Singleton's Law

by Reginald Hill

  He looked round the room for his clothes. There was no sign of the overlarge, purple-stained suit he had borrowed from poor John Caldercote, but draped over the back of King’s chair were a pair of slacks and a blue tunic-shirt. Someone had been most thoughtful. He began to pull them on.

  “Perhaps,” said King slowly, with a faint smile which made him look no more than fifteen, “perhaps deep down we’re not revolutionaries at all, merely conservative old hoarders. We hate to throw anything away. You never know; one day it might come in useful.”

  “Fine,” said Whitey. “It’s nice to know you’re so well motivated. Will this benevolence extend to getting me out of the country?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said King, quite serious now. “You know a lot about us. Away from our care and protection, you’d be very vulnerable.”

  “You don’t mean the Clubs are organized internationally?” interjected Whitey in disbelief.

  “Hardly,” answered King. “Something as parochial as this would find that very hard. But there are those who sympathize. In any case, it’s not just outside pressures that are dangerous. As a journalist, I’m sure you’d find it hard not to drop knowledgeable hints about your exciting adventures in Old England. No, you’re better off here.”

  “Waiting for the day?”

  “It may come sooner than you think.”

  “Promises, promises,” said Whitey gloomily. “You don’t really mean that some kind of uprising’s just round the corner, do you? No, don’t bother to tell me. It seems the less I know, the better off I’ll be. Look, can I go out of this place, or do I stay cooped up in here for ever?”

  King thought a moment.

  “Wait,” he said, and left the room.

  Gone to check, thought Whitey almost gleefully. The King too must obey.

  He looked at himself in the wall-mirror. Beneath the tan he had collected from his recent stay in the East, his face was drawn and bloodless. In his casual tunic and slacks, he might have been a sick man trying to regain his strength on a convalescent holiday. But he knew that outside this building the blue of his tunic would tell the onlooker that he was something quite different. A friend, an ally, a Supporter. And fifty miles south it would tell yet another story.

  King came back in and tossed Whitey a blue and white cardboard kepi and rosette.

  “Camouflage,” he said. “It should do. You don’t look much like the Nuspic photo and that’s all the Strikers will have if they’re out looking for you.”

  “You think that’s likely here?” he asked, pinning the rosette high on his left shoulder.

  “On the thigh,” said King. “Here they’re wearing them on the left thigh. You never know what’s likely. Sometimes I think there’s a much greater degree of co-operation between the top management than the ordinary Supporter would dream of. Come on. I’ll show you round.”

  The Coventry campus had the same air of neglect and decay which marked all large centres of population. Here there were comparatively few traces of the aftermath of battle, or even of the Supporters’ formation marches which could leave a trail of destruction several miles long. Such expressions of enthusiasm for the Club they saved up until their own living quarters were safely behind. But maintenance was a different matter. No norm was going to be foolish enough to come on campus to work, and the internal organization did not go far beyond keeping essential power supplies going. Time too leads a destructive march and Whitey had to tread carefully over cracked paving stones through which had pushed vigorous weeds sown on the wind which blew across the neglected lawns and fields of the University. The towering blocks, whose ground floors were often almost obscured by piles of uncollected rubbish, were patterned with cracked window-panes; and broken pipes sent water spluttering athwart the walls whose tiled fascia had come adrift in places so that the buildings looked as if they were suffering from a kind of architectural leprosy.

  In the middle of a paved courtyard, at what only an optimistic fireman would have called a safe distance from the buildings, a great fire glowed and from time to time in a fashion more desultory than purposeful, figures approached it clutching boxes full of rubbish which they hurled on. The air was full of smoke and charred paper.

  “What are they doing?” Whitey asked. “Burning books?”

  “You’re too romantic,” observed King. “Your Englishman’s never feared books like most other Europeans. Occasionally they may be a moral danger but never a political one. No, it’s just a way of keeping the level of rubbish below the first floor windows. And it’s something to do between demonstrations.”

