“I like those stadium shots in the loo.” She said. “I’m here to wish you luck. You deserve it, you lovely man.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then bent to give me a kiss. I reached up for her, wanting more, but she shook her head. Seconds later, she was out of the door. It was nearly a year before I realised that she’d come to say goodbye.
The rest of that winter was tough. Carmen had shut herself away, increasingly distant, and I compensated by demanding an even tougher training programme. Pain, Carmen once told me, has its compensations and I began to suspect that she was right.
Our last pre-Olympics Christmas came and went. I was quite keen to spend it with my folks back in Devon but Carmen had become a recluse and barely left the flat at all. The thought of the trip home to Bath for a couple of days with her mum and dad filled her with horror. And so we spent a quiet time looking at shit television and waiting for the duck to roast. It was the only Christmas Day I’ve ever been glad to go for a run.
The New Year was the same story. To be frank, I owed training my sanity. By Easter, I knew in my heart that I could take the world record. My coach knew it too, and so did Nico, my sponsor. He’d started talking about a replacement for the Porsche, something even flasher. If he really wanted to win my heart, I suggested he take Carmen to Phoenix and buy her a new life. He smiled his Nico smile and said he’d think about it.
Early summer 2012 was tense. The UK Olympic trials were due to take place in June. Even my coach, an old East German who’d pretty much seen everything in athletics, was pretty confident we had nothing to worry about. The trials were held in a stadium in the West Midlands. I knew every one of the athletes on the start line and I knew for certain I could leave them all for dead. This feeling of total certainty, the feeling that I owned the race, is what you need at my level. It turned out I was right, too. I won by nearly thirty metres. A place in the 2012 Olympic team was mine.
Next morning, back home, I got a text from my best mate, Rob. His wayward sister had disappeared. I remember gazing at that text for minutes on end. I could see Anna, that last time she’d been in the flat. I could hear her voice. You lovely man, she’d said.
I knew perfectly well that nothing, nothing, should break my concentration at this point in my running career. I was six weeks off the Olympic Games. Years and years of the hardest work I’d ever done had put me within within touching distance of a medal, something only a tiny percentage of athletes will ever experience. And yet. And yet.
I phoned Rob and asked what exactly had happened. When he said he couldn’t talk on the mobe I knew it was serious. From Bristol, the Porsche can make Devon in just over an hour. Despite the motorway cameras, I did it in less.
Rob left school at eighteen and joined the Royal Marines. After a spell in Afghanistan, he was now an instructor at the Commando Training Centre, which happens to be in East Devon where we’d both lived. Just up the road is a pub called The Bridge.
Rob and I met in the back bar. It turned out that he’d been keeping a close brotherly eye on Anna for the past year or so. Being in the military, he knew the risks she was taking and had done his best to keep her out of real trouble. Until a couple of days ago.
“I think she’s been lifted”, he said.
“Lifted?”
“Arrested. Scooped up. Ghosted. These people have no sense of humour, mate. Cross the line and you disappear.”
“But what’s she done?”
Rob wasn’t sure. He knew about the foreign websites, the way dissidents like Anna were determined to give the regime a poke in the eye, but beyond that it was all just guesswork.
“It could be anything.” He said. “Anything from tagging to sabotage. At worst I suppose she could be involved in the bombings, though I doubt it. She’d be clueless around explosives.”
I nodded. Lately, there’d been a series of small bomb explosions in the Midlands and the North, often on major railway lines. They’d all been unreported but word had spread. With the Olympic Games so close, this was the last thing the generals needed.
“So where has Anna been living?”
“Lots of addresses but mainly in Exeter. Kelly phoned me last night. She said they lifted her on Wednesday afternoon, broad daylight, Cathedral Close. Kelly was giving me all kinds of grief about it but you know what? I think that bitch shopped her.”
Like me, Rob had never been keen on Kelly. Now he was convinced she was working for the Regime. These days, you trusted no one.
“So where is she?” I repeated.
Rob assumed she’d been taken to the local internment centre. Years of recession had led to lots of bankruptcies. Big superstores on trading estates nationwide were still lying empty and some of these now housed internees.
“My guess is they’ve banged her up in the old KidzStuff shed beside the motorway.”
“Is there any way of checking that?”
“Yeah. We’re on standby at the Commando camp in case anything kicks off. We get updated prisoner totals every morning. I can ask to do a security check on the place. Piece of piss.”
“So how many internees are we talking about?”
“With my kid sister? Eight hundred and sixty four.”
I took this news back with me to Bristol. Rob had been vague about what the regime actually did with people like Anna but I sensed a darkness that extended well beyond the one-time KidzStuff superstore. When I got back to the flat, Carmen was out. So far, I’d never logged on to the foreign websites Anna had left me. I found the note she scribbled. I started with one of the French websites.
The site was a revelation. There was a tally of recent bomb incidents plus a long list of people who’d disappeared. Scrolling through it was like reading the names off a war memorial. What had happened to these people? Where were they?
