The Invisible Crowd by Ellen Wiles

Author:Ellen Wiles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16: Jude

ONE-LEGGED ALBANIAN KILLER WHO PRETENDED TO BE A KOSOVAN ASYLUM SEEKER TO GAIN UK CITIZENSHIP WILL FINALLY BE DEPORTED AFTER 14 YEARS OF LIVING ON HANDOUTS?

Alec is running like a lunatic in circles around the submarine in the Imperial War Museum, until another child leaves the captain’s seat, when he immediately beelines for it and clambers in. ‘Daddy, look, I’m driving the eNORmous submarine!’

‘Pure euphoria!’ Max says, looking on and radiating pride. ‘Why haven’t we brought him here before? Apart from the fact that you’re always working.’

‘Bit disturbing though, isn’t it?’ you say, ignoring the passive-aggressive aside. ‘Boys and their warmongering toys.’ Had it been up to you, you wouldn’t have chosen this museum, but you’ll have to work tomorrow with YK’s appeal coming up, and three other hearings this week, and so, in a fit of guilt about how little you’ve been around, you’d told Max he should choose a venue for a family outing.

‘Yeahhh,’ Max says tolerantly, ‘but he doesn’t get all that yet – it’s just a collection of fantastic moving machines to him. And when he’s old enough, there are loads of exhibits here describing the fallout of war. Hey, Captain Alec, where are you taking us in your submarine under the sea? Shall we go find a killer whale’s underwater cave?’ He goes over to squat down next to your son, who’s attacking the steering wheel like he’s in Formula One.

You smile at the backs of your boys’ matching mousy-brown heads of shaggy hair, and wander away from the submarine and around the cavernous museum. Such huge bombers and such compact Spitfires – unthinkable that grown men could fit into those cabins and sit in there for hours – all of them sleek and streamlined, like blown-up versions of Alec’s wooden planes, and yet each one a massive murder weapon.

Walking around a gigantic tank, like a green alien-mobile that could squash you into a bloody pancake if it were to rev up its engine, you remember that picture you found online of a tank graveyard in Asmara – a vast area on the edge of the city, crammed with the rusted beasts, like a zoo full of decaying elephant carcasses, that was originally intended as both a dumping ground and a memorial to their fight for liberation. Now, apparently, those tanks were being recycled by the government.

‘Can I climb on it, Daddy?’ you hear a little girl ask. You picture YK, as a boy, in the army with his brothers and sisters, hiding out in that implausible-sounding revolutionary school, with tanks like this one thundering by and explosions shaking the clouds, and hope you never have to see a tank in action. But you shouldn’t take that for granted. After all, the First World War erupted out of a tiny incident, one crazed assassination. What will start the Third World War? Will it even involve tanks, or will it be a nuclear Armageddon? Will North Korea finally flip? Will America and Russia descend

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