Strangled Silence (4 page)

She should have left it until later before taking
the train home. There were hundreds of
thousands more people than usual on the Underground
system that Friday afternoon because of the
peace marches and she had to jostle for a place on
the train when it pulled up to the overcrowded
platform. The doors beeped as they slid shut, people
pressing up against the windows as if they had been
vacuum-packed.

Amina heaved a sigh and opened her book in
the cramped space, trying to read it without leaning
it against the back of the business-suited man in
front of her. Her station was near the end of the line
and she'd probably be standing for most of the halfhour
journey.

By all accounts, the marches around the
country had been uneventful. There had been a few
anarchists – she hated the perversion of that term –
breaking windows, throwing things and trying their
luck with the police, but the crowds had been
pretty docile for the most part. The police had
blocked off any access to streets with government
buildings and channelled the protestors along
smaller streets so that they could be dissected into
manageable groups.

Some of the people on the train had been on
the marches; there were crudely designed placards
banging against the ceiling, silly costumes and
painted faces. A good-natured chatter filtered down
the carriage and at the far end, a few hoarse voices
were chanting protest songs with more beat than
melody.

The train rocked slightly, vibrating with the
movement of the wheels on the rails. There was
the occasional screech audible from beneath the
floor where the fit of metal against metal wasn't
perfect on the turns. The darkness outside in the
tunnel meant that the lighted interior was reflected
in the windows, showing people how they looked
on their way home.

Amina could smell body odour and half a
dozen different perfumes and aftershaves. She tried
to keep her attention on the page in front of her –
a chick-lit paperback, the kind she could read in a
day or two and dump in a second-hand bookshop
– but her mind kept coming back to Ivor
McMorris. She felt sorry that she couldn't make
more of his story. He seemed so desperate to get it
out in the open. It wasn't her fault he was going to
get such a brief airing, but she felt responsible anyway.
She supposed it was like this all the time:
striking the balance between how much space a
story demanded and how many valuable column
inches the editors were willing to give it. Her
mother said it was worse in television, where
reports were often measured in seconds.

Amina's left shoulder was leaning against one of
the poles. The train slowed abruptly, and as it
did so, the weight of the passengers shifted, the
movement passing through the carriage like a swell
through water. Bodies pressed her against the pole,
making her wince with discomfort, and then the
pressure eased again as everyone righted themselves.
She shifted her bag up higher onto her
shoulder and patted it to check the clasp was still
closed.

The train was still deep in the tunnel. Outside
the windows, there was nothing but a grey expanse
of concrete wall. They came to a gradual stop, no
doubt waiting for another train to clear the station
ahead of them. She rolled her eyes, impatient for
the journey to be over so she could get out of this
stuffy, muggy carriage.

At times like this, Amina's mind sometimes
turned morbidly to thoughts of the trains that had
taken people to the concentration camps during
the Holocaust. She often imagined herself back in
dramatic periods of history, daydreaming about
what it would have been like to be a reporter
covering those stories. She had long been fascinated
by reports of war atrocities. And the Nazis were the
ultimate bad guys.

They had herded whole families, whole
communities, up ramps into stock wagons like
cattle. Thousands were transported at a time, packed
so close that they could not sit down, often
travelling day and night without food or water;
there were no toilets, no drains, so the prisoners
would have had to make do with a bucket or
nothing at all, with only the draughts to feed fresh
air into the wagon.

Pressed in as she was among all these bodies,
Amina could imagine how it might feel to be
trapped like that for hours on end. In summer it
would have been unbearably hot, airless and probably
stinking to high heaven. In winter, it would
have been freezing cold and damp. People died on
those journeys, but there was no way of disposing
of the corpses – not until the train stopped at its
destination and the soldiers unlocked the doors.
Amina wondered what it would be like to spend
hours, even days, pressed against a dead body. How
long did it take before a corpse started to smell?
And what if it was your best friend . . . or one of
your parents? How did people
deal
with that?
Amina had a tough time handling an overcrowded
Tube train. She felt guilty sometimes for not having
endured some great trauma of her own.

And none of the prisoners would have known
where they were being taken, but there would have
been rumours. Rumours of vast camps surrounded
by fences and armed guards. And yet, somehow,
millions of decent, ordinary Germans had remained
blissfully ignorant.

Amina stared out of the window at the
concrete wall beyond. She was sure she would have
stood up, if she'd been alive back then. She wouldn't
have fallen for the lies. But there were no Hitlers
around any more. The Western world wouldn't
tolerate that kind of thing. Politics was a lot more
complicated nowadays.

The train still hadn't moved. People were starting
to talk about it now. They had all waited in
tunnels before, but this was taking too long. The
carriage's speakers clicked and the driver asked for
their attention:

'Ladies and gentlemen, apologies for this delay,'
he said in a halting voice. 'But there's been an
incident on the track ahead of us and we've been
asked to hold here until further notice. Once again,
we're sorry for the delay.'

Amina heard some anxious voices further
down the carriage; word about something was
being passed along. She heard somebody gasp in
alarm. A middle-aged businesswoman close to
Amina leaned over to listen to what was being said
and then relayed it to those further up.

'Somebody was on the phone to their friend
. . . before we went into the tunnel and lost the
signal,' the woman said. 'He said there's been a
bomb scare, but it wasn't specific. All they know is
that it's in one of the stations in the south-west. All
the stations ahead of us are being closed and
searched. We could be here for hours.'

