by Chris Ward
In other circumstances he would have smiled. She berated him every time he called her. It was almost a ritual.
‘Sorry. This time it’s urgent.’
‘So you didn’t just call to speak to me?’
This time he did smile. ‘Well, it’s nice to hear your voice, of course. But listen, something bad has happened. Race has gone missing.’
‘I thought you said something bad?’
‘I know you hate him, but—’
‘He’s a fucking pervert. I hope he fell down a mineshaft and got his dick caught in a crack halfway.’
‘Look, I know you don’t like him, but this is serious. We just had the DCA at the door. He’s in trouble because he hasn’t shown up at work for the last two days. Mum thought he’d gone to stay with one of his mates like he sometimes does, but no one’s seen him.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. Tomorrow I’ll go round and see some of his mates, see if anyone’s heard from him.’
‘Do you want me to help?’
‘Sure. That would be great.’
‘I need to be sure he’s fallen down that mineshaft, you know, so that I can stop worrying about my underwear going missing—look, Patrick, I’d better go, just in case.’
‘Sure. I’ll come by tomorrow mid-morning.’
‘Great.’
Patrick started to say I love you, but the line had gone dead. He turned the phone over, pulled off the casing, and took out the doctored sim-card that gave him access to one of the free pirate frequencies that had pretty much brought the downfall of the telecommunications industry. He put the sim-card into the little hole dug underneath the lip of his bedroom window ledge and slid the phone back into the box at the bottom of his wardrobe.
He went downstairs and peered into the living room. His mother, barely forty-five, looked sixty years old through worry. Her hair was sticking up where she’d run her hands, and the spray she used had held it. In her hands now she clutched a glass of a clear liquid that gave off a sour aroma that made their whole house stink.
Patrick wished it was water.
‘He’ll come back,’ he said, making her start as she noticed him.
She shook her head. ‘No, not this time. I dreamt it. He’s gone.’
Patrick subdued the urge to sigh or roll his eyes. Instead he held his gaze firm on his mother, not even daring to look at the glass that was trembling in her hands.
‘He’s probably just gone off with his friends. Perhaps they tried to get into the city. He’ll be back in a day or two, I’m sure.’
His mother didn’t look up. ‘Everyone runs out on me,’ she said. ‘Your father did, now Race. You will soon.’
Before Patrick could answer, she lifted the glass and flung it against the living room wall. Shards of glass and whatever she had been drinking scattered across the threadbare carpet.
‘I’ll clean that up,’ Patrick said as his mother started to get out of the chair. ‘Just stay there. I’ll make you another.’
He went into the kitchen and fetched an empty cardboard box and a cloth. When he returned to the living room his mother had started to cry.
‘You have to find him, Patrick,’ she sobbed. ‘You have to bring Roger back.’
As he picked pieces of glass up off the carpet, Patrick looked up and said, ‘I’ll find him. If he’s anywhere to be found, I’ll find him.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
He finished cleaning up, then got his mother a refill from an unmarked plastic container in the refrigerator. She had always liked a drink even before his father disappeared, but hiked prices made regular drinking on her cleaning salary impossible. Luckily there was always plenty of homebrew to be found on the black market. Race got it for her, but if he ever got hold of anything decent, he kept it for himself.
Patrick left his mother alone and went out. Whether his brother was missing or not, Patrick didn’t like being stuck inside on fine days. In a month—barring some miracle with his A-Level results—Patrick would start working in the robotics factory across the valley in Mirefield, limiting his daylight hours to Sundays and a couple of hours after work each evening.
The street was quiet. A couple of cars sat in driveways, but there seemed to be more bicycles every day. He had seen on the news than an anti-government rally was to be held tomorrow in the town square, but he didn’t really understand why everyone was so upset. Just three years ago, when you had to wear a mask to walk down any urban street, people were complaining about the fumes.
Suzanne’s house was a fifteen-minute bicycle ride, but Patrick preferred to walk. It was a quiet morning, with most people either in school or at work. Having finished his final exams the week before, Patrick had his last stretch of holiday ahead of him before entering the world of centralised government labour. He wasn’t so much worried about it—the five-year mandatory term might feel like a lot right now, but it wasn’t forever—but he would miss his freedom. Still, he had hoped to enjoy what he had left.
And then Race had gone missing.
His brother—Roger by birth and to their mother, but Race to everyone else—didn’t have a girlfriend or any close friends to stay with, not that Patrick knew about. Due to his musical skills—it was said he was the best guitar player in the county—he had a band, but unless they’d decided to smoke weed and rehearse for three days straight, it was unlikely he was with them, even though he had taken his guitar with him when he left. That was the only clue Patrick had, and therefore the first one he had to follow up.
He turned up a quiet street halfway between his house and Suzanne’s, and climbed the stairs to the third floor of a tatty apartment building. An overweight balding man answered his knock and gave Patrick a surprisingly welcome smile when he opened the door.
‘Sorry to bother you, Mr. Lewis. Is Johnny in?’
Johnny Lewis played bass in Race’s current band. The flat he shared with his dad was the closest of Race’s bandmates to Patrick’s house. It was a start.
