Divide and Rule

by Solomon Carter

  A group of people were milling around a patch of stony ground by a barn. They looked up and stopped whatever work they were doing as the car drew nearer. Some of them had shovels and some held rakes. It looked more like construction type groundwork rather than farming work they were engaged in. The work men looked young here too, some wearing general work clothes, while a few wore the classic-style-cum-uniform of skinheads- bomber jackets and big boots. They were skinheads, one and all. And the closer they got, Eva realised how very young these skinheads were. A couple looked school age.

  “What the hell is this place?” said Jess.

  “I’d say you were pretty close already.”

  “I really hope those skins aren’t burying anything, don’t you?”

  Eva didn’t say a word, but the thought had crossed her mind already. Eva stopped the car a safe distance from the rusting, corrugated barn, and turned the engine off. She had enough distance between her and the group of men to start the engine and get out of there easily, but she let the opportunity pass as two of the older boys headed towards the car.

  “Who are you?” asked one of the boys, his face all twisted and ugly with anger like someone had given him a hate supplement with his breakfast each day.

  “How’s the training going?” asked Eva.

  “What do you know about it?”

  Eva shook her head. “Never mind. Where is Joe Merton?”

  “He’s not here. So who are you?”

  “What about David Coulson, is he here?”

  The boys glare flickered. He looked at his neighbour. His neighbour shrugged.

  “Wait here. You’d better speak to the codger.”

  “The codger?” asked Jess.

  “Yes, darling. Codger, as in the proper old bastard. We’ve got one here on the farm. Ron Cordy.”

  The young man put his dirty fingers over the edge of the open car window, touching the black leather effect door panel. He stared at Jess and breathed over Eva. He badly needed to be introduced to the science of toothpaste and deodorant.

  “Fit couple of birds, you two. Dangerous, wouldn’t you say, coming over here in your tart’s car and your tart suits acting like you’re a pair of hard nuts? You’re just skirt.”

  “What’s your name?” said Eva.

  “Freddie,” he said with a smiling grimace.

  “Freddie – now do be a good boy and fuck off. You’re making my car stink,” Eva didn’t swear often. But Freddie deserved it. Her hand made for the ignition key. She saw and felt the violence surge up in the boy, and he reared backwards, ready to do some damage, when a loud rasping voice called out and cut the scene apart.

  “Fred, get back to work you piece of crap,”

  Eva’s heart rate slowed a little; she looked past skinhead Freddie to see a twisted little wraith of a man stepping towards them across the mud. He was wearing dirty overalls and wellington boots. All his clothes were muddy, and his hair was wild and grey, blowing in the keen October wind. He looked frail, but mean as hell. At least he pressed pause on the act of hate young Freddie was set to commit. But what was this old man capable of?

  The old man came up to the car and looked at the women quizzically in turn, and ran a hand through his wild old mane. “This is private land, ladies. Are you selling anything? Because this is not a good place to be doing it, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “No. We’re not selling anything. We’re here to find out a few things, by talking with you maybe, and some of the other people here.”

  “We don’t talk to strangers, Miss. None of us do. It’s not good practice. Now, for the good of everyone here, I recommend you drive back the way you came and go back to civilisation. The moment you entered my land, you left civilisation far behind.”

  “Are you familiar with Will Burton, the man running for parliament in Southend?”

  The old man shifted and looked closer into the car. He said nothing.

  “We’re working for him. We’re trying to help him – to protect his family and find their attacker.”

  “You work for Burton?”

  “Yes.”

  “What a strange little world we live in. I work with the man too, but I suppose you know that. Now. If you really must stay any length of time at all, here are my ground rules. You stay with me. You keep away from the barns and the outbuildings. You don’t wander off by yourself, because I think you’ll have already seen…” The old man said, looking back at Freddie, “it’s not safe round here.”

  Maybe the old codger didn’t know that Burton wasn’t in with the in crowd of UKFirst. It was possible from how Freddie had spoken of him that old Cordy was accorded with the same level of respect as Burton. Either that or Eva had already said too much, and they were in very deep trouble.

