“Joanne, it’s never too late -”
The last thread of her patience snapped. “Oh, give me a break, will you?” (At that very moment, high on the hillside behind Jericho, a single bullet was fired; but since three walls separated them from the source of the sound, Joanne’s cry was enough to drown it out.) “What does it take to get through that thick skull of yours -” she stopped, immediately repentant when she saw the hurt look on his face. “I’m sorry, Michael,” she said “I didn’t mean to be nasty. But you mustn’t keep shoving your beliefs onto me. Things have changed. We don’t have to put up with that any more. Zero tolerance, remember? Anyway, isn’t my opinion as good as yours?”
But he managed to disagree even with that. “It isn’t just a matter of opinions,” he said quietly. He looked at her again, and decided against pressing the point; her frustration with him was plainly about to get the better of her again. “Joanne,” he asked instead, “why have you come to Jericho if you’re not one of us? What are you doing here?”
She waited silently as he watched her, hurt that he couldn’t seem to see what was in her eyes, hoping against hope that the long wished-for romantic moment would finally blossom. “Don’t you know, Michael?” she said at last. “Can’t you tell?”
He looked at her, not comprehending.
“For you, Michael. I came for you.”
His face was suddenly full of pity. “Joanne - I’m sorry -” He fought to find words that wouldn’t sound cruel. “I thought you understood about Clare -”
“Don’t mention that Latimer woman to me!” she screamed at him. Then she realised what she’d done; and suddenly frightened that she was going to alienate him for ever, she threw herself against him, murmuring “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over. He didn’t put his arms around her. She lifted tear-filled eyes to his. “I love you, Michael. Why can’t you just forget her? I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Michael struggled for something to say. He hated himself for not being able to comfort her. “Joanne -” he began. “Clare and I -” She began shaking her head. “Please, listen to me,” he insisted.
But she found she just couldn’t listen to any more of this. She would have to make him understand. She took his face in her hands and shushed him like a mother quietening a distressed child. “Michael, Michael, it’s too late for that now. There’s no point thinking about her any more. I’m the only one who can help you now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s all over for you here. It’s all over for this place. The Special Services will be here very soon now. But I can help you. They’re going to let you go. I asked them, you see. We can be together - I’ve arranged it all for us, everything will be all right -”
Michael looked at her with a growing sense of alarm as the pieces of the jigsaw suddenly fell into place. “What about Clare?” Joanne babbled on; he took her by the upper arms and shook her. “What about Clare?” he shouted.
She shook herself free of his grip and swore at him. “Clare! Always Clare! Why don’t you forget her? She’ll be dead by now anyway!”
She stopped, again frightened by what she saw in his eyes: pity and disgust at what her lack of control had let him see of her; and unable to face him, she turned away.
Michael said nothing more to her.
Joanne waited, unable to bring herself to turn to him again. The hammer had been raised over her heart; all that remained was to brace herself for the blow. How could he possibly love her now?
But a hairsbreadth away from losing forever the thing that she wanted most of all, something intruded upon her private feelings. It was alien, and mocked her by wearing Michael’s face; and she found herself hating it for the way it seemed to trivialise her present circumstances by rushing upon her and demanding her attention. Now, it seemed to say. Make the choice now. It began to fill the space around her.
But though it seemed she could no more resist it than deflect the path of an oncoming train, somehow she shoved against it, clinging to the memory of Michael’s arms around her, and thinking of all the things that were threatening to slip away from her just now.
The thickening feeling of being under pressure suddenly dissipated like a balloon popping, leaving her with a sense of anticlimax and a sensation of chill so slight that she hardly noticed it. Her hands twitched, beginning the movements that would pull her wrap more tightly around her shoulders, then ceasing again as she remembered she wore no wrap.
She realised that Michael had still not said anything. A rush of something that might have been hope or panic swept away the distractions of the last few moments, and she turned around again, babbling: “Michael I’m sorry I didn’t mean it I didn’t mean it oh please Michael -”
The flow of words stopped abruptly as she realised she was in an empty room. Joanne looked around her, feeling foolish. She turned to the room’s only door; it opened with a noisy squeak. “Michael!” she cried. Her voice reverberated hollowly down the corridor’s length. She listened carefully, but could hear neither a reply nor the sound of a footfall.
*****
Clare Latimer’s nerves were quite definitely on edge. She was almost certain that someone had followed her after she left work; and when she left the nursery school after picking up her son, the same young man with the half-grown beard was there again, keeping a steady thirty paces behind her. Each time she looked in his direction, he pretended to be interested in the nearest shop window, or in something happening across the road - which meant, judging by some of the things he looked at, that he was fascinated by the prospect of joining the Army, irresistibly attracted by ladies’ lingerie, and spellbound by signs which said TO LET. It could be, of course, that Clare was mistaken; she’d been safe at home in her flat for an hour now. Was she being paranoid? Well, what of it? In today’s world, she thought, a paranoid attitude could be quite easily justified.
