The Glimpse

by Claire Merle

‘So they think your brother’s stil involved with the Enlightenment Project?’

  Lila frowned and pinched her lips together. ‘What have you heard about the Project?’

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  Ana shrugged. ‘The usual, I guess. A group of people living on the heath like they’re out of the Middle Ages.

  Anyone that goes inside the wal doesn’t come out. The folowers are starved and tortured until they break down.

  Then they’re brainwashed into accepting the Project’s teachings and carrying out abductions and massacres as part of a divine prophecy to banish evil from the world.

  That sort of thing.’

  Lila’s gaze dug into Ana. ‘How original.’

  Ana coughed and began twisting the longer strands of hair from the top of her head down into her eyes. If Cole was stil involved with the Enlightenment Project, he could be realy dangerous. They al could.

  ‘So, um, what do the Wardens think your brother and anyone else involved have done with the Pure guy?’ she asked. ‘Theoreticaly . . .’

  ‘Theoreticaly, they haven’t got that far. There’ve been no demands. No one even knows if Jasper Taurel is a political hostage. Maybe he wanted to disappear.’

  Lila fiddled with the pretty key on her necklace, then glanced furtively back at Nate and Rachel, who had now resumed their own heated discussion.

  ‘Cole’s pre-charge hearing is tomorrow,’ she murmured.

  ‘Cole’s pre-charge hearing is tomorrow,’ she murmured.

  ‘The court wil decide whether he can be locked up for another thirty-nine days while they investigate the missing Pure guy’s case. Nate thinks we should ask for another lawyer, but then the actual hearing could get pushed back weeks and by that time Cole wil have almost done the forty-two days and they’l have to let him go anyway.’

  ‘What about hiring a lawyer?’

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  ‘Yeah,’ Lila said. ‘You couldn’t lend us a thousand credits could you?’

  Ana looked away. If she got back her ID stick she could get them five thousand credits. Her ID was linked to her father’s current account. But if she touched that money, he would know. And he would find her.

  There had to be a way of getting Cole out without giving herself up. He was stil her best bet for obtaining information. Either he was involved with the abduction, or – and this seemed far more likely given everything else she’d learnt so far – he’d known Jasper was in trouble and had been trying to help him. One way or another, Cole would have answers.

  Ana closed her eyes. She had to surmount her fear. She would think through the problem. There had to be a way.

  ‘Two years ago,’ she said, ‘a man caled Peter Vincent was taken in for the third time under the Terrorism Act.

  The first two times they kept him the ful term but never charged him. The third time, the court over-ruled the charged him. The third time, the court over-ruled the Wardens’ request to hold him for up to forty-two days on the grounds of unfair discrimination.’

  Lila sat up on her knees. ‘That’s what I was saying. It’s discrimination. So you think there’s a chance of getting Cole off because it’s already happened twice before?’

  ‘The law works on precedents. If they’ve conceded the possibility before, and Cole’s case is similar, the judge is more likely to go the same way again, otherwise it’s inconsistent.’

  ‘My God, this is briliant!’ Lila leapt off the couch, clasping her hands in front of her. ‘I knew you being here

  – I 123

  knew it wasn’t just coincidence.’ She reached out and puled Ana up, squeezing her hands so tightly they hurt.

  Then she puled Ana into a hug and whispered in her ear,

  ‘There’s a bigger plan.’

  A bigger plan . . . The words sizzled inside Ana like frost touching fire. Religious people talked about ‘bigger plans’.

  Belief in a higher power was a form of psychosis.

  Everybody knew religion had destroyed every culture that ever existed. That’s why the Board fought so hard to ban public acts of worship. That’s why there were twin bilboards everywhere warning people: DOES GOD SPEAK TO YOU IN MYSTERIOUS

  WAYS?

  DON’T BE A VICTIM OF YOUR ILLNESS.

  Ana suddenly remembered something else she’d heard Ana suddenly remembered something else she’d heard about the Enlightenment Project. They were conspiracy theorists. They taught that mental ilnesses didn’t realy exist. They claimed that none of their folowers ever became sick.

