‘’Scuse me fer interupting. Has any of you guys seen Silver?’
They established that the child had been missing for four hours. Forced to give up the lemonade idea, she’d taken advantage of the upset this morning, half-inched a litre of vodka and a shot glass, and set out to sell tots in the prefab village. Which was supposed to be out of bounds, but some other tour kids, who’d been playing with refugee kids on sanctioned, neutral territory, had seen her over there. The vodka story they’d extracted from Pearl, Silver’s usual business partner. But Pearl had come back alone.
When Fiorinda woke up she was in a different bed. Charm Dudley was there, red-eyed, furious. But fury, in Charm, had to stand in for several other emotions, permanently missing from the repertoire. To get on with her at all you had to accept that. She sat up, ribs twinging hard. ‘Where’s Ax?’
Charm picked up a notepad from the bed table, and scrawled on it.
He’s gone to Cleethorpes.
‘Oh… Oh yeah, I remember, I’m deaf… Hey, me Beethoven.’
‘You fucking self obsessed little prima donna! The fucking country is about to explode, Ax has gone off to get himself killed by the mob and TOM IS DEAD! You’re unbelievable! How can you think of yourself at a time like this?’
‘You’re wasting your breath,’ said Fiorinda (getting most of this from context, as Charm was not remembering to write it down). ‘I’m not kidding, Charm. I really can’t hear you, and I don’t know how to lipread. Oh, I suppose I’ll have to learn. What about Caf? Is she okay?’
Not pregnant any more, Charm wrote. And her lover is dead. Otherwise fine.
‘What about me getting out of here? Where is here? Is this a hospital?’
You’re under guard. Sage was supposed to come back and babysit, but he got held up.
Fiorinda stared ahead of her, thinking what to do. Every breath she took was painful. ‘Where’s Ingrid? I need clothes, a corset. Oh, and I need to talk to a doctor. Not this lot. Get me someone who deals in extreme sports.’
There were two hundred and fifty-odd Boat People housed in Easton Friars deerpark, about two thousand more in emergency-requisitioned caravan parks and tourist campsites in the area. The Easton Friars spokesperson insisted no one in the prefabs had seen Silver, or her vodka bottle. The refugees’ social workers were understandably on the defensive: but if this wasn’t an infuriating prank (which still might be) the worst conclusion was probably the right one. Easton Friars was a sink estate, in Boat People terms, quietly arranged that way with the idea that the barmy army could handle any trouble. And obviously, now this had happened, a very stupid place to bring lawless, fearless Countercultural infants. There were some bad bastards from bad places, lurking among the dispossessed.
They’d found her dress and cardigan stuffed in a hole in a wall in the mock monastic ruins. No shoes (Silver rarely wore shoes); no underwear. Her Oltech tag was in her dress. Was that smart kidnappers, rapists, or Silver being wild and free? The search of the grounds continued. Sage and others moved out to the satellite camps.
He’d talked to Ax and to the people at the hospital, got some reassurance about Fiorinda and left messages for her. Best he could do. In the grey dawn of the day after Silver had disappeared he was completing a circuit around Easton Friars, looking for a beaten-up white panel van, that possibly didn’t have a number plate. Pearl had eventually revealed she’d seen her sister getting into a van, and the social workers had reluctantly agreed they knew a vehicle like the one she described; so it might be true, although kids will say anything under pressure. Gate control was not tight, refugees went in and out, some of them had wheels, a van could be anywhere. What do we do if we cannot put a cap on this thing? Shall we try to make light of it? Hey, one little rockstar hippie kid, we have several more, no worries, see, we’re smiling—
Another caravan park, government Boat People Welfare trailers at the entrance. A run-down looking place, weird idea for a holiday spot, next to a breaker’s yard. Ilkley moors off to the west, with Yap Moss somewhere beyond. He left the bike a few hundred metres up the road and headed back. No dogs about, thank God. He spoke quietly to the night security, went to have a look around alone. They were trying very hard to be discreet. The van was on the grass by one of the permanent trailers. It had an unreadable license plate, hammered by gunfire. There was also a large dark BMW, a hire-firm sticker in the back window. He touched his wrist. ‘George. Think I have something.’
