CHAPTER 1

The UK

‘Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! …’ Ululation, whistles, bellowed snatches of song, the throb of chant and protest, surged down the university corridors, through firedoors, across echoing hallways, and reached the lecture hall as an angry background hum. The room was full, a capacity crowd of students and academics squeezed onto benches and steps, heads bowed in concentration or thrust forward with attentiveness. There was tension, expectation, danger. ‘Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! …’ the unseen mob shouted.

A man stood alone at the rostrum. Average build, average face, yet his authority was commanding. He spoke fluently, without notes, a figure raised on a stage, a presence protected by a police presence. Three Special Branch officers sat before the platform, cheap-suited from central wardrobe, their arms folded, expressions fixed, sight-lines travelling and trawling the audience, scanning, screening, checking. It was no ordinary day, no ordinary lecture. Professor Duncan Pitt was in town.

‘Let us play word-association,’ he was saying. ‘I will begin. Africa … strife … Sierra Leone … Congo … Angola … Sudan … Somalia … Rwanda … Burundi … Africa – from civilization’s cradle to civilization’s grave … disease, drought, famine, food aid, starvation, bloated stomachs, pandemic Aids, mutilation, boy soldiers, Kalashnikovs – AK-47s, AK-74s – jeeps, silent streets, shanty towns, slums, burnt-out buildings, warlords, tribalism, dictatorship, diamonds, smuggling, corruption, decline, unparalleled resources, wasted chances, total mismanagement … oppression, refugees, genocide … hardship, township, rape as a competitive sport … some three million war dead each decade, around forty million inhabitants with HIV, over two million deaths from it a year, thirty million displaced from their homes by conflict, a combined debt rising to $500 billion, average annual per capita income under $500, life expectancy – fifty, the world’s lowest literacy levels, agricultural production plummeting since independence … Flies on the eyes of live children … flies on the eyes of dead children … Butchery with machetes … Swiss bank accounts … Corpses, corpses, corpses … Endless … endless … endless … and blame directed at anyone, everyone, but themselves.’

Growl had become howl, fury undulating remotely and relentlessly beyond the swing doors and sound-proofed walls. Unperturbed, an iconoclast in grey jacket and polished brown shoes, the walking-talking embodiment of controversy, Pitt continued calmly. He was a veteran of such encounters, supremely indifferent to the sentiments of an unwashed rabble; he kept his cool when others lost theirs, had been barracked and hounded from a hundred campuses, received with insults, eggs, flour, paint or ammonia at countless locations. Unpopularity came with the job, the message, the territory, death threats were a daily adjunct to academic routine – it was all so routine, so predictable. ‘Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! …’ He was not, of course, but some chose never to listen. His disregard fuelled their rage.

‘The subject – the issues it raises – requires honesty, and honesty informs us that wherever black populations emerge or settle, whether in Africa or the Atlantic rim, insuperable social problems follow. Their middle classes are smaller, their wealth creation lower, their score on societal cost-benefit charts underperforming, relative to any other ethnic grouping. The reasons are glaring to any serious observer: lack of education and application, an inability to train for the professions, a reluctance to respect authority, commit to a family, the ‘gold chains and no brains’ appeal of mainstream ghetto culture. Crass barbarity is lauded by black youth, everything is authenticated by, predicated upon, street machismo and predatory aggression. Academic underachievement is the norm, and – certainly in the United States – jail sentences are almost a rite of passage. Their reliance on welfare is statistically proven, they have offspring at a younger age and in greater quantities because sex and its consequences are free. In short, they commit the majority of street crime in your country, they have higher rates of mental disease, they swell the numbers of a burgeoning underclass …’ He looked around, anticipating the sharp intakes of breath, the unconscious buttock-clenched shuffling of individuals both disturbed and thrilled by the measured trampling of taboos. The voice was lowered. ‘Tell me I am wrong … I have spent much of my working life living either in Africa or America. There is no difference between the brutalization of women throughout Africa, and the violent misogyny driving contemporary rap lyrics. There is no difference between the murderous teenage killer wielding a hatchet in a Central African war-zone and an Uzi-toting Blood standing on a street corner in Los Angeles; there is no difference in the something-for-nothing attitudes that allow a mango to be plucked freely from the ground in West Africa and a pensioner to be held at knife-point in Lambeth, London; there is no difference in the language employed by the self-appointed leaders of the black community in our countries and the explanations given by black African leaders for their nations’ ills. It is rarely their responsibility, it is always empire, slavery, racism, discrimination, victimization, lack of rights. Not once do they put their hands up and say OK, the buck stops here, the fault might lie with us, within us …So, it is my duty today to illustrate a range of those fault lines.’

