Read Online Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text by Chris Beckett - Free Book Online Page A

be said at the inquiry.’
    Ms Hollowby gave a bitter little snort. ‘Though even if we had made the connection, I can’t see there’s much we could have done.’
    ‘Well my next job is to interview Jazamine Bright,’ Charles said.
    ‘She’s over in the satellite office at the moment,’ said Val Hollowby. ‘It’s about a mile from here.’
    ‘We’ll send for her!’ cried Janet Richards. ‘We’ll get her straight over. We’ve already booked an interview room for you. Would you like any more coffee, Mr Bowen? Or perhaps a cup of tea?’
    ~*~
    At this point the door opened and another member of Mrs Richards’ little government came in.
    ‘Sorry, I couldn’t get here earlier.’
    With his slightly lop-sided glasses and his threadbare suit, the newcomer struck Charles immediately as different from the others. He looked more like some sort of academic than a deskie, or maybe an artist or a poet. There was something dreamy and otherworldly about him.
    ‘I’ve been looking after my grandson while my daughter is away,’ the man explained, ‘and he’s gone down with flu. I’ve only just managed to line up someone to keep an eye on him.’
    A little stiffly, Janet Richards introduced him.
    ‘Charles, this is Cyril Burkitt, the Senior Registration Manager for the Zone.’
    The Senior Registration Manager, Charles noticed, not my Senior Registration Manager.
    ‘Senior Registration Manager?’ he asked. ‘Would you mind explaining what that is?’
    ‘Well, my job is to oversee the process which decides whether people should be on the Social Inclusion Register or not. Some people don’t want to be included in the Inclusion Register, you see. Some people would rather be excluded from the register and just be included. Or failing that, just be excluded, if you see what I mean…’
    He gave a little snort of a laugh. The others looked embarrassed.
    ‘The thing about Cyril,’ Dave Ricketts explained, as if he felt some sort of justification was necessary for the man’s presence, ‘is that, more than any of us, he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the residents of the Zone. He’s worked on this Zone for – what is it Cyril? – twenty years isn’t it?’
    ‘Something like that,’ said Burkitt.
    ‘Twenty years. And it’s just incredible how much he remembers.’
    ‘Do you remember Tammy Pendant?’ Val Hollowby asked him.
    ‘Tammy Pendant? Yes of course I know her!’
    ‘Tell us what you remember of her history.’
    ‘Well I knew her first as Tamsin Delaney, then as Tamsin Blows. I was her social worker back in the days when I was a social worker. Her mother – Liz – gave her up for adoption at birth. She said she didn’t want the baby one bit. She said Tammy was the child of a rape. Anyway, Tammy was placed with adopters. They were going to change her name to Jessica I remember, Jessica Tamsin Ferne. But then, at the eleventh hour, Liz changed her mind and asked for her back. We could have tried to stop it through the courts – there were a number of reasons to worry about Liz as a parent – but we decided not to, a decision which turned out to be a bad mistake.’
    He sighed.
    ‘A very bad mistake, in fact, because the upshot was that poor Tammy was seriously abused in Liz’s care and we had to take her back out. But the damage had been done by then. She was older and more wounded and we couldn’t settle her in a new family. I don’t know what’s been happening in the last year or two, but I know she’s had one placement after another break down on her. The expectation of rejection has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess. If she’d been placed as a baby things might have been different.’
    He gave a weary shrug.
    ‘So what’s happened to her? She’s got involved with shifters has she? Where is she now?’
    ‘In another timeline most probably,’ Charles said. ‘Another universe.’
    ‘In another universe ? You mean she’s…’
    ‘You see what I mean about Cyril, Mr