Manhattan in Reverse (16 page)

‘There!’ Olivia suddenly shouted. She was pointing at the trees on the other side of the backpackers. For a moment I was confused, it was as if a dawn sun was shining through the trunks. Then we cleared the end of the little wood, and we could see the wormhole directly.

The zero-length gap in space-time was actually manifesting as a sphere three hundred yards in diameter. Murray had opened it so that the equator was at ground level, leaving a hemisphere protruding into the air. There was nothing solid, it was simply the place one planet ended and another began. You crossed the boundary, and New Suffolk stretched out in front of you. That was the notorious eye-twister which made a lot of people shiver and even flinch away. As you drew near the threshold, you could see an alien landscape dead ahead of you, inside the hemisphere. Yet it opened outwards, delivering a panoramic view. When you went through, you emerged on the outside of the corresponding hemisphere. There was no inside.

It was early morning on New Suffolk, where its ginger-tinted sun was rising, sending a rouge glow across the gap to light up the English countryside.

We were half a mile away now. The kids were completely silent, entranced by the alien sunlight. Zoe and I flashed a quick triumphant smile at each other.

The road curved round to line up on the wormhole, running through a small cutting. Police lined the top of each bank, dressed in full riot gear. They were swaying back and forwards as they struggled to hold a crowd of protestors away from the road. I could see banners and placards waving about. The chanting and shouting reached us over the sound of the convoy’s engines. Things were flying through the air over the top of the police to rain down on the road. I saw several bottles smash apart on the tarmac. Backpackers were bent double as they scurried along, holding their hands over their heads to ward off the barrage from above.

Something thudded onto the BMW’s roof. Both kids yelped. I saw a stone skittering off the side. It didn’t matter now. The first of our convoy’s lorries had reached the wormhole. I saw it drive through, thundering off over the battered mesh road that cut across the landscape on the other side, silhouetted by that exotic rising sun. We were so close.

Then Olivia was shouting: ‘Daddy, Daddy, stop!’

JANNETTE

It took us bloody hours to get from the station to the wormhole. The Public Responsibility Movement was supposed to provide buses. I only ever saw two of them, and they took forever to drive around the jammed-up circuit between the station and the rally site. As for the PRM stewards, they’d got into fights with the backpackers streaming out of the station who were asking directions and wanting to know if they could use our buses. The police were separating the two factions as best they could, but the station car park was a perpetual near-riot.

Abbey used the waiting time to stock up at an off-licence. By the time we got on the bus she was completely pissed. She’s not a quiet drunk.

As we inched our way across the motorway flyover I could look down on the solid lines of motionless vehicles clotting all the lanes below. There were hundreds of them, thousands. All of them waiting their turn to drive up the off road. Each one full of people who wanted to go through the wormhole.
So many?
Actually seeing how many people wanted to leave was quite a shock. The news says it’s like this every day. How can that many people be stupid enough to swallow Murray’s promises? I know the country isn’t perfect, but at least we’re trying to make it progressive, somewhere we’re not ashamed to have our kids grow up in.

The bus finally made it to the rally area. A huge Airbus A380 flew low overhead as we climbed out, coming in to land at Stansted just a few miles to the north. I had to press my hands over my ears the engine noise was so loud. I didn’t recognize the airline logo; but it was no doubt bringing another batch of eager refugees from abroad who wanted to join the exodus.

I tracked it across the sky. And there right ahead of me was the wormhole. It was like some gold-chrome bubble squatting on the horizon. I squinted into the brilliant rosy light it was radiating.

‘I didn’t realize it was that big,’ I muttered. The damn thing was intimidating this close up.

‘Let’s get to it,’ Abbey slurred, and marched off towards the sprawling crush of protestors ahead of us.

Now I remember why I’d stopped going to protests. All that romance about bonding with the crowd, sharing a purpose with your fellow travellers; the singing, the camaraderie, the communal contentment. It’s all bollocks.

I got batted about like some cheap football. Everybody wanted to score points by shoving into me. The shouting was loud, in my ear; it never stopped. I got clobbered by placards several times as their carriers dropped them for a rest.

Then we got real near to the police line, and a beer can landed on my shoulder. I jumped at the shock. Fortunately it was empty. But I could see bottles flying overhead, which made me very nervous.

‘Let me through, you arseholes!’ Abbey thundered at the police, using her best I’m-in-charge-here voice.

The nearest constable gave her a confused look. Then she was banging on his riot shield in fury. ‘I have a right to get past you can’t stop me you fascist bastard this is still a free country why don’t you piss off and go and bugger your chief constable let me through . . .’ All the while she was pushing up against his shield. I was pressed up behind her. Our helpful comrades behind me were making a real effort to add their strength to the shove. I shouted out in pain from the crushing force but no one heard or took any notice.

Something had to give. For once it was the police line. I was suddenly lurching forward to land on top of Abbey, who had come to rest on top of the policeman. A ragged cheer went up from behind. There were a lot of whistles going off. I was on my knees when I heard dogs barking, and whimpered in fright. I hate dogs, I’m really scared of them. Policemen were moving fast to plug the gap Abbey had created. Several wrestling matches had developed on either side of me. Protestors were being cuffed and dragged off. Clothes got ripped. Those horrible telescoping batons were striking people who weren’t even threatening. I saw blood.

Someone tugged the neck of my blouse, lugging me to my feet. I was crying and shaking. My knee was red hot, I could barely stand on it.

A police helmet was thrust into my face. ‘You all right?’ a muffled voice demanded from behind the misted visor.

I just wailed at him. It was pathetic, but I was so miserable and panicky I didn’t care.

