam.
De Schelde was the name of the vessel and from what Peter knew of geography, Rotterdam was a port in the Netherlands. Peter knew a lot about Rotterdam as it was a staging post for illegal drugs, and the Establishment expected its students to be familiar with such things.
Solly got down from the cab and Peter followed. A group of people waited on the jetty and one of them waved to Solly as they approached.
“Have you got the goods, Jeroen?” Solly called cheerfully to a large man who was built like a Viking invader. This man looked like he could pick Peter up and snap him in two like a twig.
“Have you got the money?” Jeroen countered. He smiled at Solly as he said it.
“I’ll need to inspect them first. You know the rules.”
“We just get them off my barge, and then you have a good look.” Jeroen waved to a man operating the crane. A heavy diesel motor started up and the crane swung round until its arm was directly over the barge. Five men on the barge removed enormous sheets of tarpaulin to reveal three wooden crates identical to the ones in Solly’s storeroom.
Peter watched in fascination as the crane lowered a net down to the men and they tied and adjusted various ropes until the first of the crates lifted up into the air and was carefully swung over and onto the jetty. Men on the jetty unhooked the crate from the net and got the ropes clear so they could repeat the process.
There was much shouting, laughter and cursing from the two groups of men as they carried out their tasks. Seagulls glided overhead and added to the sounds with their distinctive calls. It took the best part of an hour to hoist over the three crates while Peter watched on, fascinated. He would have loved to have gone and helped but he knew he’d end up getting in their way.
The men who unloaded the cr
ates used crowbars to prise off their tops so Solly could inspect the contents. Peter moved closer to Solly as he went to the crates, determined to find out what was inside them.
The crates were packed with straw. Solly reached in and pulled out large handfuls from the nearest crate. Peter saw a stone statue hidden in the straw. When Solly pulled more of the straw away Peter realised the statue was a gargoyle. An ugly grey winged creature with long arms and claw shaped hands. It crouched down with its wings folded as though asleep. The detritus of centuries covered it. The statue must be from an old church or cathedral. Peter had no idea why Solly would want such a thing.
Solly nodded to Jeroen who gave a deep laugh. Solly moved to the second crate while the men who opened the first crate stuffed the straw back in it and resealed the lid.
The second crate contained a gargoyle that to Peter’s eyes was a twin of the first. Solly again nodded his approval and the two of them moved on to the third crate.
Once again, the crate contained a gargoyle, though this one looked a little different to Peter’s eyes. If anything, it looked like a better work of art than the first two as the gargoyle’s mouth was open with a long forked tongue sticking out.
Solly looked at Jeroen and shook his head. Jeroen looked angry for a second and then his face changed to concern. “The last one is unsatisfactory?” he asked.
“It’s made of several pieces of stone. The head is stuck on. You can see it for yourself if you look,” Solly explained patiently.
Jeroen went over to the crate and reached inside. His big muscles bulged as he seized the head of the gargoyle and pulled. The head came clear with a grinding noise revealing a plug of stone below its neck that fitted into a socket in the body.
Jeroen uttered a foreign word in disgust. He took the head and threw it across the jetty. It made a large splashing sound as it disappeared into the river.
