Singleton's Law

by Reginald Hill

  “Caldercote and Singleton,” said a voice. Whitey glanced up. It was the stubbly supporter. He was speaking to a man sitting at his ease in an old wing-chair before a large open fireplace in which a pot of geraniums burnt brighter than coal. He was about twenty years old, wearing a red and white striped blazer, matching shirt, and a huge Athletic rosette. His pale round face bore a sombre disapproving expression as he regarded the two newcomers, but his voice was studiedly neutral as he repeated, “Caldercote and Singleton.”

  “I’m Caldercote,” said John who seemed to have suffered rather less in the transfer from the street.

  “I know,” said the young man. “I’m King.”

  Whether this was a title or a name, Whitey could not make out. He did not care much either.

  “You mean, this is it?” he demanded of Caldercote, half relieved, half angry. He rose and turned on the stubbly youth. “You overdid the realism a bit, didn’t you?”

  “Singleton,” said King. “You’renot much like your picture.” He had a copy of Nuspic in his hand.

  “People change,” grunted Whitey.

  “So they say. Caldercote, why did you ask for transfer?”

  Rapidly John explained the situation. King listened without interrupting.

  At the end he said, “So you’re finished overground. Let’s hope you’re not too old to learn new tricks.”

  “Not so new!” said John with a slightly over-hearty laugh. “Why, I was active &”

  “Fine, fine. Georgie, take him down to the buttery and find what he can do. We’ll talk later.”

  The stubbly youth led John to the door in a manner which brooked no refusal. There was a lengthy silence after they had gone. Whitey made his way to an armchair and sat down, uninvited. Besides King, there were two others in the room, of much the same age. They stood, very still, on either side of the lace-curtained window.

  Whitey made a conscious effort to control the irrational pique he had felt at his rough handling. It was absurd. He had been hurt much more than this in the past twenty-four hours, and these men were responsible for his present safety. So why should he feel so antagonistic?

  He was able to answer himself almost immediately. Because they were young. Because he resented having to feel indebted to these callow youths who had been mere babes in arms when he crouched by his father’s side, terrified by the menacing faces pressed against the coach window, and saw the flames leap up from the road ahead.

  “I’m grateful to you for arranging this,” he heard himself say, pleasantly if rather formally, through the edges of the waking nightmare.

  “Spare us the thanks,” said King. “It’s a way out from overground. Caldercote needed it. You just happened to be along.”

  Whitey should have felt happy to be thus absolved from feeling gratitude. He didn’t.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  “Who knows?” answered King.

  “That’s a good question,” said Whitey. “Why not take me to someone who does know?”

  He stood up, suddenly impatient to be away from this round-faced youth in the fancy dress.

  “So you’re Singleton,” said King.

  “Yes, I’m Singleton and I’d like to talk with someone who matters.” He let his anger show now.

  “You know where you are, Singleton?”

  “Yes,” he said, startled by the inconsequentiality of the question.

  “Where?”

  “Jesus College, Oxford. Of course! The Jays! You might as well advertise!”

  “And you’ve met me.”

  “So?”

  King’s voice was low, controlled.

  “I’d like to chuck you back, Singleton. Drop you where we found you. Only now you know about Jesus. It’s not a joke, so don’t put on your non-smiling look. All the good Jesus jokes were made years ago. I’m serious. You know what Jesus is? It’s the centre of our movement. Unless age has calcined your grey matter even more than indicated by the wishy-washy crap you write, you’ve been able to work something like that out for yourself. And I place no great reliance in your capacity for silence. So we must do something else with you.”

  Whitey felt a white heat of rage explode in his head. The kind of angry, intolerant, arrogant words he had often vowed never to speak came bubbling out of him like lava from a crater.

  “Do you know who I am? What I’ve done? Do you know anything, you little runt? I’m Singleton. I was fighting the Management before you had your first erection—if you’ve managed one yet. I was in the hulks while you were still spending your pocket-money on comics. I’ve spent all my working life telling the world the truth about this country, and there’s been no occasion to mention you, or the likes of you. Now I want to talk to someone who really matters, Mister King, someone I’ve heard of, not the office boy.”

  He cooled down as suddenly as he had erupted. Enough was enough. He felt partly ashamed, but partly glad. An organization which could exercise control over someone he respected as much as John Caldercote must have a high-powered hierarchy. Underlings like King needed to be repressed from time to time.

  The youth spoke again. He did not sound repressed.

  “Rest assured I’ve heard of you,” he said. “You belong in the history books. I wish you’d stayed there. Your yesterday’s hero, Singleton. No good to anyone. Those who didn’t get arrested and who stayed on here, like Caldercote, they’ve served a purpose. But not you. All you did was set up a nice situation for the Management to exploit. That’s it.”

  “That wasn’t my responsibility,” said Whitey, resentfully finding himself on the defensive. “And if I’d stayed, I’d have been dead by now. For five years, I’ve been the best voice you’ve had in the outside world …”

  “How have you spoken for us?” demanded King scornfully. “What have you got to do with us? You’ve just said you never gave people like us a single mention. The Jays did not exist when you were last here. We are. nothing of your creation, Singleton.”

