A grainy black and white image filled the TV screen.
Suze stared up at it. And then, as if someone had suddenly flicked a switch, she gasped.
The picture showed a crowd of people — maybe fifteen in all — with two men’s faces circled in red. They both wore rucksacks, and it was difficult to make out their features with any certainty.
‘Pakis,’ the guy with the ponytail muttered. ‘All look the fucking same to me.’ He scanned around vaguely, as if he was searching for someone to agree with him.
But Suze had barely heard what he’d said. She was staring at the screen as a familiar sensation of dread crept over her body, draining away all her strength.
‘What’s the matter, sweetheart? Time of the month, is it?’ The punter chuckled at his own joke.
Suze couldn’t answer. She just stared and stared.
It wasn’t the men circled in red that had caught her attention. It was someone else, standing just behind them, with features almost as clear as if she had appeared in the Crown and Sceptre itself. A woman with dark hair, flat eyes. Older than when Suze had seen her last, but without question the same person.
Her fingertips moved involuntarily to her neck as she remembered how the woman had tried to throttle her, and the force with which Chet had pulled her off. And her insides seemed to twist as she remembered watching her from the burning house in which the man who had saved her, and who had fathered the quiet, strange little boy she loved with all her heart, had perished.
‘Oh my God,’ she muttered.
‘What’s up, sweetheart?’ the punter asked. But he didn’t get a reply.
Suze wasn’t supposed to leave the bar for long, but she had to. She turned and ran into the back room, where Harry was sitting on a battered sofa, surrounded by crates of brown ale and Schweppes tonic, carefully colouring in a Dora the Explorer picture book. Harry couldn’t read, but he would happily colour in childish pictures from morning till night. He stopped when he saw his mum, and looked up at her with big, wide eyes that were full of questions as she paced the room nervously, digging her fingernails into her palms and chewing her bottom lip.
From in here, the sound of the TV was just a distant hum. Suze continued pacing in silence, as though movement would dispel the fear in her gut. It didn’t.
‘What is it, Mummy?’ Harry asked after thirty seconds. His voice was very soft, but it was unusual enough for him to say anything without being asked that Suze immediately stopped pacing and went to sit next to him. She held out his arms and he snuggled up to her. Harry was always ready for a hug. She felt some of her anxiety fall away.
Some. But not all.
She started to shake.
‘Are you crying?’ the little boy asked. His voice was quite matter-of-fact. And when Suze didn’t reply: ‘You always tell me not to cry.’ It wasn’t an accusation. Harry spoke with such concern that she wanted to cry twice as hard. But she forced herself to get control and, drawing away from her son, she cupped his precious face in her hands.
The look he returned was serious. Not the look of a ten-year-old, but the look of an adult. It made sense in a way. Little Harry had never spent any real time with children his own age, but it caught her off guard sometimes, how much he looked like his father. It was almost as if Chet was staring out at him from behind his son’s eyes. ‘Why are you crying, Mum?’
What could she say? How could she explain such things to someone so young? How could she share her fear with someone so innocent? She closed her eyes.
‘Mummy’s just… just a bit sad,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’
‘Because… because sometimes… sometimes there are people who do bad things.’ She opened her eyes again to see Harry’s concerned little face still looking up at her.
‘But we don’t do bad things, do we?’ he asked.
Suze blinked. Do we? she wondered. She thought of the occasional shoplifting he knew nothing about; the secrecy; the deception. She’d never told Harry about his father. She’d never told anyone what happened that night. She didn’t have anyone to tell, and even if she did, fear would have held her tongue.
Stay anonymous. Stay dark.
Whenever she thought of going to the police, Chet’s words had echoed in her head. She remembered leaving London with him, and the two police officers in the service station bearing down on them. If she made herself known to the police, she could throw her anonymity out of the window. If it had been just her, maybe she’d have done that before now. Maybe she’d have given up. But it wasn’t just about her any more. It was about her son, and nothing in the world was going to make her put his life at risk…
‘Well, if we don’t do bad things, then that’s all right, isn’t it?’ Harry interrupted her thoughts.
She looked at him. He was so earnest. So right.
Countless people were dead and Suze was in possession of important information. She had to tell someone.
Not the police. But someone.
She took Harry’s right hand in hers and squeezed it tenderly. He smiled at her — such a reassuring smile that she almost felt calm again. Like she could think her way through this.
If she couldn’t tell the police, who could she tell? Her mind flitted back once more to the night of Chet’s death. If you ever need any help, track down Luke Mercer, 22 SAS, tell him what you know. But only if you have to, Suze.
Luke Mercer. The name was etched in her memory. She had no idea who he was, or where he was. From time to time she’d thought about approaching the SAS directly, but she’d never gone through with it. After all, if the police were compromised, why couldn’t the army be? She had tried to locate him other ways — not because she wanted to get in touch, but because she knew the day might come when she did. It had all come to nothing. Luke Mercer, whoever he was, had no listing in the telephone directory, nor any mention on the electoral register. He hadn’t been married; he hadn’t died. The internet had no mention of him whatsoever. It was like he didn’t exist.
But he did exist. He had to. Chet wouldn’t have mentioned him otherwise. Suze only had one remaining idea of how to contact him, but after everything Chet had said, and after everything that had happened, the thought of doing it made her feel nauseous.
It was too dangerous. It would put Harry at risk.
Suze stood up and, with a sad smile at her son, returned to her position behind the bar. Nothing had changed. The locals were still there, in their usual places, sipping slowly at their pints and ignoring everything all around them. The TV was still on. The rolling news was still rolling.
She stared once more at the images. The scenes of devastation. For the umpteenth time she saw the young journalist breaking down on camera, unable to keep his composure in the face of such horror. And then the picture again: the two Palestinian men circled in red, and Chet’s killer, easily distinguishable in the background.
She suppressed a shudder, but remembered what Harry had just said. If we don’t do bad things, then that’s all right…
The decision was a sudden one. She grabbed her coat from where she’d stashed it under the bar and went to the back room to get Harry. The little boy looked surprised as she took him by the hand and dragged him towards the front door of the pub — just in time for them to bump into the landlord waddling back in. ‘Aye up, Linda Lovelace, where the hell do you think…?’
‘Fuck you!’ Suze spat at him, and hurried with her boy out into the street.
Half an hour later she was in a local supermarket, spending money she couldn’t afford on a pay-as-you-go mobile, choosing the cheapest one that had a camera. Suze hadn’t touched a phone all the time she’d been in hiding, and she felt uncomfortable with it as she walked out of the supermarket and continued up the bustling high street. Five minutes later she and Harry arrived at Argos, where a bank of twenty-five display TVs were showing the same channel; and after another five minutes, the picture of the bombers, with her attacker clearly in the background, was repeated on each screen.