by H M Sealey
~
~ Twenty-Two ~
Asim
Asim ran until he reached the old footbridge that stretched up, over the main road. It wasn’t used any more, and was broken and dangerous in places, the old, blue paint had long rusted and the handrail had come away at least a decade earlier.
Asim climbed up, a brick clutched in one hand, a long, rusty nail dug out of an old piece of wood in the other. Below the road snaked away towards the Border, anaemic in the moonlight, picked out by the occasional car as it picked its way on the poor road.
Asim gripped what remained of the metal rails and inched his way along, grimly aware that a fall from this hight would probably kill him.
Once in position he waited, the car would be here soon. Asim clutched the brick in his fist and hoped that his aim was good enough to damage the car without killing the occupants. There were no streetlights here, what would happen, would happen in shadow.
He recognised the car, he had followed the man from the auction and watched him joke with Dai before closing him into the boot. Then Asim ran. He was a fast runner and the old footbridge which loomed up like a black rainbow across the road would suit his purposes very well indeed.
No car could travel too quickly, the road badly needed resurfacing. That gave Asim time make his aim accurate.
The brick bounced off the windscreen, cracking the glass and smashing into the bonnet like a missile. Kit swore, spun the wheel and brought the car to a violent halt, grateful the windscreen was all in one piece. Then he clambered out of the car, slightly shocked, to examine the damage.
The damage was not that extensive as Asim had hoped; the car was the sort of car hired by politicians and celebrities in the Border, the glass would be bulletproof.
Kit, cursing whoever had thrown the rock in and lamenting the money he would lose when he returned the hire car, did not notice Asim scramble down, back onto the road. Nor did he see him thrust the long nail deep into the back tyre and leave it there.
Mahmud el-Fadil was just finishing his shift when the boy appeared, red faced from running and choking for breath. He barged into Mahmud’s office and almost fell into the desk. His hands and knees were red and bleeding from climbing onto the old bridge and the blood stained his pale clothing.
“I….I need your help!” Asim didn’t hesitate, he didn’t have time for that. He stared up into the big, angry features and forced himself to see past the frightening exterior and to the man beyond.
“I know about you.” Asim reminded him. “And you know about me. That’s why you have to help me, and someone else, even if it means breaking the law again.”
~
Josh
“I want to make a phone call!” I shout those words as River and I are manhandled into the back of a van. “I get to make a phone call!”
“You shut the fuck up!”
One of the security officers punches me hard in the stomach and I double up. River is pale, unresisting, her face is blank.
There was no point in running, these men have guns and they’re not afraid to use them. If they’d turned them on the people in the pub it would have been a bloodbath. Besides, neither of us could hide, our shaved heads are still too distinctive.
Once the pain in my stomach abates I manage to raise my head. Like River my hands are cuffed behind me and so I can’t keep my balance as I’m thrown into the van.
I land on my face and I feel my teeth bite through my tongue, blood fills my mouth and I spit it out.
“I just want to make a phone call!”
“Lie still you!”
A boot kicks me in the side of my face and everything goes black for a few seconds. When I lift my head I feel the van accelerate, River is sitting on a bench between two big men and I’m still on the floor, unable to use my hands to get up.
“Please.” I beg. “I – I’ve got some money. I’ll pay.”
One of the men slings his gun back over his shoulder and squats down beside me.
“How much?”
“I don’t know, it’s in my jacket pocket.”
Baraq gave me as much as he could spare, we used a little for the bus, but there’s plenty left. I don’t resist as a hand reaches into my jacket and withdraws the little roll of notes. He gives an interested grunt.
“Please may I use a phone.”
“There’s no point in getting a lawyer.” The man says, counting the notes before pushing them into his own pocket.
“I...I don’t want to phone a lawyer. I just want to phone my dad.”
“Come here.”
The man hauls me into a sitting position and takes the cuffs from my wrists. Then he throws a phone onto my lap.
“Knock yourself out then.”
With shaking fingers I tap in the number Baraq made me learn by heart. I doubt there’s much he can do for me, but I need him to know.
I clutch the phone as it rings. It’s late, close to midnight, I hope he’s awake. I close my eyes and pray. Please, please pick up the phone.”
~
Alaia
“Uncle Baraq?”
Baraq didn’t look up. He sat alone in the dark, his phone still on the floor in the corner where he’d thrown it in sheer frustration. If it hadn’t been for River’s madness, Josh would be safely on a boat to the Faroe Islands. He held back his tears, he’d let him down for a second time.
Baraq blinked to clear his eyes and somehow found a smile for Alaia. He loved this girl deeply. He knew he projected his guilt at being unable to protect Josh and Rachael onto his brother’s children but he did so nonetheless, taking great delight in watching Asim and Alaia grow into the admirable young people they had become.
“Can’t you sleep Alaia?”
She shook her head and advanced into the room, still dressed. She wanted to tell him about Tariq, about being Abdullah and why she would still have no choice but to run. Now though, now wasn’t the time. Now she simply craved closeness with her uncle.
