The Walking Dead

  The man crossed the grass and went to the gap in the hedge that divided the garden from the field. In his hand he carried a plastic bag and a short-handled spade. There were no beasts in the field, but the man lifted his leg over the barbed wire and went into it, then started a slow, methodical search of the ground. Every few yards he stopped and set down the plastic bag, then used his spade to scrape up old cattle dung from the grass, which he tipped into the bag. When the bag was more than half filled he returned the way he had come. Ibrahim understood why the man who made the bomb went into the field and collected the waste of the beasts. It had been on the television and radio at home, on the Al Jazeera satellite channel, that the shit from animals was mixed with screws, nails or ball-bearings, and the shit would be against his washed body when he walked.

  He had begun to dress when he heard the light rap at the door. He wore his trousers and socks, but had not yet pulled on his undervest and T-shirt and the cold shimmered on his chest. He called out.

  She filled the doorway and he flinched back towards the window. His sisters would never have come into his room at home, before he was dressed, and the maidservant would not have entered while he was there. He saw the scar on her face and its anger, as if the sides of the wound would never knit sufficiently close for it to be anything but obvious. If he had gone on with his training as a medical student at the university, if he had graduated, qualified, it would have been his responsibility to suture such an injury, but that was behind him and gone. He stared at it, the livid line, and her hand went up to it–he had seen the day before how frequently she touched it–and he thought that running a finger down the indentation was like a tic in her, as if she could not leave it alone. Because he stared, ice covered her eyes.

  'I should have asked you earlier. Have you any washing?'

  He had not thought whether he would put on the T-shirt with the swan printed on it again, but it was grimy with perspiration. There were three pairs of underpants in the bottom of his bag–he had put on the last clean pair he had brought–and four pairs of socks.

  'Don't know. I'm sorry.'

  'It's not anything to apologize for. If you have clothing that needs washing, I'll run it through the machine,' she said brusquely.

  'Well, I do…'

  'OK, so give it to me.'

  He would wear laundered clothing when he went on the walk. He must be clean in his soul, his mind, his body and his clothing when he made the journey to God's table…but he did not know, because he had not been told, when that day would be. So, Ibrahim did not know how many washed T-shirts, pairs of underpants or socks he must wear before his walk. The clothing in his bag, on the carpet of the room had been against his skin, his private places. In his presence, should she handle them? He felt the same breathlessness as he had when he had watched her through the window.

  He hesitated. 'I think I have some things.'

  'Of course you do. Just give them to me,' she said curtly. 'But I don't know what I will need.'

  She was remote from him, as if nothing should bond them. 'You'll be told. I don't know. I'll take everything that needs washing.'

  'I am not told anything,' Ibrahim blurted.

  'Nor me, nor any of us. Please, your washing.' She shrugged, dismissive.

  'But I have faith that will sustain me, and I know I am going to God. I am dedicated to what I shall do . .'He lifted the underpants and socks from his bag, the T-shirt off the floor, and gave them to her. 'I hope to be worthy of the trust placed in me. Yes, I think I am dedicated enough to carry out my duty…Will you be close to me when I walk?'

  'I don't know.'

  'I think I have been chosen because I am dedicated.'

  She said quickly, seemed to spit it, 'We are all dedicated, not only you.'

  The door closed on her. Ibrahim sat on his unmade bed and held his head in his hands. He would have liked to know that she would be close to him, to feel the comfort not of a brother but of a sister.

  That Sunday morning, at the bottom of the steps to the town's Arndale Shopping Centre, the posters were stuck up in the windows of the closed Burger King restaurant. More were fastened in the doorway at the top of the steps. Workmen with paste and brushes plastered them on to the glass.

  Wherever there was available space, the posters went up.

  The next Saturday morning, it was advertised, a 'Super Sale' would start in Luton, with special offers discounted down to fifty per cent of the usual amount. There would be 'Give-away Prices', every thing 'slashed' in the chain stores that filled the retail outlets inside the cavern of the shopping centre. And on that morning a celebrity from the local radio station would open the Super Sale.

