The Division Bell Trilogy

by Rachel McLean

  “It’s me. Jennifer. I’m back home. Just wondering where you are. Give me a—. No, don’t. My phone’s not working. Just come home, please.”

  She heard movement next to her; Susan shifting in her seat.

  “Can I try another number please? Just the one.”

  Susan sniffed and looked at the door. Then she nodded. “Of course.”

  Jennifer considered. Should she call Yusuf’s parents? He was probably with them, but then he might not be. If she called them and he wasn’t there, they might panic. She’d put them through enough already.

  There was only one other person she could think of. She pulled the number up on her own phone. She took a deep breath and dialled.

  Chapter Five

  The phone rang out. Jennifer looked at Susan and gave her a wary smile. It came back even more uncertain.

  At last there was a click as it was answered. She held her breath, hoping it wouldn’t go to voicemail.

  “John Hunter speaking.” He would be wondering why an unidentified mobile was calling his private number.

  “John, it’s Jennifer. I’m calling from my neighbour’s phone.”

  She looked up at Susan, whose eyebrows were raised.

  “Jennifer?”

  “Yes. I got out. Long story. But listen, I’m looking for Yusuf. I don’t suppose you’ve been in touch with him?”

  “Sorry, no. Which number are you calling from again?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll remove this from the memory afterwards.”

  “Don’t be silly, that’s not the problem. Where are you?”

  “I’m at home. Well, I’m over the road. They let me out. That’s all you need to know.”

  “How? How did you convince them?”

  So he knew about the centre. About the Celebration ceremony, and how she’d had to pass it to win her release. Was that because he was Leader of the Opposition, or was it common knowledge?

  “Long story. I’ll tell you in person sometime.”

  The living room door opened and Susan’s son reappeared. He groaned when he saw Jennifer in his spot. Jennifer moved to the other end of the sofa, her phone still at her ear.

  “If you haven’t seen him, can you tell me if anything’s happened to him? He wasn’t— he wasn’t arrested, or anything?”

  “No. Well yes, very briefly. But then he was released. It was your flat that Samir hid in. The DPP couldn’t make a case that he’d been in on it too.”

  She took a deep breath. “And what about Samir?”

  “He was arrested at the same time as you. You know that.”

  “No. I mean do you know where he is? Have you been told anything?”

  “I’m not Home Secretary anymore. I don’t know anything about individual cases. You know that.”

  She thought of Catherine, sitting in Yonda Hughes’s office, so calm despite Jennifer’s predicament. She was Home Secretary. Surely if anyone could help Jennifer, it would be her?

  Or maybe not. You can’t leave, she’d said. You have to stay here. But then Jennifer had been fast-tracked, given a chance at Celebration. Twice. Had Catherine had anything to do with that?

  She had to get what she could from John, first.

  “Can you find out anything about Samir? Surely you—”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “Why not? I know you can’t officially, but we know—”

  “Who are you with, right now?”

  Jennifer put her hand to the phone and looked up. Susan had sat along from her on the sofa and was trying to hide the fact that she was listening. Her son had taken the armchair, but he hadn’t turned the TV back on.

  “You’re right. Sorry. I’ll call you another time.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Even if you call me on the most secure line in the country, I can’t help.”

  “Come on. This is Yusuf’s son we’re talking about. Not just mine.”

  “Things have changed. Since you were sent down. Surely you’ve heard?”

  Tom had stood up. He looked impatient. Susan was shrinking away from him. He might be stringy, but he was almost a foot taller than her. Was she scared of him?

  “Please,” Susan whispered. “I need my phone back.”

  Jennifer bit her lip. She would have to find another phone. She’d get a card, pay as you go. Tomorrow. Then she’d start again. It would be fine.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, her hand on the phone’s microphone.

  She removed it. “I have to go, John. My neighbour needs her phone back. I’ll get my own phone sorted tomorrow. I’ll call you then.”

  “I really can’t help you.”

  She ground her teeth. John was saying this for fear of being overheard, surely. He wouldn’t let her down.

  “Alright,” she said. “If you can’t help me, I’ll call Catherine.”

  “Catherine Moore?”

  “Yes. I don’t know any other Catherines.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Did he know about Catherine’s visit? Had she said something in Parliament maybe, denounced her?

  “Why not?” she repeated.

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Because she’s the bloody Prime Minister.”

  Chapter Six

  Jennifer glanced at Susan. She could probably hear everything John was saying.

  “She’s the what?”

  “You heard,” he replied. “Catherine Moore is the PM now.”

  “How did that happen?”

  She thought over her meeting with Catherine. Time seemed to flow more slowly in the British Values Centre but she was sure it was only a few weeks ago.

  “Trask had a heart attack.”

  “Sheesh. Is he dead?”

  A pause. “No. Ill. Retired.”

  “Yes, but— Catherine?”

  “Surprised me too. Fresh blood, I guess. I’m not so sure.”

  “Hmm.”

  She glanced at Susan again. Her son Tom was standing next to her, his arm stretched towards Jennifer. He beckoned.