  She scrutinised Lila for signs of Personality Faith Disorder. The key on the chain around the girl’s neck could be a religious symbol. Lila’s pupils seemed larger and darker than before.

  ‘Wil you do it?’ Lila said, clasping Ana’s hands in her own.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Wel, you clearly know a bit about law. You can help with building the case to get Cole off. You could drive the argument in court.’

  Ana shook her head.

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  ‘Listen,’ Lila continued, ‘it’s obvious you’re on the run, hiding from someone. So you could do with some new ID, right? My brother can get you the best there is. It would pass under a normal police check. And when Cole gets out he could get someone to hack into the Wardens’ network files, so that even they wouldn’t know the difference. You could officialy become someone else. No more running.’

  ‘I’m not barred. I don’t even look old enough to have a degree. I can’t go into a court hearing with fake ID and pose as a lawyer. That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You could be a lawyer’s assistant,’ Lila said. ‘If I styled your hair and did your make-up you could pass for at least twenty. You could help Cole’s crap lawyer make a proper case.’

  Ana thought about the security checks there would be to enter the courts. It might be easy enough to get through, but even with contacts and short hair, it didn’t rule out the possibility of someone recognising her.

  And what if she failed to free Cole? Would his family lay the blame on her?

  Lila folowed Ana’s gaze to her brother and Rachel in the kitchen. ‘I’l take care of those two,’ she said. ‘Wil you do it? Wil you help?’

  Ana bit the insides of her cheeks. The wild city seemed to be bleeding her of al her good sense. She felt like she was on a ride she couldn’t get off. No going back.

  Whatever happened, wherever it took her, she was on it until the very end. She huddled her arms around her bent legs.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’l do it.’

  Lila squealed.

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  Ana smiled, but deep down she wondered who she needed protecting from the most – the Wardens, Cole’s family, her father or herself.

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  12

  12

  The Defence

  A thump sounded on the cabin door. Ana startled from troubled dreams. She’d been in a car park again, franticaly trying to find Jasper as the concrete cavern filed with water. Disorientated, she roled on to her back and tried to open her eyes. Pain jabbed her eyelids. Her head throbbed from lack of sleep.

  ‘Time to go,’ a rough voice shouted.

  Nate! Ana’s body jerked wide-awake. Pre-dawn light washed the berth in grey shadow. Hurriedly, she scrambled for her clothes, puling on jeans and Lila’s sweater. Her heart raced as she unlocked the cabin door.

  Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, despite the early morning chil, Nate had evidently been up long enough to shower and shave. He was alone.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Get dressed,’ he ordered. ‘I’l wait for you up top.’ He looked Ana in the eye a moment too long. She nodded once. As she closed the door and leant back against it, needles of anxiety roled up her arms and legs.

  In the bathroom, she splashed cold water on her face and pushed back her hair. Then she grabbed her leather jacket and clambered up the ladder to the deck.

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  She emerged to the smel of freshly ground coffee and She emerged to the smel of fres
hly ground coffee and decaying rubbish. In the distance, a couple of pink tower blocks glimmered in the dim half-light. Nate and Rachel leant against the exterior wooden paneling of the wheelhouse. Rachel passed Ana a paper cup and without a word started across the gangplank. Ana relaxed a bit.

  This obviously wasn’t about her ID stick then.

  She folowed them across the plank, coffee burning her through the flimsy cup. Safely on the narrow bank, she puled her sleeve down to buffer the heat and took a sip.

  Instantly, she felt better. The coffee tasted as good as it smelt.

  They walked alongside a high black fence. The map projected by Nate’s interface shimmered in the early morning fuzz. For as far as the eye could see, barges of various sizes and colours lined the canal, two, sometimes three across.

  Occasionaly, a stench of bad drains wafted from the litter-strewn waters. Birdsong filed the morning quiet.

  Ana wondered where they were going. She walked fast to keep up. Though lacking sleep and stil recovering from diving into the canal, her body was used to early-morning physical exertion, and she soon fel in with Nate’s stride, leaving Rachel to pul up the rear. They folowed the canal wal along for two hundred metres then climbed steps, passing through an opening in a fence, on to a street.