Another part of the website featured Resistance Blogs from various parts of the UK. Just writing and posting this stuff must have carried huge risks and I felt the first prickles of shame that I’d never looked hard enough at the real face of the new Regime. People banged up for making jokes about the generals. Stories about kids – kids – who’d been tortured into betraying their parents.
I stared at the screen. This was a big moment for me. I felt as helpless as everyone else in the country when it came to taking on the Regime – there were simply too many of them – but what I did have was celebrity. People knew my name. And from the Regime’s point of view, given the on-coming Games, I probably mattered.
There was a corner of the website where you could add comments of your own. After a while I began to write. I said who I was and I said that I was really worried – I used the word “disturbed” – about what was going on. As an athlete, I was really privileged to be representing my country but I was no longer sure that I really belonged here. Not under the current Regime. Not with things the way they were. And if that was the case, then how could I possibly compete?
Reading through what I’d written, I wasn’t at all sure where it would lead, or even what good it might do, but I was certain it would be noticed. I was still wondering what else to add when Carmen came back. I didn’t hear her let herself in. The first I knew was her standing behind me, reading what I’d just written.
“You’re crazy”, she said softly.
“You think so?” I glanced up at her, then hit the Send button.
The first person to get in touch was my coach. It was next morning, half past eight. I was to get my arse over to the training complex by nine’o clock. We had a couple of things to discuss.
I left Carmen asleep. She was exhausted after last night’s row and I was in no mood to wake her up. I hoofed the Porsche across the city and was stepping into my coach’s office spot on nine’o clock.
I’ve been with Erik Boehm for nearly four years. He’s old and grouchy but his knowledge of athletics – and athletes – is awesome. In
East Germany, before the Berlin Wall came down, he was a world-class 800 metres runner. Everyone I know gives him major respect.
For once, he didn’t offer me one of his speciality luke-warm coffees. When I tried to read the latest e-mail on his PC, he turned the screen away. Someone from the Regime had definitely been at him.
First he checked that the posting on the Maquis website really had been me. I said it was. He studied me a moment, giving nothing away, then he nodded at the door. Beyond the door, in the performance area, was a bank of running machines.
“No one ever said this would be easy, Joe.”
“It’s not the training,” I told him. “I can deal with that.”
“I know, I know. But these people have got inside your head, haven’t they? And you know what? You have to chase them out again. There’s no room, Joe. No room for distractions like them.”
“Is that what they are?” I was thinking of Anna banged up in some internment camp. “Distractions?”
“Of course. For you. For me. For everyone. Get on with life. It’s there for you. And so is a medal. One day these people will go. Trust me. One day you will wake up and they’ll be gone.”
“Just like that.”
“Sure. And you know what? Every day they stay in your head is for them another little victory. You don’t want that, Joe. You don’t want them to win.”
“But they have won.” I pointed out. “And that’s the problem.”
I left the office promising to think things over. We both knew that meant absolutely nothing. I did an hour or so of weights, followed by splits and repetitions on the track, and then cut the rest of my training schedule and drove home. I knew I needed a real conversation with Carmen but when I got back inside the flat she was out. I thought about waiting for her to come back but in the end I left her a note. Out running, I told her. Usual circuit.
Usual circuit meant a special corner of the Mendip Hills I’d pretty much made my own. Forty minutes in the Porsche, and I was heading up the first steep climb, knowing I’d be glad of the shade of the big elms at the top of the hill. I ran a seven mile loop, testing myself against the clock, forcing the pace when every muscle in my body was begging for rest. That way, as ever, I could bury the uglier thoughts. By the time I completed the circuit, the endorphins had kicked in and I was cruising.
Rounding the spur of the last hill, I came to a halt. I’d left the Porsche in the usual lay-by. Behind it was a black Mercedes saloon. As I was watching, a bulky figure I recognised got out. Catching sight of me, he waved. Nico. My sponsor. He must have been in touch with Carmen, I thought. And she must have read my note.
The back of the Mercedes was empty. At Nico’s invitation, I climbed in. Behind the wheel was a blond woman, middle aged, immaculately dressed. Every time we meet, it’s Nico who makes the running. This afternoon was no exception. He congratulated me on my Olympic trials performance. I’d blown the rest of the guys away. Brilliant running, buddy.
He was sitting in the passenger seat, his body twisted to maintain eye contact. Now came the real conversation.
“So put me right, Joe. Tell me all this shit I’m reading on the internet isn’t true. Tell me there’s some guy out there’s stolen your name. Danny’s been working on a press release. You wanna hear it? Danny, go ahead…”
Danny was the woman behind the wheel. She was French, and headed the company’s European PR operation. She began to read from the press release. Sexy accent.
“Olympic gold medal contender Joe Purnell today denied any connection with the blog posted 48 hours ago on a number of foreign websites. Purnell, whose recent performances have earned him top world ranking for the 3000 metre steeplechase, condemned the theft of his identity and promised legal action against the owners of the website if anything similar should be posted again. “Like any Olympic athlete, I’m running for my country…” said Purnell, “…and I’m proud to do so.”