  Eva wasn’t keen on leaving her Alfa Giulietta with a bunch of skinhead teenagers, but she had to let go. She pressed the lock button on her key fob and walked away with the old man towards a shabby grey cottage which had to be the main residence on Cordy farm. There were other temporary buildings in the grounds nearby, a half dozen Porta cabins which looked so old that they appeared to be made of soggy cardboard. There was activity around them, with men, mostly young, some older – moving in and out of their doorways.

  “You’ve got plenty of people around here, Mr Cordy. But there doesn’t seem to be much farm work going on.”

  “Absolutely no farming whatsoever. I got out of farming long ago. European subsidies killed our farming industry but still some poor fools persist. A lot of our British farmers are working for fresh air now so the supermarkets can get rich. The farming business is torture nowadays.”

  Torture. Anti-European language too. Rhetoric and farming pessimism. This guy was a classic barrel of laughs.

  “So what do you do here then?”

  “We keep the youth busy. We give young people something worthwhile to do, something to believe in, and a place they can socialise and have fun. Most of these boys work over at Curlon’s, the food factory. We bus ‘em over in the morning, and they come back here to sleep in the evening. The rent on the Porta cabins is next to nothing, so they get to keep most of their wages. They’re better off here then they would be on those sink estates in Southend and Basildon. Here they get instilled with morals, discipline, and education, and a chance to save some money for the future.”

  “So this is a philanthropic enterprise?”

  “Come again, sweetheart?” The old man stopped in his tracks, apparently sensing the mockery in Eva’s voice. Eva held her ground.

  “I’m curious. What is your purpose? Why are you doing all this?”

  “Well, what’s your take? Some people have us down as conspiracy theorists, fruitcakes, and the like. I heard all of that before. But we are preparing for something which is already underway. Society is breaking down. Tell me it isn’t! The enemy is closing in from beyond our shores, and from within. The only people who don’t see it are the ones who don’t want to. But we see it, and we are going to do something about it.”

  “The ‘you’ who are doing something… do you mean UKFirst?”

  “Yes. I’m with the party, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m not ashamed. I’m proud of my membership.”

  “And does Will Burton know all about your farm and its purposes?”

  “Will Burton has been here. He must know about what goes on. Effectively, this is party property, and party business is managed from here. Cordy Farm is an academy.”

  “You’re absolutely sure Will Burton knows about the training and everything you do here.”

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of here. Will’s been here… and his team know all about it. Peter knows the site inside out, because he, myself and a few others made it happen. And it’s working out well, don’t you think?”

  Eva looked at Jess as she looked around. Jess’s face was a blank slate. Both of them were maintaining their composure while evaluating the circumstances. This was a boot camp for young fascist soldiers, the n
ext generation of UKFirst and whatever nationalist brand followed after it. Eva wondered how this could look pleasing to anyone… she saw a ramshackle farm, dilapidated agriculture subverted into a quasi-military camp, with a cyberpunk landscape of metal chimneys and industry in the near background. The place was horrible. It was frightening, but Eva maintained her equipoise, her eyes hiding her fear and loathing as best she could.

  “Come to the house. If you work for Burton, we’re colleagues so a day or two we’ll all be celebrating, won’t we?” There was a challenge in his bitter blue eyes.

  “I plan to be celebrating, yes,” said Eva. Though she hoped they would be celebrating very different things, she celebrating while Peter Serge wept into his lager.

  The cottage had not been redecorated, since the 1960s by Eva’s reckoning. The oven was ancient. The kitchen was equipped with freestanding furniture which had once been painted white, but was now grimly dirty, with the paint stripped down to the wood. The floor looked like it had linoleum on it, but this was worn through to the lining and curled at the corners. The old man put an ancient whistling kettle on the stove, and took a trio of teabags from a dented tin on a plain wooden shelf by a window. He wore fingerless gloves, and seemed the kind of man who would have never taken them off. Eva didn’t want a cup of tea. She didn’t want anything in this place to touch her lips. The skinheads stayed outside but lingered by the door. They were interested maybe because she and Jess were the first women they had seen on Cordy Farm for a while. Or maybe, like Jackals around a pride of lions, they scented easy pickings. It didn’t help Eva, and she felt the tension pouring from Jess in her awkward suit.