Lights dimmed, theories and formulae were espoused, reinforced, supported by certainty, backed by PowerPoint charts and diagrams, the unappetizing made digestible. A convincing display of statistics and projections, contentious subjects formatted and packaged for slick presentation, and at its centre, its epicenter, dominating with detail, conducting proceedings with a deft flick of a light-pointer, was Duncan Pitt. He started at the beginning, with ‘The Beginning,’ traced the evolution of man, the migration from southern Africa, the basic tenets of racial divide and racial disparity. Primal man, an early hominid – Homo Habilis – moved north from his African savannah habitat almost two million years before his modern descendant Homo Sapiens appeared. He was upright, bipedal, had a strongly opposable thumb, made stone tools, began to hunt instead of scavenge for roots, berries and carcasses, gained regular access to high-energy bone-marrow protein. He was already an improvement on the original ape-man species, the 4-million-year-old Australopithecus Afarensis and 2.5-million-year-old Australopithecus Garhi. Evolution, a virtuous circle, and his ability to think grew. As Africa’s climate became drier and cooler, he gained 50 per cent in brain capacity on his predecessors. Survival required adaptability. For millennia, he developed, changed, learnt, flowed into the incarnation of Homo Erectus, followed the exit route up the Nile valley into Upper Egypt until the first real human – Cro-Magnon – arrived fully formed in Europe a mere 40,000 years before Professor Pitt. Four million years, and a hike in brain size from 400cc to 1200cc. Lucky, for Cro-Magnon was a product of the tropics who faced an age of ice, uncertainty and hardship in the frozen reaches beyond Africa. He had to find shelter, keep warm, pair-bond for efficiency, travel and communicate over distance, receive information, pass on experience and insight, barter, trade, build more complex social structures. Parietic art, sculptures, beads, body ornamentation and basic musical instruments carved from bone – the birth of early culture – blossomed alongside. They reinforced hierarchy, group cohesion and identity, fed imagination and imitation, gave status, aided the growth of religious practice, consciousness and self-reflexive thought. With a voice-box sited lower than Neanderthal, Homo Sapiens could generate a range of sound, would learn to speak: wisdom was transferable, rules and conventions easily applied, tactics discussed, systems of order and defence created. Man thrived.

Then the twist. Pitt’s voice was cool, monochrome. The first major divide in Homo Sapiens occurred 100,000 years before the present time when the African strain split from the non-African. There you had it – the key. While European and Asian man evolved, farmed, exploited minerals and materials, moved away from subsistence, colonized, built cities, pushed at the boundaries of science and learning, fomented agrarian and industrial revolutions, Africa’s denizens progressed no further, remained unchanged. Whatever they touched – pre-colonial or post-colonial – collapsed into tribal struggle and destructive chaos; whatever their trappings, their pretentions, they were incapable of seizing and improving their destinies. Their knowledge was finite, capabilities marred, their limitations spectacular. Not one example, not one state, existed to challenge the pattern. That pattern was founded on a simple, single premise: intelligence. It was a brutal, provable, fact that a direct societal link existed between low IQ and poverty, between low IQ and poor educational performance, between low IQ and unemployment, idleness, injury, crime, welfare dependency, incivility, lack of parenting and citizenship skills, and the collapse of the traditional family structure. There was white trash and there was black trash. But, measured in centiles, and based on American research conducted over several decades, in terms of testable achievement and cognitive ability, whites outperformed almost 80 per cent of blacks. Average white IQ:100; average black IQ: 85. Genetics were at play, the characteristics and the differences inherited by each succeeding generation.

