The Time Gene, page 51
But a loud groan from the prison’s PA system silenced Murdo, as Matas collapsed back into his chair. “ATTENTION, FELONS. LAST NIGHT AN ATTEMPT WAS MADE ON THE LIFE OF A PRISON GUARD, IN A COWARDLY AND DESPICABLE ACT. IN RETALIATION, IN THE EARLY HOURS, THE LIVES OF FIVE PRISONERS WERE TAKEN. UNTIL THE CULPRIT DENOUNCES HIMSELF, OR IS DENOUNCED, ON EACH AND EVERY NIGHT, FIVE MORE WILL BE TAKEN. JUSTICE CAN AND MUST PREVAIL.”
The next five minutes coalesced into a dark blur of chaos. Voices of anger, hatred and dissent frothed from the canteen tables. “What the fuck?” “Five good men for that bitch!” “Let her burn in hell like she burned my brother!” “What fuckery is this? “Porphy hates her guts – he’d kiss the arse of whoever put strychnine in ‘er caviar.” The heckles became shouts, and, faster than a fighter jet, shouts became rage. And rage became blood. Scarlet rivulets of blood.
Who knew who threw the first punch? A porridge bowl flew across the room. Then a knife. Food flew everywhere. One table overturned. A chair shattered over a screw’s head, who fell to the ground flailing in agony. Murdo grabbed Matas and hauled him onto his stomach. Dropping to all fours, Murdo dragged the boy underneath a table fallen on its side, and braced himself. Within seconds, the fragile threads that bound the demons had come undone. The refectory had spiralled into a mêlée of taloned, salivating beasts, spewing their wrath onto the screws who had bound, beaten, scourged and burned them. Their basest and most animalistic instincts overawed them; as they slaked their thirst for blood and revenge. All that mattered was to shatter, smite, rip, tear... And kill…
The door burst open and at least fifty marksmen in full riot gear charged in, bludgeoning through in their wrought iron shields, deploying pepper spray, tear gas, beating and thrashing at everything that moved.
Five more minutes. The prisoners breakfasted in morose silence, including the eight slaughtered ones, who had been propped back up on their chairs. Including the still-living man with half his face missing, and the one with a loosely bound stump for an arm. All the tables had been righted, and even the cracked chairs put back to use. Splayed on the walls was a discordant medley of gruel, pus and bodily fluids; trickling under the floorboards was a dark red treacly liquid. But the living, maimed and dead sat to eat with a starchy dignity worthy of a 60-year reunion party for Oxford University cricket club. They tried to ignore the marksmen standing over them and the long black gun barrels sticking into the backs of their heads.
Flanked by riot police and marksmen, Deputy Governor Sewell stood before a lectern, his bifocals sliding onto his nose. He was reading out the Prison Riot Act (2050). “Prisoners shall bow before their overlords, observe contrition and constant repentance; shall not incite, glorify, or enflame violence; shall repudiate all forms of rebellion, insurgence or mutiny. Those found in violation of this Act, whether by accident or design, will, without trial or plea, be cut down, broken and slaughtered.”
Murdo sat opposite Matas, a spoon trembling in his hand, as he scooped gruel clumps from a cracked bowl and tried to process the latest events. Matas did not move voluntarily at all, but quivered like a lump of white butter on a stove. His eyes, white as ice, stared unblinking, colourless and frozen. Murdo sought to meet them; to give just the merest wink or smile of reassurance. But the young man was in a dark trance.
A flash of light followed, and a flurry of brass and ebony thundered in. The clink of chainmail and the Black Gauntlet. The Royal Prison Guard. Four of them. They seized Matas by the hair and dragged him away backwards, as he screamed like a tortured cat.
“Matas Naujokas,” boomed the voice of the Deputy Governor. “You are under arrest for the attempted murder of Warder Lovelace.”
“No! No!” He screamed. “Not me, please not me. I’m innocent!”
Murdo leapt up, and shouted with as much force as he could muster. “Sir, it was me. I poisoned Warder Lovelace.”
“SILENCE!”
A marksman rammed his fist into Murdo’s jaw, knocking him to the floor. Murdo twisted and spasmed in agony as the guard jerked him back by the throat and held a gun to his mouth.
“For every lie from prisoner lips, one life shall be taken,” the deputy governor bellowed in citation of the Act. “You hear that, Death Row?”