  “So, can we look around? After the tea, I mean. This place must have a lot of history, after all?” said Jess. Nice try, thought Eva. The old man looked at Jess with a sneer. “A lot of history, but a lot more future. Things going on here at the moment can’t be revealed until the proper time. So the answer is No.”

  He went back to the kettle and sized the women up again by looking at them from the corner of his eye. It was a reptilian look, furtive and disturbing.

  “What is Will Burton doing, hiring a couple of little women? We could have fixed his problems ourselves. Doing things internally is always easier,” said the little old man. He filled the cups with boiling water making three cups of dark steaming tea and poured long-life UHT milk into each.

  “Why do you think he went outside of your UKFirst circle, Mr Cordy? What does it tell you? Because it says a few things to me.”

  “Enlighten me. You are brimming with fire, aren’t you?” He said to Eva.

  “Enlighten yourself. I’m sure you can work it out.”

  The man snorted his disapproval, and handed out the cups by slamming them down on a battered old kitchen table, which had gone grey with grime and years of use.

  “We need to ask questions. We need to look around, Mr Cordy. We want help the man aiming to be your party’s first MP. Surely you can agree to that?”

  “I don’t take orders from women. I never have and I never will.”

  Eva noticed the lack of photographs, the lack of wedding ring on the old man’s veiny fingers.

  “But Burton has hired us.”

  “Good. But Will Burton hasn’t called. And besides, I only take orders from one point of contact. And that’s not Burton.”

  “Let me guess,” said Jess.

  “You can guess all you like, but I won’t say.”

  “Do you care that Will Burton’s son was injured, and almost killed?” asked Jess.

  “I told you girls, we are in the beginnings of a war. In a war people get hurt.”

  “But is this a civil war, Mr Cordy? Did your own people hurt Jerry Burton?”

  The man stood stock still. He turned, his face going purple and his lip quivering. “How dare you! How bloody dare you! They tried this trick on parties and political movements all the way through the twentieth century. Sewing bad thoughts about one another into the heads of the leadership. Create animosity amongst the members. It was divide and rule, and it worked then but it won’t bloody work now. Who the devil do you really work for, because it isn’t bloody Will Burton?”

  Damn. Eva hadn’t reckoned on people in the movement being so paranoid, but she guessed she should have done. Megalomania, race hate, violence and a new model army of Essex rednecks in the making, this movement had paranoid psychosis written all over it.

  “We have to ask the difficult questions, Mr Cordy. No, we don’t support your movement. But your leader, Mr Burton, is our client. We have no agenda beyond serving him.”

  “I don’t like either of you. You can tell Burton that, when you see him. He’s never going to find out who hurt his bloody boy, is he? Anyone can see that! You see that. He’s wasting his time.”

  “How do you know, Mr Cordy?”

  “Because if the rogue bastards who did that were going to do anything else, they would have done it by now. They had their opportunity and they lost it. The attacker bottled it and rode off into the sunset.”

  “But… how do you know that?”

  Cordy fixed Eva in his eyes and held her with a frosty gaze. ”I don’t. But I might have plotted once or twice in my time. Believe me, you have a plan to carry out a hit like that, then you bloody well do it. And when you do it, you do it once, and you don’t fail. So, my question for you, Miss, is did the attacker fail? Or did he give up? Or was there ever really even an attack at all?”

  Eva was stumped, no attack at all? Of course there was an attack. The evidence was in hospital. Eva looked at Jess and saw her eyes were glazed as she too set about cracking the old codger’s riddle.

