The Balance of Guilt Page 2

Find a corner. A confined space amplifies the explosion. Maximises the carnage. And the sacred message.

  A corner with a group of people.

  The young man started walking again.

  His steps were slower now.

  He kept thinking about his mum.

  And that he would never play football again.

  Never wear the precious lucky gloves, patched up and held together with tape. Never patrol the pitted and muddy goal. Never feel the hands upon his shoulders to congratulate him on another save. Never know that hour and a half of pure, heady acceptance.

  Be a vital part of the happy team. And of this society. As he had so longed to be.

  Until he was shown another way.

  The pure way.

  The right way.

  As he told himself. Again and again.

  But the young man’s footfall faltered. Each step grew slow and heavy. And breathless.

  He clutched at the hard wooden certainty of a pew. Studied the line of kneelers, embossed with birds and flowers. Nuthatch and yellowhammer, water lily and rose. Tapped at a Book of Common Prayer with an unsteady trainer. Harder now. Watched it slip from the pile and fall open on the stone.

  And he waited.

  Now a noise. Footsteps. He half turned. Ready for the uniforms. The shining buttons. The faces of authority. The commanding words. The handcuffs.

  And wondered whether he’d welcome them.

  His eyes focused through the creeping tears. A couple walked past, lost in their tunnel of love. They didn’t waste a glance, cuddled together, moving onwards.

  The woman was wearing a short skirt, light denim, riding with the easy rhythm of her stride, showing off the long lines of her tanned legs. A spray of freckles on her thigh.

  Even here, even in this place they called sacred, their whores couldn’t cover up their flesh.

  It was a sign. They must pay for their sins.

  They deserved it. He repeated the words, over and over again.

  They deserved it.

  Ahead was a corner. Some display boards. This great holy edifice throughout the long ages. The foundation and rise. Its thousand years standing. The struggle through the Reformation. The fears and raids and bomb damage of the Second World War.

  And a group of people.

  A young girl with a blonde rope of pony tail, clutching a shoulder bag in the shape of a puppy. Wearing a T-shirt of the Eiffel Tower, pulling up knee socks, now texting.

  A knot of men and women with cameras at their faces. They’re exchanging quiet words with Midlands accents. A fiftieth birthday party tonight. For Uncle Frank, in a local hotel. A slide show of photographs of his childhood. A woman is looking forward to remembering how they all used to be. A man prefers the idea of the buffet and free bar. He gets a dig in the ribs for his thoughts, but also a ripple of laughter.

  An older woman, leaning on a stick, studies a guide book of Devon. She pulls her cardigan a little tighter around her chest. From her bag edges a theatre ticket. It’s packed amongst a lipstick, a compact, an embroidered handkerchief and a bag of cat treats.

  There’s a thin man, eyes wide, face a little flushed. He keeps checking his watch and picking at a thread on the sleeve of his jacket. He’s smartly dressed, with an impeccably ironed shirt and trousers and smells of a little too much cologne. He’s carrying a bunch of flowers, half a dozen red roses. On a small white card, in an unsteady hand, is written, Be mine, always.

  A middle-aged man holds the hand of a woman. Flares of light flash from the diamond on her finger. He slips a kiss onto her cheek and whispers about the beauty of this place.

  And of his bride-to-be.

  At the back of the group are a couple of children, wearing matching rugby tops. Two boys. One pushes the other. He pushes back. A woman doesn’t look round, but tells them to stop. She’s intent on a polished bronze plaque, commemorating the men from the Royal Lancers who fell in India in the 19th century. She’s writing in a notebook. The page is headed Family tree – Exeter end.

  The young man lets his cloudy eyes run over them. And gathers his will.

  * * *

  “Loud” Jim Stone, the engineer, was in his usual fine form. Where some people brought a shining light to life, he radiated a beam of darkness.

  ‘I’m not happy. I’ve got a bleeding toothache.’ Loud’s thicket of a beard twitched as he chewed at his lip. ‘It hurts. A lot. And I bet it costs me hundreds to get it sorted out. Bleeding dentists.’

