Charity had her hand to her mouth. Her eyes were opened wide.
And then turning to Natasha, Monty said: “Come on. Up you get. You’re fine. If the doctors weren’t away for Christmas you’d be out of here already. We’ll avert our eyes.”
“But I can’t just walk out of here,” Natasha said.
“Of course you can. What will they do? Delighted to have an empty bed I should think. Ready?”
Natasha surprised herself by moving the blanket aside and lowering her feet to the ground. But he was right. She really did feel fine. Entranced, the children sat in silence watching as she changed,. Charity and Monty, talking intensely, had their backs turned to her.
“Ready!” she said. “What now?”
By way of a reply Monty said: “Charity, you’re on.”
Charity was kneeling on the floor collecting all the books and toys. And then gathering the four older children around her she said: “Right girls. Here’s the thing. Out of the door, turn left and ... wait for it ...” she had their attention now. “You can make as much noise as you like!”
Joyous, the girls yelped and screamed as they ran out of the door and down the hospital corridor. Charity followed in hot pursuit as nurses emerged from various doorways to help restore order.
“Madam ...”
Monty extended an arm. Natasha, holding Rosie in her arms, gave a slight curtsy.
“Thank you kindly, Doctor,” she said in a southern drawl and then looking at him, and in her own voice: “Really.”
There were in the car and away by the time Charity came through on the hands-free. “Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. The children were marvellous. Total chaos! Great Christmas treat. Oh and Monty don’t forget to ring Aunt Jessica on Christmas day. You forgot last year.”
“Will do,” he thought for a moment and then asked: “Is it angina or sciatica?”
“Aunt Jessica. Angina. Bye.”
Since Monty had no child car seat Natasha was sitting in the back holding Rosie. “Is it always like this in your family,” she asked?
“Suppose it is.”
“So where are we going?”
“Well my flat if that’s OK with you. Didn’t think you’d want to be back in that grisly hotel. Not enough room to swing a cricket bat in there. Besides I’ve managed to rustle up a rather useful niece. She is waiting for us.”
“A niece?”
“Tilly. Excellent girl. 19 years old. Three younger brothers so plenty of child care experience. Said she was delighted to escape Christmas chez her parents and would like nothing more than to earn a bit of cash baby-sitting. I said six pounds an hour. Is that OK?”
Natasha’s mouth dropped. She was about to remonstrate. But she didn’t have the energy.
“Sounds like a bargain. God. How the other half live.”
Three hours later Tilly was putting Rosie to sleep whilst Monty cooked. His kitchen opened up into the sitting room where Natasha was stretched out on a sofa in front of an open fire. As she drank a glass of white wine and looked over the river the flames licked the chimney and let off an aroma of smoky pine. Christ, she thought, I could get used to this.
“I was wondering how you’d planned to spend Christmas,” Monty said as he sliced some tomatoes on a cutting board. “You know. If you had not walked into a mad crazed terrorist. Is there anyone you need to call?”
“Plans? Well they were all in Peshawar really. Oxfam is buying the turkey and the New York Times is supplying cranberry sauce.”
“Well you won’t be back for that. Parents?” he probed.
“My father died some years ago. My mother doesn’t even know who I am any more. I’ll visit her when I am out of here. She’s in a home,” she explained. “There’s an uncle but that’s about it.”
“Brothers, sisters?”
“Only me.”
“Blimey,” said Monty as if he had never before contemplated the possibility of a life without an endless supply of relatives.
*****
Nic Wheeler, membership secretary of the BNP’s Dagenham branch, stopped at the zebra crossing and waved the old lady across. Old fashioned British courtesy. And anyway he was in a generous mood. For the first time in five years he would have the children with him for Christmas. His ex-wife was dropping them off in the morning. A new man no doubt. He hadn’t asked and he didn’t want to know. The children were coming home. That was the important thing. Family.
