To See the Light Return

by Sophie Galleymore Bird

  ‘Is he locked in?’ Will was horrified.

  ‘Yes. Partly for his own safety. He’s taken a long time to sober up, and we didn’t want him getting into any more trouble.’ The Major produced a key and unlocked the sagging wooden door.

  The smell as they walked in was powerful. Similar to that of the bunker, but with an additional fug of damp, stale alcohol fumes and old urine. The shouting stopped as soon as the door opened.

  The old man was sitting on the edge of the sort of sun lounger no one bothered to own anymore, having neither the leisure nor the reliable weather to make use of one. A blanket was thrown over his knees. On a side table were an empty plate and several mugs half full of cold tea. A stoppered bottle of water lay untouched on the dirt floor. Rain drummed loudly on the corrugated iron roof and plinked to the table from a hole.

  There was no sign of any tools. Will supposed it might be unwise to leave sharp objects in reach of someone so clearly enraged; a scowl distorted the old man’s features. At least he appeared to be sober, if angry. His hand shook as he pointed at them.

  ‘You bastards remembered me at last?’

  ‘It’s been a disturbing day, I apologise if you feel neglected. I can see someone has been taking care of you.’ The Major leaned against the doorjamb. Will hovered at his shoulder.

  ‘Locked me up is what you’ve done. Held me against my will. Who are you, thinking you can lock me up? Thought I was back with that monster Spight. Might be safer with him, for all I know.’

  Will started at the sound of the Mayor’s name. If the Major was surprised he showed no sign, but his voice was curious as he said, ‘You’ve had dealings with our illustrious Mayor?

  ‘Illustrious? Spight? Don’t make me puke. I know what the fucker’s done. Should do, I helped him enough times.’

  ‘Helped him how?’

  Will’s heart sank. He thought he’d done the right thing, pulling the old man out of the flames, but now it sounded like he was just another bad guy. Then he caught himself, remembering how the Major had reacted when he’d called Primrose the enemy. And realised he would never have been able to live with himself if he had left the old man to burn, however many bad things he might have done.

  The old man looked ashamed. ‘Can’t tell you … don’t like to remember. S’why I drink.’ A crafty look stole across his grimy features as he said, ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got anything on you? A flask or some such? I’m awful thirsty.’

  ‘There’s water there, on the floor.’

  ‘Water,’ the old man spat, as if the Major had suggested he drink acid. ‘Can’t stomach water. If you give me something with a bit of welly, I’ll tell you what I done. What Spight and I done.’ His voice was wheedling. ‘I’ve a terrible headache … can’t think with this headache.’ He clutched at his forehead, eyes screwed closed in apparent pain, but Will could see a glint of light reflecting from one that had opened slightly and was regarding them slyly.

  ‘No! I’m not giving alcohol to an alcoholic!’

  Their host, Rowena, was a stern-looking woman of about seventy with very erect posture and silver hair tied up in an elaborate knot. Wisps of hair flew free as she shook her head to emphasise her refusal.

  ‘I quite understand how you feel, and in normal circumstances I wouldn’t dream of suggesting it, but these aren’t normal circumstances.’

  Will agreed privately with Rowena, but he was torn. He really wanted to know what the old man knew, in case it helped Mal.

  ‘Ah, the special circumstances defence, I know it well. I’ll have no truck with it, and this is my home.’ Rowena’s tone was unyielding.

  The Major nodded his head and Will supposed that was that. He was astonished when the Major said, ‘Then the only thing we can do, I suppose, is take him with us.’

  Rowena looked as surprised as Will felt. Surely nothing had changed enough that they were ready to leave, something she echoed when she said, ‘You know we aren’t anywhere near that yet.’

  ‘But I am. I’m going to go get Mal out of whatever hell-hole they’ve put him, and if it means giving an old man what he wants in the meantime, to find out what he knows, then I’ll find a way to do that. Tell Merryn he can get hold of me at the barn. We’ll head there when we’ve got the boy.’

