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  dead ink

  Copyright © SJ Bradley 2017

  All rights reserved.

  The right of SJ Bradley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Dead Ink, an imprint of Cinder House Publishing Limited.

  Paperback ISBN 9781911585053

  Hardback ISBN 9781911585077

  ePub ISBN 9781911585114

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc.

  www.deadinkbooks.com

  For Ricky.

  LEGAL WARNING

  Part II, Criminal Law Act 1977

  As Amended by Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

  TAKE NOTICE

  THAT we live in this property, it is our home and we intend to stay here.

  THAT at all times there is at least one person in this property.

  THAT any entry or attempt to enter into these premises without our permission is therefore a criminal offence, as any one of us who is in physical possession is opposed to such entry without our permission.

  THAT if you attempt to enter by violence or by threatening violence we will prosecute you. You may receive a sentence of up to six months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of up to £5,000.

  THAT if you want to get us out you will have to issue a claim for possession in the County Court or in the High Court, or produce to us a written statement or certificate in terms of S.12 A Criminal Law Act, 1977 (as inserted by Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994).

  THAT it is an offence under S.12A(8) Criminal Law Act 1977 (as amended) to knowingly make a false statement for the purposes of S.12A. A person guilty of such an offence may receive a sentence of up to six months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of up to £5,000.

  Signed

  The Occupiers

  N.B. Signing this Legal Warning is optional. It is equally valid whether or not it is signed.

  1.

  Samhain waited in the dark hallway, restless. Carrying a rucksack of things that might have looked, to anybody else, like the tools a person might use to break into a place.

  ‘No – no – no – no – no...’ Frankie, bent as a folded card, sorted through hasps and screws. Gorilla’s palms: hands that gripped drum sticks, and shifted guitar cabs. Fingers that fixed, cooked, nursed. Rattling now with loose lock mechanisms, and keys that didn’t fit.

  ‘You know what this is like,’ Samhain said. They’d got in through a window at the back, and whoever had been in this grand hallway last had boarded over the top glass. It may be midsummer outside, but it was night here. If Frankie would only step out into the day a moment, he could find what he needed right away. But Frankie never wanted to open the door to the outside. Not until they were standing with lock and key and screws laying out ready, to secure the squat. A superstition that had grown from Frankie once having been thrown out of a place, only ten minutes after breaking it.

  ‘That time you hid in Endra’s wardrobe because her boyfriend came home.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? I guess you were in your pants then. Hang on, this could be it boys, this could be it.’ Frankie’s silver shaved head tilted down; he winked to a brass Yale right in the centre of his life line.

  ‘Cells at New Cross, jizzlip.’

  ‘Ah.’ Crinkled envelope eyes: a smile with one molar missing. That was the smile. The one that had seen Samhain through hangover after hangover: the smile that, seen first time, had started the longest friendship of his life. Eighteen, young and stumbling, with head throbbing and the gig room rolling around him like a head of lettuce in a salad spinner, Samhain had looked into that face and taken Frankie for somebody he already knew. He’d thought Frankie was the same man who’d lent him a balaclava and scarf in Genoa. Firm hands had dragged Samhain up from the sticky social floor, and he’d started saying, ‘I love you,’ before he’d even made it to his feet.

  ‘Steady on,’ Frankie had said.

  On their second, more sober encounter, Samhain had realised his mistake. But those first few words had been the start of something. And now here they were.

  ‘Seen enough o’ them. Wood Street Wakefield – Doncaster – Hammersmith – New Cross – could be any of ‘em. Police cells are all the same, mind. You ready?’

  ‘Yep.’ Samhain had one hand inside his bag, his heart beating like an idiot with a set of saucepans. Touched a hammer, a wrench. Fingers brushed the crowbar, before he found what he needed. The screwdriver had wriggled its way all the way down to the bottom, and was nestling under his other shirt. ‘Open it up.’