  Eva noticed the tension in Jess for a moment or two as she cradled her tea. Jess was fidgety. Maybe the fear was getting to her. But as the old man tried to stare Eva down, neither noticed Jess glancing out of the door towards the outbuildings. She kept looking. She took a deep breath, and then rapidly declared “I’m sorry but I need my asthma pump, Eva. I’ve got to get it from the car. I’ll be back in a second.”

  “Now you hold on!” The old man shouted, but Jess was already gone through the open kitchen door into the grey blustery air beyond.

  “It’s okay,” said Eva. “She’ll be back in a minute.” Eva’s peaceable smile painted over a lie. Jess didn’t have the key to the Alfa, and it was locked. And Jess didn’t have asthma. In her mind Eva began to count down. She guessed she had about two minutes before the shit would really hit the fan. Worse for Eva, Jess had now gone rogue in just the same style as Dan. Eva silently realised there was no one she could rely on. No one but herself.

  The old man sipped his tea with his fingerless gloves wrapped around his old steaming cup. He looked at Eva silently, his eyes not relenting. They were blue and flinty, like old marbles. Eva let him stare and sat down after considering whether the dining chair was too dirty to sit at.

  “What the hell are you playing at down here, Miss? This is a man’s game. And a dangerous one at that. We are preparing for what’s coming, you understand?”

  “You are preparing for what you want to happen, Mr Cordy. And if it doesn’t happen, you’ll make it happen, won’t you? Race riots. Marches on mosques. It’s all been done before.”

  The man slurped his tea bitterly.

  “Where’s the little bitch?”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard what I said. You just didn’t like it. Nosey bitches, both of you. Now, let me tell you. If she doesn’t turn up back here in two minutes, I won’t be held responsible for what the boys might do to her.”

  “My Cordy –This is your land. I’ll hold you responsible for everything that happens here. And so will my partner. And if Peter Serge and Will Burton are involved, we’ll hold them accountable too.”

  “You’re full of hot air sweetie. You’re not in your own home now, Miss. Like you said, this is my place. You’d better understand that. If you don’t, you will soon.”

  The man continued to slurp his d
isgusting tea while Eva left hers to grow cold in the damp air. From the corner of her eye she sensed distant movement beyond the window and the flapping net curtain. There, near the barns she caught an inkling of Jess moving quickly and silently out in the middle distance. No one was following her. Yet.

  “Time’s up for the girl, Miss. Now we’ll have to fix her. I’m guessing we’ll have to fix you an’ all.” The old man turned his head and yelled “Freddie! Freddie, come here you great lummox!” The big angry youth turned up twenty seconds later, a sheen of sweat on his brow. “What?”

  “Remember the little blonde tart who arrived with this one?”

  The boy nodded, a dangerous smirk emerging on his face.

  “She’s gone loose. I think she’s snooping.”

  “Are these bitches cops, then?”

  “Nah. Will Burton hired them, but I think they’ve gone off piste, doing their own thing. Mr Serge and Mr Burton can’t have rogues snooping around the farm, can they?”

  “Bad news. What you want me to do?”

  “Fetch, like a good doggy would.”

  The boy looked at Eva. Eva kept her gaze firm.

  “Then what?”

  “You know what.”

  “Yes!” the boy cheered, and clapped his hands. Eva leapt up out of her chair, calling out through the open door, and window.

  “Get away from here Jess, get away quickly!”

  The old man turned and moved to hit her, but Eva pointed at him and he stayed back “You hit me, and I’ll hit you ten times harder. You better believe it.

  Cordy hesitated. “You’ll get yours soon enough. Burton will wash his hands of troublemakers like you. You’ll see.”

  Freddie was already gone, laughing with his pack of hunting skinheads.

  It could have been less than an hour, a long and cold hour, and Eva had felt the eyes of the enemy upon them the whole time. She knew any move she made would be challenged and she didn’t want the whole farm descending into a murderous frenzy because of her. It was best she waited until the situation with Jess escalated, and then she would intervene no matter the consequences.