  “Yes, that’s been puzzling me,” said Whitey. “What in fact do they do? I expected to see more of them around.”

  “There are still classes going on. Tactical discussions. Club history. That sort of thing. It’s even possible, if you play the ball right and have a good line in Supporters’ jargon, to get something like an old-time university education.”

  “It’s nice to think the place is still full of classical scholars,” observed Whitey. “What does the Management think about these places? They must know the Underground’s very active in them.”

  “Of course. But what can they do? In Oxford it was easier for them as we were concentrated in a single college. That was almost an accident. We just gradually took the place over! Here, everybody’s spread right across the campus. No single one of us knows more than half a dozen others. We’ve been infiltrated, naturally. But then we’ve infiltrated the infiltrators, so a lot of misleading information’s been fed back.”

  He laughed freely.

  “In fact if the First Team ever do come in here to mop up, a lot of very good Supporters are going to find themselves on the penalty spot!”

  Whitey shuddered. His next planned article on the state of Britain was going to need a lot of revision. If he ever got the chance to write it.

  “Well,” he said as lightly as he could manage, “I’ll be very careful who I talk to.”

  King looked at him with an enigmatic half-smile.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll take care of you. We’ll see you don’t get captured.”

  They walked on in silence. A couple of Supporters overtook them, shouting a greeting. Whitey opened his mouth to answer, realized he was about to call, “Preds!” and bit it back. Up here the greeting was “Blest!” “Preds” would be the ultimate insult.

  The two Supporters were heading towards a large semi-ovoid structure which seemed to be made of some grey fabric rather than concrete, brick, or stone. It looked like a flat-bottomed airship, resting on the ground.

  “What’s that?”

  “That? The inflatable building you mean? It’s been there for years, I believe. No-one remember why it was erected. But the Disciplinary Committee use it now. There must be a Hearing on. Like to take a look?”

  Whitey nodded and they went into the building together, having to pass through an air-lock to avoid deflating the structure.

  Inside they found a huge press of Supporters and it was quite impossible to see what was going on.

  “Must be something good,” murmured King. “Not just a normal internal Hearing.”

  He poked the nearest Supporter in the ribs.

  “What’s the score, friend?” he asked.

  “Psycho-yuss,” answered the other gleefully. “Two periods of extra time so far! But the speakers have gone bust. They’re fixing them now.”

  King whistled.

  “That means they’ve been at it ten hours,” he whispered.

  “At what?”

  “Some poor reffer’s being persuaded to make a public confession of his crimes against the Club.”

  “You mean they’re torturing somebody in here?” demanded Whitey indignantly.

  “Not with hot pincers, if that’s what you mean. It’s all done by questioning. Let’s get a bit nearer.”

  At that moment someone started a chant which at its second syllable was taken up by everyone in the building so th
at even the sound-absorbent walls were forced to give back a dull echo of the sound.

  “United SHIT! Athletic SHIT! Rovers SHIT!”

  Whitey felt a sharp elbow dig him in the ribs and, looking at King, he saw that his companion was joining in the shout with apparent enthusiasm. Quickly he began chanting too. It went on for several minutes with undiminished vigour and then the chant modulated into the chorus of the Wanderers song. Whitey did not know the words but he bellowed approximations in his loudest hoarsest voice.

  As the final notes died away, King murmured, “Don’t overdo it.”

  Whitey saw that a couple of nearby Supporters were giving him puzzled looks. He had to remind himself again that these were not the straightforward brutish thugs their costume and behaviour indicated, but highly intelligent youths.

  There was some relaxation in the crowd ahead as about fifty of the lads began to force their way out. From their conversation, it appeared that they had some special Riot planned for that afternoon, though they seemed rather disappointed at having to leave the game before the end.

