Poster Boy, page 30
She might have been, but I fucking wasn’t.
“I wanted her on a higher dose first,” I snapped.
We’d been upping the levels of G-Star in her injections, very slowly. When you’re dealing with a junkie, a small amount of what they’re craving doesn’t even register to them, they just feel ‘normal’. Increasing it a little every day would mean she wouldn’t notice the high, but she would start to feel a bond, a sense of enlightenment, a feeling of belonging. Well, that’s what the experts say.
The truth can be a bitter pill to swallow. I wanted to make sure she had enough sugar in her veins to help it go down.
“She doesn’t need it,” Greg insisted. “In fact, I think you ought to stop giving it to her. Let her get clean, properly. You owe her that much.”
“I don’t owe her anything!”
He raised his eyebrow. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to let on it was your idea to crucify her family. But honestly, I think she would have joined us already, if she knew the truth. I really do.”
“Well, on your head be it,” I said. “If she doesn’t see things our way, well, I’ll be forced to make sure she can’t expose us.”
“I told her we wouldn’t kill her.”
“That’s not your call to make.” I glared at him. He scuttled back to his office, sensing he’d pissed me off enough already and it wouldn’t be wise to push me any further. I hate having my hand forced.
When I entered the basement, the change in Rosa was instantly visible. She was sitting straighter, looking brighter. Her eyes met mine instead of shying away.
“Hello, Rosa,” I began.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” she said, but without a hint of a smile. “I’ve got some questions.”
She’d found her balls, then.
“I’m sorry I’ve neglected you.” I chose to ignore her statement; I needed to be in control. You can’t let the other person steer. “I hope Greg has made sure you have everything you need?”
“What I need is some answers.” She wasn’t going to give up.
“And that’s exactly what I plan to give you.” I smiled as sweetly as I could, though she was pissing me off. I sat beside her on the fluffy rug.
“I want to know what’s really going on here. What your plans are, and why?”
“Rosa, I’m going to tell you the truth, I promise. But first, let me tell you a story.”
“What story?” She was almost scowling now.
“The story of the first time I killed a man.”
That got her attention.
“I had a very different upbringing to you, Rosa. And I admit, because of that, I judged you too harshly the first time I met you. I thought you were a spoilt little rich girl. No guts, no spine. But now I’m starting to see I was wrong. In fact, when I was the age you are now, I was in a similar situation to you. Funny how different paths can lead to the same destination, isn’t it?”
She didn’t look amused. But I continued.
“I was working in a bar. A real shithole. I didn’t have a friend in the boss like you did, though, or a free room to live in. It was back when the recession hit, I guess you’d have been about twelve or thirteen then, right?”
She nodded.
“Okay, so you probably don’t remember, but back then the whole country was freaking out about Dover. Violence was on the rise. The ERP was gaining the support of all the skin-head nationalist thugs, but they hadn’t yet managed to rein them in. Well, it was those types of Neanderthals that used to drink there. I fucking hated everything about them, but I had to smile and serve them anyway. And put up with their disgusting leering. I didn’t have choices; I couldn’t afford principles. But I did spit in their pints whenever I could…”
She smiled at that.
“So, this one evening, I noticed this guy, sat at the back, all by himself. I noticed him because, when one of the knuckleheads turned around after trying to grab me, I’d hocked up a nice juicy ball of phlegm into his Guinness. When I looked up, this guy was staring at me. Right at me. He’d seen me do it. I panicked for a second. I couldn’t lose my job. But he smiled and winked.
“So, the Nazi twat drank his spit pint. But he didn’t stop with the groping. Every time I had to walk through the bar to collect glasses, he tried to grab me. You might have noticed I’m not exactly the patient type. Eventually, he pissed me off so much I slapped him round the face. Everyone cheered, even his mates. He was humiliated and stormed out.
