Strangled Silence (6 page)

She looked at him. He waved his middle finger
in her face and folded his arms, waiting to have this
out with her when she finished the call.

'Yeah,' she said, returning the gesture. 'He can
be pretty funny when he wants. But then, it helps
that he's funny-
looking
. Apparently he was born
arse-first. And he's been trying to catch up with it
ever since. So, were you talking to the girls? Are we
going out tonight or what?'

Tariq gave his sister a half-hearted kick in the
backside and headed for his room. As he was climbing
the stairs he could still hear her talking:

'He said what? God, they're all the same, aren't
they? No, I'm in between at the moment. Getting
a bit tired of boys, to be honest. They're such kids,
y'know?'

Amina pencilled a number into the box and then
rubbed it out again, massaging her temples and
wishing her post-Saturday-night headache away.
The paracetamol did not seem to be having any
effect at all. This, combined with her bad mood, was
having severely detrimental effects on her powers of
sudoku. She and her friends had failed to get into
the Lizard Club in Leicester Square again. It was the
hottest place in town and they'd tried three times
over the last few weeks with no luck. They had
decided they were too cool for the place anyway,
and had gone somewhere else. The rejection still
stung though. How hip and gorgeous did you have
to be?

'Journalists can learn a lot from Hitler,' Helena
declared.

A few years ago, Amina would have risen to the
bait. It was one of her mother's trademarks to make
an outrageous statement in order to get your
attention before qualifying it with some wellreasoned
justification. Gone were the days when
Amina would react in shock at her mother's
apparent political incorrectness; now it was consigned
to the same area of disdain reserved for any
parent's attempts to be controversial, or worse yet
. . . cool. This latest declaration had been prompted
by an article in the paper in which a prominent
neo-Nazi compared the flood of Sinnostani immigrants
to the West with the Jewish 'infestation' of
Germany before the Second World War. Not long
ago, he would have been dismissed as a crackpot.
Now he had just been elected a member of parliament
in a by-election.

'Really?' Amina asked in response to her
mother's declaration. 'Hitler bit of a newshound,
was he?'

She winced at the trite remark. She hated being
smart with her mother, but something about
Helena always brought out the sarcasm in her.
Perhaps it was the way Helena substituted lectures
for proper mother – daughter chats. And being
hungover didn't help.

Now she and her mother were sitting at the
kitchen table with their cups of coffee, having
divided up the Sunday paper; Amina was doing
sudoku while her mother browsed the headlines
and worked her way through the crossword. They
would read the paper through afterwards, passing
pages back and forth. This was one of the few rituals
they still shared together, mostly on Sunday afternoons,
and even though there might be hardly any
conversation at all, they both made an effort to keep
it up.

'No,' her mother replied with a patient tone. 'I
mean he knew how to use information. He could
convince ordinary people to commit acts of
extraordinary evil.'

'And that's
exactly
why I want to be a reporter,'
Amina said.

'My, aren't we feeling sarky today!'

'Well, I didn't catch it from the water. Can I
read that after you?'

Helena slid the folded page over to her. Half
the articles in the paper were related to Sinnostan.
Amina thought about Ivor and his claims that the
army – or somebody connected with it – had
brainwashed him. She had dipped into the archives
to search for similar claims and had found a few,
none of which had offered any more evidence than
Ivor could himself. Amina idly wondered if there
might be something to Ivor's story, but she was sure
the truth would turn out to be something far more
mundane. The human mind had limits, and there
was no shortage of people who snapped because of
the things they'd seen, or done, or had done to
them.

Ivor McMorris. She found herself thinking of
his sad smile, and those slightly haunted eyes.
Haunted eye, she corrected herself. Could a glass
eye have an expression? She reminded herself that
her interest was in the story, not the man. Although
he was in another league compared to all the boys
who had been vying for her attention the evening
before in the club.

She felt a tingle of excitement as she thought
about her article again. She hoped they wouldn't
edit it too much. It was still part of the whole
journalism thing that grated on her nerves. You
could write what you thought was a brilliant piece
and then someone came along and told you it was
too long, or too subjective or not what the paper
was looking for, so they changed it.

Helena Jessop, renowned for her work as a war
correspondent and later for her investigative
journalism, had famously decided to become
a journalist after watching a single documentary
about the Holocaust. The turning point in her
career had come in Bosnia during the break-up of
Yugoslavia. She had made a report on the discovery
of a mass grave: twenty-two men, women and
children butchered by Serbian soldiers. An elderly
imam had led her through Serbian-held territory to
show her the site.

