Twenty Twelve

by Helen Black

  The rope has been cut, the ragged ends dangling at my elbows. I untangle what’s left, throw the remnants at my feet and massage the welts in my skin.

  Ronnie has her lips pressed together, the knife in her right palm. ‘Can I trust you, Jo?’

  ‘That’s a strange question with that pointing in my direction.’

  ‘I used it to cut the rope,’ she says. ‘But I could have used it to cut your throat.’

  ‘You still could,’ I say.

  She wags the blade at me. ‘At last you’re starting to see sense.’

  The plane drops and my ears pop. We are sinking through the sky.

  ‘We’re coming in to land,’ Ronnie tells me.

  The descent is steep and we almost plummet, a side wind buffeting us and my teeth grinding. The wings shudder and the sound of clanging metal fills the cockpit.

  ‘Gonna be a bumpy one,’ Ronnie shouts above the noise.

  I’m thrown around in my seat, smacking my head first against the window, then to my left, elbowing Ronnie in the shoulder. Her eyes darken, their silver light turning to storm clouds. For a second, I consider doing it again. Harder. If I aimed for the side of her head I could probably knock her out. But who would land the plane? I check outside and the grey swell of the Atlantic Ocean yawns at us. I don’t fancy a watery grave.

  The plane skids across the sky, bouncing into the air pockets, and Ronnie’s hands tighten around the controls, her knuckles white, as she tries to keep us straight.

  ‘We’re going down too fast,’ I say as the waves threaten to lick our landing gear.

  Ronnie doesn’t answer but I can see the sinews of her neck straining.

  At last the engine emits a terrible groan and we thump down, careering to the left, the brakes shrieking. Then there’s a bang and we come to a stop, whiplashed forward then back into our seats.

  ‘Shit,’ I say.

  Ronnie nods, panting, her hands still clutching the controls. I take it that was a close one.

  ‘What now?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re going to meet someone who will help me,’ she replies.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then nothing. I’ll go my way and you’ll go yours.’

  I laugh. ‘As simple as that?’

  ‘With any luck,’ she says.

  Thus far luck hasn’t featured highly. I’ve been blown up, kidnapped, drugged, punched repeatedly in the face and threatened with a gun. No one on the planet has the faintest idea where I am, including me.

  Without another word, Ronnie opens her door and slides outside. The clamour of the ocean rocks the cockpit and I have to fight the wind to open my own door. When I jump down, my feet land in wet gritty sand and as I round the plane I have to climb to stand with Ronnie. By her side I can see we’ve landed on a long expanse of beach, a sand dune bringing us to our violent halt. In front of us, the impossible wall of angry sea attacking white chalk stacks that we must have missed by inches, behind us moss green hills rolling up to meet the black clouds.

  The caravan Ronnie left me in felt isolated but compared to the scene before me it might as well have been in a Center Parcs. I feel as if I’m standing at the very edge of the world.

  ‘Welcome to the Outer Hebrides,’ says Ronnie and begins to make her way up the steep incline, away from the beach.

  Clem swallowed the last piece of lamb kebab and sucked the grease from each finger, his lips making five wet smacks.

  ‘That stinks,’ said Carole-Ann.

  ‘You were the one who sent me out for food,’ Clem retorted.

  ‘Not for something that smells like Pedigree Chum.’

  Clem waved away her protests, propelled the bag into the bin and stifled a burp in the palm of his hand.

  ‘How about that Krish, huh?’ she asked. ‘Dynamite stuff he retrieved from the PC.’

  ‘Not bad,’ said Clem.

  ‘For a twelve-year-old.’

  ‘Are you here to bait me? Or do you have anything to tell me about the CCTV?’ Clem growled.

  She pulled a face and led him to her desk. ‘This is Stratford underground station.’ She gestured to three screens, each showing the entrance from a different angle.

  ‘Why so many cameras?’ asked Clem.

  ‘You been there?’

  Clem snorted a laugh. It was a rough neck of the woods.

  ‘Here comes Frasier,’ she said, and three images of Tommy appeared, from above, front and side. He was holding something.

  ‘What’s that?’ Clem asked.