  Heavy door. All chains and sliding bolts. The swollen wood and metal mechanisms had oxidised red and rusted shut. The whole thing stuck. ‘Haven’t you got a hammer there, dreamboat?’ Sweat poured off Frankie as though he’d been oiled. ‘Don’t just stand there, do something with that bolt. Not my hands, dickhead! Mind my hands.’

  Samhain started hitting, working away at the bolts. Blows exploded along the door. Across the floor: he felt every hammer-fall in his shoes.

  ‘Right,’ Frankie said. Then he had a hand on the knob, right in the centre of the door. ‘Ready? Let’s get this thing open.’

  Two sets of hands, working away. Hauling at it, pulling a truck’s weight, until at last the door came open. Just a nick at first: enough for a golden hair of light to run down the right-hand wall.

  ‘Nothing’s ever simple, is it?’ Samhain could already feel the beginnings of a morning-after ache in his chest and shoulders. His belt chafed with salt sweat. This was a solid door, a thing built to keep intruders away.

  One last wrench, and it came swinging like a backhanded tennis racquet.

  Sunlight. Liquid amber on wall and into eyes. Samhain blinked: he was looking out into a tangled bower of blooming pink roses, white trumpets of bindweed. Leaves brighter than new peas. Twigs and stalks twisting in an arch, branches and boughs in a person-sized nest. And there in its centre, wearing slacks and a golf sweater, stood a bald and cheerily-smiling man.

  ‘Hello!’ he chimed. ‘Are you the new neighbours?’

  Samhain had dreamed of a home like this. Abandoned, bay-fronted, a Georgian thing with double rooms, and en-suites. The Boundary Hotel had a faded sign facing the road. It promised tea-making facilities, and a TV lounge. Samhain had been riding past it on his bike every day for months. He had wanted to check that it really was empty.

  Life in the slum had made him filthy as an animal. Eight of them in a place with only three bedrooms, and only one bathroom, all of them living on top of one another. He had become obsessed with the idea of white sheets, and of making tea and coffee in a room where you never saw another person’s face. Floor space enough for a person to tread freely, without needing to step over somebody else.

  The slum had only ever meant to be a house for three. But things got crowded when Sam had started crashing there following a break-up, and Frankie rolled up after being evicted from another squat. He’d brought two others from the same place with him. Soon, there had been a mattress in the living room, sleeping bags in the landing, and they were all always keeping their elbows in no matter where they were in the house.

  The sides and back told you this was a working hotel. The sign made it look that way. The windows. The car park. It was only when you really stopped to look, through the exact spot in the unruly twigs-and-sticks privet, that you could see. A door black and heavy, and always, forbiddingly, and very finally, locked.

  ‘It needs a fair bit of work,’ Frankie said. ‘But we’re hoping to be open for business by the middle of next year.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ David bounced on his toes, head swivelling. ‘Me and Barbara have always said – that’s my wife – that it would
be ever so good if some enterprising young lads, like yourselves, would get this place up and running again.’

  The long hall. A dusty reception desk with papers, opposite the bar archway. This opened into the velvety, syrupy catacomb of the guest bar.

  ‘This place was always such a grand success – always full. It was ever so sad when the Evanses had to give it up. She was ill, you know. Cancer.’ David lowered his voice: ‘They never did come back.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Frankie said. ‘We hope we can do them proud.’

  Samhain could choose a room first. He’d found the place, so he could decide which part of it was his. That was the only rule they had. ‘Nice to meet you, David,’ he said.

  He had aspirations for the top of the house. A place right up in the trees, closer to the moon and sun, with light flickering through the greenery. Almost like being outdoors. ‘Sorry to leave you,’ he said, ‘but we’ve got a lot to do, and I’d better get started.’

  Hand on the bannister. His skin met a fine coating of dust, which stuck to his palm like fur from a moulting cat.

  He looked into the gloomy, twisting staircase, and started up the stairs.

  2.

  Things had been left tidy. Bed corners squared and grimy with dust. Four UHT milk cartons, spiderwebbed and politely perched on saucer sides on a tea tray. A dead house spider, legs curled inwards in death, crumbling in the cup.