  “We want the same things,” averred Whitey. “We have a common aim.”

  “Which is?”

  “To overthrow the Management! To break the stranglehold the Four Clubs have on this country.”

  “A broad aim,” said King. “More important is, what is going to take its place? Do we have that in common too? I doubt it if I interpret this pap right!”

  He slapped his copy of Nuspic contemptuously.

  “And what of methods, Singleton? Does writing this stuff achieve anything?”

  “We each use the method we’re most adept at,” answered Whitey tightly.

  “Giving each other moral support the whiles?” mocked King. “Last night we used the method we’re most adept at. We hit the house of an Athletic assistant trainer. We took the reffer alive which was what we wanted, but his wife and two daughters got shot up in the process. Do you raise your glass to that, brother-in-the-cause?”

  “No. No, I don’t,” said Whitey wearily. “I raise my glass to the faint glimmer of hope that such things still seem to bother you a bit, son. That’s all.”

  “What a perceptive little liberal it is,” said King. “Take him away and let me get on with the day’s real business. We’ll talk again later when I feel like another laugh.”

  He made a small, weary, but imperious gesture with his right hand and for a second looked like the young state-burdened monarch his name suggested. Then the two henchmen moved forward and without touching Whitey nevertheless carried him from the room.

  It would have been soothing to his self-esteem had his mind now been full of the philosophical implications of this brief conversation, but instead all he could focus on was his immediate future. The days when he would have been an honoured guest of the underground had clearly long since past. But just how precarious his position really was had not yet become clear. The two youths by his side said nothing and a mixture of apprehension and pride made him keep silent also. His main comfort was that King had said they would talk again late
r. When I feel like a laugh, he had added. Small comfort!

  His two custodians halted beside a door and Whitey followed suit. The youths looked a little uncertain.

  “In here?” asked one of them.

  “Why not? He won’t want him wandering round, will he? Kill two birds.”

  Just a proverb, Whitey assured himself as they knocked on the door which was cautiously opened by another young man with a submachine-gun.

  No one gets sentenced with a proverb, he joked inwardly as they ushered him inside where yet another gunman stood, looking very alert and ready to act. The room was a small sitting room, not unlike the one in which he had met King. Opening off it was a bedroom whose door was wedged open revealing a man sitting slumped in an armchair and another figure lying motionless on a single bed.

  “Singleton,” said Georgie.

  “He’s to go in here? You sure? I’d better check.”

  He picked up the ’phone. Through the open door Whitey saw the short thickset man in the chair look up. His face was a mass of contusions. Then the man on the bed swung his long legs wearily to the floor and rubbed his eyes.

  “Yes,” said the guard on the ‘phone. “Yes, he has. OK.” He turned to the others.

  “He says to put him in.”

  A push in the back propelled Whitey unwillingly through the door. Protective custody was one thing, but he had little desire for his status here to be on a level with that of the men he saw before him.

  “Life is rich with small surprises, Mr. Singleton,” said Sheldrake. “Preds.”

  Nixon Lectures : Fifth Series

  Audio-Visual Material

  4 (L) Tape of interchange between Metropolitan Police Control and a patrol car on duty along the route of the anti-government protest march, January 1985.

  Voice A Bravo 8 to Control.

  Voice B Pass your message Bravo 8.

  Voice A We are parked at the corner of Church Lane and Lordship Lane. We can see the demo. march coming down Lordship Lane. There’s a lot of them. Request instructions.

  Voice B Wait… Bravo 8. Instructions are unchanged. Observe and control.

  Voice A You must be joking! Look, there’s thousands of ’em. It’s more like a football crowd than a protest march. They’re trotting in formation. Christ, it’s frightening! Request assistance.

  Voice B Observe proper procedure, Bravo 8. Wait.

  Voice C Bravo 8. This is Superintendent Bass. What’s the trouble? You’ve got your instructions?

  Voice A Yes, sir. We were requesting assistance, sir.

  Voice C Where the hell do you expect assistance from? These marches are going on all over London, you know that. Do your job and don’t waste my time! Understand?

  PAUSE

  Voice C Bravo 8, I asked you, do you understand?

  Voice A Oh, we understand all right, Bass. Listen, you can’t see this lot, but we can. And I’ll tell you this, you want this lot controlled, you’d better get yourself down here and reffing well control them yourself. Smatch!

  End of tape.

  Chapter 7

  “May I introduce Fred Burdern,” said Sheldrake. He’s not feeling very well. These wankers have been working him over for hours.”

  The stocky man glowered at Whitey but said nothing.

  “He doesn’t like you, Singleton,” said Sheldrake cheerily.

  “I seem fated to be locked up with Management men who don’t like me,” observed Whitey.

  Sheldrake laughed cynically.

  “You’re such an obvious plant, Singleton! If they stuck you in the garden, you’d grow. How the hell did you get here? I left you in the Scrubs.”

  “Coincidence,” said Whitey. “That’s where I left you too.”

  “All right,” said Sheldrake. “Swops. I was misguided enough to call on Fred here. He’s the Club Trainer, as if you didn’t know. We got taken at his house. My fault really. I showed my pass, Fred’s Striker opened the gate, and these reffers were in like a bloody flash. That’s all I know.”