“It wasn’t until after I finished my shift that I realised he hadn’t gone far. As soon as I stepped out of the door, he grabbed me from behind, pulled me into the alley. There was no one around. He started pulling at my skirt, shoving his fucking tattooed knuckles down into my pants. He didn’t know that a girl who was brought up the way I was knows to always carry a knife.”
“You stabbed him?” Rosa asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Had to. Self-defence.”
Except it wasn’t. The first slash maybe, the one when I sliced across his arm, causing him to swear and let me go. Maybe even the second. The one that got him in the shoulder and made him stumble backwards and fall to the ground. Maybe that was just to stop him coming after me. Maybe. But the third, the fourth, the fifth? They were pure fucking rage. Pure hatred. When I sliced his Adam’s apple, listened to the last breath gurgle from his body, felt his hot, sticky blood all over my hands… I wasn’t just attacking him. I was attacking every fucker who’d ever laid a finger on me. From my drunken foster mum to the school bully, and it felt fucking good.
I didn’t tell Rosa that, though.
“Anyway, I must have hit an artery in the struggle. So he fell backwards, and I could tell he was dead. I didn’t know what to do. I was going to make a run for it, but when I turned around there was the guy from the bar, the one who watched me spit in the bastard’s pint. I was trapped.”
“But if he saw it, he must have known it was self-defence? What did he say?”
Yeah, he’d seen it alright. All of it.
“He held up his hands, must have worried I’d think he was going to attack too. He said he’d heard a commotion, come to see if I needed help. ‘I thought I’d come to your rescue,’ he said. ‘But it seems you know how to take care of business.’
“I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. Really fucking scared. I asked him if he’d be a witness, tell the police it was self-defence.”
I asked him to lie, basically.
“He said he couldn’t. He was known to police himself; he couldn’t risk it. But he said he’d help me, if I wanted.”
“Who was he?”
“His name was Daniel.”
“Daniel Knight?”
I nodded. “The same.”
“What did he do?”
“He saved me. Not just that night, but for good. He gave me a place to stay, to hide, taught me how to control my temper. Then he gave me a new identity, thanks to his hacking skills, one that wasn’t chequered, one that had the education, and the funds, to do whatever I wanted.”
“Zara Jinks?”
“Exactly. And he never asked anything of me, Rosa. I don’t want you to think I worked for him because I owed him. He’s not that kind of man.”
“So why did you? Join him, I mean?”
“It wasn’t just me he was out to save, it was all of us. He told me the truth, and then gave me a choice. The same choice I’m going to give you. Once you know the truth, what will you choose to do with it, I wonder?”
“What truth?”
I studied her. Was she ready? How would she react? I remembered how it felt, when Daniel told me. The disbelief, the white-hot rage… the feeling of impotence. But for me, determination followed. And a purpose. A place to direct the fury that had always burned in my veins. Would she be the same? Or would she wither under the weight? There was only one way to find out.
“Daniel never knew his real father,” I continued. “He was a deadbeat, just like mine, ran out on his mother when she was pregnant. But, unlike me, he had a decent mother. And she met a good man, who raised Daniel as his own. He worshipped his step-father. The guy worked hard, loved Daniel’s mother desperately, and gave his family everything he had. Thanks to him he had an idyllic childhood, and he was always treated exactly the same as his younger brothers. But the problems started when that little white girl got butchered.”
“Lily?” Rosa asked. “I remember her…”
“Uh-huh. Well, then you’ll remember the riots, and the hate crimes. People started to sneer and whisper. Daniel and his brothers started getting shit at school.”
“Why? Daniel isn’t Muslim?”
“What makes you say that? His skin? Muslim isn’t always black, you know. But in this case, you’re right. Daniel isn’t Muslim. Neither was his step-dad, as it goes. At least, not a practising one. He didn’t consider himself religious at all, but his parents were, and his surname was. And that was all the bigots of this country cared about.