The screen image dissolved; the light came up on Professor Pitt. He rested his hands on the lectern. Thus, he argued, it was clear that just as Africa acted as a drag on the rest of the world, so black groupings transplanted to the northern hemisphere served to slow and debilitate the host societies in which they lived.

‘Afro-American …Afro-Caribbean … Afro-studies … So long as black communities resort to Africa as their touchstone, so long as Africa remains their focus and their fantasy, they will continue to be third-class citizens anchored in a Third World – some might argue third-rate – culture …’ Mengele! Pig! Murderer! Go Home! Pitt should be deported! Scum… Words meandered dully into the auditorium. ‘They might be compared to a recessive, recurring gene – state support, affirmative action, left-wing apologia allowing them to flourish and dominate when otherwise they would fade. It represents the overthrow of Darwinism. Rhythm, drugs, beaded hair, boxing and track athletics have, with the aid of our collective and misplaced guilt, granted them an automatic entry into Western society. I am not sure that we have benefited.’

Murmuring among the audience, the nervous whispers of the admiring and the appalled. Pitt raised an eyebrow. He liked it this way, enjoyed the act of lobbing academic grenades into quiet cloisters and close-packed assemblies. Shock tactics, shock waves made people debate, made them think. Blowing the roof out always let in fresh air. It was what these sheltered idiots needed.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I do not seek to speak for you, only to you. Listen to that noise.’ He paused, allowing the rumble of the outside demonstration to permeate. ‘You hear it? Their vocabulary is limited, their minds are closed, thoughts narrow, views blinkered. And why? Because they are trapped between two monumental walls whose cement is liberal white angst, whose foundations lie with colonialism and the Holocaust. It is time to demolish such artificial constructs, time to move on. Racial differences exist, racial differences matter. Without that core acceptance, there will never … I repeat, never …be a core understanding. I thank you.’

A crash, a disturbance that overflowed and then burst with a chaotic rush into the theatre, the hammering of fists and feet, the charge of scrambling figures who had breached the outer police cordon. Guards and protestors tumbled in a moving riot down the steps, their momentum carried, slowed, bleeding energy, halted, ending in a frenzied maelstrom of wild blows traded and counter-traded beside cowering students. A figure detached itself, dashed for the podium, was tackled, brought down, CS-sprayed and cuffed by two of the Special Branch officers as their colleague prepared to usher the professor away. Screams, jeers, the piling in of more law enforcement. The lecture was over.

Pitt leant towards the microphone. ‘Perhaps you’ll forgive me if I take questions later.’

* * *

They had no volume control, these – things. They had no right to live. Talking, jabbering, shouting with the in-your-face aggression that marked out territory, marked them out, the herd moved and jostled towards the concrete estate. Towards the concrete interment he had prepared, heading for a future set in stone. The beasts of the inner city. Why did they not simply musk-spray the fucking lampposts? There was a conformity in them, in their blank stupid faces and blank stupid clothes, the bovine-inane bellows and bandy-legged, pimp-rolling gait of those who were unaware, too wrapped in the self-importance of anti-authority, anti-anyone, to know what stalked them. Yes, he would skirt them, identify the weakest, pick them off and bring them down. The thrill of the hunt. The chase. He stiffened, paused. A BMW cruised by, its cash-rich occupant on the way to a transaction. So safe in the leather interior, so stereotypical, stereophonic. He scanned the vehicle. No one was safe. The boom-bass thud of speakers pounded into his temples, scrambled his thoughts. Kill …hate … kill … hate … kill … hate … They preached. Their culture, their invention. And he listened. The car moved on. Equilibrium restored. The group crossed the street. Irritable vowel syndrome, their glottal stops and mockney patois shrieked and echoing in the open spaces, in his closed mind. He watched, pacing slowly after them. They should pray – they were prey.

