Sufferer's Song

by Savile, Steve

  In the family room, Mick Jagger and The Stones were singing the most inappropriate record Ben had in his collection: Daddy, you're a fool to cry.

  The page indicator in the top left of the amber screen was ticking over with alarming regularity, one hundred and fifteen pages in just shy of eight days; admittedly they were all sleepless ones, and right now Ben wanted nothing more luxurious than to crash out on the sofa and forget all about his week-old angels and demons. He checked back through the last three screens for signs of tiredness taking over from typing. The sense of urban decay was there, and strong; an arrow through the heart of his memories of Elswick, Byker, Benwell, and Paradise, inner city areas with escalating inner city problems. Places that needed his angels to combat their very real demons. Places where dreams held close seemed to go up in smoke more times than not.

  He so much wanted The Sufferers Song to be more than just a parable of bad come good in the face of good gone alarmingly wrong. He wanted it to be worthwhile. Wanted it to have something to say on just about every level the reader cared to explore. Life is horrible. Bad things happen, just open the paper. Ask Samira.

  Early on, he'd found the hook to take his world apart. The thread of suffering that touches the everyday. The song to end all songs. The heart breaker. Joe Cruze was the embodiment of everything Ben hated about this place. Joe was blind, no matter than he could see in twenty-twenty, because what he did see wasn't worth the effort of looking for. Joe was his pariah with a heart of glass. He touched lives and left the visceral scars of pleasure to mark his passing, as well as the more common scars of pain.

  Nothing about Joe Cruze was straightforward. That made him fun for Ben and dangerous for the inhabitants of Ben's paper and ink world. Joe Cruze was a combination of the worst elements of everyone he knew. And there, Ben knew, he was playing with fire. Getting close to the edge.

  But that was the whole point. The paradox. These places he was trying to recreate were genuinely seedy. Places where people waited in groups for the streetlights to change colour and the red man to go green, needing the comfort of numbers. Places where roofs burnt through to timbers, cars to husks of dead metal. Where weeds grew slower than the spray-can spawned graffiti and artists prostituted themselves for the price of a cardboard burger. These streets weren't clean and pure. They weren't places where dads could sit and watch their children play at pirates on the roundabout. And it was that feeling of uneasy friction, the two rubbing dangerously together, that he wanted to capture.

  Fuzzy radio reports were beginning to filter through about some sort of trouble in Hexham through the night, the flip-side of the coin where reality came dangerously close to superseding fiction.

  Scooby, in his familiar sprawl beneath both desk and feet, was flat out and snoring, his breathing like a wet valve on a compressed air cylinder. These days the old Labrador's breathing shifted between that of a croupy baby and the wet valve, rarely sounding healthy.

  After backing up three separate Work-In-Progress flash drives this time, Ben finally relented and gave in to the Pied Piper of Tiredness and logged out of the system, promising himself the luxury of five hours uninterrupted sleep between know and the next session at the keyboard.

  On the way through, he turned the stereo off, halfway through the whoops of Sympathy for the Devil, poured himself a cold glass of fresh orange, and checked the back door for a second time, to make sure it was firmly closed and locked.

  Ben made a note to get in touch with Taryn Heyward, to check if she was interested in seeing the first one hundred plus pages before she got back to his publishers, and stuck it to the fridge door with a gnome magnet.

  Upstairs, he undressed and slipped in between the unmade sheets, pulling the blankets halfway up his chest. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, and dreaming just after.

  * * * * *

  Something was wrong.

  Heavy under the dream calliope pipes of the funland. Initially, Ben tried to incorporate the drumming sounds into his dream, shaping the plasticine world with his sleeping, but still peculiarly lucid thoughts, but eventually the banging became too heavy. Too insistent.

  He woke at ten, with someone banging fit to break down his front door.

  Groggily, Ben swung his legs around, pulled on a pair of boxers and went to answer whoever it was.