Walking softly, he went right to the trailer and looked in. The interior was brightly lit. There were six men around a small table, drinking. Four of them were better dressed than the average Boat Person, the two others younger, no more than teenagers, maybe he’d seen them at Easton Friars, hard to be sure. The little girl was tied to a chair: she was naked. There were three handguns lying on the table, two well-used assault rifles propped against a wall. If there was another weapon, it was out of sight. As he watched, the six men took cards from a pack, each turning up his choice among muttering and uneasy laughter.
It looked as if they were drawing lots.
He turned away. ‘She’s here. There are six of them, armed. Get to me soon as you can.’
The light was changing, as the red limb of the sun rose over the Vale of York. Should he wait? A few minutes could mean a lot to Silver Wing. Many times in the past few weeks being big, weird and welcome to at least some of the crowd had allowed him to get away with non-violence. But he did not think there were any Aoxomoxoa fans in that van. Better just go for it.
The door shattered like matchwood. The kidnappers jumped to their feet and he piled in, making best use of the confined space. He had them too busy to go for the guns, but he should have immobilised their transport: what Ax would have done, but Ax had two good hands and a fucking unholy knowledge of how to make a motor go or not go. Sage would just have to make sure no one here got the slightest chance to grab the kid and escape. This thought, along with the memory of Pigsty’s video diaries, instilling a ruthless and brutal determination not to fuck up… he was surprised how quickly it was over. Three of them down and out, the fourth nursing a broken arm, two of them out the door. The sound of the van’s engine: too bad. He cut the child free with his pocket knife, stripped off his jacket and his shirt, dressed her in the shirt. She hadn’t made a sound.
‘Well, Silver, did you get raped?’
There were wheels and engines outside, doors slamming, footsteps.
She shook her head violently.
‘What the fuck have you been doing, Sage?’
George and Bill stood in the broken doorway, surveying the wreckage, the skull masks grinning in disbelief.
‘Um… I was in a hurry.’
North Yorks police, who had been discreetly supporting the search, took over. Sage had not killed any of the bad guys: the teenagers who had caught Silver and sold her on were picked up without further mayhem. But too many people had been involved. The story of the child’s abduction was out, on the air and in newsprint, forming a vicious symmetry with the explosion on South Shields beach. Angry crowds gathered again. The final gig of the Rock the Boat Tour suddenly looked like a ready-made flashpoint.
They’d originally planned to hold the grand finale in Bradford Civic Centre. Before setting out they’d switched the venue to Humberside, the date to coincide with the estimated arrival time of the final ships; and left Allie’s team to fix it all up. The venue was at Cleethorpes: a former amusement park called Pleasure Island, where a CCM campground had come into being in Dissolution Year.
The ‘Festival’ had been a local affair, the campground little more than a few long-term tents planted among the rides; and the seaside-fun karaoke bar turned into a Countercultural rock venue. All that had changed. The boating lake in the middle of the site, drained as a health hazard when the park fell into disrepair, was now the centre of the arena. Big screens had been erected, marquees and pavilions, and a towered stage. Some of the white knuckle rides had been fixed up and set run
ning (irresistible, but NOT A GOOD IDEA). On the morning of the concert, with the crowds already pouring in, and an ugly mix of adrenalin, criminal intent and punters in their thousands ready to ignite, Fiorinda and DARK were in the Olde England section, in conference with Doug Hutton, chief of tour security, in an impromptu dressing room decorated with fragments of defunct kiddie-rides. A giant teacup, the huge head of a plastic caterpillar with a very sinister grin; when Ax arrived.
Fiorinda and Cafren had discharged themselves from hospital, regrouped with DARK and persuaded Fiorinda’s guards to escort them to Humberside overnight, in the good old tourbus. Everyone had been drinking hard, and they were determined to go on.
‘What the fuck are you doing here!’ yelled Ax.
‘We have a gig,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Like it says in the programme.’
Doug and his lieutenants, caught between two awesome fires, muttered excuses and left—
‘Fiorinda, I’m still in two minds whether to cancel. This place is a fucking death trap, I wish I’d seen it before… Don’t you understand what’s happened, the past two days?’
