Last Light

by Alex Scarrow

  Probably.

  But unless he had an address . . .

  What if the girl decides to go home to get something? What if this ‘Jill’ decides she’ll quickly drop in to pick up some changes of clothes for the kids . . . a favourite toy for the younger one?

  Ash was momentarily unsettled with doubt. Perhaps he should have just stayed put there and waited?

  No. He could be waiting there indefinitely. Time was everything. He had an address. His hunter’s instinct told him this Kate would know who Jill was. Better to follow his nose, than sit in the dark at 25 St Stephen’s Avenue doing nothing.

  Along the road, he found a cluster of abandoned cars, left in an orderly bonnet-to-bumper queue along a slip-road leading into a petrol station. He presumed, sometime yesterday, the petrol station had run dry, or more likely the army had swept in to appropriate what was below ground in the storage tanks. The fuel gauge on his bike told him he was running low. With some effort, a little cursing, and too much wasted time, he managed to siphon off what was left in the discarded cars. He winced at the thought of the bottom of the barrel sludge he was putting through the bike’s engine.

  It was gone ten o’clock as his bike entered a place called Guildford. It was dark and quiet.

  He found the address quickly enough.

  The woman lived in one of a row of apartments overlooking a busy high street. One of those yuppie developments that young professional singles and couples like so much.

  No kids then. Pity. They were so handy as leverage in a getting-some-information type scenario.

  Ash didn’t bother with the buzzer. It probably wasn’t working anyway. He kicked in the front door of the apartment complex and entered the plush, carpeted foyer and took the steps up to the first floor.

  He found her apartment door with no trouble. A swift kick near the handle and the door swung inwards. He stepped quickly inside.

  ‘Kate?’ he called out.

  There was no answer. No one home. She lived alone, that much was obvious, there was no sign of the live-in presence of a man. The apartment was tidy, no one had been in and rifled through this place. For a few moments he had a concern that maybe this Kate had gone away, perhaps abroad this week. But then on the answerphone, he picked up a message from someone called Ron, presumably a boyfriend.

  ‘Kate? You there? Pick up . . . pick up . . . oh shit. You must be caught up at work in London still. Give me a call when you get back home, okay? I’m worried.’

  Ash winced with frustration. So Kate had gone to work as normal on Tuesday morning, and then found herself marooned in the capital. He had passed by many people walking out on foot, along the hard shoulder of the A roads he had been on - most probably driving right past her.

  So, he would imagine a single woman like Kate would hole up at her place of work, probably with dozens of other colleagues, and wait for the worst of the rioting to subside, and the police to promptly reclaim the streets before considering a return home.

  But how long would she wait?

  A day? Two?

  There was no way of guessing that. Ash decided he could give it a day. He found some food in the kitchen, and a well-stocked fridge that was still cool inside despite the power being off. He could eat, get some rest and take a view tomorrow. There were, after all, other people in the Sutherlands’ address book he could go calling on. But that said, his gut reaction was to hang on at least for one night for this Kate.

  CHAPTER 54

  11.57 p.m. local time Northern Iraq

  Andy Sutherland sat at the front of the truck’s open bed leaning against the roof of the driver’s cab and studying the flat moonlit terrain ahead. The truck rumbled along the north road, a steady drone in the night. The others, as far as he could see, were asleep, rocking and bumping limply as the truck found the occasional pot-hole.

  He could only think of one thing, now that there was time enough to spare a thought that was anything other than the basic next step to survive. Last night’s desperate scramble through that town, the fire-fight, and watching that young lieutenant dying on the road leading out of town . . . all of that had, through necessity, sucked his thoughts away from those he cared about.

  God, I hope she did as I told her. I hope Jill’s looking after them for me.

  He’d tried his phone several dozen times since then, in the vain hope that the mobile system out in Iraq was still up and running. Not a thing, no signal. And the local radio stations still running in the country were no longer broadcasting news that could be considered reliable; instead it was a mishmash of religious sermons, calls to arms and incitement to sectarian violence.

