2020

by Kenneth Steven

  And then you saw him at home, when he’d just been with young kids. He adored babies: you could sit Eric with a baby and he’d be lost for hours. Soft as butter, a gentle sense of fun—kindness itself. He related superbly well to men; he got to know them in a real way, could get right under their skin. I think he liked women too, and he most certainly adored Trish, but it was getting alongside men he was best at. He was powerfully built and there was an edge to his voice, so working men especially respected him, but he could be kind and a good listener if he needed to be. Just as I said he was the night of Trish’s nightmare. But it went way beyond his own family: he listened to people within the community. Working men who simply felt discriminated against, who felt second-class citizens within their own country. He just knew how to get alongside them. There was more than one Eric Semple. Of course, it’s true of all of us; that goes without saying. But it’s just important to remember there were many Eric Semples. I think it matters a lot to remember it.

  So that was the way it was that night with Trish. He went downstairs with her and would have sat with her for an hour or more while she told him her dream and begged him to give the whole thing up. Maybe he did consider it for a minute; I don’t know. But the truth was that he simply didn’t believe it was an issue, that he was going to win. He knew what the big old parties were like; they rallied their troops and won through in the end. He didn’t really believe he was going to break through all that history. He wanted to make people think. I reckon at that point, in the middle of the night seventy-two hours or whatever before the actual vote, what mattered to him more than anything was that people started thinking. He always felt that people didn’t think enough: they voted the way their parents had voted and that somehow felt safest. Nothing drove him madder than that. He wanted to waken people up and make people angry; he almost felt that was his task, his mission. But he didn’t truly believe he was ever going to win that by-election.

  And that was what he said to Trish. That there was no need to give up because he wasn’t going to win; it simply wasn’t about to happen. And there was nothing she could say to make him change his mind.

  *

  I THINK IF anything we were a bit too nice to him. I feel almost embarrassed saying that now, because I’ve dealt with the toughest and had them in tears. And felt no shame about it, I can tell you. If you’re interrogating a man you know has beaten up his wife for decades, or someone who’s almost certainly been molesting a child, perhaps also for years, you learn to turn on a cold tap. That’s what my best instructor told me when it came to interrogation: learn to turn on a cold tap. The best criminals could have degrees in psychology; the best prison inmates certainly could! They might not be able to explain what they’re able to do in terms of manipulation, but they’ll achieve it again and again.

  Yes, I apologise for digressing. I think it’s important to state that we were soft on him all the same: it was just so apparent that he was a boy who hadn’t quite grown up yet. I had to keep reminding myself that he had been involved—no, at the very heart of—a terrorist attack of quite unimaginable proportions, and that he and his fellow terrorists had turned the country upside-down. He had been responsible, along with three others, for creating a near crisis at the heart of government. But for all that, I think I didn’t see him as a threat: he did not come across as any great convert to extreme Islamic ideology who oozed some dark malevolence. What he talked about was verging on the petty: the long talks at university, the watching of certain films. I felt quite certain that he was the wrong man in that he was not the ringleader. He seemed much more the spare wheel on the wagon; now he was polite and wanting to answer the questions we asked to the best of his ability. I failed to believe that this was double bluff; in all conscience, he didn’t seem bright enough for that. I felt after two hours that it was purely and simply a case of the wrong man having survived: this guy had been the hanger-on and in the end the coward, and attempting to wring something out of him that simply wasn’t there was next to pointless.

  Then my superior—the officer I’ve talked about from the outset—came back at about seven o’clock. I can remember thinking that there was a strangeness about his face. He was pale and drawn and there was something strange about his expression. I have said that I didn’t know him well and that our relationship was strictly professional: if truth be told, I had never got the impression that he liked me much. I had thought that on several occasions before, but it was almost an irrelevance: it was simply of no consequence what he thought of me. We worked alongside each other from time to time; it was neither less nor more than that. I think what muddied the waters now was my knowledge of his loss: that his only brother had been killed in the Burroway bombing. I was very aware of that, especially at the moment when I saw his expression and tried to read it. But nor could I be certain that what I was reading was correct.

  At any rate, I noticed that he was carrying a small satchel with him when he came into the interview room. He asked if he could speak with me and I got up at once, went outside and closed the door behind me. He wouldn’t look at me and his eyes seemed everywhere; he was impatient and very clipped. He didn’t actually let on that he was frustrated we had got so little from our prisoner, detainee—call him what you will—but that was abundantly clear all the same. He seemed to brush aside all that I mumbled about his not seeming to have much to reveal, nor a great deal of malice in him. I realised how it must have come across, but I genuinely believed now that we were in danger of flogging something of a dead horse.

