by Graham, Tom
Carol laughed. Under different circumstances it would have been a delightful, tinkling, girlish laugh. But here – handcuffed, blindfolded, with a mouthful of blood and the dark threat of torture to come – it sounded cold and cruel.
‘What’s so funny?’ Sam asked.
‘You,’ said Carol. ‘You’re funny, for a fascist.’
Good. Let her find me funny. No matter the reason.
‘I’m just some fella,’ Sam said. ‘I’m just trying to do my job.’
‘Like I’m doing mine. Except I’m on the side of the good guys. And I don’t do it for money.’
Away to Sam’s left came the sudden clatter of boots, and the sound of a door being flung open.
‘The compound’s secure,’ came a man’s voice, as young and educated-sounding as Carol’s. ‘No sign of any other intruders. Looks like he really was alone.’
They’ve just finished searching the compound – that means I can only have been unconscious for a few minutes. Gene’s probably on the radio right now this minute, yelling for the armed response team to get their arses down her double-pronto. Just hang on in there, Sam!
‘The Captain will be over shortly,’ the man in the doorway said. ‘You happy looking after the pig until then?’
‘More than happy,’ said Carol.
The door pulled closed and the boots tramped away. Sam heard Carol moving about the shed. She ran a tap and filled a glass. The sound of water sharpened Sam’s terrible thirst unbearably.
‘Are you doing that to be cruel?’ he asked.
To his surprise, he felt the glass touch his dry lips. Foul, rusty water poured across his tongue, but he was grateful for it.
‘Thank you,’ he said when the glass was withdrawn.
‘You won’t thank me when the poison kicks in,’ said Carol.
‘You didn’t poison me. You wouldn’t do that.’
‘What makes you so sure?’ she asked. ‘I’m more than prepared to shoot you. Why not slip you a little something and watch you die?’
‘You need me alive, at least for the time being,’ said Sam. ‘Your Captain wants to interrogate me. He might even try and use me as a hostage to coerce the police – though he’d be wasting his time playing that game. I’m completely at your mercy, Carol. There’s no point in poisoning me.’
‘No, you’re right, there isn’t,’ Carol conceded. ‘Later, maybe. Poison, or … Something more imaginative.’
‘You’re playing mind games with me,’ said Sam. ‘Increasing my sense of vulnerability. Softening me up for questioning.’
‘You’d know all about that, being in the police,’ said Carol. ‘When we bring down the government, we’ll shoot all the policemen and pull down all the prisons.’
‘Carol, just listen to yourself. You’re too smart to be playing revolutionaries with that bunch of losers out here. How the hell did you get tangled up with them in the first place?’
‘I read the papers and watched the news. I saw the way the country was going. I could see that things have to change – and the R-H-F could see that too. Are you aware how many people work more than fifty hours a week and still can’t afford their own home?’
‘I’m just a copper,’ shrugged Sam. ‘And you should see my place. It’s hardly the Ritz.’
‘Ordinary people can’t afford to live anymore. While the idle rich enjoy their luxuries, the workers struggle to survive.’
‘I don’t suppose it’s ever been any different, Carol. But that’s no excuse to start planting bombs.’
‘The government’s veering way off to the right,’ Carol went on. ‘It knows it’s losing control of the country, that the common people – the decent, salt of the earth working men and women who make up the backbone of our society – won’t stand for peasant wages and sky-rocketing inflation. Already the forces of reaction are being armed and assembled to subdue the proletariat by brute force and wanton oppression.’
‘You sound like you’re reading from a student pamphlet,’ said Sam.
‘We’re not students, we’re serious,’ Carol said, primly, and Sam suddenly realized that she was reading from a pamphlet – no doubt one of the R-H-F’s homemade fliers, or perhaps its private manifesto, typed up in student digs somewhere by some adolescent have-a-go Garibaldi with a head full of Marx.
Carol read on. ‘Crippled with strikes and civil unrest, struggling with a crumbling socio-industrial infrastructure, and facing a groundswell of public protests and mass civil disobedience, the generalissimo of the fascist junta has started to respond.’