  They had managed to pick up some moments of the BBC World Service earlier in the day, and it made for grim listening; riots and looting in every city in the country, an emergency ruling authority, and nothing from the Prime Minister or government now for a while.

  It was all as Andy thought it would be - a fucking mess.

  But somehow, he’d retained a residual hope that things might have held together in the UK just a little longer. They were Brits right? The blitz spirit an’ all that? Whilst the rest of the world might have descended to looting and pillaging, he’d hoped the Brits would have at least resorted to some sort of vigorous queuing for a while.

  With more time to think, and having heard even more snippets of news, Andy was certain now that in some contributory way, his work of eight years ago had led to this. In that report he had focused on eleven specific nodes in the global oil distribution web; nodes that were vulnerable to the sort of hit-and-run tactics favoured by terrorist groups. So far he’d heard news of seven of those nodes being hit. That alone was suspicious, but the fact that they’d been hit within twenty-four hours of each other . . . that was the clincher. Because that was the very point he had made near the end of the report . . .

  If all eleven of these highest risk distribution chokepoints were to be hit within a twenty-four hour period, the global distribution of oil would be completely shut off.

  Recalling those words - he shuddered.

  This is my report being actually fucking realised by someone.

  It meant that once upon a time he had briefly dealt directly with the people who were responsible. But far worse - Leona had seen them. She could identify one or more of them. He wondered whose face she had recognised on the TV. Someone in the public eye, someone newsworthy? His mind paraded possibilities - a politician, a national leader? A pivotal member of Al-Qaeda? The spokesperson of some kind of hardcore eco-pressure group? An industrialist or an oil baron? Some eccentric billionaire?

  Who the fuck would actually want something like this to happen? Who the hell benefits?

  He had a fleeting vision of some stereotypical Bond bad guy, complete with an evil chuckle and a long-haired Persian cat perched on his lap. He was reminded of all the weird and wonderful 9/11 conspiracy theories he’d allowed himself to get sucked into for a while after the event. The kookiest one he’d heard was that an alien craft had crashed into the Pentagon and the US authorities had smothered it with the terrorist cover story so they could research all the lovely alien technology at their leisure.

  He shook his head and laughed quietly to himself. People will believe any old crap if you show ’em a fuzzy photograph, or some shaky CCTV footage.

  ‘What is make you laugh?’

  Andy looked across the truck at Farid who seemed to be awake, studying him intently.

  ‘Oh nothing, just a little wool-gathering.’

  ‘Wool-gath . . .?’

  Andy shook his head, ‘Never mind. It’s a saying. Look I wanted to talk to you . . . we’ll be over the northern border into Turkey soon.’

  Farid nodded, still gazing out at the desert. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, what do you want to do?’

  Farid turned to look at him. ‘What you mean?’

  ‘I mean, do you want us to put you down some place inside Iraq, before we go over the border line?’

  Andy
saw the Iraqi’s tired half-smile by the silvery light of the stars and the moon. ‘You drop me up here? Amongst the Kurds? I last only five minutes.’

  ‘I’m sorry Farid. This whole fucking mess has screwed everyone up, left a lot of people hopelessly stranded.’

  ‘Yes. Anyway,’ the old man replied, ‘borders no longer, it all gone for now.’

  Andy nodded, he wasn’t wrong. It was unlikely there would be anyone manning the roadside barrier, on either side of the border. The Turkish police, just like civil law enforcement in every other country in the world, would no doubt be fighting a losing battle to maintain order amongst their own people.

  ‘Now there nothing left in Iraq for me,’ added Farid, after a while.

  ‘No family?’

  ‘No. Not any more.’

  He sensed the tone in the old man’s voice revealed more than those few words.

  ‘I lose son to militia and wife to American bomb.’

  Andy studied the man and realised, at an instinctive or a subconscious level, that he had known that the old man carried a burden of sadness with him. He was a quiet man, not like the two younger drivers. He was reflective, thoughtful, the grief he carried with him so carefully locked away.

