by Fiona Shaw
After a while, Ollie joined him, and they sat together on the bench listening to the dark sea. The village was very quiet. A van roaring down a street nearby almost had them both out of their seats and running for cover when they stopped, remembering.
–We’re in Scotland, Ollie said, breathing hard. –No hub police.
They sat down again and went on watching the cat.
–A doctor’s coming tomorrow to see Cass, Ollie said. –And there’s going to be a team coming to speak to the rest of us. From Edinburgh.
The cat moved into the shadows by the wall. It crouched, quivering, ready to pounce.
–A team?
–It’s what Cathleen said. She didn’t say what it meant.
But Jake knew what Ollie was saying.
They’d done it. Crossed the border, escaped from England. That was all they’d dreamed of, for all these weeks, what they’d risked their lives for. That’s what Martha had died for, and Jet was probably dying for, and Aliya sacrificed herself for. And now grown-ups were taking control. Taking over.
So what would happen to their gang?
Nobody could answer these questions. He’d gone to bed with them still in his head. They all had.
Outside, the birds had started up. Jake watched a line of light dance across the ceiling. The priest and Cathleen were talking in the kitchen still, first her voice, then his, then hers again. A steady thread of sound, comfortable, familiar.
As the day came, slowly the room emerged. The others were still sleeping, Ollie and Davie and Poacher. A sofa, a black stove, in the corner a TV screen. There were shelves above Jake’s head, lined with books. Photos too, old ones. Cathleen as a young woman with friends; with her parents, maybe; holding hands with a young man, not much older than Poacher, Jake guessed.
Something about the young man was familiar, and he peered closer.
–Oh, he said, because it was the priest.
The priest cooked them porridge for breakfast. There was maple syrup and cream to pour into it. They all ate ravenously while Cathleen explained what would happen when the team of intelligence agents arrived.
–It’s called interrogation, she said. They’ll probably talk to us first. Then you. They’ll ask you a lot of questions. They have to, so they’re sure they understand things properly. So they can work out what to do.
–We can tell them what they gotta do, Davie said.
–It’s not as simple as that, Cathleen said. –But you don’t have to answer anything that you don’t want to. I’ll be in the room with you, or Angus–
–Angus? said Ollie.
–That’s me, said the priest. Father Angus to you.
So then they all said their names. It was safe to, now. The priest shook hands with all of them, saying, –Pleased to meet you, Poacher; or –Pleased to meet you, Davie. Which was strange, after the night, but he looked like he really meant it.
–So, as I was saying, Cathleen said when the introductions were over, –in the interrogation, one of us will be there with you to make sure you’re OK.
The doctor arrived for Cass. She came with her doctor’s bag and a kind, serious, doctor face and she smiled at the rest of them before she followed Swift upstairs. When she came down again, her face was more serious, and she spoke for a while on a mobile. After that, she checked the gang all out, one by one, listened to their lungs and their hearts and put a strong cuff around their arms and pumped it up, asked them to show her any bruises or cuts and shook her head over what they showed her. Got some medicine out of her bag for Davie’s cough.
–I’m asking no questions about how you got here, she said, –but … and Jake saw tears in her eyes. She blinked them away. –Plenty of rest, good food, some sunshine if we can manage it here in bonny Scotland, she continued. –That’s all you need. Stay brave.
The team came soon after. A roar in the sky, louder and louder, and Cathleen calling to them all to stay inside. Poacher slumped on the sofa while Ollie, Jake, Swift and Davie watched through the front-room window. They came in a helicopter, four of them, in dark suits with dark glasses and short hair. The helicopter landed in the open space near Jake’s bench, whipping the grass flat, and the team jumped down and ran below the blades and over to the house.
They came with identical rucksacks and they didn’t smile. One ran round to the back of the house, and one stayed outside the front door. Jake realized, with a tremble in his stomach, that she wore body armour and had a gun. The other two came inside.
