by R. Jay
Chris Carter nodded lightly, his face impassive as he replied in moderate, level tones. "Well thanks for your concern Lionel, but I don't feel any need to unburden myself of anything. I certainly do not feel guilt for what I did. Had I been willing to lie about that, I might well have been freed earlier."
The man of God did his very best not to look dismayed. " Oh, I naturally assumed …"
Chris shook his head. "In my defence I did not technically 'kill' that young policeman, though I was responsible for his death. I hit him and he subsequently died from a massive brain haemorrhage as a result from an undiagnosed condition of a fragile skull. It could have happened at any time from a dozen and more causes. I just got unlucky, so did he come to think of it."
"Does that justify your actions Chris?"
"If I could recall actually hitting him with malice aforethought which I don't and never have," Chris tapped at the vivid white scar that swept up from above his left eyebrow and burrowed into his hair line. "I suppose that I could be adjudged guilty of something. But as you have bothered yourself with my welfare Lionel, I will tell you what happened that night."
Unconsciously, Chris gently stroked the smooth black marble of his parents' gravestone as if to draw some comfort from them. "I had turned eighteen the month before and had already applied to join the Royal Marines. Since I was a kid that had been my sole ambition, to follow in the footsteps of dad. I had already passed the initial academic tests and interview process and had been summoned down to Lympstone in Devon to attend a PRMC, sorry, a Potential Royal Marine Course. That is a more fitness based assessment prior to being accepted for the thirty-two week training course.
"Again I was notified that I had been successful. Mum and dad had driven down there to bring me home until further notice. We were in a celebratory mood. Standards of the Royal Marines are the highest in the world if not the highest, and I had also fulfilled a family tradition. Fourth generation soldier.
"It was late evening by the time we reached the outskirts of town after a good five hours drive. We were virtually in sight of our road when out of nowhere we were hit side-on by a police patrol car doing in excess of a hundred miles an hour on route to a minor incident outside a chip shop in the High Street. There had been no need for that level of response but some young coppers do get a bit carried away with the drama of the moment.
"Our car was rolled several times with the force of impact and I was thrown clear into the roadway. I must have fainted or passed out momentarily but when I came round my mother was obviously dead, I won't bother you with the gruesome details, and my father, still strapped in behind the wheel was dying too. Only what I do remember was this policeman, blood pouring from his own head wound, laying in to him with his metal truncheon thingy, screaming wildly at him, accusing him of obstructing the police in the course of their duty. Or some such nonsense.
"I know that I struggled up and ran at him to protect my dad in a blinding rage. But that much is all that I really remember. They found me passed out on top of the policeman who was as dead by then as both my parents. My defence lawyers argued that it was the blow to the head sustained during the crash that killed the copper. But the powers that be decided to divert the blame for what happened by convicting me for murder. I still do not know if I even hit that policeman, let alone killed him."
The vicar remained silent a moment longer, troubled face pointed down at the tips of his shoes protruding out from the hem of his robes. "A terrible tragedy. But such accidents do occur too regularly. I've conducted many a funeral for such unfortunate souls who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Chris Carter felt the heat rising in him, the scar on his head throbbing as it tended to do prior to his rage attacks. "Vicar, my father was a former Captain in the Royal Marines who served in Northern Ireland and the Falklands campaign without so much as suffering a scratch. My mother was of a white Rhodesian farming family who had fought off night attacks from Mugabe's killer thugs, before bowing to the inevitable and coming to Britain.
"They both survived all of that only to be slaughtered yards from their home by a hot-head in uniform who got his rocks off on two tones and flashing blue light. It should not have happened. I should not have spent fifteen years in jail with no conclusive evidence."
"The police do have a difficult job."
"So why make it all the more difficult by unprofessional, foolhardy conduct? Statistically Lionel, police drivers are responsible for more road deaths per year than any other formal grouping of people in this country. Not Firemen, not Paramedics who all habitually need to reach emergency situations double quick."