  He wondered if the old man would open up to him.

  ‘What happened to your family, Farid. Do you want to tell me?’

  He nodded. ‘I not talk about it much. It is my sadness alone.’

  ‘I understand. I’m sorry for asking.’

  ‘Is okay. I tell,’ replied Farid, shuffling a little closer to Andy so as to be able to talk more quietly against the rattling drone of the engine. ‘My son work for IPS . . . police. One day he and other men in station surrounded by militia. They take away police at gunpoint. His mother know he is dead, but I say he will be return. A good Muslim boy, they will let him go. He join police not for money, but for to . . . ahhh . . . rec . . . con . . .’

  ‘Reconstruction?’

  Farid nodded, ‘Yes help recon . . . ah . . . rebuild Iraq.’ The old man remained silent for a good few moments. Andy sensed he wanted to continue, but was composing himself, working hard to keep something painful inside carefully boxed up where he clearly wanted it to remain, and only let out the little bit he was prepared to share.

  ‘We hearing three day later, they find bodies outside police building. My son was one of them. He was officer in IPS, the other men . . . below him, not officer. My son was in charge. So they make special example of him.’

  Farid paused again.

  ‘They cut throat of all the men. But my son, they torture for two day, then cut his eyes out. Then cut his throat.’

  Andy stopped himself from blurting out something useless and inadequate. Instead he reached across and placed a hand on the old man’s arm.

  ‘My son’s eyes they send to me in package later with message from leader that say, “Your son’s eyes have seen the work of God”. I know these men not doing Allah’s will. I know these men evil. They film what they do with camera, and I know it is seen by many like them on Internet, and they cheer as my son scream.’

  Andy nodded, wishing he could think of something, anything to say, that wouldn’t sound blithe and clichéd. To lose a child is the end of things, to lose a child like that is beyond comprehension.

  ‘My wife, she die a week later when American bomb is drop on our town to kill this leader of these militia. They drop bomb they know will destroy many house in street. My wife visiting with her sister, they living in house nearby, all dead. They did not kill this leader, but they kill my wife, and twenty other people. The Americans find out this, they take away all the bodies and they say only two or three die. They took my wife body six month ago, I never see her again I know. She is gone. I will never see body.’

  ‘That’s a pretty shit deal,’ grunted Mike.

  Andy thought the American had been asleep. Farid turned to look at him, and for a moment he thought the Iraqi would take Mike’s comment the wrong way. He wouldn’t blame him if he did, it was a clumsy intrusion on their private conversation.

  ‘Pretty shit deal,’ didn’t even come close.

  ‘Both your people and my people take from me all that I love. I have nothing left here.’

  They rode in silence for a while, the rumble of the truck’s diesel engine producing a steady, reassuring drone.

  ‘Between us all we really fucked over this country pretty bad, didn’t we?’ said Mike.

  Andy nodded. ‘It probably could have been handled better.’

  ‘Stupid, careless American soldiers and evil men who say they fight for Allah, but they are haram, outside of God . . . they all fuck my country.’

  Mike sat forward. ‘Tell me Farid, how the hell do you still believe in God after all this shit has happened to you? And this stuff that’s happening now, Muslims killing Muslims . . . all of this crap in the name of God. How the hell do you make sense of all of that?’

  ‘I have the Qur’an. It is complete, it is correct. It is God’s word. What is happen now, what we see . . . is bad work of man, not of Allah.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Mike sighed. ‘Us humans seem pretty good at screwing most things up.’

  Andy turned to look at the American. That seemed like an interesting step for someone like him to take.

  ‘So Farid,’ said Andy, ‘where do you want to go?’

  ‘I have brother who go to Great Britain many year back. He is all my family now. I join him.’

  Andy reached over again and rested a hand on his arm. ‘We’ll get you there old man, I promise you that.’

