bastards are left on our own to fuckin’ starve.’
‘It’s only been a couple of d-days,’ Jenny muttered, her voice wobbling, ‘n-nobody’s s-starving yet.’
‘Yeah? You think? My kids are!’ screamed the blonde. ‘There’s nothin’ where we live . . . nothin’. And no one’s come to fuckin’ help us.’
I’ve got to keep them talking.
‘But they will,’ replied Jenny. ‘It’s j-just like that New Orleans thing. Help will arrive. The p-police will be back.’
The woman leaned down and slapped Jenny across the face. ‘Just shut up! SHUT UP!’
Tattoo shook his head. ‘Police aren’t fuckin’ coming, ’cause they’re too busy guarding important shit. It’s just us. And we’ve got to look after ourselves.’
Jenny wiped the blood from her lip. ‘You’re right, we need to work tog—’
The blonde slapped her again. ‘SHUT IT!’ she screamed.
‘Let’s do her!’ said the woman, ‘Show those bastards inside that we mean business.’
Tattoo looked around at the growing pack of people. There was a knot of perhaps twenty or thirty gathered around Jenny looking down at her, and more were joining the crowd with every second. She could see they were all emotionally strung out - frightened, hungry, thirsty - desperate for someone to take the lead and point the way forward. She could see there were some who just wanted a share of what was inside - no violence please - just a fair share.
And there were some who wanted to rip her to shreds.
She knew it was those of the latter kind who tended to make the biggest noise, the hidden sociopaths, the ones who cried loudest and longest for a lynching when some paedophile, benefit-defrauding immigrant, or disgraced minor celebrity was being outed by the red-top press.
The witch burners.
‘Pull her out where those shits inside can see her. Then let’s do her!’ goaded the blonde again. Voices in the crowd shouted approval at that.
Tattoo-man perhaps hadn’t intended to take things that far, but Jenny could see him looking around at the crowd, the blonde bitch was baying for blood, and that was swaying the crowd.
‘Okay!’ he shouted above the noise. ‘We’ll do her where they can see!’
She saw a flicker of metal, a penknife in someone’s hand.
Oh no, please no.
Jenny flushed cold, and her bladder loosened. She closed her eyes with shame.
She heard a younger man shout, ‘Hey! She’s pissed herself! Look!’
And then she felt hands all over her, on her arms and legs, and where they didn’t need to be . . . pulling her roughly off the ground.
The fear of the knife she had seen pushed every other thought out of her mind.
Don’t cut me, don’t cut me, don’t cut me.
CHAPTER 61
6.15 p.m. GMT Beauford Service Station
‘STOP RIGHT NOW!’
It was such a loud voice.
‘WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE FLIPPIN’ WELL DOING?’
A deafening, parade-ground loud voice that cut over the jeering and shouting of the crowd like a gunshot. Tattoo-man, the hard-faced platinum blonde and the dozen or so other people who were manhandling Jenny, stopped. They didn’t put her down mind, but for the moment they hesitated.
‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’
It was Ruth’s voice Jenny could hear; that no crap taken, tell it how I see it, call a spade a spade, Birmingham accent.
‘IS THIS HOW GROWN-UPS ARE MEANT TO BEHAVE?’ Ruth continued like a secondary school teacher chastising a classroom of unruly teenagers.
Jenny felt some of the hands that were holding her, begin to loosen, temporarily shamed. She was lowered back down to the ground. She looked up, squinting at the setting sun, melting against the horizon. Ruth stood beside the front of the truck, standing firmly with her legs planted apart, her hands held behind her back. In her dark business trouser-suit, she looked a little like a policewoman, a prison guard perhaps.
‘That’s right, put her down!’ she barked again, a little less deafening, now the crowd had quietened down. ‘What the bloody hell were you people thinking of?’
Tattoo-man was the first to regain his voice. ‘Fuckin’ bitch is with those bastards inside!’
Jenny looked across at Ruth, and realised.
They think Ruth’s one of them?
Perhaps in the confusion they hadn’t seen her emerge from behind the truck? Jenny made eye contact with her, and Ruth seemed to nod back, almost imperceptibly.
She’s picked up on that too.
‘Yeah? Well maybe she is, but this is no bloody way to behave! Absolutely disgraceful. We’re not a bunch of flippin’ savages are we?’
Ruth’s chastising approach seemed to be working for now. Maybe somehow at an instinctive level she was tapping into that inner-child thing