  Dan handed him the tape and climbed up into the van, picking his way around the engineer’s bulk. Today’s shirt was subdued by Loud’s trademark standards, navy blue with forks of yellow lightning. He must have chosen it to parade his suffering. The engineer was never one to do anything quietly. Dan had sometimes wondered if even after Loud died he would still be complaining about how much his last moments had hurt. He could be the first person to require a sound-proof coffin.

  ‘Quick edit, if you will,’ Dan ventured. It was coming up to half past twelve. The lunchtime news was on air in an hour. They could get the story cut by around one, leaving plenty of time for the live broadcast.

  Loud grimaced and grunted, but began spooling through the tape, checking the pictures, while Dan sketched out a script. Television worked best with short, sharp sentences, written to complement and explain the pictures. So, to begin, perhaps just one line of commentary – “A coordinated series of raids on houses identified by intelligence as being used as brothels.”

  Loud edited the pictures of the cops running towards the house. Dan kept quiet as they used the sound of the door being broken in. Sometimes the images needed no words of embroidery. Next came a few lines about the raids, five in all, across Devon, and they dropped in an interview clip of a Chief Superintendent which they’d filmed earlier, the man talking about the links between brothels and organised crime.

  To end the report, Dan detailed the number of people arrested and they used the shots of the businessmen being led down the stairs. Loud began a guttural giggling at the sight.

  Five to one. Ideal. Nigel had positioned the camera looking back on the house. A police officer stood sentry duty outside. It would make a good backdrop. They were ready in time aplenty, for once.

  With just a minor alteration to update the number of arrests, the report would do for tonight’s programme. An enjoyably quiet afternoon was in prospect. Dan mulled over how to spend it. Perhaps some shopping? It was a chore, but a necessary one. The fridge in the flat was in its usual state of bareness, and, more importantly, the beer cupboard was almost empty.

  It had been running dry worryingly fast of late, he knew, but sometimes, sitting alone in the flat at night, it was the only way to obliterate the memory of five months ago.

  Dan flinched. Yes, some shopping while the high street was quiet, then home and a long run with Rutherford. Perhaps if he got back early enough they could even go out onto Dartmoor. September was the King of the Devon months. The weather was still kind, the evening light beautiful in its mellowness, and most of the tourists had left for the year.

  It was a plan. A good walk on the moor with his beloved dog. Dan felt himself starting to relax at the thought.

  And that was the fatal error.

  Only later did he come to realise it must have been just about that moment, 12.57 exactly, that the bomb went off.

  Chapter Two

  THE HILLS WERE LOSING their summer lustre, starting instead to colour with hints of rust as the land sensed the colder days to come. The drive from Plymouth to Exeter was pure Devon, a guide to the county’s contrasts. Salt and sugar; two dissimilar beauties for contrasting tastes.

  To the north was the bleak glowering expanse of Dartmoor, rising from the road and topped with the dark scatterings of its jagged granite rocks, the famous tors. To the south, the gentler, classical countryside of the long slide away to the sea. The oblongs and angles of fields of crops; all greens, yellows and browns, the lines of hedgerows and woodland and the odd ne
stling village.

  Today though, there was no beauty to the drive, hardly even a passing notice, no interest except in getting it done and as fast as possible. It was 45 miles, and Dan had followed the dual carriageway so many times, but never had the journey felt so laboured.

  Today was different.

  Most radio stations had begun rolling coverage of the bombing. For the first ten miles, an eyewitness spoke of a flash and shattering boom within the nave. Of a silence, sheer with shock. And then people screaming. Piercing and hysterical. And running, blind and blinkered, in all directions, to anywhere and everywhere, just away. And of blood and injuries and body parts littering the ancient stone floor.

  Dan noticed the car’s speedometer creeping up.

  They had dropped the lunchtime outside broadcast, thrown all the kit into the back of the satellite van, run to their cars and gone. There were no thanks and friendly goodbyes to the police officers they had been working with, no apologies to the group of people who had gathered to watch the spectacle of live television in action, no hint of hesitation or delay.

