Snowballs
By florel
- 305 reads
SNOWBALLS
A young man lost his luggage on the train.
Puzzled, then bewildered, then frantic, he searched the rack at the end
of the carriage. He searched the gap between his seat and the one
behind. He searched the rack above.
Other travellers watched him, curious and silently sympathetic,
grateful for the comforting lines of their own luggage, and to whoever
had selected him, not them, for misfortune.
The conductor and the Train Manager advised him to contact the
Transport Police when he got off. The young man, trembling, ran along
the platform, up the stairs and over the bridge. He ran across the
domed and stained glassed forecourt to the door marked Transport
Police. At six o'clock on a Sunday evening the door was locked. A sign
gave a Freefone number, which in turn gave a recorded message
requesting name and address, contact number and nature of call.
And the throng of travellers went about its business, marking with
objective curiosity the young man standing by the luggage trolleys,
palms pressed against his cheeks. He blinked hard. He had his wallet,
but the address of his host in this unknown city was in his luggage. He
had his mobile, but no number programmed in. He had meant to, but...
And there were no phone books in the phone kiosk.
A pretty girl touched his elbow and asked him if anything was wrong.
She had seen him banging on the door of the Transport Police, and
slamming his hand against the wall of the phone kiosk. Her father, over
there with the car, was a lecturer at the University and had thought he
might be a student. The young man looked incredulously, deliriously,
relieved. No, no he wasn't a student, but his aunt, whom he was
visiting, also lectured at the University! Of course it was possible
that the waiting father knew her... and noticing just how pretty his
saviour was, he went happily with her and got into the back of the car,
already starting to rehearse the story he would tell his aunt in the
safety of her sitting room, which would develop into the anecdote to
entertain his friends in the comfort of the pub.
An hour later his aunt who, unlike the man in the car, genuinely did
work at the University, phoned the station and was told that the train
had arrived on time. She became concerned. She tried his mobile again,
but it was still switched off, and then she called the station once
more and asked them to page him. She waited another thirty minutes,
pacing the sitting room of her small terraced house, and then phoned
his parents.
Then she phoned the police, who were sympathetic, but who had more
pressing things on their minds than a young man who had failed to turn
up at his middle-aged aunt's, until in due course the young man's body
was found, ignominiously dumped in a skip at the Municipal Tip.
He made the front page of the local paper, and sizeable paragraphs in
the nationals. His gruesome fate - and it had been very gruesome indeed
- and his youth were enough to titillate the media for a considerable
time. With the tenuous University connection, and with the summer
vacation only a few weeks away, the possibility of sexual perverts
preying on young train travellers was a rich vein for both tabloid and
broadsheet features. Before long, firms all over the country were hit
by a wave of absenteeism as worried parents took the day off to drive
their children home from college.
The aunt made an appeal on television for help in identifying the young
man's killers. The police felt the appeal was a gamble. The aunt was a
sincere and dignified lady, but the papers had already identified her
as the refugee academic who was not afraid to criticise the government
who, as the papers saw it, allowed her the freedom her own government
would not. In the course of the appeal the aunt referred to 'certain
delays' that seemed to have beset the investigation. The senior police
officer present closed his eyes.
The focus shifted from the hunt for the killers to the debate over the
reason for the 'delays'. In vain the aunt asked the media to
concentrate on the death of her nephew rather than any passing remarks
she may have made in her frustration and grief. She refused all
requests for interviews. She begged the reporters to leave her brother
and sister-in-law alone. Her sister-in-law, she explained, barely spoke
English. She lost her temper, appeared at her front door and delivered
a tirade against the British press, who were no respecters of human
dignity.
The same British press, each and every paper sniffed self-righteously
the next morning, whose help is so vital in publicising your appeal for
help in finding your nephew's killers.
A prominent Asian lawyer announced that he would be representing the
family. A prominent white MP asked why the family, presented as
innocent victims of crime, needed representation, unless they were
already looking to sue the authorities for as much as they could get.
Outraged 'supporters' of the aunt and parents, most of whom had never
met either, leapt to their defence in print and on the airwaves. Quiet
voiced, smooth suited, well-established public persons, none of whom
knew the family, asked why it was so unreasonable to ask a perfectly
reasonable question.
Large men with hard faces and strident voices started gathering in the
streets of certain towns and cities demanding to know if so much fuss
was made every time a white boy got killed.
In despair, the aunt called the local newspaper and asked to do an
interview.
She specified which journalist she wanted. A young man, barely older
than her nephew, who was white, and who had recently done several
pieces on the harassment of Asian families on a housing estate. This
she hoped would satisfy various constituencies.
The journalist was not over-enthusiastic about doing the piece. He
didn't particularly want to be used as a pawn in a propaganda war.
However it was a scoop, and the local paper would not get it if he did
not do it. With some foreboding, he presented himself at the small
terraced house.
He came away with a heavy heart. She was a nice lady, and he wanted to
do his best for her, but he felt her analysis was na?ve, and she wanted
him to produce something that would divert the support she sensed
building for the racists, while at the same time making the point that
all was not going as well as it might with her nephew's case. The
journalist suspected he might not be that sophisticated a writer.
But he was interested in the fact that the station CCTV footage for
that day had gone missing.
On the way back to the newspaper offices, he stopped his car to buy
some cigarettes, and while in the shop took a call on his mobile phone.
The girl behind the counter was later able to tell the police very
precisely what he had said: "Great. That's great. Just what I've been
waiting to hear. I'll be right there."
Several hours later his car was found overturned and burnt out, with
his body inside it.
It was later discovered that the call had been from the repair shop
which had been mending his stereo, but by then the myth had already
taken hold. Later still, the investigation into the crash indicated
that the journalist had swerved to avoid something, possibly a small
animal, on the quiet lane he had been driving down, after which the car
had gone out of control, hit a tree and exploded. But by then, myth had
become reality.
There was a march. There was a counter-march. There was firebombing.
There was counter-firebombing. The aunt's small terraced house was set
on fire.
Desperate efforts were made by community leaders to calm the situation.
But too many people could see too many good opportunities.
In the weeks that followed, cities erupted all over the country.
And in the acres of newsprint and hours of discussion generated by this
cataclysm, no one remarked on, or possibly even noticed, the odd small
paragraph reporting the disappearance of another, and then another,
young traveller on the railways.
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