  He looked around the truck. The lads were all asleep. And there was Erich, watching quietly. He nodded courteously.

  CHAPTER 55

  10.03 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London

  It was dark.

  Oh God, where the hell are you Danny?

  She’d put Jacob to bed as early as she could, after sharing another unappetising meal of cold pilchards in tomato sauce and a slice of buttered bread. When she had tried to pour them each a glass of water, nothing had come out of the tap. It rattled and gurgled noisily, and produced nothing but a few drips. She realised that from now on they would have to start using their bottled water.

  It was another hot evening, stuffy inside again. She opened some of the upstairs windows whilst keeping all of the ones downstairs firmly closed and locked. She patiently reassured Jacob that all was going to turn out well, that Dan, whom it seemed Jacob quite openly hero-worshipped, would be back soon and then by torchlight, she found a Harry Potter book on Jill’s bedside table and began to read that to him.

  But it was all done in a distracted, worried stupor, one ear constantly cocked and listening out for Dan, whom she expected at any time to come rapping on the front door to be let in. Even though she had, in effect, taken charge of things since they’d left university in Dan’s van, she hadn’t realised how much she had been relying on him for support.

  Just me and Jake now?

  Already, she could feel herself beginning to come apart, sitting downstairs in the lounge, in the dark, waiting and listening. She knew she couldn’t do this on her own for much longer.

  The noises started just before eleven.

  The gang of youths were back again. She watched them from the lounge window, concealed as she was, behind the blind. There were twenty, maybe thirty of them, some looked as young as fourteen or fifteen, others somewhere in their mid-twenties. There were one or two girls amongst them. Leona thought they looked a couple of years younger than her. The gang arrived in small groups, gradually amassing in the narrow street outside, over an hour, as if it had been some loosely agreed rendezvous made the night before.

  A car turned up, bathing St Stephen’s Avenue with the glare of its headlights, and the sound of a pummelling bass that had the lounge windows vibrating in sympathy. They were drinking again, presumably more of their haul taken from the nearby off-licence. Their voices grew louder as the evening advanced, and by
midnight she could hear and see that most of them were pissed out of their skulls. One of them staggered into the front garden, tripped over a paving stone and fell on to Jill’s small, poorly tended flower-bed. He lay there, quite content to look up at the stars for a while before turning to his side and retching.

  There was a fight between two of the lads. She watched it brewing, it was over one of the girls; one of the ‘smurfettes’, as she’d decided to call them. She couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, but from the gestures she could guess that the older-looking one wanted some squeeze-time with one of the girls, and the younger one wasn’t too happy about it. The girl in question, of course, wasn’t exactly being consulted about this. Leona had seen countless fights like this brewing outside the pubs and clubs she’d been used to frequenting in Norwich. Always the same pattern to them, a lot of shouting, chest beating, finally pushing and shoving and then the first punch is thrown.

  This fight, though, seemed to escalate far more quickly. She watched in horror as it progressed from punches being exchanged, to a knife being produced by the younger-looking lad. It was hard to make out what was going on amidst the frantic movements of both of them, but caught in the glare of the headlight, she soon saw a bright crimson stain on the crisp white T-shirt of the older boy. They thrashed around together some more, until, suddenly, she saw the younger lad spasm violently. Some of the youths gathered round the fighting emitted a drunken howl of support. She noticed a lot of the others were silent, as they watched the younger one shuddering on the ground in front of the car.

  One of the girls screamed.

  Leona pulled back from the window, shaking as she sat in an armchair and stared instead at the undulating light from outside flickering across the lounge ceiling, as the gang gathered around in front of the car’s headlights to study the body.

  The party didn’t break up though. It continued. The drinking went on, the music got louder. The party migrated up the avenue a little way and at about a quarter to midnight, she heard someone hammering on something repeatedly. She knew it was the door to one of the houses when she heard the splintering of wood, the sound of it rattling on its hinges and a roar of approval from the mob of lads gathered outside.