She sat beside him on the sofa and rested her head against his arm.
“No.”
“It’s been a long night.”
“Who was that on the phone?”
Baraq’s smile cracked. “Josh.” He managed to say before the tears finally broke through. “My son.”
“And Elsie’s your daughter, isn’t she?”
Baraq stared at her. “What?”
“I’m not stupid Uncle. You told us you were married with stepchildren before you were brought to the BSI and tortured into recanting Christianity.” Baraq opened his mouth to respond but Alaia continued quickly. “Don’t deny it, I’ve seen the scars. I heard you speaking with Baba about finding your son, and I’m so pleased for you.”
“He was….arrested. In the Border. They don’t have any proper law there. No due procedure, no lawyers.”
Alaia cuddled closer.
“I saw your photograph.” She whispered. “In Elsie’s locket. She hasn’t recognised you, you were so much younger in the picture.” She reached out a slim hand and touched his beard. “And you didn’t have this. I only recognised you from your eyes.”
Baraq let the tears flow and for a moment they sat together, old man and young girl.
“I….I don’t want Elsie to know.” Baraq said.
“Why not. It would give you so much joy, I know it would.”
“Tariq is her natural father.”
Alaia shuddered. “He’s not a good man.”
“No. He was never good. He was swept away with the anti-Muslim sentiment that prevailed at the time of the referendum.” He explained. “He was part of a group responsible for the murder of a Muslim man. A husband and father who was doing nothing but returning home from work to his family.” Baraq sighed. “That was my father Alaia, though Tariq doesn’t know.
“And yet you forgive him?”
“Allah is most merciful and so must we be.”
“But you still believe in the Christian God?”
“Who is also full o
f mercy. And Tariq paid for his crime.”
“Did he?”
“Tariq was brought to the BSI, sentenced to death and tortured. You have no idea how thoroughly he was tortured. If you could see the burns on his body Alaia…..” Baraq trailed off. “It turned his mind. He accepted Islam the way a drowning man sizes a lifeboat and he became a zealot. He was held up as a poster-boy for the BSI, a westerner embracing the true religion. But inside, I don’t know. I think he loved Susanna and his children, he just…..he was just scared and hopeless. He drank too much.”
Alaia could see the pity and compassion in her uncle’s face and she wrapped both arms around him and let him cry.
“What will you do for your son?”
“I don’t know. Go to the Border. Try to help him. But if they take him back to Old Britain…..that’s what he fears most. Why didn’t I keep him with me Alaia? Why didn’t I insist?”
And they cried together for a long time before either went to bed.
~
Josh
The van rattles on and I lie on the floor, my hands cuffed behind my back, my heart lost somewhere deep inside me in a fog of black misery. I glance towards River who says nothing at all.
One of the men snakes out a hand and touches her knee.
“Do you want a phone call too?” He asks, slipping his fingers below the hem of her dress and moving them higher. “Because I can think of something you can do to earn one.”
River doesn’t try to stop his hands. She doesn’t even look at him.
“There’s nobody for me to phone.” She says in a flat voice.
The man doesn’t stop pushing her dress back and still she doesn’t seem to care.
“Leave her alone!” I try to climb to my feet but receive another blow to the head for my trouble.,
“Perk of the job.” Someone says in a nasty voice. “Rape’s only a crime in Old Britain. Here it’s just the people in charge taking what they want. And right now,” He leers at River. “I fancy fucking you.”
“Stop it!” I see the thug push River back against the seat and hitch up her dress, but I don’t see any more because something smashes into my head again and my world explodes in red stars.
I think I pass out for some minutes, and when my foggy head clears we’ve stopped and someone’s pulling me up. I glance over to River, I think she might be crying but I can’t tell. Her dress is torn, revealing most of her thighs. I want to tell her everything’s going to be all right, but that would be a lie.
“Where are we?” I ask, but nobody answers. We just wait until the van doors are flung open to reveal grey walls, some sort of garage or underground car park.
Somebody grips me by the shoulder and hauls me out. I stumble on the steps and land on concrete while River is dragged behind me.
We gaze around. There’s a sign over a gate with a striped barrier over it that reads welcome to Old Britain and I recognise the border police all around. My mouth feels dry with nausea. I can’t be taken back, I can’t.
“Thank you gentlemen, you’ve done a wonderful job, as always.”
I hear Diana Lamont’s high-heels clattering on the stone before she emerges from a small door marked no entry in red. The men grin at her and one of them winks.
“Anything for you sweetheart.” He says, with the sort of leer that would probably lead to a fine in Old Britain. Diana simply throws him a flirtatious smile and then approaches River.
“River?” She says gently. “Why did you do it sweetheart? Why did you want to hurt me?”
“Hurt you?” River raises her head and meets her mother’s eyes. “You’re the one who set your thugs on us.”
“To find you sweetheart. I have a responsibility to fight terrorism.”
“Terrorism?” River looks surprised at that.
