regret it.
‘Well, it seems that about four
months ago half a dozen corpses went missing from the town morgue. Those kids
who died from smoke inhalation in that warehouse fire down by the old Dock
Road… the silly sods who set it alight while they were trying to rob it? Them.
Their bodies. Stolen.’
I glanced up at her, looking for any
sign that this was one of her morbid little jokes. Her face was rigid, blank;
she was telling the truth.
‘Fuck,’ I said quietly, placing my
mug on the scarred tabletop. ‘Some people will steal anything.’
She smiled; a sad, tired expression.
‘It was all hushed up by the authorities, of course. Too embarrassing to let
into the public domain. People are finding out though; they always do. Nothing
stays buried for very long round here. Someone spoke to someone else after a
few too many pints, and the news is breaking out like little fires all round
the estates. Just like always.’
Four months ago. Just about the same
time that the attacks on immigrants had begun: foreign families being burned
out of their low rent council housing, kids spat on at school, a pregnant woman
pelted with fruit in the local supermarket, one or two people even going
missing, just like al-hakim… there had even been a picket line outside one of
the town’s three primary schools, the parents in the area refusing to allow a
couple of Turkish children into the building. One of their fathers had been
hospitalised when someone had thrown an engineering brick at his head. It was
all so wrong… such a fucking mess.
I wondered if the incidents were
linked: whether some right wing group was about to implicate the immigrant
community in the theft of those boy’s bodies, laying claims to all kinds of
voodoo and necrophilia. Breeding even more fear. More violence.
I didn’t want to think about where
it all might end.
****
The chill early hours again; midweek
in Scarbridge, when all the smart folk are tucked up in their beds, wrapped in
sleeping yoga poses around their loved ones. I was returning to the depot from
a drop-off in Newcastle- a nice little earner- and decided on impulse to take a
detour.
The urge to return to Wishwell came
upon me unannounced. Now, with the aid of hindsight, I can put it down to
shame, guilt, the need to do something- to do anything. I didn’t know what I
would do when I got there, but I did know that I had to go back to the mouth of
that alley. To inspect the place where I’d dropped off al-hakim for his final
truncated journey home.
Winter was closing in like a gloved
hand around a warm neck, choking the life out of the world: trees had shed
their blossoms long ago, the sky looked brittle as a sheet of glass, and a
sharp chill had crept into the air. Yet still I saw young women dressed in
nothing more than artfully placed scraps of wispy material and tottering about
on four-inch heels, displaying their goose pimples to whoever cared to look. I
shook my head in amazement at these people. Once more, I vowed that my child
would be raised differently, brought up with intelligence and thought for the
future.
Wishwell dominated the skyline to
the east, three and a half miles out of town, it’s run down tower blocks
blocking out the stars. The four central ragged concrete towers were surrounded
by a maze of estate blocks- cramped terraced houses, cheap purpose-built flats:
the estate was a riot of contrasting architectural styles, and had been
continually added to since the early 1960s. I drove to the perimeter of the
estate and parked up by the alley; I turned off the radio and sat in silence
behind the wheel, remembering those lumbering loose-limbed figures and their
odd disjointed movements. How they’d seemed to detach themselves from the
darkness like smoke.
Was there really some extremist
neo-fascist group operating out of Wishwell? Some militant offshoot of one of
the local right wing political parties, whose aim was to clear the immigrant
population out of the
‘Well, it seems that about four
months ago half a dozen corpses went missing from the town morgue. Those kids
who died from smoke inhalation in that warehouse fire down by the old Dock
Road… the silly sods who set it alight while they were trying to rob it? Them.
Their bodies. Stolen.’
I glanced up at her, looking for any
sign that this was one of her morbid little jokes. Her face was rigid, blank;
she was telling the truth.
‘Fuck,’ I said quietly, placing my
mug on the scarred tabletop. ‘Some people will steal anything.’
She smiled; a sad, tired expression.
‘It was all hushed up by the authorities, of course. Too embarrassing to let
into the public domain. People are finding out though; they always do. Nothing
stays buried for very long round here. Someone spoke to someone else after a
few too many pints, and the news is breaking out like little fires all round
the estates. Just like always.’
Four months ago. Just about the same
time that the attacks on immigrants had begun: foreign families being burned
out of their low rent council housing, kids spat on at school, a pregnant woman
pelted with fruit in the local supermarket, one or two people even going
missing, just like al-hakim… there had even been a picket line outside one of
the town’s three primary schools, the parents in the area refusing to allow a
couple of Turkish children into the building. One of their fathers had been
hospitalised when someone had thrown an engineering brick at his head. It was
all so wrong… such a fucking mess.
I wondered if the incidents were
linked: whether some right wing group was about to implicate the immigrant
community in the theft of those boy’s bodies, laying claims to all kinds of
voodoo and necrophilia. Breeding even more fear. More violence.
I didn’t want to think about where
it all might end.
****
The chill early hours again; midweek
in Scarbridge, when all the smart folk are tucked up in their beds, wrapped in
sleeping yoga poses around their loved ones. I was returning to the depot from
a drop-off in Newcastle- a nice little earner- and decided on impulse to take a
detour.
The urge to return to Wishwell came
upon me unannounced. Now, with the aid of hindsight, I can put it down to
shame, guilt, the need to do something- to do anything. I didn’t know what I
would do when I got there, but I did know that I had to go back to the mouth of
that alley. To inspect the place where I’d dropped off al-hakim for his final
truncated journey home.
Winter was closing in like a gloved
hand around a warm neck, choking the life out of the world: trees had shed
their blossoms long ago, the sky looked brittle as a sheet of glass, and a
sharp chill had crept into the air. Yet still I saw young women dressed in
nothing more than artfully placed scraps of wispy material and tottering about
on four-inch heels, displaying their goose pimples to whoever cared to look. I
shook my head in amazement at these people. Once more, I vowed that my child
would be raised differently, brought up with intelligence and thought for the
future.
Wishwell dominated the skyline to
the east, three and a half miles out of town, it’s run down tower blocks
blocking out the stars. The four central ragged concrete towers were surrounded
by a maze of estate blocks- cramped terraced houses, cheap purpose-built flats:
the estate was a riot of contrasting architectural styles, and had been
continually added to since the early 1960s. I drove to the perimeter of the
estate and parked up by the alley; I turned off the radio and sat in silence
behind the wheel, remembering those lumbering loose-limbed figures and their
odd disjointed movements. How they’d seemed to detach themselves from the
darkness like smoke.
Was there really some extremist
neo-fascist group operating out of Wishwell? Some militant offshoot of one of
the local right wing political parties, whose aim was to clear the immigrant
population out of the
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