But tonight he’d be in the Westland. He parked his white van beside the others and looked at the messages painted on their sides. “Smith’s Electrical. No job too small.” So Alan was already here. And there was Harry’s. “Get plastered!” Nic noted with approval that most of the vans and cars had St George’s cross odour-eaters hung from the rear view mirrors. He made a note to himself to check the pub still had enough in stock.
Before going in to the Westland he went through what was becoming a well-worn ritual. He crossed the road to pay his respects to the Pie and Mash shop in which he had eaten so often as a child.
It had closed down earlier in the year but in the window there was still a roughly written message: “Jellied and Stewed Eels – Only £3.95.”
“Bloody foreigners,” Nic muttered under his breath. “And their sodding curries.”
The pub restored his mood. He stood at the door taking in the scene. Thirty or more white men, most of them in their 30s or early 40s, were drinking pints. As usual in the Westland, the women, all Anglo-Saxon, were behind the bar serving and the men propping it up, drinking. And most of them, Nic was glad to see, were drinking bitter, not lager. He’d tried to persuade the pub to stop selling foreign drinks but was told it was uneconomic.
Walking past a notice saying, “Shirts must be worn” and a signed photograph of Bobby Moore holding the World Cup, he made his way to the bar.
“The man himself.” It was Harry. The plasterer. “What’s your poison mate? Don’t say. I know.” He turned to the bar. “Pint of bulldog, Sally my love.”
Blonde, cockney brassy and with oversized breasts, Sally was the favourite of all of them.
“Coming up, Darlin’,” she said, a glass tankard with a handle.
“Thanks love.”
“You going to the game on Boxing Day?” Harry asked Nic, handing him the drink. The local football team, the Daggers, were playing a derby match against Barking.
“Yeah. Taking the children. You know, the family enclosure. You staying for the carols?”
“Sure am! Wouldn’t miss that now would I?” he looked at his watch. “Where is he anyway? The tinkler. The missus will be after me soon. Said I’d be back by seven.”
As he spoke a young lad, probably no more than 16, came in with a cap low over his forehead in an attempt to conceal his face.
“Pint of bitter please,” he asked looking at the floor and putting some coins on the bar.
“How old are you darling?” Sally said laughing. “Come on. Show us your ID!”
The boy hesitated. “Try again next year darling. When you’re 12.”
A group of men who had heard the exchange burst out laughing and the boy, his face flushing red, moved away from the bar.
Nic Wheeler called him back. “Come on I’ll buy you a half. Just one mind!”
Sally shrugged her shoulders and reached down for a glass.
Just as she was handing it over Joe, the only one of them who could play the piano, arrived. He was greeted with a throaty, drunken roar and jibes for being late. “Where you been mate?” “The late Joe Tinkler” “Good morning Joe.” “The missus hold you up?”
And as soon as they’d bought him a pint they shuffled him towards the upright piano.
“What do you want then?” Joe asked. Men stood all around him holding their glasses in front of them. One of them started singing. “If you hate a fucking Paki clap your hands!”
The others laughed, clapped and picked up the refrain.
But Joe didn’t start playing. “Come on guys. It’s
supposed to be carols,” he said.
“Good King Wenceslas,” someone shouted.
“He was a bloody Kraut!”
“Silent night!”
“Some bloody chance in here!”
Joe started playing the tune but with so many of the men starting at the wrong time, he stopped, put up his hand in the air and played it again signalling when they should start.
Nic was standing at the edge of the group not singing. But he loved to watch this. Real tradition and a real pub. Real England. He moved over to the deserted bar and told the barmaids they should go over and join in.
“Need all the help they can get. Go on. I’ll mind the bar.” As one of the women lifted the hinged part of the bar that enabled them to move out, she said: “By the way Cheryl at lunchtime said some leaflets arrived. She put them by the piano.”
“Leaflets?”
“That’s what she said.”
He frowned. “Where they come from?”
