Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text Read Online Free PDF

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    ‘So, um… do you want to see the prisoner now?’ the custody sergeant asked, with the half-anxious, half-resentful look of someone who suddenly realises that he’s been talking only to himself.
    ‘Yes please,’ Charles said, making his voice sound extra enthusiastic in order to make up for his lapse in concentration. ‘Yes please, and thanks so much for the background. Very useful.’
    The truth was that he hadn’t even been half -listening for several minutes there – in fact he’d completely forgotten where he was – but now he dragged himself back into the present moment. There was a linoleum floor, cream-coloured walls (scrubbed, but slightly battered), a phone ringing in a side office, some foolish drunk shouting behind a door. On the desk between him and the sergeant were three separate piles of the various items that had been taken from the prisoners’ pockets. Two of the piles contained a miscellany of cigarettes, dreamer discs, coins, a flick-knife, a lump of hashish, lighters. The other pile consisted of two plastic bags containing a number of small blue spheres.
    ‘I’ll take those two bags off you for our research people,’ Charles said, rummaging in his pocket. ‘Here. I’ll give you a receipt.’
    ‘Good riddance to them,’ said the Sergeant with a shudder. ‘They give me the creeps.’
    Charles smiled as he replaced the cap on his old-fashioned fountain pen.
    ‘They are eerie things,’ he agreed, ostensibly soothing but in reality deliberately winding the policeman up, just as he’d wound up Janet Richards earlier. ‘Did you know they can even reproduce in the right conditions? You can start with a bag of twenty and next time you look there are twenty-one or twenty-two. Or so the shifters claim anyway.’

Chapter 3
    In a beige consulting room, Tammy Pendant frowned into space and Sarah Ripping watched her and smiled.
    ‘Tammy,’ she mused. ‘Tammy. Tammy Pendant. Who is she, I wonder? Who is she when she’s at home?’
    Tammy said nothing.
    ‘I’ve been introduced to her,’ the therapist went on. ‘I’ve spent several hours with her. So when will I really meet her?’
    Then Mrs Ripping waited, knowing the power of silence, knowing that silence was a vacuum that demanded to be filled.
    ‘Pendant’s not my real name,’ Tammy finally muttered under her breath. ‘My name’s Tammy Blows.’
    Mrs Ripping laughed loudly.
    ‘Oh Tammy, Tammy,’ she exclaimed, ‘you are amazing ! You are absolutely amazing! You distinctly told me when we first met that it says Tamsin Pendant on your birth certificate and that that was what you wanted to be called. Because Blows was your stepfather’s name, you said, and you hated him.’
    ‘Well I’ve changed my mind haven’t I? Tammy Blows is what everyone calls me.’
    Tammy tried to keep silent then, but she couldn’t resist adding one more thing:
    ‘Anyway it says Tamsin Delaney on my birth certificate. You people should get your bloody facts right.’
    That made Mrs Ripping laugh even more.
    ‘You are determined , aren’t you, Tammy? You’re determined that no one is ever going to find you!’ She smiled. ‘Mind you I suppose Tammy Blows is quite appropriate really. As in Tammy blows her top! Tammy blows up her foster-homes!’
    Tammy made up her mind not to rise to this – did Mrs Ripping really think she was the first one to mess about with her name? – but somehow she couldn’t quite stop herself from murmuring: ‘Tammy blows off. Tammy blow-job. Tammy blows cock for a packet of cigs.’
    ‘But Tammy blow-job is a name that other people have given you, Tammy,’ cried Mrs Ripping. She came rushing across the room to kneel in front of the slender, exquisitely beautiful, teenager. She seized Tammy’s hand to caress it. ‘There is so, so much more to you than that!’
    Tammy pulled her hand away with a grimace, revolted by the touch of Mrs Ripping’s wrinkled skin, her rank vegetarian breath.
    ‘I want to go now