  Carole-Ann zoomed in. It was a teddy holding a heart. The food in Clem’s stomach churned.

  They watched him wait, looking up and down the street, occasionally behind him into the station. His excitement was palpable.

  Moments later, someone approached him. He was at least six foot, wearing a hat and dark glasses, a rucksack slung over his shoulder. Clem doubted very much that his name was Petal. He spoke to Tommy, his body language relaxed, a hand touching the boy’s arm. He threw back his head and laughed and Tommy joined in. Then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a phone, which he showed to Tommy.

  ‘What’s the betting it’s a message from Petal?’ said Carole-Ann.

  Clem felt anger flush his neck and he raked at his collar.

  ‘She can’t make it, but she wants to meet her new boyfriend at the Olympic stadium,’ said Carole-Ann.

  With a hideous inevitability they watched Thomas Frasier take a ticket from the stranger and, finally, the rucksack. The man helped Tommy secure it on his back. As the man turned to leave, he waved. Beaming, Tommy waved back. Then they watched Tommy wend his way out through the crowds.

  ‘I’ve checked CCTV all the way to the stadium,’ said Carole-Ann. ‘We could track him almost continuously.’

  ‘Did he look in the bag?’

  ‘No.’

  Clem slumped onto Carole-Ann’s desk. Tommy had had no idea what was in the rucksack. He’d thought he was on his way to meet the girl of his dreams. When he’d been stopped at security, he’d panicked. Wouldn’t anyone with two guns pointing at their head?

  ‘There was no other choice,’ said Carole-Ann. ‘You had to do it.’

  Clem closed his eyes and let his head droop. She was right. There had been no other choice. The boy was making a run for it with an IED. Whether he was aware or not, he was a danger to everyone around him and had to be stopped. But that didn’t make it any easier.

  ‘What about the guy?’ he asked. ‘Can we ID him?’

  ‘Face recognition has drawn a blank,’ said Carole-Ann. ‘But we’re using all the CCTV in the area to see if we can find out where he went.’

  ‘Do whatever it takes and hunt him down,’ said Clem. ‘We have to stop this bastard.’

  As I clamber after Ronnie, I can make out a red pickup truck at the brow of the hill. Ronnie continues towards it but her pace slows as a grizzly bear of a man gets out.

  She stops about ten feet away from him, staring through the driving rain. When I catch up, I stop too.

  The man is wearing a checked shirt buttoned all the way up. Straggles of shoulder-length hair are tucked behind his ears and topped with a baseball cap, rivulets of water running from its peak. Almost too casually, he has a rifle strung across his shoulder by a leather strap.

  ‘Ronnie?’ he asks.

  ‘Uh huh,’ she says.

  ‘Who’s that?’ He nods at me.

  ‘A friend,’ says Ronnie.

  ‘Hawk isn’t gonna like outsiders coming onto the island.’

  ‘I’ll square it with Hawk,’ she says.

  The man pauses for a second, as if weighing up what to do. ‘All right.’ He drops the back of the pickup. ‘Get in.’

  Ronnie pulls herself in and takes a place at the back, on a tyre island among a pile of dirty, sodden rags. I heave myself after her and sit among a selection of saws, hammers and screwdrivers, with my back to the side.

  The man slams the flap shut and leans over to me. I’m thrown
back by the stench of his body odour. ‘Got a name?’ he asks.

  ‘Jo. You?’

  The man scratches his armpit with a hand so large he could use it to paddle a canoe. ‘Tiny.’ He walks back around to the driver’s side, guns the engine and shoots off, skimming the hill top, leaving Ronnie and me to hunch ourselves against the deluge.

  If I thought the boat and plane journeys were uncomfortable, it becomes clear that they were merely preparation for this truck ride. As we head out at speed, we are rattled and rolled along a road that’s more pothole than track, all in the vicious force of the storm. Ronnie scratches through the various old blankets and coats until she finds two baseball caps and throws one to me. It feels greasy to the touch and smells of week-old milk.

  ‘This is no time to get precious, Jo.’ She slips on her hat. ‘It’s going to be a long one.’

