“Yeah.”
“By taking the gold?”
“Sure. And that matters, doesn’t it?”
By now, I’d developed a headache that was threatening to shatter the inside of my skull. I was way past making any kind of decision on anything. Instead I was looking at the bottle of wine. Paul reached for my glass. I shook my head.
“Any chance of something stronger?” I said.
“No problem, Joe.” He summoned the waiter. “First sane thing you’ve said all night.”
They came for me at half past three in the morning. To be honest, I’ve no memory of how I got back from the restaurant. All I can remember is a blazing row with my agent, fuelled by half a bottle of grappa. When Paul demanded a promise that I’d behave myself as far as the Regime was concerned, I told him to fuck off. I was the fastest steeplechaser on the planet. I’d do it my way.
I awoke to a splintering noise as they smashed open the front door of the apartment. Then, inexplicably, I was looking at three armed Bubs standing over the bed: helmets, visors, body armour, the lot. They pulled me out of bed and told me to get dressed. Stumbling down the stairs towards the street, I fell over twice. The second time they kicked me upright again.
The back of the 4 x 4 stank of vomit and disinfectant. I sat wedged between two of the Bubs. In a strange way, I felt too dazed to be frightened. This whole thing had become surreal.
The guy behind the wheel drove like a maniac. In no time at all we were out of the city and pulling a hard left into one of the trading estates beside the M5 motorway. I recognised the Halfords Superstore and the Ikea sign in the distance before we slowed for some kind of checkpoint. The sandbags and rolls of razor wire were bathed in a hard white light. The security barrier went up and we stopped outside a portacabin.
I was hustled inside and told to strip. Photos were taken, details noted, personal possessions tucked away in an envelope. Only when I showed my ID card did the woman behind the desk believe that I was me.
“I saw you on telly.” She grunted. “So how come you end up here?”
Good question. Attached to the portacabin was a shower facility. I was hosed down by an old guy wearing an orange jump suit with a company logo on the back. When I asked why, he just laughed. Welcome to the world of DIY.
Clad in an orange jumpsuit of my own, I was marched across the car park to the superstore. More razor wire. More sandbags. Inside, the racks were still full of various bits of hardware but the aisles between were packed with sleeping orange bodies. The lighting, mercifully low, made it hard to be certain but there must have been hundreds of internees in there. Every aisle was patrolled by guards with automatic rifles. Totally surreal.
They found me an oblong of concrete in Wall Fixings. I was tossed a thin bed roll and a blanket. The guy next to me grunted, turned over, then went back to sleep again. The blanket was crusted with something evil and the whole place stank. Sleep, I knew, was out of the question. For the first time in years, I was no longer in control of my own life.
Next morning, we gathered at the head of the aisle for a polystyrene cup of stewed tea. The guy I’d slept beside shuffled up to me in the queue for the urn. He turned out to be a black stand-up comic from the West Midlands. His name was Marcus. He’d had a couple of gigs in a club in Plymouth and some of his edgier jokes had gone down badly with the Regime. So far, though it was easy to lose track, he thought he’d spent a couple of months in custody. He was always asking to talk to someone in charge but these requests had been ignored. When I asked him what would happen next he just shrugged.
“It’s limboland, man.” He said. “Ain’t no clocks. Ain’t no daylight. Ain’t no nothing.”
The thought of spending serious time in Wall Fixings was hard to grasp but I was luckier than Marcus. The guards came for me hours later. I judged it to be around midday. Waiting for me in an office at the front of the building was a plate of biscuits and a cup of proper coffee. Also, sitting beside a middle aged man in army uniform, a face I recognised. My coach. Erik Boehm.
The officer didn’t bother to introduce himself. He told me that Carmen had been discharged from hospital and had been shipped back to her parents’ place in Bath. When I asked whether she’d left me any kind of message he scribbled himself a note and said he’d look into it. In the meantime, I was to listen to my coach.
Erik looked really uncomfortable.
“I’ve been talking to some people,” he said. “and they’re prepared to offer a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“In return for your immediate release,” he said. “you promise to run your race. You watch your tongue in all the media interviews. You turn up for the three thousand steeplechase. And then you win.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then there will be consequences.”
“Like what?”
Erik shrugged. He couldn’t say because he didn’t know. At this point, the officer leant forward over the desk.
“This is probably simpler than you think it is.” He was looking at me. “Nobody in this country is bigger than the Regime. And that, my friend, includes you.”
My fingers strayed to the stitches above my eye. I believed him. Erik asked me how I felt. I said fine. I was still looking at the officer. My mind was racing.
“You’re holding a woman called Anna Capper.” I said. “The moment you release her, I’ll do whatever you want.”
The officer raised an eyebrow and made a note of the name. Erik had slumped in his chair. The meeting was over.
I returned to my blanket and my bed roll. By now, word seemed to have spread that an Olympic gold medal prospect was banged up in Wall Fixings and I spent most of the night fending off various sports fans. Then, towards what felt like dawn, came a very different conversation.