  The manager of a chemist's in the centre spoke to a councillor who sat on the Trade and Commerce Committee in the town hail as they watched the slapping on of the posters from a vantage-point among the trees of St George's Square.

  'I hope this bloody works,' the manager said. 'Rents are up, takings are through the floor. If this doesn't pull the punters in, we're well and truly shafted.'

  'They'll be fighting to get in, just you wait and see, when the doors open.' The councillor slapped the manager's back. 'Could be a special day for the Arndale next Saturday. They'll be shoulder to shoulder and lined up right round the corner. Its the sort of initiative this town needs and that shoppers respond to. They'll come with filled purses and wallets. It'll be like the Saturday before Christmas.'

  It was Jools's routine on a Sunday morning. Out of bed, Hannah's, out of her flat and down the alleyway into Inkerman Road. Up Manchester Street and past the town hail where that damn great clock was striking, along the pavement past St George's Square, the wine bar, Travelcare, the Oxfam shop and Tasty Fried Chicken. Then the closed doors of three building societies and the Age Concern unlit windows on his right, and the dive into the newsagent that sold fags. Every Sunday morning was the same: Hannah would be making breakfast and he would be on the quarter-mile tramp for a carton of cigarettes and a scandal sheet.

  And, as it always did, his mobile rang.

  His father: 'Just to tell you, son, that Babs rang and I said you were out, and would you call her?'

  His father and mother, fifteen miles north of the town, were an active ingredient in the deception fools practised. The familiar bleat from him to Babs was that they were elderly, getting frail, and that it was important he visited as often as possible, both to show them his support and to do jobs round their house because they could no longer afford, as pensioners, to have a man in. They hated telling the lies for their son's adulterous relationship but, as he told them when it was fraught and he was challenged, the alternative was a split with Babs and their granddaughter without a father at home. Babs would ring on a Sunday morning, and Jools's father would swallow his truth culture and say that fools had just popped out, then telephone his son. fools would call home on his mobile and would concoct anecdotes of what he'd done at his parents' house for them. Did he care? Not much…He bought his cigarettes and the paper, and as he walked back he spoke to his wife, and forgot her as soon as the mobile was back in his pocket.

  That Sunday morning fools Wright had much to reflect on.

  And he was not sure–in a welter of confusion–where his priorities lay.

  Could have been his performance in bed with Hannah, bloody abject and useless. Could have been the package in the bottom of the wardrobe at home with his shoes and spare sandals covering it.

  What to do? If the Inkerman Arms had been open, he might have headed into the public bar and ordered up a double Johnnie Walker, no ice, but it was not.

  He had seen the posters going up outside the shopping centre. When Babs and he went out to buy things, it usually ended up in a whispered bickering about what they could afford, what they couldn't, and which credit card or cheque book might still be functioning. Different times. There was twelve and a half thousand pounds, presumably in fifties, in his wardrobe and he could go down to the shopping centre next week and buy ha
lf of any of the damned outlets bloody near empty.

  He passed the Inkerman Arms and heard a vacuum-cleaner inside. He was within sight of Hannah's door. The trouble with Hannah was that she had an appetite, and women with an appetite needed regular feeding, and if she didn't get satisfaction at one outlet, she'd go looking for another. It was the way she was: if Jools wasn't the flavour she'd be heading off elsewhere, and he'd be getting the phone call to say he needn't bother to come again. If he had that call, it would push him down into the gutter.

  He didn't blame himself. Never had done and wasn't about to start. Every man had a price. Damn certain, if enough noughts were racked up, Mr Justice Herbert who was God Almighty in court eighteen, had a price. He grinned at the thought of the big brown-paper parcel being slipped into the judge's grip. It didn't enter his mind that he should fight, kick and scratch against corruption. Christ, he needed the money. Pretty damn lucky that the offer had been to him, Jools Wright, who was deputy head of geography in a sink school filled to the gunwales with yobs and who had the original debt mountain, than to Rob, Baz or Vicky. It would be hard to keep a straight face when Mr Justice Herbert sent them out and Jools stated to the rest of them, 'I hear what you say, but on the basis of the evidence put before us, and disregarding the prejudice against the accused that the police evidence has tried to manufacture, I really cannot–in all honesty and sincerity–find the Curtis brothers guilty. No, I'm listening but I'm not about to change my viewpoint when the liberty of two citizens is involved. You can call me what you like but my vote is for an acquittal.' They'd be raging at him–but in his wardrobe there was a parcel of money…When he opened the door to Hannah's flat, he smelt the cooked breakfast.

