by Tony Salter
The taxi stopped. She heard the clunk as the door locks released. Was he coming into the back? Should she fight back? Why was he doing this?
Paralysed by indecision, Shuna lay there shivering, eyes closed and both hands clasped together in desperate prayer.
‘Get out.’ The noise of his voice condensed into those two small words. The doors were still closed, and he hadn’t moved from his seat. What was happening? Was this some sort of trick?
‘Get out. Now.’
Shuna scrambled to her knees, pulled open the door and rolled out onto the pavement. They were in a side street in Shepherd’s Market, nobody in sight, but close to the middle of the busy West End. She saw his face appear at the open passenger-side window. He wasn’t angry, and she saw something broken and beaten in his eyes.
‘I only wanted to talk,’ he said. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’
And then he was gone, the open door swinging closed with a final thunk as the sound of screeching tyres faded.
Shuna never found out why he’d been following her.
She’d had a complete breakdown a few weeks later and the drugs they’d given her had disengaged her from reality. Medication had taken the edge off her fear and controlled the panic attacks, but for several months, she’d lost interest in everything; it wasn’t only the police action against Jim Pritchard which she avoided, every element of her life had been reduced to lifeless clockwork.
She hugged Zoe and Anna when she remembered, but took no pleasure from it. Food and wine, which had been her passion, were reduced to fuel and sedatives and, wherever she looked, beauty seemed to have faded quietly out of the world.
Sex was off the table. More than just a lack of libido, she couldn’t control the myriad dark images which filled her mind whenever the subject arose. Simon had been wonderful, although she could see that the strain of it all was making him unhappy. It was probably causing permanent harm to their relationship, but she struggled to care.
He was angry that she’d refused to press charges; they fought often about that. He couldn’t understand how much she needed it to simply go away. None of it made sense, but she didn’t want revenge. All she wanted was her life back and persecuting that man wouldn’t help. She could see that Simon was trapped by his memories of that evening. His failure to protect his wife still gnawed away at him and he needed something to tip the scales back.
Despite her reticence, the police charged Jim Pritchard with attempted abduction although, in the circumstances, she was excused from making a court appearance and they relied on her written statement. The offence was potentially very serious, but there was no real evidence of the stalking and they hadn’t been able to find any photos on either of Jim’s cameras nor on his laptop. Nothing had actually happened to her in the taxi and the defence lawyer had apparently been very good.
At the end of it all the judge gave him a suspended sentence, subject to a strict restraining order, and that was that. Unsurprisingly, the taxi licensing authorities were less understanding; he was banned from driving a taxi for life.
Simon had been in court for the verdict and, even after the drive home, he was livid.
‘What’s the point?’ he shouted, banging his fist on the table. ‘What’s the bloody point?’
‘It’s done,’ said Shuna. ‘That’s what’s most important. If they’d given him jail time, his lawyer would have appealed and it would have carried on. I’m much happier this way.’
‘But what about justice?’ said Simon. ‘Anything could have happened that night. Look what he’s done to our lives.’
‘The thing is,’ said Shuna. ‘Nothing did happen. And I can’t imagine his life’s looking great either.’
‘But he brought it on himself. He deserves to pay.’
‘We started it, darling. If I’d been a bit less obsessed with my rights back then, none of this would have happened.’
‘But that’s no excuse for …’
Shuna had suddenly remembered why she loved him and smiled. ‘… Let’s stop worrying about right and wrong for now. I’m happy it’s over and I’m going to stop taking those stupid drugs. It’s time we got our lives back.’
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, Anna?’
‘That man over there’s giving me a weird look.’
Shuna wasn’t really listening to what Anna was saying. The colossal majesty of the dinosaur had caught her by surprise and she’d been standing and staring in disbelief for over a minute, her lips slightly apart and eyelids heavy and drooping.
All those months working on her uncle’s game reserve as a fifteen-year-old fed her imagination; memories of elephants and hippos ponderously crunching their way through the bush gave her mental tools which allowed her to clothe the skeleton in sheets of heavy, wrinkled hide – grey and bulletproof. She could imagine the massive feet reaching up and out with deceptive slowness before pounding down to crack the red terracotta tiles and send minor earthquakes rippling out in splintering starbursts.
‘MUM!’
Shuna was jolted a hundred and fifty million years forward – back to the real world. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I was miles away. What did you say?’
‘I said that the man over there was giving me a weird look.’
‘Which man?’
‘The old man in the purple fleece. In the corner behind the dinosaur’s foot.’
‘But, he’s a museum guard, sweetie. I’m sure he was just checking to make sure you weren’t touching anything.’
‘No. It was different. I might only be ten, but I’m not blind. He looked surprised and then angry. Look. He’s still staring at us.’
Shuna looked over at the guard. There was nothing special about him. He was about sixty, short grey hair under a baseball cap, plenty of wrinkles and a nose that had probably been broken one time too many. Aside from that, just an ordinary man. His face was shaded by the cap, but she could see he was angry and there was no doubt that he was staring directly at them. There was something accusing about that look and the way his head was hunched down into his shoulders looked familiar.
The context was completely wrong, but something was tugging away at her memories, teasing out the woollen thoughts, strand by strand.