Johnny’s dad nodded. ‘He’s in his room. Been in there all day.’ He winked. ‘Probably watching porn or something. Not heard him playing any music, that’s for sure.’
‘Can I speak with him?’
The man shrugged. ‘Sure. Come on in.’
Johnny was slouching on a broken sofa watching an old science fiction movie on a TV with a third of the screen just a scramble of pixels. He glanced up as Patrick entered, then turned back to his movie, lifting a cup of something fizzy to his lips.
‘Get on, Little Devan. What’s up?’
‘I’m looking for Race.’
‘He didn’t show at practice yesterday. We figured he was still pissed after Rick told him his new riffs sucked last week. Would be like him to have a tantrum about it. Tell him it was just a joke when you see him, would you?’
‘He’s been gone three days. He took his guitar with him. We had the DCA at the door this morning because he’s not been showing up at work.’
‘At least that means they don’t have him.’
‘Could be a feint.’
Johnny snorted. ‘They’re not that clever. Perhaps he’s gone off to busk in London before they seal us out.’
‘He’s not got that kind of motivation. It’s an effort for him to get up for work. Something’s happened to him, I’m sure of it.’
‘Well, what do you want me to do about it?’
‘Just let me know if you hear anything. Anything at all.’
Johnny shrugged. ‘Sure. Hey, you wanna sit and watch this with me? Chronicles of Riddick. Bit dated, but they don’t spend the money on effects like they used to. This is cool shit, man.’
‘Another time.’
Johnny shrugged again. ‘Whatever.’
Race went out, saving his thanks for Johnny’s dad as he left.
The other two members of Race’s band lived across town. Patrick headed over there, taking a detour to Suzanne’s house on the way. Unli
ke the old council house that he shared with his mother and Race, Suzanne’s house was a tall, stately townhouse along a line of doctors’ surgeries and lawyers’ offices. Three doors down from Suzanne’s place, two DCA vans sat raggedly against the curb, one with its engine idling. A tickertape barrier was set up to guide people around that section of pavement, and behind it stood a group of armed agents. Two stood on guard, rifles across their chests.
Patrick got as close as he could until one of the guards waved him around. “Tinkerton Accountancy Ltd” read the sign outside the broken-in door. From inside came the muffled sound of silenced gunfire. Patrick tried to get a look in through the door but a guard stepped over the tape and marched toward him. Putting up his hands in a gesture of surrender, he backed off until the guard headed back to his post.
Suzanne’s place was too close to whatever bust was taking place for the front entrance to be safe. Instead, Patrick walked to the end of the street without looking back, then cut left into a thin alleyway that led behind the row of houses. The fortified rear walls of gardens and padlocked car garages rose on either side as he approached Suzanne’s house from behind. The road angled around to the left, but as her place came into view, to his dismay he saw a group of DCA agents here too.
The closest he could get to Suzanne’s place without being seen was the wall of a lawyer’s office four doors over. He pulled leather gloves on over his hands and jumped up, feeling lumps of glass beneath his gloves that had left scars on his hands on a previous occasion.
He dropped down on to a plain paved courtyard with a single picnic table sitting amid a few tasteful potted plants. Easily seen by anyone looking out of the wide back windows, he ran to the side wall and climbed quickly over.
Arms that had lifted plenty of weights dropped him down on the other side, an overflowing mess of vegetation at the back of a house belonging to an old woman Suzanne had often told him was mad.
From farther down the row came the sound of a gunshot. Outside this time, unsilenced, the crack loud enough to hurt Patrick’s ears, leave a lingering ring behind. Patrick dropped behind a wiry azalea and froze. The sound of panic, perhaps? A mistake in a carefully organised plan?
From around the front of the row of houses came the sound of a car engine starting up. The spin of wheels was audible from here, as was the squeal of the engine as it sped away. Farther up the alley, the group of DCA agents moved in Patrick’s direction, their bored conversation drifting over the garden walls.
‘And next on the agenda is … drum roll please—’
‘Stanley Jones, dissenter extraordinaire. Let’s hope those clowns don’t fuck this one up.’
Patrick’s breath caught in his throat. Stanley Jones was Suzanne’s father. Owner of a robotics factory outside town.
‘Hold your poses,’ came the second voice from over the wall. ‘No firing unless he runs. We’re only supposed to take them for questioning.’
Patrick moved along the side wall until he was near the back of the old woman’s house. Climbing up onto a tumbledown coal shed, he leaned over the wall into the adjacent yard.
He was just one yard away from Suzanne’s, but the tenant between them—a doctor, so Suzanne had said—had taken precautions to the extreme: an assortment of broken glass and porcelain-covered clean paving slabs, making it impossible to get across the yard to the back of the house without making a sound.
Patrick was just thinking to retrace his steps when a door burst open at the back of Suzanne’s house. He could only see the top edge over Suzanne’s wall, but the muzzle of a gun poked up between two helmeted heads.
‘Get off me, you pig bastards! I’ll cut your dicks off with the rustiest knife I can find if you lay one more hand on me!’
Despite himself, Patrick smiled. Suzanne, the girl he loved like nothing else in the world. The next sound stunned him, however: the thump of a fist striking flesh, followed by a grunt of pain and then the scrabble of stumbling feet.
