The Steel Spring (9 page)

‘Go on.’

‘I went out on to the landing,’ the man said uncertainly. ‘And I … well, I heard them at some of the locked doors, and they smashed them down and hauled out the people who’d stayed
behind. So we opened our front door and hid in the wardrobe. They didn’t find us.’

‘I had my hand over his mouth the whole time,’ said the woman, looking at the boy. ‘I was afraid I was going to suffocate him. But then, after about half an hour, we heard the sirens again and the motor engine noise as they drove off. Then we thought it would be safe to come out.’

‘And nobody’s been here since then?’

‘Not until you came,’ said the man. ‘But ambulances drive past every so often. They collect up anyone they find outside and take them away.’

‘We mustn’t go out,’ said the woman, squeezing the child’s hand.

‘Is it just you in this block now?’

The man and woman exchanged doubtful glances.

‘Did you hear the question?’ said Jensen.

‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘I heard.’

‘Well?’

‘No, there are some others here. They must have done the same as us. Hidden. We never see them, but we hear them.’

‘The sound really carries here,’ the woman said apologetically.

Jensen still had his eyes fixed on the man.

‘One more thing,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Why didn’t you obey the evacuation order when so many other people did? And why didn’t you let the child be taken to a place of safety?’

The man shifted his weight to the other foot and looked round nervously.

‘Answer the question.’

‘Well, I went on working longer than most people, and …’

‘And?’

‘Er, I knew the blokes at work who were on the trains and trucks that collected the rubbish from the main hospital and that big detoxification unit. They said …’

He stopped.

‘What did they say?’

‘That anyone who went into hospital caught it and died. Blood donors and anybody else.’

‘But your colleagues didn’t catch it?’

‘No, they were never let into the actual buildings.’

‘So it was all just rumour?’

‘Yes,’ the man said.

Jensen studied his notebook for a while. Then he said:

‘What had happened earlier. Before the epidemic?’

They looked at him, confused.

‘Nothing,’ said the man. ‘I was working.’

‘There were disturbances. The election was postponed, wasn’t it?’

‘So I heard. But we didn’t see anything about it on TV or in the papers.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Only that they were putting off the election because there were antisocial elements trying to sabotage it.’

‘Were there any of these antisocial elements at your own place of work?’

The man shrugged.

‘Well, I don’t really know. The police came for a few people.’

‘What sort of police?’

‘Don’t know. But someone said they were the secret police.’

‘There’s no such thing as the secret police.’

‘Oh. Isn’t there?’

‘No. How many were arrested?’

‘Only a handful. And a few others made themselves scarce.’

‘Where did they go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you interested in politics yourself?’

‘No.’

‘Do you usually vote?’

‘For the Accord? Yes, of course.’

The woman shifted uneasily.

‘That’s not true,’ she said quietly.

The man gave her a miserable look.

‘If I’m being honest, we don’t bother these days. But that’s not a crime, is it?’

‘No.’

The man gave a shrug.

‘Why vote?’ he said. ‘It’s all beyond us, anyway.’

Jensen closed his notebook.

‘So you didn’t witness any of these disturbances yourself?’

‘No. I only heard rumours.’

‘What sort of rumours?’

‘That lots of people got so incensed with the socialists that they beat them up.’

‘When?’

‘At demos and so on. But I expect they only got what they deserved.’

Jensen put away his notebook and pen.

‘Do you know who smashed the window of the supermarket down there?’

‘Yes, it was the same lot as came for the children. They broke
into the shop and took loads of stuff out to the bus. Stuff they sold in the shop, I mean.’

The boy said something incomprehensible. The woman tried to shush him.

‘What’s he saying?’ asked Jensen.

‘He’s asking if Mister Policeman’s got a bang-bang,’ she said, blushing. ‘He means a gun.’

‘No, I haven’t got a gun.’

Jensen looked at the open bag of sweets in the child’s hand and said:

‘Don’t forget to pay for that when things get back to normal again.’

The man nodded.

‘Or there could be unpleasant consequences.’

Jensen moved towards the door. The woman went after him and said, quiet and hesitantly:

‘When will things get back to normal?’

‘Don’t know. You’ll be safest indoors until further notice. Goodbye.’

No one in the flat said anything more.

Inspector Jensen left. He closed the door carefully behind him.

There was not much to see on the way to the Sixteenth District police station. The streets of the inner city lay empty and the whole city centre looked completely deserted. All the shops were locked and barred, as were the snack bars where the private food industry syndicates that had won contracts from the Ministry of Public Health used to serve up their scientifically composed but far from tempting set meals. The only sign of any kind of care and loving attention to detail were the names of these food outlets. They were invariably called ‘Culinary Paradise’, with subheadings such as ‘The Dainty Morsel’, ‘Chef’s Delight’ or ‘Eats and Treats’. The windows displayed fake, plastic food, and alongside them and inside the premises there were notices distributed jointly by the Ministry for Public Health and the group of companies that ran the restaurants. Most of these said ‘Chew your food well, but do not occupy your table for too long. Other citizens are waiting.’ This concise message encapsulated the primary interests of both parties. During his long period of illness Jensen had had problems with his digestion, and had only patronised such places on rare occasions. He knew, however, that the food was cooked centrally and sent out pre-portioned. A few years before, the operation had been rationalised so that all the outlets in the city served only a single daily dish, a move that had generated significant savings, that is to say, greatly improved profitability, for the conglomerate
producing the food. The standard dishes were allegedly geared to popular taste and were devised by a group of experts inside the Ministry of Public Health. A typical dish might consist of three slices of meat loaf, two baked onions, five mushy boiled potatoes, a lettuce leaf, half a tomato, some thick, flour-based sauce, a third of a litre of homogenised milk, three slices of bread or crispbread, a portion of vitamin-enriched margarine, a little tub of soft cheese, coffee in a plastic cup, and a cake. The next day it would be the same thing again, but with boiled fish instead of the meat. The whole lot was served on hygienically packed plastic trays, covered in plastic film. The profit motive had dictated that almost all the private companies in the business had gradually been sucked up by the big food industry conglomerates.

