Strangled Silence (37 page)

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 . . .

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 able 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.

As she turned away, he reached up and pulled
the cover off the case, revealing a wide metal tube
like a gun barrel protruding from the top of a squat
box. There was a hopper mounted on the side of
the box, and on the back of the case were two silver
gas cylinders. Gas cylinders.

The man looked straight at her and smiled. Her
heart gave a mighty thump. His hand slapped a
button on the top of the weapon. There was a loud
bang. A stream of something erupted out of the
barrel. Screams burst from the crowd as the air filled
with . . . the air filled with
money
. The machine was
a confetti blaster – powered by carbon dioxide. And
it was shooting money.

The screams hesitantly turned to laughter and
whoops of joy. The people reached up, snatching
the ten-, twenty- and fifty-pound notes out of the
air. The money swirled around, floating lazily down
towards thousands of giddy commuters. Amina
joined in, grabbing a fifty-pound note as it spiralled
down towards her. She looked at the paper and then
over at the man who had fired the cannon. He was
laughing. She stared back at the paper again. There
were words printed on it in translucent blue ink:

'Web search: There Is No War'.

'Do you remember?' a voice beside her asked
softly.

Amina turned to face the man who stood
there. It was Ivor McMorris. The man she'd interviewed
not long ago, who had dragged her into a
mess of delusions, lies and paranoia. She should
have felt disgust at the sight of him, but instead . . .
she felt a need to see him smile.

'Do you remember?' he asked again, his face
hopeful.

She rolled her tongue around her mouth, feeling
the healing scar where she had bitten it.
Looking around her, Amina could see that other
people were reading the words printed on the
money. They appeared puzzled – curious. Many
were taking pictures of the scene with the cameras
on their phones.

'I . . . I remember . . . that . . .' She struggled to
make sense of a memory that didn't fit. 'I think this
was my idea. Money talks.'

'Yes,' Ivor said, smiling in that slightly sad way
she knew she loved. 'Money talks. This is happening
right now in three other railway stations. Thousands
of people will pull this money from the air. And it
was all your idea.'

It would spread like a virus. Unlike the leaflets
she'd seen John Donghu's boys printing, these
would never become litter. They would be carried
by these travellers to every corner of the city, and to
the country beyond. They would never be thrown
away, but would instead be spent – passed on to
others. Some could circulate for years.

People would begin to search – some with real
curiosity, others just for a laugh. The phrase 'There Is
No War' would become famous. And even if the
information they found was scoffed at, maybe a few
– just a few troublemakers – would demand to know
the truth. And a few troublemakers was a good start.

'I remember . . . things . . . things about you,'
she mused aloud. 'But they don't seem real.'

'Because somebody made you forget,' Ivor said.
'But we'll help you remember.'

Amina did not want to remember. It was
uncomfortable to even try. She did not want to
fight her own mind.

'Let's start now,' she said, holding up the fiftypound
note. 'Come on. I'll buy you breakfast.'

They walked away through the crowd, watching
those around them stooping to scrape up the
cash that was littering the floor. And so it was that
the word was spread.

was packing his bags. He had a private jet
scheduled to leave the country from a small airfield
in an hour's time. He slapped a clip into his automatic
pistol and threw it on top of his jacket, which
lay beside the open suitcase. It was an empty
gesture. If it ever came time to use the weapon, it
would already be too late.

Striding across his severely, but expensively
decorated bedroom, he opened another drawer and
started pulling out some socks. His mobile rang –
the no-nonsense electronic ring-tone making him
start. Walking back over to his jacket,
drew
the phone out and looked at the screen. The number
wasn't displayed. People in his business withheld
their numbers as a matter of routine. Biting his lip,
he took the call.

'Yes?'

'Is this Admiral Robert Cole?' a woman asked.

'Who is this?'

'Admiral Cole, this is Helena Jessop. I was
wondering if I could ask you some questions about
VioMaze and the experimental mind-control
programme it's running for the military?'

Cole stared at the phone, wondering how the
bloody woman had got his number. For a moment
he was tempted to go on record. Maybe even go to
the police, ask for protection. Get it all out in the
open.

But the moment of madness passed. He hung
up on her, throwing the phone beside the gun.

'You did the right thing,' someone said from
behind him.

Cole's shoulders slumped and he felt a sudden
itch in the centre of his back. Turning slowly, he
locked eyes with the man in the black tracksuit
standing in the doorway. The man held a pistol
capped with a stubby silencer. He wore latex gloves
and plastic covers over his trainers.

'You don't have to do this,' Cole protested,
raising his hands in a pleading gesture. 'You have
nothing to fear from me.'

But those were his final words.