He pointed again at the jagged scar across his forehead. "I carry this as a permanent reminder of mum and dad being 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'. Amen." Without anything more said, Chris Carter brushed past the subdued vicar and strode away from that place of scribed sadness.
******
THREE
The honourable Yasir Davi was proud to be one of the few British born Muslim MPs' sitting in the Mother of Parliaments. A Junior Minister no less, for Overseas Aid and Development for third world education systems and establishments. He saw it fitting to squeeze the British tax payer for every last hard earned penny to pursue private needs at the other side of the world.
He was equally as industrious on the home front, serving on various quangos' and pressure groups promoting 'Faith and Community Cohesion' amongst his support base in the town's burgeoning Asian population; a self generating built in majority vote come polling day.
His profile was raised to further heady heights when he was elected to the steering group of the Council of Muslim Britain, (C.O.M.B.), an increasingly influential body, that had the governments' sympathetic ear, with an open agenda to aggressively raise the awareness of Islam and vigorously promote Muslim interests. One insidious strategy was the distribution of books and literature extolling the virtues of the Ummah to mainstream primary schools and a generation of bemused children.
Despite receiving generous grants from the public purse C.O.M.B. was a virulent critic of British foreign policy, and domestic issues with the remotest bearing on the Brotherhood. Their demands for disproportionate considerations rang through the innermost corridors of power with the echoing threat of a growing Muslim vote.
Davi himself, though of Pakistani descent, had been born in the town of Holtingham that he now represented and previously had practised there for years as a barrister of the people. He had developed a fearsome reputation for pursuing claims, against the police in particular, for discrimination, corruption, ineptitude and racism.
The reality and truth of those cases he had championed carried little weight, but inevitably the might of popular assumption and trendy diktat sped him ever further onward like a surfer on unstoppable Atlantic rollers.
His courtroom diatribes painted illusionist masterpieces of ethnic minorities under the yoke of oppression; targeted by the police and victimised by white society. Inevitably the representative organs of State bodies ruled that it was less embarrassing and cheaper in the long run to settle quickly out of court than to be stamped on by the jack-boots of emotive fiction. Davi had played taut nerves like a maestro, become enriched to the tune of sorely depleted public budgets.
But for all his anti-establishment posturing during his formative years as a public figure, at the age of forty-two he had no intention to garrotte the Golden Goose that had usurped the British Lion, pluck it naked, suck its eggs dry. Lucratively harvest it yes, but to render it barren and destroy it no.
Therefore he found the presence of Kamal Khan for the first time in his constituency surgery rather unsettling. Whilst his regular gripers and moaners sat waiting the other side of his door, Khan sat the other side of his desk in the small airless office over a side street dry-cleaners, clearly in no rush to say much or go anywhere too soon.
Khan himself was a stern figure, fearsome at times, his face with the wrinkled and browned compl
exion of a pickled walnut. Three fingers were missing from his left hand, two from his right. The left side of his face was blast pitted and scarred; his left eye a white glass orb. His clothes were the flowing robes that had evolved from the need for protection from the searing heat and tempestuous dust storms of the middle and far east. Rather incongruous here in the cold and wet mud of eastern England.
To a foolish romantic's eye he looked the very image of a Pashun tribesman. Unlike the smooth, urbane and educated Yasir Davi, he was born in the harsh mountain ranges of Pakistan. He had arrived in the UK during 1971, fleeing the military juntas' crackdown after a failed bomb attack on government offices that had left him so disfigured.
He had never shown any acknowledgement of, let alone gratitude for the political asylum granted him for the last forty plus years, or the hundreds of thousands of pounds he had milked from the system in benefits as he moved about England in search of some measure of destiny. In recent years he had arrived in Holtingham with a clique of violent inclined supporters, and in a short space of time had ousted the incumbent religious clerics in the mosque and had himself installed as the new Imam.
His increasingly aggressive rants on Islamist extreme doctrine drove many regular worshippers to other mosques in the area while the Holtingham premises became a hotbed of radical preaching. An increasing number of young men cast adrift from their homes and families from across the country were taken in for 'educating' at the madrasa school within, which rumour claimed, teaching is rife with inaccuracies, sweeping condemnations of Jews and Christians, and triumphal declarations of Islam's supremacy.