‘Ted Heath? "Generalissimo of a fascist junta"?!’
Even in these horrible circumstances, Sam had to laugh.
But Carol ploughed on regardless. ‘Hiding behind the façade of its so-called ‘democratic mandate’, it is already entrenching itself behind a barricade of riot police, rubber truncheons, and state-sanctioned terrorism.’
‘This stuff might sound great in the bar at the student union, Carol, but out in the real world it’s –’
‘Trades unions have been infiltrated with secret policemen. Telephone lines are routinely tapped. Mass surveillance is being insinuated into the fabric of society right under the unsuspecting noses of the population …’
‘Carol, I’m too old for this sort of thing.’
‘The media pumps out its diet of lies and distortions masquerading as the truth, and fills the heads of the impoverished workers with desire for the decadent capitalist playthings they can never hope to afford.’
‘You’re going to love the stand-up comedians ten years from now, Carol, believe me.’
‘You’re part of the fascist machinery,’ Carol said, matter-of-factly. ‘And no, I’m not reading this bit out. The country’s falling apart. The government is turning to more and more extreme measures to stay in power. There will be swastikas flying over the Houses of Parliament any day soon, you’ll see. And you, Mr. CID-man, you are part of that regime. You’re a Nazi stooge. You’re the Gestapo.’
‘But here comes you and the Red Hand Faction to seize the day and save the workers,’ said Sam. ‘More fun than cramming for your Eng Lit, is it?’
‘You’re like my daddy. You’d have me back in the Chichester Academy for Young Ladies, all dressed up in my pretty frocks and making eyes at suitable boys.’
‘Is that so bad?’
‘If you think it was fine for Emperor Nero to sit playing the fiddle while Rome burnt all around him, then no,’ said Carol. ‘But you see, Rome is burning. Our Rome. And it’s time to take sides. The pretty frocks had to go on the fire, along with all those bourgeois schoolbooks and everything else that kept me tied to the corrupt capitalist system that brought about our current state of crisis in the first place. The revolution is just around the corner. It needs soldiers, not debutantes.’
‘You’re preaching again,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve heard speeches like this before. Where I come from, there’s too many people talk like you do. They use different words, and different languages, but they’re saying the same thing. They say the world needs to be pulled apart and remade, and to do it they put bombs in buses – and saw people’s heads off – and fly planes into cities.’
‘Planes into cities!’ Carol cried out, delighted. She even clapped her hands together, like an excited girl at a gymkhana. ‘Only a fascist would think of that!’
‘I didn’t think of it. God, I didn’t think of it! It was …’
‘But you know, it’s not a bad idea. Just imagine it, all those pampered capitalist leeches, strapped into their seats, howling and hollering as down they go!’
‘If only you knew what you were really saying.’
‘And then … Kaboom!’ Carol mused, enjoying her fantasy. ‘Smash, crash, right into – where, do you think? The Houses of Parliament? Buckingham Palace? Or what about the Chichester Academy for Young Ladies! Ah, yes please! Or am I letting pleasure get in the way of business? Whatever. The point is, a revolution’s coming whether you like it or not. You know tha
t. And the R-H-F will ensure that it stays on track.’
‘Carol, Carol,’ sighed Sam, shaking his blindfolded head. ‘I know I’m going to come across sounding like your dad, but you’re throwing your life away. You should be back at college, studying for your exams and making new friends and getting ready for the rest of your life.’
‘The Red Hand Faction is my university,’ said Carol, predictably. ‘Its soldiers are my friends. And the rest of my life will be spent in furtherance of the revolution.’
Sam gave up. It was like debating with a Dalek. She was drunk on idealism, with the cast iron self-assurance that only comes with youth and ignorance. Sam imagined her with a Che Guevara poster pinned up on her bedroom wall, worshipping him the way others girls her age worshipped Lennon or Bolan or the Bay City Rollers. No doubt she envisaged the revolution as some sort of freewheeling rock concert, with crowds surging and chanting and cheering, the air buzzing and crackling with joyous excitement. The bad guys would be vanquished and the red flags of freedom would be unfurled across the land. And after that? After that, the sun would be shining every day, and there would be justice for all. The kids would all be barefoot in the park, forever. And the grown-ups would not be there to spoil things.
