by Robin Jarvis
Jezza removed his leather jacket and slipped off his boots. Howie continued reading from the book and still Queenie danced.
Then the rain began. The iron chair hissed and the flames died within the charcoal. The electric forces around them dimmed and were extinguished. Jezza was naked now. With his head bowed, he approached the Waiting Throne.
“Don’t!” Shiela begged, her reason struggling to the fore. “You’ll die!”
Her boyfriend did not respond, but Howie turned to her and in a solemn, commanding voice said, “Have faith, Labella.”
And then, as the rain teemed down, Miller stepped forward, all expression gone from his face. The burly man lifted Jezza by the waist and lowered him on to the scorching metal of the chair and Jezza pressed his bare back against it.
Shiela covered her ears. His shrieks were louder than the thunder that boomed across the harbour. She saw him clench his teeth so tightly that every vein stood out across his neck and chest and he placed his arms on those of the chair. Another howl of thunder – or was it merely him?
Miller bowed and walked backwards.
“Enough!” Shiela screamed, breaking through the enchantment that had smothered her. “That’s enough!”
Darting forward, she seized Jezza’s hands and pulled him clear. He went rolling on the ground, curled up in a ball, choking with his pain-filled cries.
When she saw the state of his back, she grabbed one of the water carriers and emptied it over him.
“Call an ambulance!” she shouted. “Hurry!”
“No!” Howie answered.
“He’ll die!” she yelled. “Look at him – look at that!”
“It’s beautiful,” the tattooist said admiringly. “Such exquisite work.”
The girl stared at him for an instant. Had everyone gone crazy? Howie was normally so level-headed and sensible. She reached for her phone and was about to dial 999 when a trembling hand knocked it from her grip.
“No hospitals!” Jezza struggled to say. “No doctors! I must… endure it alone.”
“Jezza!” she protested. “You need help.”
“There is no Jezza!” he screamed back at her. Then he collapsed and lay sprawled face down on the floor, the rain lashing across his body.
Shiela looked round at the others. They were staring at the man at her feet. The throne had seared strange symbols and ancient writing into his flesh.
“The contract is made,” Howie announced. “Lift the Ismus. We must bear him from this place.”
With the utmost reverence, Miller, Tommo and Dave approached the unconscious man. Tesco Charlie had put his glasses back on and brought a blanket from his cab. They covered the Ismus with it and gently carried him inside the container on the back of the lorry.
Shiela watched in disbelief. Even Manda and Queenie were playing along with it now, walking behind them like overawed worshippers.
Howie emptied the other two water carriers over the Waiting Throne and clouds of steam billowed upwards.
“Come, Labella,” he said, emerging from the white vapour with a beatific smile widening in his beard. “Rejoice. We have a Lord to rule over us and govern the Dancing Jacks. When the Ismus recovers from the Great Ordeal and arises, order shall be restored.”
Shiela could not comprehend what had happened that night. But she knew they had all taken a step towards something sinister and final and there was no going back.
Chapter 9
“IT’S ALL QUIET here today, but on Friday night, right behind me, outside the historic Landguard Fort here in Felixstowe, tragedy occurred – a tragedy that claimed the lives of many local young people. At nine o’clock last night several thousand were gathered here to take part in a supposed flash mob. Each of them had been invited via an anonymous email that the police are currently trying to trace. Details are not completely clear yet, but something sparked a riot and, while that was going on, a car came hurtling down this approach road, seemingly out of control. It skidded then crashed into another car, parked over there in that car park, and exploded. The second car followed moments after. You can only imagine the terror, the panic.”
A cool female voice interrupted.
“Have the police made any further statement as to how the car came to be out of control?”
The man on the screen shook his head. “Not as yet,” he said. “The forensic teams are still combing the wreckage and the area, as you can see behind me. But eyewitnesses we’ve spoken to say there was smoke coming out of the car even before the crash. Others claim to have seen flames.”
“Thank you, Justin, now we can head over to Lyndsay Draymore outside Felixstowe General where the injured and the dying were taken last night.”
The image of the suited man standing upon the sandhill, with the road behind him, was replaced by a smart young woman, in front of a red-brick, arched entrance.
“Lyndsay, what more can you tell us about this tragic incident?”
“Well, Tara, medical staff have been working round the clock, through the night here. I understand there was something in the region of a hundred and twenty casualties, impact injuries and burns being the majority of cases that had to be dealt with.”
“And I gather the death toll has now risen again?”
“Yes, within the last hour, it has been announced that two more have died as a result of their injuries, bringing the total now up to thirty-eight – with five more still in intensive care and fighting for their lives. An unbelievable loss of life in this usually quiet seaside town, here in Suffolk.”
Behind her a nurse emerged from the entrance; she looked tired and drained. Someone behind the camera must have alerted Lyndsay because she turned and almost ran over to her, eager for a word from the front line.
“Can you tell me what it’s been like in there?” she asked, shoving a microphone forward.
A startled Carol Thornbury looked quizzically down the lens that came after.
“How is the mood of the medical staff?” the reporter asked. “What can you tell us? How are the families of the injured feeling at this time?”
