Blame

by Simon Mayo

  ‘I know it’s bringing the neighbourhood down.’ He grinned. ‘But what can you do?’ He caught up with Ant. ‘Busy?’

  ‘I’m going to breakfast, Jimmy,’ she said flatly. ‘Of course I’m busy.’

  ‘Too busy for company?’

  She looked at him, her forehead creased. ‘How come you’re so annoying?’

  ‘How come you’re so difficult?’ he said, smiling again. ‘So . . . inscrutable?’

  She shrugged. ‘It comes quite easily actually.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Jimmy. ‘See you in Happy Hour? I might be able to fit you in.’

  She didn’t smile much, but it was enough to make Jimmy laugh.

  They all shuffled down the stairs and joined the queue for breakfast.

  ‘More zookeepers around this morning,’ said Ant, looking at the number of uniformed guards observing the breakfast routine. Some stared down from the decks, others walked around the tables, all of them stony-faced.

  ‘I’ve counted twelve,’ said Mattie. ‘Which is four more than normal.’

  ‘And all of them as ugly as each other,’ muttered Jimmy, sitting down. ‘Do you think they have to practise to make their expressions that blank?’

  ‘And they’re new,’ said Amos. ‘Not our usual.’

  Ant scrutinized the guards near her and nodded. ‘You’re right. Haven’t seen this crowd before. They’re not on the payroll. We’ll need to break them in . . .’ She waited for a white-shirted officer to pass their table, oblivious of everyone holding their breath.

  ‘Where are you lot from then?’ she called to a sweating guard.

  Apart from quickly narrowed eyes, there was no sign that the man had heard her. He kept walking.

  ‘Rude,’ said Ant. She noticed Amos wincing. ‘What? You don’t trust me?’

  He carried on eating. ‘No, I’m sure you’ll handle it fine,’ he said through his porridge.

  ‘Classic Amos,’ said Ant. ‘Your mouth says one thing, your eyes something else.’ She waited for the next screw to approach and tried again. ‘Where you lot from then?’

  A man with one hand on his belt and the other holding his radio came over to where Ant was sitting. The radio squawked with urgent voices and he paused, then turned the volume down. She saw that his badge said MCTAVISH.

  ‘You trainees or something?’

  The PO bent down between Ant and Jimmy. He smelled of chewing gum. ‘We give orders, you obey them. That’s the way it works. It doesn’t matter where we’re from.’ His voice was cold, measured.

  ‘You really are new,’ said Ant.

  The guard straightened. ‘Stand up,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I’m eating my breakfast.’

  The man clipped his radio onto his belt so that he had both hands free. ‘Stand up, strutter.’ His voice was raised and the buzz of conversation died away; everyone recognized a face-off when they saw one.

  ‘My name is Ant. Give me five minutes, Officer.’ She took a bite of toast.

  ‘Don’t push him, Ant,’ muttered Jimmy.

  ‘Abi, just do what he says,’ whispered Mattie.

  Ant munched some more toast.

  The guard’s hands were twitching. ‘You want me to haul you up by your strap?’

  She stopped chewing. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  The man beckoned for assistance. ‘Last warning, then you’re on basic. Stand. Up.’

  ‘Pick on someone else!’ said Jimmy.

  Someone from another table: ‘Leave her alone!’

  Another voice: ‘Yeah, leave us all alone!’

  Then a whole range of voices joined in. ‘Dixam pas!’ was the first shout, followed by ‘Yeah, bax!’ Then a chorus of ‘Bax! Bax! Bax!’ filled the hall.

  ‘Speaking in Spike,’ muttered Ant. ‘They’re gonna love that.’

  The sweating officer now joined his colleague. His badge said DENHOLM.

  ‘What are they saying?’ shouted McTavish over the noise.

  Denholm shrugged.

  ‘She’s refusing orders. I’ve asked her to—’

  Ant leaped to her feet and the chanting died away. ‘OK, is this better?’ she yelled, her face now centimetres from the guard’s. ‘I’m standing. Hope it helps you understand. All I asked was where you were all from. It’s really not a big deal. It’s called conversation in most places. But hey, why talk when you can beat the crap out of anyone you choose?’

  Ant felt her T-shirt being tugged so hard it ripped. She spun round and saw Mattie standing on his chair, eyes blazing. He mouthed some words – so fast Ant couldn’t work out what he was saying.