Despite the horrors she had seen – and some
considered these genocidal maniacs to be the Nazis
of the nineties – Helena still considered Serbia's
people to be no better or worse than anyone else.

'We make decisions about our lives based not
on the world around us, but on our perception of
that world,' she said, putting down her pen and
cupping her hands around her coffee mug. 'Hitler
understood this. Every leader does. Control all the
information and you control how people make
decisions. If you can control it well enough to convince
the majority that a certain action is necessary
– even a monstrous one – then you can carry out
that action and the people will not only let it
happen, they will enthusiastically support you. And
all it takes are the right words and maybe some
pictures to help them along.

'Hitler and the war he started are perfect
examples of the power of words. He was a master
of propaganda and he knew the importance of
influencing education too. Get 'em young. That was
why he started the Hitler Youth. Start persuading
them as soon as they're able to understand your
words. Empower the kids – make them feel part of
the fight.

'Millions of people were executed, not because
he was an evil mastermind or a madman – but
because he had the power to
convince
. He could turn
a nation's fear into hysteria with his rousing
speeches. He made ordinary Germans feel as if they
were under attack – not just from enemies in other
countries, but also from the Jews he claimed were
seizing power from within.

'In fact, by portraying him as an evil monster,
we do people like him a favour. We kid ourselves
that if another Hitler turned up, we'd spot him long
before he could commit the same sort of horrors
again. I mean, it'd be obvious he was a monster,
right? Which is why this shit keeps happening. It's
more likely that the next Hitler will manage to
convince us we are under attack from someone else
long before we realize what he really is.

'That's why a good journalist can learn a lot
from Hitler. He wasn't the devil in human form, he
was just a man. But he was a superb manipulator,
and that's what journalism is up against. And it's
why a country's most important defence is not
the armed forces or a nuclear deterrent or even
diplomacy; it's a free press – a bunch of bloody-minded
journalists who are determined to tell
people what's really going on, so we know the real
enemies from the false ones. They are the first line
of defence against tyranny.'

Helena did not need to point out that she was
one of these and took her position as defender of
the nation's freedom extremely seriously. She and
Amina had versions of this conversation on a
regular basis, with just enough variation to avoid
completely repeating themselves. It was a grown-up
equivalent of her mother sitting beside her in bed
and reading a favourite storybook to her night after
night.

'And what about all the
other
journalists?'
Amina asked. 'The ones who don't agree with your
point of view?'

'They should all be shot,' Helena responded.
'Failing that, well . . . I suppose they have to have
their say too. Though frankly, the world would be
a better place if only everyone would just listen
to me.'

Amina suspected she was only half-joking.

Ivor had endured this nightmare many times. He
knew there was nothing about it that should have
scared him and yet the terror set in again as soon as
he recognized the spinning numbers over their
alternating red and black backgrounds.

There should have been nothing frightening
about a roulette wheel, even if this one was
dazzlingly ornate and swung with the gravity of a
merry-go-round, the numbered slots flashing past
with dizzying speed. There was something about
the numbers themselves that filled him with a
sense of horror, but he could not say why. He was
looking across the top from a low angle, suddenly
riding in one of the slots, when the little white ball
fell in and started to bounce around the wheel.

The perspective yawned away from him. As the
ball bounced into the distance, it retreated in size
until it was little bigger than a grain of sand, then
expanded to several metres in diameter as it neared
him again, crashing down on the wheel at each
bounce with the weight of marble. If it landed in
his slot he would be crushed. He could not move,
no matter how hard he tried. He was strapped into
the slot by invisible bonds.

The ball crashed past, its passage blowing back
his hair, its tremendous weight sending a jolt along
the wheel and up the bones in Ivor's backside.
Suddenly he was airborne, looking down on the
wheel from above. He had played roulette just once,
in a casino in Kurjong. In a normal wheel there
were thirty-seven randomly placed numbers,
including one slot labelled zero.

He remembered hearing the legend that one of
the developers of the game of roulette had sold his
soul to the devil to learn its system. This was why,
if you added up all the numbers from one to thirtysix,
you ended up with 666 – the Number of the
Beast.

The wheel in his nightmare had 101 slots. He
had no idea what this meant.

He always expected to feel pain from his empty
eye socket in these dreams, but instead he still had
his right eye. It was his teeth that began to come
loose. He wailed, trying to keep his jaws still as
his teeth split and crumbled like chalk, shards
sliding down his throat and spilling from between
his lips.