* * *

The eiderdown heap stirred, swore, an arm extending to swipe blindly at the digital alarm that had bleated mercilessly for two full minutes. Shit …The clock fell, bounced and lay face-down in the carpet, its synthesized tones incessant and increasing. A heavy book landed on top of it, but had no effect. Fuck the age of the microchip. Confused, nauseous, his brain paralysed by alcoholic embolism, Josh Kemp crawled into daybreak and lay panting with the effort. He whimpered – it used less energy than a groan – was unsure of where he was, what had happened, whether hangover had tipped irrevocably into genuine stroke. I can’t move my legs an inner voice insisted, before he lost himself in the exertion of decryption. He came round again, died, rallied, the clock shrieking.

Coffee, cranberry juice slopped into a glass with half a teaspoon of powdered methyl sulfonyl methane (MSM), his detox cure-all. More coffee and half an hour later, he slouched naked, head in hands, on the edge of his bed. The belly descent and ascent on the ladder from the master cabin had bled his strength. He could sit like this all day, might have to. There had to be a reason to get up, to get dressed. He rubbed his eyes, wincing as they gained focus, and tried to remember. No use. He slumped. Another attempt; he rose to his feet, balanced and wobbled with the gait of a one-year-old towards the stairwell for the dangerous trip to the bathroom. A converted grain barge moored on the Thames did not lend itself to practicality, to ergonomics. Time dragged, he dragged. Objective reached, he stepped into the shower, turned the taps and revived long enough to regret waking up, regret encountering lukewarm water, regret finding himself at forty-five without direction, without Krista, finding himself at forty-five. Too many regrets. Half-saturated, half-drained, he stumbled back to bed and reverse-rolled himself across the mattress, a pillow clenched to his face. He would lie here awhile, motionless, undisturbed. The clock was in several pieces.

‘I appear to have walked in on a mid-life crisis.’

Kemp did not raise the pillow. ‘Shit, Noel Coward – that’s all I need.’ The alcohol residue was forcing out a poison sweat on his skin.

‘I bring gifts. Paracetamol.’

‘Too little, too late.’ The packet landed on his stomach. He fumbled to open it blind. ‘You realize I operate a shoot-to-kill policy on board?’

‘I’d die from cholera on this shit-bucket before you could even hit me.’

‘Don’t you knock?’

‘As a rule, no.’ The visitor wore, or rather filled, a royal blue cashmere coat and was carefully binding his Brigg umbrella. ‘But then, I rarely apply for telephone intercept warrants either.’

‘Upholding democracy as ever.’

‘A vastly overrated concept.’

The pulse in Kemp’s temples carried the ache deeper. He kept the volume low, tone on mono; basic pain management. ‘We are guided by a commitment to legality, integrity and objectivity.’ He could still do irony, and quote from the Security Service’s official statement of purpose.

‘You remember? I prefer to see it as wasting time before my pension.’

‘Your idealism awes me.’

‘Your nudity does the same for me.’ The man lobbed a cushion onto Kemp’s groin, seating himself in an easy chair. Outside, wind gusts were speckling the portholes with March rain.

‘What do you want, Aubyn?’

‘To patronize you, of course, to see how far you’ve fallen, to find the true meaning of Schadenfreude.’

‘Our friendship always was complicated.’

‘The DG’s concerned.’

‘The Director General of MI5, concerned?’ The pillow dropped from Kemp’s face as he struggled onto an elbow. ‘The only time he gets concerned is when a government crony of his is found dead with an orange in his mouth and a turnip lodged up his rectum.’

‘Harvest Festival’s on hold.’

‘So he’s turned his attention to me?’

‘My God, you look awful.’

‘What do you expect? I come round to find a character from Grimm’s fucking fairytales staring at my dick and telling me the head of our security establishment is taking a personal interest.’

‘You can’t blame him.’ St Clair was examining his fingernails, feigning detachment. ‘Every morning he leaves his Dolphin Square flat and sees the car of yet another young woman parked up outside your berth. Quite a parade, I gather.’

‘It’s called divorce, born-again bachelorhood, getting back a life.’ Kemp blister-popped a pill into his mouth, swallowed it dry and with difficulty.

‘And it’s the talking point of the office.’

‘Glad you’re finding a post-Cold War role.’

