Strangled Silence (7 page)

'I'm really sorry you're not happy with it, Ivor,'
she told him. 'But it was felt that we couldn't print
the kinds of allegations you were making without
some kind of evidence. Maybe if you had some way
of proving—'

'Let me talk to Goldbloom!' he cut in.

'Mr Goldbloom's in a meeting, he won't be
free for some time. And he'll only tell you what I'm
telling you. You can't go accusing the military of
brainwashing people without some kind of proof.
Just think about what that would
mean
. You were a
journalist . . . sort of. You know how this works.'

'I know you printed an inaccurate story
about me in a national paper and deliberately
misquoted me,' he snarled. 'And I know I'm rich
enough to afford some serious lawyers. Tell
Goldbloom that and tell him to ring me when
he's free.'

The line went dead. Amina sighed and put
down the receiver. It was a hollow threat. They
hadn't said anything bad enough about him to be
sued for libel, but she had to tell Goldbloom
anyway. Helena had once said a journalist wasn't
doing their job properly if they didn't get sued from
time to time, but Amina doubted that this was what
she meant.

She was a little hurt by his tone too. She had
kind of liked him. Still, you needed a thick skin to
work in this business and it didn't develop
overnight. Pushing Ivor McMorris out of her
mind, she tried to remember what she had been
doing before he called.

'Amina! Call for you on line six!' a voice
shouted.

'Thanks, I'll take it here!' she replied.

Hopefully it was Ivor calling back to apologize
now that he had calmed down a bit. She picked up
the phone again and pressed the lighted button.

'Hello?'

'Is this Amina Mir? My name's Chi Sandwith.
I do some work for the
National News
. Maybe
you've heard of me?'

Amina rolled her eyes. The
National News
was
a rag full of lowbrow sensationalist stories and
celebrity gossip. The last issue she'd seen actually
had a blurred picture of a UFO on the front page.

'Sorry, no. I don't read the tabloids.'

'Right, well, I believe in reading a bit of
everything and I noticed your article in today's
paper: "Lottery Winner Afraid to Spend His
Millions".'

'Yes, what about it?' she asked guardedly.

'Well, you mentioned that Mr McMorris was
a veteran of Sinnostan and I was wondering if
maybe he had more to say. It was a very . . . brief
article and I just thought he might want to expand
on—'

'I'm sorry, but we don't give out contact
details,' Amina said in a clipped tone. 'Thank you for
calling.'

She put down the phone before he could say
any more. Poor old Ivor. He'd probably get hundreds
more pest letters over this, from people eager to offer
guidance on how to spend his money. Slouching in
the chair, she tilted her head back and stared at the
ceiling. She couldn't get hung up on this. The story'd
had its shot and now it was time for her to move on.
There were too many other things to do.

'Oh, bugger! The coffees!'

She took off out of the chair so fast it spun.

Despite his frustrated anger, Ivor was relieved when
he read the article. His threat to Amina had been
just bluster and he was regretting it already. He
winced as he wondered if she'd taken it personally
– a part of him still held out hope of seeing her
again. What was it she'd said? 'You were a journalist
–
sort of
'? Smirking, he shook his head. Cheeky
cow!

He knew how the system worked and he
should never have expected the story to be
printed as he told it. Of course they needed proof.
But his hands were shaking as he put down the
phone and he couldn't tell if it was due to fear
or fury.

Maybe this was for the best. He had tried to
tell his tale and failed miserably. Perhaps the
watchers would leave him alone now. He had been
shown to be impotent in their eyes and they
could rest easy knowing he was no threat to their
operations . . . whatever they were.

He went to each of his windows and looked
out onto the street below, but there didn't seem to
be anything out of the ordinary. As ever, he caught
fleeting glimpses of people at windows, in doorways
and on the street corner, but nothing he could be
sure about. Everyone seemed to be just minding
their own business.

Letting out a long breath, Ivor went to his
fridge and took out some milk. This occasion called
for some hot chocolate. He hadn't decided what to
do with the rest of his day; do a workout, watch a
film or two, surf the web. Maybe he'd pick up one
of the books he was halfway through reading.

Then the buzzer on the door's intercom rang.