  Lips pursed in disapproval, Rowena nodded. ‘I’ll tell him. But if you screw this up for us, Major, you’ll have to live with that.’ She turned on her heel and left the kitchen where they had found her. A couple of young cadets washing up plates in the large sinks across the room looked at each other with raised eyebrows but said nothing. Their looks of disapproval switched to Will and he avoided them by following the Major out. The Major was stomping back across the lawn and Will had to run to catch up. His head was full of questions, but the look on the man’s face put him off voicing them for the moment.

  When they got back to the shed the Major unlocked the door and flung it open.

  ‘Right, you can stay locked up here like a prisoner, with that bottle of water for company, or you can come with us and I’ll see what I can do about getting you a proper drink.’

  The old man jumped up from his lounger, staggered a little, still clutching the blanket. ‘I’m coming with you!’

  ‘I’ll expect you to tell me everything you know about Spight.’

  ‘I’ll do that, but it’ll take a drink or two. It’s a long tale, and not a pretty one.’

  Mrs Mason didn’t come with them, and she also forbade Tom, Dick and Harriet from leaving.

  ‘They can come back with me when we know what we’re doing, and that might just be a few hours, when we’ve heard from everyone. Please, Paul, take your time and think this through.’ She put her hand on the Major’s arm. Will was shocked to hear the Major had a given name.

  The Major shook her off, but gently. He pulled her into a quick hug before stepping back. ‘I’m not going to do anything stupid. You know me better than that, I hope.’

  She gave him a rueful smile. ’I know you well enough to be sure you’ll try.’

  That had been half an hour ago. Now, they were bouncing around in an electric vehicle the Major had ‘borrowed’ from their host, lifting the key fob from a rack by the front door as they left. Apart from the sound of its tyres hissing and throwing back mud on the road it was silent. Travelling on little-used lanes, the Major professed confidence they could make it back to Bodingleigh unnoticed.

  A direct route would take them through villages. Even with the heavy rain keeping people indoors, their passage might be remarked upon, or stopped. The additional distance meant it could be at least another hour before they got back and, as less-used roads received no upkeep, the car’s suspension was already struggling. The old man in the back seat was complaining the bouncing around was making him feel sick. The few hours of sleep Will had managed at the conference table were not enough to have left him feeling rested, and the constant jouncing was making his head pound too. So was the old man’s complaining. It was a relief when the Major drove through an open gateway into a fallow field and switched off the car’s battery. Without the windscreen wipers sweeping away rain the windows were obscured. They wouldn’t see anyone who might creep up on them. Will hoped this wouldn’t take long.

  The Major turned around in his seat to regard their passenger, who blinked back at him.

  ‘Right then, time we had our little talk.’

  ‘You promised me a drink.’

  The Major reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a hip flask. He unscrewed the lid and sniffed at it. The fumes of whisky were strong enough to reach Will and, apparently the old man, who leaned forward and reached out with shaking hands. The Major held the flask out of reach.

  ‘You promised!’ The old man looked to be on the verge of tears.

  Will felt sick, revolted by what they were doing to him. He wanted to cry at the old man’s weakness.

  Some of his feelings seemed to be shared by the Major; his voice was gentle as he said, ‘I’m not h
appy to be doing this. I’m not happy to be exploiting a sickness like this. So, please give us some information on account. Before I hand this over, you go back to ruin, and we can’t make any more sense out of you.’

  The old man looked at them both, blinking. His eyes were watering. He nodded slowly.

  People were being sold off as slaves. It was happening in the place Will had lived, and all over the county of Devon. He, Jeremiah, had been responsible for making collections, as he described them. Picking people up, keeping them locked up, fed and watered, and delivering them to the docks. He said he tried to treat them as well as he could, but he couldn’t always control what went on when he was sleeping, or away on a collection, and sometimes he had returned to find his subordinates mistreating the stock – that was how he described his prisoners – and taking advantage of the younger and prettier ones. He started drinking, and when that didn’t numb him sufficiently and he couldn’t handle it anymore, he’d quit.

