Chapter 47
Puck's Dell, Stumblefrith Forest, Wealdshire. Friday 29 May 1998
The police cordon thinned out as half of the policemen moved into the camp. Each was accompanied by a yellow-jacketed security guard wearing a white safety helmet. The guard would ask a protester to leave and the policeman would be on hand to ensure that both guard and protester behaved lawfully. If necessary, the policeman would arrest the protester.
Lessons had been learned over the years — learned by both protesters and officialdom. In the early days of road protest, acts of violence were sometimes perpetrated by both sides. Protesters, angered by the destruction of the environment and their temporary homes, and frustrated by their inability to withstand the onslaught, would sometimes lash out. Security guards, unaccustomed to dealing with protesters, assumed that any eviction methods were acceptable as long as they resulted in a site being cleared. Members of the public were horrified by scenes of brutality, and tales abounded of old people and schoolchildren being punched in the face by violent security men who had been hired by road contractors to act as 'heavies'.
These days, everyone was expected to follow unwritten rules of confrontation so that both protesters and evictors could say later that the eviction had been a good one. The last thing that anyone wanted was for acts of aggression to be caught on camera. Although there were no media people at Puck's Dell yet, there was always the chance that someone had a video camera.
When Penelope saw the police moving in, she looked around to see what the other pixies were doing. She couldn't see any who were just standing around like she was. At the last minute, everyone who wasn't locked-on or occupying a tree house had taken up a defensive position. Penelope looked up. In a net suspended between four trees, six pixies were weaving their limbs in and out of the mesh. Martha and several others were standing on the longest rope walkway. Penelope heard someone call her name. She looked around and saw an arm waving to her from a bender. 'Go and defend your bender,' a voice called.
Penelope ran to her shelter but, just as she was about to enter, someone behind her asked, 'Are you Mrs Starling?'
She whipped round and saw three young policemen facing her. 'Mrs Penelope Starling?' the middle one asked.
'No,' said Penelope, 'she's gone,' and knew that she was telling the truth. 'My name is Fury.'
Constables Priddy, Gunter and Smythe-Harrison looked at each other, puzzled that the boss had apparently made a mistake. They moved away.
Penelope was about to breathe a sigh of relief when another policeman approached her, this time accompanied by a goon in his white helmet. The goon addressed her. 'I am asking you to leave the site.'
The policeman said nothing.
Penelope thought quickly. She couldn't just leave now. She would feel such a failure if she allowed herself to be removed in the first five minutes. Could she bring her knee up into the goon's groin? Yes, she could, but what good would it do? She would be arrested and Jaine-Marie and Gerard would wonder what had happened to her. Of course! That was it.
'I'm not leaving without my daughter,' she informed the goon. Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and marched off in the direction of the tree where Jaine-Marie was locked-on. She didn't see the goon roll his eyes upwards or the constable shrug his shoulders.
Gerard looked down from his vantage point and saw his mother speak to the two yellow-jackets and then walk to where Jaine-Marie was. He saw people being escorted from benders. This tended to be a leisurely process. Two yellow-jackets would approach a bender, crouch down to speak to the occupant or occupants, and then stand up again and wait. At first, Gerard wondered what was going on. Eventually, however, he realised that the police and goons were waiting for the pixies to pack their belongings. He was surprised that the pixies were allowed to take so long to gather together their bits and pieces. Once they had finished, they were escorted out of the camp — not all of them turning back to see their homes destroyed. Other goons moved in as soon as a bender was vacated and tore it down. Within half an hour, not one bender remained. The communal bender had been flattened early on and the kitchen shelter had needed no more than a few hard tugs to bring it down. Gerard felt tearful again. Puck's Dell was beginning to look as if a bomb had hit it. He brought his gaze back up to treetop level and looked around him. There was no devastation here. The tree houses were intact and people were still occupying the large net and the rope walkway. He waved to Twiggy whose home was in an adjacent tree. He opened his mouth to call to her but decided he didn't want to attract attention to himself. It wasn't that he didn't want to be seen but, despite the destruction below, there was still very little sound apart from the pixies' song which was still being repeated, both by those who remained in the camp and those who had been escorted outside the police cordon.