  “They need the phone back. I’ll have to call you again.”

  “They? I thought you were with your neighbour?”

  “And her son. I’ll get my phone sorted tomorrow, John. I’ll call you back.”

  “Right. Good to hear from you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Was it awful?”

  She dragged a hand through her hair.

  “Not great. Look, I’m going to call Catherine too. There’s even more reason to get her involved now.”

  A snort. “Good luck with that.”

  “I know you don’t like her, but—”

  “It’s not that. She’s worse. Than Trask.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “See for yourself. Read the news. You were wrong about her, Jennifer. You should have taken me up on my request to spy on her back when she was a backbencher.”

  “We’ll see.” Jennifer couldn’t quite believe that Catherine was as hard-line as her predecessor, the man who had thrust his face into Jennifer’s and gloated when her conscience had brought her own government down. Catherine had been her friend for years now. She knew her better than John did.

  Tom was next to her, his hand on the phone.

  “Give it back, please.”

  At home, she leant against the party wall. She knew that Samir had piggybacked on her next door neighbour’s wifi in the past, dissatisfied with the speed of theirs. They both had BT accounts, and if she could remember her password she would be able to use a slice of their data that was available for sharing with other customers. If that system still existed.

  After two attempts she got in, punching the air when the wifi symbol on her phone sprang to life. She went straight to the BBC website.

  The headline was about a foiled attack in Glasgow. Six men had been arrested and one shot by police. The police involved were co
mmended for their bravery, as well as a member of the public who’d raised the alarm. No mention of the family of the man killed. They were probably on their way to an airport already, one way or the other.

  She resisted the urge to search for her own name and instead typed in Catherine’s. One hundred and twenty-three results in the last day alone.

  This was going to take a while. She put her phone on the kitchen table, checking it had enough power, then boiled the kettle. There was coffee in the tin and fresh milk in the fridge. So Yusuf hadn’t gone for long.

  She picked up her phone and mug and took them into the living room, slumping into a chair. It was gone ten o’clock and she was tired. What time had she been woken by the orderlies this morning? It felt surreal to be sitting here in her favourite chair sipping good coffee when so recently she’d been sitting in one of those awful low chairs in Yonda Hughes’s office.

  Her inbox was full, although the frequency of emails had dwindled over time. There were hundreds from September, when she’d been arrested; hundreds per day, in fact. And then just three today. One was from Yusuf. She scrolled down and realised that there he’d sent her an email every day since she’d been arrested. The thought of him taking the time to do this with everything else he had to deal with made her heart warm.

  She opened the most recent one, wondering where he’d been when he sent it.

  Hey Jen,

  It’s a dull, cloudy day today which makes Hassan restless. Yesterday it was sunny so I took him to the botanical gardens to see the mynah bird. He still loves it.

  She wiped her eyes and lifted the phone.

  Today I’m going to take him to the cinema. Good for rainy days. Then something to eat. Boring, I know.

  Hope you’re doing ok. Kisses from both of us.

  Yusuf x

  That was it. No mention of Samir, or of her arrest and imprisonment. She wondered how long he’d tried to get permission to visit her until he’d given up. If he’d been able to visit Samir.

  She looked up at the clock. Almost eleven. Tomorrow was a school day, and Hassan needed to be in bed.

  She pulled up the calendar on her phone, then realised it was the half term holiday. That was why Yusuf had been taking him out, keeping busy. Distracting himself from the emptiness of a house missing two of its occupants, even if those were the two with the lightest footstep. Samir had spent most of his days alone in his room, while she’d been out from Monday to Thursday, down in Westminster. Not at half term, though. Half term had been special.

  But if they’d gone out for the day, where were they now?

  Chapter Seven

  March 2022

  Rita’s cell reminded her of those documentaries she’d seen on TV, travellers going to Tokyo and staying the night in hotel rooms that were nothing more than a sleeping pod. The thought had filled her with dread; it would be like sleeping in a high-tech coffin.

  The light had just come back on for the second time. It seemed to have no relation to the time of day.

  The hatch opened and a tray was pushed through. There was a thin stew of potatoes and carrots, mixed with a few peas and a pulse of some kind. Cheap food that would keep her alive but wouldn’t build up her strength. She didn’t care; it was food.

  After the empty tray was taken away, Rita lay down and stared at the low ceiling. In the corner, a spider bounced between the walls, slowly weaving its home for the next few days. Company, she thought.

  A buzzing sound came from outside and she sat up. A guard peered through the hatch then slammed it shut and opened the door. She waited for Rita without saying anything.

  Rita slipped on her thin shoes and shrugged her shoulders to rid them of the ache that had been troubling her. The bruises on her back from the beatings she’d received at Burcot Park would be fading now, turning yellow. Her wrists were red though, from being slapped right here, in the second group session. She’d failed to co-operate and the counsellor had brought that stick out. It was heavier than it looked.