Openly he advocated violent reprisals against the west for its invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan to the new class of Faithfulls who travelled from out of the region, crowding into the mosque to be mesmerised by his fiery oratory.
He made no secret of his hatred for his benevolent host country or his desire to see terrorist acts perpetrated there. Nor of his singular vision that Britain become an Islamic Emirate under Shariah Law, with Allah's blessing. Not for nothing was Kamal Khan referred to in hushed whispers or enraged cries as the Holtingham Ayatollah.
Most remarkable was his apparent immunity to prosecution. Successive Home Secretaries, when petitioned with the facts, preferred not to grasp politically sensitive nettles, but to treat him as a buffoon and loudmouth. 'Better out in the open than plotting away in some ghetto back street.'
A view definitely not shared by Yasir Davi right now, as the man in question hooked his one good eye into his face with an expression that could only be described as a snarl as he finally made his demand in a deep, commanding tone.
"This charade is a demonstration of Imperialist arrogance, a blatant enforcement of Christian supremacy in this country. It is an insult to Islam!"
Davi spread manicured fingers in the air between them, shrugging his shoulders in placating manner. "I am sorry Kamal, what you are asking is out of the question. This ceremony is a very special occasion for these people."
"These people? YOU are one of 'these people'!" Khan flared, his spittle dotting the desk top as his depleted fist rose and banged the wood in his fury. "You have abandoned your own creed, and loyalty to Mohammed."
Davi reared back in his seat defensively, a reaction that quickly blustered back as indignation. "You have no right to speak to me like that Kamal. I am a good Muslim who has worked hard all my life to protect and represent our people and faith here in Britain.
"In short, our ambitions and intentions are the same, only our methods differ. There is no need for such confrontation. It is inevitable that one day in the not too distant future, Britain will become an Islamic nation. Our numbers and birth-rate alone guarantee this. Together in time we will revive Khilafah. So be patient Kamal, as they say in this country, 'softly, softly, catchee monkey.'
"So," his smile was flushed, was pleased with his argument as he relaxed back into his chair. "Unless there are other matters that you wish to discuss with your Member of Parliament Kamal Khan, can I ask that you leave my office as I have other constituents waiting to see me?"
Kamal Khan did not move. Worse, he appeared to settle further into his seat, as immoveable as a mountain of the Karakoram range. A strange glint flickered in that dark, hooded eye, appearing to take on a life of its own as his thick lips drew back wetly from yellowed, sharp teeth. The impression of a wild cat preparing to pounce on its prey was not lost on Yasir Davi who's boldness evaporated like a fleeting will-o'-the-wisp as he shrank further back into his chair that creaked in protest.
Khan hissed at him, a feral threat , barely audible. "You remain a man of importance in this devil's island only for as long as I allow that to be so. I have knowledge that will destroy you."
Davi stared right back, transfixed like a rabbit in the headlights, cold fear clutching his entrails as he knew then what was to come.
"Your visits to Pakistan, to the Yemen, on behalf of your Imperialist masters with your fools gold, seeking to bestow western ideals and culture upon our schools, even the girls, with tainted money. You, a turn-coat, a Greek bearer of gifts."
Davi's voice faltered, his trembling hands scrambling on the desk for a pencil to worry, desperately trying in vain to ward off the inevitable. "I go to support the next generation of the Muslim Ummah. The young ones who surely will inherit the world, an Islamic world."
He flinched as Khan suddenly reared to his feet, leaned across the desk and unbelievably seized his chin between a thumb and a remaining finger, a hard grip, toned by deformity.
"Is that so Mr. MP man, saviour of all the little children of Islam?"
"Yes!" Davi's voice emerged in high pitch, his eyes watering with the pain of Khan's iron grip, and the indignity that bestowed.
"Does buggering young Muslim boys count as support in your western values. Does Mohammed look down and bless you?"
