I tried to crawl across on my knees. Another kick came to my legs, another punch to my head. Everything spinning.
Oh my God, the worst way to die – beaten to death.
A blow against my back.
I stretched my arm out to the gun.
You have to do this, I told myself.
A thud into my arm. Recoil. Oh God, the pain. Please stop. Please help me.
Refocus. There it was. Stretch to the gun. Stretch.
Shoes came down close to my fingers, hands took the gun from in front of me. I collapsed.
I’m done. This is it.
I heard a voice. ‘You wouldn’t,’ it said.
‘Would,’ said the other.
Couldn’t distinguish between them. I rolled over. Saw Jackson’s feet close by.
‘Step away from her.’
‘I can’t do that, son. You know I can’t. She could ruin us. We need to get rid of her.’
I looked up. He was undoing his belt. Pulling it through the loops.
‘You mean she could ruin you, not us. And you’re wrong – there’s no could about it – it’s will. She … no, me and her, me and Martha, we will ruin you and you deserve it.’
‘Isaac, you’re not thinking straight. The girl’s got in your head.’
‘No, Jackson.’
‘Dad, I’m your dad.’
‘No, you’re not. Yeah, you adopted me, but you took me out of there so I didn’t blab about you pushing my mum over the balcony and so you looked good! Give your public profile a touch of humanity! I know you killed her!’
‘Isaac …’
‘Don’t deny it.’
‘All right, if you need to hear it from me, yes – I killed her! OK? But that’s not why I adopted you. It was because you … you looked at me with these big innocent eyes and all I could think of was what my life had been like living there, and what was going to happen to you.’
‘What?’ Your tone was mocking. ‘You had some rare moment of compassion?’
‘Believe it or not, yes, I did. But Patty, she turned it into something else.’ He snorted and shook his head. ‘Patty … the rest … it was all Patty.’
‘No. Patty didn’t sell drugs on the Rises, getting people addicted to get more money. Patty didn’t have affairs just to prove she was still attractive, or, I don’t know, for some power trip; Patty didn’t push my mother off the balcony, didn’t run Martha’s mum over, didn’t bribe people to get her own way, didn’t –’
‘ALL RIGHT!’ His voice echoed through the underpass. From the corner of my eye I saw the belt slip through his hands and his fingers pause at the buckle.
‘I don’t want to be associated with you,’ you said.
‘You don’t have to be,’ he replied. ‘You can walk away, live your own life.’
‘You’ll let the press see that? Broken family? Failed father?’
I felt him shuffle sideways towards me. ‘They don’t have to. We keep them sweet. We show the public what they want to see while behind the scenes we do as we like.’
‘Lie to them? Manipulate the press with all your nasty contacts? Yeah, of course, because that’s what you always do!’
‘Just put the gun down. You’re not seeing straight. We’ll get rid of the girl and everything can go back to normal.’
I glanced up and saw you shake your head.
Jackson edged closer to me. I was trembling, watching as he pulled his belt through the buckle. I couldn’t move.
‘We have to,’ Jackson said and he was right behind me, the smell of the belt leather in my nose, the strap nudging my shoulder as it swayed.
‘Move away from her!’ you said.
‘No. I’m going to finish this and you’re going to go home and we’re going to forget the whole fiasco.’
‘I said, move away from her!’
‘You’re a child. You don’t know what you’re doing.’
I was crying, desperate to run away but I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
‘MOVE AWAY!’ you shouted.
Behind me Jackson laughed.
‘I’m warning you!’
‘No, you’re not. You’re just a little boy in a big man’s world who doesn’t know how to behave.’
I felt the belt slip over my head.
I watched you with the gun in your outstretched arms, your finger on the trigger, tears in your eyes.
I felt the leather on my neck.
‘You’ve turned me into this!’ you shouted.
‘The apple never falls –’
The bang of the gun finished the sentence.
I turn my back on that godawful electric chair waiting to kill me, and move to the glass. I want to tell you I’m sorry. Please, Isaac, look at me. Tell me everything will be all right. Tell me it won’t hurt.
Jesus, I’m scared.
My chest’s burning. I feel sick.
No … calm down … breath steady … come on.
Something’s going on behind me. The door’s opening. There’s a guard and … what is that?
Isaac
‘What is that?’ Isaac says.
The security officer leans forward from the seat behind. ‘Our new machine.’ He smiles at Isaac and points to the television screens lowering from the ceiling.
‘Watch. They’re about to introduce it on Death is Justice.’
Death is Justice
Kristina and Joshua stand next to the large screen. On it an animated version of Cell 7 and an animated Martha sitting in the death chair. Straps are tied around her wrists, ankles and chest. Above her a metal crown lowers onto her head.
KRISTINA (smiling): Yes, viewers, our proudest innovation to date, I believe.
JOSHUA: Many think so …
KRISTINA: Let me explain.
On the screen a small door opens in the rear of the cell and a machine rolls in on pre-set tracks.
KRISTINA: This new invention is completely automated. It eliminates the need for an executioner as such.