“Are you bloody stupid or something?” Carol snapped. “How do you think they’re feeling? Get that ruddy camera out of my face or I’ll give you a colonoscopy with it! And keep this area clear!”
Carol barged impatiently past the camera crew, leaving a thick-skinned Lyndsay smiling benignly. “As you can see,” she continued without a blink, “the atmosphere here is tense and tempers are running high. This is Lyndsay Draymore, Felixstowe General, for BBC News.”
The picture switched back to the anchorperson, perched informally against the news desk, casually displaying the shapely legs that had served her so well in Strictly Come Dancing the year before.
“And we’ll have more of that terrible incident in Suffolk on our main bulletin at six,” she purred. “You can tweet us your thoughts and condolences at the address at the bottom of the screen. Now over to our showbiz correspondent to see which pop diva has lost a size, shredding twenty pounds thanks to a new diet from…”
Martin turned off the TV. “Good on you, Carol,” he said proudly.
“She looked shattered,” Paul commented.
“Must have been a horrible night there,” Martin answered. “I’ll run a bath for her and do some toast. She’ll want something before she crashes…”
He flinched, not believing his unthinking choice of word, and the horror of the previous night rushed in again. He and Paul had returned home in a kind of dream state. The night had been alive with sirens and whirling lights and they had both fallen asleep in front of the rolling news.
The phone rang. It was Carol’s mother.
“Hello, Jean. Yes, I saw her on the news just now too. No, television always makes you look fatter than you are. Yes, it’s been awful. No, I don’t know how many were from the school, they haven’t released that information yet. Paul is fine. I’ll tell her you rang, soon as she gets back. OK, you too, Jean. Bye now.”
It was
the second time she had rung. The first was at half six that morning when she had first heard about it on the radio. Other people had called: Barry Milligan had sounded irritable and hungover and his mood wasn’t helped by the fact that the rugby game had been cancelled out of respect. Gerald Benning, Paul’s piano teacher, had checked to make sure he was safe, and so had members of the family who hadn’t been in touch for years. It was positively ghoulish.
When Carol came through the door, she gave her son the biggest, chest-crushing hug he’d ever had. She had worked an extra four hours over her shift. Her face looked grey and drawn and her hollow eyes seemed to attest to the things she had seen in the casualty department.
Martin passed her a cup of tea, which she took gratefully, but refused the toast.
“I couldn’t,” she stated.
Neither Martin nor her son uttered a word while she drank it. Then, cradling the cup in her hands, she said, “I never want to go through another night like that as long as I live.”
“You were just on telly,” Paul ventured. “You were fierce!”
“That stupid, stupid woman. Why do they ask such inane, crass questions?”
“It’s what they do,” Martin said.
“I almost punched her, but you know what stopped me? I knew it’d help her flaming career and I’d end up on some cheap blooper programme that’d be repeated for the rest of my life.”
She closed her eyes and seemed to sag.
“There’s a bath waiting,” Martin told her. He had never seen her like this before. Carol always left the grimness of the job at the hospital and was able to detach herself from it. Not this time. She was too limp to manage the bath. She just wanted to flop into bed.
Halfway up the stairs, she stopped and said, in a small, defeated voice, “I recognised lots of them. Some had been your pupils, Martin. A few of them still are… or were.”
Across town, Emma Taylor sat on her bed, staring blankly at the wallpaper. Conor had gone with her in the ambulance. Both had been too stunned to say anything. In casualty Emma had been checked over: superficial burns to the back of her legs, which had been appropriately dressed and, due to the volume of more serious cases coming in, she had been discharged. Conor had been treated for the cuts and bruises he had sustained in the fight, but the sights that wheeled by while he waited never left him.
Emma’s usually disinterested parents had been loud and vocal in their sympathy, but of zero use and were more keen to find out if any compensation could be claimed. For the first time, the girl had not milked a situation to her utmost advantage. Instead she went quietly to her room, plugged her earphones in and replayed those moments over and over in her head. She hadn’t slept all night.
When her mobile rang, she didn’t hear it, but saw the flashing of the screen. She stared at it like it was something new and unrecognisable. The number was certainly unfamiliar. She picked it up and pulled out one earphone.
“Who’s that?”
“Conor.”
“How’d you get my number?”
“Nicky Dobbs gave it me. I knew you two used to go out…”
“Nicky Dobbs is a waste of space.”
“So I thought I’d…”
“What do you want?”
“About, you know. I can’t talk to anyone here about it. They won’t be able to understand.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But you were in that car – you know what happened. The police are going to start asking…”
Emma bristled. “Are you going to grass me up?” she said. “Others will have seen you in it.”
“They was too busy running for their lives. Only you and me know I was in that car. Danny, Kevin, B.O. and Brian won’t be telling no one now, will they? They’re burned and gone. We both saw Kevin flapping about on fire. So you just keep your trap shut, yeah?”
There was a silence.
“You hear me?”
“I’m not sure,” Conor said at length. “I can’t get my head straight.”
“Then try harder!” she told him. “Don’t you think I’ve been through enough?”
“Yeah, course.”