  Samhain might have been in a tree house. Branches stretching in dancers’ arms over the Velux, the sky a searing blue behind a fluttering confetti of new leaves. He opened the window to let out the scent of decay, and heard a lawnmower.

  The scent of trapped life had been stronger with each step he’d taken. He’d pushed open this last door half-expecting to find a museum. Oak furniture, an old Grandfather clock. But it was more like a Premier Inn. White walled, all one piece. Everything covered in a dust so fine it formed a coverlet like dryer lint.

  He glanced around, and ditched his rucksack on the bed. His shoulders felt strangely light without it: he had been carrying it a long time. Tools, his hoody, a t-shirt. Things he couldn’t manage without, when things were so easily lost. He looked in the mirror, and realised that somehow he had ended up with a cobweb in his buzzcut.

  ‘Sam?’ Roxy’s voice had the tone of a rusted gate blowing loose in a gale. She appeared in the doorway, in her work clothes, her tattoo a vibrant splash of green and blue. ‘So this is it, huh?’

  ‘Great, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Our new home. At least, for now.’

  Something in her expression made him think of a laboratory beagle. The way they didn’t know what to do when the clasp slipped to let them free – looking at both sides of their cages, uncertainly, the only life they’ve ever known. ‘It’s great,’ she said. ‘It’s so big.’

  ‘We should keep it for just the three of us. You, me, and Frankie.’

  She nodded, and stepped closer. He could smell last night on her. The taste of whisky in her sweat; her top thin enough that he could see her nipples.

  ‘So, this is your room – is it?’ Her smile was wary.

  Sudden silence from the lawnmower. Quiet, and the noise of cooing pigeons overhead.

  ‘Yeah. Well, there are plenty to choose from. It’s not like any of us need to share anymore.’

  He saw her harden, and turn away. ‘No. We don’t need to share. I just thought you might want to.’

  In the next step, she moved to an unexpected distance. Out of reach and curving backwards, too far for him to touch. ‘Roxy,’ he said. ‘Come on, don’t be like that.’

  ‘I’m going to choose my room.’ She receded into the darkness of the stairway, and started hopping down. ‘Just so you know, I’m on a split – so don’t expect me home early. Tommy and me might go out after closing.’ Pausing at the curve of the stairs, with one foot hanging over the next step. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  Samhain didn’t answer right away: he didn’t know how to. Anything he said was going to be the wrong thing, anyhow. That was always the way with Roxy.

  ‘Forget it,’ she said.

  It was as she hopped around the bottom corner, that he suddenly remembered. They were without electricity and gas. Somebody had to sort that out.

  ‘Hey, Roxy?’ he called.

  ‘What?’

  She paused where she was, already on the second landing, and didn’t look happy about being stopped.

  Reconnection in a squat was easy. Frankie had taught him how. First step was to find a call centre worker lazy or gullible enough to send a letter to him at this address, which he could use as proof that he lived here. Only, Samhain couldn’t make phone calls. He’d lost his Nokia in a pub a week or so ago, or maybe in the street on the way home, and had no idea where to start looking for it.

  ‘Can I borrow your phone?’

  3.

  The woman behind the library desk had a face like the gallows. Moping her way around, rattling the pencils as though this place was a funeral home, and these books the skeletons of her dead children. ‘Yes?’ she snapped.

  ‘Can I book a computer session, please?’

  She sighed, and beckoned. ‘Card.’ Clawed hands, the hands of a darning woman.

  The computer room was off to one side, and full of clicking and typing. Screens open to Yahoo! Mail, or the kelly green of the Total Jobs website.

  ‘Start at ten past,’ she said, sliding him a pencil-written code. ‘This will only work today, so there’s no point keeping this slip and trying to log in with it again tomorrow.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. He was in here all the time. Daily, when he’d been living in the slum. He knew the rules.