  At first glance, the row of whitewashed Regency houses and parked cars reminded Ana of British movies set in London at the turn of the milennium. Romantic comedies with bumbling lead characters that fel in love but were kept apart by insecurities and misunderstandings. But as kept apart by insecurities and misunderstandings. But as they strode past several vehicles, she realised the cars weren’t 128

  empty. People slept on backseats and in gutted boots. A canvas tent hung from a large estate car. Further along, two vehicles had been roled back to back, doors torn away to make a single shelter. The tranquil, leafy suburbia was an ilusion. As Ana examined the street, she noticed a labyrinth of tents and shelters behind the white wals and iron railings of boarded-up houses.

  She’d driven through this sort of neighbourhood before.

  She knew about the Global Depression and how in the late tens and early twenties the banks reclaimed over fifty per cent of people’s homes. Tent cities had sprung up.

  Pockets of England were abandoned, while others became over populated with the jobless searching for work. In the end, when the Depression was officialy over and the slump in the economy became the norm, the National Bank, a conglomeration of several English investment and high-street banks was the only one left standing. They had total control over the remaining oil reserves in the North Sea, ownership of over ninety per cent of the country’s agri-cultural land – land that was heavily policed – and legal possession of milions of homes.

  ‘You could comfortably house four to five families in each of these.’ Nate scowled.

  ‘There are plenty of other streets where people squat,’

  Ana said. ‘Why not here?’

  ‘You’d have to knock down a wal to get into one of

  ‘You’d have to knock down a wal to get into one of these places,’ Rachel answered. ‘The windows and doors are boarded from the inside with steel sheets. And then, even if you did get in, after a night or two you’d be going to hospital. National’s not messing around with their 129

  property. They’ve got a deadly deterrent. No one knows what they’re using, but you see a house with steel boards, you’re better off on the outside . . . Where you from, anyway?’

  Ignoring Rachel’s question, Ana stared up at the windows. The rising sun began to catch and reflect off the metal. If you narrowed your eyes, the sheets looked like ordinary windows on a bright day.

  They continued to weave through back streets, until they came to a Victorian house with sash windows and a wooden front door. A sturdy fence surrounded the front garden.

  Nate wound his hand through a gap in the gate and unhooked the lock. They trod the wide path up to the door.

  On either side of the path long grass swished in the breeze.

  ‘Who lives here?’ Ana asked.

  ‘Cole’s lawyer,’ Nate said. He lifted up the letter box and peered into darkness. After a moment, he quietly let it drop shut. ‘Wait here. I’l just let him know we’ve arrived.’ Nate jogged down the steps, vaulted over a picket gate at the side of the house and disappeared through a passage.

  through a passage.

  Ana didn’t know much about how things worked out in the City, but she was pretty sure entering unannounced through a back door at such an early hour meant they weren’t invited. She glanced up and down the street.

  Rachel leaned back against the porch wal, watching Ana scepticaly, making her feel self-conscious. Rachel was far older than Ana, probably in her mid-twenties, and she had an edge to her. As though if you got too close you risked getting mangled.

  At last, there came a dul thud from the other side of the 130

  door, folowed by a click. Nate poked his head around the corner. He scanned up and down the street, then ushered Ana inside.

  ‘Have fun,’ Rachel said.

  The halway stank of bleach. Two doors lay ahead of them. The one on the left stood open; the one on the right had been boarded over. Nate waved Ana through the open door and folowed her in, closing it behind them.

  Floorboards creaked underfoot as they passed an empty living room. Up ahead lay the kitchen. Nate guided Ana through a door on their left, into a dark space that smelt of bad breath and body odour. Heavy curtains blocked the window light. Something unseen whimpered in the folds of darkness. Ana held back, pinching her nose, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Nate switched on a smal bedside light.

  Just an arm’s length away, a naked man sat tied to a kitchen chair.

  kitchen chair.

  Ana cried out in alarm and tumbled backwards.

  A sock gagged the man’s mouth. A large, pink moon of skin shone in the centre of his patchy black hair. Bushy eyebrows stuck out from the edge of his face like a misplaced moustache.