“Speech Terrorism sweetheart. That’s what you’ve done.”
“Speech terrorism? Right. I get it. This is another opportunity for you to respond to words with physical violence again isn’t it? Like when you send your hired protesters to burn shops because something was said you didn’t like. I didn’t hurt anyone. I just recorded you admitting to what you’ve done. And you’re too late, I already upoloaded it.”
Diana tuts and picks at a fleck of dust on her suit.
“And I’ve already conducted two interviews explaining that I was attacked by Speech Terrorists this evening, and they threatened my life and the lives of my guests in order to force me to confess to the conspiratorial nonsense they invented.”
She steps towards River. “Your little video, sweetheart, will, at best, join the conspiracy theories along with the Loch Ness Monster and the faked moon landings.” She touches River’s face with a soft hand. “It was all for nothing River, do you understand? I’m doing a newspaper interview in the morning, the victim of a terrible attack. It’ll increase my popularity. I’ll look sad and beautiful and maybe wistful in the photographs. I almost wish you’d succeeded in killing somebody, then it would garner me even more sympathy.”
Right now I want to die. I genuinely have never felt this terrible before.
Diana sweeps away from River. “I shall, of course, report that both terrorists were caught and have been sent to a Rainbow centre for psychiatric evaluation. My concern is for their mental health, obviously.”
When she mentions the Rainbow Centre I feel my whole body sag to my knees and I let out a long, desperate groan of defeat. I can’t go back. Please God, no. Let me die now, a heart attack, anything.
“Now,” She brushes River’s forehead. “Knowing these gentlemen, am I right in thinking you had a little fun with them.”
“Fun?” River intones the word listlessly.
“They’re men’s men. You don’t get many of them in Old Britain any more. Do you need the morning-after jab sweetheart?”
River doesn’t answer that, but she hangs her head.
“Oh darling, you were always so funny about sex. It’s fun. That’s all.” Diana turns and walks back towards a long, sleek car parked a little way away. She opens the door, reaches down and picks up a bag. “But I did ask my doctor to give me this before I came to meet you. I don’t really want any grandchildren born in a Rainbow Centre do I? Not to a mentally unstable mother.”
Diana holds the syringe in her perfectly manicured hand and returns to River’s side. “It’s such a handy little jab isn’t it? Anyone can administer it. Even me. It’s so much more efficient than the morning after pill used to be.”
She pushes the needle into River’s thigh and River barely jumps.
“There now.” Diana kisses River on the cheek. “All done.”
“I can’t believe you just accept rape as normal.” I say suddenly finding my tongue. “All that stuff you preach about feminism, you old hypocrite. In Old Britain these men would be in prison.”
“We’re not in Old Britain Josh.” She tells me. “Or maybe I should call you Skye.”
Diana barely looks at me, but now I can see the monster lurking beneath the kind promises and the compassion. It’s so expertly camouflaged I didn’t notice it until its teeth were in my neck. “I’m so sorry darling,” She says, without an ounce of regret. “But I have no choice other than to recommend neither of you leave the Rainbow Centre ever again.”
~
Dai
Kit reached the border far later than he expected, he was no expert and changing tyres and he had grappled in the dark for some time. He would lose money on his hire car too, which irritated him no end. But he held on to the knowledge that he had Daichi Hisakawa in the boot, and Daichi may prove the link to Family Matters that he required.
As he waited for the barrier to rise, Kit ran what information he had acquired over in his head. They were slippery, like eels. Every time he thrust his hand into the barrel somehow they wriggled away, leaving him with nothing between his fingers.
Dai would change all that, and Sylvester Jourdete would just have to admit that nobody was more deserving of promotion than Kit
Summerday. And Kat could just go screw herself.
“Excuse me?”
A big man with a large beard and a scar across his nose leaned into his car.
“Yes?”
“Will you bring the car over here please.”
“Why? I’m in a hurry.”
“Routine security check sayyid.” His voice was heavily accented. Kit gave a deliberately irritated sigh and swung the car off the main road and down a smaller track to a small building.
“Make this quick.”
Two men opened the back doors of his car and glanced inside, swinging torches beneath the seats.
“I’m a police officer in Old Britain.” Kit told them. The man did not seem at all bothered.
“And I am a police Officer in the BSI. You are in the BSI.”
Kit scoffed. “You don’t have police here, you have savages with sticks.”
The man did not allow Kit’s words to rile him, simply walked around the car and examined the bonnet and the windscreen, his boots crunching on the ground.
“An accident?”
“A brick dropped from a bridge.”
“Deliberate?”
“I have no idea.”
The man stopped and let his eyes examine Kit, there was oil on his shirt and his face where he had wiped his forehead whilst grappling with the wheel.
“Are you sure you’re a police officer?”
“Of course I’m sure. Check my papers.” He rubbed his hand on his trousers. “I had to change a damn tyre. That’s why I look like this.”
“But you realise we must check?”
Kit had never been searched before, not more than a cursory check on the passengers. He found this man’s polite disrespect galling.