Even from the relative safety above the wheel,
the ricocheting ball held him in a trance and his
eyes followed it with a grinding feeling of
inevitability. Don't let it fall on number twenty, he
prayed. Not number twenty.

The wheel slowed. The ball lost momentum, its
bounces getting shorter and lower. It clattered into
its final resting place with what sounded like a
death rattle and Ivor screamed himself awake.

It always took a minute or two to realize that
the dream was over. He slowly became aware
that the sheet beneath him was damp and he sniffed
it tentatively. It was just sweat. A couple of nights
after arriving at the hospital in Kurjong, he had wet
the bed. Chronically embarrassed, he had tried to
steal away and wash the sheets, but was caught
hurrying down the corridor to the bathroom
cradling the urine-stained linen. The nurses had
been sympathetic; they had seen it all before.
Compared to some of the psychologically damaged
cases they had on their hands, Ivor was an ideal
patient.

He looked at the time: it was after five in the
morning. His glass eye felt too big in its scarred
socket – he normally left it in when he slept. The
socket ached and he tenderly rubbed the skin
around it. He wouldn't get back to sleep now. That
was fine; he preferred going out first thing in the
morning before the rest of the world was up. It
made the watchers easier to spot and he had
learned to amuse himself by wandering around
aimlessly, changing direction at random and seeing
them struggle to remain anonymous as they took
turns following his antics.

It was Monday morning. Amina had said her
article would be printed today. The early editions
would be out soon. There was a twenty-four-hour
shop down the road, so he could drop in and see if
his story had been printed. Would they know
already? They had to, if they were as powerful as he
thought they were. And if not, they soon would.
The online version of the paper would be up for
sure; he'd check it out himself, but he needed the
excuse for a walk.

Ivor dressed without turning on the light and,
grabbing his jacket, he headed for the door. Going
outside alone in the early hours of the morning was
probably not the wisest thing to do, but after long
sleepless nights of uncertainty, he just didn't give a
damn about anything any more.

He checked the hallway through the spy-hole
and then opened the door, but stopped before stepping
outside. Leaning over to the side table behind
the door, he pulled out the drawer, took out his
stun-gun and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He
already had the metal bar from a dumb-bell in his
other pocket.

Just because he was verging on suicidal didn't
mean he'd let himself be taken without doing
somebody some serious harm.

Amina and Tariq were always up later than their
parents and, as a result, had only to compete with
each other to get to the bathroom. And compete
they did. There was another bathroom downstairs,
but it didn't have a power-shower. Tariq got there
first this time and Amina had to wait impatiently for
her turn.

'I have to go to work, y'know!' she called
through the door.

'I have to go to school, y'know!' he sang back.

He was going through a goth phase and spent
ages every morning working his black hair into a
carefully arranged untidiness. Looking at her watch,
Amina was almost ready to give up on the shower
when he finally unbolted the door and came out,
his gothic look contrasting with his prissy blue-and-grey
school uniform. She emerged from her
room and stopped dead when she saw him.

'Are you wearing eyeliner?' she asked.

'No,' he replied, bowing his head as he strode
past her.

'You are!' she gasped, grabbing him by his
jaggedly spiked hair and holding his head up. 'Ha!
My little brother – the new Marilyn Manson! It'll
be white face-paint next. You could cover up those
spots. Or . . . no! Black lipstick!'

He brushed her off with a petulant gesture and
hurriedly made for the stairs.

'Hey, wait a minute.' She turned to follow him,
her smile disappearing. 'Is that
my
eyeliner? Oi! Do
you know how much that stuff costs?'

He was already down the stairs, pulling on his
jacket and grabbing his school bag, its grey canvas
daubed with the hand-drawn logos of half a dozen
death-metal bands.

'Get your own bloody make-up!' she yelled as
he slammed the front door after him.

But twenty minutes later, she was still smiling
about his new look as she waited for her train. She
had gone through her own rake of rebel fashions,
but working in an office had put a stop to that.
Now she was wearing a smart black trouser-suit
over a pin-striped white shirt, eager to be taken
seriously by the professionals in the newsroom. Her
long dark hair was still a bit damp, so she had left it
down to let it dry. She would pin it up before she
got to the office.

The first thing she did when she arrived
at work was grab a copy of the morning edition.
It was available online of course, but she got a
particular thrill from seeing her work in print. It
took her a couple of minutes to find her article,
tucked into the side of a page halfway into the
paper.