  “Hold your horses,” he called down. Scooby was still curled up and sleeping, somehow. Through the glass panel, Ben could see the policeman's outline, stippled to the point of virtual anonymity by the safety glass. “I'm coming, I'm coming.”

  Coming down the stairs, Ben's first instinct was not to open the door; that way the trouble, whatever it was, could not get to him through the glass. That in itself wasn't enough to prevent him from opening the door to Barney Doyle.

  Barney was standing awkwardly in the doorway, wringing his hands for want of a hat to take his anxiety out on, mouth twitching like a jumpy rabbit. “Sorry to be getting you up, Ben. Didn't figure on you still being asleep though.”

  “That's okay, Barn. Come on in. Take the weight off your feet. You want a coffee? You look like you could do with one, if you don't mind me saying.”

  “Please. Just fill the mug with caffeine. No need to worry about the water.”

  “Sounds ominous. Better come through and tell me what I can do.”

  Ben pottered, scooping up a tee shirt from the back of the sofa and pulling it on, lifting down the decaffeinated Alta Rica and clean mugs, filling the kettle from the mixer taps and setting it to boil, while Barney explained, obviously feeling uncomfortable with his role of chief confessor. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, loosened his tie, and asked Ben if he minded, indicating his tobacco roller.

  “No problem, There's an ashtray on the windowsill.”

  “Evie won't have the stuff near her,” Barney confided. “Makes everything smell like week-dead ferrets, she says.”

  “Now there's a pleasant thought, perhaps-”

  “You already agreed, I'm afraid. Anyhow, I'm here because I need to ask a favour, Ben. Now I know we haven't always seen eye to eye on things, but I don't see eye to eye with most folks, truth be told. Perk of the job, I suppose. The thing is, you're a decent enough bloke, and you're smart. Reckon you need to be pretty observant doing all that writing malarkey, right?”

  “Where's this going, Barn?”

  Doyle licked the edge down on his licorice paper roll-up, put it between tight lips and lit it before he went on.

  “Doubtless you've heard about the nonsense in the pub last week. Come to think on, I've seen you since to talk about it, yes?”

  Ben poured out the coffees, and then perched on the breakfast counter to listen.

  “Edward McMahon? That was the lad Johnny stabbed, he died in the General, and all things considered things have started getting mighty strange around here since.”

  “I've seen the caravans.”

  “Yep. We’re talking full scale invasion. The thing is, McMahon's not the only problem. We pulled a suicide out of Dipton Wood Friday morning and it turns out Frank Rogan's been missing just about as long, if not longer. It's all hooked up with some funny stuff, and that's why the big boys have come in guns blazing. Listen to me would you, going around in circles again. Hellfire, I'll just spit it out straight for once. Some very nasty things have been happening and everyone on my side of the job-fence wants to get his hands on Johnny Lisker and his pal, quick-smart. Now, you being an observant sort of chap, I was thinking, you might want to join us. An extra pair of eyes. Thought of maybe asking your brother, too. We're getting some folks together to join the teams, help spread the legwork out better.”

  Ben was smiling wryly. Haven't always seen eye to eye? For the literal translation see came to blows once, and only once mind you, when Ben had been in his early twenties and tanked up with enough of the brown stuff to float a navy. The two of them had been firm friends virtually from the moment Barney's club of a fist flattened Ben into becoming
a pacifist. Funny thing was, since the runaway success of The Swords of Scorn every time Barney wanted to ask anything he ended up getting his tongue tied around his tonsils.

  “If you're asking me to join the search party, just give me time to grab some clothes. If you're asking me to do anything else, you'd better run through that explanation again, this time in English.”

  “Good job I'm not asking you for money or we'd be here all day.”

  “All week, more like,” Ben joked.

  “Hell, depends how much it was and how quickly I needed it,” Barney agreed, drawing deeply on his roll-up, his words wreathed in sickly sweet smoke.

  “When do you need me?”

  “What is it now, ten past ten? Fifty minutes too soon?”

  “No sweat.”

  “Get yourself wrapped up; you've just drawn the short straw. Forty of us are joining the Special's from Newcastle in a methodical grid search of the peaks around Moses Hill.”