Davie peered round the door into the kitchen. –They’re, like, padded out with gear, he whispered. –A woman and a man. One’s got a holdall, one’s got a briefcase. The bloke’s huge. He hasn’t got any neck. An’ the woman’s got studs up her ear.
–No-Neck and Studs. That’s what we can call them, Jake said. He felt better, giving them nicknames. Made them less scary.
–My mum used to have studs in her ear, Ollie said. –Four of them. She’d twizzle one when she was reading, or watching TV.
Father Angus came in. –They want Jake, he said.
–On my own? Jake said.
–It should be all of us, or none, Ollie said. –That’s right, isn’t it, Poacher?
–Should be, if we’re Outwalkers. But we ain’t outside now. We’re inside. Different rules.
–They want Jake on his own, Father Angus repeated.
In the kitchen, Studs was tapping something on a pad. She had short blonde hair and she still wore her sunglasses, though the sun wasn’t shining in the kitchen. No-Neck was pulling things out of the holdall. Davie was right; he was built like a boulder.
On the kitchen table were the notes Jake had made of Aliya’s memo, and the disc from Jet’s collar. At the other end of the kitchen, Cathleen had her back to the room, making tea.
When Studs looked up, Jake saw the surprise on her face.
–Blimey. You really are a kid, she said. –Better be something good. Your call got us up in the middle of the fricking night.
–Siddown, No-Neck said to Jake, and he swung a kitchen chair on to the middle of the floor. Jake sat on it, his back to Cathleen, facing Studs.
Studs looked down at her pad again. –Introductions, she said. –I’m Jill. He’s Jack. Your name is Jacob Riley, she said.
Jake nodded.
–Please say so then. For the record.
–My name is Jacob Riley, Jake said.
–Right. Here’s how it goes. We decide what’s important, and we ask the questions. You answer them. Got it? Studs’s voice was clipped, like she didn’t want to waste any breath.
–Yeah, Jake said, but he wondered what he’d done wrong already.
–Our time is precious, Studs said, picking up the disc. She bit her nails, Jake noticed. –We’ve been ordered to drop vital tasks back in Edinburgh to fly down here today, thanks to your friend here, calling in her favour last night. So while I question you, my colleague is going to evaluate this disc. She looked down at her pad, then up again. –Ms Cathleen Dewey will stay in here with us, but she will not participate in the interrogation.
–Actually I will, if I need to. Cathleen’s voice was steely behind him. –Whatever you think, we have a duty of care under Scottish law towards this boy, both of us. And I won’t hesitate to suspend the interrogation if he asks me to. Or if I judge you to be breaching the law.
Jake saw Studs’s eyebrows go up a bit. –Fine, she said. She leaned in towards No-Neck, whispering. Jake had butterflies in his stomach. He looked round at Cathleen.
–All right? she mouthed, and he nodded.
No-Neck took the disc and his holdall into Cathleen’s utility room and shut the door. Studs scrolled on her pad, reading through something. It was quiet in the kitchen. Cathleen set cups of tea on the table in front of them; she’d put sugar in Jake’s, and the sweetness startled him.
Studs questioned him for about half an hour – Jake could see the time tick by on the kitchen clock. Sometimes she let him finish his answer, others she cut him
off with the next question. The Home Academy, how had he escaped? Any others with him? How had he found the gang? How had he evaded the hub police? How did they cut out the hub chip? Did he still have it? On and on, the questions went. What about his parents? What did he know about their jobs? When did they die? How did they die?
–In a car. But not an accident, he said. He shut his eyes and he saw them again, their faces against the car window. –An ‘incident’.
–Have you killed anyone? Studs sounded bored, uninterested. –Where did you hide the disc? How did you meet the girl? How did you know who she was? When did she give you the memo details?
Jake felt dizzy. His fingers, his legs were tingling. He made fists to dig his nails into his palms, to bring his mind clear again. He answered her questions as best he could, but his head was in another place. He was on the floor in the Home Academy hall again, the Headteacher’s voice dinning into his brain, and lots of other voices were dinning too. Mrs Hadley’s, and the Food Bank woman, and Scar woman, and the ticker tape, and the newsreaders. Not your home. Not your home. Disgusting, lowlife scum.
