Spiral (22 page)

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Jam softly. He reached into his pocket, pulled free a cigarette and lit up. Smoke plumed around his face, swirling in the cold air. He took a deep and heavy draw.

‘Those cunts,’ said Slater, his face an animal snarl, saliva glistening on his teeth.

‘Yeah,’ drawled Jam. ‘But which cunts, exactly?’

They moved slowly down the hill, boots thumping, crunching on glass; the bustle of activity following the immediate blast had subsided; no longer did rescue vehicles line the destruction zone, hundreds of people picking through the rubble, machines lifting blasted concrete slabs and massive H sections of steel. Most of the debris had already been cleared from around the hole; all of the bodies had been recovered.

‘We could have been in that,’ said Nicky, her face pale, her stomach churning. ‘That was
our
HQ. We could have been inside; we could have died with all the others.’

Jam merely nodded. All strength had flooded from him. All fight had gone.

Tapes had been set up surrounding the crime scene. The group stopped at this false barrier and were eyed suspiciously by several police officers who moved towards them backed up by the heavy military presence of about fifty Justice Troop squads with heavy machine guns.

‘Can we help you?’

‘No ... no. Did many people escape?’ asked Nicky softly.

‘Not a single one,’ said the PC gently. His smile was filled with kindness; his eyes glittered with horror stories and pain. He obviously had his own nightmares to contend with.

As the policemen moved away, Jam, Slater and Nicky just stood, dumbstruck, bitterness filling them with vinegar acid; their gaze roved over the mound of remaining rubble, the blackened scarred pavement with its twisted buckled flagstones and melted tarmac. By the edges of the crater stood the relics of life and work: a charred settee here, half a desk there. A battered and flame-eaten filing cabinet. The burned remains of a rubber plant. Business detritus now witness to the most terrible of man-made catastrophes: the bomb.

‘We need to catch these fuckers,’ said Slater softly.

‘Yes,’ breathed Nicky.

‘We need to make them pay.’

‘But that’s the problem,’ snapped Jam, turning, his stare angry. ‘How many people died here? Three, four hundred? Fucking pay for that? You can’t; even if you catch the people responsible, the leaders, or the monkeys planting the devices - you can’t make them pay for such a loss of life.’

‘Ironic, ain’t it?’ said Nicky bitterly.

‘What is?’

‘Spiral - experts in demolition and destruction; their own HQ wiped out in true Spiral style. Could have been done by our own people.’

‘We don’t take life with bombs,’ said Jam sourly. ‘Ours have always been surgical strikes against terrorist and military targets.’

‘Boys and their toys,’ sneered Nicky. There were tears on her cheeks. ‘Things always go wrong; people always die. It’s just the way of the fucking world. But this ... this...’ she gestured.

‘This,’ said Jam, ‘this was done to destroy office and investigative personnel. It was to wipe out the fucking mainframes, that’s why Spiral_H was targeted.’

‘I have an idea,’ said Slater.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘We need to see The Priest. He will have the answers, and he is the only man I would trust right now.’

This statement was met with a moment of stunned silence.

‘He’s fucking insane,’ said Jam, staring into Slater’s weary horror-shadowed eyes. The huge man shrugged, turning back to look at the remains of the devastation.

‘He is head of the
secret police.
So fucked-up as to be incorruptible.’

‘That’s if he’s still alive,’ said Nicky.

‘He’ll be alive,’ said Slater. ‘It’d take more than a few assassins to murder The Priest. After all,’ he smiled sombrely, ‘God is on his side.’

They turned away from the rubble, the stones and glass glinting in weak sunlight. They walked, rubble crunching underfoot, back up the hill, away from shattered dreams, detonated lives, smashed worlds. The van was waiting; they drove away in silence.

The moor road was cold, winding, and awesomely dark. The van hissed its way through the rain, headlights carving slices of yellow from the absolute black. Jam, Slater and Nicky all huddled together on the vehicle’s wide front bench more out of dismay at this hostile environment than from any real need to share heat.

