Justice (Chapter Five)

Chapter Five
Down one flight of steps, then another, and then another, until we reached what must have been the bottom basement.
A jarring shiver overran my body; I could feel the cold shimmering from the walls, the paint fracturing down here in the damp.
The Red opened an industrial, metal door. I was shunted over the threshold. Was this where they’d taken Shannon? My fingers curled into my palms. The door slammed behind me.
The room was bare apart from two, red plastic stools. Stepping onto the tiles, I almost slipped. They were glassy with a liquid film. It was then that I noticed that the floor sloped down towards a gouged out gutter running against the far wall. The smell of antiseptic filled my nostrils. So this was what you’d call easy clean.
When nothing else presented itself, I sat on the stool closest to the door. The red walls pressed down on me. I was trapped in a giant, internal organ, the smell of bleach permeating tissue, a knife waiting to slice me open. Out of nowhere, I began to list, alphabetically, the capital cities of all the countries I knew. My breath jarred to a gasping pant; my fists balled tighter. Seriously, I needed to get a grip. I almost laughed – Shannon wasn’t likely to get a grip anytime soon. The noise of the door reopening made me jolt.
As she entered the room, Fake Finger had to stoop. Her bony cheekbones bordered the caverns of a wasted face on either side of her nose; her eyes darted to mine in an instant. She walked towards me. My legs begged to activate, but instead I sat and waited.
Noiselessly, she positioned herself behind my stool, her shadow falling across the sheen of the tiles, a serrated reef in a sea of white. I watched the malevolent shape raise its hand. Then, her touch came. Gently, the prosthetic finger caressed my cheek from ear to chin. Slowly, the plastic nail slithered back and forth across my face. My skin felt every flicker, every line a tattoo upon me.
I leapt up and turned to face her. My hand flew to my cheek. I watched on as, silently, she raised the nude implement she had used in her caress to her nose and sniffed along its length, seemingly savouring the odour of my skin. Inhaling my scent, she released a sigh of heady pleasure that transformed into a high giggle of joy. I stood and watched.
Fake Finger had taken my scent and she had liked it. Then, as suddenly as she had come, the giant creature stepped back, moved to the door, opened it and left the room.
I had no time to think. In a contrasting flurry, a battered handbag and grubby anorak bundled forwards into the room. It was Mum.
“Clara. Thank God you’re alright. Come here darling, you stupid, stupid girl.”
She clutched me to her, her handbag wedged between us, and ran her fluttering hands over my matted hair. She smelt of scented candles, Sunday lunches and, most importantly, of home. Her dry, permed hair scratched against my face as it had a thousand times before. Finally, she released me, levelled her glasses and futilely looked for a place to hang her coat and bag, as if she had fallen into a local tearoom rather than a compound. In the end, she kept her anorak on and her bag in her hands. We sat across from one another on the child sized stools.
She leant across the divide, a whisper tumbling from her mouth,
“Clara, what on earth is going on? We, well, I got a phone call in the middle of the night saying that you’d been arrested for being involved in Parasite-troubles. Then, we drove all the way up here, to Birmingham of all places, it was a terrible journey and they said we couldn’t see you and that you were in serious trouble. We had to book into a hotel...”
My eyebrow shot up in revolt,
“What do you mean when you say ‘we’?”
I knew the answer to the question.
“Well, darling, Greg knew that you’d been arrested before I did, well, he would do, wouldn’t he? He is Warden after all. Anyway, he came over to help me out and drove me all the way up here. He’s been talking with the Reds for ages trying to sort out this mess. He says he thinks he’ll have you out in no time, once he’s pulled a few strings. He’s been very kind and very helpful Clara.”
“Has he? I bet he has.”
“Come on Clara, he’s trying to get you out of here. Please, you need to stop this now – for me. He’s doing his very best for you and you could at least be a bit grateful, couldn’t you?”
I chose to ignore the question, opting for a twist of the knife instead.
“You said he knew I’d been arrested before you got the call? Mum, you can be so stupid sometimes, don’t you realise he’s probably the reason Shannon and I have ended up in here? He’s probably been snooping through my computer for months, that’s probably the only reason he’s been coming over so much.”
Her face fell. Her voice rose.
“Don’t be ridiculous Clara. I’ve had it up to here with all of these conspiracy theories and Maggie feeding you all kinds of rubbish on SKYPE. You need to grow up. You need to help me a little bit. It’s not easy for me at the moment you know and Greg has been a wonderful help. He’s got far better things to be doing than looking through your files. He is working his way up to becoming an important person in Sense. He comes over to give me some support – don’t you think you could offer some as well?”
I changed direction.
“Have you spoken to Shannon’s parents? Are they here too?”