  He interrupted me in the end and spoke quickly and without looking at me; that is what I will always remember, that he almost refused to look at me. That is the verb I would use. He said that down below this floor of the building there was a chamber that had been used in the old days for interrogations—that was the word he used more than once—and that was where he wanted to take him now. This was about the defence of the realm; it was of the utmost importance that we got from him every shred of evidence that might be used to prevent a similar or even a far more serious atrocity. Did I not realise that he might be quite capable of letting us believe he was really the innocent in the whole affair? That was something he had encountered time and again in Northern Ireland; you released the rat into the streets again and two months later the rat came back with Semtex and blew a few lives to smithereens. We had a chance to find out the whole truth; we had one survivor and it was our duty, our moral responsibility, to get the last drop of evidence from him, however long that took. And he said that he would do the interrogating, that that was what he wanted, insisted on.

  I felt there was little more I could say or do at that point. I followed him back to the interview room and was asked at no time whether I agreed with what was being suggested or not. In point of fact it would be wrong to say it was being suggested: it was more a case of the whole thing being demanded. It had been decided; there seemed no room for discussion. How did I feel? I will admit that I felt I had been rather driven over. It was only later, I suppose, I felt aggrieved about it and even something verging on anger or at least great frustration. I felt brushed to one side; the manner in which we had conducted things was just dismissed. Interestingly enough, I remember seeing my superior by the prisoner for a second in the interview room and recalling something. It came back to me that once upon a time, many years before, there had been allegations, rumours—never substantiated—that he had punched a black suspect. I can remember nothing else about the case than that; all of the circumstances have gone now, but that simply flashed across my mind, the memory of that allegation. Then he explained very quickly and not very clearly what was going to happen next and we all meekly followed him out of the interview room.

  No, I had no real idea what this was all about—none. It sounds an excuse to say everything happened terribly quickly, but it is nothing less than the truth. He had suddenly come back to the building, had dragged me out and swept to one side all I tried to explain, offered his own solut
ion and decided he was going to be the one to do the interrogating from then on. Yes, I know that he was perfectly within his rights, but I believe—and continue to believe—that what he was deciding was simply not up to him alone. I don’t feel I actually thought there was anything malevolent about his actions at that point: I felt more that I had been caught up in a whirlwind and deprived of time to think and make decisions. I felt that on behalf of my colleague, too. There were two of us who had been conducting the interview, the questioning—and we were equally dismissed. I’m not sure whether we actually spoke about the whole thing together later or not; we were both too shell-shocked. So we basically proceeded into this back place—this old Victorian rooms and stairs—and started down into a kind of basement. But if the two of us felt bewildered, I can hardly imagine what was going through the mind of our prisoner. He was just beside himself with terror.

  *

  NO, IT WASN’T hearing about the bombing itself that came first. It just so happened that I went downstairs very early in the morning and put on the radio. There are times I think when you feel something catastrophic has taken place, and this was one of them. It had nothing to do with second sight at that moment, nothing at all. It was just the kind of feeling I suspect we all have now and again in our lives when we know something has happened. I just sat numb with a cup of tea by the window; the radio was hardly on at all because I was afraid I might waken my husband upstairs. In the end I ceased to hear the individual words that were spoken at all: my eyes were on the beauty of the early-morning sky and they filled with tears.

  I couldn’t tell you when I saw the vision, if that’s what I’m to call it; I never really know how to describe such things. I’m from the north-west Highlands of Scotland and I have the second sight, have had it since I was a young child. I don’t believe you choose to have such a thing: indeed, if most people could choose whether they’d have it or not I suspect they would wish it away in a moment.

  It’s very hard to describe how it works with me. Quite suddenly I’ll be taken outside myself altogether: it’s almost as though a door into another world opens and I’m inside for a few seconds. Except that you have no sense whatsoever of the passage of time; I have no real way of knowing whether it all lasts five seconds or five minutes. Most often it happens when I’m on my own, and it seems to be when I’m quite far away in my thoughts anyway. So you’re slipping from a place of—I simply don’t know how to express it properly. In Scotland we talk about being in a dwam; the way you might be on a bus when you’re looking into the landscape and are far away in your thoughts. It’s not necessarily a place of deep thinking; you may not be consciously thinking of anything at all. It’s somehow beyond that.

  At any rate, I had this flash of a vision of a river of blood. It was in a town or a city, and I knew it was a place where I had never been before. I cannot tell you how I knew that, I can say only that I did know it, pure and simple. Although it lasted for only a moment, for that split second I could see with absolute clarity the buildings on either side of the road and even the shapes of the clouds in the sky. It was as clear as any photograph, but it all happened so quickly—rather like a flash of lightning—so you are left with only the detail of this single picture you’ve been given.