‘Take it easy, Winters,’ said a man’s voice. ‘She needs a mouth to talk out of if we’re going to find her old man.’
‘Bitch needs to learn some discipline. Come on, move.’
Suzanne grunted again. Patrick craned his neck, but he couldn’t see them. The sound of footsteps told him enough, though. They were taking her out of the back entrance on to the alleyway.
He had no weapons, not even a knife. The DCA were little more than organised thugs, but they would shoot him without a second thought.
‘Come on, get her round the front. Search the house. If you find her father, we can kill her, boss said.’
One man sniggered, loud enough to chill Patrick’s blood. The DCA had a reputation for brutality toward prisoners, particularly females. That sound suggested more might be done to Suzanne before she was ever killed.
‘I want first dibs at the interrogation.’
‘I bet you do.’
‘I’ll fucking—uhh!’
Another thump cut off Suzanne’s voice.
As the men retreated, Patrick made his way back through the garden and hauled himself up over the wall as the group exited the alleyway at the far end. With his heart thundering, he raced after them, searching his brain for some way he could stop them taking her. Give himself up? Spin them a lie about her father so they let her go?
He reached the road just as the first of the two vans sped past. He was watching its taillights go when the horn of the second blared. As he jumped back, the van sped through where he had been standing.
The back window was tinted, but the van was old like most vehicles in Britain, and much of the tint had been scratched off. Something flickered behind it, a person, fighting against their captors.
Patrick kicked the curb and screamed his frustration.
Suzanne.
The Department of Civil Affairs had taken her.
2
Suzanne
The agent called Seth Winters didn’t know where to put his hands. Suzanne watched him warily as he stalked around the table where she sat with her hands tied behind her back, waiting for the next blow to come.
Three times now, he had backhanded her across the face. Once he had punched her in the gut, and twice struck her in the back of the head with the ball of his palm. On one of those occasions, he had shoved her face against the table hard enough to bloody her nose.
Keeping a count served two purposes. It passed the time, and it meant she knew just how much she needed to give back with interest when the tables were turned.
‘For the nine-hundredth time, no, I don’t know where my father is. He went off to work like he always does. Do you think I care? I’m eighteen. My plan for the day was to find some way to get drunk and then have sex with my boyfriend.’
‘You’re a damn worthless slut.’
Suzanne forced a smile, aware it might incite his wrath. ‘I’m a teenager. What were you expecting?’
Winters slammed his hands against the tabletop and glared into her face. ‘You think I’m tough with you? You should thank me for staying in here. There are guys outside that door who would strip the skin off your back.’
‘Good for them. And what exactly would they hope to find?’
‘Stanley Carmichael-Jones didn’t show up at his factory this morning. Our investigators have found massive sums of money leaving your father’s bank and being transferred into European banks. Yesterday saw a transaction of nine million pounds.’
Suzanne shrugged. ‘Perhaps he was ordering new carpets? He has expensive taste, my dad. Our kitchen knives are straight up silver—’
Winters slammed his hands down again. ‘Shut up or I’ll cut out your damn tongue.’
‘And how exactly will that help? Come on, mate. I’m eighteen. Do you think I care what my dad does at work?’
Winters gritted his teeth and lifted a hand. Suzanne closed her eyes, but the blow never came. When she opened them again Winters had turned away from her, facing a blank wall, his hands clasped behind his back.
Suzanne sighed. ‘Enlighten me.’
‘The Freedom of Speech Act. Passed by parliament last January. You no longer have the right to say what you want. I could lock you away forever just for what you’ve said to me in the last five minutes.’
‘You’re an arsehole.’
Winters turned to face her. He smiled. Mid-thirties, she guessed. Not unattractive, but he pulled off a sneer that would make any movie villain proud. A hard body, one built through training yard exercises, but if he was here in the DCA he was better with his brain than his muscles.
‘Be nice to me,’ he said. ‘Be very nice, and I can get you out of here. There’s no video surveillance in this cell. Article 14.2, remember? It’s only you and me. Whatever happens is your word against mine. Now, I can walk out of that door and tell my boss you have no information of value, and that we should let you go, or I could say that you’re hiding something. Something that could be beaten out of you with a little effort. Which do you choose?’
‘Fucking kill yourself.’
Winters drew his gun and jabbed it into her face. Suzanne gasped as she stared straight down the barrel.
‘You have nothing of value to say. I can see that now.’
Winters pulled the trigger. Suzanne screamed as the empty chamber clicked.
‘I told you,’ she said, voice trembling. ‘I don’t know where my dad is.’
Winters nodded. He put the gun away then folded his arms. ‘I think you might be telling the truth. I’m not sure, though.’ He unfolded his arms and began undoing his belt. ‘I’ll tell you what? I’ll give you five minutes to convince me.’
The two DCA agents tossed her into the cell and slammed the door. With her hands tied, Suzanne had no way to stop herself as she struck the back wall, twisted around, and slid to the ground.
Her face ached. One eye was swollen shut. Her nose and cheek ached, and one of her back molars was loose.