Strangled Silence

by Oisin McGann

  Someone must have called the police. There were sirens wailing in the distance. They would arrive in a matter of minutes.

  'What are we going to do now?' Amina asked.

  She had a small camera out and was taking shots of the drone.

  'We need to get out of here,' he replied. 'We've struck bloody gold. If this isn't hard evidence, I don't know what is. I need you to go home and get those pictures uploaded on the web somewhere, and soon. Distribute them. Make it so they can't be gathered up and destroyed. And then find somewhere safe to lie low for a while. We got lucky this time – they tried to take us on the sly and you caught them by surprise. But these sods won't give up that easy, especially now we've got them by the short and curlies!'

  Chi was elated. He'd finally found his flying saucer and he was going to make sure the whole world knew about it – but not until he'd examined every inch of it to find out who'd made the thing. There was a huge, stupid grin pasted on his face and he didn't care.

  'What are you going to do?' Amina asked him.

  'I'm going to take this to the only man I can trust to protect me,' Chi told her. 'And I think I've got enough to buy my way in.'

  - stared at the phone in his desk drawer, wondering why it was ringing. That phone was a dedicated line. It wasn't supposed to ring unless something was going badly wrong. It was late in the night, when normal people were at home in bed or out enjoying themselves. - rarely indulged in either activity. The problem was, he had just been about to pick that phone up to deliver some bad news of his own. Now he was about to receive some instead. With some sense of trepidation, he reached into the open drawer and picked up the handset.

  'Yes?'

  'The package has gone missing,' 's voice informed him.

  'What?' he barked, glancing up at the door of his office, to ensure it was closed. Then, in a quieter voice, he hissed: 'What do you mean, "missing"?'

  'I mean exactly that. The container that arrived in Sinnostan was full of water. Plain old bloody water. The nerve agent has disappeared and we have no idea at what stage in the shipment. The route was so complicated it could be anywhere. Our people are rounding up all the couriers, but it'll take time to find out who diverted it and where. There's a possibility it never even got put on the ship. I think Cantang double-crossed us.'

  'Cantang? Jesus,' - exclaimed. 'Hang on . . . you mean he could still have it here? But if that's so—'

  'There could only be one reason why he'd do it,' said calmly. 'He's going to screw us over – the only question is how badly. We have to shut down everything, cut our losses and get out.'

  'That won't be so simple,' - replied. 'Amina Mir and Chi Sandwith just got their hands on one of our drones.'

  There was a frosty silence on the other end of the phone.

  'How the hell did that happen?'

  'She shot the bloody thing down. Don't ask me how! The point is, we can't shut up shop until we've got the thing back or destroyed it. I presume there's nothing on it that can lead back to your company?'

  'No, not directly. But . . . No, no, there isn't.'

  He didn't sound sure enough for - 's taste. There was another long pause on the line.

  'Look, we don't have any options on this,' said at last. 'I want scorched earth. Leave nothing behind that can implicate us. In two weeks, I want all of this to be a memory.'

  'Easier said than done. We don't want them to be able to follow a long line of dead people back to our door. What about ? She won't be happy about shutting down her precious programme.'

  '? I think she's outlived her usefulness and I don't trust her motives. If there's any doubt about her, get rid of her too.'

  - sniffed, allowing himself a bleak smile.

  'That one will be a pleasure.'

  Amina had come home after Tariq had gone to bed and she was awake and out before he got up. He didn't know why she had taken the gun, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to work it out. She had taken that funeral card threat seriously. Tariq was worried about her. Whatever she was mixed up in, she was way out of her depth. He wished their parents had taken her more seriously – just as he wished they'd listened when he tried to tell them about the MindFeed program in school. He was still taking part, but he was feeling increasingly nervous about it.

  They were doing Physics using a beat-'em-up game today. Speed, acceleration, momentum, mass, gravity, energy, they all had a bearing on how you tackled your opponent. You picked your fights according to how well your specs compared with your opponent's and played your strengths against their weaknesses. As the students lined up for roll call, Tariq held his phone up, pretending to turn it off, and used the camera to snap some pictures of Noble.

  Once on the computer, he downloaded the images. The customizing feature of this game, like the shoot-'em-up, allowed you to paste a new face onto your opponent's head. Noble's fit perfectly. Tariq proceeded to thrash the bugger's image with well-placed blows.

  The class passed quickly and it left him in a good mood. Destroying your tormentor over and over again was quite therapeutic. For most of the rest of the day, Tariq felt better about school. The other lads ignored him at lunchtime, preferring to spend their break smoking out the back and flirting with the 'bad girls'. It made him think of Dani again and how he could make her laugh, but that seemed to be as close as he'd ever get.

  Tariq had always been of the opinion that bully victims – and he hated using that term to describe himself, it was so pathetic – brought a lot of trouble on themselves. He probably shouldn't take himself so seriously; he should relax, laugh a bit more at their jibes and even crack a few jokes at his own expense. This whole thing of relishing being the outsider had backfired on him. Being different was all very well, but he seemed to have gone too far. He hadn't been out with a girl in over a year.