  I glance up at the sky, my eyes scrunched against the downpour and slap it on my head. Ronnie can’t resist a chuckle.

  Mile upon mile of green-brown turf whizz past, the horizon lost in a waterlogged mist, until we slow and pull to the right. As one, Ronnie and I lean over the side to see what’s happening and are met with a view of a dilapidated cottage, its white stone walls crumbling, the thatched roof balding.

  ‘Well, I’ll be . . .’ says Ronnie and jumps over the side of the truck, landing with barely a sound.

  Tiny gets out of the cab and eyes up Ronnie, who is standing legs akimbo, staring at the cottage, shaking her head with a small smile. She turns to Tiny, catches him leering at her and the smile falls away to nothing. ‘What?’ she barks.

  ‘Nothing.’ He slopes into the cottage.

  I stretch a leg over the side of the truck and let myself fall with an awkward thump onto my hands. I wipe off the mud down my tracksuit trousers and peer into the darkened doorway.

  Tiny exits the cottage, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. In his left hand he carries a four-pack of beer, in his right a four-pack of Coke.

  ‘What’ll it be?’ He holds up the drinks.

  Ronnie reaches out and takes the soft stuff.

  ‘Works for me,’ he says and gets back in the cab.

  Ronnie sweeps into the truck like a gymnast and opens up the flap for me. I’m only just inside, one foot still in midair, when Tiny grates the gears and floors the accelerator.

  We take our places in the same spots and Ronnie hands me a can. It’s so wet I almost drop it. Ronnie opens hers and almost finishes it in one go, then swirls the remnants around the bottom of the can, making a hollow tinkling sound. I pull the ring on my own can, releasing the gas with a pfft sound and take a long swig.

  ‘I don’t suppose you want to explain how this,’ I hold up the can, ‘found its way into that old place?’

  Ronnie shrugs. ‘They arrange for someone from one of the other islands to leave provisions from time to time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Look around you, Jo. Do you see any shopping centres?’

  I check my surroundings. Rolling wet hills as far as I can see, punctuated only by grey rock. The nothingness of it all makes me dizzy and disorientated and I have to close my eyes. When I open them, Ronnie is looking into the distance, as if there’s something there waiting to be discovered.

  ‘Who’s Hawk?’ I ask.

  ‘What?’ She tears herself away.

  ‘Hawk,’ I repeat. ‘Tiny mentioned someone called Hawk. He said he didn’t like outsiders. I assume that’s who you’re going to meet.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘So who is he?’

  She gives me a sidelong glance. ‘We go back a long time. He owes me.’

  ‘In the same way I owe Rory?’

  ‘Something like that,’ she replies and goes back to her vigil.

  Rory stares at the video feed to his front door. It has been twenty-five hours and forty-two minutes since Ronnie left. She said she would bring a replacement towel as soon as possible. Rory wonders whether more than twenty-five hours and forty-two minutes could be considered ‘as soon as possible’. He knows that this is not an exact amount of time and that different people mean different things by it.

  It’s like when Imelda used to tell him she would visit ‘in a day or so’. This sometimes meant three days, sometimes four. On one occasion it meant nine days because ‘the arseholes at head office’ wouldn’t approve her travel expenses.

  Ronnie knows Rory hates inaccuracy. She also knows there are only three towels. There is no spare. If an emergency should occur, such as a power cut, he will be forced to abandon the schedule.

  He taps the side of his head to stop it hurting and watches the video feed for a further four minutes. At last, he moves away, back to his bank of computers. Platformnow.com is very busy. A lot of posters are discussing a boy called Thomas Frasier who was shot by the police at the Olympic stadium.

  Rory checks three threads.

  Topic By Replies

  Do the feds think we’re fucking Gunshot 69

  idiots?

  I don’t know if any of you guys are watching this shit happening in England, but shooting a kid in the back?

  SecondAmendment At 16:21

  They’re saying it was an accident.

  Gunshot At 16:22

  Bullshit.

  Freedomfighter At 16:25

  Here in the US there is one fatal shooting a day by the police. That’s 365 a year.

  Police say they’re catching criminals, but how many of those people are really political targets?

