by Adrian Wills
The blank screen of the television flickered in the corner of the room. Below it, a DVD player hummed and clicked at the end of the film Proctor had been half-watching. He grabbed the remote and replayed his favourite scene, the one where Stallone rips out the throat of a Burmese solider with his bare hands.
He lit a cigarette, and squinted through the smoke at the graphic images, imagining what he'd do to the men who'd jumped him in the street, and playing out in his mind the revenge he'd exact. Maybe he'd slash open their bellies and let them watch their steaming entrails slop out on the floor as they died.
You know who you are, what you're made of.
When you're pushed, killing's as easy as breathing.
Proctor intoned the words under his breath. He crossed the room and yanked his hunting knife out of the plasterboard, walked back to the couch, and wiped the blade clean on his leg. Willem Dafoe was on his knees, head thrown back, his body riddled with the bullets of a chasing Vietcong pack of guerrillas. Proctor aimed for his throat. The knife whistled through the air and struck the poster through the two dog tags that replaced the 'o's in Platoon, lodged in the wall with a twang and stayed there.
Proctor winced. Painkillers had taken the edge off the worst of the pain in his chest, but every time he moved, an agonising twinge reminded him of his injury. He still didn't understand why he'd been targeted. They'd accused him of being some kind of impostor, but he had no idea what they were talking about. Probably mistaken identity. Not that that was any excuse. They'd still pay the price.
Proctor's fingers drifted to the wound where it felt as if a colony of ants was marching over his skin. Through his T-shirt, he scratched at the edges of the dressing trying to relieve the awful, crawling itch. But the more he worked at it, the more intolerable it became.
He jumped from the couch, and slouched into the bathroom with its avocado-coloured bath and basin, cracked tiles and mouldy ceiling. He tugged on the light, splashed cool water over his face and stared at the gaunt reflection in the mirror. His eyes were ringed with dark circles like bruises, his skin pockmarked with acne.
He balanced the smouldering cigarette on the edge of the basin, and tugged his T-shirt off over his head. His chewed fingernails picked at the edges of the surgical tape until the dressing sucked away from the sticky lesion beneath.
Proctor drew a sharp breath as he prodded at the inflamed skin, unable to draw his eyes away from the ugly wound. He peered at it more closely, turning to catch the light, but unable to comprehend what he was seeing. The fluid-filled blister had formed into a definite, familiar shape. It looked like the letter 'P' dissected with a horizontal stroke.
The shrill tone of his mobile phone broke in on his thoughts. He hurriedly reapplied the dressing, pulled his top back on, and tossed the remains of the cigarette into the toilet bowl.
He answered without checking the number. 'Hello?'
'It's Mike.'
'What's up?'
'Nothing. Why?'
'You sound - is everything okay?'
'Yeah, of course. Listen, are you in? I need to talk to you.' He paused. 'It's quite urgent.'
'Yeah, I'm here. Come over.' Proctor knew he wouldn't be sleeping for a while, and welcomed the company as a distraction from the dark thoughts clouding his mind.
'Be there in ten minutes.'
His friendship with Mike Clark had been cemented after they'd marched shoulder to shoulder at Proctor's first BFA protest rally. The day had ended predictably in a series of sporadic brawls as the right wing extremists were confronted by anti-fascist counter demonstrators. Proctor and Clark had found themselves isolated, surrounded by a gang of young Muslims in a back alley, and facing a vicious kicking. Until Clark pulled a knife. A gleaming seven-inch blade he'd had hidden in his waistband behind his back. The snarl on his lips convinced the gang he was crazy enough to use it, and they'd fled in fear. Afterwards, the two men collapsed in fits of jubilant laughter, congratulating each other like young warriors who'd seen off an entire army.
Clark arrived at Proctor's flat precisely seven minutes after his call. He pulled back the curtains, checked the street below left and right, and back again, while Proctor fetched two cans of lager from a fridge yellowed with age. He threw one across the room. Clark caught it one-handed, snapped it open, and emptied half the contents down his throat in one go.
