Complicity

Okay. I've worked myself up enough; I crush the packet. It doesn't crumple very satisfactorily because there are so many fags still inside it, but I persevere and use two hands and get it down to about half its earlier volume and then take it to the toilet and tear it open and empty the broken, folded cigarettes into the pan and pull the handle and watch most of them just float and swirl in the churning water and get so a

I open the skylight in the toilet and the one in the box room to get a through draught and stand there shivering until I pull on my dressing-gown, feeling mightily pleased with myself. I sit down at the computer to find that my era-rating in Despot has slipped back a bit while all this has been going on, but I don't care; I feel righteous.

I suck the cold night air in and laugh, snapping the mouse around the desk surface like a wild thing while the little hand sprite on the screen flashes from control surface to display, grabbing icons and throwing them about my empire like thunderbolts, building roads, dredging ports, burning forests, digging mines and — using the very ironic Icon icon — opening more temples to myself.

A horde of barbarians from the unexplored steppes to the south tries to invade and I lose an hour fighting the bastards off and have to rebuild the Great Wall before I can get back to the Court display and continue my long-term strategy of weakening the power of the regional lords and the Church by making the palace so luxuriantly, sumptuously steeped in the ways of the flesh that the barons and the bishops become hopelessly decadent voluptuaries and hence ripe for the picking while my merchant classes prosper and I encourage cautious technological development.

I have another whisky and a bowl of Coco Pops with lots of milk. My hand keeps reaching for the place where the cigarette packet would normally be, but I'm coping with the cravings and surviving so far. I really want some speed but I know if I have any I'll want a cigarette afterwards, so I leave it alone.

I have a brainwave and get my secret police to go down to the bazaar and find some drug dealers; bingo! The dealers are introduced to the Court and soon most of the people I've been working on are thoroughly hooked. It occurs to me this might actually be a better way of controlling things than just bumping people off, which is what the secret police are usually best at. I call it a day at 4 a.m. and only feel slightly jittery as I head for bed. I can't get to sleep and I keep thinking about Y; after half an hour I give in and have a wank and fall gratefully asleep afterwards.

The building is warm and smells of dog. You pull him through the door and lock it. The hounds are already yelping and barking. You turn on the light.

The ke

So far everything has gone well. You came across the fields and through the wood just after sunset, checking the place out with the night sight and finding the big house dark and empty. The alarm box high up on one gable wall glowed soft red; you had already decided not to attempt breaking in. You went down the drive. The gatehouse was dark, too; the gamekeeper would be back after the pub in the village closed. Far enough up the drive so that it wouldn't be seen from the main road, you felled a small tree with the handsaw, then sat down to wait. The Range Rover came growling up the drive two hours later. He was alone, still wearing his city suit; you coshed him while he was standing looking down at the tree; the car's idling motor covered any noise you made and he didn't even turn round. You just drove the Range Rover right over the tree.

His arms move weakly as you haul him across the concrete and prop him against the gate of one of two unoccupied pens. The dogs" barks change as they see their master. You put your day-pack down on the concrete, take out some plastic ties and hold them in your mouth as you try to haul him to his feet, but he's too heavy. His eyelids are flickering. You let him slump back again so that he's sitting against the chicken-wire gate and when his eyes start to open you pull his head forward by the hair and cosh him again. He falls to the side. You put the plastic ties back in your pocket. You're thinking. The foxhounds continue barking and yelping.

You find a hose attached to a tap beside the doors; you remove the hose, throw one end over the breeze-block lintel of the empty pen, pull it through the chicken wire and tie it under his armpits. He makes a moaning noise as the hose tightens round his chest; you start to haul him upright, but the hose breaks and he falls back against the gate. "Shit," you say to yourself.

Eventually you have an idea. You lift the gate off its hinges and lay it down on the floor beside him. Then you roll him over onto it. He makes a noise somewhere between a moan and a snore.

You secure his wrists and ankles to the chicken wire with the plastic ties, using two at each point. You've tested the ties yourself; they look flimsy but you couldn't burst one when you tried, and you've seen US police on television use similar devices instead of handcuffs. Only you're not sure how strong the chicken wire is, so using two on each wrist and ankle and tying them round different hexagons in the wire seems a sensible precaution. The hounds are still barking intermittently, but they're making less fuss than they were. You use a length of the hose to tie his waist to the angle-iron strut that makes a Z-shape through the gate. You undo his belt and pull his trousers down; he has a deep tan from a holiday in Antigua last month, fading now. You haul and scrape the gate over to the wall of the empty pen, then you squat behind the top of the gate and heave it and him up, sucking in your breath and grunting and then pulling the gate up still further and then letting the top edge of the gate rest against the wall of the pen you took the gate from. The gate rests there at an angle of about sixty degrees.

He's starting to come round. You change your mind about letting him talk and take the electrical tape from your day-pack and bind it round his mouth and the back of his neck, through the wire, so that his head is held tight too. There is some blood leaking from under his long fair hair; it trickles down the nape of his neck and onto the collar of his shirt.

Then, while he's still making moaning noises through his nose, you take the two cut-out bits of newspaper and the little tube of glue from your day-pack and stick the articles onto the breeze-block wall straight across from him, one on either side of the gate. The dogs inside leap up and snarl at you as you do this, shaking the chicken wire.

The headline of the first article reads EX-MINISTER IN IRAN ARMS DEAL ROW, and in smaller writing underneath it says, "It was my judgement that the interests of the West would best be served if the Iran-Iraq War went on for as long as possible."

The headline of the second article reads PERSIMMON DEFENDS CLOSURE PLANS — "PRIMARY CONCERN SHAREHOLDERS', and underneath are the words, "1000 jobs go after only five years as grant runs out."