  Gunshot At 16:28

  We live in a police state, brother. Government-sponsored terrorism.

  SecondAmendment At 16:30

  Remember Sean Bell? They shot him over forty times.

  Gunshot At 16:32

  Remember Waco? Seventy-four men, women and children were murdered so that the New Order could show its authority.

  Rory’s heart gives a little flutter at the mention of Waco. This is a reference that will always bring Hawk into the discussion. Rory assumes he has the word on alert. He waits two minutes.

  Hawk At 16:34

  And let’s not forget they televised the whole massacre to instil fear into the people so they wouldn’t take action and fight.

  Freedomfighter At 16:35

  I’m too scared not to take action, man. I don’t want my kids looking over their shoulders.

  Hawk At 16:37

  Our brothers and sisters in England need to know we’re with them.

  They need to stand up against the might of the state and we’ll stand alongside, shoulder to shoulder.

  Rory would like to communicate with Hawk. Ronnie told him Hawk was dangerous, but Rory wonders if that is true.

  People lie.

  It took Rory most of his childhood to understand this fact. His mother said she loved him, but that was a lie. Imelda said she would help him, but that was a lie.

  Ronnie told him she would return with the replacement towel ‘as soon as possible’.

  R1234 At 16:40

  I am here.

  Hawk At 16:41

  Hey, man, I’ve been thinking about you a lot. How is your nose?

  R1234 At 16:42

  It hurts.

  Hawk At 16:43

  You need to put ice on it, man.

  I’ve had a lot of bust-up noses in my time and ice is the only thing that will bring it down.

  Rory sticks out his tongue. If Hawk is dangerous, how come people have punched him on the nose?

  R1234 At 16:44

  Who did it to you?

  Hawk At 16:45

  It’s a long story.

  I had to leave home when I was fourteen and there was no one to look out for me.

  R1234

  I had to leave home when I was twelve.

  Hawk At 16:46

  Then you understand what it’s like, man.

  No family to look out for you. No friends to watch your back. You get picked on.

  A bloody nose is the least of your worries, rig
ht?

  Rory remembers the torture inflicted by the kids at The Orchard. How they hid his shoes and spat in his cereal. How they threw lit matches into the hood of his parka on the way to school. How Josh McGreavy stamped on his hand until every finger except the smallest was broken.

  R1234 At 16:48

  I understand.

  ‘I am telling you in no uncertain terms that the boy has been abused.’ The doc is standing with her hands on her hips, the way Mama used to when she was good and mad.

  The prison officer shrugs. ‘Jail does strange things to a body, especially boys. They do all sorts of weird shit to themselves.’

  Isaac is in the hospital bed in the very far corner, but he can hear every word.

  ‘Three deep anal fissures,’ she says.

  ‘Like I say, with no girls around there ain’t no telling what they’ll get up to.’

  The doc leans forward. She may only be five foot nothing, but she means business.

  ‘The boy has been repeatedly raped,’ she states.

  The officer flicks Isaac a look. ‘He say that, did he?’

  ‘He didn’t need to. The injuries speak for themselves.’

  The officer rubs his nose with his knuckle. ‘The way I see it, there ain’t no evidence,’ he says.

  The doc crosses her hands over her chest. ‘I won’t let this rest. A prisoner was seriously hurt while in your care. If you won’t take action, then I’ll go to your superior officer, and if he won’t listen, I’ll go to the governor.’

  ‘Thing is, Miss Mulholland . . .’ he begins.

  ‘Doctor Mulholland.’

  ‘Right, right.’The officer nods. ‘The thing is, you’ve only been here a couple of weeks.’

  ‘What has that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Well now, when you’ve been here as long as I have and got the same experience, you’ll understand the procedure,’ he says.

  ‘Procedure?’The doc makes quotation marks in the air. ‘You’re telling me there’s a procedure for dealing with the brutal rape of a child while in the custody of the state?’

  ‘There’s a procedure for everything that happens in jail,’ he tells her. ‘Including allegations of criminal assault.’

  ‘Well, I’m all ears.’

  The officer looks over at Isaac again and he can see the hatred burning in the man’s eyes.