  He rubbed the back of his head gingerly.

  “There was a lot of gunfire. Then they came back with Fred and tossed us both into the back of a van. Nice people you’re associating with, pal. They murdered the Striker at the gate and God knows who else got hurt.”

  King’s words came back to Whitey. He must have been talking about Burdern’s wife and daughters. Poor bastard, he thought looking at the man with new sympathy.

  “Why did they want you?” he asked. “Hostages?”

  “Oh no. Fred’s our Trainer. There’s a big anti-Jay operation being launched by the Strikers and Fred’s the man who knows the details. That’s what they want.”

  “They haven’t bothered you much.”

  “Fortunately I don’t know the details and they seem to know enough about us to know I don’t know. The wankers must have someone on the inside. No, I was just a lucky bonus. Me they will use as a hostage. I hope.”

  He laughed, a little nervously.

  “Though from your performance they hardly need to trade hostages for prisoners, do they? That old sod in the Scrubs must have crapped himself when he found you’d gone. You cost his predecessor his job and that was just by escaping from the hulks. They’ll really relegate this one for letting you get out of the main gaol!”

  This confirmed Whitey’s own feeling that the manhunt had not been as massive and thorough an operation as the escape of Chaucer, Hydrangea and himself had merited. To alert the First Team would mean alerting the Management and the Governor had good reason for not doing that.

  Memory of Hydrangea brought back to him what now seemed the incredibly distant events of the previous day.

  “Did you know I was on that plane, Sheldrake?” he asked. “What was the hi-jacking all about?”

  Sheldrake laughed again. He seemed incredibly relaxed for a man in his position.

  “Good try, Mr. Singleton. I’m not sure why you’re in here with me, but I’ve got to assume you’re trying to catch me offside, haven’t I? I mean, basically you and this lot are on the same team, aren’t you? So, I don’t mind a chat, but nothing confidential, you understand. Just a general picture.”

  “All right,” said Whitey. “We’ll swop general pictures. It wasn’t this lot who got me out. Someone came for Chaucer. The girl and I just followed.”

  “All three of you broke?” Sheldrake whistled. “They’ll put the old sod beyond re-election!”

  “We separated,” said Whitey, feeling the lump on the back of his head throb. “Eventually I was picked up by the Jays and brought here. They don’t quite know what to do with me.”

  “That was a very general picture!” said Sheldrake. “All it deserves in return is the assurance that you were just a lucky bonus from the hi-jack. It wasn’t all laid on for your sole benefit.

  “I thought not. But why then? Why was the girl put away? What happened to the others?”

  “Ref knows,” said Sheldrake calmly. “I’m just an Assistant Manager.”

  He was lying. He knew a great deal more, Whitey was sure.

  “What are you in this for, Sheldrake?” he asked curiously.

  “What’s a nice fellow like me doing in a joint like this, you mean?”

  “Something like that. You’re an intelligent man. You can see as clearly as I can that this country’s reached its lowest depth since the Norman conquest. The only law is what you can get away with. The only rule of behaviour is trust no-one. The country’s carved up into four unnatural territories, many of whose occupants are ready to kill each other for wearing the wrong-coloured scarf. The individual has no rights, no protection, except what he makes for himself. We’re the disgrace of Europe. The only country in the civilized world which permits the basest passions, the most depraved elements, the lowest common denominators to control its destiny!”

  “You should take a closer look at the rest of civilization,” said Sheldrake cynically. “Listen to me, Singleton. You’ve been indulging in a monologue for f
ive years without interruption and you’ve got used to being applauded every time you break wind. You’ve set yourself up as the only true chronicler of our hard times. Articles, seminars, lectures, oh yes, we hear about them, read them, look at transcripts. Then forget them.

  “We’re too busy surviving here. That’s what it’s all about. Now you come along with your reffing condescension, appealing to my intelligence—yes, that’s what it is, condescension! You mean that I seem quite bright for a management moron. Shall I tell you something? I’m fifteen years older than you. I remember the old education system well. This place we’re in now, I was up at this very college, would you believe that? A historian, no less. And the one lesson that remains from my studies is that there are no cures for mankind’s ailments. It’s like the common cold. My granny used to say the best thing to do was take nowt, but sweat it out. If you suppressed the symptoms today, they’d just break out again next week.

  “Well, even in those days, the papers and magazines and tele programmes were full of bleating sheep like you, all trying to sound like collies and telling us what was wrong with society. Why, some of you even dignified your bletherings with pseudo-scientific names and invented a new Babylonish dialect in case people should too easily detect the emptiness of your prattle!”

  “You’re strangely bitter,” interjected Whitey. “I use no jargon. I make a simple claim for rational behaviour and the rule of law.”

  “And when you’ve said that you believe you’ve said something meaningful! Words and phrases like that are the faeces of the intellect. Noisome waste that needs to be flushed away. Society wisely ignores its self-elected wise men. Charlatans, wizards, witch-doctors, that’s all you are, chanting nonsense at a summer’s sky and claiming huge kudos if it happens to rain.”