This Is Not Forgiveness (24 page)

We go out into the bright autumn morning. I see Caro shiver, either at the coldness of the air, or maybe the reality of what they plan to do is coming home to her. She touches the remote control that she keeps on her car keys and the gates glide open on a world that couldn’t be more normal. Men dressed in shirtsleeves are slinging briefcases and computer bags into the backs of their cars, hanging up their suit jackets. Mums are coming out to do the school run, packing kids into the back of people carriers, passing them bright new bags and shiny new lunchboxes, ready for the new school year.

This is my last chance to stop this thing from happening. I refuse to get in the car.

‘Get in!’ He takes out a handgun from his pocket. His eyes flick to the happy families. ‘Or it starts right here.’

I get in the car. He gets in the other side, moves over so he’s sitting behind me. I feel the end of the gun barrel, small and round and cold on the back of my neck.

Caro tries to start the engine, the ignition squealing. She fumbles the gears.

‘Don’t go flaky on me,’ he says. ‘Time’s wasting.’

She finally gets the car started and drives out on to the road.

‘Drive carefully now,’ he says to her. ‘Don’t do anything to draw attention and mind the speed bumps.’

He jabs the gun into the back of my neck again. A reminder not to act up and not to turn round.

‘Why would you even think about doing this?’

‘Direct action,’ Caro supplies. ‘It is the only way to get people to pay attention. Propaganda of the deed.’

‘See how they like it,’ Rob says behind me. ‘Right, Caro?’

‘Violence is the only way to answer violence,’ Caro says, although she’s not sounding too sure, now it’s really going to happen.

‘That’s bullshit and you know it!’ I turn to look at her, even though he jabs the gun barrel in harder. ‘How’s this going to make a difference?’

She doesn’t answer. Her grip on the wheel tightens. Anxiety makes her speed up and we bounce over one traffic calming device then another.

‘Slow down! I told you to watch that!’ Rob shouts from the back, his voice loud with something I’ve never heard there before. Something like fear. ‘Keep your speed down! There’s a load of explosives packed into the spare wheel!’

‘What?’ Caro turns her head to face him and the car swerves, hitting the kerb.

‘Fuck’s sake! I said – drive careful!’

‘You never said anything about a bomb!’

‘You wanted an operation. You got one.
Violence is the only way to answer violence.
’ He is parroting her words back at her.

‘A bomb? For Christ’s sake, Rob.’ I twist, trying to see him. ‘That’s crazy! The whole thing’s crazy! You’ve got to stop this right now.’

‘Don’t say that.’ He angles the gun up under my skull. ‘I’ve told you before.’

‘But why would you do that? Caro?’ I turn to appeal to her. ‘This is madness. You can’t do this. Think of all the people who’ll be there! All the people who could get killed!’

‘You shut up! You ain’t got no say in this. No say at all. I told you, didn’t I? Should have done me when you could.’

‘A bomb isn’t part of it. Was never part of it.’ Caro is trying to keep calm, but her hands are trembling, slipping on the wheel. ‘This was supposed to be a political operation, an assassination.’

‘Dead is dead. You said that yourself. What does it matter who or how many? See how they like it here, that’s what you said.
Direct Action. It is the only way to get people to pay attention.
’ He’s quoting her words back at her again, taunting her with her own rhetoric. ‘You thought I weren’t listening, couldn’t understand all that political stuff you were laying on me. I was listening all right. I ain’t thick.’

‘I never said you were.’ She says it so quietly he can’t hear.

‘What’s that?’

‘I never said you were thick.’

‘Yeah? It’s what you think, though? Him, too. I’m just doing what you said you wanted. Do anything for you, wouldn’t I, princess? A bomb on home soil, in a school? That should do it. That’ll make a difference. That’ll get their attention. It certainly will.’

Caro has no reply. Rob can’t see her face but I can. It is pale, like a mask, no expression, but her lips are trembling, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks.

