Authors: Chris Cleave
I stopped running and looked at my boy and then I put my hands up to my mouth and screamed. It was his face you see Osama. His lovely ginger hair was burned to thick black tar dripping down his face. His skin was raw with burns and one of his eyes was boiled white as an egg. I screamed again and left the suitcase where it was and ran up Warwick Street with my boy running after me and all the cardboard boxes and the homeless in their cheap nylon sleeping bags going up in flames as he brushed past them.
I stopped at the first phone box I came to and jammed 30p in the slot and called Jasper and Petra’s flat but it was just the answering machine and the phone ate my money. Both their mobiles were off too. I tried again and again all through that day to call Jasper and Petra. I spent all the money I had in phones. I should of still had the wad of cash Petra and Jasper gave me only that all went on drinks in the Travelodge and the Regent Palace Hotel. They told me not to use my bank card so that was still under my mattress. I was too scared to go back to Bethnal Green till I knew what was going on so I just wandered round Soho. You wouldn’t like Soho Osama I reckon there can’t be one single place in it that isn’t forbidden by your prophets for one thing or another except maybe Soho Square and the trouble with that is it gets pretty crowded. It was the longest day.
By the time it got dark I was hungry and my boy was so starving he’d given up howling and he was just sitting there on the pavement very quiet and pale. Even the flames on him were starved. It was just his fingertips burning with flickering little flames like candles. I had to get some food for him but I was skint. So we just sat there for a while in some doorway or other getting hungrier and colder and just hoping something would turn up. But nothing did turn up and when my boy started to shiver I started to beg. I wonder if you know what that felt like Osama to have my poor boy’s eyes on me while he watched his mummy kneel down on the pavement on Wardour Street with a McDonald’s cup in front of her to beg spare change off the old pervs coming out of the sex shops.
People must of taken pity because I scraped together a fiver. I spent it on a Happy Meal for my boy and an extra-large Fanta and we sat at a table in the corner of McDonald’s. My boy was sulking and I couldn’t blame him Osama I mean no boy should have to see his mum on the cadge like that. He wouldn’t touch his Happy Meal and in the end I had to eat it for him.
We spent the night in a doorway in Berwick Street. I found a big sheet of bubble wrap and tucked it round us but it didn’t do any good against the cold. I didn’t sleep much. My boy sparked and smouldered all night but somehow there wasn’t any heat coming off him.
* * *
In that doorway tucked up in my bubble wrap I had a dream where the terror was over. In my dream Osama I wrote you this letter and you read it and then you went off behind a rock where your men couldn’t see you and you cried and you wished you hadn’t killed my boy. It made you too sad now. You didn’t feel angry any more you just felt very tired. I wrote to the others too Osama like I promised you at the beginning. I wrote to the president and the prime minister and now they felt sick and tired too. None of you wanted any more small boys to die 4 years and 3 months old who still slept with their rabbit whose name was Mr. Rabbit. So all you men just told your people to pack it in and go home. And that was it. It was over. There was just a load of old foxholes filling up with rain and empty basements with the jihad graffiti slowly going black with mildew. There were a million old chewing gum wrappers and fag butts where the terror used to be.
They untied all the balloons in the Shield of Hope and let them float away. I held on to the cable of my boy’s balloon and I hung there under his smiling face getting carried higher and higher in the night sky. It was lovely looking down on London shrinking till it was just a tiny spark in the darkness. It looked like all you had to do was spit and you could of put the whole city out. In my dream I smiled and I wondered where my boy would carry me. We floated very high above the world and the moon was very bright and I saw it all. All the rivers and the mountains were lit up with silver and the forests were full of creatures hunting and hiding and thinking nothing much. There was a warm wind pushing us and we swooped down low into the valleys and there were little villages there where the windows were lit up and all the colours glowed and you could smell food cooking. And from inside all the houses you heard mums singing their children to sleep and their love was stronger than bombs.
When I woke up it was raining and I sat in that doorway just shivering. I watched everyone in the Monday morning rush to work I was thinking how last Monday I’d been one of them. After I’d watched for a bit I got up and walked to a phone box. My boy followed along after me with the tarmac of the road melting under his feet.
