Strangled Silence (26 page)

Mrs Hilary Atkinson seemed to suffer from
abysmally bad luck, as Amina was soon to
discover. And being mugged wasn't the half of it.
When she answered the door of her maisonette – a
well-tended little seventies affair with window boxes
on the ledges and hanging plants on either side
of the door – she was squinting out through a black
eye that wouldn't have looked out of place after a
heavyweight title fight. The black was fading into
a purple, its stain of yellow spreading well beyond
the main lump. Amina almost winced when she
saw it.

'The swellin's gone down a bi' now,' Mrs
Atkinson said, spotting Amina's reaction. 'Me 'ead
woz the size of a wa'ermelon las' week. I woz
chewin' parace'amol like they was Smar'ies. If my
son ever gets 'is 'ands on the little snots who done
this, they'll wish they was never born, I tell yah. You
Marie then?'

'My name's Amina, Amina Mir. I'm afraid
Marie couldn't make it because of the alerts at the
airport, but she asked me to come in her place.
I'd very much like to hear your story, Mrs
Atkinson.'

'Right then. Come on in. Kettle's on.'

The house was comfortable in a worn, old-fashioned
way that would have reminded half the
adults in the country of their mother's place. Bad
watercolours of birds hung in the hall; in the sitting
room were pictures of children or grandchildren,
and over the fireplace, a picture in a laminated
frame of two cockerels woven out of some kind of
fabric. The furniture was old but well cared for, and
the ornately patterned carpets and wallpaper could
not have been bought in this country in the last
twenty years.

'The muggin' was just the icin' on the cake,
really,' Mrs Atkinson began as soon as they sat down
to a tray of tea and biscuits and a mineral water for
Amina. 'Those kids've bin actin' up for the last
couple o' years. Most of it was just mischief to start
wiv; smashin' windahs or lettin' air out of people's
tyres an' all 'at. Y'know, just playin' up. But lately it's
bin gettin'worse. I woz onto the bill abou' 'em, but
they're just too busy wha' wiv all the drug dealers
and people smugglers an' the terrorists an 'at. My
sister's eldest, Jimmy – lovely boy – is a copper, an'
he spends all 'is time fillin' out bleedin' forms. I ask
yah, is 'at wha' it's all abou'?'

Amina shook her head. She should have asked
Mrs Atkinson questions to keep her focused,
but found she was enjoying the old woman's banter.

'So I was walkin' along the alley, and I sees
these two li'l snots comin' towards me. An' I knows
I'm in trouble, 'cos they're the same two who
smashed all me garden gnomes last year and Maryacross-the-road
says they're bad seeds and they're
sproutin' into right li'l villains and them not even
sixteen. They did 'er gnomes an' all, an' I'm sure
they was the ones who set fire to me shed in the
winter just gone. Li'l snots! Mind you, it was
the warmest I got that winter, what with the
pittance they giv yah for fuel allowance these days.
My next-door neighbour froze to death a year ago!
Can you believe 'at?
Hypothermia
they call it, but it's
a fancy word for
freezin
' to death if y'ask me. Who'd
a thought it in this day and age? Sometimes I shiver
so much me dentures sound like a pair of woodpeckers
goin' at it!'

Amina resisted the urge to look at her watch.
She took a sip of water and continued to listen,
letting the old dear get to the point in her own
good time.

'Mind you, the 'eat can be as bad! Y'know how
many people died in the 'eatwave last year? Nearly
three thousand! Know how many were killed by
terrorists? None. But you didn't see the army out
surroundin' old people's 'ouses and fannin' 'em to
keep 'em cool, did yah? Hear all the politicians on
the radio talkin' about keepin' us safe? Y'know what
would keep me safe?
Air conditionin'
!'

She stopped long enough to take a sip of her
tea. Amina knew there would be very few people in
the world who would be allowed to make Mrs
Atkinson tea using that teapot. It would have to be
done just so.