‘Yes I do. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Shit. Are you crazy? Listen, they meant to kill you. We don’t know when those mines were planted, but we know when the bastards switched them on. They were watching the tv, they saw you on the beach, and then they sent the signal—’
Fiorinda shrugged. ‘Ouch. Yes, I spotted that. It isn’t relevant, Ax. What’s relevant is that the punters need a shot of theatre, now, before anything else bad happens and shifts the balance further. And we’re the ones to give it to them, because we got blown up—’
‘In football terms,’ said Gauri, earnestly, ‘wor side’s a goal down. We have to regain possession. We canna let the sad bastards take the advantage off us—’
‘I want to play,’ said Cafren Free, speaking low. ‘I want to do this, for Tom.’
‘It’s not your decision, Ax,’ said Charm, belligerently.
‘You’re fucking out of your heads!’
‘You could be right,’ agreed Fiorinda, grinning fiercely. ‘So WHAT?’
‘We’ve talked to Doug,’ said Fil, attempting to sound rational. ‘He reckons the risk is rickable, I mean manangerable.’
‘Yeah, he says that, because Fiorinda has the security crew hypnotised. The site is full of dangerous lunatics, real bad guys, a lot of them planning to be in the mosh… Fuck, I don’t believe this. How can you sing with broken ribs?’
‘They’re not broken, only cracked. Anyway, I’ve got that sorted. Miracles of modern medicine.’
Suddenly he was distracted, staring at her. ‘You can hear me.’
‘Er, yeah.’
‘Then why didn’t you CALL me, TELL me about this plan.’
‘It comes and goes. I think the alcohol helps. Ax, trust me. I know what I’m doing. Me, cynical manipulative crowd pleaser.’
She saw him weaken, and held out her arms. He hugged her carefully, kissing her hair, her bruised face. ‘My lovely girl, you’ll drive me crazy, okay, go ahead, not that I could stop you.’
‘One other thing,’ said Fiorinda, smiling up at him sweetly, pissed as a pickled pack rat. ‘Charm can be Tom. She’s an okay bassist. But we’ll need a lead guitar.’
‘Doesn’t have to be any good,’ said Cafren, reassuringly. ‘Anyone can be wor’ Charmain. Three chords and a horrible attitude: that’s all you need.’
Fiorinda and Ax on stage together. It made sense, if anything was going to work. He couldn’t believe DARK’s frontwoman would stand for it.
‘Is that okay with you, Charm?’
Charm glared at him. ‘Don’t fucking take it as a precedent.’
Fiorinda and Cafren went back to bus to rest. When they came out again (having spent their time drinking instead of resting) the Olde Englishe Theme Park street, that had become the backstage of this thing, was a mill of strangers, mainly male, many of them openly carrying weapons. Fiorinda, walking among her guards, saw Ax with a couple of barmy army officers, talking to some big guys in digital masks. Ax in that rather wonderful dark red suit with the nehru jacket, smiling easily. He was unarmed, of course, but he had a guitar slung over his shoulder, (his Flying Vee, not the Les Paul), none too subtle reminder of a different sign of mastery: the British Army assault rifle Ax Preston had used in the Islamic Campaign. The guitar-man as warlord. Follow me. Keep the peace. Or take on me and my army.
Their eyes met.
So this is where we’re at. This is your role, and this is mine.
‘Better get on, Fio,’ said one of the security men, respectful but uneasy: not happy about her being out in the open.
In a hotel suite in York, Allie present only as a wandering voice, the Few had discussed the stage effects for this gig, which they’d decided to call the Armada Concert. Verlaine had been distressed about the lack of logic: Elizabethan Armada bad thing, bad invasion of foreigners. Surely that was the opposite—?
‘No, no, Ver,’ Fiorinda had explained to him. ‘Armada good because we won, and romantic historical thing. This Armada therefore also good. D’you get it?’
‘But we, er, whoever ‘we’ was, I’m a Papist myself, we didn’t win. They got blown off course by a storm and ended up wrecked in Ireland and places—’
‘This is the British-I’m-sorry-I-mean-English public,’ said Sage. ‘Logic? You are kidding.’
