The Steel Spring (13 page)

‘Did they have any children, those people?’

‘No.’

‘What was the woman’s job?’

‘She worked in an archive at the Ministry of Justice. Later it turned out that …’

‘Yes?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘Are you married?’

‘No. Why are you asking me this?’

‘Routine,’ said Jensen. ‘Anyway, to get back to that Saturday.’

‘Yes. So we went out to the assembly point, but for some reason we got held up and were late. I don’t remember why. Does it matter?’

‘No.’

‘When we got there, they’d already moved off. We met them as we were coming off the motorway.’

The man fell silent and looked towards the window. Outside it was sleeting, and big wet flakes were sticking to the glass.

‘It was a clear, very blustery day. I remember the wind tugging at the flags, and the people with the banners had a job to keep them up straight. As soon as we caught sight of it in the distance we remarked to each other how beautiful it was.’

‘Beautiful?’

‘Yes, with the red flags whipping in the wind. And our comrades struggling with the breeze to keep the placards and banners up.’

‘How many marchers were there?’

‘A couple of thousand or so. We rarely got more than that. Often not even that many. There were quite a few children as well. Those with small children usually brought them along to demonstrations.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, various reasons.’

‘Such as?’

‘So the kids had the chance to learn something sensible from an early age. To show anybody watching that there were in fact people who had children and thought they were fun to be around. And not least because there wasn’t anywhere else for them to go, of course. Daycare provision is virtually nonexistent in this country, and socialists don’t tend to have domestic servants.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good. So we met the march just as we came off the motorway and even as we passed, we noticed something unusual was happening.’

‘What?’

‘There were groups of people at the sides of the road, arguing with the demonstrators. Some were shouting insults, others were throwing things – empty bottles and cans. In one place I saw some of them scuffling with a uniformed police constable.’

‘Why?’

‘The police were trying to stop them rushing out into the road and attacking the marchers. At that stage, the police must have had orders to make sure the demonstrators were left in peace. You ought to know that better than I do. Am I right?’

Jensen nodded.

‘Yes, that’s correct,’ he said.

‘Admittedly most of the people driving past or on the pavements seemed totally uninterested, but there were some counter-demonstrations as well.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘We got out of the taxi and joined the march.’

‘And then?’

‘It was the same the whole way along. Lots of people were standing along the pavements hurling abuse at us. Some threw eggs and tomatoes. My friend’s wife got hit in the forehead by a tomato. It made her laugh. In a few places, people even threw small stones, and some tried to run up and grab our signs off us. The police stopped them. There were several cars following alongside the march the whole time, and the people in them were spitting and swearing at us.’

‘What kind of people was it who attacked you?’

‘I didn’t get the impression that they were any particular kind. Most of them were well dressed and there were just as many elderly as middle-aged or younger ones. Men and women.’

‘How did your group react to this?’

‘We felt encouraged for the first time in ages.’

‘Encouraged?’

‘Yes, really. After all, our big problem was that nobody took any notice of us, not even the police. That was the first time we’d provoked any kind of counter-demonstration, or any reaction at all, come to that. We felt our message wasn’t falling on deaf ears any more.’

‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘I don’t think so. Nothing serious happened. The weapons employed were very largely verbal ones, you might say. People generally contented themselves with shouting and swearing and throwing bits of harmless rubbish. Tomatoes and empty beer cans can scarcely hurt anyone.’

‘What happened next?’

‘Our rally was the liveliest and rowdiest one I’d ever experienced. By that time, an awful lot more people had assembled in the opposing camp. They yelled and booed and barracked the speakers. But we had loudspeakers and loudhailers and were able to stick to the planned programme.’

‘Did the opposition seem to be organised?’

‘No. That was one thing we were pleased to notice. The troublemakers had no organisation at all, and that was one reason they couldn’t really cause us any serious disruption, of course. It was as if each individual was acting spontaneously on their own. We talked about that afterwards, and my friend said he’d been struck by the fact that they were people of such widely differing ages. The obvious conclusion otherwise would have been that it was an organised counter-operation. That the regime had sent out patrols of some kind to undermine what we were doing, as part of its election propaganda. But it was clear that that wasn’t the case.’