Murdo, flailing on the floor, whimpered an assent.
“Murdo! Please, please help me! They’ll put me in the Smithy!”
The Black Gauntlet gripped Matas’ arms and dragged him from the refectory, screaming and shouting as he lay on his back.
Chapter Forty-nine
The Pact
Braemuir, Dundee, December 2002
Bittersweet memories flooded into Leonie’s mind as two robins hopped on Dreamia’s silvery twigs. Oh, to be so carefree, so unburdened! Now, which street did Mr Thompson live in? She fished in her bag for his Courier. Since Mr Khan’s hip operation, it suited him to delegate certain errands to Leonie. And she had begun working full-time for him when his cataracts got bad. All at once, a voice broke the silence. A voice from the past.
“Leo…wait on me!”
A frisson of dread welled in her stomach. She hadn’t spoken to Roxy in months. And she no longer cared that their friendship was lost forever. The last thing Leonie needed was for it to rekindle. She knew Roxy of old. Now that everyone else was treating her like a leper, Roxy would crawl her way back in. But, she’d use, abuse and betray her, and waltz off the second that wretched Liam got out of that jail.
Leonie turned round. “What is it?”
“Leonie…wait up, you nincompoop!” Roxy cried, seemingly oblivious to Leonie’s wariness, or to the fact that even the rough kids’ mums kept their offspring away from her these days.
“Can I help you with something, Roxy?”
“I want tae say sorry,” said Roxy, quite unabashedly.
“Sorry for what?”
“For everythin’,” she said. “For how I treated you, an’ for shuttin’ you out. For slaggin’ you off when you were doin’ all the right things, and I was doin’ all the wrong ones.”
Leonie tiptoed around Roxanne, dreading in her a grizzly bear promising benign intentions, whilst sharpening its claws behind its back.
Roxanne continued, her voice cracking a little: “I feel disgusted wi’ myself every day. Did you know I wrote to the headmaster? Told him the horseshit prank thing was my idea. But,” she quaked, “it doesnae change the fact I’ve brought shame on our whole year group. Haggis’ dad said we were all tainted…all the leavers.” She was close to tears. “I’ve made so many mistakes. There’s no goin’ back, Leonie…”
Leonie gave a soft smile. “So have I made mistakes.” She looked down at her stomach, visibly swelling even under her voluminous coat.
“Aye,” said Roxanne, rallying a little. “You know, Leo, I’m proud of you.”
This was a somewhat atypical response to a sixteen-year-old’s pregnancy to an estranged father. “Why?” she asked.
Roxy laughed. “Oh, Leonie! Think about it! Me, Kayles, Ade, or that slag Brooke Cumming…you might’ve expected it from us. But come on, Leonie, I mean…you. We all thought you’d be joinin’ a nunnery soon. Turns out, you’re the biggest slapper o’ the lot. Pretty cool, eh?”
Leonie was not up on the precise definitions of ‘slapper’ and ‘slag’, but smiled her thanks.
“So, come on, Leo, tell us all the goss. Where’s daddy boy? Heard he done a bunk pretty fast when he found out you were up the duff.”
Leonie’s face tightened. “He never knew. The police told us he’d been found dead.”
Roxy stared openmouthed. “Oh, God, Leonie, I’d no idea!” she gasped. “But…you don’t seem…”
“Upset?” Well, I am upset – but not because Fiorello’s dead. I know he’s alive. A dogwalker found the other boy…the one who looked like him…in a disused garage near the Dighty.”
Roxy looked wistful for a moment. “What happened?”
Leonie, who had expected Roxy to scoff, felt emboldened. “Nanna and I went to the police after reading the report in the Courier. The police said this ‘Luigi’ was found in a locked garage next to a motorbike with the engine running. They reckoned it was suicide. But the autopsy said he had a very severe brain injury that he had to have sustained several months earlier. That couldn’t have been Fiorello! The police were totally rude to me when I told my story. They didn’t believe me about the other Fiorello. Luigi Corrazzo was not a twin, so he must have had a Doppelgänger. Possibly the ‘him’ from an alternate universe.” Her jaw pinched. “But I’m never going to give up the search for my Fiorello. We’re meant to be.”
Roxy gave her a moderately – but only moderately - scathing eye-roll. “Yeah, that’s all well an’ good, but… how come you’re preggers? How come you didn’t, like, take precautions?”