"No! No this is not true … "
"We have photographs, statements. Our judges are ready to implement Sharia, condemn and punish you in the name of Mohammed and Allah."
"I … " Davi's voice trailed away, lost in fear and desperation, tears trickled down his olive cheeks.
"You may be 'my' MP, but I am your Imam, in our culture I have the greater authority here. Believe all that I say and then nod to indicate you will comply with all that I demand of you, or I shall destroy both sides of your cultural cross-over life. DO IT!"
Stricken, distressed, the tears flowing free now, Yaris Davi nodded once with those sharp, talon-like fingers still painfully gripping his face, not loosening one iota.
"Good, good. Now, here is what you are to do."
******
FOUR
The Legion Club had become the centre of his shrinking world these last years of his long active life. For Henry Carter, this homely place with its bar and function room, the Legion branch flag splayed across an upper wall, and a black and white photo-portrait of a young Queen Elizabeth smiling benignly down on the members, this was his last posting.
His younger life had been spent shunting around the globe in rattling old trucks and trains, cramped, rusty troop ships, to distant locations of alien smells, dust and flies, unfriendly incumbents who wished to kill you. Retirement led him unerringly here, back home, amongst old friends and comrades and shared memories.
Fading photographs in cheap frames hung on every available wall space. Young men, many long dead, peered through dusty glass, all in uniform: army, navy, air-force; grinning laconically back at the camera from atop tanks, cockpits of fighter planes and bombers, the back of trucks on the wide decks of aircraft carriers. Their cheerfulness and casual good humour belying the reality that violent death stalked their interrupted lives.
Henry sat alone at the long committee table they convened around once a month. His fellow members had long shuffled off to the company of wives, evening meals waiting on them. Arranged along the varnished top the Legions' marching flags, their own banner, a Union flag and an old, faded, rather threa
dbare banner of the Holtingham Pals' Battalion, the saddest reminder of that small town's history. Half of the younger generation cajoled by a stern General Kitchener into forming their own fighting unit and taking on the Boche in Flanders. Of sixty-eight men only twelve returned, including Henry's father, broken in spirit and mind.
Energetically he rubbed saddle-soap into the cracked leather of the belts and their attached flag-pole holsters, that Legion members would wear as they proudly led the marching parade along the centre of the High Street next Sunday, November 11th, bearing aloft these same flags to the towns' War Memorial in homage to Britain's fallen sons of the last one hundred years.
'At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.'
Henry would not leave and go home for his own dinner until the heavy hide gleamed, a task he took upon himself every year; for how many more he could not say.
The entrance door to the Legion Hall clashed to behind him and footsteps clacked across the polished wood floor. He laid down his mutton cloth and turned in his chair, slightly surprised to see a young girl in a stylish, belted, Burberry winter coat, knee length boots and carrying a large, leather handbag, screaming of quality, looped over her left shoulder.
Ever the gentleman he rose on protesting knees to greet her as she stopped before him, a slightly askew smile on her face as she stared up at him with an unsettling directness.
"And who are you please?" She demanded rather unexpectedly, taking the very same words right out of his own mouth.
Henry blinked back his bemused reaction to that. "Me? Henry Carter is the name, I serve on the committee here, More to the point my dear, who are you, and how can I help you?"
Her gaze wandered around the hall whilst imperiously offering her hand clad in soft, kid hide. "Lucy Lever, Anglian Chronical." She conceded in an abstract, bored manner.
"So you are a reporter Miss Lever?"
"Ms., Ms. Lever, thank you. Community and general interest desk. I've been sent to get some background material on your Remembrance Day Parade on Sunday."
Did he detect a slight curling of her pink upper lip? "Background material aye? Well there have been two world wars and a whole lot of smaller ones you may well have heard about. Unfortunately service people get killed, we commemorate them and their sacrifice. In fact the whole country and Commonwealth does. Quite big in the media too." Sarcasm had a habit of thrusting through his polite nature when goaded. "Tell me Ms. Lever, what happened to Norman Batty? He's covered this ceremony every year for years. Never had to ask for background material. Do you work under him?"