  This was no time for niceties.

  They passed the twin towns of Buckfastleigh and Ashburton, cut into the edge of the moorland. A pair of steeples rose from the slate rooftops, along with the tower of the Benedictine Abbey. The journey was half done. A herd of Friesian cows crossed an overpass spanning the road, moving slowly, tended by a young man on a quad bike.

  Now the car’s radio shrieked with the hysterical voice of a woman. She was breathless and babbling, about the scores of police, fire crews and paramedics converging on the greens around the great historic building. About the hoses trained on the magnificence of its gothic stone columns and statues. About the crying and sobbing. And the stretchers, covered in blankets and carrying lifeless forms that were once the shape of people.

  Dan checked his mirror. Nigel was right behind. The look on the cameraman’s face said he was listening to the radio too.

  They crossed the River Teign, shallow and fast, churning white waters, and the levels of its flood plain. A ramshackle flock of sheep drank at a cutting in the bank, the order of a camp site on the opposite side, the rows of colour of its hardy tents fewer now as another tourist season faded.

  The voice on the radio changed. An Inspector Humphries was saying the region’s emergency plan had been put into action. The police’s investigation was at a very early stage. He could confirm only that a bomb had exploded and it was a suspected suicide attack. There were unconfirmed reports of several deaths and scores of injuries.

  The Inspector concluded by quietly saying that yes, these outrages were often carried out by teams of attackers. And no, he could not rule out the possibility that other bombers might be in the area. Armed police were at the scene. The public were being asked to look out for any suspicious activity, particularly involving people carrying rucksacks.

  Dan found his mouth felt very dry.

  The road climbed the long ascent to Haldon Hill. A pair of horses grazed in a clearing. The darkness of the gathering forest closed in around the traffic, only the white tower of the Belvedere breaking through the tree line.

  They slowed to round a chugging tractor and topped the hill. Below stretched the panorama of the Exe Valley, lit bright by the sunshine, miles of plain, and the city of Exeter. The brick and glass towers and halls of the university one boundary, the grey lines of the airport and motorway the other.

  A tail of black smoke was rising from the city’s centre, first winding, then dissipating, a dark smear on the blue sky.

  The road shifted steeply downwards. The car radio hissed and crackled. A man was repeating the words, “I just can’t believe it”, over and again. The presenter was adding his agreement. Dan’s mobile rang, but he ignored it.

  They turned off the A38 and reached the outskirts of Exeter. The main road in to the city was conspicuously clear. But outbound it was gridlocked. The faces in the windscreens were pale, taut and drawn.

  Dan turned up the volume. A reporter was at the scene of the attack. She was describing the crowds of people milling around. The relentless ringing of mobile phones as panicked people called those they knew were in the city. The frightened families looking for mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. They were wailing, shouting and screaming, calling out the names, pushing and pulling at people in the crowd, checking faces.

  The hugs of relief as some were reunited, too emotional even for tears. The continuing anguish of the many still searching.

  The roar of the police helicopter hovering in the air. The impending arrival of the security service, FX5, and SO15, the Counter-Terrorism Branch of the Metropolitan Police.

  Always these things happen to someone else, a woman was saying. Always.

  But not today. Today, it happens to us.

  One more road. One last turning.

  The air was full of sirens. Streams of people were walking, jogging, stumbling away. Some were sitting, smoking, propped against walls and buildings. Others sat on benches and car bonnets with heads bowed or just staring. Eyes wide, filled with fear.

  Terrorism had come to Devon.

  * * *

  They parked just inside the remains of the medieval wall, on double yellow lines, but it wasn’t the kind of day to worry about that. Nigel scrambled the camera, tripod and microphone from the boot of his car, Dan helping. Police cars kept rushing past, their blue lights washing from the glass of the shop fronts. They jogged across the road and into the green.

  Professionalism dictated they started filming at once. But not today, not on this story.