Suddenly, the unnatural calm was shattered by a loud crash.
Alan Jenkins, standing in the middle of what had been a ramshackle village not so long ago, allowed himself a smile as he heard the powerful bulldozer ram a tree a short distance from the camp and bring it crashing down. After a shaky beginning, everything was going according to plan now. The ground-dwellers had been evicted, those who were locked-on would eventually be cut free and taken away (or would give up their futile protest when nature called), and now the bulldozer was clearing a path to the camp so that the cherry pickers could be brought in. Ah yes, thought the Sheriff, we're doing well. Once the cherry pickers are here, we can bring down the people in the treetops. With a bit of luck, we'll have most of the protesters out before nightfall and I will be congratulated for organising a speedy and trouble-free evacuation. His self- congratulatory smile evaporated when he saw a scruffy young man striding purposefully towards him. The smile on his face was a little disconcerting. Jenkins smelled trouble.
Shadow marched up to the Sheriff and didn't stop until he stood too close for Alan Jenkins' comfort. 'You'd better call it off,' he said.
'What?' said Jenkins, a worry line appearing on his brow.
'I said you'd better call it off. The bulldozer.'
The Sheriff was uncomfortably aware that Shadow was looking very confident. 'And why should I do that?' he demanded to know.
Shadow held his hands up. 'I can think of lots of reasons why I'd like you to — but there's just one reason why you definitely will.'
Jenkins knew what Shadow was going to say before his lips had started to move. Tunnels, he thought.
'Tunnels,' Shadow said.
'Where are they?' the Sheriff asked, trying to sound authoritative but knowing that he had just lost the trump card.
'I'm not going to tell you where they are, but I will tell you that if your bulldozer carries on bringing trees down, there's every chance that some of the tunnels will collapse.'
'Are there people in the tunnels?'
'What do you think?'
There was another crash. Both Shadow and the Sheriff looked in the direction of the bulldozer although they were unable to see anything yet.
The Sheriff put his walkie-talkie to his ear — and then seemed to change his mind. 'There aren't any tunnels,' he said, challengingly.
Shadow raised his hand and extended his finger as if he was intending to poke the Sheriff's chest. 'I've told you there are tunnels. If you want to call my bluff — go ahead. If I'm telling the truth, and you go ahead, you can be quite sure the whole world will know that I've told you.' Shadow cupped his hands, held them to his mouth, and shouted, 'There are tunnels.' He lowered his hands, narrowed his eyes, and stared at Alan Jenkins.
'Tell the bulldozer to stop for a moment,' the Sheriff said into his walkie-talkie.
'It's already stopped,' a tinny voice replied.
'Why?'
'Too many old farts in the way. The place is crawling with them.'
Shadow turned away. He pretended he'd heard nothing of the conversation. Well done Jerry, he said to himself. I hope you remembered to contact the media.
He heard a cough. He turned back. 'I don't know your name,' said the Sheriff.
'I'm Shadow.'
'Right . . . Shadow,' I've told the bulldozer to stop. 'We'll look for your tunnels now. They'd better be there,' he warned.
Jack Palmer unfolded the lightweight picnic table and set it on the ground. 'Here all right, Rosie?' he asked.
Rosie Palmer stood back and examined the ground with the eye of a picnic expert. 'Move it to your right a bit,' she instructed, waited until her husband had shifted the table, and said, 'I think that will be fine. Let's unfold the chairs and see if it feels right when we're sitting down.'
'Excuse me,' said a rough voice.
The Palmers ignored it.
'Hey.'
Rosie held up her hand in a wait-a-minute gesture.
'Oi, you can't have a picnic here.'
