Ardent Justice

by Research Professor Of Social Policy Peter Taylor-Gooby

  If you enjoyed Ardent Justice you might like my first novel: The Baby Auction, available from The Conrad Press and most bookshops and on Amazon and Google Books. Here are the first two chapters:

  1

  Matt was six years old and he was frightened. Mummy was holding his hand but everything was terribly wrong.

  They’d gone further down the track into the forest than he’d ever been before and it was getting dark. The trees were different here, taller, packed closer together. He felt they were crowding towards him. If they got right round him he’d never find his way out.

  Mummy had stopped walking. He wished she wouldn’t hold his hand so tightly. They stood there, staring down the track. You could just make it out in the evening light and then it turned at the crest of a rise and you couldn’t see it any more. The pine trees towered over him. He caught the smell, rich and harsh, but there was another odour he didn’t recognise, with sweat and iron and something like lamp-oil in it.

  He gripped Mummy’s hand. She wouldn’t look at him. She just stared down the track.

  ‘When’s Daddy coming? I’m hungry.’

  She glanced down but she didn’t smile. The sun was now touching the tops of the trees. It was night already between the trunks and the black shadows were reaching out across the track, towards them.

  ‘Later, Matt.’

  She squeezed his hand. Now she had a different look on her face, as if she was listening out for something far away. The forest was silent; there was no wind among the trees, no bird-song. He wished she wouldn’t grip his hand so hard. He felt so hungry he couldn’t stand still. He wished Daddy was there and they could all go back to the village together.

  He heard a rattle, like a harness being shaken hard, and the clatter of hooves on the track, then the special low whinny a horse makes when it recognises the smell of its own stable.

  That’s when he thought it might all be all right. He shouted:

  ‘That’s Duke!’

  Duke was his favourite, the best, the most powerful horse in the village. His father always used Duke for the ploughing. Daddy sometimes lifted him up onto Duke’s back. He loved the soft warmth of the horse’s body. He loved burying his face in the mane and stretching his arms round the sturdy neck and feeling the great muscles move under the skin.

  He let go of Mummy’s hand and started to run forward. Duke rounded the corner and plunged towards him. A man, his Daddy, sat astride his back, urging him on.

  ‘Daddy!’ he shouted, ‘Daddy!’

  Daddy drove the horse onward, towards him. All around the great trees crowded in, the shadows black as pitch between their trunks.

  He saw one of the shadows move and he felt as if his heart was being squeezed in his breast. The shadow heaved forward, separated itself from the darkness under the trees and swept out of the forest onto the track. It reared up, forming itself into a shape like a man, but black as the night between the trees. The hair rose stiff on the back of his neck.

  He felt Mummy’s arms round him, clasping him against her. She was trembling. Others came, men like black shadows flowing out of the forest. They made no noise. All he could hear was the pounding of hooves and Mummy screaming:

  ‘No!’

  The first figure hurled itself upward at Duke, grabbing at the bridle. It lurched sideways and was dragged along, clinging to the flank of the horse. Duke’s head was wrenched round. The black shapes swarmed round, reaching up and fastening themselves onto Daddy, dragging him down.

  He was on his feet, throwing his body from side to side to shake them off. Then something swept up over his head from behind and he was gone.

  Matt stood there watching it all happen. His whole body quivered in horror. Then he woke up and it was dark and he was eighteen and Ed was there beside him and he loved her so much he could hardly breathe and he was telling her his dream.

  2

  He was standing there, right at the back of the main stand, almost against the rear wall of the City Stadium. Ed was beside him, and she had her arm tight round his waist and her head on his shoulder.

  Ed’s name was really Eden, but she’d told him she only wanted to be called Ed. She was eighteen too, just over a fortnight younger than him. They’d met in Re-education. She had skin the colour of cinnamon, long brown wavy hair which she often tied back, brown eyes and a smile that made Matt feel he was worth something. There was a scar the width of his thumb under her right eye, healed so close to the colour of her skin that you scarcely noticed it. That warm August day she was wearing blue jeans and a crimson tee-shirt and she was the only person out of the thousands who packed the stands who mattered to Matt.

  He couldn’t understand why everyone was so intent on the giant screen that dominated the stadium, on the words that kept appearing on it, all about ‘Citizens’ and ‘Exchange’ and ‘The One Law’. He was more interested in the family in front of him – a couple and a boy who must have been only about six years old.

  The same age I was when they came for Dad, Matt thought.

  There were more people in the stadium than Matt had ever seen in one place before. He felt uneasy. He knew that the message on the screen and the speeches of the well-dressed people he could barely make out on the platform in front of it were part of Celebration Day and that was why they were all here.

  He just didn’t believe any of it would make any difference. Celebration Day wouldn’t help him find Mum or Dad. The parents of the small boy in front of him stood rigidly at attention, chanting the words on the screen. Matt felt his heart go out to the child, who tugged impatiently at his father’s hand. He guessed from their shabby blue work-clothes and the fact that they were here, at the back, in the cheapest area, that they came from the poorest class in the city, just like him and Ed. You never got paid very much. They’d sack you if they decided they didn’t want you and that meant going hungry. They were on an outing together as a family. He thought maybe that didn’t happen very often.

  The child tugged harder, almost swinging on his father’s arm. Matt watched, the familiar ache at his heart, thinking of his own father and of his mother, of what it was like when you were a child and there was no-one who was there for you.

  All he needs is a smile, he thought. Don’t ignore him. Give him a smile. All around them the crowd were shouting

  THE ONE LAW PROTECTS PROPERTY!

  THE ONE LAW PROTECTS FREEDOM!

  THE ONE LAW PROTECTS DIGNITY!

  The noise battered at his ears. He saw the father swing round and glare down at the child. He felt the anger gathering in his chest. The man suddenly shoved the child away, so violently that he fell. Matt started forward. The child picked himself up and stared at Matt with solemn, dark eyes.

  Matt couldn’t help himself. He tapped the father on the shoulder:

  ‘Careful with the kid,’ he said. ‘You’ll hurt him.’

  The father, thin, his narrow face prematurely lined, made to answer. Then he caught the expression in Matt’s eyes, half pain, half anger, and turned abruptly away.

  Matt felt a hand gripping his wrist. Ed slipped in front of him.

  ‘The One Law protects everyone. That includes kids.’

  The man grabbed his son with one hand and the woman with the other and pushed his way into the crowd. The child dragged behind, staring back at Matt, unsmiling.

  Ed released Matt’s wrist.

  ‘You OK?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I’m OK.’

  He relaxed his shoulders and forced his attention back onto the ceremony. No-one paid him any attention. They were all gazing up at the screen, shouting out

  THE ONE LAW!

  ignoring everything else going on around them. Ed was mouthing the words on the screen beside him. He opened his own mouth in time with hers, but could say nothing, his throat constricted. Ed looked u
p at him:

  ‘It’s OK. Just pretend you’re saying it.’

  Matt never saw the point of the One Law. They taught you about it in Re-education but none of it made sense. The only good thing about Re-education was that it was where he met Ed. Matt knew he was special to Ed. Happiness tickled inside him whenever he was with her. For the first time since they’d sent him to Re-education he felt he could make something of his life.