‘You listen up,’ he says to her. ‘You listen to me and you listen carefully. This is what you are going to do. You will drop me and Jimbo at the multi-storey, then you will drive to the school. You will park your car on the side of the car park which is parallel to the drive.’

‘When is it set to go off?’ Her voice is far away, almost disinterested, as if she’s distancing herself from the whole thing.

‘10.15. I open up at 10.00. It’s a trick they use all the time out there. Double whammy. One thing goes down and everyone thinks that’s it. Just when they think it’s all over – kerboom! If one don’t get you, the other one will.’ He gives a low laugh, as if at something private, not meant to be funny. ‘I’ll be watching so no-show from you, car in the wrong place, anything don’t look right, and I start shooting, beginning with Jimbo. Any sign of trouble, things not going according to plan, he gets it first.’

‘And what if there are car checks? What if they stop me? Search the car?’ There’s that distance again, as if she’s talking about someone else who’s been given the task of driving a car bomb into a school.

‘That’s your problem, darlin’. You’ll think of something. Sweet talk them. Use your charm. Or schwack!’

He’s holding the gun up to my head now. She glances sideways and back again. Rob has taken this way past anything that she had planned. He’s hijacked the whole mad scheme and then outmanoeuvred her with all the skill of a grand master. She’s silent, like she has no answers. He’s left her with nowhere to go.

Her tears have dried on her face. Her jaw is rigid; a small muscle jumps in her cheek. She’s driving smoothly now, with more confidence, but her knuckles are white where she’s gripping the wheel. Her apparent indifference is masking her anger. She is fighting to keep her fury under control.

‘Rob!’ I twist round. We are nearing the town now, minutes away from the multi-storey car park. Up there, he’ll have the whole town in front of him, not just the school. Precinct, ring road, you name it. I know he’s beyond reasoning, but I have to try. I figure he won’t shoot me, not here, not now, not in a street full of cars and people. ‘You can’t –’

I don’t get to finish the sentence.

‘I told you to shut the fuck up!’

He hits me across the side of the head hard with the barrel of the gun. I see double, can’t hear for the ringing in my ears and feel the liquid trickle beginning to flow through my hair. I touch my forehead. My hands come away red with blood.

Caro turns to look at me, automatically lifting her foot from the accelerator as she does so.

‘Don’t stop the car,’ he snarls at her. We’re driving through the centre of town, towards the bridge over the river. There are plenty of people about, getting off buses, walking up from the station, coming out of cafes clutching lattes. ‘Keep driving or he gets it – you, too, and anyone else around.’

For a second, I think that she is going to disobey him. Her eyes go wide with shock at the sight of the blood trickling down my face. The car is in danger of stalling. I hold my hands out, fingers spread, sticky and red.

‘This is real, Caro! How much more are you going to spill?’

‘There’s tissues in the glove compartment,’ is all she says. She accelerates, eyes looking ahead, her mask back in place.

‘You’re mad, you know that!’

‘I told you not to say that.’ He taps me with the gun again, but gently this time, almost a caress. ‘But maybe I am, little brother, maybe I am. Runs in the family.’

We’re approaching the bridge now. They haven’t finished working on it; the traffic is still single lane with temporary traffic lights across it. We get there just as the lights are changing. Caro slows right down, as if she is about to stop.

‘There’s only one thing left to do.’ She breathes the words so quietly that only I can hear. Then she says: ‘Get out of the car,’ her voice low and deliberate. She says it again, loud and insistent, screaming the words in my ear. ‘GET OUT OF THE CAR!’

I’ve got the door open and dive sideways, out of his line of fire. She speeds up, jumping the temporary lights which have just turned back to red. She has the long bridge to herself. She puts her foot down, the car picks up speed. Workmen turn, alerted by the roar of the engine, the squeal of tyres on tarmac. Then halfway across, just before the point where the stone parapet is replaced by a temporary barrier, she swerves hard to the left. The car mounts the pavement – workmen are shouting, scrambling to get out of the way. I hear the wooden barrier splintering, then a splashing roar as the car hits the river nose first and goes straight down.