“Don’t ask me. She just asked me to pass on the message.”
Having belted out the first verse with all the volume they could manage the men had calmed down now and were trying to sing softly. But they only knew the first verse and so, by unspoken agreement, simply repeated it.
“Silent night. Holy night.”
They were joined by the barmaids who, huddled together in a group, sang in higher voices.
“All is calm. All is bright.”
Confused by the message about the leaflets Nic Wheeler skirted round the singers and looked at the base of the piano. Sure enough there was a box there,
“Round yon Virgin Mother and Child, Holy Infant so tender and mild,”
He bent down to examine it.
“Sleep in heavenly peace.”
The explosion tore through the piano and ripped into the singers. An invisible wave of pressure thrust the men and women in all directions. Nic Wheeler’s flesh, bone and sinew splattered onto the walls. The dead and dying, their pale skin streaked with blood and dirt, lay prostrate on the floor.
*****
Jaz was back at the car feeling hungry. As he’d expected, the workshops were all quiet. None had lights on. He thought about breaking into one so that he could rest there in the warmth. But they would probably be alarmed. Best to stay where he was.
But he needed to eat. And to replace the meat he’d lost when that bloody dog was after him.
He walked towards the shops keeping his eyes fixed on the pavement. He had five days stubble now and was hopeful that, even if the police had put out a photograph, no one would recognise him.
The road was lined with parked cars, many of them, for some reason, old Volvos. On the other side he saw an elderly woman with such an accentuated hunchback she was almost completely bent over, her head and neck parallel with the pavement. She needed a stick to keep balance and moved at an impossibly slow pace. A cat, attached to her waist by a long piece of string walked besides her occasionally tugging in an attempt to move away.
On the side of the street he noticed a group of Orthodox Jewish men wearing black suits and outsized hats talking as they walked. Jaz could see ringlets of hair dangling around their ears, framing the pale faces and noticed that each one was carrying a book. He wasn’t sure what book the Jews had instead of the Qur’an but guessed they must be on their way to synagogue.
But there was no point staying on the street. It only increased his vulnerability. And he was feeling the cold. Taking the plunge he walked into the only shop he could see open. The shopkeeper, also an orthodox Jew, was sitting by the till reading a paper in a script Jaz could not understand. He barely glanced up as Jaz walked in. Heading straight for the safety of the tightly packed narrow aisles, Jaz picked up a wire basket and looked for food he could eat in the car. He found a can of Coke, chocolate biscuits, crisps and in the fridge at the back of the shop, a cooked leg of chicken on a plastic tray covered with cling film.
Within a couple of minutes he had paid – the shopkeeper was still more interested in his paper than Jaz – and was outside again heading for the Mondeo. He could sit it out now until he went to see Aysha before going to Victoria coach station.
But Jaz couldn’t settle in the car. At first he left the engine off fearing it would attract attention. But as the temperature dropped he switched it on and put the heater and radio on. The warmth made him drowsy and slipped in and out of consciousness. From time to time he picked at the food, unwrapping the chicken and opening the can of Coke. The smell of cooked meat filled the car, which combined with the warm dusty air almost made him gag. He opened the window to clear the air get but kept on eating. He’d need all the energy he could get. Still chewing, he listened to the music as it gave way to the news. He closed the window to be sure he could hear it all clearly.
“There are reports of a large explosion at a pub in Dagenham, East London. Emergency service personnel are at the scene and the ambulance service has said there has been loss of life. It is not yet known what caused the explosion. We’ll bring you more details as they become available.”
So, it had worked. He let out a long breath, brought up an image of Mahmud in his mind and then, forcing himself to concentrate again, tried to make sense of the next item.
“Muslim groups have criticised the police for arresting a local GP in Wembley. The police have said the case is terrorist-related but have given no more details. The Muslim Council of Great Britain insisted the doctor is a well-known local figure with no links to militants.”