  As he walked out of his last class of the day, he was already considering a change in hairstyle. He could join a couple of the school clubs too – it would be nice to play some tennis again, maybe even take up a martial art. His father was always on at him to channel his aggression into something useful.

  Tariq noticed the smell in the corridor as he went to leave his heavier books in his locker before going home. Other kids were looking around too, sniffing the air with puzzled expressions. Wrinkling his nose, he walked along the bank of grey metal doors until he reached his; marked like his school bag with the names of death-metal bands. The odour was stronger here – crawling up his nostrils in feathery wisps of irritation. His eyes were fixed on the three slits perforating the top half of the door. With his keys out, he hesitated before opening it. He already knew what he was going to find.

  With jerky movements, he jammed the key in the lock and turned it, yanking the door open. Inside, spread out on his jacket as if dropped from a height, was bagel-sized curl of dog shit. Some of it had been smeared up the walls of the locker and over his books and the stack of software disks. He gently closed the locker, walking away from it until a wave of dizziness came over him. Feeling nauseous, he knelt down and pressed his brow against the cool metal of a locker door. Rage grew like a ball of needles in his mind, his breath coming in short gasps through his teeth. They were never going to leave him alone.

  They were never going to leave him alone.

  His nails dragged down the drab, painted metal.

  They were never going to leave him alone.

  His head leaned so hard against it, he could feel the door buckle slightly.

  They were never going to leave him alone.

  A gurgling growl uttered from his throat, like the sound of some trapped, despairing animal.

  There were no clear thoughts in his head as he strode through the corridors and out of the school. The car park was too small and was always full at the end of the day with parents on the school run. Some parents didn't bother pulling in because they were likely to get stuck behind somebody else who was waiting, stopping instead at the kerb of the dual carriageway that ran past the car park.
Kids hung around on the path alongside the main road, watching out for their ride home and horsing around while they waited.

  Alan Noble and his mates were just outside the gate. There was a three-metre fence around the entire school grounds, but the railings on the side of the road in front of the gate were suitable for sitting on and Noble's crew often claimed them as their own so that they could sit and look out over the high roofs of the SUVs pulling up to the kerb.

  Perched on the top bar of the railing, Noble turned in time to see Tariq coming through the gate.

  'Whoa!' he said, laughing. 'Look at the face on hi—'

  Tariq's first blow broke Noble's nose. Blood sprayed from his nostrils. The frenzy of punches that followed shocked everyone standing nearby. Noble's friends stood frozen for several seconds. The mother behind the wheel of the car nearest the railings saw the violence break out and immediately pulled out of the space and into the road. Tariq kept hitting Noble around the head, grabbing the bully's tie so that he could wrench him back each time his punches knocked the other boy away. Somebody tried to get their arm around Tariq's neck but he bit as hard as he could into their arm until he heard a scream and the arm pulled away. His left hand kept a tight hold on Noble's tie. The skin of his right fist split around the knuckles, cut by the impacts and by Noble's teeth.

  More hands grabbed him and this time someone seized his hair, pulling his head back. His grip on Noble's tie was broken and he was dragged back. A man in a silver, low-slung Mazda, unable to see over the Range Rover in front of the fight, spotted the vacant parking space by the railings, gunned his engine and swung into it just as Noble toppled backwards off the railing. His head hit the tarmac of the road, his neck folding under the weight of his body just as the car skidded over him. His shriek grated across the surface of the road before being crushed against the high kerb.

  Nobody who heard the sound would ever forget it.

  The hands holding Tariq loosened, almost letting him fall. Their grip released and he stood, suddenly conscious of the empty space that had developed around him. The others were distancing themselves from him, and his vision completed the illusion of suddenly floating in space, tunnelling his focus onto the body beneath the front wheel of the car. Somebody behind him started screaming and then another started and another. The harsh sound was a wall pushing him forwards, pressing him against the railing, forcing him to look down on what had once been Alan Noble. Tariq was overcome with the certainty that he had not done this thing. This wasn't happening to him, but to someone outside of him.

  'It wasn't me,' he whispered.

  As hands seized him again, pulling him back, forcing him to the ground, he shouted it over and over again.

  'I didn't do this! I didn't do this! It wasn't me!'

  Amina got out of work when the crowds were heaviest, seeking safety and anonymity in the mass of bodies making for the trains. Despite Shang's very public murder, she was convinced that nobody would come for her as long as she had people around her . . . and if they did, she would scream blue murder.

  She had spent the previous night lying awake, holding her father's gun beneath the duvet, trying to work out how she could convince her dad of the danger she was in. Maybe if he could get her onto one of the marine bases, they would keep her safe. But for how long? Was she going to have to live in fear for the rest of her life?

  The last few nights had taken their toll on her. In the reflection of the train window, her face looked pale and drawn; there were dark bags under her eyes. She fantasized about being able to lie down and close her eyes without fearing for her life, as she had been able to do only a few weeks ago.

  The Underground station wasn't far from her house, but this was where she felt the deepest unease, on the walk home. Every car or van that passed near her set her on edge; she flinched at any loud noise. She had the keys for the front door in her hand while she was still a hundred metres from her house.

  Amina was unprepared for the scene that awaited her outside her home.