Studs’s voice drove on, mercilessly. How did you get to the border? Names, please. Places, please. But you escaped, didn’t you? And you escaped again? How many hubbers chasing you? How many?
–Stop! Enough! Cathleen marched down the kitchen and stood between Jake and Studs. –He’s a child, for god’s sake. Look at him. What are you accusing him of? Or any of them?
Studs scrolled back on the pad. –You tell me, she said quietly. –This is what I’ve heard so far. Over the last month or so this gang of children has travelled the whole way up England without any phones, or other tech, or money. They’ve evaded hubbers, stolen Coalition top-secret info, and killed three hub police, plus a helicopter pilot and a security guard. Accurate so far?
–We didn’t kill the secca. He fell off an escalator, Jake said. –And the hubber on the MailRail—
–All right. Studs interrupted him. –I’m not concerned with the rights and wrongs. Just whether these people died.
–Yeah, Jake said in a quiet voice. –They did. And Martha died too.
Studs ignored this. –Then yesterday. Our intel was telling us—
–Your what? Cathleen said.
–Our intel. Intelligence. According to our information, Berwick was locked down yesterday evening. Completely roadblocked and flooded with hub police. We’ve only seen that once before along the border. For a major political fugitive. So we knew something big was kicking off over there. Miraculously your little gang gets in to Berwick and you manage to find somebody, a priest no less, to skipper a fishing boat to get you over the border, out of the clutches of the hub police?
Her voice went up at the end of the last sentence, and it sounded like a question. So Jake answered her.
–He found us more than we found him. We were in the church garden. You should ask him.
–Oh, we will, Studs said. –Don’t worry.
She swiped to a different page, took a sip of water.
–To sum up, she said, –English surveillance is second to none. Hub chips, CCTV, a vigorous and well-trained hub police force. England’s borders are extremely – aggressively – well-policed. The New Wall is virtually impassable from the south. And yet, here you are, six of you, and you’re children. You’ve made it over the border on the first time of asking and you’re all in one piece.
Jake said nothing. It did sound a bit unlikely, the way she said it, but he didn’t understand why she didn’t believe him.
–So, Studs said, –to be plain, we’re wondering if this little gang, and in particular you, Jacob Riley, had some assistance from on high. And I don’t mean from God.
–You’re saying Jake is a spy, Cathleen said, –aren’t you? You’re saying they’re all spies, the whole gang …
Studs pushed her pad away from her and sat back in her chair.
Cathleen leaned forward now. –And that’s why you’re being so aggressive with this child. That’s why you’re treating him like he’s guilty. Like he’s the bad one …
Studs put a hand up. –Not spies. More like stooges.
–A stooge? Jake said.
–They’ve risked everything, Cathleen said. –One of them killed, another captured, and you’re treating them like they’re evil. Like they’re on a mission to destroy us.
–Stooges are people, kids in your case, set up as fall guys, Studs said. –You’ve been briefed for your mission and sent over by the Coalition to provoke us into action. Her voice was even and Jake noticed that she didn’t correct anything else Cathleen said.
Jake stared at her. She thought the gang were her enemies. How could she believe that? They’d told her what had happened.
Her voice drilled into him, with its calm, reasonable, horrible words. –Because who would suspect a boy? she went on. –You fooled the priest. Disillusioned with his Coalition government, he was desperate to believe you. Jumped at the chance, didn’t he? To help you? And after all, who would suspect a gang of kids? It’s like children being used as suicide bombers …
Jake tried to keep his face calm, but inside he was boiling with anger and with despair. He’d lost so much, his heart just felt hollow. His mum and dad murdered, Martha dead. Jet wounded and still in England. Aliya captured and sent back to London, to her mother. And this woman was telling him he was part of a Coalition plot. That they all were.
