John Bolland

Novel Extract - The Dark Numbers

The Dark Numbers The Dark Numbers traces the lives of an estranged father and son, Billy and Gary Matheson, during the early months of 2003. Billy, a middle-ranking oil company exec with a complicated love-life, is struggling to bring his life back into a humane balance against the backdrop of corporate politics, the second Iraq War, the SARS crisis and hardening Russian attitudes to the West. Meanwhile Gary, an anarchist activist by day and office cleaner by night, is drawn ever-deeper into a dangerous world of people-trafficking gangs and anti-capitalist protesters. As both strive to find a moral footing for their tangled lives, the action ranges from Stop-the-War demonstrations in Glasgow to mass graves in the Russian Far East, culminating in the Anti-G8 protests around Lake Geneva in June 2003. Based on extensive research and first hand experience, the book addresses themes of responsibility at the personal, familial and global levels .

 

Excerpt

Glasgow , Scotland – Friday March 7 th, 2003 – 6.55 p.m. GMT

Gary raked open the sliding door and out they baled in shell suits and hejabs and puffa-jackets, shalwaar kameez.
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-
8-9-10-11-
“You. Quick!”
12.
The mini bus was already moving as Gary shut the door.
“When?” he shouted - but Breslin was away around the corner. Gary’s cellphone buzzed.
“Midnight. On the nose. Corner of George Square. Don’t be late. Don’t lose any.” Breslin hung up.
The gang shook themselves down and separated, the men to the left, the women to the right - then they separated some more.
They were all illegals. Ghurghust was Pashtun. The other men were Kurds. Gary’s two regular girls, Nazreen and Samar, were Marsh Arabs from Iraq. That night, Breslin had brought five new women. He said they were mostly Kosovo Albanians. Gary was from Aberdeen. His job was to interpret for Breslin and to keep an eye out for thieving. Gary barely spoke a word of any foreign language. Breslin just couldn’t be bothered struggling with fractured English.

To read more of this text follow the link to Chapter 5

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