by H M Sealey
Asim looked at Dai and Dai looked back. Border Pass. Dai had no Border Pass and no way to acquire one. He touched his still-injured leg beneath the table and grimly remembered his souvenir from his first time he crossed the border. The wound would not allow such a thing again.
Dai tapped the table with his fingers for a moment. Then he took a swift breath. He would have to take a chance.
“I have a problem there I’m afraid.” He said with a long sigh.
“A problem?” Kit raised an eyebrow.
Dai patted his jacket pocket. “I had my damn wallet stolen. Most of my money, cards, and my Border Pass. Everything.”
“Really?”
Dai nodded. “I had it when I got here.”
“Well you must have or you wouldn’t have got in.”
“And later, when I came to pay for a drink, I realised it was gone.”
“Didn’t you say something? The thief must be in this room. Mind you, I wouldn’t put it past some of these savages.”
Dai lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I didn’t want to make a fuss. It’s not like I could call the police is it? I don’t see there’s anything I can do.”
Kit looked concerned. “I doubt Zeb’s customers would consent to being searched. That’s a terrible piece of bad luck for you Mr. Kimura.”
“To be honest, I don’t know what to do. How far is it to the Border?”
“Five miles. But you won’t get over it without your pass.”
Kit ordered two drinks, gave one to Dai and raised his glass. “Don’t look so downcast. I’m sure I can help you.”
“You could?”
“Of course I could. I couldn’t see a fellow civilised man trapped with the primitives. Look, my hire-car’s outside. I’m a police officer, back in Old Britain. I’m sure they won’t check my car too thoroughly. I expect I could smuggle you in the boot. What do you say?”
“Wouldn’t you get into trouble if I was found?”
“I could die if a satellite fell out of the sky and landed on my head too. I don’t bother with ifs. “
Dai shook his hand. “I can’t thank you enough Mr. Summerday.”
“You’re very welcome.” He glanced at his watch. “We ought to head off though. If we hit the border just before their evening prayers they’ll be too busy crawling on their faces to pay much heed to us.”
Dai stood up, finished his drink in one gulp and set the glass down on the table. “I might visit the bathroom quickly. Not sure my bladder will cope with bouncing around in the boot of a car otherwise.”
Kit nodded with a smile. “You do that. I’ll settle the bill.”
“Thanks.”
Dai headed off across the carpet while Kit took located his wallet, counted out three notes, and threw them onto the table in front of him. He took out another note, folded it, and handed it to Asim. The generosity of the gift surprised him, Asim had not been expecting payment.
“Well, I didn’t really need a translator did I? Still, you haven’t complained once the whole night.” He took a business card from his wallet and scribbled a second number next to the first. “If you ever feel like spreading your wings and getting out of this godforsaken country, call me. I could find a use for you.”
Asim took the note and the card without comment and Kit ruffled his hair.
“You’re a good kid and you look dead beat. Go home.”
“Thank you sayyid.” Asim pushed the note into his pocket. He was eager to speak to Alaia and Uncle Baraq. His bed would be very welcome too.
“He’s right you know.” Sylvester said. “If you’re caught smuggling someone over the border they’ll be trouble, and I couldn’t help you.”
“It’s a risk.” Kit admitted. “Though not a bog one. I’ve never been searched crossing the Border before.”
“It’s not like you to take any risk that doesn’t avail you something.” Sylvester scrutinised him more closely. “So what’s in it for you?”
Kit’s eyes made certain Dai was nowhere in earshot.
“I know exactly who our friend is.” He whispered. “I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ll bet you a year’s salary that’s Daichi Hisikawa.”
Sylvester looked surprised. “The brother?”
“Right. It’s too much coincidence. Japanese chap exactly the right age turns up at the auction looking for his sister, just like he said he would. Who else is he going to be?”
“So what are you planning?”
“I’m planning to drive straight through the Border and back to Old Britain while he’s still in my boot. Once there I’ll arrest him for illegally crossing the border, stealing the money and, I very much hope, for being part of Family Matters.”
~
~ Twenty-One ~
Josh
“Darling?” Diana petitions River gently, hiding her irritation. “What are doing? Is this a game?”
River crosses her arms tightly. “It’s no game. I just want to make absolutely sure none of your guests can go anywhere, and nobody can get in. That’s all.”
“Why dear?”
River marches into the big sitting room and perches and the arm of the sofa, gazing slowly around the room at the faces surrounding her. Rich, influential people, government ministers, businessmen. People who could generally buy their way out of trouble if they say or do the wrong thing.
Nobody can buy their way out of this locked room.
“I just want to talk to you all.” She says. “About something I know that’s very dear to your heart.”
“There are a great many causes dear to my heart Ash.”
“Oh, this one is really close.” River taps her heart then meets Diana’s eyes. “Assisted Suicide.”
Diana looks flustered, but she’s a politician, I suppose she’s used to awkward questions.
“If you want to talk about policy darling, I’m happy to do so, but not when I’m hosting a party.”