As the machine reaches the animated Martha an arm extends and plugs into the rear of the chair. A timer appears on a display along with the stats, and a voltage meter reading zero.
KRISTINA: As the timer counts down the final votes and stats, it triggers an automatic reaction from the machine. If a ‘guilty’ verdict is reached, a separate timer counts down from three minutes …
The screen pans out to an animated man standing at a lectern in the front of the viewing area, speaking to the crowd of onlookers.
KRISTINA:… allowing for the final words from the victim’s family.
The man returns to his seat, and as the timer reaches zero, the voltage meter reading rises and electricity courses through the body of the animated Martha. After a few minutes, the meter readings reduce and Martha’s eyes close.
Joshua turns to camera.
JOSHUA: What do you think to that, viewers?
Applause goes around the studio.
KRISTINA: You see, ladies and gentlemen, what this does so well is put the justice and the death directly into your hands. You are judge, juror and even executioner now. The machine here takes direct information from the phone lines, converting it into action, which ultimately does away with our accused. We are all about empowering you!
Isaac
‘Can it be stopped if something goes wrong?’ he whispers.
The officer shrugs. ‘What could go wrong?’
‘Everything,’ Isaac says, shaking his head. ‘But I think it did a long time ago.’
Cicero turns and taps him on the arm. ‘Isaac, look.’
Inside the cell, Martha is standing up.
Death is Justice
Seated at the desk, Kristina and Joshua turn on their high stools to face the live feed on the screen, the eye logo spinning in the corner.
JOSHUA: Well, the moment we’ve been waiting for.
KRISTINA (laughing): One of them!
JOSHUA: I can’t tell you, viewers, how excited I am to hear what secret it is th
at Martha has to tell us. How long has she been given to speak, Kristina?
KRISTINA: She’s been allowed the normal three minutes, which frankly surprised me, seeing as that is the same as the victim’s family. Seems an imbalance; surely the guilty should be allowed less.
The live feed shows the guard has shackled Martha’s wrists and ankles together and moved her towards the glass.
Joshua puts his fingers to his lips and looks to the audience. The sound changes, crackles, the noise of Martha’s heavy breathing hanging over the studio.
Martha
Martha focuses on Isaac. Flicks a smile so small only he could notice, then she turns her attention to the audience.
‘I promised you a secret,’ she says, her voice small and shaky. ‘I don’t think it’s one you want to hear and it’s not one I want to tell any more.’
‘Just get on and kill her!’ someone shouts.
‘But I need to start further back so, please, bear with me …’ She takes a breath and looks out to the waiting faces. ‘My mother …’
‘Your mother was a prostitute!’ a female voice says. ‘The Rises is full of them!’
Martha pauses. ‘My mother wasn’t, but you’re right that there are prostitutes in the Rises. Tell me what you would do – sell sex or starve?’
‘I’d work!’
Martha screws her face up. ‘Please, I have three minutes, I don’t want to use it arguing about lack of jobs and low pay and everything, please …’
Her breath judders, her eyes hover the audience, catching the gaze of each and every one.
‘My mother believed in love. In truth and honesty. And trust. I like to remember her as an idealist, but really I suppose she was naive.’ She glances to the clock.
‘Seventeen years ago she fell in love with a man. He was good-looking, charming, he spoilt her and promised her the world. She’d grown up in poverty, her family struggling from one pay day to the next.’
‘You won’t get any sympathy from me!’ a man shouts. ‘Nothing excuses what you did!’
A few people around him turn and glare; a few fingers on lips to hush him.
‘The last thing I want from you is your fucking sympathy!’ Martha shouts back.
There’s an intake of breath and Martha glances to Eve who has her hands raised as if to calm her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her voice lower. ‘I’d just like you to listen. With an open mind.’ She takes a breath. ‘I suppose she was vulnerable. I suppose she should’ve known better. She knew who this guy was, she’d seen him around and heard the gossip. Friends tried to warn her. When she was telling me about this, she said she was stupid. I don’t go for that, I think she was manipulated.
‘This man was clever. He knew what he wanted, took it, finished with his victim and moved on to the next. A trail of destruction followed him that became bigger and bigger over time.
‘When my mum first knew him, the trail was just beginning.
‘When she told him she was pregnant, he upped and left her to cope by herself. I never knew his name, she never told me. She told me it was better that way and I believed her.
‘It probably would’ve been.’
She looks back at the clock – one minute thirty seconds left.
‘But things have this weird habit of coming out. After she died, after she was murdered, sometime after, not straight away cos I couldn’t face it, I went through her stuff. I didn’t want to. It was private to her, but I had to. And I found some letters, and I held them in my hands; looking at her name on the envelope, a heart drawn on the back of one, I knew they must be from him. I couldn’t work out why she would keep them, I knew they must be from him, my father, and … and … I took the papers out … and I read them.’
Her body trembles, she crosses her arms and rubs her hands down them, her eyes as well. She blinks and tears fall.
‘With them all was another letter, typed address and all official looking. I read that too. It was from a solicitor, an agreement that she had signed, that said in return for her not contacting him, my father that is, and for keeping his identity secret, she would receive fifty pounds a month until I was eighteen. Fifty pounds a month for her silence.
