Notorious - John Jones (read after .TXT) 📗

with as much enthusiasm as he could gather. “What’s next then, the hospitals?”. Anthony realised what he had just said, and flushed with embarrassment.

“Hospitals? What do you mean?”

“Er, I mean to give money to, now that erm, the Ryvak money will be gone, and it's got to go somewhere, hasn’t it?”

“What? No. Ryvak’s money will cease. The charities won’t get any more because there’s no money to give them from Ryvak, see?” It seemed fine, Anthony thought. Tom had obviously misunderstood for the better what he had said, and remained oblivious. Stuart came out of the take-away eating a spring roll from a portion he had bought. He nodded in the direction of campus, and they both headed in that direction.

“I’ll just bask in the glory of this for a while before I choose my next target.” Tom continued.

“Yes, well, anyway, I’ve got to go, see you later,” said Anthony.

“Speak to you soon”.

“Ye…I’ll show you the video when I get it off Melissa,” said Stuart. “I had my doubts, but I reckon he was possessed”.

“Really?” said Anthony. The image of the letter to the police flashed into his mind, and the words: ‘…bask in the glory of this for a while..’ made him slow down.

“I need to go back to the house,” he said, “I’ll see you in class”. Stuart ate the last of one of the spring rolls. He nodded.

“Ok, catch you later”. He walked away, and Anthony felt a rush of fear surging through him. He still had a moral obligation to inform the police of Tom’s recent activity, despite the fact he had failed to prevent him in his sabotage.

 

He knew he still had to do something. Post the letter anyway, he thought. Yet, he guessed that that was perhaps a petty form of revenge as a reaction to his futile attempt to stop him. There was still the obligation he felt to the people who may have benefited from the experiments.

 

Yet, it seemed remote, and somewhat fanciful he thought to suggest that hundreds, maybe thousands of people may have been helped if he had posted the letter. Perhaps if they understood how Tom did it, and took control of their finances again, then maybe they would get back on track.

 

Again, his sense of moral obligation would not let him see Ryvak close without at least some sort of attempt at resuscitation. To begin that process, he knew that all he had to do was post the letter, and from there, he did not know. It would be down to the police from there.

 

Anthony would anonymously watch as Ryvak returned to its feet, with Tom explaining his actions to the police. They would perhaps wave the letter in his face. ‘We know what you’ve been up to’. That seemed quite fanciful as well. Yet, Anthony couldn’t predict the future, and in order to proceed with what could potentially be the restoration of Ryvak, he could only wait to see what came of his posting. As Ryvak returned to normal, he thought perhaps he would bask in his own glory, while Tom lay in a prison cell.

After ten minutes, he was driving through the Mersey tunnel. He decided not to take it directly to the police, but to a post-box. He didn’t like the thought of him posting it, then have the door open and a policeman come out and say: ‘I’ll take that’, because then he would have had a good close up, and would recognise him in any negative repercussions. It meant Tom may have a more increased chance of finding out who posted it. He turned off his mobile as he drove, in case he called again. He hoped he wouldn’t hesitate in posting it, because he knew that if he did, then it would probably never be posted.

 

After a few minutes he was driving on ordinary roads again, looking for a post-box. He knew one was bound to be where the shops were, and he pulled up at red-lights, spying one outside a post-office over to his right.

 

A loud horn blared behind him, and he saw in the rear-view mirror an angry faced youth. The lights were on green, and he drove quickly forward and pulled the vehicle across the road and parked beside the post-box. He heard the distant engine of the car that had beeped him. Someone who thinks they’re on a race-track, he thought. He retrieved a pen from the glove compartment and picked up the letter. What address was he going to put? he thought. After a few moments deliberation, he wrote: ‘FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE POLICE. URGENT’. This is very necessary, he thought. This is something I just have to do. I cannot sit back and do nothing. Watch Tom’s grinning face for the next few days.

This’ll wipe the grin away. Still though, he thought, getting out of the vehicle and crossing to the post-box. If it was a choice between the possibility of helping with medical advancements by getting Ryvak back on track or losing Tom as a friend, then he knew what the obvious answer was.

 

He posted the letter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

38

 

 

Eric Murray leaned back in a creaking metal chair and watched the video with a cynical expression on his face. In a small classroom, with six tables arranged in a rectangle, a television that looked like it belonged in a museum had been set up with the camcorder attached in one corner.

 

He was 38, and had once been a student in the same place, so liked to think of himself as a kind of ‘trendy tutor’ with regards to what the students were going through. He knew how they felt, as he was constantly telling his students. ‘I know what it’s like. I’ve done it’. He thought himself kind of integrated into the student schema, yet his priority was firmly embedded in the work he was paid to do. He would try and be like a student while he was within his working time, laughing with them, listening to them talking about subjects unrelated to the work, yet when he was out of hours, he would not mingle with them, and would only talk to them if it was necessary.