The eyebrow raised. ‘A little harsh.’

‘Is it?’

‘We’re somewhat busier than you.’

‘Terrorists? No. Gangsters? No. Drug smugglers? No. Gun runners? No.’ He was sitting upright now. ‘But the sex life of a former employee – it’s fair game. Taxpayers will be pleased.’

‘We want you to take a job.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘Senior management.’

‘You’ve got eighteen hundred staff to choose from. Don’t tell me they’re all on maternity leave?’

‘They don’t have …’ A smile as punctuation. ‘… the requisite combination of skills.’

‘I’ll translate – the work’s either too dirty or too menial.’

‘And underpaid, as per usual. What do you say?’

St Clair was enjoying himself, always did. He had the fleshy dissipation, prehensile lips, sly eyes and quick mind of a Whitehall survivor, could swim in the murkiest pools of political intrigue or prop up the bar of a Soho drinking den. Seedy yet refined, louche yet disciplined, he would drink with an ambassador or the embassy chauffeur, drug their wives, bug their premises, could party hard or devour dossiers, knew everyone – knew everything – would store, retrieve and disseminate gossip on a scale that a mainframe might find hard to match. It was joked that whenever a personal file was marked for destruction, it found its way instead to St Clair’s well-appointed house in King Charles Street, Westminster. He wore colourfulness as a cloak, idiosyncrasy as a mask, had made office coups and bureaucratic putsches a favourite subject and way of life. Director Generals came, served, were knighted and removed. And there, right in the shadows, bright in the shadows, was St Clair – aide, deputy, gofer, messenger, fixer, right hand, kingmaker, deposer and chief assassin. Jack of all trades, master of most, a useful and entertaining ally to have on side. He did not forget friends or enemies; he did not forget a face. Kemp liked him, but had never trusted him.

‘You should have been a Roman senator, St Clair.’

‘Flattery.’

‘It’s a no. Whatever you’re offering, I’m not interested.’

‘How disappointing. We’re not talking gladiatorial combat at the Coliseum.’

‘I still end up hurt.’ Kemp settled back into the horizontal.

‘You’re already damaged, Josh. Admit it, the most exciting thing that’s happened to you in the past two years is finding a turd in your gym’s hydrotherapy pool.’

‘You heard?’

‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’

‘I junked it in favour of a quiet life, doing translation work, listening to the shipping forecast …’

‘And hoarding collectables.’ St Clair bent forward, dipping from view, reappearing with an item of female underwear pinched between thumb and forefinger. ‘Exhibit Y. For an introvert and sociopath, you’re plainly irresistible to girls.’

‘Keeps me young.’

‘Doesn’t keep you fed.’ The undergarment was dropped, the hands clasped together, tactics refined. ‘Hurricane at Dogger, light winds at Rockall …Boring stuff. You want more. He’s an American academic.’

‘So?’

‘Professor Duncan Pitt.’

‘Sounds familiar.’

‘Should do. He’s featured in the press every day since his lecture tour started …’

‘And in the file I opened on him. I know.’

‘Ah, progress, and even in your delicate state. Yes, dear Duncan is becoming – dare I say it in view of the sensitivity – a bit of a bête noire.’

‘Very droll, St Clair. Now fuck off.’

‘He’s causing us problems.’

‘Then I love him.’

‘We don’t. He’s stirring up things that are best left unstirred, tapping into the worst kind of sentiments.’

‘It’s called freedom.’

‘It’s called trouble; it’s called inner cities dominated by ethnic majorities; it’s called politicians who don’t appreciate having to fight fires.’

‘You’ve ruined my morning to tell me this?’

St Clair cocked his head to one side. ‘The Home Secretary’s reluctant to impose a banning order. Might seem heavy-handed, one-sided, given Pitt’s a respected intellectual, given that any number of black radicals and supremacists are allowed through the net. Besides, we’re a mature democracy.’

‘I admire your sense of humour.’

‘I’d prefer it if you responded to my request.’

‘You want the frighteners put on?’

‘In a nutshell. You’ve studied him, heard the tapes, understand his arguments, his agenda, traced his links to the lunatic fringe.’