  She left her cell, expecting to see other women in the corridor, being herded to their own group sessions. The cells were on the outer edge of the building, in a large wing that smelled of disinfectant and metal. The group rooms were at the other end, in a wing of their own. The cells had windows boarded up on the outside, while the group session rooms were lined with breeze blocks painted in a dirty cream. No windows. She wondered what they’d been used for in the past; solitary confinement?

  The corridor was quiet. Only one or two women were out here. In one of the occupied cells, a woman was shrieking the words to the National Anthem. She reached the beginning of the second verse and then fell silent.

  Rita fixed her gaze on a woman a hundred feet ahead of her, also heading for the stairs leading down to the other wing. The corridor that linked the wings was the only section of the prison with windows, and she savoured the chance to walk beneath their glare. They may be high in the wall but any glimpse of the sky gave her a welcome grip on reality.

  They reached the top of the stairs. The woman ahead had paused for a guard to open a set of doors. Rita felt a finger in her back.

  “This way.”

  She turned to look at the guard behind her. A small door was open in the wall next to them, one that Rita hadn’t noticed before. It was painted cream, the same as the walls, and led to another narrower corridor.

  Rita looked at the guard, whose eyes were raised to the wall past Rita’s head. She was tall and willowy, with rosy cheeks. She could only be twenty-five years old, at most. What was a pretty young thing like that doing here?

  Rita stepped through. She and the guard waited while the door locked behind them. There was a camera above it; someone was watching them, letting them pass. The guard gave her a smile.

  “Come with me.”

  Rita smiled back at her, surprised by this sign of humanity. No one had smiled at her since she’d been dragged away from her group at Burcot Park. How long ago was that: a week, ten days? Two weeks?

  She followed the guard through two more doors. Each time, the guard would give her a sidelong glance then look up at the camera and pull her face into an expressionless position.

  They reached a door set into the wall on their right and the guard pressed an intercom button. The door opened before she had the chance to speak into the intercom. She shrugged and guided Rita through.

  The room was the largest Rita had seen since arriving here, with space for two desks and a bank of cabinets on the back wall. Sun slanted through the window to one side.

  A guard sat at one of the desks.

  “Hello, Rita.” She sounded more like a dentist’s receptionist than a prison guard.

  “Where am I?”

  The guard who had brought her here was staring ahead, avoiding eye contact. Rita had a sudden realisation.

  “Is this Celebration? Am I being fast-tracked again?”

  The guard at the desk shook her head and opened a large brown envelope, letting its contents spill onto the desk. Rita’s eyes widened. Her belongings were there: the outfit she had been wearing when she was arrested in her classroom, her watch. Her purse.

  “No, Rita. You’re being transferred.”

  Chapter Eight

  This centre was quite different from Burcot Park.

  Sure, this place allowed its inmates a similar degree of freedom. It put them through one-to-one meetings with counsellors. And it had group sessions too, although Mark’s first had been quite different from any he’d presided over at Burcot Park.

  But where at Burcot Park there had been an initial wariness between the inmates – patients – which tended to work its way up to trust and even friendship, here he’d seen it simmer over into low level violence. On Mark’s first night there’d been a fight in the canteen followed by a lockdown, all the men confined to their rooms. Locked in; something he hadn’t seen at Burcot Park.

  Mark couldn’t be sure if this was because it was a men’s centre, or whether it came from the
top.

  Because the governor here was nothing like Yonda Hughes. Mark had dismissed his boss as managerial, believing his clinical background to be better than her bureaucratic one because it was Health Service, not Home Office. He’d been wary of her, knowing her to be a bully who mistakenly believed she had a heart of gold.

  But compared to the governor here, a man called Steve Adams who wore tailored grey suits with subtly contrasting ties and gleaming black winkle pickers, Yonda was a free spirit. A child of peace and love. And not just because of her rainbow of outfits.

  This guy hadn’t got here via a Home Office career; he was private sector, and he wanted everyone to know it.

  On Mark’s second day he’d been brought into the governor’s office, ushered in wearing his regulation blue jeans and grey hoody, unsure what to expect.

  By the time he left, he was equally unsure of what had happened, and what it meant.

  Steve had sat back in his cream leather chair, his hands steepled in front of him, and given Mark a look that was part intrigue, part condescension.

  He’d welcomed him to the centre, told him to behave himself and work on the program, said call me Steve and dismissed him. An orderly called Blue had taken him away, the tattoos that covered his arms matching his name.

  Now he’d been here three days, had a one-to-one with his counsellor, and attended one silent group session in which no one had made the remotest bit of progress on the program. And here he was again, in the governor’s office.

  Did anyone else get asked in here all the time?

  The office was empty when he entered. A bleak, featureless space with a bland veneer desk in the centre and a cream fake leather chair behind it. He sat on a low sofa, designed to look smart but actually making his legs itch.

  A young woman came in behind him. She gave him a tight smile and sat down on the chair next to him. She was petite, dressed in a cheap red skirt suit and with her face lightly made up. She smelled of lily of the valley. She didn’t fit any model he had in his head for a counsellor.