  ‘Mr Jackson,’ Nate said, ‘I present you with your new assistant.’ Ana’s heart felt like it had jumped right out of her.

  Nate was definitely deranged. He must have some sort of Aggressive Personality Disorder because he’d tied up his brother’s lawyer and was threatening him, instead of con-ducting a normal conversation.

  Nate bent over the man so that their heads were almost touching. ‘This afternoon,’ he said, ‘when you walk into 131

  court to have my brother’s pre-charge detention overruled, she’l be with you. You wil carefuly folow her instructions as to how to proceed. Clear so far?’

  The man’s low whining turned into a frantic effort to speak. Ana recoiled in disgust – at Nate, at the lawyer, at this ridiculous plan.

  ‘I haven’t got a frigging clue what you’re saying,’ Nate told the man. ‘To be quite honest, I don’t care. There’s only one rule. You do exactly what she tels you to.’

  Ana swalowed down her horror as best she could.

  ‘Surely we could have this conversation without the viol-

  ‘Surely we could have this conversation without the viol-ence?’ she said. Nate folded his arms across his chest, face screwed up tight. She shook her head. What had she got herself mixed up in? ‘So how wil he know what I want him to say?’

  ‘He’l wear an earpiece and we’l give you an interface set to vocal. Whatever you type he’l hear through his piece.’

  ‘That won’t work,’ she said. ‘Someone wil notice.’

  ‘We’l extend his sideburns so they cover the ears,’ Nate said. ‘’Course, it would help if you could touch-type so you weren’t constantly looking down at your lap.’

  Ana stared at him. He’s demented. But how could she back out now? She tentatively stepped forward and squatted in front of the lawyer. She ripped off the tape plugging his mouth and removed the dirty sock, almost gagging at the smel.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Nate said. She shot him a scathing look.

&nbs
p; The lawyer’s frightened eyes flitted back and forth between them. He exhaled a puff of stale air. Ana backed up, breath-132

  ing through her mouth. Nate clenched his jaw but remained silent.

  ‘What do you think of this plan, Mr Jackson?’ she asked.

  The man’s head whipped up to Nate and back down again. ‘I’m a tax lawyer,’ he stammered. ‘Not a people person. You should ask for reassignment.’

  ‘Take too long,’ Nate said.

  ‘I only get put on the cases they want me to lose.’

  ‘Why?’ Ana asked.

  The man broke eye contact. He stared down at his pasty thin legs. ‘Because I never win.’

  ‘Wil they alow you to bring an assistant?’

  ‘If you’ve got an LLB degree.’

  Ana looked over at Nate. ‘Wil I have an LLB degree?’

  she asked. Nate nodded. ‘OK.’ She held her breath and began to untie the lawyer. ‘Mr Jackson,’ she said, ‘I’d like you to transfer al the information you’ve got concerning the charges against Mr Winter on to his brother’s interface so that I may study it later.’ The man rubbed his wrists. Red cord lines lay grooved in his skin.

  He hesitated before getting up.

  ‘May I?’ he asked, pointing to a dressing gown draped across the floor at the foot of his bed.

  ‘Of course.’ Ana turned aside. She had no desire to see more of the crêpe-like skin stretched over angular bones, the mottled chest and arms, the wrinkles of flab at the waist, the droopy bump underneath his stained Y-fronts.

  ‘How can we be sure he’s going to go along with this?’

  she said quietly to Nate. ‘He could easily talk to someone between now and this afternoon.’

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  Nate laughed nastily. ‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. He knows who he’s dealing with.’

  ‘Threats don’t work wel with everyone,’ Ana said. She turned to the defence lawyer. Slumped in an armchair by an oak wardrobe, he seemed slightly less pathetic in his navy dressing gown.

  ‘How are you regarded among your work coleagues?’

  she asked him.

  ‘My work coleagues?’

  ‘Yes. And your boss who puts you on these losing cases?’

  Jackson looked at her bleakly, as though expecting her to twist the knife. ‘How would it feel,’ she continued, ‘to show them that you can win?’