‘You know what I hope, Carol?’ said Sam. ‘I hope you don’t get yourself killed before you grow out of all this nonsense. I really do hope that.’
‘That’s big of him.’
Sam recognized him the man’s voice at one. It was that swaggering fool with the moustache. The Captain. At once, Sam tensed. He yearned to rip the blindfold off, to at least be permitted to see what guns were leveled at his head, what instruments of torture were being prepared.
‘Has he been giving you any trouble, Carol?’ the Captain asked.
‘He’s been talkative,’ said Carol. ‘He keeps trying to make friends with me.’
‘Well he would. He’s in a pickle and he knows it. Getting pally with us is his only hope. Still, he seems to have gone a bit quiet now, though, hasn’t he.’
‘Take this blindfold off,’ Sam boldly demanded. ‘Whatever you’re going to do to me, at least be man enough to look into my eyes while you’re doing it.’
‘He’s trying to assert some sort of authority over us,’ the Captain, said, sounding amused. ‘No doubt they train them to do that in Gestapo school.’
‘I said take off this blindfold and face me like a man!’
There was a pause, during which Sam could hear nothing but the sound of his own rapid breathing. Then, without warning, he felt somebody tugging roughly at the knot of the blindfold. The cloth was yanked away, and at once harsh light flooded Sam’s vision, burning into his retinas. He screwed up his eyes in pain, felt renewed waves of agony pulsing through his brain from where Carol had whacked him. His eyes smarted, pouring tears down his blood-caked face.
‘He does look a bit of a state,’ he heard Carol say.
‘If you think he looks a state now,’ laughed the Captain, ‘just wait until we’re finished with him!’
CHAPTER TWELVE
BLACK & DECKER
A naked light bulb burned from a trail of flex, bathing the hammers and screwdrivers, drills and bolt cutters, rusting tips of boathooks and old fish-gutting knives, in a sickly yellow glow. Young Carol, with her Heidi plaits and gentle, pretty face, stood over him, playing with the semi-automatic as if it were a toy. The Captain had leant his ArmaLite carefully against a wall, rolled up his sleeves, and was now leaning casually against a wooden workbench, fixing Sam with a long look. Pensively, he ran his finger and thumb repeatedly along the contours of his Jason King moustache.
‘Can you see now?’ he asked.
‘I can see,’ said Sam, forcing his streaming eyes to open.
‘I’m assuming that you know who I am.’
Sam said nothing, admitted nothing, gave nothing away.
‘How did you find out about our little hidey-hole, hmm?’
Sam tried to look as blank and noncommittal as possible.
‘Whatever information you have about us, it gave you confidence enough to break in and try to make off with our little hostage, Mary Deery,’ said the Captain. ‘And that makes me think you must be rather more in the know about the RHF than is good for you.’
Beside him, arrayed on the workbench, were pliers, chisels, a rusty, gap-toothed saw. Sam tried not to look at them, tried to forget the pain throbbing through his head and the feel of dry blood congealed on the side of his face. All that mattered was to keep them talking – talking about anything, even if it was just this insane revolution claptrap – in the hope that, out there, somewhere, Gene was arranging his rescue.
‘Will you say something?’ the Captain asked, his voice mild, his eyes hard. ‘Or do I have to make you say something?’
‘We have one of your boys in custody,’ said Sam. ‘Brett Cowper.’
‘I know that.’
‘He’s talking. He’s telling us everything. He’s cooperating fully.’
‘Not any more, I should imagine,’ said the Captain.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s not likely to last long in one of your Gestapo dungeons. Admittedly, he’s not black, so that might extend his life expectancy for a few days. But …’ He shrugged.
‘We’re not the Gestapo,’ said Sam. But in his mind he could see Gene laying into Cowper in the Lost and Found Room, and the red dots speckling the floor outside the holding cells, and Cowper’s dead face lying there, smiling, surrounded by a slowly spreading pool of his own blood.