'So I'm in the alley and I can see the two li'l
snots comin' towards me. And it's only about seven
in the evenin' but it's already dark under the trees
and the council's been promisin' to put lights
on 'at path ever since my
brother
was mugged
there two years previous, but of course they 'aven't.
So then . . . sure you won't 'ave some tea,
love?'

'No, thanks,' Amina replied with a polite smile.

'Suit yourself. Never saw the appeal in drinkin'
plain wa'er meself. So then, these two boys come
up – 'oods up, you know the way – and they ask
me if I 'ave any fags and I tell 'em I don't. I
gave 'em up after I caught pneumonia a few
years ago.

'So then they laugh and ask me for me 'andbag.
And I tell 'em they're not 'avin' it.'

Mrs Atkinson took a sip of her tea, her hand
shaking only slightly.

'And . . and then they started 'ittin' me. Really
'ard, like, and I'm on the ground in no time and
they're
kickin
' me. Then one o' the li'l snots stops
and takes out 'is phone – y'know the ones with the
cameras?'

Amina nodded, swallowing as she felt her
throat tighten.

'An' 'e
films
it!' Mrs Atkinson's voice shook. 'It
was the last thing I saw – 'im lookin' at me on the
. . . the . . . the li'l screen on 'is phone an' gigglin'
away to 'isself.'

She didn't cry, but Amina could see the effort it
was taking to hold it in.

'And they were arrested?' she prompted gently.
'You told Marie that the police picked the two boys
up the following day?'

'Course they did,' the old lady quavered.
'Kids 'adn't a brain between 'em. Tried to use me
pension book, didn't they? Said they were collectin'
it for their granny. Idiots. As if that pension's
worth a damn anyway, since the fund collapsed.
Know what the li'l snots said when they were
nicked?'

She sniffed and then started laughing –
high-pitched, almost hysterical laughter, and Amina
didn't know whether to smile or not.

'You know wha' . . . ha-ha-ha . . . wha' they
said? They . . ha-ha . . . they said, "Wasn't our fault!
We're just products of the system. We never 'ad a
chance!"'

Her laughter stopped abruptly, and an
expression of what could have been pity settled on
her features.

'Still, it could be worse, I suppose. Not everyone's
'ad my good fortune. You seen those ol' dears
livin' in their bombed-out ruins in Sinnostan?
Gawd love 'em. Some people have the worst
luck.'

Biology was taught on
MindFeed
using a shoot-'emup
game. You had to name the parts of the body as
you blasted them. There was an alternative that
taught the science using first aid instead, if you
weren't of the trigger-happy mentality. Tariq went
straight for the guns.

The enemy soldiers came thick and fast and the
crosshairs could pick out chinks in their body
armour, but you had to choose the name of the
body part from a drop-down list. Tariq was among
the best in the class at this and he was revelling in
his new-found expertise. His hands danced nimbly
across the keyboard, blasting one target after
another. He wished he had a proper cordless
controller handset like he had at home, but the
school's computers weren't set up for games . . . yet.
If there was one thing he knew about the military,
it was that they knew how to spend money on
hardware.

His hair was long enough, with his shirt collar
turned up, to hide his earphones. As he gunned his
way through the virtual city street, Absent
Conscience thudded in his ears.

'
You said I was your guiding star/But I'll be daylight
to your vampire's heart/Say you love me while you
suck me dry/So I'll burn your soul and your poisoned
lies . .
.'

Tariq finished his game and got ready to start a
new one. First he had to do the hand-to-eye coordination
test, tapping the arrow buttons as the
two squares on the screen flashed up alternate lights
and patterns. He turned off the music because he
couldn't concentrate enough with it on. There was
a sound element to the test now too; a beep you
had to react to whenever you heard it.

He had just completed the test when he heard
cackling from a group of the guys at the other end
of the room. There were thirty terminals in four
rows, but some of the others were empty as Noble
and his mates had gathered around a single screen.
Lieutenant Scott was not in today. Mr Quinn, the
Biology teacher, was sitting at a desk by the door,
engrossed in a science magazine. Unlike some of
the other teachers, he did not resent the intrusion
of this military project into the school curriculum.
As far as he was concerned, the less time he had to
spend trying to drum facts into the heads of obtuse
students the better.