River pulls out the phone Baraq gave her from her little clutch bag and casually gazes at the screen.
“Oh, I think now’s the perfect time.” She says, her voice somehow easy yet taut at the same time. “So tell me about it.”
“Tell you what?”
“How you fought tirelessly for all those poor people suffering from mental illnesses to be allowed to take their own lives.”
Diana straightens up a little and sets her jaw. “Well yes, I did. I had so many letters from so many deeply unhappy people. So much suffering. Mental illness was on the rise. I wanted to offer…..a kind end to an intolerable pain.”
“So you legalised Assisted Suicide?”
“Yes.”
“Which saved your government – how much was it? Two billion a year?”
“Ash!” Diana’s eyes widen as if such as thought never occurred to her.
“Admit it. AS means fewer hospital places, fewer doctors appointments, less medication, fewer crisis teams, fewer flats, hostels and welfare payments. Really, your kindness was very well rewarded.”
Diana looks as though she might cry, she’s certainly very pale. The other guests watch this confrontation in either surprise or irritation, but nobody interrupts. Not yet.
“River, please!”
River jolts her head up away from from her phone and waves a warning finger at her mother.
“Ah, ha. Careful mother, don’t start using my real name or I might start telling people what happened there too.”
Diana looks at her daughter in horror, as if River has just threatened to blow her house up. Her face is pale with outrage and perhaps just a little fear.
“I tried to offer something to people who wanted to die! Stop twisting it into something ugly. People campaigned for the right to die.”
“As a last resort for people in great pain.”
“These people were in mental pain! I’m sorry you don’t agree with the law. Go and wave a placard outside Plas Gwyn! And if you don’t like assisted suicide then don’t do it!”
Diana’s
face is flushed with indignation, her fists are clenched at her side.
“I won’t.” River says. She gazes slowly around the room, drinking in every face. “You lot though, everyone in this room. You’ve just taken AS drugs.”
There are exclamations of horror all around the room, like fireworks. Every set of eyes stares at River, shock registering on faces.
River reaches back into her bag and withdraws a glass bottle. She holds it aloft.
“I added this stuff to your drinks, all of them. Recognise it Mr. Clarke?” She throws the bottle to him and he reads the label. The expression on his face tells the entire room that River has done precisely what she says.
“River?” Diana’s voice is a squeak. “What are you doing?”
“I think it takes about an hour to kick in, so you’ve all got about thirty minutes left.”
There are discernible sounds of panic all around and River addresses the room with icy words.
“Relax everyone. I’ve got this too.”
Now she takes another bottle from her bag and clutches it in her hand.
“W – what is it?” Diana asks, I can see her trembling, she clutches the edge of a chair for support.
River tosses her head.
“Don’t you recognise it Mr. Clarke? It’s from your laboratory too. The one you own in the BSI so nobody can trace it to you.”
River tosses the bottle into the air and catches it. “Just in case you don’t realise what it is. It’s the antidote.”
I can feel the breath catching in throats all around. River’s eyes narrow as she regards her mother.
“You know about the antidote, don’t you mum? That thing you give to the dead bodies to bring them round. I read your e-mails about this years ago. You called it the Julliet Drug. I suppose because Shakespeare’s heroine took a potion to make her appear dead. You never liked that play. But then, you were always anti traditional relationships.”
River stands now, phone in one hand, bottle in the other.
“I know what you’ve been doing mum. I know you re-animate most of the young bodies, the ones without families to make a fuss. But you messed up families anyway didn’t you? I mean, you always hated the concept of family. Families take care of each other and you wanted the government to do that. I know you sell those young bodies into slavery afterwards, here in the Border where it’s legal.”
Diana is crying now, the tears take little lines of mascara down her face.
“River. Stop this, please.”
“Do you want the antidote?”
She nods. “Yes.”
“Then tell me why you had this developed. Clock’s ticking remember.”
Diana swallows audibly.
“So – so people could reverse the decision, if they changed their minds.”
“But AS victims are dead. They couldn’t change their minds. So come on, admit it. Admit what you do.”
I watch all of this in horrified silence. Diana sinks down on the sofa and buries her face in her hands. River quickly surveys the rest of the room. “Just so you know, if any of you try to take this from me, I’ll smash it.”
I think at least one of the men intended to try and overpower River, because three or four now step back. That little glass bottle looks very fragile in her hand.
“River,” Diana mumbles. “I know it seems unpleasant -”
She doesn’t get any further with that sentence, River lunges across the floor, a furious, judgemental whirlwind in silk. A vengeful god with life and death in her hands.
“Unpleasant!” She screams. “No, it doesn’t seem unpleasant, it seems evil. Truly, utterly evil! You sell people as slaves. Your government. The one known for it’s compassion and love of equality!”
She shakes her head. “No, no, it’s not like that.”
“So tell me what it is like then? Tell me that you don’t get thousands of pounds for one young, healthy body. Only they’re not healthy are they, because they’re mentally ill. I’m amazed any of them survive, but I suppose nobody cares about a slave’s mental health do they?”
