The Sanction

by Mark Sennen

  ‘Isn’t that what the police are supposed to do?’

  ‘They don’t have time to develop anything these days. I’m talking about the bigger picture.’

  Holm noted Huxtable’s use of the bigger picture. Noted, too, the euphemisms aplenty in her statement: wasted behind a desk – useless at analysis. Doing things the police don’t have time to develop meant investigating areas they didn’t feel were worthwhile. While get out there suggested, quite simply, that Huxtable wanted him gone from under her feet.

  ‘And this bigger picture? Where exactly am I to find it?’

  ‘You’re aware we get thousands of pieces of information a week, most of which are never followed up? Time and time again we have people who blip on our radar but are passed over because of lack of resources. Right-wingers, left-wingers, radicals of all types intent on getting their fifteen minutes of fame. There are snippets of intelligence which, as much as we try, we can’t jigsaw together. Even with AI and a bunch of algorithms we’re missing these at the moment. You might just get lucky.’

  ‘You’re kicking me out of JTAC.’

  ‘We’re supposed to be the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, Stephen. The problem is your recent analysis has been wide of the mark.’ That flat smile again. ‘And I’m not kicking you out. I prefer to think of it as moving you sideways, OK?’

  ‘Sideways?’

  ‘Yes. You’ll remain under the JTAC umbrella, but you’ll have an office of your own, a budget and a free hand to pursue whatever leads you want within reason.’ Huxtable smiled, but the look wasn’t a good one. ‘Take some time off to think about it, OK?’

  Huxtable reached for Holm’s report. She glanced at the cover before sliding the document into her out-tray. He’d been dealt with. Rubber-stamped. Filed. Her gaze moved to Holm, a quizzical expression on her face as if she was surprised to see him still there.

  He struggled out of the armchair and got to his feet.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said.

  * * *

  The funeral for Silva’s mother took place fifteen days after the attack. Francisca da Silva had had a wide circle of friends and colleagues and, since she’d split with Silva’s father, several lovers. She’d never remarried though, and it was Silva and her father who’d dealt with the arrangements. Silva had been an emotional wreck and near useless, but her father approached the situation much as he’d have tackled a military problem. He created checklists, delegated various tasks to friends and family, drew up contingency plans and imposed strict deadlines. Now though, as they sat in a car following the hearse, Silva could see the effort involved had worn away at him. His hair had greyed years ago, but there were other signs of ageing that seemed more recent.

  ‘Friday,’ he said, aware Silva was looking at him. ‘Not a good day for a burial, but it was the only slot available. Fully booked, see? Damn good business to be in, funerals. There’s an endless supply of clients and they don’t answer back.’

  Silva wasn’t sure if the reference to Friday was religious. She didn’t think so. Her father had never done God and she couldn’t see him starting now.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she said. He hadn’t asked her the same question. Not once in the past two weeks. ‘I mean, I know you and Mum were—’

  ‘Estranged is the word,’ her father said. He didn’t turn to face her. Rather he appeared to be studying the back of the chauffeur’s head. As if there was something there that might explain everything. ‘It was her choice, you know. That we separated all those years back. She wanted something more, someone else.’

  ‘Do you blame her? She’d had enough of the worry, Dad.’

  ‘That’s a bit rich. I reckon she was always more concerned about you than she ever was about me.’

  ‘That’s different. Parents are always worried about their children.’

  ‘She could never understand what drove you to sign up. She hated you being in the military. I think she felt by you choosing the army that somehow I’d won and she’d lost. She wanted something quite different for you, something more noble, as if fighting for what you believe in wasn’t noble enough.’

  ‘Dad, don’t. This isn’t the time.’

  Her father fell silent, but what he’d said about her mother wanting something different for Silva was true. She’d wanted Silva to go to university, but Silva had struggled at school. She was clever but not studious; she excelled at sports, but not in examinations. At the behest of her father she’d taken up shooting at an early age, and at sixteen she’d won a gold medal in a junior class at the world championships. As a child she’d never associated what she did on the range with the military, but looking back she could see there was an inevitability about her future linked to her prowess with her rifle. When, at a careers fair, she’d come across an armed forces stand, she’d tried to hurry on past, but the female recruiting officer had caught her eye. Almost unwillingly she found herself drawn to the displays. The officer explained about the opportunities which were opening up for women now the UK was finally allowing them to serve in combat roles. ‘You could make a difference,’ she’d said, pointing to a picture of British soldiers alongside smiling Afghan children. ‘We’re building schools, providing sanitation, protecting the local population from those who want to impose their barbaric ideologies on them.’