‘The handwritten letters were only signed with his initials and I remember staring at them, thinking it couldn’t possibly be the person I was thinking of.’ She sucks in a deep, ragged breath, looks at the thirty seconds on the timer and back to the audience.
‘But the letter from the solicitor had his name in full. My father … my father …’ She looks over the audience.
‘Was Jackson Paige.’
Death is Justice
The studio is in silence. Both Kristina and Joshua are open mouthed and agog.
JOSHUA: Huh … well … viewers …
KRISTINA: Lies and deception. That can’t possibly be true.
JOSHUA: At this point, Kristina, I do wonder why she would lie.
Martha
A ripple goes over the crowd, louder and louder.
‘That’s why you killed him!’ someone shouts.
‘Jackson Paige,’ Martha shouts over the hubbub, ‘was a regular visitor to the High Rises. His charity work was a cover. He had mistresses there, he sold drugs there. He didn’t respect us or where he came from, he used us!’
The noise is getting louder and louder. A guard comes up from behind Martha and grabs hold of her, but she stands firm.
‘He got my mother pregnant and left her with nothing. He didn’t care. He just moved on to someone else. He was a liar and a cheat. He was corrupt. He killed my mother, not the boy who was executed, and he got off because he has money!’
‘She hated him!’ someone shouts. ‘She was jealous!’
‘She wanted him dead!’
‘Execute her!’
The guard drags Martha back to the death chair, but she struggles and pulls away from him, lurching towards the glass and staring out.
‘I never wanted him dead!’ she shouts. ‘I just wanted the truth for my mum and for Ollie. There should be proper, fair justice for all, not just people with the money to buy it!’
Eve, Cicero and Isaac stand up and they applaud.
Death is Justice
KRISTINA: And would you look at that? A strange clique there of the counsellor, the judge and the bereaved, don’t you think? What is going on there?
JOSHUA: I think, Kristina, that people know a lot more than us …
KRISTINA: Impossible!
JOSHUA (shaking his head): There’s more to this than meets the eye. This is not over yet.
The studio audience are strangely quiet, mouths wide as they watch events unfold.
Martha
‘Please,’ Martha says, ‘I’m telling you the truth!’
‘You’re time’s up, bitch!’ a woman’s voice shouts.
Martha looks out and pauses on Isaac’s face watching her, tears falling down her face. For a moment she drops her head and her shoulders judder as she breathes in and out.
‘I promise you that you will understand even more,’ she continues, looking up again, ‘when you’ve heard everything. You’ll think back to what I’ve just told you and wonder. Someone once said to me that there comes a time when you choose to act or choose to be silent for ever. I’m only sixteen, but even I’ve seen the apathy from those who could do something, and the frustration of those who can’t. This is the only thing I can do to maybe, maybe change things.
‘From the day that trigger was pulled and Jackson fell, I’ve known that my role is the martyr. Someone else, someone else who’s stronger than me, has to carry on.’
The guard drags her to the chair and slams her into it.
‘Please, stop,’ she says. ‘Let me carry on, please!’
The straps tighten across her wrists and around her legs.
‘Stop!’ she yells. ‘Please!’
A cloth goes around her mouth and her eyes widen in horror.
She squirms and pulls and tugs, but she canno
t get free.
Death is Justice
KRISTINA: As I said, viewers: lies and desperation.
JOSHUA (quietly): Don’t forget to join in the debate on your social media device, and stay tuned to follow these live events and listen to our in-studio questions. In fact, Kristina, things are going a little crazy out there in internet land, are they not?
KRISTINA: Indeed they are. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure you must have very strong feelings about this landmark case, but don’t let the fact that she is only a teenager sway your opinions. This is the last five minutes of voting time, get your fingers busy. And don’t forget, tonight you are the executioner too! Let’s get those all-important numbers …
Martha
‘The time is: 8.50 p.m. You have: ten minutes until your possible execution. The current stats are: 98.3% in favour, 1.7% against. We will update you in: five minutes with the final count.’
That’s it then. I bet everyone thinks I was making stuff up. Trying to eke out time. I’m going to die and all they’ll know about me and remember is lies.
She said some crap about having a secret then told us Jackson was her father – I can hear it now. Reckon she had some vendetta against him, or she was jealous. She’s a cold-hearted bitch who pulled a trigger and killed our hero.
Only I didn’t pull the trigger, did I?
It felt like hours, sprawled there on the frosty tarmac, battered and bruised. The bang of the gun in my ears. Staring at the body next to me. His eyes open and vacant. A hole in his head. One, not riddled with bullets like the papers said.
I couldn’t stop staring at him.
I didn’t see you collapse next to me. I just suddenly sensed you there.
‘I … he …’ I couldn’t find words. Couldn’t think or fathom or …
‘The police will be here soon,’ you whispered.
I put my hand on yours. My head started coming into focus. ‘We said, didn’t we, that things needed to change. This is it.’
The reality TV show to die for. Literally Page 22