  “And what will you be doing when all this is going on, or shouldn't I ask?”

  “Taking another twenty folks down to the riverside, through the park and that way. Should be back home in time for tea.”

  “With any luck.”

  “Evie always says I'm lucky. Well, I've got to press-gang the rest of the able bodied men.”

  “They won't know what smooth talking devil hit them.”

  “Funny, Benjamin.”

  “One thing.”

  “Only one?”

  “I'd appreciate it if you steered clear of Mike, he's feeling pretty low right now.”

  “Oh Christ alight, of course. It would have been Hannah's fortieth, when? Yesterday?”

  Ben hadn't even thought about it. May 17th. “Today.”

  “God, with all this going on I hadn't even thought.”

  “Tell me about it, and I haven't even got a decent excuse for forgetting.”

  “Look, how about I get Evie to sort something together and we drag Mike out to take his mind off it. Won't be nothing flash mind. The pair of you have been as good as kids to me and Evie for longer than I care to think back. I can't believe I forgot something like this.”

  “Thanks, Barn. You're a bloody good man, and don't let none of those city hotshots tell you otherwise.”

  “Me? Let a bunch of those snotty-nosed kids get me down? Now who's being stupid?”

  * * * * *

  There was an air of purpose to the Chaos inside the converted youth block. Things that had to be done were getting done, no matter that the methods behind the execution were more often than not less than straightforward. Tasks and details fractured down like the spines on an enlarging Mandelbrotset.

  Someone had Radio One on and was listening to Simon Bates’ Our Tune. Another sob story without a happy ending. The villagers had taken to congregating in the cloakroom area, out of the way as best as possible, and were in the process of electing Ben and Daniel Tanner as spokesmen should any speaking need to be done, which suited both men just fine.

  Coffees and teas were being organized in rotas, Charlie Adams’ well thought out addition to the havoc. Plastic beakers spawning to fill every unoccupied flat surface.

  One of the old classrooms had been taken over as a centralised communications setup for the rapidly growing network. Both Johnny Lisker’s and Alex Slater's physical descriptions and current photographs had been circulated by Telex to every force, port and customs team in the country. Andy McKenna and Todd Devlin had naturally taken control of the whole show; McKenna governing the logistics of the localised search, Devlin otherwise occupied with Dr Brent Richards, building what he hoped to God was a watertight, airtight and any other form of tight case that would effectively finish the paedophile. Kristy French, unfettered by chains of office and Civil Rights had already phoned in her own damning indictment following a traumatic five minutes with Scott Jordan. Without actually naming names, but saying enough to give any game the reader cared to scratch the surface for away, Kristy nailed the doctor’s first wrist firmly to the cross.

  As Ben had expected, the conversations clung fragilely to one of two topics; yesterday's poor showing in the football, and the more excitable buzz of the murder hunt – because that was what it had become, after all. The rumours were growing while he listened, hearsay moulding itself into indisputable fact with a simple nod and an: “I heard it from so-and-so,” wink.

  He wondered what sort of opinions were filtering outside to the press of cameras, micro recorders and notepads in the sweaty palms of the journalists locked out in the playground.

  The sooner the show hit the road, the better for all concerned.

  Rubber handled torches and plastic doggy bags were dished out along with the third round of coffees. Ben saw Sam Ash twice, the local man was walking with a man on his back, or a monkey, or another fistful-cum-headful of hate. Ben recognised the look in Sam's eyes. He'd seen it in Mike's not so long ago. Maybe suffering was a plague. Hang around people who suffer out of habit and you pick up that habit, bad that it is. Ben wanted to ask what the monkey-man was, if he could help with the burden, but he was sure the rumours would filter through to him eventually. That fact was probably more reliable than wildfire catching in the Australian Bush. Besides, Ben wasn't so sure he was in a position to help himself let alone anyone else if it came down to it. A paranoid neurotic dressed up as a hopelessly indecisive writer “chappy”, to quote Barney Doyle’s way of thinking. Ben tended to agree, if not whole-heartedly, at least shamelessly. Most of the time.