 

Even then he would be strictly formal and brief. When he came to work in the morning, and the clock struck nine, it was back to being the smiling ex-student who knew what they were going through. He had wanted to see how they were progressing, and to give them any pointers and advice to help them gain good marks. It wasn’t favouritism. All students gained equal support, and now it was their turn for his assistance, and he watched the screen with his arms folded. Jane and Melissa looked at each other with unease.

 

Did he hate it? Was it the worst documentary he had ever seen? Not that it was a documentary any more, more an in-depth view of spirituality by Curio and Malcolm who were not part of the project. They hoped he didn’t point that out. He was watching the part where Curio gave his talk on the spirit world.

“Oh what’s he talking about?” said Eric. “Where did you find him? You got a psychic to help you out? He hears voices in his head and ‘speaks’ to dead people. Er, right…ok. That’s 50 points deducted right away”. They all looked at him in unison.

“What?” said Adam. Eric leaned even further back in the chair, and it protested loudly. “Only joking. It’s good that you enlisted the help of somebody else. It shows commitment and how serious you are about the project”. He continued to watch, and his face became even more sceptical when he saw Curio become supposedly possessed. “Seriously,” said Eric, “If this guy believes all this then he needs help”. The others glanced at each other, not wishing to say anything, preferring to keep quiet their willingness to mainly agree with Curio. His expression did not change until he saw Ian talking to Malcolm.

“What’s this? Surely you’ve set this up. This is not serious”.

“It is. It is,” said Melissa. “His father was involved in a weird sect or something, and so was Ian. I’d like to continue following this up...” Eric stared at the screen as Ian tried to break through the van.

“Is this for real? If you’ve set this up just for marks then I’m afraid I really will be making deductions, but if it’s real...”.

“It’s most definitely real,” said Stuart. “It was on the news”.

“Well…” said Eric, leaning forward on the table. “Have you shown this to the police?” The long silence gave him his answer.

“Why not?..it's the first thing you should have done”. Melissa couldn’t meet his gaze.

“I thought perhaps, that considering Ian was dead, and there were witnesses, then they did not need this tape,” she said. Eric nodded.

“If they take away the tape, then you have no documentary, I see”. He leaned back in the chair again, his hands behind his head.

“Make a copy. Give the original to the police, and you may continue as you were”. He stood up, picked up a folder he had brought in, but never opened, and walked out. Before the door had swung closed, it was pushed open by another tutor whom they vaguely recognised. He stopped and looked at them all. They looked back. There were three seconds of silence.

“Are all of you doing the paranormal documentary?” he asked. They nodded.

“There’s nobody else?” he added. Jane shook her head.

“No, we’re all here”.

“You’re doing a video, right?” Well considering it’s a documentary, I would think so, Melissa thought.

“All of you are in it?” he said. “All of you are doing the project?”. They nodded again, and looked at each other.

“My name is Kenneth Romney. I work over in Civil engineering”. He was 53, was overweight, his belt straining at the lowest notch, had wild brown and white hair that did not take too kindly to a comb. He made no pretensions of knowing what the students were going through. He was a student in the early seventies, where peace and freedom was the order of the time, and he, like thousands of others, had made themselves visually known to be of like mind.

 

The most daring he went, however, was to wear a multi-coloured shirt and a pony-tail at the same time, and when he looked back at photographs of himself looking like that, he would redden with embarrassment. He was the type of tutor who always seemed to wear the same clothes, every day they were working, in all seasons. It was a dark brown suit that he would probably be buried in.

“I’m collating data about student projects within this term. It’s to store in the archives unit. I need details about this assignment, and I’m going to need your addresses”. Jane frowned.

“Our addresses?” he said. Kenneth nodded.

“For the records. Your addresses are in a separate database and cannot be attained for this purpose, therefore I will need you to write it down”. Suspiciously, and reluctantly, the students set about writing their addresses on pieces of paper. Kenneth collected them and put them in his top pocket.

“I need the video as well,” he said, crossing to the camcorder.

“What?” said Melissa. He picked up the camcorder and looked at it as though he didn’t know what it was.

“I want the tape. Give me the tape”.

“What for?” asked Melissa.

“For the record,” he said, finding the eject button. He took the tape out and let the camcorder drop to the floor. A piece broke away and hit the wall. The students all looked at the contraption, then at the class door which was slowly closing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

39

 

 

Curio watched contentedly as a Land rover pulled out of the car-park, and drove away out of sight. It was driven by the journalist from ‘Lazy days’ who had been to interview him and take pictures. He had tidied the flat to the best of his ability, which had basically meant going over the