Proctor fell onto the sofa and drew a Marlboro from a depleted pack. The flame from a plastic lighter crackled and hissed. As he took a deep draw, he watched his friend pace the room.
'What the hell's wrong with you? Sit down, will you,' he said. 'You're making me nervous.'
'Can I have one of those?' Clark nodded at the Marlboros. Proctor tossed the packet over with the lighter.
'What's happened, Mike?'
'Nothing really.' Clark fixed his friend with a long, hard stare, as if he were working out whether he could trust Proctor with what was on his mind. 'Something happened a couple of nights ago. I wanted to tell you before but - '
Ash fell from Clark's cigarette like dirty confetti.
'Tell me.'
'Some arseholes jumped me, managed to get me in the boot of their car, and took me off.'
Proctor puzzled over the look on his friend's face. Not quite embarrassment. Shame, maybe.
'I had to tell someone.' As Clark dragged hard on the cigarette, Proctor noticed his hand was trembling. 'They did something awful.'
'You can tell me, Mike,' said Proctor, but he suspected he already knew what was coming.
Clark slipped off his jacket, pulled his T-shirt over his head revealing an angry welt, red and inflamed in the middle of his chest. 'Look at what they did.' There were tears in his eyes.
'Yeah, I know,' said Proctor, softly. He stubbed out his cigarette, pulled up his own top, and ripped off the dressing. 'Same here.'
'What the hell? They came for you too?'
'I think we've been branded, like cattle.'
'But - why would anyone do that?'
'I don't know, but I sure as hell intend to find out.'
Chapter 4
At precisely eight o'clock, thirty mobile phones chimed with the delivery of an identical text message. Trent Garside threw back the remnants of his mug of tea, and read the brief instructions.
'Queen's Head. Chichester Road. Fifteen minutes.'
He gathered up his notebook, threw a few coins on the table to cover the bill, and left the comfort of the all-night café for the frigid night air, setting off at a brisk pace as the pub was a good ten-minute walk.
A jostling scrum of reporters, photographers, and cameramen had already gathered in front of two thickset men in ill-fitting black suits who were trying to manage the melee. One held a clipboard in massive hands laden with gold sovereign rings. He was checking off names, and waving through those on an approved list.
As Trent took his place in the queue, raised voices caught his attention. One of the bouncers was arguing with Daily Tribune reporter, Harry Coles, a slight man, with greying hair swept back from his brow. His checked jacket had the crumpled look of someone who had slept in his clothes. He was no physical match for the thug with the teardrop tattoo under his eye.
It was apparent that the disagreement had arisen over Coles' name being missing from the list. Unwilling to enter into a discussion about the situation, a second bouncer took matters into his own hands. He grabbed two handfuls of the reporter's jacket, lifted him clean off his feet, and threw him across the road still clutching his notebook. His yelp was pitiful.
Coles tried to stand, still protesting his rights, but was kicked to the ground. Two or three photographers fired off a few snatched frames, none keen on attracting the wrath of the two brutes. Besides, none could afford to miss the press conference and have the ignominy of calling their night news editors to explain why.
When Trent saw that it was Coles who'd been thrown out of the line, he wasn't surprised. His paper was a liberal left-wing national that had print
ed a series of exposés on the British Freedom Alliance and its leader, Ken Longhurst, the former used car salesman with an oily charm who'd been hailed by the party as a reformer with serious ambitions to win electoral representation at all levels. He claimed to be on a mission to cauterise the unsavoury elements of the party that had left it languishing in the political wasteland for so many years, and had even employed a slick publicity machine to convince the nation that Longhurst wasn't a racist.
Not that the Daily Tribune saw it like that. It portrayed Longhurst as a violent bully unprepared to tolerate anyone who threatened his view of how British life should be. They'd spoken to anonymous party activists who claimed Longhurst ruled by fear, bullying, and intimidation, and whose private desire remained the reclamation of the country for British whites.
