The woman got in, holding the stained envelope in her hands. He glanced at it. Apart from the sauce marks and damp patches, it was blank. No writing of any kind. The dashboard clock said 10.40. They’d be home by 11.30, assuming he was still capable of driving.
He had never expected to be ill before. His speed dropped in anticipation of what he thought was coming. The woman noticed.
‘Leader wants this as soon as possible.’ She tapped the envelope. ‘Speed it up.’
He felt fine.
31
THE STUDENT AND the woman arrived back at 11.35. She got out first, he glanced at himself in the mirror. He had messed up. Not enough leaves? The wrong leaves? He got out and walked to number 26 a few paces behind the woman. He had failed.
Boxer Street was narrow, shabby, unremarkable. The terraced houses were built in the 1930s; far enough from Coventry city centre to have avoided the Blitz of 1940 but close enough to the university to have been hit by students since 1968. Most of the entrances sported multiple doorbells. Bikes, overflowing bins and recycling tubs were scattered by front doors and along scrubby, broken paths. The smell of rotting vegetation was unmissable. Loud music pulsed from a high window opposite. Two women in denim shorts and sun tops smoked roll-ups on their front doorstep, an overflowing ashtray between them. They didn’t look up.
Inside 26 the leader was waiting for them in the hallway. Khaki shirt, baggy black cotton trousers. He held out both hands, as if in supplication. The woman placed the envelope on his upturned palms. He seemed pleased. ‘Today is a good day,’ he said, then turned and walked to the kitchen. The student and the woman waited in the lounge. She took the two-seater sofa, he leant on the wall by the door. He still felt fine.
After a few minutes of silence the leader strode in, followed by the sweating man, his head ringed with bandages. The leader stood by the empty bookshelves, a sheet of lined paper in his hand. The student could make out the indents of five lines of type, twelve maybe fifteen words a line. A long message this time. The leader waited for the sweating man to ease his way on to the sofa, then smiled. ‘A good day today, a better day tomorrow.’
Tomorrow? thought the student. Tomorrow?
He still felt fine.
The leader waved the paper. ‘We are about to jump-start the revolution. We cannot leave it any longer and our citizen friends in the London cell have offered us the next target. We will strike at the bankers, priests and the Jews of the oppressor class. The other leftists who side with the bureaucrats and the status quo will be shamed. They have learnt nothing. Arguing with us is pointless. Negotiating is pointless. They will be reviled.’
The student had heard all this before, but his delivery was more urgent now, more desperate.
‘When you marched against the war, did it stop? No. It stopped nothing. When you voted, in election after election, what did it change? Anything? No, it changed nothing. This is how we bring emancipation.’ He produced his wooden-handled knife, pointed at his audience in turn. ‘If you could at last change the world, would you step up and do it? Wade in filth. Embrace the butcher. Change the world.’
And in the space of a few seconds the student felt a sweat break, first on his forehead, then down his arms and legs, then throughout his body. His heart slowed. His eyes lost focus. As the leader folded his paper, the student slid his back down the wall.
Well this is it then, he thought.
The nausea enveloped him. He pushed himself on to his hands and knees. He knew it was coming. His insides turned to water. His body was expelling a poison. The last thing he heard before he passed out was the leader’s shouts and a torrent of clicks from the Geiger counter.
32
THE STUDENT DRIFTED in and out of consciousness. He knew he was in an ambulance. His stomach was still on fire, his clothes soaked through. The lights were fierce, the suspension on the vehicle non-existent; every pothole and ramp sent spasms of pain through his body. He vomited continually. Careful latexed hands wiped him clean. Two voices, he thought, one male, one female. A conversation he couldn’t reach. He thought he caught his name being repeated somewhere but through the fog of siren, engine and clatter he wasn’t sure.
A crashing of doors, new raised voices. He screwed his eyes shut. He was strapped, jolted, and on a trolley. Propelled at speed, he found a handle to grab. Every bump, every turn made his head throb, his stomach heave. The light acquired shadows, the shouts gained echoes. He was inside. The acid burn in his throat and nose didn’t stop the familiar sweet disinfectant smell filling his lungs. He’d made it to hospital but was weaker than he’d ever felt, sicker than he’d ever imagined. He needed to explain why he was here but not until he was safe. He tried to open his eyes, tried to form words, and failed at both. His eyelids were too heavy, his lips stuck together.
The leader had said tomorrow. It was getting darker.
The noise of the room elongated and twisted into a deep pulsing sound that throbbed around his head. It filled his chest. Voices, then whistling, then a crackling electric current.
Then it went black.
33
HE WAS SITTING at a large, crowded table. The noise was extraordinary. He knew everyone was family, it was just he couldn’t name anyone. He would have to guess.
There was an old woman at the head of the table, her