Ivor glared at it. He wasn't expecting anybody.
He continued looking at it until it buzzed again and
then he reached out and picked up the handset.

'Yes?'

'Ivor? Hey, partner, it's Ben. Sorry for showin'
up out o' the blue like this, but I really needed to
talk to you . . . and, uh . . . well, I didn't want to do
it over the phone.'

Ivor went to press the button that unlocked the
door to the street, but then hesitated.

'You on your own, Ben?'

'Sure, man.'

'Sorry, you know how it is. Come on up.'

Ivor pressed the button and put down the
handset. His hands were steady now, but his nerves
were even more on edge than before. The timing
was just a little too weird. Had Ben seen the article
yet? There was a knock on his front door and Ivor
checked through the spy-hole before opening it.
Ben was alone, as he'd said. That didn't do much to
set Ivor's mind at ease. He opened the door and
ushered his old colleague inside.

Ben Considine had been Ivor's cameraman in
Tarpan, seconded from the US army. Back then, he
had been a real ladies' man, with his sun-bleached
blond hair, his tanned, roguish good looks and his
macho Texan drawl. He could find the humour in
any situation and had been Ivor's guide to the
nightlife in Kurjong's backstreets. But that was all
before the bombing. He was a different man now.

Ben rarely went out without some kind of hat
on to conceal the burn scars up the left side of his
neck and head, which had left that side of his scalp
bald. After numerous operations on the left side of
his face, his flesh looked misshapen and the shape
of his stubble was all wrong because the skin-grafts
had been taken from his thighs. He had been standing
closer to the bomb when it went off, framing
Ivor in the shot of the street.

He had always dreamed of being a cameraman
in Hollywood and would joke about how he'd
make a great movie star himself. Ivor had admired
him for the way he could hold his nerve and keep
the camera steady in any situation. Now, Ben rarely
did any camera work and when he did, it was
always in a studio, never out on the street. He
couldn't stand the way people stared.

'What's up?' Ivor asked.

'Just needed to talk,' Ben replied, making himself
comfortable on the couch. 'Not many people I
can talk to about . . . y'know, this stuff. Got any
beer?'

Ivor fetched a couple of beers from the fridge.
It was early yet, but he wasn't one for obeying
conventions. He sat down opposite the couch and
handed the bottle over. Neither of them used
glasses.

'Been havin' a lot o' problems lately,' Ben told
him. 'Hallucinations, paranoia, and some absolutely
mindbendin' nightmares.'

Ivor nodded. They'd talked about this before.

'Still no roulette wheels, I'm sorry to say,' Ben
added, giving him a distorted version of the ol'
charmer's smile. 'A lot o' tiled corridors and faces in
surgical masks . . . watchin' the lights whisk by
overhead. Kept seeing these coloured flares that
made me want to blow chunks. The hallucinations
were new, though . . . and they were the freakiest –
there's nothin' that screws with your brain like
seein' spaced-out crap in broad daylight.'

'Like what?' Ivor asked.

'Well, first I just kept thinkin' people were
watchin' me,' Ben said. 'Guys with no faces,
y'know? Like you used to talk about? I'd look
around and they'd just be disappearin' round a
corner, or liftin' a newspaper up in front of 'em. But
then I got to seein' worse things too.

'The first dead body I saw lyin' on a path in the
park, I thought it was real. It was this pudgy guy in
a shirt and trousers lyin' there with no visible
wounds. Just dead. Couldn't understand why all
these folks kept walkin' past him . . . even steppin'
over the dude without reactin' to him at all. I
actually went over to check his pulse and that was
when I discovered he was a Sinner – one of the
corpses we'd filmed in Tarpan. I turned him over
and screamed and then I was lookin' down at an
empty bit of pavement and people all around me
were starin' at me like the nut-job I was.

'After that, I started seein' other corpses that I'd
filmed in war zones, walkin' past me in the street –
still torn up with their wounds, but walkin' round
lively as you please, like they were just wearin'
special-effects make-up or something. I learned not
to react to them eventually, but you can just
imagine how I was feelin'.'

'What about the smudge-faced guys?' Ivor
pressed him. 'D'you see them much?'