When the guards at the end of the aisle weren’t looking, I’d rolled under the storage racks and found myself in Painting Accessories. Deep down I knew they’d release me and before that happened I wanted to see as much of the internment centre as possible. As I emerged from under the rack, I became aware that the wound above my eye was bleeding again. The guy nearest to me had seen it too. He had a length of loo roll stashed away. He started to clean me up.
Before long he’d put a name to my face. It turned out that he was a serious fell runner. He lived in a tiny village in Somerset and over the last few years he’d got to know every corner of the surrounding hills. We talked about distance running for a while, what we each took from it, then he mentioned his neighbour.
“The guy’s some kind of freelance journalist. He drinks a bit, too, and the last time he had a skinful in the pub he told me this story he’d picked up from a contact in Ireland. Something about dead bodies on a beach.”
“What happened?”
“He wouldn’t say but next morning he appeared on my doorstep, really hungover, and swore me to silence. Said I wasn’t to tell anyone a word about the Irish thing.”
“How come?”
“He’s scared shitless about our new leaders. He says he’s got previous with the Regime and no way does he want to end up in a place like this.”
I trusted the guy in Painting Accessories. He said that if the Regime let me go, I was welcome to borrow his place in Somerset. The hills, he said, were great for running. He scribbled down a handful of local routes and told me how to find the village and the spare key to his cottage. He also mentioned the name of the journalist. Before I got the call to the next interview, I’d memorised the lot.
They released me at 11.43, after a brief interview. In return for the promise of Anna’s release, I agreed to keep my mouth shut and run the 3000 metres steeplechase. Looking back, I don’t think either side had the slightest intention of delivering on the deal but by that time I’d had more than enough of Wall Fixings. Anna was right. Living under this lot was a form of surrender. By mid afternoon, with a b
agful of spare clothes, I was heading down the M5 towards Devon.
Rob was home from the Commando Camp by the time I arrived. He lived with his partner and their two kids in a rented house at the back of a seaside town called Exmouth. He’d read the blog I’d posted on the French website and when he saw the state of my face he first assumed that I’d been beaten up by the Regime. In a way, it was true. Nowadays, the Bubs could do whatever they liked. It certainly didn’t pay to cross these guys.
When I told him about Wall Fixings and the deal that had got me out, he shook his head. The Regime were promising to release Anna once the Games were over. Like me, he didn’t believe it.
“So what are you going to do?”
I explained about Carmen. I’d phoned her at her parents’ place in Bath but we were shouting at each other within seconds. She said I was stubborn and selfish. In her view, I’d blown my chance for Olympic gold and as a quality ex-athlete she found that beyond belief. She also knew that I’d blown any prospect of funding her American operation. After our conversation in the Mercedes, Nico had phoned her and virtually told her so. Maybe that’s why she’d taken the tablets. Nice.
“So what next?” Rob repeated.
I told him I was going to try and find Anna. He thought I was mad. I’d seen the inside of an internment camp. I must know by now just how tightly the Regime had got the country stitched up. Anna was just one name amongst tens of thousands. Where on earth would I start?
“I’m not sure.” I said. “But the point is that people know me. They’ve seen me on telly. They’ve read about me in the papers. I’m a bit of a celeb and if I can use that to help Anna then…” I shrugged, “…I will. No way am I going to be running for these bastards.”
Big moment. I stared at Rob. I’d never felt so certain in my life. No way was I going to let myself down.
“But how do you get at them?”, he asked.
I mentioned the conversation I’d just had with the internee from Somerset.
“The guy’s got a neighbour who’s some kind of journalist. He seems to have dug up a story in Ireland, something that might embarrass the Regime. The guy’s an hour away. I’m going to talk to him.”
“When?” Rob was looking at his watch.
“Now.”
Much to his partner’s alarm, Rob insisted on coming with me. Sedgeley is a tiny hamlet tucked into a fold of the Quantock Hills. There was a storm brewing out towards the west and I could smell rain in the air. One of the three cottages beside the abandoned Wesleyan chapel had to belong to the journalist.
We got lucky with our first knock. He was a tall guy with thinning hair. The sight of strangers at his door drained the colour from his face.
We invited ourselves in. The last forty eight hours had completely changed my take on pretty much everything. Like Rob, I had no doubt that the Regime would be watching my every move. The entire country was covered by CCTV. What I no longer had was time.
The cottage was dark, with stone floors and damp patches on the walls. When the journo asked what we wanted, Rob told him that we were authorised to collect his notes on the Irish story. This, we’d agreed in the car, would be a neat way of finding out whether the Irish story even existed.
It did. But the journo wanted to know who the hell we were.
Rob showed him his Royal Marines ID. He studied it for a moment, then said he’d have to make a phone call to a contact in the Regime. Just to check. Rob and I exchanged glances. We both knew we were seconds away from seriously blowing it.
Thank God for Rob. I’d never been in a situation like this and I watched, amazed, as Rob spun the journo round, pinned him in an armlock, and told me to find some rope. There was a shed in the garden and I returned with a roll of binder twine. By now, the journalist was slumped in a chair, his eyes following our every movement. Rob had pulled the curtains on both windows and switched on a reading light. I gave him the binder twine and watched him tie the journo hand and foot.