  King moved rapidly forward before those in front could rejoin in their inpenetrably tight ranks. Whitey followed, ignoring the protests that went up, until one particularly large youth swung round threateningly and demanded, “You for goal, friend?” This seemed to have some ritual significance and heads turned to take in the situation. For all Whitey knew, there was a ritual reply. King was too far ahead to help. The best he could manage was to shake his head and mutter, “No offence.”

  Whether this would have sufficed was not tested as a loud metallic voice suddenly boomed through the air, saying, “That’s fixed it,” and a great cheer went up, diverting everyone’s attention.

  Whitey managed to put another couple of bodies between himself and his threatener before being brought to a final halt by sheer density of numbers. But he had at last reached a position where he could see something of what was going on in the centre of the hall.

  There was a raised platform, bearing a table behind which sat half a dozen Supporters. These he presumed were the Disciplinary Committee. About twenty feet in front of them standing on a small round podium was a slight figure who looked to be in the last stages of exhaustion. Its hunched, dejected posture made it difficult to tell whether it was a youth or a girl, and the Wanderers blue tunic and slacks gave no clue.

  A couple of yards behind the podium stood a double rank of about a dozen Strikers. Whitey assumed they were local products rather than members of the Wanderers First Team, but they looked a formidable lot in their blue track-suits. They had truncheons hanging at their sides but no automatic weapons and this confirmed Whitey’s guess. Only genuine First Team Strikers were allowed to carry arms.

  “Sorry, friends, but it’s all fixed now,” said one of the platform figures into a microphone. “As Chairman, I declare this Hearing of the Disciplinary Committee to be resumed.”

  Another cheer went up and the crowd swayed gently in unison. They were prevented from encroaching on the central area by an encirclement of linked crash barriers, one of several types used in the last days of the old football matches in an attempt to preserve order on the terraces by barricading rival factions from each other. They had been strong enough to succeed, but in the end proved only another cause of escalation as the missile boys took over, hurling stones, bottles, darts, anything they could find, into the neighbouring pen. And finally came the showers of acid and the Molotov cocktails.

  “Now, Our Friend,” said the Chairman in a kind voice, using the traditional form of address to anyone called before the Committee, “we are ready to resume the discussion. Is there anything you would like to say at this point?”

  The accused murmured something which even the neck-mike could not pick up. The Chairman made a sign and one of the Strikers stepped forward with a glass of water which he gave to the accused who drank.

  “There now, Friend,” said the Chairman, still sounding like a benevolent uncle. “What did you say?”

  “Please,” the voice was now audible, but low and strained, “Please, I’m very tired, I should like to sit down.”

  The Chairman did not answer for a moment, but looked at his fellow committee members.

  “So,” he said finally. “You would like to sit down. Look around you, Our Friend. Go on, look around you!”

  Slowly the accused’s head rose and slowly began to turn. It was a girl. The face was expressionless, not through the exertion of self-control but because fatigue had drained all feeling from the brain behind it. The eyes stared blankly, unseeingly, into the crowd. Whitey felt their gaze pass slowly over his face and ducked his head instinctively though he knew that nothing was being registered. When he raised it again the girl had resumed her posture of anonymous dejection. But there was no doubt about her identity in Whitey’s mind.

  It was Hydrangea, the girl from the plane.

  “What do you see, Friend,” asked the Chairman, and now his voice began to rise and a hysterically angry note began to replace the avuncular kindliness.

  What do you see? I’ll tell you what you see. You see good, honest, loyal Supporters, come here today to see that this Hearing is fair, come here today to share in your examination, come here today to give you their support! That’s what you see! And are they sitting? Are they sitting? No. You see they are not. And do they complain? Do they ask for chairs? No, they do not!

  “Yet you, the central cause, the only reason why these hundreds of good, loyal Supporters have to spend hours standing and waiting, you want a chair! you want a chair!”

  He collapsed back in his seat as though his outburst had exhausted him.