  He leaned towards her. ‘Passes! Around your neck!’ He spoke as loudly as he dared, his tone desperate. And it worked.

  It was like a bucket of cold water over her head. Ant couldn’t afford a pat down, not with three swipe cards and two passes around her neck. These were Castle or Village POs, or maybe from out of town; they didn’t know how things worked in Spike. She turned to face the guard. And smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry, my mistake. I’ll shut up now. I was out of order – it’s the heat, I think.’

  She waited as the man reassessed her. A broad smile had transformed her face; the fierce, challenging eyes were now lit with warmth and sincerity. Eventually the PO grunted and walked away, looking almost disappointed. ‘Next time . . .’ he said.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, there won’t be a next time,’ Ant said brightly. ‘I’ve learned my lesson, Officer, really I have.’

  Ant sat down again. She looked at Mattie and shrugged. ‘I forgot!’ she said quietly. ‘But thanks.’

  Gina came over and inspected the T-shirt. ‘I’ll ask if I can go and get another one,’ she said.

  ‘No, really,’ said Ant. ‘Leave it. It’s fine.’

  Gina recognized the tone and realized there was no point arguing. She went back to her place.

  Flashpoint over, the buzz of conversation rose again. Jimmy leaned in close. ‘Well, Miss Norton Turner, that was good shouting,’ he said. ‘Dangerous, but pretty spectacular.’

  Ant shrugged. ‘As opposed to you, Jimmy.’

  He looked affronted. ‘I just thought it could get nasty, Ant. Everything is very tense – it would only take a small spark to set the whole place off. But Master Norton Turner here might just have saved the day.’ Jimmy saluted Mattie with his plastic cup of tea.

  Daisy leaned over. ‘You really going to leave your strap showing?’ she whispered.

  ‘Why not?’ said Ant. ‘Maybe I’ll decorate it while I’m at it. My body. My strap.’

  ‘Did you see the looks on their faces when the chanting started?’ said Jimmy. ‘They had no idea what was happening!’

  ‘Which is the general idea of having our own words,’ said Ant. ‘Haven’t heard Spiketalk used on new arrivals before though.’

  ‘And if we have new screws,’ said Daisy, ‘you need to lose the passes. You can’t just walk around with them under your shirt. Judging by that shouting match, this new lot aren’t very nice. That was a bad one.’ She nodded at one of the guards who was still loitering nearby. ‘Your sister owes you, Mattie.’

  ‘Like I said, it was the heat,’ said Ant. ‘That and the Shahs shouting all night.’

  ‘Oh, please . . .’ said Amos.

  ‘At least you’re not in the same ’bin as them!’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ll swap with anyone . . .’

  ‘Plus everything else,’ said Daisy. ‘All night. The noise. From everywhere. Mum says she thought it was kicking off in Pentonville.’

  ‘I heard the sirens,’ said Ant through a mouthful of toast. ‘Couldn’t tell which prison they were going to though.’

  ‘The screws told her,’ said Daisy. ‘Said there had been a fire in the gym and a wall had collapsed.’ The others had stopped eating and were staring at her, waiting for more information. She shrugged. ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘How come your mum gets to hear this stuff?’ said Mattie. ‘Gina isn’t told anything.’

&
nbsp; ‘It’s old drug money, Mattie,’ said Ant. ‘It always works.’

  Mattie looked puzzled.

  ‘Basically Daisy’s dad ran a drug cartel. Very successfully too. That buys a lot of favours, a lot of info.’

  ‘Did he disappear?’ asked Mattie. ‘Like our parents?’

  ‘He died,’ said Daisy flatly. ‘Before he got caught. So I’m out at eighteen, of course. Mum’s doing a six – two years more than Amos’s dad got, which doesn’t seem right to me.’

  Without comment or even looking up, Amos picked up his tray and went to sit at the next table.

  ‘You didn’t need to say that,’ said Jimmy quietly.

  ‘Amos’s mum was a bent copper!’ said Daisy. ‘And did far worse things than your dad ever did. He was just a banker.’