It had made uncomfortable reading for the BFA, but Longhurst's response had been to keep his head down, issue a brief denial of all the allegations, and refuse all media interviews. Yet the longer he had remained out of public view, the bigger the story had grown, until it had become one of the most discussed talking points of the week. The BFA's claims of political legitimacy had been debated on chat shows and news hours across television and radio. And so when selected journalists finally received an invitation to a press conference, there was a clamour of excitement. A robust rebuttal from Longhurst would certainly give the story legs for another few days.
As Trent reached the front of the queue, he felt a pang of guilt. Harry Coles had picked himself off the floor and dusted down his clothes, but was visibly shaken. Trent pretended not to have seen him.
'Name?' asked the bouncer with the sovereign rings.
'Garside. Trent Garside. Freelance.'
'Press card?'
The bouncer studied the plastic identity card Trent produced from a worn wallet, and waved him inside.
The Queen's Head was a dingy, working class pub with faded red carpet sticky from spilt beer, its faded wallpaper and ceilings tinged a tobacco yellow.
The lounge was already filling up. Journalists, photographers, and cameramen were arranging themselves around wooden tables, glared at from the bar by a dozen menacing-looking men with arms streaked with discoloured tattoos. A stage at the front was partially obscured by a red velvet curtain.
Trent pulled up a stool and shook hands with the man already at the table, Pete French, a former colleague who still worked at the Newham Gazette.
'This is all a bit odd, isn't it?' said Trent, pulling a dog-eared notebook from his bag. Two television crews were setting up their cameras on tripods to their right, while a row of photographers had settled on the floor with their cameras clutched to their chests.
'Yeah, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world, not after Longhurst has been playing the invisible man all week,' said the Gazette reporter.
'What do you reckon? Think he'll announce his resignation?'
'I'm not sure Longhurst knows the meaning of the word.' Both men smiled at the joke. 'Anyway, it's been a good week for them, hasn't it?'
'Are you kidding?' said Trent. 'He's been hung out to dry by pretty much every news organisation in here.'
'Yeah, but money can't buy the sort of exposure they've had. Their profile's gone through the roof. Keyes must be rubbing his hands with glee.'
A hush fell over the chattering reporters as a smartly dressed man appeared from the wings.
'Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, and thank you for coming,' said Michael Keyes, the party's director of communications, and the man largely credited with the turnaround in the BFA's fortunes. 'Apologies for the secretive nature of the invitation, but as you know, some disruptive elements seem hell-bent on making trouble for us.'
Keyes was well-known by most of the reporters for a number of high-profile public relations positions he'd held in government, and it had come as some surprise to most of them when he was unveiled by the BFA as their spin-doctor-in-chief. His brief was simple. To rebrand the party and make Ken Longhurst electable.
'As you all know,' Keyes continued, 'we've been the subject of a number of vindictive slurs in recent days, accusations that are absolutely without foundation. We thought it was one rogue paper with its own peculiar vendetta. We tried to ignore it and let it blow over, but I'm afraid you're a bit like sheep, aren't you? What started as an insignificant - and largely fabricated - series of lies, dressed up as journalism, has sadly snowballed into mainstream news. I know many of you wanted interviews with Ken, but we hoped the fuss would die down. That clearly hasn't happened, so tonight we wanted to set the record straight once and for all.'
Keyes paused between each sentence, sweeping the room with his gaze, making sure each and every reporter felt he was speaking to them individually.
'So I've asked Ken here tonight to answer all your questions, and hopefully put some perspective on this so-called story. I trust we'll see some positive coverage in tomorrow's papers?' He checked his watch. 'I make it less than two hours for most of you to get your copy filed for tomorrow's editions so, without further ado, it's my great pleasure to introduce the leader of the BFA, Mr Ken Longhurst.'
Like a compere at a second-rate talent show, Keyes took a step to his right and gestured to the curtain over the stage. The BFA thugs at the bar clapped and cheered. Someone whistled.
Ken Longhurst appeared theatrically; a wide grin fixed on his face, and was immediately drowned in a sea of photographers' flashes. Television cameras whirred into life, and reporters lifted their pens in anticipation. Longhurst looked good. An open-necked white shirt under a tailored black suit accentuated his tan. Black hair, peppered grey, was combed neatly into place, and his shoes were polished to a glossy sheen. He grabbed a microphone from a stand.
