by Oisin McGann
so can I.
But Ivor had a loose tooth that helped him remember. She did not. As her senses began to fail her, Amina bit down hard on the side of her tongue. Wincing, she crushed the flesh between her teeth again, tasting blood.
I will remember.
12
Chi waited an hour for Amina to call. After that, he knew she wasn't going to. The Scalps were mopping up. He sat at Gierek's computer desk, his head in his hands,wondering what he was going to do. Despite having five well-armed, hardcore survival enthusiasts at his disposal, he was utterly helpless. He didn't even know where to start looking for her. He could report her missing, but what good would that do? Amina was gone.
She had wanted to try and help the kids who were dying from the nerve agent used at the Lizard Club. The least Chi could do was give the police everything he had on VioMaze. Maybe the company had an antidote. They might even be embarrassed into handing it over – if it could be proved it was their stuff the terrorists had used.
Which, of course, it couldn't.
Even so, he had to try. There was a police station only ten minutes walk away. Chi saved his files onto his MP3 player and, checking his pepper spray was in his pocket, he made for the door.
'Where d'you think you're going, peckerwood?' Gierek called after him, from beneath the chassis of one of the trucks.
'Out. Don't suppose any of you want to come along?'
'Busy,' Gierek grunted back. 'Don't be long. Your turn to cook dinner.'
Chi nodded and walked out. He had to stand and wait for Gierek to buzz the gate open long enough for him to slip through and then he started along the road out of the industrial estate. He hated Cricklewood. He found the place depressing and even in daylight, he was nervous walking around here. This part of it consisted of half-dead green areas and wide roads, forbidding blocks of flats and high walls encircling factories and goods yards. Razorwire said a lot about a neighbourhood. In the evening, many of the streetlights in the area were out.
His eyes followed any car or van that came too close to him along the road. He had his earphones in, but kept the sound off. It was never a good idea to block out your own hearing. A helicopter passed by overhead and he watched it anxiously. But it was probably just some rich slob avoiding the traffic.
The dog came at him out of nowhere. A Rottweiler, a mound of black and brown snarling muscle with jaws dripping drool, charged up behind him. Chi turned round to face it in alarm and immediately knew it was a mistake. This dog wasn't playing. And it wasn't stopping. Chi put his hand in his pocket to reach for his pepper spray. It would probably stop the animal . . . or it might just make it mad. He bolted for the nearest cover.
Turning down an alleyway between two factory walls, he looked round desperately for something to climb up on. But everything around here was built to be youth-proof. The dog came into the alley after him, dashing towards him with unnerving speed. He had seconds before it was on him. A steel door started to open in the wall to his right. Chi rammed through it and slammed it shut behind him. There was a thud and the scrape of claws on metal as the dog hit the other side. An enraged barking erupted outside.
'Down, Butch,' a man's voice shouted.
The dog fell quiet. The hair on the back of Chi's neck stood on end as he realized that the voice had come from behind him . . . on his side of the door. He turned to find himself in a small utility room with bare concrete walls lined with fuse boxes and pipes. It was dark; there were no windows, just a bare fluorescent bulb that flickered dimly. Another door in the opposite wall was closed, hiding whatever lay beyond. There were four men in here with him, all wearing gas masks. So much for his pepper spray.
None of them looked surprised to see him.
'Chi Sandwith,' one of them said in a muffled, rubbery voice. 'That was your life.'
Chi fought them. There was no hope, but he wanted there to be evidence of a struggle on his body. Anything that could be found in an autopsy: skin under his fingernails, bruising on his body, defence wounds . . . anything that could tell the world he wasn't just another sympathy case who'd done himself in because he couldn't handle living.
But these men were too good. When they finally jammed the cloth over his nose and mouth, his limbs were restrained firmly but gently, in ways unlikely to leave any marks at all. The concrete floor was cold and gritty as it pressed against his skin. The cloth was damp and the fumes from it quickly made him dizzy. Sobbing, he tried to hold his breath, but it was useless. He was grateful when the end finally came.
