Signs

A woman looks to her left as a man kisses her right cheek. That will be the signal. Sam watches, looks around. Which woman, which man? No-one knows, just keep watching, it will happen. And then? It will happen.

They’ve chosen a busy place again. Not too far from the last time. It doesn’t bother you. Makes it more interesting this way. Sam wanders off towards the racks of blouses, starts fingering them. You wouldn’t have thought they were Sam’s thing, really, but you never can tell these days. It takes all sorts.

You remember the time you first met them all. Not long off the flight in from Dublin, one of those twin-engined planes that brought you to Blackpool airport of all places. Not even Manchester. Still, the security there wasn’t up to much. Just one over-tanned, over-lacquered blonde in her 20s. The noughties’ version of her sixties’ grandmother and her eighties’ mother.

You’d caught the train from Squire’s Gate straight down to Preston and into The Railway pub. Someone had bought you a pint and a hot steak sandwich with twister fries. Twister fries for god’s sake. It was all in the details.

Sam had been there, the first one you’d noticed. Small and dark and classically Mancunian. Scrawny, sharp-eyed and shrewd with one of those timeless, ageless faces. Either young and careworn or old and not doing too badly.

Sam is heading up the escalator now, into menswear. More Sam’s thing, you believe. T-shirts, jeans, jumpers. But still not quite Sam’s thing. Not here, not this shop. Not over the walkway, either. Certainly not over the walkway.

After that meeting in the pub, you’d spent a week in a safe house in Fulwood, up near the hospital and the college. Leafy Fulwood, with its detached houses set back from the road. Privacy in curtain-twitching suburbia. Houses built for merchants and paid for with the sweat of your people. England’s whores, shipped over for their skills in digging and their willingness to work for next to nothing.

You realise that you ought to follow Sam. The shoppers obstruct your progress. You don’t have Sam’s knack for weaving through the crowds or side-stepping the stalled middle-aged women wondering if that shiny black satin thing is right for the Golf Club Dinner. You ride up the escalator and pause at the top, ignoring the tuts and sighs of the shoppers wanting to get past you. You scan the department for Sam’s whereabouts. Over by the café. Then you realise. Toilet. You loiter by the jackets. It wouldn’t be good form to follow.

A woman, a Doreen or a Barbara or a Brenda, thickening waist, slackening jaw line, squeezes unnecessarily past you. You stand your ground, watching for Sam’s return. The woman sighs, “Excuse me!” She’s desperate to look at the jackets you’re standing by. Let her wait. Won’t be long now before she doesn’t need to worry about whether the sage or the taupe will suit George or Basil or Brian better.

Sam’s heading back, wiping hands on jeans. You nod your head, attracting Sam’s attention. Everything okay? Yeah sure. Bit nervous. Dunno why. Never done one of these before. Yours a statement, not a question. Nah, comes the reply, Sam suddenly, clearly, young and careworn.

You head back down the escalator together. It hasn’t happened yet. You know for sure it hasn’t. No signal, no response.

You wonder who’s going to make the phone call this time, claiming responsibility, giving the police 5 minutes’ warning. Last time it was Michael, but Michael isn’t around this time.

After your week in leafy Fulwood, you’d been moved to your own flat in Northenden, near the Tesco and the dual carriageway up into Manchester. You didn’t see anyone else, but you knew Sam was along Palatine Road in West Didsbury, Niall further up in Withington, Ray at Mauldeth Road by the station, and Franny just outside Chorlton. There were others, but it didn’t do to know too many names, too many locations, just in case.

You spent month after month in Northenden, wandering along Palatine Road, looking in the shops, drinking in the pub on Longley Lane. You managed to find work at the Golf Club, in the bar, chatting up the middle-aged and middle-class, charming them with your Irish accent. Bored out of your head, marking time, biding your time, brooding and waiting.

You’d been given a car. A navy blue Fiesta. You parked it on the street, then on the driveway on special days. Days when they came round to tell you a bit more about the plan.

The months dragged on. You knew Northenden as intimately as your own skin. You knew the Princess Parkway/Princess Road like it was one of your own arteries, Palatine/Wilmslow/Oxford Road as though it were a vein. Manchester the heart, Northenden the lungs, you carrying the stuff the plan needed to survive.

You click back to the present, to the plan in action. Sam is restless, sweating slightly, watching, hand in pocket, ready. Sam’s the one who will trigger this, in a way. Sam has the radio detonator for the semtex packed into the cars parked directly beneath this store. Your navy blue Fiesta, Franny’s white Cherry, Niall’s dark green 205. Three cars parked in a triangle. Three cars waiting to explode.

And you. You have your own surprise. You smile at Sam, your hand in your pocket, like a mirror of Sam’s. Sam smiles back, still nervous. Still no sign, no signal, though Sam keeps watching. Looking for the man, the woman.

You remember the day you made the suggestion, your addition to the plan. You remember their raised eyebrows, their reluctance. You’d explained calmly, all the middle-eastern groups were doing it now. The government over here wouldn’t expect it. They weren’t sure. No-one had ever wanted to before. This was a political war, not a holy one, for all its mask of religion. It wasn’t how they saw the fight being fought. The fight, you’d explained, still calmly, wasn’t working. It was time to try something new. The peace process was a joke. Sinn Fein had lost their balls. People were waiting, hoping, wanting something to happen.

It took you a couple of meetings to persuade them. You’d asked to speak to Sam. Sam was the only other one like you. No family, no ties, no long-term future. The way you’d explained it, Sam didn’t know your secret. Sam just knew you would both be in the building when the semtex exploded. But Sam believed in the fight, understood it had to go this way, understood that lives of the faithful would have to be lost.

Sam is getting agitated now, but it’s too late. The detonator is in Sam’s pocket. Sam has to be here to see the signal. You can see in Sam’s face that reality is dawning. Sam is going to die. Sam doesn’t want to die. You smile, lean towards Sam and kiss her on the right cheek. She is looking to her left, looking for the signal. You whisper in her ear. Press the button now Sam. She looks at you, horror mixed with realisation. Your right hand is in your pocket, ready. She isn’t pressing the detonator, her hand is out of her pocket. You put your left hand into her right pocket, press both buttons at once. The explosives packed around your body go off first, taking out the entire first floor of M&S, then the cars in the underground car park explode.

There is a sort of silence in that corner of central Manchester, underpinning the sound of alarms and the creaking of buckled steel. The sort of silence that tells you, by the absence of weeping, that no human life survived. The people shopping on the other streets haven’t made it down there yet, to gawk at the destruction, to begin the weeping. The police were unprepared. No-one made a phone call. The underpinning silence stretches on, like the cloud of dust still blanketing the rubble.

© J R Hargreaves 2003