‘It’s the rational centre who admire him.’

‘Hence our worry. He’s not in the Hitler-was-a-misunderstood-artist camp, doesn’t belong to the school of fatalities-at-Auschwitz-were-merely-poor-man-management. Harder to counter. We’ve stoked the university protests, placed well-sourced black propaganda with the media – again, forgive the connotations – but Professor Pitt remains. Stubborn fellow.’

‘It’ll blow over, blow out.’

‘Not according to our research.’

‘Anyone could have a quiet word with him – a junior, an office generalist, one of the second-rate civil servants you insist on recruiting, even a cerebrally challenged policeman. It’s not exactly Regnum Defende, is it?’

‘Threats to the realm take all manner of forms, all manner of direction.’

‘As does vomit. I’m not well, Aubyn.’

‘The money has been paid into your bank account.’

‘You’re low.’

‘But I’m loyal. You owe me, Josh.’ Silence from the recumbent figure. ‘I’ll take that as assent.’

‘Take it as interview over, leave me alone, I want to go to sleep.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘It’ll do.’

‘Who suffered fools for twenty years at the Box because you wouldn’t?’

‘Not my fault the upper reaches are infested with them.’

For St Clair, Box was PO Box, trade slang for MI5; to Kemp, it represented the truth – an institution he had pigeon-holed in his past, nothing more than an address to be shredded. PO Box 500, PO Box whatever. They would not receive a Christmas card.

‘Who guarded your back, protected you, each time you pissed in the coffee mug of every Director? Who curried favours as you couldn’t be arsed? Who gave you a free rein? Who …’

‘Okay. Okay.’

‘Okay’s as good as a yes.’

‘I’ll think on it.’

‘You have until this evening, 1800 hours. Give up on the Flying Dutchman act. You can reach me anywhere.’

The apparition receded, the aroma of damp overcoat and Floris aftershave lingering. Of all the people in all the world. St Clair. Kemp stared at the ceiling. He could do with the cash. The boat needed upkeep, prettification, London was an expense, entertainment a financial abyss. No responsibilities other than himself, but St Clair was right – there were debts to pay, personal and professional. And there was Krista, his former wife, an alien from a previous dimension, a stranger on another continent. A twelve-year flash-in-the-pan, and everyone got burnt. His marriage had ended at near enough the same moment as his career; each paralleled the other in decline. All good things … One afternoon, he had boarded a return flight from the family’s winter holiday in Santa Barbara and found himself unaccompanied; one morning, he entered the office monolith on the Embankment and discovered himself volunteered for redundancy. Sure, reasons were given: rationalization, downsizing, interpersonal communication failures, a new broom. MI5, too, had offered explanations. Wife, work, over. The motives were unimportant, lost anyway in the bitter desire to move on, to sit, drink, read, work out, screw and play guitar badly in the comfortable surrounds of his houseboat Maria Johanna. He coped, had no choice. Life was a sexually transmitted disease, irritating and terminal. This was the only protection he had. He folded his arms behind his head and breathed out. There was no explanation for the death of Emmy, his daughter. She was gone, erased. The wake of two police rigid inflatables lapped against the port side. Hours to kill.

Deceleration, the Thames police craft slowing into their own wash as they manoeuvred alongside the garbage cage. There was the normal detritus washed in on the tidal bend, the condoms, bottles and ballooning rat corpses, the burger wraps and hypodermics, the sodden trash thrown out by human trash, tipped and dumped carelessly or deliberately to be carried away and cleared by others. One of the cleanest sewers in Europe, wiping away filth, evidence, throwing up surprises. Collection time. An officer leant over with a boat-hook, found purchase on the wallowing object; a colleague, wearing rubber gauntlets and a surgical mask, knelt to assist. They were fishers of men. The body rolled. It was a male – female cadavers always floated on their backs – but the lack of a head would hinder identification. They slipped the cradle-harness around the torso and worked to edge it onboard and into its bag. On the second boat, divers rocked themselves over the sides to begin their fingertip search. It was later, on a pathology slab, that the clues would be tabulated, theories formulated. It was later that the victim would be ascertained as black, in his mid-forties, that the use of torture before death was determined, and the acid-enhanced blade scars to his chest distinguished as a paean of praise to one Professor Duncan Pitt.