‘How did the meeting end?’

‘The usual way. We passed a resolution and then packed up our kit and everyone pushed off home.’

‘And the next demonstration? What happened there?’

‘Hang on a minute. There was one very peculiar incident, after the meeting. Something that seemed completely incomprehensible. I’ll try to tell it as I remember it.’

Jensen regarded him expectantly.

‘When the meeting broke up, I went off with my friend and his wife. We’d been planning to go to our society HQ and finish off some posters we’d started the night before. My friend had a red flag rolled up under his arm.’

The man on the sofa lapsed into silence and seemed to be collecting his thoughts. Jensen said nothing. Down in the cells, the solitary alcoholic gave a series of hoarse, hacking coughs.

‘Our premises are in a basement over on the east side. To get there you have to take the ferry over the canal, unless you’re going by car of course. Pedestrians aren’t allowed through the tunnel or across the bridges, as you know. There weren’t many people on the ferry, and nobody seemed at all bothered about us. We sat on our own, chatting about what had happened. We all thought the same thing, namely that we ought to be encouraged by it. We got off the ferry when it had docked and walked the rest of the way; our HQ isn’t that far from the ferry station. On the way you go through a rather posh, upper-class district. You know that area between …’

‘I know the area you mean.’

‘We were walking three abreast along the pavement, not saying anything at that point. The street was empty except for two elderly people standing outside the entrance of one of the buildings. I assumed they lived there and were on their way in.
The man must have been around sixty-five or maybe nearer seventy, and the woman looked about the same age. They were both well dressed, typical old-school, upper-class, right-wing types. The man was wearing a grey felt hat, black overcoat and galoshes, and he had an umbrella with a crooked, silver handle. I naturally wouldn’t have registered those details if it hadn’t been for what happened next.’ The man on the sofa fell silent again and shook his head.

‘I still don’t get it,’ he said. ‘It was utterly absurd.’

‘Get to the point,’ said Jensen.

‘Just as we’re passing, the man says, “The devil take you, you goddamned riff-raff.” My friend, who’s nearest to him, doesn’t take it in immediately, or maybe he can’t believe his ears. Anyway, he stops and says very politely, “Excuse me?” And the man stares at us and says, all high and shrill: “Bloody rabble, how dare you show your faces here?” None of us have seen this man before, or his wife for that matter, so my friend says: “I’m sorry, but do we know each other?” Then the man grabs his jacket and shouts: “Do you think I don’t recognise you, you damn socialist bastards!” Then the old biddy – yes she really was an old biddy – starts screeching and yanking at the flag my friend’s got under his arm. They’re totally hysterical. The woman manages to grab the flag and hurls it to the ground and starts spitting and stamping on it. Then she whacks my friend’s wife in the head with her handbag as hard as she can and bellows: “Communist whore!” They both seem completely off their heads. The man raises the umbrella as if it’s a rifle with a bayonet and jabs the point in my friend’s chest, several times with full force. My friend falls to his knees and the old biddy grabs him by the hair and tries to kick him. She’s screaming at us the whole time, showering us with spit.’

The man on the sofa glanced quickly at Jensen and put his hand nervously to his chin.

‘I just stood there, absolutely at a loss. I mean, they were old people and it didn’t seem right to lunge out at them. In the end my friend’s wife pushed them aside and grabbed the flag. Then we made off as fast as we could. The last thing we heard was the old man shouting after us.’

‘What did he shout?’

‘You don’t deserve to live!’

There was a brief silence. The invalid said:

‘I just didn’t get it, and I still don’t. But plenty of other incomprehensible things have happened since. The next day we did at least find out who those people were. A retired bank director and his wife. They had some aristocratic-sounding name. As reactionary as hell, of course, but a very refined and courteous old gentleman. So they say.’