There was more cackling, and Tariq caught a
few sidelong glances his way. It was smarter just to
ignore them, but he put his game on pause and
stood up.

'Can I go to the toilet, sir?' he asked the
teacher.

'Mm-hmm,' Quinn replied without looking
up.

Tariq walked towards the door, passing the
gang of four boys crowding round Noble's terminal
as he did. He stopped when he saw what was on the
screen.

Now he knew why they had held him down a
few days ago and taken his picture with their
phones. The enemy soldiers charging towards them
on the screen all wore Tariq's face. They even had a
grimacing one for when the shots struck. Noble
was proving to be an apt student of Biology, blasting
away one Tariq after another. The boys gave an
extra cheer when any of the charging figures were
hit in the face.

Tariq watched from behind them, completely
unnoticed. Suddenly, he really did need to go to the
toilet. Suddenly, he needed to be on his own. His
breath rasped through gritted teeth as he walked
down the corridor.

Chi got home not long before Ivor was due. He
went through his normal routine of sweeping
the place for bugs, then laid out a bowl of food for
Roswell, whistling to her to come in from the
garden. She sauntered through the cat-flap and
brushed back and forth between his legs, indicating
that she would eat when she was good and ready.
He loved her contemptuous manner.

The terror alert at the London airports was all
over the news. The rumour was that the authorities
had picked up email traffic about a possible attack on
planes landing or taking off around the city. A simple
surface-to-air missile fired from the shoulder could
bring down any commercial airliner. The airports had
been surrounded by troops, tanks and armoured
cars. Helicopter gunships swooped overhead.
Nobody was quite sure what all this heavy armour
was supposed to achieve, but it was an intimidating
sight.

Chi watched the reports on his PC as he
waited for Ivor. A correspondent was describing the
frustration of the people trapped in the airports
until their planes could be given clearance to take
off, when the doorbell rang. Chi kept one ear on
the television as he went out into the hall, punched
a code into the alarm and opened the door to let
Ivor in. But one look at his guest's face made him
forget the news broadcast.

'I need you to turn that off,' Ivor told him, as
they walked into the study. 'There's something
you're going to want to hear.'

And then Ivor began to relate the flashback he
had experienced in the hospital. Chi listened in rapt
fascination as the story unwound – about Ivor
waking up in the military hospital, escaping from
the orderlies and finding himself in the
medical/strategy room, surrounded by surgical
staff. As Ivor told of his recapture and the patchy
memories he had of the hours of conditioning in
the isolation tank, Chi could not hide the smile that
crept across his face.

'And all because you lost a tooth they didn't
know about,' he chuckled. 'Bloody hell, Ivor. This
blows this thing wide open! And you're sure you
saw Shang?'

'It's hard to be certain.' Ivor shrugged. 'Maybe
my mind was just putting his face there, 'cos it fitted
. . . I don't know. But I'm pretty sure all of this is
what got buried under the false memories. It's all
still a bit woolly. I don't know what I was doing
there, or what the story was with the roulette
wheel.'

'Shang's a roulette fiend – he spends a fortune
on it,' Chi replied. 'It's in his book.'

'OK, but what . . .' Ivor's fingers went unconsciously
to his right eye. 'What's it all for? Jesus,
you don't think I was a stake in some kind of
twisted casino gig, do you? That's all I need: I lose
my eye 'cos some rich old fart was using me as a
gambling chip.'

'I don't know,' Chi said, lost in thought. 'It's
hard to be sure, but like I said before, it's one of two
things. Either they're brainwashing you to make
you
forget
something, or to make you
do
something.
I'm still trying to figure out the UFO angle in all of
this—'

'Oh, for God's sake, Chi!' Ivor snapped,
suddenly losing his patience. 'When are you ever
going to give up on that crap? Get serious, will you!
We're not living in the bloody
X-Files
here.'

