Running Wild - Ballard James Graham. Страница 24

Five years have passed since the Pangbourne Massacre, and the first news has been heard of the thirteen children. During this time there has been no trace of the group, and Scotland Yard assumes that they are either dead or in the custody of a foreign power. The kidnapping of Marion Miller from Great Ormond Street is seen as part of this conspiracy, and it is assumed that the young murderers were either drugged or acting under duress.

Sergeant Payne and I are the only ones to remain skeptical. Payne has continued to send me whatever pieces of information come his way, but the special investigation of Reading CID has long since been disbanded.

However, he telephoned today to tell me that in the early hours of this morning an assassination attempt was carried out against a former British prime minister. All details of the affair have been hushed up, but it seems that an armored truck was driven at high speed through the gates of the house. The explosion that followed, on an exclusive estate in Dulwich, southeast London, has been attributed to a leak in a nearby gas main. The former prime minister was unharmed, and was photographed handing out cups of tea to the police and firemen. As before, she continues to enjoy respect, if not affection, as a leader now sometimes known as the "Mother of Her Nation," or "Mother England."

These titles, recently coined by a sycophantic newspaper editor nostalgic for the halcyon days of the l980s, must have been a red rag to the Pangbourne children. The oldest of them is twenty-two, and most of the others have left their adolescence behind. Even Marion Miller is now thirteen, and it is interesting that one of the former prime minister's bodyguards reported that the assault seemed to be directed by a stern-faced teenager with blond hair which she brushed compulsively from her forehead. He speculated that these gestures might have been a set of coded signals.

Will the children strike again? I take it that all authority and parental figures are now their special target. So the regime of kindness and care which was launched with the best of intentions at Pangbourne Village, and which has prompted countless imitations in the exclusive estates of southern England, not to mention Western Europe and the United States, has given birth to its children of revenge, sending them out to challenge the world that loved them.