‘A lot of the punters won’t get off on Elizabeth the First,’ pointed out Anne-Marie, worriedly. ‘They’re not re-enactment nuts—’
‘Doesn’t matter. She’s been on tv. A lot of folks will get off: and feel included.’
‘There’ll be big screens in the Park,’ said Allie’s voice. ‘At Leeds, and at Reading. We’re working on the rest, we should have reasonable coverage—’
And Fiorinda, the Crisis Sweetheart, will be dressed up as the Virgin Queen.
The red and gold dress, long tight sleeves and small waist, full skirts below the knee. The square neck was cut high enough to hide most of the bruises; the boned bodice would keep her back straight, and help her breathing. The sporting-injuries doctor had injected some kind of jelly into her back, that would float around her cracked bones and render them more or less innocuous. He’d warned her it would have to be sucked out again, or the ribs wouldn’t heal, and this would be painful: but fuck tomorrow. Fiorinda sat in front of the dressing room mirror, drinking tequila and thinking of her lovely moonstone, opaline organza, spattered with blood and human flesh. Definitely an ex-dress, that one. ‘Ouch,’ she said, ‘I know why you’re here, Ingrid. There’s no way I could have dressed myself tonight. But is there anything you can do about my face?’
Ingrid slipped a make-up bandeau around her hair. ‘It’s gonna to hurt a bit.’
‘Hahaha. Never mind. I will try not to squeal.’
She waited for the band to get settled: Cafren wearing the Battleship Potemkin sailor cap at a jaunty angle, Charm looking furiously out of it, scaring the stage crew… I guarantee we’re going to screw up, hope we don’t wreck everything. Such a hissing and whooshing in her ears, wish that would go away. What a lot of faces. So many people, here and in the Park, and at Leeds, at Reading, at Wembley, wherever else anyone had tv. She’d reached the stage where she didn’t feel drunk, she could just barely remember that there was something called normal and this was different. Borne up, shattered, spread like a thin Fiorinda-film over all those screens… She walked on stage, took a mic from a stand and went right to the front. The huge triumphant roar that had greeted DARK’s appearence died away. Calm little grin—
The Fiorinda Appreciation Society had convened with fervent attention in the wings. Allie was there, and Roxane: all the Chosen, most of the Few.
‘She’s smashed,’ murmured Dilip anxiously. He’d just arrived from London.
‘Fraid so,’ agreed Ax. ‘They all are. Completely hammered. It’s okay, they’ve er, reached a plateau. I wouldn’t care to try it myself, but DARK have done this b
efore, you know.’
‘All too often,’ muttered one of the music press types, insinuating pair, who’d been adopted by DARK on the tour. ‘True fanatics reckon they can tell the difference. Most people can’t.’
The onstage screens were showing Spanish galleons and the Virgin Queen, blown up and intercut with the people-stuffed hulks of the present, and the refugees coming ashore, from the grey thankless waters of that bad old North Sea. No laser beams, no fabulous fx. If they’d been available, it wouldn’t have been the right message.
‘History lesson,’ shouted Fiorinda. ‘Listen to this. ’Bout four hundred and thirty years ago, another Armada set out to invade our country. They never made it. It was a stormy summer, like this one: they got blown away. The weather’s not going to save us now. We have to save ourselves, and four hundred thousand desperate neighbours of ours. But we can do it. We can face the challenge, and this Armada will not destroy us either—’
She broke off, and stared at the crowd for a long moment. The Fiorinda Appreciation Society held its breath. Has she dried? What shall we do, why doesn’t she—
‘You know, that summer, people told the queen of England she should stay indoors, hide behind bodyguards, for fear of the mob. People have been saying the same to me. I think you know why. I’m not the queen of England, I’m just a singer with a rock and roll band, but I feel the same way as she did. Fuck that. Hey, Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength in the goodwill of my faithful and loving people—’
‘She’s quoting. What’s she quoting?’ demanded the other music press type, wide-eyed.
Bold as Love Page 33