Studs was still talking. –So we’d take action. Bomb their facility, probably. Only way to know we’d stopped it. And then the English Coalition would have all the excuses it needed to retaliate. And it would do that with full force. All those thousands working in the so-called fracking fields, and so-called picking fields, trained up, weaponed up. Ready to strike north and take Scotland back. They’ve wanted to do that for years. Decades …
There was a noise from the utility room, like a roaring shout, and the door was wrenched open, and No-Neck came pounding into the kitchen, breathless, and slapped something down on the kitchen table in front of her.
–You gotta listen to this disc, he said. –Now.
Forty-six
–Watch the news tonight, guys, said Studs before the team left.
So they all crammed into Cathleen’s tiny living room, three of them squashed on the sofa, Jake and Ollie on the floor, Ollie’s long legs folded up beneath him. Even Cass came down to watch, sitting on Swift’s lap. Jake didn’t know if she’d changed in the last day, or if it was just that he was looking at her properly for the first time, now they’d crossed the border and stopped running. But he saw how her eyes were far too big for her face and he saw the dark rings beneath her eyes, and he saw how pale she was. So pale, it was like you could see through to her bones.
He gave her Jet’s collar to hold.
On the screen, a slick newswoman, checking her pad. Then she looked out to the camera.
Tonight, in breaking news, a successful drone strike on a secret scientific and military complex across the English border. We hope to have a statement from the Defence Minister.
–Yo! Davie was on his feet, and Ollie too, shouting at the screen. –Yo! That was us! Outwalkers are top!
–Keep it down, Poacher said. –Watch.
And there it was, filmed from above, a line of low, white buildings on fire. The camera zoomed in and they saw fire engines spraying water, and flames that leaped to the sky.
Over the top of the footage, the presenter’s voice went on:
It is believed that new intelligence led to the targeting of this facility in the south-west of England. Satellite images suggest that the strike was successful in destroying the facility entirely, and with the fire spreading to all parts within minutes, loss of life cannot be ruled out. Fire crews were unable to reach the fire quickly due to the extreme security surrounding it.
An initial statement from the Scottish Foreign Office denies Scottish agency in the drone strike, though it states that the Scottish government had recently become aware
of a “very real threat” posed by the facility. For this reason, the Foreign Office statement says it cannot, at this time, condemn the action, though Foreign Secretary Hamish Alexander says that of course any loss of life is regrettable, and he is aware that the action will carry serious international consequences.
We will bring any updates as they occur. And we will return to this story later in the programme when we will have the Defence Minister here to respond to events. Meanwhile, in other news …
Cathleen turned the volume down. Poacher turned to Swift and high-fived her, and Ollie and Davie were on their feet again, jumping up and down.
–We did that, Poacher said. –That drone strike, it was down ter us. Our gang. Jake? he said. –That was you!
–Yeah, Jake said. He tried to smile. It was good, wasn’t it? That they’d destroyed the Co-Labs, and the nano-microchip vaccine that wasn’t a vaccine, and the ways to switch people on and off, like his parents had said. So why did he feel so bad?
–You’ve started something much bigger than you know, Father Angus said. –Bigger than this drone strike. You’ve started something for the English people.
–They’ll blame it all on Scotland, or lowlifers, or these kids. They’ll say it’s destroyed their ability to protect their people, not their ambition to control them, Cathleen said. –Your Coalition will slam the lid on this so hard the whole island will shake.
–They will. Father Angus nodded. –But I don’t think the English people will believe them this time.
Jake pulled off his hoodie. His cheeks were burning. He knew why he felt bad, and he wished he could just sink into the ground. He wanted all of this to end. Or never to have begun.
–You all right? Cathleen said.
–I’ve been there, Jake said quietly. –In that building.
He could feel Cathleen’s stare. –The one on fire? she said.
–Yeah. Those pictures on the screen … I could see my parents’ lab. The windows: they had flames coming out of them. My dad got special permission for me on ‘Take your kids to work’ day. And their assistant, Jade, she made me hot chocolate in the laboratory kitchen. She gave me a Curly-Wurly to dip in it.