Much to his dismay, Chi woke up. It seemed his ordeal wasn't over yet. He was lying on the floor in the back of a van, with a man sitting on the bench over the wheel-arch beside him. The man was stocky, with a tight haircut, the skin of his scalp and face stained with the dark tinge of one who simply cannot shave enough. Chi's eyes were drawn to the large brown mole on his jawline. It had been cut recently, presumably while shaving. If there was any expression at all in the man's eyes, it was one of amusement.
'He's awake!' he said, over the noise of the engine.
'So what?' someone called from the front.
Chi was lying on his front. As he rolled over onto his back to look around, he felt something hard and square dig into his side, but he couldn't tell what it was. The interior of the van was unremarkable – white, with racks of some sort lining the walls. Two more of the Scalps sat up front. It was dark out. Chi worked out that he must have been unconscious for at least eight hours. His arms and legs were tightly pinned and he gazed down at what was holding them. It appeared to be some kind of shrink-wrap, wound around his entire body from his feet, all the way up to his mouth, which was effectively gagged. Only his nostrils were left free so that he could breathe.
'It's clever stuff,' the guy with the mole told him. 'Dissolves in water. Not too fast, mind you – after a couple of hours or so. Won't leave a trace. As far as anybody will be able to tell, you'll have gone into the river of your own free will.'
'Why do you always have to talk to them?' the driver shouted back. 'He's a muppet – and a dead one at that.'
The stocky one ignored his colleague, continuing to stare down at Chi with a disturbing intensity.
'I put a couple of bricks in your pockets, so you'll sink fast,' Mole said. 'It'll be over quicker if you don't hold your breath. Just open your mouth and suck that water into your lungs. You won't, of course, but I thought I'd say it.'
So that was it. They were taking him to Suicide Bridge or somewhere like it. Chi tried to hide his fear, but it was pointless. He was trembling like a child, his skin was coated in a cold sweat and his bladder was threatening to release its contents into the shrink-wrap. The van slowed down and the driver let out a curse.
'There's people on the bridge.'
Mole stood up and walked forward to look out of the windscreen.
'What the hell are they doing there?'
'Look at the placards.'
'Ha! OK, let's do it further downstream.'
Mole came back and sat down on the bench again.
'Seems like you get a few more minutes. There's some folks on the bridge standing watch. Bleeding-heart parents concerned about all the suicides, by the looks of things. We'll have to take you downriver a bit and drop you in there. Won't be long.'
The van turned onto a rougher road, jolting the floor under Chi's back and causing him to roll from side to side. He could only bend his knees to keep himself still, and even that movement was restricted. Mole stuck his foot out, pressing his heel against Chi's stomach to hold him down. The van drove for what seemed like an age and then stopped. The abrupt silence left after the engine was turned off sent a chill down Chi's spine.
He thrashed about as they opened the doors, but he was too tightly bound to offer any resistance. The three men pulled him out of the van and carried him through a gloomy area of woodland, picking their way carefully, moving without haste. They did not use torches, confident enough to find their route by the faint ligh
t of the moon. Soon, he heard the sound of the river. His nose was getting blocked up now and he was finding it hard to breathe. Snot bubbled and burst from his nostrils. As his breathing became strained, he began to hope that he would pass out before they threw him into the water, but it wasn't to be.
They reached the edge of the river. Chi could only see the slight glimmer of the water in the darkness. There was no sense of ceremony, no pause to contemplate the murder they were about to commit. Mole used the point of knife to cut a small hole in the plastic around Chi's mouth. It was important that water got into the lungs, he explained. Then he nodded to the others:
'Right, on three. One . . . Two . . . Three!'
Chi felt their hands release him on the third swing. There was the briefest, frightening moment of weightlessness and then the river hit him, engulfing him. The chill water paralysed his chest, making him gasp. Panic seized him, making him squirm frantically around, his mouth firmly closed against the water. It was all around him, trying to get into him. The shocking coldness made him curl up . . . and it was then that he discovered he could get his head above the surface of the water.