“But who are you?” He kept asking.
Rob ignored the question.
“This Irish story of yours…” , he began. “We need to know how far you’ve got.”
The journo stared at him, then shook his head. No way was he going to help us out. Rob was wearing a loose T-shirt over his jeans. From the front of his jeans he produced a small Army-issue handgun. The journalist stared at it. So did I.
Rob asked the question again. This time he got an answer.
“I took a call from a contact in Dublin…” The journo began.
“When?”
“About five months ago.”
“And?”
“Some villagers found a number of bodies washed up on a local beach. These people were naked. They’d been tied up hand and foot.”
“How many bodies?”
“Four. There were post-mortems on all of them.”
“And?”
“They all had identical injuries. Impact injuries plus indications of severe frostbite. My contact said the impact injuries could have been consistent with a fall from a great height.”
“Like out of a plane?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened?”
“I went to Ireland.”
“And?”
“I discovered there’d been no inquest, no press coverage, no funerals, nothing. The bodies had just disappeared. Along with the story.”
“So what did that tell you?”
“It told me…” the journo was beginning to sweat, “…that someone had been applying a great deal of pressure.”
“And where do you think that pressure came from?” Rob had the gun in the man’s face.
“I’ve no idea.”
“Think.”
The journo stared at him. Rob once told me you can smell fear. He’s right. He put the question again, then settled the muzzle of the handgun an inch above the journo’s ear, pressing lightly on the whiteness of his temple.
The journo swallowed hard, then closed his eyes.
“London.” He whispered.
We searched the cottage before we left. Upstairs, in a cupboard in the spare bedroom, we found a stash of files. We went through them one by one until we found the Irish story. The beach where the bodies washed ashore was in County Kerry, near a village called Caherdaniel. The post-mortem had taken place in Kenmare. At the back of the file was a handwritten list of names and contact details. Three of the names were underlined and one of them had three pencilled stars beside it. The guy’s name was Jeff Bullen. He lived in North Wales. This, we both agreed, was our best chance of taking the story further.
Outside, it was raining. When I headed for the Porsche, Rob took me by the arm. The journo drove a beaten-up old Renault Espace. Rob must have lifted the keys when we were searching the house. The Regime would be watching for the Porsche. Better to swop cars.
I’ve known Rob for most of my life. We were best mates when we were kids and I realised, driving away, that nothing had really changed. He’d once told me that he’d do anything to help if I ever got into serious shit but what he was up to now was almost suicidally brave. He had a career to think about, and kids. The journo would probably free himself within the hour. At which point, Rob and I had a big, big problem.
There had to be a reason Rob had signed up for all this. And there was.
“I did the inspection recce in KidzStuff a couple of days ago,” he said, “and I asked for an up-to-date list of the internees. The guys in the front office put me in front of a PC and told me to help myself. I went through every name.” He glanced across at me. “Then I found another list, just half a dozen names, priority targets they’d packed off north, some place they call the RC.”
“What does that mean?”
“The Removals Centre.”
“And?”
“Anna was one of the
m.”
We drove through what was left of the night, not saying very much. I think we both realised the risks we were taking, and why we were doing it, but that didn’t make the prospect of the days to come any easier. Rob was far better equipped than me to understand the scale of the task we’d set ourselves but there’s something in the Marine mind-set that tells you that anything is possible as long as you want it badly enough. Like athletes, they believe in the power of focus. Or what we athletes call The Zone.
It got light at four in the morning. By now we were in mid-Wales. To the north, we could just make out the blue tumble of mountains around Snowdonia. There was nothing on the roads and the few villages we passed seemed deserted.
An hour or so later, we stopped in a small country town for petrol. While Rob was filling the tank, I went across to the kiosk. I was in a bit of a daze by now, not thinking properly. This Jeff Bullen lived in the Conway Valley and I hadn’t a clue how to find it.
The old man behind the counter was asleep. I sorted out a map and took it across. Then I saw the posters for the Olympics. There were three of them and the biggest featured a face I knew only too well. I was backing away, heading for the door, when the old man woke up. He eyed me a moment, then extended a hand.
“My goodness, boyo.” His eyes went to the poster. “What have you done to that pretty face of yours?”
We ran into the road block an hour an a half later. Rob spotted it as we rounded a bend in a narrow valley. A couple of hundred metres away was a line of oil drums. Squatting on either side, half-hidden in the rocks beside the road, were a bunch of Bubs in full combat gear. Rob knew a great deal about making split second decisions in situations like these. He braked hard, pulling the Espace into a tight 3-point turn. The first bullets shattered the windows behind me. Then came a louder bang as one of the tyres exploded. The Espace dipped to the left, then stopped completely.
I looked across at Rob, clueless about what we were supposed to do next, but he was slumped across the steering wheel, blood pumping from a hole in his throat. The firing had stopped now, and I reached across, trying to ease his body back against the seat, but I realised it was hopeless. A second bullet had torn through his right eye. The spray of grey slime on the window behind him was brain tissue.
The Ghosts of 2012 Page 3