  He had known if he told Spight he no longer wanted to work for him, the Mayor might use his family to make him change his mind, so he just walked away one day; walked to the outskirts of Plymouth where he knew he could disappear and find work labouring. He was no longer married, his wife having died in the ‘flu pandemic of ’27, but he still had two children.

  ‘Kids’ll be long grown, might have little uns of they own. S’best I keep away from ’em,’ he mumbled through tears.

  Some time in the last year or so things had become too dangerous in the suburbs, with fires breaking out in the new towns built at the turn of the century, and he started to drift around the city, begging and working for scraps of food or, more often, drink.

  He didn’t drink much whisky; Will reckoned his liver was so soaked it had only taken a few mouthfuls to fill it brimful. When he stopped speaking and slumped back against the headrest, the Major removed the flask from his hand, gently, screwed the top back on and slipped the flask back into his pocket.

  The scale of what they were up against had just multiplied beyond Will’s capacity to calculate. He felt ill.

  ‘How come we don’t know about this? How come everyone doesn’t know?’ he blurted out.

  Jeremiah’s eyes opened blearily as he mumbled, ‘There’s some does, and they just turn a blind eye. Folk go missing, who you gonna tell? Spight? One of the others he controls? If they’ve come from the fat farm, and most does, they’ve been written off already. Family don’t want to know ’em anymore. Too 'shamed of themselves I reckon, and too glad of the extra food and stuff.’

  Primrose. Will was chilled by the thought that perhaps export for slavery was in store for her. If only he had helped her when he could.

  ‘And if it’s kids …’ Here Jeremiah’s breath hitched and he had trouble swallowing. ‘Well, not everyone can feed all the kids they has, or love ’em enough to want to hang on to ’em. Or they lets ’em out to play and they don’t come back. People just disappear sometimes, ’specially somewhere like Plymouth.’ Jeremiah leaned forward and Will recoiled from the stench of his breath. ‘He doesn’t take ’em from everywhere, he’s too smart for that. Places people might ask too many questions, like Bodingleigh, or Longmarsh, he plays it careful. Too smart to shit on his own doorstep, is Spight. If folk there knew what were going on, that might give him personal trouble.’

  ‘But what about the resistance?’ Will asked. ‘How come we … they don’t know?’ They had not spelled out to Jeremiah who they were. Perhaps he had worked it out for himself, but it was safer for everyone that it not be confirmed.

  ‘Ha! Don’t make me laugh. Clueless bunch of do-gooders, the lot of ’em.’

  A hot defence rose in Will’s throat, but the Major coughed and shot him a look that told him to keep his mouth shut, before turning the car on again and backing out of the field.

  Once they were underway, Will asked, ’Where did you get the flask?’

  The Major looked a little ashamed. ‘I pinched it out of Mrs Mason’s pocket. She always carries whisky, for emergencies, but I knew she wouldn’t hand it over once she knew why I wanted it, and I didn’t want to lie.’

  So that was why he had hugged her. Will had been sure there was something more to it than that but supposed he was wrong. He leaned back in his seat, numb to the resumed bouncing around, and wondered where she got her whisky from. Mrs Mason must be connected to have a regular supply of imported alcohol.

  His mind switched to the more urgent matter of mulling over what they had been told. In the back seat, Jeremiah, sang softly to himself. The song sounded sweet, and sad.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ asked Will.

  ‘You heard the man. It’s time the people of Bodingleigh knew what was happening under their noses.’

  ‘And Mal?’

  ‘And it’s time he was rescued.’

  glinting in the shadows

  Organising the logistics of transport and storage had taken some time, but they were ready to start. Fred’s fingers drummed on the rim of the open van window as Dug drove them through the outskirts of Plymouth. It meant the three militia men he’d picked up in Ivybridge, who now sat on the floor in the back, were getting wet, but he liked the way it made him feel; like someone from one of the old action movies in his DVD collection. Badass.

  The streets were twilit but not yet deserted. It was coming up to nine. They had two hours until curfew; they needed to get a move on to be sure of snatching their share of the twenty-five bodies needed.

