Department 19: Battle Lines

For Sarah,

who knew what writers were like, but managed to look past it

The earth had a single light afar,

A flickering, human pathetic light,

That was maintained against the night,

It seemed to me, by the people there,

With a Godforsaken brute despair.

Robert Frost

We seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways; into a whole world of dark and dreadful things.

Jonathan Harker

Table of Contents

From
: Office of the Director of the Joint Intelligence Committee

Subject
: Revised classifications of the British governmental departments

Security
: TOP SECRET

In the village of Crowthorne is an alarm.

A direct copy of a World War Two air-raid siren, it is bright red, and sits atop a pole two metres above the ground.

The alarm is connected by an underground network of wires to Broadmoor Hospital, the sprawling estate of red-brick buildings that sits above the village, and which is home to almost three hundred of the United Kingdom’s most dangerous, damaged citizens.

It is designed to alert anyone within a twenty-five-mile radius to an escape from the hospital, and has been sounded only five times in earnest in more than fifty years.

Ben Dawson had been asleep for about forty-five minutes when the siren burst into life. He jerked up from a dream about sleep, the kind of long, deep, uninterrupted sleep that had been impossible in the six weeks since Isla was born, and felt his wife raise her head slowly from her pillow.

“The baby OK?” she slurred.

“It’s not Isla,” he replied. “It’s the siren.”

“Siren?”

“The bloody Broadmoor siren,” he snapped. It was deafening, a two-tone scream that made his chest tighten with anger.

“What time is it?” asked Maggie, forcing her eyes open and looking at him.

Ben flicked on his bedside lamp, wincing as the light hit his eyes, and checked the clock.

“Quarter to four,” he groaned.

Not fair,
he thought.
It’s just not fair.

Then he heard a second sound, in between the peals of the alarm; a high, determined crying from the room above their bedroom. Ben swore and swung his legs out from under the duvet.

“Stay there,” said Maggie, pushing herself to the edge of the bed. “It’s my turn.”

Ben slid his feet into his trainers and pulled a jumper over his head. “You see to Isla. I’m going outside, see if anyone else is awake.”

“OK,” said Maggie, stumbling through the bedroom door. She was barely awake, moving with the robotic lurch of new parents everywhere. Ben heard her footsteps on the stairs, heard her begin to gently shush their daughter.

Ben felt no fear at the sound of the siren. He had been up to the hospital several times, had seen the electric fences and the gateposts and the sturdy buildings themselves, and was not the slightest bit concerned about the possibility of a breakout. There had been several, over the years; the escape of John Straffen in 1952, who had climbed over the wall while on cleaning duties in the yard and murdered a young girl from Farley Hill, was the reason the siren system had been built. But the last time anyone had made it out had been almost twenty years ago, and security had been increased and expanded since then. Instead, as he stomped down the stairs towards the front door, knowing the baby was already awake so it didn’t matter, what Ben was mainly feeling was frustration.

The last six weeks had been nothing like the parenting books had suggested, or as their friends had described. He had expected to be tired, expected to be grumpy and stressed, but nothing had prepared him for how he actually felt.

He was utterly, physically, exhausted.

Isla was beautiful, and he felt things he had never felt before when he looked at her;
that
part was exactly as advertised, he had been glad to realise. But she cried, loudly and endlessly. He and Maggie took it in turns to go and check on her, to warm bottles or burp her or just rock her in their arms. Eventually, her eyes would flutter closed, and they would place her back in her cot, and creep back to their own bed. If they were lucky, they might get two hours of uninterrupted sleep before the crying began again.

Ben shoved open the front door. The night air was warm and still, and the siren was much louder outside. He walked out on to the narrow cobbled street and saw lights on in the majority of his neighbours’ homes. As he lit a cigarette from the pack he kept for emergencies, like when he had been woken up for the third time before it was even four o’clock, doors began to open and pale figures in pyjamas and dressing gowns began to appear.

“What on earth is going on?” demanded one of the figures, a large, broad man with a huge, bald dome of a head that gleamed in the light. “Why doesn’t someone turn it off?”

Charlie Walsh lived next door to Ben and Maggie. Ben glanced at him as he made his way over, then returned his gaze to the hill above the village. The hulking shape of the hospital was visible as a distant black outline in the centre of a faint yellow glow.

“I don’t think you can,” Ben replied. “I’m pretty sure you can only turn it off at the hospital.”

“Then maybe someone should go up there and see what’s happening?”

“Maybe someone should,” replied Ben.

“All right then,” said Charlie. “I’ll come with you.”

Ben stared at his neighbour. He wanted nothing more than to go back upstairs, wrap his pillow round his head, and wait for the terrible ringing to stop. But that was now no longer an option.

“Fine,” he snapped, and strode back into his house to grab the car keys from the table in the hall.