River takes up her phone again and switches it on.
“So it’s confession time mum. You’re going to explain exactly what you’ve been doing, and I’m going to record it. Then I’m going to stream it on every form of media I can. I’m going to see the whole of Old Britain knows that you’re no better than any other white slave trader. Then, and only then, I might give you the antidote.”
Diana stares at River. She just stares and stares.
“I…..I can’t do that.”
“I think you’ll find you can. Otherwise everyone in this room is dead.”
“River, this isn’t fair!”
“Fair? What would you know about fair mum? You make millions with your businesses here in the Border and you don’t pay a penny in tax to your own damn government. You and the rest of the cabinet are as much in charge here as Old Britain. You run a capitalist paradise with one hand and a socialist hellhole with the other.” She raises the phone so the camera is facing her mother. “Now talk!”
Diana raises her head, she looks twenty years older and wretched.
“E-everybody kept getting diagnosed with mental illness. There were so many. New ones were being invented every day. I wanted to help people’s mental health, but the more I tried to make people happy and healthy, the worse they became. It was as though the more they were encouraged to focus on themselves, the more problems they found. And the poor nutrients in the food didn’t help. Or the vaccines. We – we tried to vaccinate for mental illness, but it was a disaster. River, it was draining the treasury. I had to do something.”
“How compassionate of you.”
“It wasn’t just me.”
“No?”
“It was debated in Cabinet. But we kept it quiet. Pushing through AS helped save money, but not….not enough. When NuTru took power we had so many election promises to make good on, so many programmes to implement. We needed money.”
“The eternal problem for the socialist,” River looks at her in disgust. “Eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
“The money from…..the merchandise…..it’s essential. We’d be bankrupt without it.”
“It’s blood money mum. And they’re not merchandise, they’re people! Look at you, you demonise the old values that built this country and all the time you’re worse than anything England did in its colonial past.”
River doesn’t move, she just stands in front of her sobbing mother, holding the camera.
“Make your confession.” She orders. “I’d say it’s good for the soul, but I think you sold that years ago.”
~
Elsie
“I wonder why Gran hid this locket.” I dangle it from my fingers and let it swing, catching the light as it moves.
Snuggled on put-up beds in Alaia’s room, Missy and I try to sleep but the excitement of the evening runs through our exhausted brains and sleep evades us. We lie awake and talk about everything, about Dai and Zeb and Baraq and Alaia and Tariq.
Missy sighs and strokes my hair in that cosy way she always used to, when we had sleepovers.
“Elsie, your Gran didn’t put that locket there.” She takes a little breath. “I did.”
I sit up in bed in my borrowed nightgown.
“What?”
“It’s a long story. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“But how did you get it?”
Missy moves away from me a little. “I didn’t know it was yours, not at first. I worked it out later, because the woman I met looked so much like you.”
“Missy, I don’t understand.”
“When I was eight I met a woman in the woods. She was dying. She was looking for her daughter. Rachael. I didn’t know any Rachaels, but she put this locket in my hands and told me that Rachael could trust the people inside.”
“That man, Tariq….he said my name was Rachael.” I screw up my face, trying to remember. “Josh ca
lled me El. Gran did too.”
“I kept the locket, I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know whose it was.” She takes a huge breath, I can hear it. “Then mum saw it. There was a little piece of paper inside you see.”
I nod. “I know. It said Family Matters. I just thought it was making a statement.”
“Uh huh.” Missy keeps her back to me. “I just kept it in my treasure box, wondering if I’d ever find this mysterious Rachael.”
“So how on earth did it end up in a vase in my house?”
“For the same reason my Bible ended up there.”
I catch my breath. “Your bible?”
“Well, my mother’s. Look. My parents were involved in Family Matters, I didn’t find out until I was eleven when I started helping them. That’s when I realised that the locket must be connected. I showed it to my parents but they didn’t recognise it either. So I just kept it.” There’s a pause. “I kept it until the night my parents were shot at the Border.”
“They were shot – you said it was an accident.”
She turns sharply. “It was nothing to do with you. Your Gran didn’t want you to know.”
“You knew about Gran?”
“Anyway. The night they were shot I knew the house would be searched by the authorities. The Bible has the names of everyone involved with Family Matters inside, so I knew I had to hide it. Then I remembered the locket and I took it too. Just in case. I came to your house and pushed them both into the vase when you weren’t in the room.”
Missy rubs her eyes. “I’m sorry Elsie. Once the bible was safe I left it there. I thought, since Bibi was part of Family Matters too, it’d be safe…..” She lets out a sudden sob. “And I was scared! Really scared. I thought, if the bible was ever found, your Gran would get into trouble, not me. I was too frightened to keep it in my house. But your family wasn’t under suspicion. I mean, your Gran turned your dad over to the authorities, everyone trusted her.”
I listen to all this in silence. I never knew. Gran and Missy were running Family Matters and I just went on dumbly with my life.
“He was a Christian Missy! He suffered warped thinking. Gran did the right thing.”
