Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text Part 5

'Well, why don't we give him the stuff then?' asked Janet Richards. 'I mean if it will head off a problem here on the Zone, why not? Let's do it!'

'But that would be like giving a heroin dealer back his stash if he agreed to move to another neighbourhood!'

There was silence. It seemed they didn't find this idea quite as preposterous as Charles had a.s.sumed they would.

'Well, I suppose so,' said Mrs Richards, 'but it seems a pity.'

'In any case,' Charles said, 'I think Ha.s.san may have been bluffing when he claimed to have more information. Obviously I don't know for sure but, as I said before, I've got a strong sense that he and Furnish have only just arrived here. The main point is that you need to be on the alert. The thing that makes slip so dangerous is that people can use it to escape the consequences of their actions. These people really can get away with murder.'

They all looked at one another.

'Now if you'll excuse me...' Charles began, but he was interrupted by Janet Richards' phone.

Someone at the other end had more bad news.

'How many people...? You've got cars on the way over...? Okay I'll put you onto d.i.c.k.'

She called her chief of police to the phone.

'Some sort of disturbance on a recreation ground,' she explained as she handed him the receiver.

Oddly the new crisis appeared to have had a positively soothing effect on her, and she seemed much less tense as she returned to the table to join the rest of them. Thugs with baseball bats, fights in recreations grounds: this was the kind of trouble she knew and understood.

'I've got three air patrols and six cars on this,' said d.i.c.k Thomas the police chief, returning to the table 'Some sort of petty gang fight I should think, but if this was to turn out to be the mischief you were talking about, Mr Bowen, then I think we've got it pretty well in hand.'

'That's good,' Charles said. 'Now if you'll excuse me, I really should get back down there and...'

But he was interrupted for a second time by the phone. Janet Richards returned to it with a slightly theatrical sigh she almost seemed to be enjoying having an audience - but her face fell as she listened 'Vanished? In front of witnesses? How many? Missing from the Unit? Okay, I'm going to put you on to Val.'

Val Hollowby came to the phone. The Social Care Purchaser's gaunt, skeletal face became even grimmer as she listened to whoever was on the other end.

'But why wasn't I notified earlier? Are you saying Jazamine didn't follow procedures? Why wasn't I told this girl was interested in s.h.i.+fters? Yes I know, but how can I support you if you...'

'A fifteen-year-old girl went missing from outside our a.s.sessment Unit this morning,' Janet Richards explained to Charles. 'She's had a problem with absconding for years, apparently, so nothing new about that, even if her social worker does seem to have just let her go on this occasion. But the thing is that she was evidently at the centre of the incident in that recreation ground. It's looking very much as if this could be another of your Dunner cases, Mr Bowen, because any number of people are now telling our officers that they saw her vanish into thin air.'

Val Hollowby came off the phone.

'The girl's called Tamsin Pendant,' she said, 'a.k.a. Delaney, a.k.a. Blows. She's fifteen years old. Lots of history, lots of problems. Physical abuse. s.e.xual abuse. Been in the care system for years. Lots of trouble there. Placements breaking down. Absconding. Drugs. And she's been talking a lot recently, or so I now gather, about s.h.i.+fters and seeds and Dunner and all that.'

Suddenly she leaned forward, looking into Charles' face with big watery eyes: 'But you know, Mr Bowen, they all do all sorts of worrying things. It's easy enough with hindsight to say we could have seen the signs, because there are always signs when you look for them afterwards! It's not that we necessarily miss them at the time. It's just that we can't act on them all.'

'Yes,' said Janet Richards shortly, 'but I'm concerned that they didn't let you know in this case. I'm concerned about the lines of communication. That's something we'll need to look at.'

Janet Richards was putting down a marker. She was pointing out that a breakdown of communication had occurred at a level below that of one of her subordinates. It was a preliminary step in that old deskie dance of blame. And the Social Care Purchaser, understanding this instantly, darted her boss a look of pure hatred.

'Who was the last person to see her?' Charles asked.

'Her social worker, Jazamine Bright,' said Val Hollowby, 'and before that a free-lance therapist we use called Sarah Ripping. One of the Unit staff took her to a session with Sarah, and then Jaz collected her and took her back to the Unit. When Jaz dropped her off, Tammy announced that she was going to disappear and that Jaz would never see her again. For whatever reason, Jaz didn't actually walk her back inside the Unit as she's supposed to do but just dropped her off, and Tammy never went inside. It seems she's been talking a lot lately about s.h.i.+fters and having s.h.i.+fter friends and so on, so it all fits together. Too late though, of course, as will doubtless be said at the inquiry.'