As she turned back to Anna, she realised what that something was.
‘It’s him,’ she said, pulling her daughter by the hand and looking around for Zoe.
‘Who?’
‘That bloody taxi driver.’
Dan
‘Rosa?’ said Rachel. ‘In my heart, I always knew it must have been about a woman.’ She looked at Dan and he wondered if she would understand. ‘Rosa. It’s a beautiful name.’
‘She was a beautiful person,’ said Dan. ‘I’ve never talked about her since that day. Not to the counsellors. Not the police. No-one. I wanted to keep my memories of her all to myself.’
Rachel didn’t say anything. She always knew when to speak and when to remain silent.
‘I’m going to start at the end,’ said Dan. ‘I’m not sure whether I’ll manage to get through to the beginning, but at least you’ll know how it ended.’
He took out his wallet and opened it on his lap. His fingers were clumsy, and he found himself struggling to tease out the small piece of soft, yellowing paper. He unfolded it slowly and, without looking up, handed it to Rachel.
That small piece of paper had been in his pocket every day for half a century. He’d felt a jagged knife plunge into his heart every time he’d looked at it and had lost count of the number of times he’d almost torn it up or thrown it in the fire. Almost, but not quite. He couldn’t allow himself to forget. His memories were all he had left.
But his memories weren’t real any more. They were memories of memories, layered one upon another, day-by-day for fifty years. He couldn’t recall anything they had spoken about as they walked, there was no continuous record of their journey into town that morning. There were only disconnected images: bright sunlight and flickering shade; the tall o
aks dappling the sidewalk under their feet; simple white strap sandals and delicate brown ankles, the yellow cotton of her dress; white teeth, happy laughter and dancing eyes. Dan no longer knew what was real and what was imagined.
It was all so long ago.
THE AUSTIN DAILY OBSERVER
August 2nd 1966
One and a Half Hours of Terror
Yesterday morning, just before noon, the unthinkable happened. A young student and former Marine opened fire on innocent bystanders at the University of Texas.
Over 96 minutes, the sniper shot forty-four passers-by from on high in the University of Texas tower, killing 14 and seriously wounding many of the others. Earlier in the day, Charles Joseph Whitman, 24 had also murdered his wife and mother with a knife and handgun.
Whitman successfully defended his position from police marksmen until two policeman eventually killed the shooter by climbing to a platform above him and blasting him with revolver and shotgun fire.
Four of the wounded have since died, including a young pregnant woman; her six-month-old unborn son was killed instantly by yesterday’s bullet which today also claimed her as a victim.
Three years after President Kennedy’s assassination, Texas is again the centre of a firearm-related tragedy. Never, in our proud history, has anything like this occurred.
Will our great nation ever be the same again?
They sat in silence while Rachel read the article.
Dan didn’t trust himself to look at her and it was only when she gave him back the refolded newspaper cutting that he dared to lift his gaze. He saw the love and anguish in her eyes which was more than he could bear, as he’d known it would be. He dropped his head onto her shoulder and, when she wrapped her warm arms around him, the tears came.
‘Maybe I should have chosen a slightly less public place for this?’ he said eventually, his trembling voice ill-suited to humour.
‘Screw them,’ said Rachel and the profanity sounded stranger on her lips than the fact that her husband was bawling his eyes out in a British museum.
‘Yeah,’ said Dan. ‘Screw them.’
‘So, Rosa was the young pregnant woman?’ said Rachel.
‘Yes,’ said Dan.
‘And the unborn baby,’ said Rachel. ‘That was your son?’
‘Yes,’ said Dan.
‘You poor man,’ Rachel sobbed. ‘You poor, poor darling.’
Nadia
Nadia looked at her watch. Almost quarter to twelve and still nothing. She left two messages for the waitress at the cafe, asking her to see if she could remember anything else and then gave her phone to Ed in case he was able to pick out some sort of pattern from the hundreds of updates to the Snowflake thread. It was crazy that MI5 and MI6 didn’t have open data sharing. Weren’t they supposed to be on the same side?
He looked up. ‘Are you aware you’re literally hopping from one foot to the other?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know people ever really did that.’
Nadia glared at him. ‘I can’t stand this waiting. I know we’re running out of time.’
He handed her back the phone. ‘I don’t think you’ve missed anything here,’ he said, ‘although you won’t want to hear the latest from GCHQ.’
‘What is it?’
‘Seems you’re right about timing. They’ve just intercepted an encrypted message referring to a glorious event at twelve o’clock today.’
‘Oh Christ,’ said Nadia, feeling her shoulders sag and the nervous energy drain out of her body. ‘We’re too late.’
She felt Ed’s arm around her. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ he said. ‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over … And who knows? … His watch might be slow.’
Nadia laughed in spite of herself. ‘A poor moment for humour,’ she said. ‘But you’re right. Nothing is over until the fat lady sings. Let’s sit tight and give the forensics guys a few more minutes. We know he’s close and there’s no point in chasing off in the wrong direction.’