  The crowd burst into applause, clapping their hands above their heads (the only possible way of doing it) and swaying more violently than before.

  The Chairman spoke again.

  “We have treated you well. Perhaps too well. We have given you every chance to explain yourself. Perhaps it’s time we saw you in your true colours. Whatever they are.”

  He snapped his fingers. Two Strikers moved forward holding in their upraised arms a selection of garments in Athletic red, United yellow and City green. A great growling roar of disapproval went up from the crowd, turning into a cheer as the Strikers hurled them down in disgust before the girl.

  “Help yourself,” said the Chairman. “Pick whichever you please. Pick the colours which belong to you.”

  The girl looked up.

  “No,” she said. “I’m wearing my colours. Please, these are my colours, I’m a good Supporter.”

  She did not sound as if she believed herself. The Chairman flung up his arms in disgust.

  “Must we do it for you?” he cried. “Right. If you force us, we will.”

  The two Strikers returned, seized Hydrangea’s tunic and began literally tearing it off her back. She did not resist and in a few seconds was stripped to her underclothes. The crowd roared in approval as the Strikers then began to dress her. Green trousers, yellow jacket, and finally they rammed a bright red beret on to her head. She made no effort to resist but stood as they left her, half turned round to face the crowd, like a grotesque and defeated Harlequin.

  “Face the Committee, Friend,” said the Chairman when the noise had died away. Slowly she shuffled round.

  “Now what have you to say?” he demanded. “Now we see you as you are.”

  “I appeal to the Management,” she said slowly and with great effort. “I want a fair trial.”

  “The Management? Why should the Management waste time on you? And what do you mean by ‘trial’? This is no trial, Our Friend. A trial establishes guilt or innocence. There is no such doubt here. Our labours are all for your benefit. Do you think we derive pleasure from seeing you in those abhorrent colours? No, we do not. We want to help you to be able to wear the one, the only, the True Blue once more. You have been obdurate but we have been patient. We have followed you round the circle of your deceptions seeking a way in. You say you have been a Support
er all your life, yet you cannot sing more than the first verse of our song. You say you are a native of Birmingham, yet your answers to questions about that city are strangely inaccurate. You say you came to Coventry to join this Supporters Club, yet you entered the campus stealthily and were only detected through the eternal vigilance of one of our Strikers. Why did you come? Where did you come from? Who are you?”

  Good questions, thought Whitey. Ones that he himself would very much like to hear answered. But somehow whenever he encountered this girl, she was in a state so parlous that her own responsibility for his troubles became insignificant.

  She was speaking again, finding strength from somewhere to raise her voice and almost control the trembling in it.

  “I have a right,” she began.

  “Right? You?” screamed the Chairman. “You have no right even to talk of rights! You think only of yourself, of your fatigue, of your hunger, your rights. We have been here more then ten hours and you have learned nothing!”

  An outburst of applause drowned the girl’s reply but Whitey, his eyes fixed intently on her lips thought he caught it.

  “Nor have you.”

  Now the crowd launched into the club song and again Whitey was constrained to mouth approximations of the words. As it finished a new cry was started up.

  Off! Off! Off! Off!

  It was accompanied by the rhythmic waving of one hand held straight up in the air with the index finger pointed.

  Off! Off! Off! Off!

  Whitey joined in. There was nothing else to do.

  Off! Off! Off! Off!

  The sound was deafening.

  Off! Off! Off! Off!

  It went on for more than ten minutes. The Commitee sat perfectly still. The Strikers stood at strict military attention. The girl swayed slightly…

  Off! Off! Off! Off!

  … and fell.

  Instantly the chant eased and the silence which took its place was the more terrifying. Nothing happened for a long moment then the Chairman stood up.

  “This Hearing is adjourned,” he said.

  Two of the Strikers dragged Hydrangea to her feet. The other Strikers went forward and removed a section of the crash barrier. Immediately the crowd spilled forward and the area of open space disappeared in a second.