  But I did know with certainty, right away, it was a river of blood. I could tell it was flowing, don’t ask me how. There was just no doubt about that part of it, and I really knew at once that this was linked to the bombing. I don’t believe it represented the bombing itself; I knew it was somehow connected to it. The fact was that this was somewhere different; I just knew it. It felt a different place too. I realise that a lot of my explanation is going to make little or no sense, especially to anyone who takes a healthy amount of convincing about things. I can say only that this is the best way I can describe what I suffer; it is the most honest way. I really didn’t sleep that night; I was wondering if there was anything I could do to work out where this place might be, to prevent some terrible catastrophe before it was too late. It didn’t strike me at the time that the vision might have been a metaphor; most of what I’m shown is literal. But all I could do was remember the sight of that flowing blood; I felt I could all but smell it. And why was this given to me? I don’t think I’ll ever know; I often don’t. I just suffer with something until it makes a kind of sense. But in the end I felt there was nothing I could do with it, except remember it and see that blood and smell it. I think it was a warning, nothing less than a warning of what was to come.

  *

  GEORGE CARR, CONSERVATIVE Party—nine thousand, two hundred and twenty-four. Marjory Karen Ellis, Labour Party—six thousand, one hundred and ten. Laurence Kelly, Liberal Democrat—one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-six. Francis Eric Semple—nine thousand, seven hundred and twelve. I hereby declare that Francis Eric Semple…

  The place just erupted after that. I think Eric was the most surprised of the lot. I remember his face being quite ashen; he blinked a lot and was holding Trish’s hand, but he hardly seemed to notice what was going on around him. It was like a football stadium. With his name being roared so much he was barely able to speak, and he didn’t say much in the end. The Tories had really believed they’d won it; I think he believed it himself, right up to the nail. I’m not sure his own supporters did, though; they were jubilant, but they’d fought and fought for every vote. And that was what did it: five hundred votes was the difference between success and failure in the end.

  I noticed Eric was whisked away quite quickly. There was a struggle to get him out of a side door; it looked as if things were going to get a bit ugly at one point. He had his heavyweight champions: a couple of Neanderthals who could have broken their way through concrete. There were English flags flying, some far-right inflammatory chanting. The media were going wild; there were television crews—not only from this country—and all manner of interviews taking place. Everyone knew what Eric stood for: he was an independent in name only. This was a first, a total first. It was one thing being voted onto a local council, but winning a seat in a by-election was something else.

  The spin being put on it already was that it was the Burroway effect, that Eric had stood on a xenophobic, anti-Islamic platform and tapped into far-right sympathies. I suppose that wasn’t all wrong either; he certainly benefitted from the Burroway tragedy—perhaps he wouldn’t have won at all without it. But what was more true was that the whole mood of the country was quite anti-Islamic: people were really angry at the carnage, at the slaughter of total innocents. Eric had been bold in his speech-making: he wasn’t called Little Hitler for nothing. Quite what they thought he could do to change the position is another matter; it was almost that they could just feel a bit better about the state of the world and their lives if he was elected—that was as important as anything else.

  People spilled out onto the streets after that and it was a warm and muggy night. There was a party atmosphere and you could hear chanting and clapping all around. One or two pubs were serving free drinks and I remember hearing fireworks going off. I’m not sure what I thought, to be honest. I was quite excited that he’d done it, that he’d proved all the pundits wrong. But I can also remember thinking I was glad I didn’t come from the Pakistani community. I can’t say I thought about that for any length of time, but I certainly can remember it being something that went through my mind.

  I think there was a feeling as well that this was a middle finger up to Westminster. There was a northern dimension to all this, too. It wasn’t just about London deciding how we were going to live our lives and telling us that multi-culturalism was going to work. There was this sense of sending a message to say we had minds of our own and the way we voted was up to us. Maybe that was part of the reason for the result too. I think that Eric was the only really local candidate on the list: the rest weren’t exactly from the south-east, but they certainly weren’t seen as born and bred. Eric’s great strength was appealing to the working-class man, rousing the fire in him. He was
respected and he had the right voice; more than that—he had the perfect voice.

  But I think I went home that night imagining the place would be back to normal the following morning. That’s generally the way of it, isn’t it? You can have a right old political earthquake and the next day the bins are still collected and old Mr Jones still walks his poodle to the newsagent’s to pick up his copy of the paper. I just thought it had been an exciting night and it went to show you could never predict the outcome of elections. I drew my curtains and paid homage to the patron saint of political upsets. I had no earthly idea what was about to happen. But I would still contend that no one did: not a soul. I’d put money on that.

  *

  I’M NOT HONESTLY sure how it all began. It’s funny how everything’s clear at the time and then hardly any time later you start to question the order of things. I was working late that night, was down in one of the side streets where the company has a basement. I’m not the least bit political: I’m one of the silent majority. You have extremists on both sides; each lot is as bad as the other. No doubt they have points to make, but I think the past few months illustrate more than anything what things are like at the edges. The irony is that I used to be very politically engaged once upon a time: I was a Labour man with strong working-class roots. Then I lost faith in Labour—I think it was the Iraq war that did it. I marched with the millions against that war and no one listened. That was the last straw: I lost faith in the machines that politicians had become. They weren’t people any more. I didn’t truly believe they cared. But I especially didn’t believe that where I lived, on the edge of Sudburgh. I saw the worst of things over perhaps eighteen months or two years and I felt sickened.