‘Sit there! Wait!’ I was pushed onto the top of the fresh earth bank. Ten feet below me backpackers were cowering as they scrambled along the path towards the shining wormhole. They all looked at me in fright, as if I was some kind of demon. That’s not right, not right at all. I’m one of the good guys. The vehicles heading for the wormhole were swishing past, their drivers grim as they gripped the steering wheels.

I saw a big navy-blue BMW 4x4 towing a horsebox. The driver was peering forward intently. Visual recognition kicked in.

‘Get your fucking hands off me dickhead this is assault you know I’ll have you in court oh shit get those cuffs off right now they’re too tight you’re deliberately torturing me help help,’ Abbey was yelling behind me.

‘It’s Colin,’ I whispered. ‘Abbey, that’s Colin!’ My voice was rising.

‘What?’

‘Colin!’ I pointed frantically. There was Olivia sitting in the back seat, face pressed up against the glass to look out at all the mad people thronging above the bank. Seeing me. We both gaped at each other. ‘He’s taking them. Oh God, he’s taking them through the wormhole.’

Abbey gave her arresting officer an almighty shove, her weight pushing him off balance. ‘Get them,’ she screamed at me. ‘Move.’ Three furious policemen made a grab for her. A truncheon was raised. Her shoulder slammed into me. I tumbled down the bank, arms windmilling wildly for balance. My knee was agony. I crashed into a backpacker, and fell onto the tarmac barely a yard from a transit van which swerved violently.

‘Grab them back,’ Abbey cried. ‘They’re yours. It’s your right.’ She vanished beneath her private scrum of police.

The vehicles along the road were all braking. I looked up. Everybody was stuck behind Colin’s BMW, which had stopped. The driver’s window slid down smoothly and he stuck his head out. We just gazed at each other. A whole flood of emotions washed over his face. Mainly anger, but I could see regret there as well.

‘Come on,’ he said. The rear door opened.

I looked at the open door. I got to my feet. I looked back up the bank at the violent melee of protestors and police. I looked back at the BMW. The wormhole was waiting beyond it. Cars were blowing their horns in exasperation, people shouting at me to get a move on.

I start walking towards the BMW with its open door. I know it’s just plain wrong. Morally. Ideologically. I truly believe that. But what else can I do?

If at First . . .

‘My name is David Lanson, and I was with the Metropolitan Police for twenty-seven years. When we got handed the Jenson case I was a chief detective, heading up my own team. Not bad going; from outside you’d think I was a standard careerist ticking off the days until retirement. You’d be wrong, I’d grown to hate the job with a passion. Back when I signed on the CID were real thief-takers, but by the time the Jenson case came up I was spending all my time filling in Risk Assessment forms. I’m not kidding, the paperwork was beyond parody. All good stuff for lawyers, but we were getting hammered in the press for truly dismal crime statistics, and hammered by the politicians for not meeting their stupid targets. No wonder public confidence in us had reached rock bottom; the only useful thing we did for the average citizen by then was to hand out official crime numbers for insurance claims.

I suppose that makes me sound bitter; but then that seems to be the fate of old men who’re stuck in a job that’s forever modernizing. The point of all this being, despite drowning in all that bureaucratic stupidity, I reckoned I was quite a decent policeman. That is: I know when people are lying. In those twenty-seven years I’d heard it all, and I do mean
all
: desperate types who’ve made a mistake and then start spouting bollocks to cover themselves, the genuine nutters who live in their own little world and believe every word they’re saying, drunks and potheads trying to act sober, losers with pitiful excuses, real sick ones who are so cold and polite it makes my skin crawl. Listening to all that day in day out you soon learn to tell what’s real and what isn’t.

So anyway, we get the call from Marcus Orthew’s solicitor that his security people are holding an intruder at his Richmond research centre, and they’d appreciate a full investigation of the ‘situation’. That was in 2007, and Orthew was a media and computer mogul then, at least that was the public perception; it wasn’t until later I found out just how wide his commercial and technological interests were. His primary hardware company, Orthanics, had just started producing solid-state blocks that were generations ahead of anything the opposition was doing. They didn’t have hard drives or individual components, the entire computer was wrapped up inside a single hyperprocessor. It wiped the floor with PCs and Apple Macs. He was always ahead of the game, Orthew; it was his original PCWs that blew Sinclair computers away at the start of the eighties; everyone in my generation went and bought an Orthanics PCW as their first computer.

But this break-in: I thought it was slightly odd the solicitor calling me rather than the company security office. Like I said, the longer you’re in the game you develop a feeling for these things. I took Paul Mathews and Carmen Galloway with me, they were lieutenants in my team, good people, and slightly less bothered about all the paperwork flooding our office than me. Smart move, I guess; they’d probably make it further than I was ever destined to go. Orthanics security were holding on to Toby Jenson. They’d found him breaking in to one of the Richmond Centre labs, which the CCTV footage confirmed. And I was right, there was more to it. We read Toby Jenson his rights, and uniform division hauled him off; that was when the solicitor told me he was a stalker, a twenty-four-carat obsessive. Marcus Orthew had known about him for years, Jenson had been following him round the globe, hacking into Orthew’s systems, talking to people in his organization, on his domestic staff, ex-girlfriends, basically anyone who crossed his path; but they hadn’t been able to do anything about him. Jenson was smart, there was never any activity they could take him to court for, he never got physically close, all he did was talk to people, the hacking could never be proved in law. The Richmond break-in changed all that. As it was Orthew making the allegations, my boss told me to give it complete priority; I guess she was scared about what his magazines and satellite channels would do to the Met if we let it slide.