  Dan and Nigel stopped, stood still, and joined the crowd around them in simply staring.

  The famous view which had graced tens of thousands of newspapers, magazines and postcards, websites and billboards, and recreations from artists’ canvases to schoolchildren’s notepads, the very symbolic heart of Exeter, had been defiled.

  The magnificent stained glass window of the façade had been destroyed by the force of the explosion. The cobbles were strewn with jagged fragments of rainbow glass, many shining in their spectrum of soft colours as they caught the afternoon sun. Some of the pieces were larger, one depicting a green valley and running river, cut in half by the blast. Another, the body of a shepherd, the words find redemptionbeneath. Others were shards and splinters, angled edges of blue and red.

  Wessex Minster had been blinded.

  ‘Shit,’ Nigel hissed. ‘Just – well – shit.’

  From the peak of the open arch, a trail of smoke wound up towards the sky. The once bright stone had been blackened with charcoal stains. A few lonely fragments of sharp glass around the base of the window had survived the blast. Dan, squinting, could make out the remnants of a disciple’s robes and half a cross.

  He breathed out heavily. Around him, in the crowd, people were pointing, some shaking their heads, others just staring, but for such a mass of people there was a remarkable silence.

  They could sense the violation. No words were needed. All understood the hatred unleashed here today. The desire to anger, rage and outrage. To spit bile into the face of society.

  Dan reached out a hand and gently held Nigel’s shoulder.

  ‘Sorry,’ his friend whispered, slotting the camera onto the tripod. ‘I just – well …’

  Dan stood behind him, watching Nigel’s back as he captured the scene. As they filmed, another slice of the window slowly peeled from the stone frame and clattered onto the cobbles.

  A low moan echoed through the crowd.

  A couple of paramedics emerged from the side door of the Minster, supporting an elderly man. Bandages covered his head. They walked slowly towards a waiting ambulance. A couple more emerged, carrying a stretcher. A child was lying upon it, her blonde hair trailing. They could hear her crying.

  Dan shuddered. He suddenly felt a lonely stranger in a hostile land.

  And recording, writing and reporting this the most futile gesture of an
ephemeral life.

  He was vaguely aware of some noise. Words. Close to his ear.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Nigel was asking.

  ‘Err, yeah. A bit – shocked, but mostly yeah. Why?’

  ‘You were muttering to yourself.’

  ‘Was I? Oh, right. Sorry, I was just, err – thinking. OK, you keep getting the pictures, I’ll start finding us some interviews.’

  Dan pushed his way through the throng, to one of the benches surrounding the green. He held up his press pass as a symbol of unquestionable authority, gathered his breath and called, ‘Was anyone inside the Minster when it happened?’

  Faces turned. A few shaking heads. He tried again, but still no luck. Dan hopped down, picked his way to another bench and tried once more. This time a young woman raised a slow hand.

  ‘I was. I’d just come in the door to have a look round. All I saw was …’

  ‘Hang on,’ Dan interrupted. Nigel had spotted her and was pushing his way over, holding out the microphone.

  She could only have been in her early twenties, had short dark hair and a cute, freckled face. ‘I’m not sure I want to be on telly,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘Not after … this.’

  Dan smiled, reassuring, but firm. ‘This story needs to be told. And you’re the one to do it. What’s your name?’

  ‘Rosie.’

  ‘What a beautiful name. It suits you.’

  She gave Dan a look that suggested his charm had proved as effective as firing custard pies at the walls of a castle. Perhaps another angle of approach, then. Experience had equipped him abundantly.

  ‘Rosie, it’s easy enough. I just want you to tell me what happened. All the words I come out with can never let the viewers know what it was really like in there. Only you can do that.’

  She still didn’t look convinced.

  ‘You do realise it’s nothing short of your duty? You’ll be helping to set down history.’

  Dan thought he heard Nigel groan. But now she looked more impressed.

  ‘Well, since you put it like that. I’d just walked into the door – I was going to join one of their guided tours – and I was looking at the ceiling when there was this noise …’