* * *

The USA

Not a breath of wind, just the unstirred gumbo stillness of a northwest Mississippi night. The Delta – mojo and moonshine, God and gin tins, catfish, cotton and corruption – the smoky darkness pressing down on the scrub fields and cedar swamps, the levees and shotgun shacks. This was poverty, southern discomfort; this was the blues. Mary turned down the kerosene lamp and hummed quietly to herself. She had a good voice, engrained with suffering and past liquor abuse; she sang each weekend in juke joints or a wayside casino in Tunica County, had been known to stand on a stage and transfix an audience at the Crossroads Festival, had been known to the police, had been known to a lot of men.

Behind the curtain screen her baby boy Jesus slept sound. She would die for him, kill for him. He was all she had; the corrugated one-room cabin with its newspaper insulation, its lack of plumbing or electricity, was all she could give him. So she hummed, the refrain that had carried her family in chains from the Gold Coast to the plantations of the South, that had seen her ancestors pick cotton, escape, act as ‘conductors’ on the underground railroad for other fleeing blacks, that had seen them fight for the Union cause, evolve into sharecroppers and a new generation to be exploited. Civil War to Civil Rights, and she had yet to spot the change. She came from lineage who had either served time in Parchman Penitentiary or the US Armed Forces, who expected to be shot, whipped or lynched, who were dirt poor – ate dirt, earned dirt, handled dirt, were kept in dirt. Emancipation Proclamation, 27^th September 1862. She was the end product. Full cycle, full circle. The feudal overlords still lived in their smart town houses, drifted among their cotillions and all-white country clubs, dined at their expensive Cleveland restaurants; each October the cotton crop was still harvested, the stripped stalks standing blood-red for mile upon mile. Soil bled here. Antebellum, post-bellum, it made little difference. Slavery came in many guises, prison took many forms.

She peeked behind the curtain to check. The boy’s breathing was steady. He had been fretful these past few weeks, must have picked the tension up from her. She had tried to smother her anxiety, but the shock at finding an arsenal of automatic weapons and grenades hidden in oil drums near a creek used as a trash tip and dumping ground for rusting farm equipment weighed heavy. It would serve her right for scavenging. She had not told a soul, would not dream of approaching the law. These parts, it was best to let things alone, let things, explosives, people, lie. Basic safety procedure, survival reflex. She had tiptoed away, prayed she went unnoticed, then prayed again for herself and her baby Jesus. The Lord would protect them; the red flannel mojo bag tacked to the wall, with its contents of High John the Conqueror root, would protect them.

Time for bed. It was the optimum way to save on fuel. She undressed, splashed her face from the water bucket, lay down on the horsehair mattress rolled out on the floor and extinguished the light. Her own little space, her own little world, and people and fire ants were not welcome. She yawned, thoughts trailing off into darkened cul-de-sacs, consciousness slowing, stress uncoupling. Dog tired. Sleep came quickly.

Strange, she thought she had dealt with the lamp. But its brightness seared her retinas, illumination chiselling through into her slumber. Wakened state came in stages, confused and intermittent, one dream substituting for another. She rubbed her eyes, senses stupefied, fear rushing in with focus. Devils, must be. The apparitions stood above her, three hooded figures, messengers who came by night, were of the night. She clutched the thin blanket about her. Please don’t touch Jesus, please don’t harm him, please … she begged silently. They gazed on her without speaking. The central demon leant forward to take a closer look, his flame-red robes picked out with the symbols of the zodiac, his head a funfair grotesque with devil horns and a tapering conical hat, pompom nose, goatee beard and snaggle-teeth. It was a mask that smiled fixedly at her terror, an image ripped from a comic book, a history book. They had returned.

‘Lookee here,’ it whispered. ‘Mercy. If it ain’t proud Mary. Why’ya call your son Jesus? Is it cos only God knows who his papa is?’