Nico was giving me the big corporate smile. The conversation was nearly over.
“Short and sweet, Joe. We need to knock this thing on the head. Anything you want to add, you just go right ahead. Danny, you gotta pen?”
Danny produced a Mont Blanc fountain pen and passed the press release back to me. I could see Nico watching me in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t take the pen.
“You gotta problem with any of this stuff, Joe?”
“Yeah…” I was looking out at the hills, “…I’m afraid I have.”
I was home by six. I let myself into the flat, called Carmen’s name, got no response. Assuming she was still out, I stepped into the bathroom and stripped to take a shower. Then I realised that the door to the cupboard where she keeps her medication was open. I called her name again, then went through to our bedroom. The curtains were pulled against the sunshine but in the gloom I could see the shape of Carmen’s body on top of the duvet. Her back was turned to me and one arm was stretched towards the bedside table. On the table I recognised the plastic bottle of painkillers she often used. It was empty.
I stepped across to her, bent low, gave her a gentle shake. She stirred, mumbled something I didn’t catch. She was cold to the touch and her breathing was very light. I was about to fetch my mobile from the bathroom when I caught sight of the note folded beside the empty bottle of tablets. When she’s emotional or angry, Carmen writes in capitals. YOUR FAULT, the note read. BASTARD.
I rode with Carmen in the back of the ambulance. They wheeled her, still unconscious, into the priority channel at A&E and told me to find myself a seat in the waiting area outside. I sat there for the best part of four hours. All I felt was numb. Your fault, bastard.
Around half past nine, three young guys came in. They all had cans of lager and the one who limped was smoking. They were looking for trouble. They gave a wheelchair a kick and then one of them recognised me. They wanted to shake my hand, make a real night of it, tell the world what a hero I was. I was trying to calm them down when a couple of Bubs arrived. The receptionist behind the desk must have pressed the panic button.
Bubs were what we called the new breed of private security guys that had appeared everywhere. Bubs stands for “Big Ugly Bastards”. They rode around in big 4x4 pick-up trucks, black paintwork, black windows. They wore baggy camouflage suits, thick-soled high-laced boots, and combat helmets. They were armed with American carbines. They took no shit from anyone and getting a name or an ID was virtually impossible because behind the wraparound shades they all looked the same.
Now, the Bubs drew batons and bundled the youths across the waiting area and through a pair of swing doors marked “Fire Exit.” The coffee machine was beside the doors. I went over, found some small change, peered through the glass panel on one of the doors.
The doors led to a stairwell. I could see the two Bubs giving the youths a battering. All three were on the floor, trying to cover their heads. I pushed through the doors and tried to pull them off. One of the Bubs, the smaller of the two, spun round and cracked me across the side of my face with his baton. Seconds later, still staggering, I became aware of the hot, coppery taste of my own blood. The Bub nodded towards the swing doors.
“I’d get that seen to, son.” He touched his own face. “Looks nasty.“
A nurse in A&E stitched the wound and gave me a couple of pain killers. No one seemed interested in my story about the Bubs. These days, shrugged the nurse, that kind of stuff happens all the time. It’s the kids’ fault really. People should learn to behave themselves.
A couple of minutes after I’d returned to the waiting area, my mobe began to ring. By now, I’d had the word that Carmen was pulling through.
It was my agent on the phone. Like Nico and Erik Boehm, he must have got the word about my little outburst on the website.
“Listen.” He said. “I’m at the station. We need to talk.”
I explained about Carmen and said they were plan
ning to discharge her the following morning, but already the phone had gone dead. Branzino’s, he’d said. As soon as you like.
Branzino’s was Paul March’s favourite Bristol restaurant. We always meet there when he comes down. At first he thought he’d been joined by a stranger. Then he realized it was me.
“What happened?” He was staring at the line of stitches above my right eye.
I explained the fracas at A&E but he wasn’t really listening. He was more interested in my posting on the French website.
“You’ve upset people.” He said.
“I bet.”
“Important people. Powerful people. Fortunately they know that you don’t mean it.”
“Who told them that?”
“Me.”
“Then you’d be wrong.” I was still thinking about the Bubs beating the crap out of three harmless young pissheads.
“Listen, Joe. I’m here to look after your best interests. In this case, protecting you from career suicide.”
“Suicide’s a tricky word just now, Paul.”
“Yeah? Listen, I’m sorry about Carmen but I mean it. Pull out of the Games and you’ll never run again.”
“Who says?”
“They do. You want to know how? At best you’ll get a lifetime ban. Next best, they’ll break your legs. Worst case? Let’s not go there.”
That sounded like a threat. Paul broke off to OK a bottle of red. Then he was back in my face again.
“You won’t remember the ’36 Olympics, Joe, but there was a black guy running, an American sprinter, Jessie Owens. The Nazis had set the Games up as this big advert for the regime, for the Reich, and their team was full of huge strapping blond white guys who were going to steamroller everyone. Except they didn’t. Because Jessie Owens dicked them all. By winning. You could do the same thing.”
“To the generals?”
The Ghosts of 2012 Page 2