The Passengers(40)
‘Of course!’
‘Because I don’t think that you would. If you’re being truly honest with our audience then you have only chosen her because you can foresee the drubbing you’d receive by the Asian community you also represent if you didn’t. You have already let down our African viewers by backing the death of Bilquis. If you are seen to allow Mrs Khartri, a second person of colour, to drive to her death without putting up a fight, then the fragility of your already wafer-thin, irrelevant organisation will crumble to the ground which, I might add, is where it belongs. I suggest that you are the racist in the room, not I.’
‘Not only are you a bigot but you’re a bloody idiot too,’ Muriel hit back, her nostrils flared and her jaw tensed.
‘Matthew?’ asked the Hacker.
‘I choose Heidi for the same reason as Muriel picked Shabana. I don’t want to be the one who leaves two children orphaned. I would prefer not to have that on my conscience.’
‘Oh, so now you choose to have a conscience?’ said Jack. ‘In your time on this jury you’ve chosen to toe the line and do as you’re told but once the cameras are on you and you have to answer to the world, you suddenly decide that you care? All of you, you’re hilarious.’
‘And you, Fiona?’ asked the Hacker.
‘Sofia Bradbury.’
‘What?’ Jack saved his loudest laugh for Fiona. ‘Of all people, you are choosing to save the life of an actress?’
‘I don’t have to justify myself to you,’ Fiona replied.
‘What’s happening to Shabana’s car?’ asked Libby suddenly.
The focus of everyone’s attention was drawn to a screen and Shabana’s car coming to a halt. The unease in Shabana’s eyes was immediate. She kept turning her head to the windscreen and the window behind her. There were moving shadows everywhere.
‘Something’s frightening her,’ Libby continued.
Suddenly Shabana’s face was replaced by live footage from outside the car, looking in at her through the front windscreen. People swarmed her vehicle like wasps around a nest. The sound returned and the jurors heard her name being chanted, hands banging on the windows and people grabbing at the door handles, trying to yank them open. The camera switched to a live Snapchat channel as traffic came to a standstill and more people deserted their vehicles to take selfies with the woman trapped in her car. Children were being held aloft by their parents to help them get better views of Shabana and history in the making. Soon the mob was at least fifteen-people deep.
Shabana’s face was contorted by fear but her screams couldn’t be heard above the cheering and excitement as each new person appeared.
‘They think they’re helping her,’ said Fiona. ‘They think they can get her out.’
‘Why aren’t the police stopping this?’ a panicked Libby asked.
‘Some users who are monitoring their communication channels claim teams have been deployed to disperse them,’ said Cadman. ‘They should be arriving there any second now.’
Libby held her breath until three marked police vans appeared, sirens and lights blazing. Masked officers in riot gear poured from the side doors, pushing their way through the throng towards Shabana’s car, using their shields and batons. In an instant, their heavy-handed approach faced resistance. And as they grew closer to their target, the crowd turned on them. It became an angry mob with fists flying and rocks and debris being hurled at the police.
A yellow cloud of gas appeared from nowhere, making it harder for the cameras to see what was happening, but the jurors heard screaming coming from adults and children running blindly in different directions.
‘I have a terrible feeling about this,’ said Matthew. ‘Remember what the Hacker said would happen if any of the vehicles were interfered with …’
He didn’t have the opportunity to finish. Shabana’s car exploded into a fireball, taking out her and scores of people and officers.
Chapter 29
JUDE HARRISON
‘No!’ yelled Jude at the sight of Shabana’s car becoming engulfed by flames.
He slapped himself on each side of his head with the palms of his hands again and again as if it might knock the images out or wake him up from a nightmare.
Squirming in his seat, he couldn’t take his eyes away from the aftermath of the bomb blast. As the yellow gas dissolved, it was replaced by a thicker, darker fog as the car burned. His perspective alternated between whichever camera was capturing the clearest and most powerful images. Over the next few minutes, Jude witnessed the angst and confusion as the bloodied and the injured were carried away from the scene; he watched dazed survivors stepping over bodies, some virtually unrecognisable as human, others in tattered clothing and missing limbs.
Next came news channel helicopter coverage, putting the scale of the blast into perspective. He viewed cars in close proximity to Shabana’s ignited one, while people ran to extinguish the flames from a burning child’s clothes. He could take no more. He pressed a button to turn his chair 180 degrees to face the rear seats, then grabbed a disused fast food carton and tried to vomit into it. Several times he retched but there was little inside him to come up.
A bead of sweat trickled from Jude’s hairline down his forehead, pooling in an eyebrow. He wiped it away. It was as hot as hell inside his car and his nerves were making him more anxious. With no working air conditioning, or the ability to wind down the windows, there was no way for him to cool down.