For a moment there is silence, the only sound the lapping slop of the displaced water. Time seems to slow, then stop altogether so everyone is frozen in the moment looking towards the source of this extraordinary event, this disturbance to their lives. Then it all speeds up again and people are running, shouting for help, racing to the bridge. I scramble to my feet and I’m running, too.

I don’t know what I expect to see as I get to the parapet. Maybe that she’ll emerge. She’s a good swimmer after all, a strong swimmer. Water is her element. She told me that. She will get out, people do escape from those situations. She will wriggle out and swim up to the surface. She will emerge from the water like a river mermaid – a nixie, a lorelei. She will appear any second. She has to survive. The prospect of her death does not seem a possibility. He’ll come up after her. He’s a born survivor. I cannot think of his death, either. He’s been through a war – how could this kill him?

The seconds stretch to a minute, two. People hang over the bridge, line the bank, attracted by the drama, the spectacle. Unable to do anything, they lean forwards, straining towards the patch of disturbed water, point and gesture in a flutter of helpless hands. Time ticks by. The disturbance in the water has dissipated; the river resumes its flow.

Chapter 36

I stay, staring down at the place, while emergency services arrive and the police begin questioning witnesses, wanting to know if anyone knew the identity of the occupants of the vehicle. I have a weird sense of shame, as though I’ve failed them. I lacked the power to stop them. I didn’t have their guts, their courage. I couldn’t live with either of them, or die like them. I am alive, I survived. I feel relief and guilt in equal measure and find I am crying, sobbing, and the tears will not stop. I see someone in the crowd point me out to a young policewoman. She comes over and asks me gently, ‘What happened to you? Were you involved in the accident?’

I nod, unable to speak.

‘Did you see what happened? Did you know the driver?’

I nod again, tell her my brother was also in the car. Tell her there is something else that they have to know.

She leads me by the arm to her senior officer. There’s an inflatable recovery boat being brought down to the water, police divers checking their equipment. I have to stop them, warn them about the bomb. I think they won’t believe me, but they take my warning seriously. The whole thing escalates from tragic accident to terrorist incident in an instant. Work is halted, the whole area is cordoned off, bomb disposal arrive. Divers are sent down. The car is brought up, it stands, shrouded in a white tent, the occupants still inside it, while experts work to defuse the bomb.

A paramedic sees to my cut, cleans me up, then I’m taken to the police station and questioned for a long time. I stick to my story that Caro was a hostage, we were both innocents with no idea what Rob was planning. No one will ever know for sure what sent them plunging into the river, but everyone believes that it was Caro, that she chose to sacrifice her own life to save others. It has turned her into a heroine.

Chapter 37

I’ve put my words and theirs together. If there is any kind of explanation, then it is here. Rob posted his video diary on the Net. He’s a hero to some people. It got a lot of hits before it was taken down. Caro’s mother returned the rucksack that I’d left at her house. Caro’s notebook was inside it, tied with red ribbon. On the cover, it says:

For You

I grieve for them every day, but really it isn’t that simple. I’m angry with them for doing what they did, leaving early, leaving me to go on alone, and it’d be dishonest of me if I didn’t admit to a little part of me that is thankful that they are no longer here to throw my life into turmoil, or to hurt me any more.

Writing this has made these feelings easier to understand and to endure.
What you can’t change, you got to live with
, that’s what Grandpa used to say. I’ll be living with this for the rest of my life. But at least I’ll have a life. I’m ready now to say goodbye. The urn is heavy, heavier than you’d think, but a small container for a full-grown man. I take it down to the river. I choose to go in the very early morning, near dawn. I’m on the bridge, at the place where they went over, where the stone is paler. The light is soft. There’s mist above the water. Down towards the weir, the river is rippling gold with the rising sun. I lean on the new stone of the parapet for a moment, looking down at the place where the water is still in shadow. I open the canister, tip it slowly and watch the ash drift in the slight breeze that always blows here, watch as the fragments fall and scatter, dimpling and dusting the dark surface.