'Good to see so many of you could make it tonight. As Michael has explained, we thought it would be useful to set out our stall after all the lies that have been written and broadcast this week. I'm sure you all have plenty of questions so let's throw it open. Put up your hands, and when we come to you, remind us of your name and who you represent.'
A sea of hands shot up as the clamour for answers began, and Ken Longhurst settled in for a long evening.
Chapter 5
The last glimmer of sunlight had already faded as the rows of shops and cafés along the high street were closing for the evening. Handfuls of last minute shoppers were meandering home as traders fastened shutters and bolted doors. In the shadows, Blake kept his eyes fixed on the building opposite. He was trying to look inconspicuous, his hands shoved in his pockets and his shoulders sloped, leaning against a wall between an estate agent's office and a hardware store under the cover of a small arcade. Through a window of Proctor's flat, he could make out the flickering light cast by a television, and occasionally he caught a glimpse of a shadow moving around inside. Proctor was obviously at home, but Blake needed to be sure he was alone.
He'd been watching from the same position for almost an hour when a middle-aged man with a grey beard stepped out of the hardware store and locked up with a bunch of keys on a bungee cord attached to his trousers. If he noticed Blake, he did a good job of ignoring him. A few minutes later, the lights in the estate agent went out and two loud women in business suits swept out, laughing and joking. One caught Blake's eye. She returned his smile with a glint in her eye, then grabbed her colleague by her arm and they disappeared giggling down the road.
Another twenty minutes passed before the door to Proctor's flat opened. A thin, pale figure dressed in black slid out and scurried away with his eyes to the ground and his shoulders hunched. Blake knew that Proctor hadn't ventured far since his run in with the gang who'd abducted him. He suspected Proctor wouldn't be gone for long so he moved fast.
He pushed off the wall, and loped across the road, feeling in his pocket for a key. In a single fluid movement, he had the lock to Proctor's front door open and let himself into a narrow hallway. Ahead, a steep flight of stairs rose up to the first floor flat. Blake paused to listen for mo
vement above. Through the wall to his left, he heard the dull clatter of dishes from the Chinese takeaway, but upstairs was quiet.
He took the stairs two at a time, and found the flat in darkness. The television was still on in the corner and the sodium glow from the street lights outside filtered through the window giving him enough light to see by.
An unpleasant, musty odour of sweat and stale tobacco smoke hung in the air, and Blake noted a pile of dirty dishes filling the kitchen sink. Empty beer cans were strewn across the floor, and a tabloid newspaper had been left open on a pine dining table. Blake picked his way across the floor, turned off the television and settled into an armchair facing the top of the stairs.
Less than four minutes later, he heard a key rattle in the lock, followed by footsteps bounding up the stairs. Proctor emerged into the gloom, feeling for the light switch on the wall. The room was suddenly bathed in bright, white light.
'How the hell did you get in here?' Proctor dropped a blue plastic carrier bag as he spotted Blake rising from the armchair. The bag landed with a thud, and six cans of beer rolled out.
Blake noticed his hands had balled into tight fists by his sides. 'Relax, Ben, it's only me.' He made it across the room in three easy strides, and placed a reassuring hand on Proctor's upper arm. 'You're safe. I'm not here to cause you any harm.'
'Who are you?' Proctor's voice wavered, and his face crumpled in alarm.
Blake tapped Proctor's shoulder three times. 'Sleep now, Ben.'
Proctor's eyelids fluttered and his chin rolled onto his chest. Blake guided him to the sofa and laid him down with his head on a cushion. When he was sure Proctor was in a deep trance, he drew the curtains, grabbed a dining chair, and pulled it up close to the younger man's head.
'My name is Tom Blake, and you work for me and the government. That means you’ll do everything I ask of you, without question. When you awake, you will not recognise my face, but when you see me again you will understand that I am not a threat.' Blake spoke slowly and deliberately, drilling into Proctor's psyche. 'How do you feel?'