I stuck my last coins into the phone box and dialled Jasper’s mobile. It was the longest time before he picked up.
—Jasper! It’s me. What’s going on? Can I come back to the flat yet?
—Wouldn’t be wise, said Jasper. There are people looking for you.
—I looked at the paper. I looked at all the papers. Where’s our story?
—Our story is nowhere, he said. Our story is dead. Petra killed it.
—What do you mean?
—Petra claims she changed her mind, said Jasper. She called me from the office late on Saturday night. Said she no longer believed the story was in the national interest. Bless. As if Petra’s ever given a fuck about the national interest.
—Look Jasper I haven’t got much time my money’s going to run out. If Petra doesn’t want to go with the story then you’ll just have to do it yourself.
—No, said Jasper. I’ll tell you what’s happened. The paper’s sold out to the government and Petra’s sold out to the paper. Now the government has your videotape and the paper has first dibs on the next big Downing Street leak. God knows what deal Petra’s cut for herself. I’m guessing she’ll come back from maternity leave as deputy editor. Everyone’s a winner. Oh. Except you. And me. And the British public of course. You do have to hand it to Petra Sutherland. She’s fucked an entire nation.
I couldn’t get my head round it. I leaned back on the wall of the telephone kiosk and watched the glass melting where my boy was pressing his nose against it.
—Are you still there? said Jasper.
—Yeah. What happens now?
—Oh, said Jasper. Now the fun really starts. I get sacked from the paper and blacklisted as a drug addict. No one else hires me. Petra moves to one of her family’s charming homes in Primrose Hill and has my baby and gets a court order barring me from seeing it. I fester. My cocaine dealer and my local off-licence garner a modest living from me for a short period of time. One day my neighbours ring up to complain about a nasty smell and the fire brigade turn up to remove my rotting corpse from the flat.
—You’re high aren’t you?
—Very very high sweetness, said Jasper. It’s 8 in the morning and good old Jasper Black is high as a motherfucking kite.
—I need to come back Jasper. I need my bank card and my clothes. Who are these people looking for me? What do they want?
—Nothing good, said Jasper. But maybe nothing too bad either. You’re small fry. They’ll probably just threaten you. Tell you what’ll happen if you try taking the story elsewhere. If it’s any consolation anything they can do to you and me is small beer compared to what they’ll do to Terence Butcher. They’ll chain that poor fucker down a well so deep you could throw a packet of fags down it and he still wouldn’t have anything to smoke till Christmas.
—Listen Jasper we’ve got to be quick this phone’s flashing at me. What are you going to do now?
Jasper laughed down the phone. It was a sharp and vicious laugh and it hurt my ear through the receiver.
—I’m going to do what any self-respecting Englishman would do in my position, he said. I’m going to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
—Please Jasper this isn’t the time to muck about I—
—Want to watch? he said. Meet me in an hour on Parliament Square. Do you want me to bring your—
The phone went dead.
* * *
I didn’t have the bus fare so I walked down to Westminster. It was only a couple of miles. It was raining a bit and the sky was so black and heavy it gave you a headache but it felt good to be going somewhere finally. I couldn’t wait to see Jasper even if he was off his rocker. My boy was feeling better too. When we walked through Trafalgar Square he laughed and chased the pigeons and singed their wet tail feathers with his hands.
Jasper got to Parliament Square before me. He was sitting on a pink suitcase under the big black statue of Churchill. There was a little dry patch there sheltered from the drizzle. I ran across the road and Jasper stood up and we hugged for a long time while the traffic roared past on the wet roads. He smelled of whisky. After a bit we stepped apart and looked at each other. Jasper got out his Camel Lights and we both lit one and I stood there smoking with my hand shaking like a sewing machine.
—You look like fucking shit, said Jasper.
—Thanks.
—So, said Jasper. Petra stitched us up.
I shrugged.
—Yeah.
—I’ll miss her you know, said Jasper. I’m surprised. What with me being heartless and everything.
—You’ve always been kind to me.
—Not always, said Jasper. I’ve always fancied you but don’t mistake it for kindness.