'Hell, yeah!' Ben guffawed, some of his old
spirit showing through his scarred face as he nearly
sprayed beer everywhere. 'It got so everybody I
looked at had this blurred face that I couldn't see.
Like havin' a lump o' Vaseline smeared on your
camera lens. Felt like the whole goddamned world
was goin' blank on me. Even the pizza delivery guy
just had these eyes starin' out of this flesh-coloured
smudge – and he's like a buddy, he's round so often!

'Then, last week, I got a call from my pop. I got
the webcam and everythin' set up for him, y'know?
And there I was lookin' at his face on the monitor
and I couldn't recognize a goddamned thing about
him. My own
father
. That was when I went back to
see Higgins.'

Ben knocked back the last of his beer. Ivor
went to get him another without being asked.

'Higgins said I was repressin' a whole load of
stuff and I had to work it out o'my system. I swear
to Christ, every goddamned shrink you ever talk to
tells you that. He put me through some o' that
regressive hypnotherapy . . . you know, where they
put you in this trance and take you back to the past?
Ever done that?'

Ivor nodded.

'Didn't turn up much,' he said quietly. 'It was all
pretty confused. And Higgins said it can be as much
fantasy as reality. It's useful, but you can't really trust
the results.'

'Yeah, well, he said that to me too,' Ben
snorted. 'Still
did
it though. Probably charges the
army extra for it. Anyway, he puts me under and
probably has me talkin' about every time I'd jerked
off when I was a kid, or cheated on a girl, and then
I come out of it and he's smiling at me.'

'Yeah? How come?' Ivor asked.

'Reckons he's got me figured out. See, the
Scalps guys? They're all the people I blame for my
injuries. Not that the actual folks I see are to blame
. . . it's more like . . . I need a conspiracy to explain
why I was hurt. I can't accept that it was just dumb
luck I was standing there when the bomb went off;
it doesn't satisfy my sense o' outrage. You know, like
. . . sometimes this crap just happens to you and
that's life. So my mind has kind o' spun together this
ring of conspirators who hurt me as part o' their
master plan and now they're watchin' me 'cos
they're afraid I'm gonna come back at 'em. It helps
my subconscious make sense o'my injuries. Sort o'
like believin' in God 'cos it gives us comfort,
knowin' we're not just arbitrary sparks of
momentary existence – if you get my drift.

'But he said the biggest thing I had to work out
was the fact that I blamed one person above all the
others. He said if I dealt with that, the other stuff
would start slidin' into place.'

'So who was the culprit, then?' Ivor chuckled.

'Oh, that was
you
, buddy.' Ben nodded at
him.

'But I didn't plant the bomb,' Ivor said, taken
aback. 'Why would you blame me?'

'Hell, man! It doesn't have to make sense! It's
just my mind lookin' for someone to hold
responsible, that's all. You were there and you were
callin' the shots, so I blamed you. Don't take it all
personal! So I'm just here to say that I know I'm a
screwed-up basket case with wild delusions of
persecution, but I'm
dealin
' with it. And I needed to
tell you that I've spent the last few months blamin'
you for all this, even though I know it ain't true.'

'Right. Well . . . thanks for your honesty,' Ivor
muttered. 'Ben?'

'Yup?'

'Did . . . did anyone . . . suggest that you come
round here and tell me all this?'

'Yeah – Higgins.'

'No. I mean . . . I mean anyone from the top
brass.'

'Ivor,' Ben sighed, leaning forward and putting
the half-empty beer bottle on the coffee table. 'We
both know you're goin' through the same crap. You
just haven't been as honest with yourself yet. You've
got yourself holed up in this poky little dump, con-vincin'
yourself that "they" are out to get ya 'cos . . .
'cos you're on the point of findin' out what they did
to you. But there is no "they" – at least, not outside of
your
head
. You gotta deal with your demons, partner.'

Ivor gazed out of the window, lost in thought.
Ben still hadn't mentioned the article. Maybe it was
just coincidence that he'd called by hours after it
had hit the streets. But there was no way to be sure.
Ivor yearned for a time when he hadn't been so
suspicious, so fearful. He knew he was being
paranoid.

Yeah, he thought, but am I being paranoid
enough?