Put all that out of your head, Sam, he thought. Don’t give these fanatical bastards a single sliver of credibility. They’re the bad guys, you’re the good guys, and don’t let these buggers mess with your head. Stay focused. Stay sharp. And buy yourself as much time as you can …
‘Cowper’s in a cell,’ said Sam. ‘He doesn’t want to go down for thirty years for his involvement with you lunatics, so he’s giving us all sorts of inside information. The game’s up with the Red Hand Faction. We know all about you. It’s only a matter of time before we round the lot of you up.’
‘Oh, dear!’ said the Captain. ‘Is that why they sent you here – all on your own – to sneak about in the dark? Is that why they’re bursting in now to rescue you and arrest all of us?’
‘He’s not very good at bluffing, is he?’ said Carol.
‘You can’t really blame him,’ smiled the Captain. ‘You gave him quite a thwack back there, Carol. It can’t be easy trying to think straight with the sort of whopper migraine he must be having right now.’
The Captain began fiddling idly with a lethal spike from a boathook, turning it back and forth between his fingers.
‘Brett Cowper’s not said anything to you, has he?’ he said quietly. ‘He’s dead. If you lot haven’t finished him, he’ll have finished himself.’
‘He’s alive and cooperating.’
Ignoring him, the Captain continued. ‘Nobody knows you’re here. You followed up some lead, didn’t you? On your own. You thought you’d win yourself some kudos with your Gestapo buddies. You thought you were James Bond. But I think in doing show he made a shilly mishtake, Mish Moneypenny.’
Carol laughed.
‘You’re right: I did come here alone,’ said Sam. ‘But very soon I’ll be reported missing.’
‘Most likely,’ said the Captain. ‘But I don’t think anyone will know where to look for you.’
‘It won’t take them long to work it out.’
‘I don’t believe you. I don’t think anyone’s going to come here, not until it’s too late.’ The Captain, still smiling, looked very deeply into Sam’s eyes. ‘No one’s going to help you. You’re in something of a jam, Mr CID.’
‘My name’s Sam.’
‘He’s trying to appeal to us as fellow human beings,’ said Carol, and the Captain nodded.
‘My name is Sam,’ he said again. ‘Sam Tyler.’
‘I don’t care what you’re called,’ said t
he Captain. ‘Your name isn’t destined for history. Mine, however …’
The Captain lifted his face, letting the creamy light from the naked bulb fall across it. He seemed to be dreaming his insane dreams, while Carol watched him adoringly. After a moment, he seemed to recall where he was and what he was doing. He put down the old boathook and turned his attention back to Sam.
‘We could go round and round in circles all night,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got a war on my hands and really can’t spare the time. So, we’ll get on with the business at hand. Sam Tyler, or whatever your real name is, I’m going to use you. I’m going to use you as a courier. I’m going to entrust you with a message to take to your fascist paymasters.’
‘You’re going to let me go?’ said Sam.
‘Yes,’ the Captain said, running his hands over the array of tools on the bench. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
He picked up a long, sharp-tipped screwdriver. Carol grinned, her cheeks flushing with excitement. Sam secretly tested the strength of the handcuffs, the sturdiness of the chair he was manacled to, but found both cuffs and chair were solid.
‘My name is Peter Verden,’ the Captain said. ‘Remember it. Tell it to your pig-dog bosses when you get back. Better still, I’ll write it down for you. On you. So you won’t forget.’
And he made carving motions in the air with the screwdriver.
‘I’ll write “Peter Verden”, across your … back, do you think? Your stomach? What about across your forehead? And then I’ll write the name of this delightful creature standing beside you – the last woman you’ll ever see, alas, because I’m going to have to send you out of here without any eyes, I’m afraid. I’ll write “Carol Waye” on your … backside? Oh, no, that’s unbecoming for a lady. Maybe I’ll write “Carol” on your left forearm and “Waye” on your right.’
‘I don’t mind if you write it on his cock,’ Carol suggested, the vulgar language sitting oddly with her cut-glass accent.
‘But will there be enough space?’ Verden mused.
‘What’s the point of all this, Verden?’ Sam asked, glaring up at him. ‘I thought you were a revolutionary, not a sadist.’