“But you want to set the law on me as well? I wasn’t even driving!”
“No. I dunno. I can’t think.”
Emma ground her teeth. “Look,” she said, “there’s no way I’ll be let out of this house today. They’re useless, but think I need to stop in so they can claim extra for the trauma. I’ll work on them tomorrow and meet you then, yeah? We’ll talk it through, yeah?”
“Tomorrow? I’m not sure I can wait…”
“Just sit on it for one more bloody day, will you!”
“OK, OK.”
“Down by the boot fair then, about three.”
“The boot fair?”
“Where else is busy on a Sunday here? I’m not going to traipse up a lonely beach with you. It’s not a date.”
“I wasn’t asking for one!”
“See you then, then.”
“Umm… and Emma…?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry about Keeley and Ashleigh.”
The girl’s mouth dried. “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks.” She ended the call and closed her eyes. Images of her two friends caught in the Fiesta’s headlights reared in her memory.
Emma snapped her eyes open and continued to stare at the wallpaper.
The rest of that day passed quietly for the shocked town.
On Sunday the papers were full of it. There were sensationalised eyewitness accounts from whoever they could get to talk about the incident locally. Half of those interviewed hadn’t even been there. There was a two-page spread with a dynamic graphic of View Point Road and the progress of the car along it, with arrows indicating where the vehicle was going to crash and explode. There were photographs of the deceased, each taken at some point the previous year – all young, all smiling. Danny Marlow had been singled out as the cause of the disaster, but none of his family, especially his brother, would give an interview so the papers had to make do with the gossip they had wheedled out of neighbours and unnamed “close family friends”.
As well as all that, there were the usual scaremongering articles on the dangers of the Internet. Sporadic, starred panels voiced the opinions of waning celebrities whose publicity agents had eagerly volunteered their clients’ condoling sound bites about the tragedy, even though most of them had no idea where Felixstowe actually was. A photo shoot had been hastily arranged for a teen pop sensation, coyly wearing a firefighter’s helmet and little else, to show her support for those brave heroes who battled the flames, while also plugging her latest single, the release of which had been specially brought forward and was available on iTunes that very day.
Barry Milligan read through every paper and cradled his head in his hands. The death toll had now risen to forty-one. Eight of them attended his school. A further twenty-three had been former pupils and twenty-seven were still in hospital. Special services were being held in churches across town that morning and he had sat and prayed with everyone else, to whatever might be listening.
Then he drove to the school. There was an emergency meeting of governors and department heads at 2 p.m. and he wanted to be the first one there. He needed to be in his office to sort out the details for tomorrow. As he approached, he saw that floral tributes and messages were already being laid outside the gate. There was another reporter hanging about, ambushing groups of sobbing girls. News editors loved intrusive images of raw grief. Snot and tears are real attention-grabbers. Barry slipped by them and entered the building.
A school after hours and during the weekend is a strange, lonely place. It needs children to bring it to life and give it purpose. Standing in the corridor, which echoed and smelled of floor polish, Barry wondered how he was going to get through Monday’s assembly tomorrow morning.
The meeting only lasted an hour; no one was in the mood to argue and everything was settled. There would be counselling
available for any child who needed it throughout the week. It was going to be a rough time and like nothing Barry had ever experienced in his professional life. Downing Street had even been in touch. The Prime Minister would like to come and deliver his condolences in person and give a sympathetic yet inspirational speech to the students. Only one discreet camera crew need be present, the press office assured him. Barry had vetoed that immediately in very colourful language. The week was going to be difficult enough without an unctuous Prime Minister and his entourage having to be considered. The Headmaster’s sole duty was to the children. Publicity-hungry politicians seeking to boost their ratings in the opinion polls by exploiting such a tragedy didn’t even figure. It made Barry furious.
After the meeting and making the necessary phone calls and doing everything he possibly could, Barry returned home. He donned his favourite rugby shirt and spent the rest of the day with a bottle of twelve-year-old malt. The pubs were infested with reporters, sniffing for grime.
The rest of Felixstowe could not remain indoors any longer. The grieving town needed company: they needed to see familiar faces, to stop and talk, to share their sorrows and disbelief and give thanks if their immediate circle had not suffered a loss.
So that Sunday afternoon saw unusually high numbers wandering down to the seafront. They chatted in hushed, respectful tones while they walked past the cheerfully painted beach huts and deserted amusements, and found their steps gravitated towards the peninsula. But they demurred at completing that solemn journey just yet. Instead they stopped at the Martello tower along the way and browsed through the boot fair that was held there every Sunday, floods permitting, on the surrounding wasteland.
Conor Westlake was sitting on the low sea wall in front of the boot fair. His face still bore the discoloured marks of Friday’s fight, but they looked worse than they felt.
The gulls were floating above, shrieking mournfully and swooping down on any scraps that the chip-eaters flung their way. The sea was grey and featureless, except for the movement of the enormous container ships that sailed from the dock around the infamous headland. They were so immense they looked like drifting cubist islands. Conor checked his phone for messages, but there were none. He swivelled about on the wall and looked across the car roofs and bustling boot fair.