‘You sure it’s up here?’ said Nicky miserably.

‘Aye,’ said Jam. ‘I’ve been once before. Ain’t that right, Slater?’ Slater grunted in his sleep and Jam punched him; Slater’s snoring altered pitch but he did not wake up. ‘You fucking heap of lard.’

Jam guided the van with care; past hordes of huddled sheep, through vast puddles where water had gathered at inadequate drainage channels, and still the rain pounded down and Jam began to wonder if agreeing to this meeting had been the best decision he had ever made.

The van screeched to a halt.

Rain danced in the beams of the headlights.

Nicky stared at the map. ‘Should be just up here. On the left.’

‘I’m remembering it well,’ said Jam sombrely.

He crunched the van into first, and they moved forward; Nicky was right, they found the rutted mud-trail and Jam turned the van onto this slippery ascent. There was a grinding sound as wheels spun, then a modicum of grip was established by tyre rubber and the van lurched forward.

They bounced and wheelspun up the narrow trail, the van rocking. To either side were steep banks of earth and heather; it made the trio - or the two parts of the trio who were at least awake - feel incredibly confined.

‘I can’t understand how he can fucking sleep,’ said Jam bitterly.

‘It must be a talent,’ agreed Nicky.

‘I mean, you wave a gun near his nose and he’s awake faster than a male virgin’s first ejaculation. But put him in a non-threatening situation, a mountain could fall on the lumbering bastard and he’d happily snore through the incident.’

‘You’ve got to admit, you’re fond of him though.’ Nicky grinned, stroking the sleeping man’s cheek. ‘He’s big and dumb, but he has a heart of gold and would die for you.’

‘I’m fond of him like I was fond of a particularly bad case of VD. Like Slater, the VD itched a lot - a constant annoyance, and so I was permanently fucking reminded it was there. Like Slater, the VD induced fond memories of distant pleasure - but in the grim reality of grey dawn-light I found the real world a much more grim and painful place. And finally, just like the VD, Slater is a constant pain in the cock.’

‘You have such a way with words, Jam. You make me so horny.’

Jam grinned. ‘I know, love, I know. Keep calm.’

The steeply ascending lane ended on a ridge and as they bumped over twin ruts a huge quarry opened up ahead of them, gleaming ghostlike in the moonlight that broke through the scattered black clouds. The headlights carved sections from this disused place, this abandoned surface mine: rearing jagged slopes and pyramid piles of debris and rock were everywhere. Jam paused for a moment, gaining his bearings, then they moved away down a wide stone-floored corridor between two dynamite-blasted walls. They passed huge stacks of rock, some neatly square, some shaped randomly from the blasts that had freed them from their thrall. They passed tracks that had been adapted by motor-cross riders in search of excitement, and they came upon a huge, stagnant black pool that filled a rock basin, a lagoon of ancient oil and mud, a dumping ground from the days when the quarry had been operational.

‘Here we are.’ Jam stopped the van at the side of the murky black lagoon. It gave off a dead stink and, glancing out, Nicky could see a couple of sheep corpses bogged down in the mire. She shivered; what a fucking way to die, she thought.

The rain had lessened and Jam stepped from the van, a pistol in his gloved hand. He stared around, then saw lights and a car creeping towards him. In the van, Slater had slotted a magazine into an SMG and she held the muzzle low, unseen; heavy-artillery back-up.

The car halted, its tyres crunching. It was a huge and battered old Volvo.

‘We cool?’ shouted Jam.

The Priest climbed ponderously from the vehicle.

‘Oh yes, my son,’ he said. He looked left and right, and, carrying a Bible in his left hand, walked slowly towards Jam, boots stomping on the hard quarry ground.

‘I hate this place,’ said Jam miserably. The rain was soaking him; his hair was lank, rat-tails, his face a sheen of water.