  ‘If you’re trying to access certain websites and getting an error message, chances are it’s blocked by our central I.T. system. We can’t do anything about that here.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  She gave him a sharp, shrewd look. ‘Current session finishes in ten minutes. You’ll be able to get on after that.’

  The branch library had been a better place than home, until he’d moved into the Boundary Hotel. Its hush: people spoke in whispers, and nobody ever asked you to move. Cushioned seats around the reading table. New newspapers every day. It was a place of calm, with a familiar smell of carpet tile and public buildings.

  It was in this library that Samhain had started trying to set up a European tour for the band. Frankie had contacts, and Samhain had contacts – they were both all over the Europunk message boards, and all over MySpace, trying to pull something together.

  Nothing about it was simple. Trying to get the gigs to line up, to avoid having to drive all over Europe and back – the whole thing was a nightmare. But this, Frankie liked to say, was the best thing about being in a punk band: the ‘ravishing, dashing uncertainty,’ as he called it, ‘makes you feel so alive!’

  Samhain sighed, and looked at his MySpace. He spent half of his outgoing messages apologising for being British. We don’t agree with those imperialists Bush and Blair and We don’t support the war in Iraq, to avoid any doubt. They were giving any benefits from the sale of their CD to Médicin Sans Frontière, and he always mentioned that too. It was the only thing they could do to help in a situation where they felt totally powerless, where they’d been taken into a war against a protest of millions, a protest he and Frankie had been involved in. They wanted to show the sincerity of their intentions; they wanted to get more gigs. But until the gig collectives started replying, lived chaos. Samhain was waiting on replies from three different sets of people. He sat on the lumpy library chair, clicking refresh.

  Message from: Marta

  Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Guitar

  Marta had been looking after his guitar for weeks, ever since things had taken a strange turn in the slum. When new people had started living there, people he didn’t know. He hadn’t felt safe having it around. His guitar was the only thing he had that was worth anything, and he couldn
’t replace it if it went missing. Better for it to be with her, in the flat she shared with her boyfriend, than in the slum, where anybody might pick it up.

  They’d been chatting back and forth, on the same message thread, ever since.

  Samhain,

  Been sitting here half the night wondering how to start this message. If it doesn’t come across right, I’m sorry, Samhain, I really am.

  A friend from CopWatch sent me an article today, and I thought you’d probably want to see it. Because of a story you once told me about your mum.

  Mart. Beautiful, dependable Mart. She’d changed her profile picture so that it showed her sitting in the sun somewhere, bare shouldered and golden, auburn curls tumbling over one eye, at a picnic pub table. Looking at it made him realise that he didn’t see nearly enough of her.

  It was just like her to see an article and make the connection between that and one of her many friends. Just like her to remember a story he couldn’t even recall having told her himself.

  You probably already know that a lot of Deep Green Resistance groups were infiltrated by undercover cops in the 80s, right? The DGR movement was crawling with them in the early 80s. Loads of climate groups and deforestation activist groups all over northern Europe and South America were affected.

  My friend Sky had a kid by one of them. She thought the guy was an activist too. Long story short, she found out he wasn’t. He was a cop. Some of the other activists found his real passport. It gave his real name and listed a wife as next of kin. Turns out the guy already had two kids, aged 6 and 8. Sky’s son must be about 22 now.

  He couldn’t give any real explanation for the passport when challenged, and then Pete vanished from camp, poof! Gone! Just like that.

  Only a cop could have managed to pull off a disappearing act like that. God only knows how he managed to get away so quickly. They were in a camp right in the middle of nowhere, accessible only by foot or bike.

  Samhain knew camps like that. He’d grown up in them. An infancy spent in sandy soil and tree houses in climate camps all over Europe. Memories of his boyhood weren’t of solid walls, or of a nursery, but of canvas and placards, and chain-link fencing and tents; of dancing and wildfire; of dirt, of earth, of bicycles and yurts, or bearded men serving meals foraged from the woods; of minty tasting herbal tea, drunk out on a huge, expanding earth, that stretched endlessly out towards the horizon.