  ‘“Just a banker” is not something I normally hear,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Drug lord, bent copper, banker. What’s the difference?’ said Ant. ‘At least there’s only one crook in your cell. There’s two in ours. Gina’s father was a seriously crooked accountant and Dan’s father was a swindler. Plus Grey hates the fact that our real parents just disappeared. So we’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘You don’t often mention your folks,’ said Daisy. ‘You know, your real folks.’

  Ant glowered. ‘There’s no reason to mention them,’ she muttered. ‘Crap parents anyway.’

  The rest of their breakfast was eaten in silence.

  Eventually Mattie said, ‘Gina wants us,’ and ran over to where a group of women sat with their heads close together. Sarah Raath and Mishal Noon both made room for him. If they hadn’t been in a high- security prison eating porridge at just after 7 a.m., they could have been ladies lunching. Each woman still had the unmistakable air of someone who knew they didn’t belong here. Ant knew Gina wasn’t like this back in the ’bin and concluded it was a show they put on. For the screws, certainly, and for themselves too.

  Ant was watching her brother. ‘We ruffle his hair all the time,’ she said. ‘And it never bothers him. Would drive me crazy.’

  ‘Yeah, well, not much chance of that,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Our dad made us have the same pudding-bowl hair,’ said Ant. ‘He got some weird, controlling kick out of it. When we went to live with Dan and Gina, we changed. I shaved mine, Mattie grew his. Come on, it’ll be Happy Hour in a minute.’ She picked up her tray and walked to the slops bucket. As she passed Gina’s table, Mattie beckoned her over. ‘Sarah says a man died last night. Villager.’

  ‘Told you,’ said Daisy.

  Ant looked at Sarah Raath; her short blonde hair was going white. She nodded confirmation of the story as Daisy sat next to her.

  ‘Screws say a wall collapsed; Villagers claim he was thrown against it. That’s why it collapsed. Load of the cons then set fire to the gym. Cops and fire brigade still swarming all over the place. Village sounds like a bad place at the moment.’

  ‘Don’t push it any further with the screws, Ant,’ said Gina. ‘Reckon that’s why they’re twitchy and nervous today. Please change your T-shirt.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Ant threw her uneaten porridge and toast in a large plastic tub.

  ‘I’ll bring Mattie up,’ said Gina. ‘He’s OK with us.’

  ‘You really going to leave your strap uncovered?’ called Sarah Raath as Ant and Jimmy walked away.

  ‘We’ve all got one,’ said Ant. ‘Might as well flaunt it.’

  *

  Four years earlier, South London

  ‘Mama, wake up. It’s Mattie.’ The small boy in school shorts and sweatshirt gently shook his mother’s shoulder, but she didn’t stir. ‘Abi, you try again,’ he said. He swapped places with his sister, who had been hovering at his side.

  She knelt by the bed so that she was level with her mother’s ear.

  Please wake up.

  ‘Papa’s home,’ she said. The words took a few seconds to penetrate whatever level of unconsciousness Shola Murray had achieved, but, spell-like, they worked their magic. She rolled over and forced her eyes open, her gaze flitting between her children.

  At last!

  ‘Papa’s home,’ repeated Abi, more urgently this time. ‘We can hear him downstairs.’ Mattie started to climb into the bed but his sister pulled him back. ‘No. She has to get up. We have to be ready.’

  Shola opened her mouth to speak, her lips separating only slowly. ‘Pitit mwen,’ she said, her voice still thick with sleep. ‘My children . . . OK. We can do this.’ She forced a smile, the last of the congealed saliva flaking away, then sat up and pulled back the duvet. ‘I just shut my eyes for a second, that’s all . . .’

  Abi rearranged her mother’s skirt. Mattie handed her a glass of water. They all jumped as a crash came from the kitchen downstairs. Shola really was awake now. She reached out and held their hands, talking softly but fast. ‘Remember. Speak English to him. Only use Creole if you have to – don’t make him mad.’

  Heavy steps and humming on the stairs.

  When he sounds OK, he’s not OK. That’s what Mama says.

  Abi grabbed a book. ‘Read it, Mama. Anything it says, just read.’ She pulled her brother down to the floor and they sat together, focusing furiously on what their mother was saying. The bedroom door swung open and Kyle Turner breezed in, a beer in one hand and a mixing bowl in the other. To Abi he looked enormous. Smart as ever, perfumed as ever, but mainly just enormous. She caught him out of the corner of her eye and looked swiftly away.