Ms Hollowby gave a bitter little snort. 'Though even if we had made the connection, I can't see there's much we could have done.'

'Well my next job is to interview Jazamine Bright,' Charles said.

'She's over in the satellite office at the moment,' said Val Hollowby. 'It's about a mile from here.'

'We'll send for her!' cried Janet Richards. 'We'll get her straight over. We've already booked an interview room for you. Would you like any more coffee, Mr Bowen? Or perhaps a cup of tea?'

At this point the door opened and another member of Mrs Richards' little government came in.

'Sorry, I couldn't get here earlier.'

With his slightly lop-sided gla.s.ses and his threadbare suit, the newcomer struck Charles immediately as different from the others. He looked more like some sort of academic than a deskie, or maybe an artist or a poet. There was something dreamy and otherworldly about him.

'I've been looking after my grandson while my daughter is away,' the man explained, 'and he's gone down with flu. I've only just managed to line up someone to keep an eye on him.'

A little stiffly, Janet Richards introduced him.

'Charles, this is Cyril Burkitt, the Senior Registration Manager for the Zone.'

The Senior Registration Manager, Charles noticed, not my Senior Registration Manager.

'Senior Registration Manager?' he asked. 'Would you mind explaining what that is?'

'Well, my job is to oversee the process which decides whether people should be on the Social Inclusion Register or not. Some people don't want to be included in the Inclusion Register, you see. Some people would rather be excluded from the register and just be included. Or failing that, just be excluded, if you see what I mean...'

He gave a little snort of a laugh. The others looked embarra.s.sed.

'The thing about Cyril,' Dave Ricketts explained, as if he felt some sort of justification was necessary for the man's presence, 'is that, more than any of us, he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the residents of the Zone. He's worked on this Zone for what is it Cyril? twenty years isn't it?'

'Something like that,' said Burkitt.

'Twenty years. And it's just incredible how much he remembers.'

'Do you remember Tammy Pendant?' Val Hollowby asked him.

'Tammy Pendant? Yes of course I know her!'

'Tell us what you remember of her history.'

'Well I knew her first as Tamsin Delaney, then as Tamsin Blows. I was her social worker back in the days when I was a social worker. Her mother Liz gave her up for adoption at birth. She said she didn't want the baby one bit. She said Tammy was the child of a rape. Anyway, Tammy was placed with adopters. They were going to change her name to Jessica I remember, Jessica Tamsin Ferne. But then, at the eleventh hour, Liz changed her mind and asked for her back. We could have tried to stop it through the courts there were a number of reasons to worry about Liz as a parent but we decided not to, a decision which turned out to be a bad mistake.'

He sighed.

'A very bad mistake, in fact, because the upshot was that poor Tammy was seriously abused in Liz's care and we had to take her back out. But the damage had been done by then. She was older and more wounded and we couldn't settle her in a new family. I don't know what's been happening in the last year or two, but I know she's had one placement after another break down on her. The expectation of rejection has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess. If she'd been placed as a baby things might have been different.'

He gave a weary shrug.

'So what's happened to her? She's got involved with s.h.i.+fters has she? Where is she now?'

'In another timeline most probably,' Charles said. 'Another universe.'

'In another universe? You mean she's...'

'You see what I mean about Cyril, Mr Bowen?' broke in Dave Rickets, as if to bring the conversation back onto less dangerous territory. 'I told you his knowledge was encyclopaedic.'

'It's very strange,' Cyril said, 'that this should have happened today of all days, quite eerie in fact. I hadn't thought about Tammy at all for ages, but this morning she's kept coming into my mind.'

He looked round at the others, realised they were all reluctant to meet his eyes, and turned instead to Charles.

'I keep getting this vivid image of her,' he said. 'I can picture it quite clearly as I'm speaking to you: Tammy on her own in the middle of an empty field, under a dark grey sky and... and a bitter wind blowing.'

In a field under a dark grey sky, Charles thought as he waited in an interview room for the social worker Jazamine Bright. It had been in his mind too: a field, a threatening sky, a biting wind and a dark, diffuse, all-pervading sense of dread. These things happened around s.h.i.+fters.

He phoned his boss.

'There's way too much going on at once here, Roger, for me to able to deal with on my own. We've got two in custody who'll disappear at any moment. We've got the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old girl. And on the top of that we've got the threat of some kind of violent incident instigated by another group of s.h.i.+fters. The deskies here don't have a clue. All the signs were there to see that the Zone has been crawling with s.h.i.+fters for months but as usual they're all completely in denial about the whole thing. I'm just not going to be able to deal with it all.'