‘God’s weather is to be tolerated, for He is the judge of what needs to grow, what needs to be sown, and what needs to be reaped. He is the Gardener, Jam. He is the Gardener.
Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you; a new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.
‘ The Priest beamed, brown eyes shining.

Jam frowned.

‘Yeah. Right, mate. Listen, I assume you got the ECube transcript?’

‘I did. The infidels have been busy. They seek to overthrow us.’

‘I thought -
think
- that I can trust you, because I know you are one of the main Tactical Officers - one of the main men, the Spiral secret police. Internal affairs, yeah?’

‘By your trust, I assume you mean the HK trained on me from the van, by that huge ham-fisted oaf Slater?’

Jam shrugged, grinning. ‘Hey, you know how it is.’

‘Indeed I do,’ said The Priest calmly. ‘What is it you seek to do?’

‘Things have gone from bad to worse; we’ve just come from London.’

‘The HQ?’

‘Yes,’ said Jam sombrely.

‘We must pray for their souls,’ said The Priest, great sadness in his melancholy voice, his huge eyes filled with tears. ‘And yet, before prayer, I cannot help but feel that this crime must not go unpunished.’

‘We need your help,’ said Jam softly. ‘You have higher clearances than we have; and, let’s be honest, you probably know more about what is going on than we do ...’

The Priest’s eyes glittered. ‘Shall we say, there have been...
complications.
What is it you have in mind?’

‘Find out who the fuck is responsible - gather together all the remaining DemolSquads and fuck the bad guys severely from behind. Shit on them from a very great height.’

‘First you need the Source; then you need the Target.’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ said Jam. ‘There’s nobody else we can trust - and believe me, it was hard deciding even to contact
you.’

The Priest stood, rain dripping from his huge dark bulk. He thought, long and hard, brow furrowed; finally, as if coming awake from a trance, he smiled down at Jam, then reached out and patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘I have had guidance.’

‘You have?’ Jam looked up, nervously, at the heavens.

The Priest nodded. He placed his hands together, as if in prayer. His huge shaggy brows bunched together as his forehead wrinkled in concentration. ‘The Lord will lead us, Jam; the Lord will protect us; and the Lord will guide us.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes. The Lord has already placed important information in my possession from a variety of sources; already I am acting upon this information. But I need to make a journey, and I will need help - I was going to call for some back-up but... you are here now, my friend. Sent, I think, by the Almighty.’

‘What kind of journey?’ Jam’s voice was suspicious.

‘As Tactical Officers, we keep tabs on a variety of people and places around the world; monitor them, shall we say. There has been recent increased activity at a variety of locations and I sent TacSquads to investigate - just before the explosion at the London HQ. I was on my way for one such reconnoitre when I received your garbled transmission.’

‘So now we can go with you?’

‘Your help would be much appreciated, Brother. This increased activity links conveniently with the troubles in London, and in Spiral as a whole. I have high hopes of there being a very strong connection.’

Jam nodded.

The Priest chuckled. ‘We will have to meet at Sambray Airfield - first I have a few jobs to take care of.’

‘OK. Just name the time.’

‘Twelve hours.’

‘We’ll be there,’ said Jam softly.

The engine droned like a bee gathering honey. Natasha woke up, yawned, and watched the sun dancing across the tops of the cotton-wool clouds. She rubbed at her eyes, and enjoyed the view for a few moments; far far below, the sandy landscape, marked with the odd ravine or range of hills and dotted with scattered bushes and trees, reminded her of better days - happier days before the world became such a war-torn fucked-up place...

She shifted. Winced as stitches pulled tight.

She glanced across at Carter. ‘You OK?’

‘Sure am, flower.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Greece. You see the island down there?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Zante. I had a good holiday there, once. Our apartment became infested by ants and we had to lead a trail of sugar to our noisy Glaswegian neighbours - ha, soon shut them up - but overall it was a good gig. How are you feeling?’