The tall man in the suit in front of Amina
swore under his breath. Others started to talk
excitedly.

'Did they say who planted the bomb?'

'How many bombs are there? Does anybody
know?'

'Are they just going to leave us down
here?'

'What if the bomb's on one of the trains?'

'Don't you remember the bombings a few
years ago? Nobody knew anything until it
happened. And then when people tried to escape
from the trains, the fires spread through the tunnels.
I heard the firemen couldn't even get into some of
the tunnels it was so hot.'

'But there's nothing in the tunnels that would
burn!'

'There's
us
.
We'd
burn.'

'Oh my God!'

Amina felt her pulse quicken. It was an ideal
time to bomb the Underground if you wanted
to make headlines – the rush-hour crowds were
swollen with peace protestors. If you were aiming
for a high body-count, this was the time to do it. It
didn't matter that the protestors were demanding
some of the things the terrorists wanted. Terrorists
were lunatics; they didn't care who died, as long as
it made shocking headlines and gruesome television.
Terrorists wanted publicity.

Her piqued imagination was already cramming
her mind with morbid thoughts. If a bomb went off
on the train, the emergency services could take
hours to reach them. Aside from the blast, the
biggest killer would be the smoke; more people
died from fumes in fires underground than from the
flames themselves. Even if a bomb went off in a
tunnel nearby, the smoke might be enough to
choke them before they could escape to the surface.

Amina tried to make more of a space around
her. At five foot five inches tall, she was smaller than
most of the people surrounding her and she was
beginning to feel penned in. Everyone was restless
now; there was a sharp smell of fresh sweat in the
air, feet shuffled on the floor. Was it getting warmer
in here too? Amina leaned back against the couple
behind her to try and get them to shift a bit, but
they were against the door and had nowhere to go.
There seemed to be less air in the carriage now. She
was finding breathing more difficult. That was to be
expected; everyone was anxious, so their breathing
would be faster.

'Does anybody smell smoke?' the middle-aged
woman asked. 'I think I smell smoke.'

'I don't smell anything,' the man in front of
Amina replied. 'Let's not get worked up about
nothing here.'

'I'm not worked up, I just think I smell smoke.'

'I think I smell something too,' a shabbily
dressed teenage boy spoke up.

A debate began about whether there was or
was not a smell of smoke in the air. Amina craned
her neck to peer over people's shoulders. She just
wanted to see everyone's faces as they talked. It was
frustrating not being able to see who was speaking.
Her hands were pressed against the back of the man
in front of her and she pushed a bit too hard. He
stumbled forward and looked back at her, a
Roman-nosed horse of a face with fair hair and
reddening ears.

'Whoa there, young lady! Easy.'

'Can people make room, please!' a concerned
voice called from further down the carriage.
'There's a woman who can't breathe, here. I
think she's hyperventilating, or got asthma or
something.'

'
Where
are we going to make room to, may I
ask?' someone else snorted.

'Everybody just calm down!' the horse-faced
man cried.

'You calm down!' the middle-aged woman
retorted. 'You're the only one shouting!'

Amina squeezed her eyes shut. She could feel
her own chest tightening up. A wave of dizziness
swept over her. If only they'd all just shut up!

'I think we should get off the train and start
walking!' the man declared.

'We can't get off the—'

The speakers clicked again and the driver's
voice came through:

'All right now, folks. Apologies again for the
delay, but I'm happy to say we've been cleared to go
through to the next station. There's been a bomb
alert, but there's no need to panic – it's nowhere
near us. They're going to be shutting the stations
down to be on the safe side, but there will be a bus
service laid on to get you to your destinations. We
hope this hasn't caused too great an inconvenience
and we look forward to having you travel with us
again soon.'

It seemed to take for ever to get to the
platform, and when it did, the passengers bulged
and were spat from the opening doors, hurrying for
the escalators in a hustle of movement that fell just
short of a panicked sprint. Amina let herself be
carried by the mob, over the tiled floor and past the
framed advertisements offering holidays, recruitment
services and expensive cosmetics. The
grooved metal steps of the escalator glided up
slowly, but some people pushed past, walking
up them with frantic movements. Amina waited for
her turn to slide through the ticket barrier and then
rushed out onto the street with its foul, exhaustfilled
air. She breathed it in like it was the
countryside in spring. Around her, police officers
armed with sub-machine guns watched with
impassive faces as the people flooded out.

Amina took a few more breaths and then
looked around for a bus to take her home.

Chi took a circuitous route of train and bus
journeys back home, but after getting off the last
bus, he made the mistake of walking down the
main street, rather than taking the longer way
through the park. That was how Gierek spotted
him.

'Sandwith, you little rat!' a voice bellowed
across the street.

Chi turned in alarm to see a burly skinhead
charging through the traffic at him. Horns blared
but the man with the army surplus clothes and the
muscle-packed body ignored the oncoming cars, so
intent was he on trying to get his hands on Chi
Sandwith.

His quarry had already taken to his heels. Chi
knew he couldn't outrun Gierek for long. The man
was a survivalist and a fitness fanatic. He could
pound right over Chi in a hundred-metre dash. But
Chi was not unprepared.

When you lived life on the edge of society and
you came in regular contact with the kind of information
the government would kill to protect,
you had to have some contingency plans. Chi
would normally have anticipated having to escape
from
his house rather than flee
to
it, but it was a
straightforward matter of adapting to the circumstances
and reversing the route in question.