Just barely. He was lying in mud at the edge of the river and here the water seemed to be only a couple of feet deep. By staying still, he was able to lift his head up high enough to get his nose and mouth into the air. He dragged in life-giving gulps of it.
Rolling his eyes back, he stared up at the bank. The three men were gone. Or were they? Was this part of their game? He didn't think so. He should have been thrown from the bridge, but they had taken him to a part of the River Sliney they didn't know instead. They thought it was all as deep as the section under the bridge. Their mistake. Now he had a chance – however small a chance that might be. The cold seeped through his flesh, his muscles, his bones, his marrow.
Doing his best to keep himself on his back, using his pinned arms to brace himself, he bent his knees, dug his heels in and pushed himself up towards the bank. He managed to move about twenty centimetres. The plastic was slippery on the mud of the riverbed, making it hard to stay in position. Every movement risked dipping his head under the water.
He jammed his heels in and pushed again. His feet just slipped in the mud and ducked his head under the surface. He panicked for a moment but then regained the air. Blowing water from his nostrils, he took a few more panting breaths and tried again. Another twenty centimetres or so. The water was a little lower around his head. Its edge encircled his face, reaching just over his plastic-wrapped chin and around to his cheekbones.
After a few more pushes, he hit something metallic. The water was just shallow enough for him to look round. His head was resting against a large cylindrical shape angled down into the mud. A rusty barrel. Beyond it was the riverbank. One look at the mud bank told him he hadn't a hope of going any further. As he peered through the gloom on either side, it looked as steep in both directions. Resting his head against the crumbling rust of the barrel's side, he felt his heart sink. The Sliney was a tidal river. Judging by the height of the waterline on the bank, the river was due to get a lot deeper. But even that didn't matter, because Chi could barely feel his hands or feet. Hypothermia was setting in. He was shivering violently now and he knew that when he stopped shivering – when his body no longer had the strength to generate warmth – then he would pass out and drown.
How long did the plastic take to disintegrate? Two hours? Too long. It certainly didn't feel any weaker yet.
Chi roared through the hole in front of his mouth, the plastic making a flapping sound. The Scalps must be gone by now. Maybe the people on the bridge would hear him. He let out another cry and then started coughing as water got into his throat. After another few yells, his voice started failing. In frustration, he banged his head against the metal barrel. It emitted a dull boom.
To hell with it, he thought, gritting his teeth against the icy wave of nausea that was climbing over him, I've got nothing else left.
It was the only Morse Code he knew. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. Like they used on the Titanic. With his forehead, Chi began to bang out 'SOS' on the corroded barrel's side. He was starting to slip back into the water and he no longer had the muscle control to stop himself. Soon, he was struggling to keep his mouth above the surface. He kept head-butting the barrel. Three quick knocks, three slow ones, three quick ones. Grainy-wet crumbs of rust coated his forehead. Now it was hard to keep his nostrils clear of the water. He had to keep his mouth closed. As he turned his head to the side, his breath sprayed across the surface. He could barely feel the rest of his body; his entire focus was on his head and neck, which were starting to ache unbearably from the tension of holding them in this raised position.
Three quick knocks, three slow ones, three quick ones. Three quick knocks, three slow ones, three . . . three quick ones. Three quick . . . knocks . . . three . . . slow ones, three quick ones . . .
The water climbed up his nostrils. His first attempt to clear them failed. He breathed in water, coughing it out and almost sucking more back in through his mouth. His second breath barely got him enough air to stop his lungs from spasming. Could he hear voices? It sounded like somebody calling out. Three quick knocks . . . The water covered his nose and mouth again . . .
7
The doctor told Amina that she had been found lying unconscious in some bushes in the park not far from her home. She had a bad cut on her head from where she had probably been hit with some blunt object. Her tongue had needed a couple of stitches too, from where she'd bitten it, presumably when she fell. It was swollen, and she was lucky not to have choked on it. It was assumed that she had been mugged.