Roger was a bright man and an experienced manager but all his jobs until very recently had been in conventional immigration work, and he had no direct s.h.i.+fter experience.

'I know you shouldn't have to deal with this on your own, Charles. But sod's law I suppose things are blowing across the whole region just now. Mike and James have been at Lockleaze all day, Judy's turned up a hornet's nest in Swindon, and Fran's boarding school looks like it's going to keep her busy for at least a couple more days. I'll try and...'

There was a knock on the door.

'I'll have to get back to you later,' Charles said, as he rose to greet Jazmine Bright. 'Just see what you can do, okay?'

'Hey!' she said. 'I know you, don't I?'

Charles couldn't place her straight away. He recognised her alright: those slightly African features and the hair tied up in little bows. He knew she meant something to him too. He knew she was a.s.sociated in his mind with feelings both bitter and sweet. But just for a second, immersed and preoccupied as he was in what was happening here, he couldn't find the context.

'But you said you were an immigration officer!' she protested.

Of course! Susan's party! And Jazamine was that hard-to-remember name.

'Well I am an immigration officer. It's just that I've moved on from dealing with the national boundary, to...'

'...to guarding the universe itself,' she interrupted. 'Wow!'

She had seen right through him! That was how Charles felt. She'd taken one look at him and summed him up. He thought of the silly, adolescent, self-dramatising thing he'd written that night after getting home from the party what had he called it? Marcher and he swore to himself that he'd destroy it as soon as he got home. Out loud, though, he defended his ground.

'Well, it's important. Imagine if everyone could escape at will from the consequences of their actions.'

She smiled, amused by his intensity. It was a reaction he frequently encountered. Most of the world, it seemed to him, was in denial about the fact that s.h.i.+fters really existed. The remainder and this included even the other members of his own Section - was in denial about the implications.

'I think Tammy's main problem was having to deal with the consequences of other people's actions,' Jazamine said.

'Yes, Mr Burkitt did say she was the child of a rape. And that she'd been abused. And he said he felt that the system had let her down by returning her to her mother when she was small.'

'Yes, it did. Not that it's possible to make the right decision every time, mind you. None of us can do that. We can't read the future.'

'Well no,' Charles said, 'and there isn't one future anyway. The future is millions of alternatives.'

'Well of course. That's why it's impossible to know in advance.'

He was surprised by this answer. Not many people accepted so readily the principle of the Great Tree.

'The child of a rape,' he mused. 'Imagine. Your very existence the result of a transgression.'

'Transgression?' said Jazamine with a smile. 'That's a very old-fas.h.i.+oned word!'

'I think it just means crossing over. Crossing over a boundary.'

'Yes,' she said, a little tartly. 'I know what it means.'

Well done Charles, he thought, you've been pompous and patronising already and she's only been in the room for about a minute.

'Anyway,' she said, 'you're right, there is something irresolvable about knowing that your existence is the result of a crime...'

She told him a bit more of the history. It seemed that Tammy had often made threats to disappear.

'But the thing is,' Jazamine said, 'up to now when she's made these threats, she's never gone any further than empty garages and places like that. She just holes up for a night or two until she gets picked up by the police, or until she gets fed up and returns of her own accord.'

'I see. So you a.s.sumed this was the same kind of thing. Can you tell me what exactly happened this morning?'

Jazamine told him about picking Tammy up from Sarah Ripping's, the conversation in the car, the abandoned plan for a burger and Tammy's parting shot as Jazamine dropped her off outside the Unit.

'The bit I do feel badly about,' she said, 'is that Tammy did want to go for a burger with me. She can't admit to wanting anything from anyone, of course. She can't really admit that she likes anyone, not even to herself. But really she did want to have a burger with me, whatever she might have said, and I knew it. And I suppose if I hadn't been so cross with her I would have gone ahead and taken her for one. And then maybe...'

She made an impatient gesture of dismissal with her hand. Charles remembered how much he liked the way she moved.

'But there's no point thinking like that, is there?' she said. 'There's always a what-might-have-happened.'

He nodded.

'What-might-have-happened. I suppose you could say that's where the s.h.i.+fters come from. And the place they go.'

She considered this for a moment, frowning, then gave an abrupt little nod.

'What the agency is p.i.s.sed off with me about, though,' she went on, 'is that I dropped her off outside the Unit and didn't check her in with a member of staff. That's what you're supposed to do, you see. And now it's all got to be looked into and a decision made by my bosses as to whether I get sacked, or a written reprimand on my file, or just a verbal warning. The fact is that it's an open unit and kids can go out whenever they want. But...'

Jazamine broke off with a shrug.

'Well, never mind. The worst that can happen is that I lose this lousy job.'