  The few pedestrians out in the wet streets watched the van pass but without making it obvious. The panel van marked them apart as Spight’s men, and that made people wary. The Mayor had made it very clear no one was to know what they were up to, on pain of becoming part of the shipment, which meant they needed to park up somewhere and proceed on foot.

  He and the other gang leaders had divided the city into five sectors, five people to be taken from each. Fred had chosen to take Stonehouse and Millbay. These had once been known as rough neighbourhoods, before everywhere got rough, but the residents here were more dispirited and less organised than some of the others. Fred’s crew might have to fight to get what they’d come for, but there would be no coordinated response. Perfect. Fred liked to play to his strengths.

  They parked the van at Devil’s Point, in the shadows of the once-exclusive Royal William Yard, converted from Napoleonic barracks at the end of the twentieth century and now a crumbling area of dark alleyways – down which the wind howled in off the Atlantic – and cavernous fortified squats that no one visited after sunset unless they had a death wish or their own nefarious business in mind. Fred left Dug behind the wheel, prepared to come and collect, or to move the van if it started getting the wrong kind of attention, and proceeded with his muscle back towards the westerly end of Union Street. They walked through the rubble of old streets that had burned down or fallen to scouring storms. Dressed in scruffy civilian clothing rather than militia uniform, they looked like any other small feral pack, of which they saw several. Fred ignored them as they ignored him. So long as they didn’t step deliberately on anyone’s toes, they might get away without attracting too much attention. He knew the Mayor would prefer it that way, but part of him, the part that had been roused by the violence he had visited on the insurgent spy, was itching to lash out.

  They found their first target in the shadows of a semi-derelict block on the edge of a housing estate. Much of the building remained intact, although all the entryway doors had been kicked in and hung drunkenly off their hinges if they hadn’t been taken away for firewood. A young man was hurrying towards the westernmost stairwell, alone and hunched up against the rain; otherwise the street was deserted. Silently, Fred signalled to one of his men to head their prey off before he reached the comparative shelter of the estate, while he and the other two blocked his escape. When he became aware of them, the young man began to run, but couldn’t twist out of the way of the hands reaching for his shoulders and pulling him off his feet. Fred smacked h
im over the back of his head with the coin-weighted sock and he went down without a fight, to be slung over a shoulder, while Fred radioed for Dug to come and collect.

  Their next was a twofer. Two young women, no doubt considering themselves safer together, in one of the smaller side streets. One of them produced a knife, handling it in a practised manner. Her friend, instead of staying close, backed away in panic and tried to run for it, only to have her feet swept away from under her by a scything size eleven boot. Distracted, her protector lost the knife to a swift kick from Fred. Shrieking and clutching her broken wrist, she put up little more resistance besides screaming obscenities at them, until Fred punched her, and she went down hard.

  Two to go.

  *

  When no one showed up at the bunker within twenty-four hours, Spight assumed that somehow the rebels now knew he had invaded their HQ and taken their man. Swallowing his rage, he told Dorcas there was a chance someone would come to rescue the prisoner, but she was to tell her staff nothing, and, while the door to the larder should remain locked, the door should not be guarded. Similarly, he kept the perimeter around the bunker loose.

  Let the idiots think he was too caught up in arrangements for his shipment to have proper security in place. Not that it wasn’t close to the truth. Keeping on top of updates from his subordinates in Plymouth was time-consuming, and he’d lost key personnel to the captaining of the raids. Bob wasn’t much use to him, having turned up late, looking tired and pale. Spight hoped the man wasn’t coming down with something, or forgetting to take his medication; he needed him at his side, focused. In the meantime, he’d sent him to the kitchen to fetch some supper, while Spight sat with his satellite phone and a walkie-talkie at the ready, in Dorcas’s poorly lit and cramped study, hastily scrawled notes spread out on the desk before him as he kept tabs on his different teams. The last of the day drained away into an early dusk brought on by the storm lashing the trees. Rain battered against the window.