She sat in her favourite armchair by the television, keeping one eye on her toddler and one eye on the box. (The TV was running a trailer for a chatshow to be screened later in the week, and the guest was some author she’d never heard of.) In an act half-intended to provoke one of her neighbours - she didn’t care which - she had turned the volume up almost to maximum, (How do you like a taste of your own medicine? Go on, I dare someone to complain) and so almost missed hearing the sound of someone knocking at the apartment door.
She stabbed the “mute” button on the remote control as she got up, then walked to the door and squinted through the spyhole. She could see no-one. Whoever it was rapped the door again, making her jump. “Who’s there?” she snapped.
“It’s the plumber. The landlord says you were complaining about a blocked bathroom sink.”
This was true; she’d been hassling Mr Farren for days about the sink. But she was reluctant to open the door immediately. She glanced over her shoulder at the clock. “How come you’re working so late?”
“In my business you work all kinds of hours,” said the man, sounding a little impatient. “You can’t say to someone standing in ankle-deep water, sorry, mate, I finish at five. Look, is there a job to be done here?”
Clare hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t see you. Would you move over in front of the door?”
The man gave a little grunt of irritation. “Okay, here I am. Satisfied?”
But Clare could see only a blurred shape that was about the same colour as a workman’s overalls; there seemed to be something gelatinous or greasy smeared on the other side of the lens. She frowned and said, “Shake your toolbag.”
“What?”
“Shake your toolbag. I want to hear the tools rattle together.”
“You won’t hear anything. It’s a leather bag, and each tool has its own pocket. Look, I can’t stand around here all night - are you going to let me in or not?”
Clare made up her mind: better safe than sorry. Anyway, she didn’t like his tone. “No,” she said. “Go away.” Through the door she could hear
a snort of disgust as the plumber turned away, and the echo of his footsteps as he made his way down the concrete staircase. She kept listening until she could hear nothing more; then she opened the door, stepped outside, and looked down the stairwell.
She jerked around at the sound of someone rushing her from behind. The bearded man came at her trying to press a thick cloth over her mouth and nose; it reeked of something pungent and suffocating. She wasn’t strong enough to push him away, but she scrabbled at his eyes with her fingernails, and he backed off, cursing and cupping his face with his free hand.
She slipped past him into her flat and tried to slam the door, but he threw himself against it with all his weight before the lock had clicked. Clare cried out as the edge of the door connected painfully with her left cheekbone. Her child, who had been oblivious to the loud voices and scufflings up to this point, now had his attention captured too suddenly for his liking; he began to scream.
Clare struggled breathlessly with her assailant in an effort to keep the chloroformed cloth away from her face, and desperately trying to steer him away from her son. They careered crazily across the room before tripping over something and falling apart. The bearded man fell close to the boy. “Martin!” Clare yelled. “Get away from him! Run! Run!” But the bewildered child only stood there and cried even harder. Oh God, don’t let anything happen to him!
“All right,” said the man, thankfully ignoring Martin. “I’ve finished playing games.” At that moment, he seemed so ridiculously macho that he was almost a caricature of the kind of villain who always turns up in American police dramas on TV. Under any other circumstances, Clare would probably have laughed at him; but now, all she could think of was: Why haven’t the neighbours come? Then she remembered the TV; if they could ignore that, they could ignore any racket.
She watched the man reach into his coat pocket for something, and guessed from his change of expression that whatever he was looking for was no longer there. His gaze darted to and fro across the floor for a couple of seconds; then he spotted the place where the knife had fallen, nearer to Clare than to him. He dived for the knife; but his attention had already been diverted from his prey for too long. He heard an incredibly loud sound as something was smashed over his head; then he collapsed, groaning. He thought he heard the sound of footsteps receding, and a door slamming somewhere, but he wasn’t sure whether or not these were just aural delusions, a soundtrack for the fireworks video he could see projected on the inside of his eyelids.
The next thing he was aware of was being awakened by the touch of a cold draught coming from an indeterminate direction. It was not at all invigorating.
He sat up, rubbing the bump on his head, and looked around; the door lay ajar, and there was no sign of either the woman or the boy. Into the empty room the television was blatting a newsflash about an armed police action against terrorists in some place called Jericho. That gave him a start.
Police! he thought. Time I wasn’t here.
*****
Ellen Martyn had almost finished her copy of Raptures when the lights began flickering annoyingly. She paused, certain she knew what was going to happen next.
It happened: the room light bulb and the one in the table lamp beside her both popped, plunging her into a darkness relieved only by the faint glow of a corridor bulb leaking through the narrow fanlight above the door. She could hear a dull thud and a cry coming from the next room as someone’s knee or hip connected with something just as unyielding as bone. Most of Jericho’s lights, she knew, would be out of commission.
She put down the book and carefully made her way out to the corridor. “Mark!” she called. “Are you all right?”
Her husband, answering in the affirmative and sounding only slightly doubtful, joined her a moment later.
“I thought you said you and Richie had fixed the system once and for all,” she accused.
“We thought we had,” said Mark. “I can’t think what we might have missed.”
“Me neither,” said Richie, who suddenly appeared out of nowhere, complete with torches; the apparition made them both jump. “I didn’t think I was that ugly,” he said, grinning.