Ed took his arm away. ‘I was a desk analyst for my first five years at GCHQ,’ he said. ‘It was a strange job. There were moments of huge excitement when things were going down. Maybe someone had called the wrong number on a burner phone and we suddenly got access to a dozen other targets, or a simple tip-off released a cascading waterfall of new intel. At times like that, we worked until we couldn’t see straight, living off Red Bull and pizza.
‘And then, the flow would stop as though a tap had suddenly closed. No warning and no explanation. There was nothing anyone could do about it. The only option was to wait. I guess we used humour to defuse the tension.’
Nadia nodded. ‘I get that,’ she said. ‘It’s not so different on a stake-out. Even though most of the time nothing happens, I’m normally OK with it. I don’t know why this one’s getting to me so much. I suppose I’ve just spent six months watching thousands of people going to the mosque every Friday. I had a good view from my window and could watch them as they arrived and left. They were just ordinary people, coming to worship peacefully. I know I don’t believe in God, but I still felt happy to be a part of it, somehow. I felt proud of my roots.’
Although Ed didn’t speak, Nadia watched his features soften, and she saw kindness and understanding in his eyes.
Nadia felt her built-up anger and frustration pushing to the surface. ‘Maybe I’m just fed up,’ she said. ‘Fed up with a tiny minority of idiots giving all Moslems a bad name and I can’t cope with the idea of another incident making it even worse. I may not be religious, but that doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of who I am and where I come from.’
‘You don’t need a Moslem background to feel that way,’ said Ed. ‘Fingers crossed we get lucky this time.’ He sat down on the low wall behind him, leaving room for Nadia. ‘For now, I think we just have to wait. Even though they’re one step ahead of us, we’re close.’
‘I know,’ said Nadia, joining him on the wall. ‘The other thing that’s bugging me is Snowflake. He really doesn’t fit the usual profile.’ She knew that her own personal issues were probably making her over-sensitive, but she became almost tearful as she thought about the things she’d uncovered. He’d only been a few years after her at Oxford and, apart from being a little naïve, he’d done nothing to deserve the perfect shitstorm of bad luck which had hit him.
‘Tell me what you found out,’ said Ed.
‘He grew up in Bradford,’ said Nadia. ‘Bright, but wimpy, nerd with a stupid bullying father. Somehow managed to defy the odds and get a place at Oxford to study biochemistry. An uncle – who happens to be a known drug dealer – agreed to fund his education in return for a commitment to work for him. He was doing OK until his final year, on track for a high 2:1 or even a First, but there was a complication.’
‘A “complication”?’
‘Yes,’ said Nadia. ‘I tracked down his old tutor and a few of his contemporaries and apparently he fell in love with an Egyptian girl, Mona El Masry. The way I heard it, she was already engaged back home and just wanted to have a bit of fun while she had the chance – to enjoy her final years of freedom. She was wealthy and beautiful and Snowflake was either too stupid or too blinkered to see the truth. He fell head over heels and they were together for two years.’
‘Poor bloody idiot,’ said Ed. ‘It’s not only men who are arseholes, is it? So, what happened?’
‘Well, it was all a bit predictable, I guess …’ said Nadia, who hadn’t stopped staring at her phone. She paused in mid-sentence. ‘Hang on. They’ve got a first pass on the fingerprints … it’s definitely our man, a twenty-two point match … three other sets … and one of them is an eleven point match for Unicorn.’
‘He must have brought the detonator unit with him from Pakistan,’ said Ed. ‘That fits completely.’
‘But it doesn’t bloody move us forward at all, does it?’ Nadia could feel the events of the past few weeks catching up and black despair sinking over her. What was the point? ‘All it means is that we now know for sure we’re dea
ling with a highly experienced terrorist who never fails.’
‘It means he’s here somewhere,’ said Ed. ‘If we could find him, it would be a major coup.’
Until that moment, Nadia had been pleasantly surprised by Ed, who appeared to be a decent man, maybe even someone worth going out for a drink with. It was, she realised, inevitable that his true colours would shine through sooner rather than later. ‘So, there’s a central London suicide bombing,’ she snapped. ‘Dozens of people are killed and injured, bigots around the world are given another gift-wrapped excuse to be racist and anti-Moslem, hundreds more jihadists are inspired to join the cause … and all you give a damn about is a major career coup?’
Ed stepped backwards, eyes wide with shock. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. That’s not what I bloody meant and you know it.’
Nadia looked at him. He was standing in front of her, arms by his sides, looking at her like a smacked puppy. He’d just opened his mouth to say something else – probably some sort of pathetic justification – when her phone started to ring. She lifted one hand which stopped him dead.
‘Hello …? Hello …?’
11:48
Jim
Luckily – or unluckily – Julie wasn’t the type to sit and stew for hours and Jim barely had time to pick up the broken halves of the vase – which had cost a bob or two – before the kitchen door swung open and Julie filled the doorframe, gloves on for Round Two.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she screamed at him. ‘Where did you get all of that bloody equipment? How much did it cost? Why would you keep it a secret?’
The whole saga with Shuna had done something to Jim. His standard M.O. would always have been to go straight onto the offensive and bulldoze any resistance into the ground, just like the Rio police had done to those favela slums before the World Cup. It had always worked for him and he’d never thought twice about it.