I smiled at him.
—I didn’t bring your bank card, he said.
—Oh.
—I brought you my bank card instead, he said. I won’t be needing it. Pin number’s scratched into the back of it. It’s good for a few grand. Not a king’s ransom but it should get you back on your feet.
He reached in his pocket and handed me his card. I just stared at him.
—What’s going on?
—I’m not ecstatic with how I’ve lived my life, he said. I was born with a certain amount of talent and I’ve snorted it away. I let the system absorb me. But even a man like me has a point beyond which his pride will not allow him to go. I will not let them screw us like this. I’ve decided to make a stand.
He looked down at the suitcase by our feet.
—See this? he said. This is what the authorities are scared shitless of. This is six sticks of dynamite packed around a jam jar full of Strontium-90 and Caesium-137 painstakingly stolen from hospitals and factories across the Middle East by Al Qaeda operatives.
—No it isn’t Jasper. It’s Petra’s Louis Vuitton suitcase.
—You know that, said Jasper. And I know that. But as far as the rest of the world is concerned it’s a dirty bomb. If this thing goes off the whole of Westminster will glow in the dark until well into the next ice age. I’m about to call the police and tell them. And they’ll believe me because I’ll use the code word the May Day cell used. The one Terence told you about in your little pillow chat. And as soon as I get off the phone with the police I’ll call the BBC. That should get everyone’s attention.
—You’re off your nut. What do you want to do all that for?
—I’ll threaten to set off my nasty little bomb unless they bring me a camera crew. And then on live unexpurgated TV I’ll tell the world what really happened on May Day.
—No Jasper. Please no. You know what they’ll do to you.
—Oh yes, said Jasper. I’m hoping they kill me outright. I’ve never been much tempted by prison.
I stepped up close to Jasper and put my hand on his cheek.
—Why are you really doing this?
Jasper grinned.
—Well, he said. Would you believe me if I said I think you’ve been through enough and you deserve some kind of justice?
—No.
—No, said Jasper. Must be your tits then.
I started laughing then and so did he. It must of been on account of he was on coke and I’d had no sleep but we were in hysterics.
—Oh Jasper. We’re fucked aren’t we?
—Oooh yes, he said. Petra’s really done a number on us. We’re as fucked as it’s possible for two individuals to be in Great Britain at the start of the 21st century. We have finally done it. We have achieved terminal fuckedocity.
He hugged me. We were having a right old time of it there under good old Winston Churchill with the morning rush hour roaring on all round us but it didn’t last long because soon Jasper stopped laughing. He reached down and unzipped the suitcase. It wasn’t a dirty bomb in there it was Mr. Rabbit.
—Here, he said. I thought you’d want him back. Take care of him now won’t you?
Seeing Mr. Rabbit reminded me it was all real what was happening to us. The rain felt cold again and I shivered.
—Jasper. That’s enough silliness now. Let’s just get out of here. Let’s disappear. We’ll get on a train and just go.
—Where to? said Jasper.
—I don’t know. Anywhere that isn’t London.
Jasper stroked my cheek.
—Everywhere is London, he said. For us. Don’t you see? We are London. Anywhere we could go you’d always be grieving and I’d always be. Well.
—What?
Jasper looked down at the rainy pavement and the pigeon shit and the old black discs of chewing gum.
—Disappointed, he said.
The roar of the traffic was quieter now. Rush hour was nearly over. Anyone who had work to go to was either there already or hoping their boss wasn’t. I reached up and kissed Jasper very quick on the mouth.
—Jasper?
—Yes? he said.
—My boy would of liked you.
—Go on, he said. You’d better get out of here.
Then he got out his mobile and dialled the Metropolitan Police. I walked off down St. Margaret Street and I didn’t look back.
Jasper Black never did get to say his piece on camera and I never saw him again except for the TV pictures of that moment when he’s climbed up with that silly pink suitcase onto the statue of Churchill and the police sharpshooter gets him in the back. I expect you’ve seen those pictures too Osama they’re pretty famous. It’s the way that great big smile comes over his face as he’s falling.
* * *