“So, as I’m sure you know from your experience with your little friend Soheila, things just got worse and worse. Especially for Daniel’s mum. A ‘true Brit’ married to a Muzzie? You can imagine… The ERP was gaining support, nationalist splinter groups were rife. It wasn’t a good time.
“Suddenly, out of nowhere, his step-dad announced he wanted them to move to Canada. He had a friend out there who was organising a place for them to stay. He’d already seen to college and school places for Daniel and his brothers, and even arranged a perfect job for his wife. They didn’t question it. Plenty of mixed race and Muslim families were jumping ship. But he himself wouldn’t be able to join them for a few months. Work commitments, you see, he had to finish his tour of duty, and there was a big event coming up.”
“He was in the forces?”
“He was a pilot. A damn good one. He was in the Red Arrows.”
The goosebumps rose on her flesh. She had an inkling where this was going, so I put her out of her misery.
“Daniel’s stepfather’s name was Yousseff Nasir.”
Her mouth opened slowly, then shut again. I waited for her to process enough to ask questions.
“He was the Dover bomber?” she asked. “Gridless was started by the son of the Dover bomber?”
“Imagine how Daniel felt, half-way across the world when he heard the news that his beloved step-father had turned terrorist?”
“He couldn’t believe it?”
“He didn’t believe it. Still doesn’t. And neither do I.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Did he fly the Spitfire into the cliff? Yes. That’s not in doubt. But was he a terrorist? Was he carrying explosives? Did he, in fact, cause all that devastation? Those are the questions that need answering. And the truth isn’t pretty.”
“So what is it, this truth you think you know?”
“I told you Daniel didn’t believe it, right? Well, lucky for him he’d made friends with a fellow Englishman on campus. Kyle Redwood. Everyone knows Kyle’s the best there is when it comes to hacking; it’s no exaggeration. I hate to give the fat slob too much praise, but he is a damn genius. So Kyle got on the case. After many all-nighters huddled round a screen in their dorm, they found it.”
“What did they find?”
“Testimonials. From young women, girls even. Allegations of sexual abuse against them, by Yousseff.”
“So… he killed himself… because he was a paedophile?”
“Don’t be stupid. Don’t you think if it was true it would have been all over the press? The Muzzie who bombed Dover was also a kiddie fiddler? It’d have been perfect. No, when Kyle investigated the girls, he found they didn’t really exist. They had cyber trails, but that’s it. They’d been fabricated.”
“Why?”
“Blackmail. They blackmailed Nasir into breaking formation, diving into the cliff, killing himself. He had no choice. If he didn’t, they’d drag him and his beloved family through the courts and the press. Probably add some charges against the boys too. They’d be disgraced, and their lives ruined. But… a large deposit was made into his account just a few days before he announced the move to Canada.”
“How large?”
“Enough to pay for a house, and a first-rate education for the boys.”
“That doesn’t prove—”
“Kyle did some digging into the background of the ‘friend’ who arranged the move from the Canadian end. He wasn’t a friend at all. He was an ex-British secret service agent, and he was on the ERP payroll. Nowadays, he’s employed as a senior exec for DatStats, one of Cole’s largest investors.”
“You’re saying Cole, the ERP, they planned Dover? That’s mad! It doesn’t make any sense!”
“It makes perfect sense, Rosa, they had the most to gain.”
She stood up, tears running down her puffy cheeks.
“You’re a bunch of conspiracy theorist whackos! Lunatics!”
“It must seem that way, yes,” I said calmly.
“And even if you were right, it still makes Nasir a murderer! To cause all that misery, just to protect himself and his family!”
“Rosa,” I took her arm, stared straight into her eyes. “Do you really still believe a single Spitfire crash caused the cliffs to fall?”
“He was carrying explosives, everyone knows that!”
“No. No, he wasn’t. And even if he was, a crash on the surface? You’ve seen those cliffs go down a thousand times. They went from the middle…”
“I’ve heard the theories,” she snapped. “Everyone has, and they’ve all been debunked a million times over!”
