The Petitioners Read Online Free PDF Page A

very practiced at looming, but she did her best.
    The newcomer laughed.
    ‘Mr Goodfellow! I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on,’ I said.
    ‘Best to keep your voice down,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Not that it makes a lot of difference – they can still hear everything you say.’
    ‘Everything?’ I said, my heart sinking at the thought of all the conversations I would have to replay in my mind to make sure neither Jen nor I had said anything that could get us locked up. I had been hoping the laws that had allowed them to lock people up for nothing had been swept away in the storm, but I always knew that was ridiculously naïve of me. I stared up at him. He stared down at me.
    I began to wonder whether he had gone stark, staring mad or I had.
     
    GAVIN
     
    Before the helicopter had turned into a speck the size of a bluebottle buzzing around the sky, Declan started on at me again.
    ‘What’s that thing she gave you?’ He grabbed the black device out of my hand like a child who wasn’t very good at playing nicely with others. That description fitted him well, in fact. I smiled as I watched him turn it over in his hands.
    ‘I can’t see how to put it on,’ he complained. Fiona went to have a look, and the two of them pressed and slid their fingers across every available surface.
    ‘Oh, give it to me!’ said Dan in the end, snatching it out from between them.
    ‘Don’t break it,’ I told him gently. It was nice to see him take a harmless interest in something, after all.
    Three seconds later he had managed to activate some sort of alarm that wailed out its warning incongruously in the open air of the hills, causing a near-stampede of sheep after one of them panicked.
    Fiona, Declan and Dan seemed to think it was very funny, after their initial surprise.
    ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ I said, picking it up from where Dan had flung it. I brushed off the sheep-droppings. It fell silent.
    They were all staring at me when I looked up. I couldn’t help reading accusation in their expressions.
    ‘What was that about?’ said Declan.
    ‘How should I know? I haven’t seen anything like it before.’
    ‘It seems to know you,’ said Dan. I glanced down at the thing in my hand. Now a green light was flashing. I looked for an on-off switch without success. The exterior of the black thing was quite smooth, like a sea-washed pebble. I experimented with turning it in various directions.
    ‘I can be with you in ten,’ said the voice of Tanya Fairfax suddenly.
    I jumped. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Everything’s fine. We just had an accident with the – thing. The communication device.’
    ‘An accident,’ she commented. ‘That’s what they always say.’
    ‘Give it to me,’ hissed Declan. ‘I’ll drive over it in the jeep.’
    ‘I wouldn’t advise it, Mr O’Donovan. It’s programmed to destroy itself and everything within a certain radius if damaged.’
    ‘How big a radius?’ said Declan.
    The device remained silent.
    ‘Don’t push your luck,’ I told him.
    ‘Let’s throw it in the reservoir,’ said Fiona.
    ‘Are you mad?’ Declan turned on her. ‘It’s probably full of some deadly but untraceable poison that would spoil our drinking water supply for decades to come.’
    ‘Just an idea,’ muttered Fiona.
    ‘We could throw it off a cliff,’ Dan suggested.
    ‘We still don’t know how big a radius of destruction it has,’ I pointed out. ‘I’d better just hang on to it for now.’
    There was an awkward silence.
    ‘I think I’d better take it,’ said Declan after a moment. ‘You seem to be able to activate it – you’d have her and all her minions descending on us again in no time.’
    ‘I’ll be careful,’ I said. In fact what had just happened had made me seriously consider contacting the woman, if only to establish just what she was offering. Declan and Fiona obviously wouldn’t ever trust me, no matter how much I did to help them, and I wasn’t