Chi glared back at him for a moment, saying
nothing. If Ivor wanted to see 'serious', then maybe
it was time to show him. Chi hadn't trusted
anybody but Nexus with knowledge of his prize
possession, but this was as good a time as any to test
it on Ivor.

'Stay here,' Chi said. 'I'll be back in a minute.'

Striding out into the kitchen, he knelt down
and opened the pots cupboard. Taped into the lid of
an old coffee percolator was Gierek's badge. The
real one. The badge Chi had given him had been
a copy. It wasn't difficult: the badge was simply a
blank chrome-plated disc about five centimetres in
diameter with a safety pin set into the back. Chi
pinned it onto the right breast of his black
MEGADETH
T-shirt and walked back into the study.

Ivor was watching the news on the computer
screen and did not look up immediately. When he
did, his first response was one of utter shock. His
second reaction was a wild punch that caught Chi
on the cheek and knocked him back against the
doorframe. Ivor hit him again, nearly dislocating his
jaw. Two more blows landed before Chi could pull
the badge off his T-shirt and hold up his hands.

'Stop! Agh! Stop! It's just me! Let me explain!'

Ivor grabbed him by his hair and dragged him
across to the desk. There was a letter opener in a
cup with some pens and Ivor seized it and pressed
the point against Chi's throat.

'It better be a
good
explanation. If you're one of
them . . .'

He didn't finish the threat. He didn't have to.

'I'm not, all right?' Chi protested, holding up
the metal disc. 'It's the badge. Gierek caught one of
his watchers once and pulled this off his jacket. This
is what's making you see . . . what you're seeing.'

Ivor looked at the chrome badge as if he'd only
just noticed it. He took it off Chi and held it up to
the light. He was wincing and pressing his hand
against his side as if he was in pain, but he didn't say
anything about it. Looking back at Chi's face, he
frowned in thought.

'What did you see?' Chi asked, with a hungry
expression.

'Your face . . . it was blank. I could only see
your eyes. It was like you were one of the Scalps.'

'It's the badge,' Chi said breathlessly. 'I think it
may be alien technology. It looks innocent enough
– there's no visible circuitry, or . . . or transmitter –
even under a microscope – but it's definitely sending
out some kind of signal. I think anybody who's
been through the same process as you can pick up
that signal – maybe they've put an implant in your
brain that can read it – and it makes you unable to
see the face of someone wearing this badge. It's like
it gives you a blind spot. To anybody else, it just
looks like a blank chrome disc.'

Ivor was still staring at the object with a
mixture of amazement and confusion.

'What if it's much simpler than that?' he said
softly. 'I couldn't see the badge when you were
wearing it. What if I've just been programmed with
some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion? When I see
the badge, I'm supposed to block out the person's
face and the badge itself.'

Chi opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish
for a moment, his heart sinking.

'I never thought of that,' he admitted. 'Damn.
Damn, I thought I finally had some proof that there
was something out there.'

'You have,' Ivor replied, pinning the badge back
on Chi's chest and regarding him with an unsettled
expression. 'You've proof that somebody out there's
been messing with my head. I . . . I can't see your
face, man. This is scaring the shit out of me. But
why would anybody do this? I mean, I can't tell
who you are, but I can see you've got no face! It's
not exactly subtle.'

'Maybe that's part of the plan,' Chi sniffed.
'Creating a myth. Can I take this off now? You're
looking at me funny.'

'Huh! Look who's talkin'.'

Amina's mind was whirling when she returned to
the newsroom. The place was quiet; only a few
people were at their desks. Everybody was still out
covering the alert at the airports. She wondered
how many other stories like Mrs Atkinson's weren't
getting written today because of the terrorist alerts.
Then she wondered how often this happened. She
remembered what Ivor had said:'War is loud. If you
want to distract people's attention from something,
there's nothing better than a bit of death and glory.'