I shook my head. “You’ve heard the theories you were allowed to hear. The ones that could be debunked. The ones constructed by fantastical students, or disgraced academics. Trust me, Rosa. I know. I take down the credible ones for a living. We have to let a certain amount of dissent, of speculation, get out there. You can’t win an argument if there’s no opposing view. But the real noteworthy objectors? The actual evidence? They get crushed, and destroyed.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That whole area was closed to the public, for conservation work, several weeks before Armistice Day. The story was that there’d been a small cave-in and they wanted to make sure the tunnels, and the cliffs themselves, were all secure before the Remembrance display, right?”
Rosa nodded dubiously. So I continued.
“What you won’t know is that the company undertaking the work, Countryside Services, enjoyed massive donations from the ERP as part of their commitment to ‘preserving our heritage’.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Unfortunately, despite those donations, they still didn’t have the manpower to undertake the task alone. So, a local company, Greenland Construction, thoughtfully offered the services of several of its workers, including the foreman that ultimately led the work. At first, they all worked together well, but after a few days the foreman, a Mr Harry Savage, declared he was unable to continue working with the men from Countryside, as their public sector methods and training were so inferior to those of his staff… Countryside could never complete the task in time without them, so after ensuring Greenland Construction was fully competent, they graciously bowed out to allow the project to continue.”
“So?”
“So, for two weeks the site was entirely in the hands of Mr Savage and his most trusted workers. That’s public knowledge, should anyone care to look. But what’s not commonly known, because great pains have been taken to hide it, is that Greenland Construction is a subsidiary of the hugely successful Cole Corp. Enterprises, and our Mr Savage is Cole’s former aide. In addition to, briefly, running said construction company, he was also the CEO of a major overseas munitions manufacturer.
“Rosa, a single Spitfire did not take down the white cliffs of Dover. A power-hungry billionaire hell bent on turning the country fascist did. Savage and his cronies planted explosives, with the promise they would be well rewarded once Cole came to power, as he inevitably would. Look them up, not one of them is worth less than five million now. They all made ‘smart investments’, apparently…
“I know what you’re thinking. It could all be coincidence, right? But consider this, Rosa: If there’s nothing to hide then why can no record of any of this be found anymore?”
“If there’s no proof, then why should I believe you? Why do you believe it? Have you ever thought this was all just Daniel’s little fantasy?”
“I said there was no record anymore.” I pulled a pair of Shades from my pocket and handed them to her. “But you’ll find everything I’ve told you is corroborated by the files on there. I’ll give you some time, it’s not easy to accept, I know.”
I left her in the basement, with the truth laid out before her eyes. And I had to admit, Kyle had been right all along. Keeping that information safe was more important than any of our lives.
27
ROSA
I looked through the files. When I was finished, I watched the footage of the cliffs collapsing for the last time, but in many ways the first. I could never stomach it again.
It was all there. Everything she said. And more. The employment records, the faked testimonials, a hacked email between Cole and Savage in which the now PM congratulated his colleague on a job well done, dated November 12th.
All now sacrificed to the god of rewritten history. But Kyle and Daniel had got there first. Before the Public Information Department had been launched, before Cole had the means to truly hide his tracks, from world-class hackers as well as expert ones. Perhaps others had found these files too but they had remained silent. I didn’t want to think about why that might be.
The Dover bombing had been an attack on the British people. But not an attack on our pride, our heritage, or even our history. It had been an attack on our hearts and minds. The winning battle in a war against our tolerance, our compassion, even our intelligence. And we had surrendered. Given in. Succumbed to the notion of ‘them and us’, allowed ourselves to be divided. And therefore conquered.
Just as I had been forced to accept that Jimmy’s death had not saved innocent lives, now I had to come to terms with the truth that there never was any great threat against us. Even those of us who did not believe the ERP’s end justified their means, we’d still swallowed a lie.