She confirmed this; the memory was hard and sharp in her mind, two black home-boys, wearing hoodies and packing knives with knuckle-duster handles. The doctor, a young man with a shy manner and a sexy Eastern European accent, checked her out and declared her to be recovering well, despite being unconscious for what must have been a full day and night. They hadn't found any ID on her – her bag was gone – so the first thing he did after he'd taken her name and details, was to call her parents. Amina spoke to them briefly on the phone and assured them that she was OK. Their concern gushed through the receiver, spilling over her and upsetting her. It was a relief to hang up the phone.
As she waited in the six-bed ward for them to arrive, Amina reflected on this latest bit of misfortune in a whole series of tragic embarrassments that she had been forced to suffer. Being taken in by Sandwith and McMorris and the whole conspiracy posse was bad enough – if she never saw either of them again it would be too soon – but to have her gullibility broadcast across the national media was almost more than she could stand. It would take a miracle to get her career back on track after this. She'd be a target of ridicule when she went back to university – a delusional patsy with a convict for a brother.
Her tongue throbbed and she worked it around her mouth, but sucking on an ice cube was the only thing that helped. Wallowing in her misery, she stayed wrapped in her bedclothes with the curtains drawn around the bed, moping quietly until her parents arrived.
'Oh, honey!' her mother exclaimed, pulling the curtains aside. 'God, we were so scared!'
Her father said nothing, simply enveloping his little girl in his arms so that she had to hug him back and then the tears started. Helena joined in the embrace, driving even more sobs from Amina, despite her best efforts to put on a brave face.
'We're so sorry,' Martin rasped, his throat tight with emotion. 'We turned our backs on you when you needed us most. We didn't believe you. It'll never happen again, sweetheart.'
They stayed like that for another minute or two, before unwrapping themselves, warm and redfaced and feeling like a proper family again.
'I feel like an idiot,' Amina said to them at last, speaking awkwardly around her swollen tongue. 'They fooled me from the start with their talk of mind control and UFOs and . . . and . . . and bloody secret agents. I fell for it hook, line and sinker. I won't be a
ble to show my face at the paper again! I should have stuck to making photocopies.'
Helena and Martin exchanged uneasy glances. None of them had ever heard Amina indulge in self-pity before. Her plaintive tone almost made them cringe. Helena found herself unable to meet her daughter's eyes. Her mothering instincts had never been very strong – her career had always come first. But Helena Jessop knew her little girl and she could always tell when something wasn't right. Looking down with concern at her daughter, Helena resolved to find out what.
There was nervousness in the air of Liverpool Street station as the early morning commuters hurriedly made their way out of the Underground and onto the main concourse. Everyone had seen the broadcast now, the one sent after the poisonings at the Lizard Club. Everyone knew how vulnerable the Underground system was to a nerve-gas attack.
Amina stepped off the rising escalator, allowing those in a rush to brush past her. It was good to be getting back to work again. Her family had been getting on her nerves for the past few days. They had been treating her as if she was on the verge of some mental breakdown. As if she was some kind of new Amina they did not fully recognize. Often she would walk into a room and find them pausing in the midst of a conversation she knew was about her. She was getting sick and tired of it all.
Watchful eyes followed Amina as she came through the ticket barriers onto the concourse. An echoey voice announced a late arrival on platform six. This was the busiest time of the day, when the greatest numbers of travellers passed through the station. People queued up at the counters for fast-food breakfasts of bagels, baguettes, croissants and coffee and smoothies. Faces looked up at the boards, waiting for word from on high. Amina was in the thick of the crowd, making for the stairs that led out of the side entrance of the station.
She caught a side-on glimpse of a man's face as he wheeled a tall, black, heavy case past her. A black plastic hood covered the top half of the case. There was something about him she thought she recognized, but you got that a lot in crowds – your mind sought out the familiar. He looked like a hard-case: a muscular skinhead with Slavic cheekbones – maybe a soldier she had met on one of the bases her family had lived on. She wasn't in the mood for chatting with near-strangers today.