Mark nodded towards the torches. “Do we really need them? Why can’t we just move into rooms with power for now, and repair the generator tomorrow?”
“The press has stopped working,” said Richie, “and we have an order for another four boxes that has to be ready first thing tomorrow morning. Besides,” he added, “I’m determined not to let that brute of a machine beat me. I’ll force it to do its job if it’s the last thing I do.”
“I’ll get my coat,” said Mark.
“I’ll go too,” said Ellen. “I don’t know that I’ll be much help to you, but I couldn’t be bothered hanging around here waiting for the lights to come back on.”
“Fine,” said Richie. “I’ll just tell the others we’re on the ball.”
“Um - I wouldn’t disturb Michael and Joanne. They seem to be in the middle of… you know, in the middle of something.”
“Right. Well, I think the lights in that room are ok anyway.”
A minute later found them trudging up the short slope behind Jericho towards the fenced-off area where the generator was. They spoke little; the business of walking became hypnotic, obliged as they were to concentrate on the shifting patch of torchlight at their feet. The overcast sky let neither moonlight nor starlight through, so that it appeared almost solidly black, and the feeble glow of the few lights still on at the rear of Jericho crept only a metre or two up the hillside; so they found that when they looked up, their torchbeams seemed to peter out impotently into a particularly dark blob in the centre of their vision, illuminating nothing. Straining their eyes into the darkness felt like throwing a stone into a bottomless well: you keep expecting to hear the splash, but it never comes. When they reached the fence, it seemed almost to spring up in front of them.
Ellen followed the two men around to the gate at the side of the enclosure. There was a pause as Richie fumbled in his pockets for the key, and Ellen, directing her torchbeam at the padlock, saw what he missed: “You won’t need a key. It’s been forced.”
Surprised, Richie reached out and touched the gate lightly with his fingertips; it swung open with a creak. They leant forward slowly to look down the steps.
Ellen turned around sharply as she heard the sound of grass rustling nearby; a dark figure loomed up in front of her, and she stepped back against the fence with a cry, dropping her torch. There was a flash, and the flat, deafening crack of a pistol shot; behind her, the gate crashed to and fro as if someone had fallen violently against it, and she heard a flurry of muffled thumps and scuffling sounds as whoever it was tumbled down the steps towards the generator.
Further off, someone began swearing in a parade-ground voice, and at that moment she realised with astonishment that she was still alive. Then she thought: Mark!
Before she could call his name, he was calling hers; and she ran to him through the darkness. He pulled her away from the enclosure, and they dived into the long grass nearby and lay still. Ellen had a fleeting moment of deep panic when she felt what she supposed to be the wetness of blood on his jacket; then reason took over, and she realised it was dew. “What about Richie?” she said in a low voice.
But he hesitated before answering, and when he did, his lie was not a very good one. “He’s alright. Just keep down.”
Meanwhile, the gunman’s excuses for being prematurely trigger-happy were cut off in mid-flow as the owner of the soldier-type voice told him: “Shut up and start looking for the other two! Everybody! Don’t let them get away! Damnfool idea,” he growled to himself, “I knew I should have trusted my own judgment!”
Ellen and Mark watched the flicker of torches scanning the area around them, and willed themselves to sink into the earth. “There must be ten or twelve of them,” whispered Ellen. “We’re dead, Mark!”
At that moment, she was surprised by something very pleasa
nt. She couldn’t have said exactly what it was; not because it was vague, but because it brought such an enormous surfeit of associations that no one of them could adequately conjure up the fullness of it. It was like dawn breaking an hour before you expected it. It was like finally being able to say a word that’s been on the tip of your tongue for ten minutes. It was like the memory of the hugs your favourite aunt gave you as a child, so warm and affectionate you thought you would almost suffocate. It was like the smell of bread as it comes fresh from the oven. It was like discovering a tenner you’d forgotten you had. It was like lying back in the sunshine with your eyes closed, feeling the warmth. It was like being told “Well done!” by the person you wanted to please more than anyone else. It was like a mother’s reassurance: “I’ll always be there for you!” It was like tasting chocolate for the first time. It was like being given some amazingly generous gift. It was like realising the alarm clock bleeping beside you doesn’t have to be heeded; you can roll over and go back to sleep, because today is Saturday. It was like meeting a well-loved friend you haven’t seen for ages. It was like being gripped by an innocent lust, such as you might feel for your beloved on your honeymoon; not spoiled by any associations of guilt. It was like finally solving the last, most difficult clue in a crossword puzzle. It was like hearing “I love you!” when you expected to hear “That’s it. It’s over.” It was like winning a very big prize. It was like the warm feeling you get when you realise that Christmas is closer than you had thought. It was like discovering that The Good Old Days haven’t gone forever, after all. It was like walking down the street with your small hand in your father’s giant one. It was like passing some momentous exam. It was like being immensely proud of a beloved brother who has gone out into the big bad world and conquered it; and now he is coming back to be with you again. It was like the arrival of something you’ve been looking forward to for so long that you thought it would never come.
Fanatics: Zero Tolerance Page 15