She tugged the blanket higher.

‘You’ve been careless, Miss Jim Crow. Prints all over things that don’ concern you, prints that check out ’gainst records held at the sheriff, see?’ It whisper-tutted close to her face, the trailing horns exaggerating the admonishing shake of its head.

‘So what are we to do …’

‘… with you?’ the second and third figures chimed.

The leader straightened and scratched musingly with a finger at the base of his occult hat. ‘You nigger contrabands are always gonna be a problem, what with your Thirteenth Amendment, your rights, your freedoms, your vote registration, your nosin’ ’bout.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Mary whimpered.

‘Oh you do … an’ you will.’ The man cocked his head, scrutinizing her. He felt no pity for this race, could stamp them out like roaches. Hate was the primal source, the motivator, the catalyst, and hate he had carried from the day he entered Menard State Penitentiary, Illinois, from the moment he was beaten, stripped and gang-raped by the blacks on his gallery, from the moment HIV was diagnosed. Soul and asshole sodomized, all for the sake of subjugation, discipline, sex slavery, all for the sake of keeping the primate cages in the prison system happy. And now it was he who wore the happy face, the folksy, jokesy wizard guise.

‘Understand this?’ One of the flanking assistants dressed in black pulled up the short sleeve of his T-shirt. Inked on a shoulder was the outline of two peaks side-by-side, their slit-eyes recreating those on the man’s dark hood. An unmistakable profile: the Klan.

‘I … I think so.’

‘Uh-huh. And this?’ The other shoulder flash portrayed a similar silhouette, its motif a curving double-A. Viewing was brief, the sleeve tugged down. ‘Worn with pride, along with my flamin’ sword tattoo and the spider’s web on my back. Figured it out yet?’

She mumbled something, incoherent with terror.

‘I’ve killed myself a nigger, we all have. We’re gonna kill again.’

‘You’d like a chance, wouldn’t you?’ The leader folded his arms. ‘For yourself, for Jesus there?’ She nodded, eyes wide. ‘Sure you wanna live?’ More frantic nodding. ‘Then you leave, and you don’t come back.’

‘And you don’t talk,’ said the executioner to his right.

To his left. ‘You never saw no guns, no ammunition, you never saw nothin,’ you never saw us.’

‘Never,,’ she repeated trance-like, her eyes swivelling.

‘That’s right. Otherwise, the Citizens Council will send us ridin’ out to track you down one last time.’

She shivered. Citizens Council. It was a name that clawed at her bowels, clutched at her from the past – the 1950s – when an uncle had been strung from a tree for encouraging fellow-blacks to vote, when churches and halls were firebombed, when Mississippi burned. Her throat was dry, her skin damp and chilled. The horsemen had galloped back into the present, carried their sacred fiery cross, their rope nooses.

The chief placed his foot on her belly. ‘One week. Then Herod orders the killin’ of the first-born. Catch me?’ She did. ‘Two weeks, and you’re bein’ fed in bite-size pieces to friendly ’gators.’ She let out a sob. ‘Inconvenience us, defy us, it’ll be slow – for you both, for keeps. I promise.’

She believed him utterly, wanted to run screaming down the track, to run a thousand miles without stopping. It translated into breathing so tight she was gasping at the margins of a faint.

‘Ah didn’ mean no harm, missa.’ There was beseeching misery in her voice.

‘That’s where we differ.’

‘Why? I’m just a singer, I’m poor …’

‘You make a mighty fine hushpuppy.’ Quiet laughter, mocking.

‘I try and mind my business.’

‘Not hard enough. You’ve heard our offer. Sleep on it. Life or death, Mary. Your choice.’

‘Where do I go?’

‘What do you do? Your choice.’

‘What we’re sayin’ is run out of state, before the state runs out of you.’ Hard eyes behind the black sack hood.

The sorcerer took a pace backwards. ‘When you see what happens in Mississippi, when you see what happens ’cross God’s chosen country, America – stare at the flames, and remember tonight, Mary. Remember your meetin’ with the Forresters. Tidin’s of great fuckin’ joy.’

The light went out.