Rosie turned, glared at the young man in yellow jacket and white helmet, and reproached him. 'The trouble with young people today, is that they have no patience, and no respect for the elderly.' She unfolded her chair and sat down. 'This will do, Jack. Pass me the plates.'
The yellow-jacket called a policeman. The policeman gave a huge grin and shook his head as if to say, 'This is your problem, mate — but I promise I'll come to your rescue if they set about you with their plastic knives and forks.'
The yellow-jacket tried again. 'Excuse me sir and madam. I don't know whether you've noticed, but there's a rather large bulldozer trying to get past you. If you could possibly just move aside for a moment — we would all be extremely grateful.'
It was Jack's turn to speak. 'I'm seventy four. I've been coming here for picnics for the past fifty years. I've never seen a bulldozer here before. I think the driver must have lost his way. Why don't you go and tell him where the road is?'
The bulldozer driver switched off his engine, climbed out of his cab, and jumped down to the ground. He walked over to one of the security guards. 'You have to admire them, don't you.'
Apart from the two who had just decided to have a picnic in front of his bulldozer, there were old folk sitting or lying on the ground in front of the cherry pickers, and groups of mature and well-dressed people protectively holding hands around the trees which lay in the bulldozer's path. In addition, there were those who were making a nuisance of themselves by going from one policeman to another, asking for the time or directions to the nearest public conveniences.
'Makes you think, don't it?' said the bulldozer driver. 'Give this lot some machine guns and mortars and they'd probably be more than happy to take on the whole of the British army — and win.'
The security guard sniggered. 'I don't know whether you know this already, but there's an old boy behind you with a spanner. I couldn't be certain, mind, but something tells me that he thinks one of your caterpillar tracks needs some attention.'
The driver whipped round. 'Oi! What you doing with that spanner!'
Meanwhile, the Sheriff was having an animated conversation with Inspector Ward.
'Listen to me, Inspector. I can't take any chances. If there are tunnels, and we move in the heavy equipment, there's a damn good chance that the roofs will collapse and we could be accused of manslaughter, if not murder.'
Inspector Ward stood with his feet slightly apart and his hands behind his back. 'With all due respect, sir, that's your problem. All we're here to do is keep the peace and make sure that no-one breaks the law.'
'But your people were supposed to keep an eye on this place. You should have known there were tunnels.'
'We had the camp under constant surveillance — chopper, uniformed police, undercover bods pretending to be out walking their dogs. No-one saw any evidence of tunnels. Where did they put the spoil — the material they dug out?'
The Sheriff waved his arms in the air. 'I don't know. Maybe they magicked it away. Maybe they ate it. Maybe they buried it!'
'Maybe they didn't do anything with it,' Inspector Ward suggested.
'What do you mean?'
'I'm suggesting, sir, that there may not be any tunnels.'
'Yes yes yes. We've already discussed that possibility. What do you know about that Shadow chap?'
Inspector Ward sniffed. 'Dr Richard Parry. Twenty six. Brunel University. Engineer. No police record. Clean driving licence. A born leader. Wish he was on our side.'
'Damn. You think he's telling the truth about the tunnels?'
Inspector Ward shrugged. 'No way of knowing. He believes in what he's doing so he certainly has the motivation to build a network of tunnels. Equally, he'd lose no sleep if he was telling you a pack of lies.'
'Yes, Inspector — I know the name of the game. Avoid eviction for as long as possible so that the council is landed with a huge bill for security, and the government has to think twice about future road schemes. The cost of evicting the three camps on the A30 was about half-a-million pounds. I don't want anyone accusing me of making an expensive cock-up.'
'Better find those tunnels and get the moles out, then.'
'One slight problem there. Your people said there were no tunnels so we haven't brought any ground radar. Won't be here until tomorrow. In the meantime, we'll have to search for the entrances and ventilation shafts with our eyes, and test the ground with steel rods.'
'I'll wish you the best of luck then, sir.'