‘When did you hold your next demonstration?’

‘Exactly a week later. Everything was a good deal rowdier that time. There was a bigger crowd of onlookers, and they were a lot more aggressive than the previous week. The police had brought in reinforcements. We went through with them anyway, the march and the meeting. And we still thought it was to be viewed as a positive development. We even decided to demonstrate more often and on other days of the week, to confuse the opposition. There was a lot of inflammatory stuff about us in the press and on TV just then. But the mass media soon stopped their running commentary on events. Before long they weren’t saying anything about them at all, even in news bulletins. And the papers didn’t write a word. They were full of the usual old froth about film stars and famous people. While society was collapsing about their ears.’

‘Collapsing?’

‘Yes. Isn’t that what’s happened now?’

Jensen made no reply.

‘Another disturbing thing came to light round about then.’

‘What?’

‘In our society we had several members who were doctors and medical students. Nobody had seen them since the beginning of September. One of them was the man who brought me here, your district doctor. They weren’t at home and when we asked about them we got the same unvarying reply: that they’d gone off to attend a conference somewhere. My friend’s wife, who worked at the Ministry of Justice, eventually heard they’d been arrested. We didn’t know if it was true or not.’

Jensen said nothing.

‘Presumably it was true, because practically every doctor with socialist sympathies had vanished. Rumours seeped out that they’d been taken into custody on the orders of the secret police.’

‘There’s no such thing as the secret police.’

‘You’re lying,’ said the man on the sofa matter-of-factly. ‘I know it exists. Or used to. The girl who worked at the Ministry was able to find out about it. They were called the security services, not the secret police, and they answered directly to the Justice Minister. Their main task seems to have been to keep a register of opinions, a catalogue of individuals with inconvenient political views.’

Jensen bit his lower lip. After a while he said:

‘The Steel Spring. Is that phrase familiar to you?’

‘The Steel Spring?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. I’ve never heard it before.’

The man grimaced and said:

‘My legs are hurting again.’

‘Do you want another tablet?’

‘Yes.’

‘One more thing. How did the next demonstration go?’

‘Complete uproar. Chaos. Fights breaking out. Hordes of police, but they did the very minimum to protect us. Stones and empty bottles raining down on us. Lots of people wounded, on both sides. Thank God we had no children with us. The fascists, as we’d taken to calling them, were behaving as if they were out of their minds. It was the tenth of October, three weeks before the catastrophe.’

The man on the sofa tossed his head and gritted his teeth.

‘It wasn’t just the fascists who were crazy. Other people started going weird as well. My friend’s wife, for example … can I have that tablet now?’

‘In a minute. What was the matter with your friend’s wife?’

‘I’ll tell you. Later. Now please let me have that tablet.’

Jensen put down his notebook. Then he shook a pill out of the tube and slid his hand under the back of the man’s neck.

Once the man on the sofa was asleep, Jensen went back to his office. He unlocked the filing cabinet where they kept the orders and rules of general conduct that came in from outside, places such as the police headquarters. He went back to the day when he had handed over command and got out the red folder with the list of the forty-three doctors who were to be arrested. Then sorted quickly through the files for the past three months, selected ten or so and put them on his desk. Sat down and began to study them. They were all red and had the same code name: Steel Spring. Two of them were further arrest lists and the rest were instructions about police conduct at demonstrations and the issue of firearms on such occasions. The first arrest list had a hundred and twenty-five names on it, the second four hundred and sixty. His stand-in had ticked some of the names, presumably those of people they had successfully detained. Other names had annotations like ‘unavailable’ or ‘disappeared’, and many simply had question marks beside them. The annotations were untidy and presumably done in great haste. As far as he could see, the police of the district had not been able to apprehend more than a fifth of them, and most of those were on the first list.

As with the original arrest order for the forty-three doctors, neither of these communications said who they were from, but on
closer inspection he found they bore the seal of the Justice Minister. They also differed from the original list in that they had a short note appended, the same for both of them: