The Balance of Guilt (33 page)

D
REAMS ARE GREAT
. Danhad always thought so. Some wonderful things happened to him in the travels of the night, and, unlike many people, come the morning he usually remembered what they were.

Some could keep him grinning for much of the day.

He only tended to have one nightmare, a recurring theme of being in an exam hall, turning over the paper and finding he couldn’t answer any of the questions. There was a variation too, in that sometimes he would be
sans
trousers. Dan occasionally wondered if it was a metaphor for his life, but was reassured after reading in a weekend paper that it was a common spectre. Apparently it was to do with unpreparedness and the traumatic effect of exams and often stayed with many people for the whole of their days.

So, in at least one aspect of life he was relatively normal. Dan found that oddly comforting.

His enjoyable visions were far more ranging, from the standard sunshine days of simplicity on Dartmoor with Rutherford, to being the superhero captain of a spaceship. He would defeat the hordes of evil aliens and save the human race on a daily basis, and with such audacious panache that it could have been part of the job description.

He tended to gloss over the interpretation of that one. Dan knew from unpleasant experience that some of the avenues of his mind were best left unexplored.

But of these particular dreams, whether it was because they were enforced by unconsciousness, or just that his brain needed a break after the shocks and stresses of the last few days, Dan had no memory. There was only blankness, a void, a time when he was unaware even of being alive.

And when he did finally come around, Dan had to wonder whether he was still in that happy land of fantasies. Because he was being applauded.

And in Dan’s experience of the real world, that never happened.

He blinked hard, was aware of some surprised sighing and muttered conversation, a couple of whispered voices, growing louder, filling with excitement. There were colours too. They were dancing, shifting, like a kaleidoscope in his eyes. Now shapes were forming. An oblong, filled with streaming light.

A window. Dan thought he remembered that was the correct technical term.

Now a square, a screen with black surrounding it. A television. Some brown wood, tall and patterned. A wardrobe. A cylinder, with protruding flowers – a vase. A green and grey twisted thing which might have been art.

And two ovals. Pale coloured. One topped with darkness, the other more straw. Looming closer.

Faces! That’s what they were. Familiar faces. And they were smiling.

Both were moving very close now. They were still clapping. And they were pushing parts of their faces onto his.

Kissing. It was called kissing. This seemed pleasant.

Perhaps he was still dreaming. Kissing and applause from two women at once.

It did feel like a familiar fantasy.

Now sound. Soft, and rhythmic. Coaxing. Speech! The faces were talking to him.

‘Dan! You’re awake! You’re back with us!’

Apparently this wasn’t a dream.

He raised a hand. He had to concentrate and it felt heavy and shaky, but it moved mostly fine under his control. He waved it and found another hand reaching out to take it, squeezing his palm.

The two faces were talking to each other. The older one was saying, ‘Do you want me to leave you alone for a while?’

‘No,’ the other replied. ‘Not at all. You’ve stayed by him the whole time. Don’t leave now. Besides, I think he’s going to need both of us to tell him everything that’s happened.’

Dan wondered what they were talking about. But the younger face was still smiling and holding his hand, so it couldn’t be all bad.

The focus was coming back to his eyes. The younger face was very pretty. Lovely dark hair too, just what he suspected he remembered was his type.

He thought he might try a little charm when the power of speech decided to grace him with its return. She probably had a boyfriend, but he’d give it a go anyway.

Perhaps he’d tell her a story. He had plenty of good tales. Dan vaguely recalled that telling stories had always been a part of his life. He might even have been paid for it once. Something called a job.

And what a ridiculous job it would be. Being paid for telling stories!

The older of the two faces was talking to him. She was pretty too, although she looked tired and sad. She was asking how he was.

It was a cue for some of that famous charm. Dan wanted to wink and say “How do you think I am with a beautiful woman either side of me?”, but the words were reluctant to form. So he favoured her with his best smile instead.

Now something less good was happening. The smile brought with it a pain. He ran his tongue around his mouth. It was swollen and it stung. How did that happen?

Come to that, another pain had arrived. It must have decided to join its friend. Sociable creatures, pains. They seldom called alone, annoyingly. But this one was in his head. It was coming from the side, a dull, drumming thud.

Dan raised his hand to its source and was surprised to find some thick padding. He poked at it and was rewarded with an enthusiastic stab of discomfort.

It was clear this particular pain wanted to be left alone.

He decided to concentrate on other matters. He could come back to the pain later. It didn’t feel like it was going anywhere fast.

The room was interesting. It was very white. And it smelt funny. Not just clean, in a way his flat rarely did, but more than that.

Antiseptic. That was it.

A hospital! He was in a hospital. Ah, now he understood.

He must have had an accident. Probably a car crash. Nigel was always telling him to drive more carefully. Well, at least he had survived, albeit with a couple of injuries. He hoped no one else had been hurt.

And then it came back. All and everything. In the rush of a second’s realisation.

Dan gasped and sat up in the bed. Gentle hands immediately started easing him back down.

‘I’ve remembered,’ he stammered. ‘The bombing. The cover up. Trying to expose it. What happened? How did it all end?’

The two faces were still smiling, but more broadly now.

‘Just take it easy,’ the dark-haired one said. ‘It all worked out.’

They exchanged a look and the other face added, ‘I suppose we’d better tell you what happened.’

Dan had been unconscious for two days. And what a time he’d missed.

He hadn’t judged the crack on his skull quite right. In fact, he had come close to getting it terminally wrong. Instead of a glancing blow, one which would leave him incapacitated for perhaps twenty minutes or so, he’d managed to deliver a full and stunning impact to a particularly sensitive area of his skull.

A white-coated and ridiculously young doctor breezed into the room, fussed around, checked his bandage and made no attempt whatsoever to welcome Dan back to the world. Instead, she delivered a scolding when he admitted to inflicting the injury deliberately.

‘You were very lucky,’ she said, wagging a finger. ‘You could have fractured your skull, if not worse. It’s a good job you’ve got a thick head and a less than sensitive brain.’

She was out of the door again before Dan could thank her for the pastoral care and kind words.

The spies had been forced to call an ambulance, just as Dan had hoped. But instead of a few minutes delay it had been more like half an hour as the paramedics checked and stabilised him. Dan was taken to hospital, and there remained oblivious to the extraordinary events unfolding outside of his little white room. Claire and Ali had taken turns to sit by his bedside.

El had plenty of time to go about his work. He would have heard Dan’s blubbing in the toilets via the phone, realised what was happening and scrambled to the studios. There, he hid himself, but took snaps aplenty of the police in the car park, the van full of tapes, papers and running orders, and most importantly, the two spies.

Most of this Dan was imagining. But he knew El well enough to guess that was precisely what he did. And he had some good evidence for the assumption. Because on his bed was a spread of national newspapers, and the headlines were breathtaking.

THE GOVERNMENT’S BOMBING
FX5 IN STATE-SPONSORED BOMBING COVER-UP
THE SPIES WHO BOMB THEIR OWN
HOME SECRETARY TO MAKE STATEMENT ON TERRORIST BOMB COVER-UP

The pages were accompanied by photographs of the police raid on
Wessex Tonight
, and close-ups of Oscar and Sierra.

‘Ooh,’ was all Dan could find to say. ‘Was that me?’

Claire folded her arms. ‘We assume so. Would you care to explain how you made all this happen, despite being unconscious?’

Dan noticed his face was forming into a smile. ‘I’ve no idea. But perhaps I could hazard a guess – hypothetically, of course. First though, tell me a little more about what’s been happening while I’ve been on my holiday from the world.’

If Dan had one complaint, it was that he hadn’t been there to see it all.

He imagined it as a great party which he had organised, one of the finest the country had ever seen. Everyone was invited, the entertainments were wonderful, the twists and turns of the event thrilling. It would go down in history and be something the population talked about for years to come.

And he was the only one not to make it along.

El had all the pictures he needed and the information too. From his guardian angel’s work, shadowing Dan to see who was following his friend, to the detailed briefings he’d been given on how the case was progressing. Just in case Dan disappeared, or was somehow silenced, as he suspected might happen, to that final call from the toilets, Dan had kept the photographer up to date with every development.

El knew about the raid on
Wessex Tonight
, the arrests, the using of John Tanton and the attempted cover-up. He knew everything about what the spies had done. He had the pictures to prove it. The only problem was bringing it all to public attention.

And it was a big one.

None of the mainstream media would have a chance of airing the scandal. Like
Wessex Tonight
, they too would be silenced in an instant by the crushing boot of the government and the legal system. So, there was only one way.

It had long been a maxim of Dan’s that if you couldn’t win by the rules, that left only one option – to change them. And that required two unlikely saviours for the cause of truth.

Dan had taken a very deep breath, drunk a couple of fortifying beers, steeled himself and let theGeeks in on the secret of what was happening. For once, there was no squealing, not even any spinning on chairs or high-fives, only a nonplussed silence.

Inevitably, it didn’t last long. Not only did they embrace the idea of exposing the scandal and getting one over on the establishment, they delighted in it. And they improvised a far better plan than Dan could ever have managed alone.

His original idea was to set up a website detailing what the spies had done.

‘Can you do that in a way which’ll make it impossible to trace back to you?’ Dan asked. ‘And difficult for them to close down?’

He was rewarded with two sets of excited emanations, noises like fireworks ascending into the sky.

‘I take it that means yes?’ Dan asked, when he had lost patience with the show.

‘Easy peasy, chilli and cream,’ came the delighted, if puzzling response. ‘We’ll just get our cyberpals to help and have it hosted somewhere miles out of their clutches. Russia’s a good one. Or some commie nation somewhere. That always annoys the Brit cops. It’s a cinch to do.’

Dan briefed them on what he needed for the content of the site. He also introduced them to El, who would be providing the pictures and more material if something should happen to Dan. He expected the photographer to find the Geeks unsettling, but El wasn’t at all bothered by them, even showing some interest in a new website they were designing to make internet gaming easier.

Forget opposites, it was more a fact that oddballs attract. And here, in this dark and musty room, they had three of the finest specimens on the planet.

Dan didn’t stop to wonder where he would rank in that particular chart.

He was about to leave, when the creature known as Flash squealed, ‘Hey, hey, hang on Dan, Dan, the TV man.’

He grimaced, but waited.

‘A website’s cool for starters, but it won’t do what you want alone, will it Gordon?’

‘No way, Jose,’ shrieked Geek Two. ‘There’s too many of the little fellas out there. It’s like fish in the ocean. There’s tonnes of them swimming around. You’ve gotta make your little tiddler a big whale.’

Dan sighed. ‘In English? Meaning?’

‘Meaning, your plan is to make your naughty little scandal so well known they can’t cover it up no more?’

‘Yep.’

‘Then we gotta work at it. We gotta make it jive. But don’t worry. I think we have a little ideary-poo.’

‘A what?’

‘Don’t worry, Dan, Dan the TV man. Just leave it to us. We’re going surfing in cyberspace.’

A spin on the stools and a high-five sealed their plan. And more they would not say.

But the Geeks had been as good as their word, if not very much better.

El must have taken his photos from the raid straight to the Geeks, along with the latest information on what happened. They had added it all to the website they’d set up, and published it.

But, as Flash and Gordon had so very eloquently squealed, that alone was nowhere near enough. So they had gone about turning their tiny twinkle in cyberspace into a shining star.

First, they had set up a large number of duplicate sites, with similar names, to attract more attention. But even that wasn’t sufficient for a real flare of interest. So the Geeks had gone viral.

El explained their plan in one of the final briefings Dan gave him. It wasn’t exactly clear how it would work, probably because neither El, nor Dan, truly understood. But, in essence, it took advantage of the prevalence of mobile phones, email and the internet to spread word of the scandal.

First, the Geeks had set up a program to send out many millions of emails. They had a way to make sure they avoided spam filters, and, anyway, the title tended to demand attention. These emails got read.