Jaz could see no connection, switched off the radio and for the second time that day he started packing.
*****
Sally coughed. As she tried to clear her throat the hacking sound reverberated through what was left of the bar. The air was filled with dust particles slowly descending, covering everything and everyone with a thick layer of fine grey powder.
As she put her hand to her mouth to see what was coming out from her lungs, she looked about her. Her ears picked up sound as if it were echoing a long way away but she could make out a solitary alarm bell and then the moaning, and sometimes the squealing of those who had survived.
Among the shattered glass, twisted metal and blood-stained seats lay handbags, briefcases broken chairs, clothes and shoes. Jimmy the carpenter was lying next to her. His cheeks were pink but flecked with black marks, like a raw joint of meat that had been dragged through some dirt. She saw the body of a man with smoke seemingly coming from its chest. His stomach was covered in blood and shredded organs. He’s inside out she thought to herself.
She put her hand on the ground trying to sit up but with a jerk it slid away from her. Blood.
To her right there was a man she did not recognise. She looked at him puzzled and wondering whether she would have known him were it not for the fact that his pockmarked face had been weirdly contorted when the explosion squeezed the air out of his lungs. Thick trickles of blood ran out of his nose and ear.
Sally felt a cold drip of liquid on the back of her neck and, screaming out loud, jerked up to a crouching position. It was only then she realised just how lucky she had been. Bodies and body parts lay all over the floor and only a few showed any sign of life. She looked up and saw a long thin crack in the ceiling above her. Water, from a burst pipe she figured, was hitting the floor beside her. Droplets of diluted blood splashed onto her trousers.
One body looked lighter than all the others and as Sally moved towards it she saw that the explosion had ripped off a woman’s clothes. She was blond with dark roots close to her scalp. Apart from her nakedness she looked completely unharmed but even before she touched her cheek looking for a sign of life Sally knew she was dead. She found a blood soaked garment lying near her and tied to cover her torso.
“Help me!” A man with a shard of glass sticking out of his shirt extended his hand towards here. She gripped it.
“Steady now. You’re OK.”
“Am I?” he asked. Unable to move his head he tried to look down his body
to see if all his limbs were intact. Exhausted he gave up the effort and instead gripped Sally’s hand a little tighter. “Mother. Mother,” he murmured.
But the moment that stayed in her mind, the one image she was never able to erase, was the last thing that happened before help arrived. For some reason the alarm bell had stopped and apart from the groans of the survivors the room was silent. She saw the boy whose ID she had asked for. His face looked fine but as she looked down towards his feet she saw that both his legs had been ripped from his body and a huge pool of blood had leaked from his stomach. And then a dull green light appeared by his face. Sally looked, not comprehending until his ring tone – some pop song - echoed through the room. She could not bring herself to answer it and to tell whoever was calling what had happened.
*****
Christmas Day was just two hours away and once again the commissioner’s meeting room was filling up. There were more people this time as some of the principals had brought assistants to help answer questions that arose. They were still settling in their chairs when he spoke.
“The prime minister will be convening a COBRA meeting later this evening,” he said. Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. The committee that would coordinate the state’s response.
The decision was expected. Everyone present could have predicted it. But somehow the words injected an extra sense of urgency.
The assistant commissioner went straight to the main point: “So is it him? Jasir Khan?”
Silence.
“Should we be looking at anti fascist groups?”
It was MI5 territory and Monty spoke. “There’s the Campaign against Racism and Fascism and the magazine Searchlight. Although there have been moments of violence in the past there’s no history to suggest they would do this and we have people in both. All our contacts are saying they know nothing about it.”
“And no splinter groups?”
“No. At least not that we know of. And to be honest I think we would know.”
“So I repeat. Is it Jasir Khan?” Again no one took up the invitation to speak. “Nothing?” he sounded like he couldn’t believe it. “When was the explosion?”
TARGET BRITAIN: a political thriller Page 26
