Author: Mark Renney

For Tanner, each name as it appeared on his list was merely a statistic, albeit one it was his job to render obsolete. He was all too aware that there were levels and some of them had sunk deeper into the quagmire than others. But he had always believed it was important not to make a distinction and that the guilty were guilty. But was Tanner still so sure it was as simple as that?

When disappearing a life Tanner was often struck by how bizarre it was, this occupation of his. He always began at the very end of the trail and worked his way back toward the beginning. As he did so he discovered just how far each individual had fallen and for how long they had gotten away with it. Opposing the System and spreading the lies and helping to keep the rumours alive. Because that is all it was – the subversive’s idea that there was another way and it could be different. It was just a rumour.

Trawling down the years Tanner often wondered at which point they started listening to those lies and believing in that idea, in the rumour. But there was of course no record of this, no hard evidence that Tanner could take in his hands and rip into shreds. Or if there were it was too well hidden amidst the minutiae, too deeply entrenched within the mundane facts that help to make all of us tick.

The trails Tanner was assigned to follow were merely ones made of paper. It wasn’t necessary for him to dirty his hands with anything other than the written records. These trails always began at the traitor’s last known address; a house or an apartment, sometimes just a room, a rented box. But whichever it was, a mansion or a bottom bunk on Skid Row, it was the subversive’s final abode, their home.

Tanner wasn’t required to enter and to rifle through their belongings and he was thankful for this. He hadn’t any desire to sift through all of the things that they had gathered over the years; the heirlooms and memorabilia. It didn’t matter to him if they had been train-spotters or stamp collectors or fans of the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan.

Some of it he could guess at – the framed certificates and sporting trophies. These, of course, would be destroyed and anything else of any real value would acquire a new price tag ready to be sold.