“Fiorello nicked Baz’ girlfriend’s pills and told me to take them. But they gave me migraines, so I…um…didn’t.”
“You mean you didnae use a condom? Leonie, what are you at? Hello – AIDS? And all the other shit you can get. God, you’re so naïve.”
Leonie turned a violent shade of beetroot. She hadn’t thought it wouldn’t matter, as there would never be anyone else for either of them. “It never occurred to me that he might have had partners before me.”
“You are so stupid, Leonie,” said Roxanne in exasperation. In all honesty Leonie thought that Roxanne herself qualified poorly as a paragon of wisdom, but bit her lip.
“Well, we’ll have to have a catch-up,” said Roxy, as if they were two old ladies meeting at bingo. “Me an’ Liam are movin’ in together when he gets out. Come round sometime; we’ll have a girly night in…watch a dvd, eh? You can bring Baby,” she added, stroking Leonie’s bump. She raised an eyebrow. “Though make sure it doesn’t cry, ‘cos I can’t stand bawlin’ babies. You promise?”
Leonie doubted they arrived with a remote control, but promised all the same. “Nanna says we’ll get a house,” she said.
“House? Who’s gettin’ a house?”
“Me and the baby.”
“Well, excuse me, how much does that suck!” said Roxanne in disgust. “Some cad gets you knocked up, and they give you a free house? Me an’ Liam - decent, upstandin’ citizens - get bugger all.” Leonie could not decide whether Roxy was being serious. “How’d your nanna react when you told her? Did she go ballistic?”
“It wasn’t too bad, all things considered,” Leonie recalled. “First she told me I was a fallen woman…”
“Well, who isnae?”
“…An’ then she ranted at me into the small hours of the morning about besmirching the Hatto good name, burdening the welfare state and gratifying the desires of the flesh. But, the next day, she was knitting little romper suits and blankets for the baby. Auntie Millie thinks it’s hilarious. She wrote to me: ‘heard you’ve got a bun in the oven...how yummy-licious.”
Roxy looked revolted. “Just don’t expect me to ‘coo’.”
Leonie assured her she would not. But there was a question that had been preying on her mind. Why had Liam blown up the Lord Provost’s house?
Roxanne’s eyes darkened. “It was me. Well – I made him do it. He took the rap for me.”
Leonie swallowed hard. She did not want to be impolite. But the words slipped out. “How come?”
Roxanne lowered her voice once more. “This is why I feel really bad, eh? We went to Stew McLiar’s house, right, an’ Liam begged me no’ to do it. But then I said: ‘if this place doesn’t burn, I will’, and Liam thought I meant to commit suicide.” She bit her lip. “But I just meant I felt all clogged up inside, like I’d swallowed a ton of soot. I wanted revenge, Leonie. An’ I was so sure revenge would set me free. Stop me wantin’ to hurt an’ bully people like I’ve done ever since Dad went to jail.” She hung her head. “But this is where I colossally an’ monumentally screwed up, Leonie. Revenge doesnae set you free. It eats you up from inside. I wanted to destroy everythin’ McLally cared about; like he did to me. Instead, I destroyed both myself and Liam.
“Worse still, it was all just so totally pointless. McLally had insurance…he wangled enough money to buy an even bigger house. He’s swanned off to stay wi’ pals while it’s bein’ built. In the Bahamas.”
Leonie laughed. “Doesn’t he know anyone nearer?”
Roxy shrugged. “I’m more surprised he’s got pals anywhere.”
“Did Clelland go with him?”
Roxy’s tongue warped round her lips. “No. He’s off to an even snobbier school than Jayjay’s. Place called Eton.” Roxy was smouldering with rage. Leonie backed away.
Roxy called her back. “But I won’t be bullyin’ anyone ever again, I promise. You don’t judge me, do you? An’, Leo…for the record…I didnae ask Liam to take the rap. He said he’d hang himself if I didnae let him. McLally suspected me soon as he found out I was a Malone, but Liam told the Judge he done it to avenge me, and he swore I’d begged him not to.”
“Did he get a long sentence?”
“Not as long as you would’ve thought. He pled guilty, eh, an’ the defence said he was really brave when he hauled Lachlan from the flames.” Roxanne, who seldom physically cried, was crying now. “I just wish…oh, I ken this is stupid…I just wish I could turn back time.”