  So they exchanged nods, neither paying much attention to anything outside their own thoughts.

  It seemed to Ben that the whole thing was taking rather a long time. Certainly not the slick, fluid operations of Hawaii Five-O and The Professionals. Paperwork was being checked and double checked. He'd seen archaeologists move quicker when they thought someone had unearthed an ancient treasure without thinking to seek their permission before hand, but then, archaeologists were something else and in the main a rule unto their own.

  And there was at least one journalist, he noted wryly, who had made it through the cordon. Trust that little band of bloodhounds to get a sniff come the scent of blood. Mind you, if he hadn't heard her phoning in a brief stop gap piece on some local doctor, he would have placed the slender, shaggy haired blonde with tired eyes and slumped, burdened shoulders, as a worn out athlete, maybe one of the Shire's aerobics instructors. Barney Doyle put him straight on that score, too.

  “That girl? She's like a strange attractor for disaster. I mean, when they get around to burying her, I'll lay odds black flowers will grow out of the ground thereabouts.”

  “You saying she's a jinx?”

  “Nope, just that she's got into the bad habit of sticking her nose into exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.”

  “And you'd know all about that, right?”

  “Put it this way, Ben son, and this goes no further. People around her have an alarming habit of getting themselves killed.”

  “No kidding?”

  “God's honest, lad. That's what all this fuss is about,” Barney checked both ways for people in earshot, then whispered: “Found her photographer friend ripped apart in the General this morning.”

  “I didn't hear that on the news.”

  “And you're not going to either.”

  Warming to the subject, Ben asked, “And who else?”

  “How the hell should I know? But since she turned up I ain't had me a decent night's sleep. Ain't that enough?”

  “She sounds like a regular little Jonah.”

  Jack Kemp and Andy McKenna came into the cloakroom then, clapping their hands for a bit of quiet and attention. The desired hush fell.

  * * * * *

  “Two teams of twenty. When I read your name out go through to the hall area with Officer Kemp. Okay, Daniel Tanner, Terry Matthews, Seth Lawson, Jim Becket,” Ben heard his own name four men down the line and joined the procession winding through to the central hall.


  There, they were split into two divisions of ten, Jack Kemp taking charge of one, and an officer he introduced as Greg Stafford, the other. Both Daniel and Ben found themselves lining up with Kemp, the Jonah girl and a handful of others made up of PC's and villagers. They all had that same look in their eye.

  Ben was put in mind of the opening line from The Swords of Scorn, “Drink to me with thine eyes alone.”

  No adoration here though.

  Something similar to bloodlust as the pack ordered itself into ranks of strength and priority. Something primitive was happening here, an adaptation of the Survival law. Both Daniel and Ben ended up bringing up the rear, neither taken with the unhealthy fascination that seemed to be gripping many of the locals. Seth Lawson, for God's sake, had turned up in his Suzuki 4x4 with a shotgun in the trailer.

  Ben almost felt sorry for Johnny Lisker and Alex Slater. Things were in serious danger of getting out of hand, like the classic nightmare of the blood-thirsty pack in the movie remake of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Villagers gone bad. It was something about the pack mentality that bred and brought out the worst sorts of hungers.

  Technology was taking over the old hall, a hive of terminals, the digital interactive incident board, faxes, printers and keyboards. Snakes of cable and wire hooking Westbrooke and the incident room up with the Police National Computer network and the rest of the real world out there.

  More going on here than meets the eye, Ben thought, digging around in the pockets of his wax jacket for the half eaten tube of extra strong mints he thought he remembered leaving there.

  “All a bit gung-ho,” he commented to Daniel Tanner.

  “Too right, pal. Some way to spend a Sunday.” Daniel let out a long, weary sigh. “I'd promised the girls a picnic down by the lake, but I suppose we'll have to do that tomorrow now. Hope the weather holds; otherwise my life won't be worth living.”