  ‘What a lovely scene,’ he said. ‘Though wait a minute . . .’ His brow furrowed. ‘Who’s putting who to bed here?’ He looked from his wife to his children and then to the unmade bed. ‘A few gins after lunch, Shola? Or before maybe?’

  Shola had stopped reading. Apart from her shaking hands, she had stopped moving altogether.

  ‘She wasn’t well, Papa,’ said Abi.

  ‘I bet she wasn’t.’ Kyle took a mouthful of beer, swilled it around his mouth and swallowed noisily. ‘So who picked you up from school then?’

  ‘I always do it, Papa. I collect Mattie and we walk.’

  ‘Of course. I think you told me that. So . . .’ He put his bottle down and hummed again as he busied himself with the contents of the bowl. He tested some hair wax between his fingers, then smoothed it into his hair.

  ‘Kimbe,’ whispered Shola. (Be strong.)

  ‘Ou mem tou,’ mouthed Abi. (You too.)

  Kyle suddenly stopped humming and held out the bowl. Abi and Mattie could see the long pair of scissors inside. Their father smiled. ‘Who wants a haircut?’

  Clifton, Bristol. Now

  Max Norton was not in the best of moods. Having worked the late shift at the café, he really needed to sleep in. Midday would have been fine, 2 p.m. ideal. Instead, after a sweltering, airless night and his flatmate knocking the bikes over on his way out, he was nursing his first coffee at just after ten o’clock.

  The kitchen was already too bright and too hot. He opened the window wide then drew the curtains across. They billowed slightly and he felt the faintest of breezes on his clammy skin. He locked and chained the front door, then flicked open his laptop and began his daily ritual. He logged on to what looked like a chemistry revision site and started to answer the verification questions, eight in all. The last one asked him the name of his current project. He typed ‘Complex Cell Evolution’ and waited.

  His screen went blank, then appeared to reload the same site; this time the answer to the last question was ‘Inorganic Chemistry’. Again the screen reappeared and his current project became ‘Dark Matter Photons’. Max had drunk half his coffee before the familiar grey screen and black rectangular box appeared, the cursor pulsing, waiting for his sixteen-digit log-in. He gulped the rest of the coffee and typed fast.

  Max had been a student for two years and his parents had been in Spike for most of them. He had been so freaked out by heritage crime and the ‘New Legal Settlement’ that with the university’s blessing he had opted to study abroad for a year. Of
the courses offered he chose a science option at the Free University of Berlin. Not only did it have a good reputation, but Germany appeared to be the only country immune to the new madness. ‘We’ve done that whole blame thing before,’ explained one of his new computer science colleagues. ‘We learned from our history. Shame no one else did.’

  Max had joined a small team who were setting up sites on the dark web where strutters could communicate freely. The level of encryption they had used made it painstakingly tedious to log on, but it meant that, with patience, it was possible to find out what was happening to imprisoned strutters across Europe. Some of the ‘Bug sites’, as they became known, enabled affected families to communicate with each other for the first time. Others linked escaped strutters and ‘on-the-runs’ who had disappeared before they could be arrested.

  Not all resistance to heritage crime was underground. A few human rights groups, lawyers and campaigners organized protests and ran online campaigns. But they came up against popular opinion: people were still angry and believed justice was being done.

  A clatter from outside made Max jump and he ran to the window. His flatmate wasn’t due back till later, but he couldn’t risk anyone stumbling into this. He tweaked the curtains. Two floors down he saw the bins being emptied and he exhaled slowly. He was tired and he was jumpy, but being fanatically cautious had quickly become a way of life. There was a small ‘Bug group’ in Bristol – strutter relatives, friends and supporters – but they usually kept their distance, meeting only rarely. There were too many families in too many countries who would be compromised if anything leaked. Max rattled the security chain, checked the door lock again and returned to the laptop.

  The page displayed was simple and in plain text only. Max whistled as he saw the number of messages displayed, and began to scroll down. Usually he would expect a daily update, with four or five reports from the nine UK strutter jails: new prison terms started, new visitors’ accounts or smuggled messages from inside the jails. Today he counted twenty-seven reports, all of them from HMP London. He scanned the messages with a growing sense of dread.

  Death today in Pentonville. Think it’s the Irish guy. Outrageous.