She wished she could call him up – just chat to
him. There was so much to talk about and her
friends would never understand. They wouldn't
even believe half of it. It was a lonely feeling.

The War for Liberty made the news in some
form every day. It was big, scary and affected everyone.
Their very way of life was under threat, or so
they were always being told. The terrorists were out
to get the people of Britain simply because they
were trying to impose peace on some of the most
troubled regions in the world. The more she
thought about it, the more it seemed like the plot
of some Hollywood action thriller – evil villains
with paper-thin motives of world domination
threatening the peace-loving democracy. She
thought about Mrs Atkinson again and how her
story had been eclipsed by a bolder life-and-death
drama and asked herself what other stories were
being blotted out.

Chi had said Ivor's brainwashing had to have
one of two purposes: to cover up something that he
had seen or done, or to programme him to carry
out some task at some point in the future. But what
if he was only partly right? What if the cover-up
was still going on? Maybe the whole war was a
diversion to hide something that was going on in
Sinnostan?

Once again, Amina was struck by how little she
knew about the country. It was constantly in the
news, but she didn't know anyone except Ivor who
had been there – or at least had been outside the
safe areas – since the war had started. Any reporters
who didn't travel with the military had to get their
news from local Sinnostani reporters who risked
their lives going into the isolated mountain regions
where the insurgents operated. That was another
thing: the insurgents were supposed to be trying to
overthrow the government, but all the action
seemed to be happening in areas of the mountains
where hardly anybody lived. What was that all
about?

Everything about this war seemed to be held at
arm's length. It was so far away and yet it dominated
the news like some kind of gruesome soap opera.
And then every now and again, a terrorist group
would commit some atrocity in Britain or Europe
or the States and rattle on about the West's crimes
in the East, just in case the news coverage of such a
distant, alien place was beginning to lose its flavour.

Amina decided she needed to know more
about the place itself, from someone who knew it
well. The memory of the funeral card was never far
from her mind and she knew Goldbloom would
not take kindly to her persistence, but she had to
know what was really going on over there.

Charlie Stokes, one of the paper's longest-serving
reporters, was sitting at his desk, typing
away. He was a painfully thin chain-smoker who
had to take regular fag breaks out on the roof to get
him through the day, and would drag any inexperienced
temp up with him to chat while he
did. Like most addicts, he needed company. Amina
wandered over to him, trying to look casual.

'Hi, Charlie, whatcha workin' on?'

'All right, Amina? Just putting the finishing
touches to this piece – looking back on how the
war started. Asking about all that nerve gas the
terrorists were supposed to have.'

'Oh, right.' She couldn't come up with a less
direct way of asking, so she just came out with it.
'You've worked on a lot of the Sinnostan stories,
haven't you?'

He turned to look at her.

'Yeeesss. Why?'

'Who do we have over there – I mean, who has
the paper got over there, who really knows what's
happening?'

'Tryin' to figure it all out, huh?' He chuckled,
pulling a piece of paper from a drawer and writing
a name and number on it. 'Good luck. One of our
best guys is actually in London at the moment. His
name's John Donghu. His blog is one of the most
reliable coming out of that pit and he's a sound
bloke when it comes to translating irate natives.
Want to meet him?'

'Do you think he'd want to meet me?'

'As far as Sinnostan is concerned, he'll talk to
anybody who'll listen. Wouldn't hurt that you're
cute either. Buy him lunch and you won't be able
to shut him up. Fancy comin' up to the roof for a
smoke?'

'I still don't smoke, Charlie.'

'All right, all right. Fancy comin' up to the roof
while I smoke then? You can drink some bloody
mineral water or something.'

Amina knew it paid to get the old salts on your
side. Charlie got his choice of the big stories and he
might one day ask for her help on one. Futures
were made in the little conversations over coffee or
a cigarette. And if Goldbloom found out she was
still digging into Sinnostan, she'd need all the future
she could get.

'Sure,' she said. 'I could use some fresh air.'