On reading it, she wondered if her mother's
philosophy regarding swearing at one's leaders
applied in this case. The story had been cut to
ribbons:

LOTTERY WINNER AFRAID TO SPEND HIS MILLION
by Amina Mir

Jackpot winner Ivor McMorris claims that he
has hardly spent a penny of the 2.4 million
pounds lottery prize. One of three winners,
McMorris is the only one still living a modest
lifestyle. Apparently, he is worried about
what people might think of him. Speaking
yesterday, he said: 'I'm afraid to spend the
money. I don't want to make anyone angry.' A
veteran of the conflict in Sinnostan, McMorris
has since become a recluse and now resents
the attention his winnings have brought him.

Amina ground her teeth as she read the article.
Ninety-four words; that was all Goldbloom had
given her in the end. And half of them weren't even
hers. She wouldn't have minded if he had kept the
essential elements of the article. The whole reason
Ivor had come to them – the reason he was afraid
to spend any of his money – was because of his
suspicions about the events leading up to his
injuries in Sinnostan, and they had been completely
removed from the story.

Throwing down the paper, she stormed up to
the copy-room. There was photocopying to be
done. One of the entertainment correspondents
had given her a set of listings to copy and bind, but
she was still getting her head around the state-of-the-art,
multi-functional copy machines. Any one
of these monsters could do two-sided copying,
automatic loading, automatic resizing, sorting,
stapling and – so she had been told – had a shatterproof
glass top in case you fancied photocopying
your backside.

As she jabbed aggressively at the little touch-screen,
trying to get it to do a
simple bloody photocopy
,
her mind seethed with the unfairness of it all.

Helena had warned her that this kind of thing
happened all the time, but this was the first time it
had happened to
her
. It wasn't right! Even if Ivor
was a bit of a crackpot, she'd promised to do her
best and he had trusted her. She would have felt
better if Goldbloom had just shelved the story
altogether – at least that way he wouldn't have
made a liar out of her.

For some reason, the copier seemed determined
to print her A4 copies out on A3 paper. She
shoved the sabotaged copies into the recycle bin,
changed the paper setting back
again
and pressed
the green button. The copies came out on A3 for a
third time.

Amina was not a complete turnip when it
came to technology. She could deal with all manner
of problems with her PC at home. She could programme
the DVD recorder and use every function
on her mobile phone. But this machine seemed
determined to disobey her instructions.

'Bugger this!' she growled, resisting the urge to
kick it.

Goldbloom should have told her he was going
to change the whole context of the piece. It was
still her story. Even if she was just starting off, she
had the right to know what was going on. As the
copier started to spit out copies printed in mirror
image, she swore again.

'Problem?' a voice asked behind her.

It was Rob, one of the paper's youngest
reporters, a West Indian wide boy with big
aspirations.

'Nothing in this bloody building prints the way
you want it to!' she told him, folding her arms as if
daring him to argue.

'Yeah, it's like a big conspiracy, innit?'

He walked up to her, leaned past, giving her a
patronizing smile, and reset the copier. Then he
touched the screen twice. The pages started sliding
out the right way up, the right way round and on
the right paper.

'Yah just gotta know which buttons to press,
girlie!' he said in his best Yardie accent.

By the time she had delivered the bound copies
to the boardroom, the editors were all getting
settled and looking for teas and coffees. Amina
dutifully took their orders and hurried off to fill
them. She reminded herself that noting down all
the various combinations of lattes, cappuccinos,
espressos, decafs, half-cafs, sugars, sweeteners, soya
milks, along with the confusing arrays of herbal
teas, was excellent practice for her shorthand. Her
mother said it was vital to have the old skills. Some
day she might get caught without a recorder and
have to take notes fast.

And if the whole reporting thing didn't
work out, at least she could turn to waiting
tables.

She was halfway through preparing all the
various beverages when Judy on reception buzzed
her to tell her there was an Ivor McMorris on the
phone for her.

'Bugger,' she said with a resigned expression.

She had barely picked up the phone at a free
desk when Ivor's irate voice blared out at her.

'I'm "afraid to spend the money because I don't
want to make anyone angry!"?' he snapped. 'Is this
what you call reporting? What the hell happened to
everything I told you about my memories? You
didn't even mention the bombing! Put Goldbloom
on the phone, I want to speak to him. Do you
know the risk I took in talking to you? Have
you any idea what that meant?'

Amina winced, letting him run out of steam
before she replied. She knew some journalists who
made it a policy not to speak to the subjects of their
stories after the articles were written. Sometimes it
just wasn't worth the hassle. But she thought it was
a crap thing to do to somebody, even if the mistakes
in the article weren't hers.