  She wore only the long sports shirt he'd given her and an apron. In the routine, they'd have breakfast in bed, then the trays would go on the floor and it was back to what Heaven sent.

  He told her he thought he had a cold coming on, wasn't himself, but that he'd have thrown it off by next weekend. They had breakfast in the kitchen. An hour later he rang his father and told him, it was necessary to be consistent in his deceit, that he was on his way home to Babs. He didn't talk while he ate, as if his silence was a symptom of his cold, but he could see Hannah's annoyance, which seemed to say she thought she'd been short-changed. He was far away, thinking of the brothers and whether on Monday morning, tomorrow, he'd have the bravado to look them in the eyes because he'd taken their money.

  They walked round the exercise yard.

  'Nothing to do but wait,' Ollie Curtis said. 'I hate waiting.'

  It was a banal remark, but true. It was the third time that the younger brother had made it, and they were only on the fourth circuit of the small area used by Category A remand prisoners, and they would get in another twelve circuits before the prison officers called them in and locked them up.

  His voice spattered on: 'Can only wait for the morning. I suppose then we'll hear fast enough what Benny's done for us, get it from the brief. I'm with you, Ozzie, it's the only bloody chance. I reckon you're right. The witness won't stand up to another year of hanging about. The mistrial's all we've to look to, then going after that witness, but the waiting's a bastard.'.

  Beside him, Ozzie had his hands deep in his pockets, his head down, and he trudged the circuit at pace.

  'What you reckon, Ozzie, are you feeling good or what?'

  The elder brother shrugged, his mind elsewhere. Young Ollie was always a dripping tap and talked when there was nothing to say. The 'only bloody chance' was with the Nobbler. Why? Because they were in Belmarsh where the security was tighter than it was at any other gaol in the country. There was a joke question among the 'ordinary'

  remand men: 'Where is the biggest and most flourishing Al Qaeda cell in the country?' And a joke answer: 'In Belmarsh.' The hate guys, the bomb-plotters, had damn near half a landing to themselves. They had their own cook and their own religion man and the officers stayed off their backs. But them being there meant more wire on top of the outer walls, and more supervision, and guns outside in the locked-up boots of the armed-response vehicles. Where the brothers walked now, in the piss-poor little yard, there was a heavy tangle of reinforced wire above them. And it would be no better when they went to court because there were more guns in the escort vehicles, and guns at the Snaresbrook holding cells and round the courtroom. The Nobbler was the 'only bloody chance' because the option of a break-out did not exist. In a year and a month on remand, Ozzie Curtis had searched for a chink of light peeping through the security, and had yet to see it.

  'By now Benny'll have done his approach,' Ollie Curtis said. 'You think this jerk would double-cross us, take the money and not do the business? It's a hell of an amount of money, and there's no guarantee. Would he dare?'

  There was a grimace from Ozzie. He would have preferred to walk alone, but could not. If young Ollie told his mother, when the cousin brought her up on the first Saturday of every month, that Ozzie wouldn't walk with her darling baby, aged forty-four, there would be tears and bloody shrieks. He walked with his younger brother…Let the jerk try. He'd get the full treatment. Given the spade out in a wood and told to dig the pit, then get down in it, and he'd look up at the barrel facing him. When half his bloody head was shot to hell the hole would be filled in on him. The life of Ozzie Curtis was one of 'service industries': a service to supply the wheels, another to fence, a third to provide a slaughter-house where cash and diamonds were stashed and safe, a fourth to hire out firearms. There was also an industry, expensive but worth it, for a man who double-crossed on a deal. But it wouldn't come to that because the Nobbler would have spelled out the consequences of a double-cross, and only a bloody idiot would have ignored him.