Those who made a study of solidarity issues had long since discovered that when hundreds of thousands of people ate exactly the same food at exactly the same time, the result was an enhanced sense of security and a collective sense of belonging. The bosses of this socially useful production chain were not resident in the country. They had been living on islands in more southerly climes for many years. There were regular features on them in the weekly magazines. These would have pictures of them relaxing on yachts or standing by white marble balustrades with palm trees and surf-fringed beaches in the background.

The streets were dotted with carelessly parked cars, and there were military vehicles abandoned at some of the major crossroads, just as at the airport. Most of them were tanks or armoured cars. In some places, windows had been smashed and walls bore bullet marks, but there was no evidence anywhere of direct destruction or serious damage. Jensen saw no living
people, and no dead bodies. Nor did he come across any ambulances or other motor vehicles, but as he negotiated the maze of intersections at the city hall, he saw a column of trucks moving along highway seven. They had full loads on the back, covered with tarpaulins, and to judge by their direction of travel they were heading for the central detoxification unit. The convoy had no escort.

Fifteen minutes later he was at the Sixteenth District station. He turned through the arch and saw his own police car parked in the usual place, though not as neatly as he would have done it himself. On checking he found that the doors were not locked and the key was in the ignition. Inspector Jensen gave a slight shake of the head. He had always thought the head of the plainclothes patrol slipshod and imprecise in his actions. His reports left a good deal to be desired, as they were often unfocused and cluttered with irrelevant detail. He would never contemplate recommending the man for a position of higher command.

The doors to the police station were also unlocked. The large reception area with its old-fashioned decor and fittings was deserted, and there was nothing to indicate any human presence, living or dead, in the station as a whole. He looked about him, and then went calmly up the spiral staircase to his office, hung up his outdoor things, and sat down at his desk for the first time in three months. Glanced at the electric wall clock. It had stopped, for the first time in fifteen years.

The untidiness of the desk was plain to see, and it annoyed him. Pens, pencils and sheets of paper were lying all over the place. He opened a drawer and found the same thing there. It took him a good quarter of an hour to restore order around him. Then he went to the filing cabinet, took out the log that
was supposed to be kept by the duty district inspector, opened the large, paper-bound volume in front of him on the desk and began to study it. He went back to his own last day on duty and read the final entry, signed by himself.

Handed over command, 10.00
.

Further down the same page, his successor had written:

Have arrested 39 of the 43 on list I was given. Plainclothes from some security service came to get them for questioning. Jensen seems to have messed up somehow, but then he was ill
.

The entry was typical of the man’s inability to express himself. Jensen wrinkled his nose, not at the impertinence of the comment but at the clumsy, unclear way it was worded.

He read on. The entries for the first week were merely numbers of drunks apprehended and sudden death incidents. For example:

48 alcohol abuse cases this evening. Two killed themselves
.

Then the man had clearly realised this was an unfortunate choice of words, crossed out ‘killed themselves’ and wrote ‘died suddenly in the cells’ instead.

A few days later:

Still haven’t been sent a new doctor. Difficult
.

Jensen glanced through a few more pages and found the following entirely misplaced comment:

New doctor came today. Heard Jensen’s as good as dead and going to be cremated over there. No point bringing the body home, says the head of personnel at HQ. The lads here are collecting for a decent, realistic-looking plastic wreath
.

On the twenty-first of September, a Saturday, there was an entry completely out of keeping with the rest.

Whole force out to protect a demonstration march from agitated civilians. Went fine, but mood very heated
.

And a week later:

More demo trouble. Much worse than last time, but we more or less coped. Manpower from lots of districts involved. Aggravating for police officers, forced to take the demonstrators’ part against nice, law-abiding citizens
.

On the third of September his stand-in had written:

Major riot at political demo. Backup called in from outlying districts
.

A week later:

Total chaos and running battles at the party offices and outside friendly embassies. Tough for the police. Lots of them acting against their own convictions
.

And a few days after that:

We’ve finally been ordered to carry weapons and go in hard
.

The entry for the twenty-first of October was particularly sloppily written and inadequately formulated:

The elections have been postponed and there’s no order any more. The socialists dare not attack the friendly embassies now. The loyal part of the population has had enough and is besieging the embassy buildings of powers hostile to the people. We can’t protect them, and nobody in the force wants to anyway. Have heard the diplomats are closing their offices and getting out
.

Jensen read on.

Only two drunks last night. No time for them any more
.

Long arrest list from the secret branch. 125 names. Got hold of 86. The rest must be in hiding
.

Another arrest list from the secret services. Tried to get hold of the police chief today. He’s out of the country. Most of the government, too. Hard to get proper orders
.

This last entry had been written on the thirtieth of October. The next day came the following summary:

Military assistance deployed this morning. Tanks, armoured cars, all sorts. Have been notified that the traitors of the nation are planning a major coup on Saturday, it’s in the papers and it’s been on radio and TV. Police morale is better than ever. They’re all itching to put the socialists in their place, once and for all
.

There was also an entirely superfluous addition:

Shame old J. wasn’t here for this. Hope he’s having a nice time up there in heaven!

Jensen read the unorthodox sentences with a frown of displeasure. Moved on to the critical Saturday:

Almost all the red scum crushed by us and the army. Lots of law-abiding citizens helping out. What a day!