“Shannon? No, I didn’t, well, actually, I thought you’d been picked up on your own. You mean to tell me that you dragged poor Shannon into this madness as well? Clara, you know she’d follow you to the ends of the earth and you get her put in a compound? Her father will go mad when he finds out, absolutely mad.”
“You’re right, he will go mad, but not in the way you think. She’s here – somewhere, I just don’t know where. I saw her, but then they took her back to her pen. Mum, you need to listen to me. It’s about Shannon. I need you to get in touch with Maggie and tell her to contact Libertarious. I doubt if they’ll be able to do much, but they could put some pressure on to get us out of here. You need to believe me; they wanted her to talk, for her to tell them what we were doing in London. She didn’t, not at first, so they cut off one of her fingers – I’m not joking. I think it was the Orange woman who let you in here, I think she did it. I saw her hand. Mum, you need to tell her parents, you need to get in contact with Maggie. Who knows what they’ll cut off next.”
She shook her head slowly back and forth and pressed her glasses up against the bridge of her nose. I saw the veil of disbelief descend. I saw her mind switch off.
“Clara, please stop being so melodramatic. There is no way that the authorities would chop off the finger of a teenager. Where are you getting these stories from? I think we’ll need to get you to see someone when we get back home – I might ask Greg if he can arrange it. I can’t carry on like this, all this stress you’re putting me under. I’m starting to wonder if you’re alright, if all the stuff with your father hasn’t left you, well, you know, a bit mentally ill.”
“Mum, they did it; they cut her finger off. This is serious. Why would I make something like this up? If you don’t find a way to get me out of here you could end up with a daughter without a finger too. They know all about Dad and the discs that we were looking for. Do you really think they’d be getting Orange Coats involved if they didn’t think this was heavy stuff?”
“What discs? Come on Clara, you’re getting carried away, but Greg is going to fix all of this.”
“Well, why don’t you ask Greg to fix Shannon’s finger too? He’s fixing everything else around here isn’t he? Fixing the bathroom cupboard, fixing your exhaust, oh and fixing your brain so that you don’t even believe your own daughter when she tells you something. Mum, I’m telling you now, they cut Shannon’s finger off. I saw it. I saw it right in front of me. And, you think he’s fixing things for me to get out of here, do you? Don’t you think it’s a bit funny he only started coming round all the time after Dad?”
“Clara…”
“It’s all about Dad you know, it all goes back to him and you can’t even see it.”
“Clara…”
“Do you know how much you talk about Greg now? Do you? It’s like Dad never existed. It’s like you believe what they said about him, what Greg said about him. None of that was true, you know that don’t you? Do you even miss him? ‘Cause it looks to me like you’re doing pretty well without him.”
She sighed and grasped hold of my hands in hers.
“Clara. Your father left us. He made that decision and he did what he did and he left us. What do you want me to do? Run around, ignoring the facts of what happened and hope that won’t make it true? Is that what I should do? Well, I won’t. He’s gone. He nearly got us all in terrible trouble and then he left us high and dry. Left me to deal with the mess that was left behind. I miss him, but he made his choice and his choice wasn’t us darling.”
Her eyes started to water. She looked to pitiful sat there on that ridiculous stool, her jowls wobbling with each little sob. If I hadn’t been so angry, I might have felt sympathetic. She wrapped the anorak tightly around her forever-spreading frame and, for the first time, I was shocked by how old and worn she looked.
I lowered my voice and searched for her eyes,
“Mum he was fighting for us. Fighting for what was right. Maggie and her Dad, they were helping him Mum, he… He didn’t do what they said. I don’t believe them and neither should you. We found files, lots of files all relating to him. It isn’t as simple as you think. He didn’t tell you things because he didn’t want to put you at risk. Do you really think he could have done the things that they accused him of?”
She turned back,
“I don’t want to hear about any more theories. I don’t want to hear them! I just want to get you safe and back home and to carry on living my life. I don’t want to lose anyone else. You might not like Sense darling and I’m not saying that I agree with everything they do, but we have to get on with it and…”
“And what? Start sleeping with the local Warden? Greg filed on Dad you know. Are you lining him up for husband number two? Is that the plan going forwards?”
She untangled her hands from mine.
“Stop this, stop it right now. Greg is just a friend – a very good friend. Clara, for someone so clever, you can act like a very, very silly girl at times. Now, I’m going to speak to Greg and find out when we’re taking you back home. I do love you darling, I just wish, well, that you’d calm down. I do know it’s been hard on you, I know that.”
She rose from her stool and went towards the door.
“Won’t be long. I’ll be back in a bit.”
She knocked on the door, an invisible hand opened it, and she left me. She left me in a room with a sloping floor and gutter along one side.