  Over a dozen reporters were hanging outside the garden gate with microphones, recorders, cameras and TV cameras. They turned as one when they saw her coming, spreading out to encircle her like a pack of dogs. The questions came in a barrage of insistent voices.

  'What made your brother do it? – Has he had any previous history of violence? – Has he ever suffered any other mental health problems? – Tell us about the mind control experiments! – Have any of his friends suffered the same problems? – Does he have any friends? – What about this mind control? – What have the flying saucers got to do with this? – Who is involved in this conspiracy? – Was your father one of the brainwashed soldiers? – What exactly—'

  'Stop!' Amina shouted. 'What do you want? What's going on?'

  Some of them shared knowing looks. She hadn't heard.

  'Amina Mir.'A woman spoke up, brandishing a microphone bearing the news logo of a radio station. 'Your brother, Tariq, has just murdered a fellow student on the road outside their school. He struck him several times in the face and then pushed him under the wheels of an oncoming car.'

  Amina's throat tightened, her stomach becoming a hard knot of wood in her abdomen.

  'What? What . . . what did you say?'

  'Tariq claims that he was being brainwashed by a computer program that the army introduced into the school. He said that he knows this because of a story that you have been working on for the Chronicle – a story about soldiers being abducted and put through mental reconditioning by a secret black-operations unit. He said that they are using the same process in his school and that you have received death threats because of your investigations. Is your mother involved in this investigation, Amina? What about your father? What have his connections in the military and the Department of Defence got to say about all this? Have you any comment, Amina?'

  The rush of questions began again, buffeting her with their insinuations. She pushed through the pack, hurrying up the driveway, her keys in her hand. The moment she was inside the house, she snatched her mobile from her bag and dialled her mother's number.

  'Hi, Mum?'

  'Amina? Oh God, love. Are you all right?'

  'Is it true, Mum?'

  'Tariq killed a boy at his school, honey. There . . . there were a lot of witnesses. He's already . . . he's already confessed. It sounds like a fight that got out of hand. I'm sure the part where . . . where the other boy – Alan Noble – was pushed under the car . . . I'm sure that was an accident. Hang on—' Her mother turned away from the phone to say something to somebody else for a moment and then directed her attention back to Amina. 'Are you all right? The press are at the house, aren't they? Don't say a bloody word to them, OK? Your dad will be home soon and he'll deal with them. Stay inside until your dad gets home. Don't say anything to the press, do you understand?'

  Amina hung up. She sat down on the stairs and gazed out through the patterned glass at the distorted figures hovering outside the gate. It occurred to her that she had better put her father's gun back. But even if she cleaned it he would know it had been fired – and anyway, she had no way of replacing the four missing bullets and he always knew exactly how much ammunition he had in the house.

  If the press found out who had fired the shots at Chi's house, her family's reputation for insanity would be confirmed.

  Staring out at the reporters, the irony of the situation did not escape her. She had wanted proper publicity for her story and now she'd got it. She had craved the safety of the public eye and now she had it in spades. It was hard to see how things could get any worse.

  14

  Things got steadily worse. Over the next week, Tariq's assault on Alan Noble continued to be held up by the press as the latest evidence that young people today were violent screw-ups. Helena Jessop and Martin Mir put their media savvy to good use, releasing a carefully measured statement to the press and downplaying talk of Amina's 'investigation' and Tariq's claims about being brainwashed.

  But
the dogs had their teeth into this now. If Tariq had not mentioned the army's computer program, the story might have faded after a few days – another tragic episode of school violence. Instead, the sniff of a conspiracy added far more meat to this story. But the idea wasn't taken seriously; it was used instead to establish how disturbed Tariq was and how his older sister's outlandish theories had sent him over the edge. The boy remanded to the detention centre in Feltham – bore so little resemblance to her brother, caught in snatched shots by the press's cameras outside the police station that Amina had to look twice at him before she recognized him. Pictures on television of his new face, with its hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes, made him look like a haunted schizophrenic.

  The Chronicle distanced themselves from Amina, saying that she had been working outside her brief, that she wasn't even a real reporter, just a university student on work experience.

  All of a sudden, the rest of the press seemed to know a great deal about Amina and her connections with Chi and Ivor. Too much, too fast. She was told not to come into work for a week and she spent most of the time watching the news and reading the papers online, and she was astounded at how much they knew, how detailed their background information was.

  Tariq's poor record in a series of schools, his behavioural problems and the fights he'd got into were all made public. Even his brief foray into Islamic fundamentalism was dragged out. They made a big issue of the music he listened to, especially the 'nihilistic' work of Absent Conscience, whose songs were also being blamed for a school shooting in the States.

  Amina's youth and lack of experience in journalism were highlighted, excusing her for her gullibility in being taken in by more cynical types. But in some reports, she was portrayed as ruthlessly ambitious, willing to weave any kind of fantastic tale in her desperation to make headlines. Girls she'd hardly known in school were interviewed, claiming she had always cared more for her career than for friends or family, airing old grudges against her that she'd never even been aware of. In their opinion, she was not above playing to Ivor McMorris's insecurities in order to use him for his story . . . and his lottery millions.