  'What's getting to me, Ozzie–while we're waiting, and it's going on like a clock ticking–is this. If we get put away big-time, how long's the respect we're getting now going to last? Does respect last if we're down for fifteen or more?'

  God, why couldn't his kid brother shut his damn mouth? Respect mattered to Ozzie Curtis. He was a blagger, not a druggie importer. He did not fraternize with Crime Squad detectives, did not have any cosy little relationship that meant informing on rivals. The druggie importers were crap and he didn't mix with them on the landing but he reckoned that any of them, if they learned something confidential about him that they could squeal on to their advantage, would shop him. Inside Belmarsh, Ozzie Curtis had status, but he would lose it if the sentence was heavy. He would just be another shuffling wreck, getting old, a target for any arrogant kid on the block, and he'd have his bloody brother whimpering in his ear. He depended on the Nobbler.

  'If we go down, Ozzie, there'll be all of those Asset Recovery guys crawling all over us. They'll bloody strip us bare. You thought of that, Ozzie?'

  Targets for Asset Recovery, and he didn't need to be told so, included his house down in Kent, which was worth, minimum, one point two five million, his Lexus four-wheel drive, the wife's top-of-the-range Audi, and the villa on the hills above Fuengirola–a place in Spain of that size was another three-quarters of a million–and there were the Cayman accounts, the Gibraltar money, the investments in the Black Sea apartments and…His status in Belmarsh would seep away once he was down and the Asset Recovery team were digging at him. He'd be a bloody pauper, and there was no respect on the landing for one of them.

  'Nothing to do but wait,' Ollie said. 'I hate waiting.'

  'He must have courage,' Faria whispered. Then the pitch of her voice was bolder: 'Which of us would do it?'

  She had cooked chicken breasts and served them with rice and a curried sauce. It was what she would have given her parents if she had been at home, and her two brothers, if they had not been doing religious instruction in Pakistan. She had looked up before she put that question. The doors to the dining area were still closed. Before she had brought the food from the kitchen, she had called through the doors that their lunch was ready.

  'Would you? Would you do what he is going to do?'<
br />
  'I have not been asked,' Khalid answered, but looked away. 'It is immaterial what I say. It is not expected of me. You want honesty among ourselves and between ourselves? No.'

  Her finger jabbed at Syed. 'Would you? Do you have that bravery?'

  'If it were necessary, perhaps. But another has been chosen. I do not have to answer because the question is on a false premise. I do more for our struggle by staying alive, by continuing as the servant of the Organization. I was never a volunteer, and I am thankful I was not asked.'

  Leaning across the table and her food, her eye and finger moved on to Ramzi. 'Is the Faith in you to do what he will?'

  'I would have, if I had been selected.' His chest swelled. 'Already I told people that I was prepared for martyrdom. It is a disappointment to me that I was not chosen…Yes.'

  Her gaze crossed three empty places and came to rest on Jamal. 'Would you walk with the vest against your body?'

  'I don't know. I can't say. Many heroes have, in Chechnya, Palestine and Iraq, so many that we no longer know their names.' He giggled, childlike. 'Do I believe what many of those heroes were told? Do they go, in Paradise, to the virgins? Are the virgins waiting for them? There are imams who say the virgins are there…Perhaps I would do it if I believed in the virgins.'

  There was a thorns of the same question. 'Would you, Faria? What about you?'

  But doors opened. She seemed to see what she had read: heads spiralling into the air, severed at the neck, flying high, across the room and out through the open window. They fell to the grass and rolled there, like the footballs boys played with in the side-streets off the Dallow Road. She saw the heads of Khalid and Syed, Ramzi and Jamal…then her own. She did not have to answer. The places at the table were taken. She ducked her head and ate. She did not look up until her plate was dean. Then, nervously, she glanced around her. She was the first to finish. Her eyes met his.