“Don’t we all?” observed Leonie, glancing at her pregnant belly. Then a burning question assailed her. To ask was to cut the timebomb wire. It risked blowing up the fragile friendship. But she feared she’d explode herself for want of asking.
“That stuff about you turning back time when we were kids…it was all just pretend, eh? Like D…dreamia?”
A frost glazed over Roxy’s face. Then she grinned. “Come on, Leo. Even you’re no’ that gullible!”
A mixture of relief and disappointment filled Leonie. As her eyes smarted, she took comfort at least from one thing. She had won her part in Annie fair and square. She could at last lay to rest that gnawing suspicion that Roxy had wangled the part for her by transtemporal skullduggery.
But then again, Roxy had hesitated before the denial. Maybe, just maybe…
“We cannae go back, Leonie,” said Roxanne firmly. “What we can do, though, is go forward; an’ that is what I mean to do. I’ve promised our Liam I’ll go straight; no more arson, no more shopliftin’, no more bullyin...”
“No more Jayjay o’clock,” breathed Leonie.
Roxy swallowed hard. “We were evil. All of us. But from now on I’m gonna be a model citizen. I’m gonna make somethin’ o’ myself. I’m gonna be a movie star, or a singer, or a chat show host, or a supermodel...”
A smile unfolded on Leonie’s lips. “Me too. In fact, I might be auditioning on Megastar next year.”
Roxy grinned, but Leonie did not get the sense that Roxy took this plan seriously. “What does your nanna think?”
Leonie swallowed. “She…um...doesn’t know.”
“And the baby?”
Leonie faltered. “Um. Maybe Nanna or Millie could…”
Roxy laughed. The message was clear: Yeah, right. Ding dong. Pull the other one.
All right. Perhaps Leonie hadn’t thought it through. But they would all laugh on the other sides of their faces when she lifted the Megastar trophy. If other fat, ugly and stupid people made it that way, then so would she.
Roxy beamed at her. “Tell you what,” she said. “Shall we promise to help each other on the bumpy road to fame? Best pals for life, eh?” She fished something out of her pocket. “You offered me one o’ these years ago, but I wouldnae take it because I thought they were bollocks. Well, I still think they’re bollocks, but I’m givin’ you one anyhow.” She held out her hand. It was a friendship bracelet.
Leonie stared at Roxanne in shock, as if she still had niggling fears about that bear sharpening its claws. Then, as Leonie sobbed her heart out, the two girls embraced each other with more warmth they had ever done before. It was the happiest moment of Leonie’s life.
Chapter Fifty
The Road from Damascus
Headquarters of MI8, Damascus, Syria, December 19th, 2051
Perun pored over his computer screen. A fever crushed his head. Twelve hours of scrolling and zooming-in, and nothing but red herrings. His retinas were raw and his tea had grown cold. He rubbed his eyes again – that wretched heat, and that infernal itching!
Deep beneath the ground, he heard the sound of shelling and gunfire. In these vaults deep beneath the city’s outskirts, the lights were dim and the air was stale. It was like working in a smithy. He’d worked here on-off since MI8 set up camp three years ago, but never for so long. Four months without seeing the sun. Four months of water that tasted like warm slime. Four months of baking in a slow-cook oven. He mopped his brow again. This bunker would be his coffin. But not before his mission was accomplished. And that bought him a little time. After all, it took a vast amount of stamina and fortitude to trawl through five decades’ worth of newspapers, foreign office papers and MI6 dossiers. But that secret Russian nuclear base must exist somewhere. He’d leave no stone unturned in his bid to find it. Somewhere…somehow…someone would have left a clue. Doctored video footage. An unexplained death. A ‘UFO sighting’. Perun slouched over the keyboard like a parched reed in a dried-up stream. But it was not as if he could rely on some minion to sift through these files for him. No-one under Level 10 was allowed near them.
Nothing ailed Perun. The dark ache behind his eyes stemmed only from lack of sleep. A side effect of strain, high temperatures and poor sanitation. The gnawing in his chest and gullet, so chafing it felt like being skinned, was the burn from the Semtex and sulphur that scorched the air. In one thing Perun prided himself. He had no soul. He was an ex-human being, a mere biocomputer whom no sentiment could sway and no tenderness soften. The happiest day of his life was the day the Russians had ripped out his soul, and purged him of every last vestige of tenderness and love. That one act of mercy had paradoxically set him free.