  Back home the notion had festered. She knew her mother would be against it. Since her parents had divorced her mother’s world view had changed. She’d emerged from the domineering influence of Silva’s father like a butterfly breaking free of a cocoon. Her politics were increasingly left wing and she’d recently moved from a secure, well-paid job with The Times’s foreign desk to a position with a news agency that specialised in covering the Middle East and Africa. However when, after several weeks of considering the options, Silva told her mother she was thinking of a military career, she’d been surprised by the reaction. Rather than dismissing the idea out of hand, her mother encouraged her to do some research and make up her own mind. If Silva was happy, then she’d be happy, she said. Silva never kidded herself her mother had been wholeheartedly in favour of her career choice, especially after all that had happened to her, but she never realised she’d hated it.

  If that was the truth then her mother had hidden it well. Even after Afghanistan, when Silva had been in the military prison, her mother had been nothing but supportive and there’d never been a word of criticism. Perhaps, Silva thought, unconditional love and support was what being a parent was all about. What it was supposed to be about.

  She turned to look at her father. He sat rigid, staring forward, unaware how much his words had hurt. It was precisely because she’d wanted to help people in the same way her mother had done that she’d joined up. Sure, she’d been a muddle-headed, idealistic teenager, but the sentiment had been genuine. To know the truth about her mother’s feelings was a bittersweet agony. Bitter on account of the disapproval, sweet because it highlighted the unconditional love. And her mother had been wrong about who’d won: she’d joined up in spite of her father, not because of him.

  Until the incident in Kabul, Silva had never regretted her career choice. The army had meant she could continue to shoot and they’d given her time off to compete. In return she became a poster girl for the recruiting officers, highlighting the very things that had attracted her when she herself had signed up. That effect was magnified when she won a bronze medal at the Olympics. Overnight she was transformed into a minor celebrity. Her picture appeared on the news, there were offers for product endorsements and speaking engagements, and she was shortlisted for awards. Of course the fact she’d been successful and in the public eye meant when the time came, the fall was much harder. Still, through all the chaos, the ups and downs, her mother had stood by her.

  Silva remembered the day of her release from prison. Sharp words, a pile of civvy clothes, an officer handing her the letter announcing her formal dismissal from the army. She’d been marched to the gates and had stepped into another life. As she
’d trudged away towards the main road, not really knowing what the hell to do next, she’d heard a familiar voice call out her name.

  Rebecca!

  She’d turned and there, a few paces away, stood her mother. Silva had collapsed in her arms, all the hardness and bravado of the past year gone, nothing but tears left.

  ‘You know what?’ Her father’s words cut into her thoughts. He’d turned from his study of the chauffeur’s head. ‘The ironic thing is she’s the one who’s dead in a military conflict and we’re still alive. You get how that works, because I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘I don’t get anything much at the moment.’

  ‘She was a journalist, for God’s sake.’ Her father shook his head. ‘Bloody wrong place. Bloody wrong time. If it was down to me I’d bomb the fuck out of the bastards and be done with it.’

  ‘We tried that. I was there, remember? And anyway, who exactly do you bomb?’

  Her father said nothing for a few minutes. They drove through winding country lanes between hedges bloated with thick summer greenery. A church spire in the distance seemed to get no closer.

  ‘Are you going to carry on working as a postie?’

  ‘I’m on sick leave.’

  ‘You mean on account of your mother’s death? Compassionate leave?’

  ‘No, Dad. Sick leave.’ Silva tapped her head even though her father was now looking forwards again. ‘Mental health. Any sign of stress and they sign you off. Like you might contaminate the letters or something.’

  ‘And are you mental?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I was pretty sure I was, but then I thought about what happened to me. Considering the circumstances I’m probably verging on being almost normal.’

  ‘That’s good to hear, Rebecca. Normal. Good to hear. Your grandmother was nutty, remember? Very difficult to deal with.’

  ‘She had dementia, Dad.’

  ‘Whatever you want to call it, she annoyed the hell out of me.’

  They rounded a corner and the church was there. A thin spire touching a blue sky. A grassy bank surrounding an acre of graveyard. Cars parked on the verges. People waiting.

  They climbed from the car and heads nodded and there were half smiles intended to show sympathy. Silva spotted a government minister, tried to put a name to the face but failed. There was a local MP and a large group of her mother’s friends and co-workers from Third Eye News, the agency she worked for. Neil Milligan, the proprietor and chief editor of the agency, raised a hand. The poor man looked abject. Standing at a discreet distance were several photographers and a TV crew.

  Silva began to greet some of the mourners before turning to see what had happened to her father. He stood by the limousine talking to the driver as if he had nothing better to do than pass the time in idle chit-chat. He shook the man’s hand and came across to Silva.

  ‘Colour Sergeant Wilkins. Gulf War,’ he said. ‘I knew I recognised him from somewhere. Top bloke.’

  Chapter Five

  A couple of weeks after the funeral, Silva’s father called her. It was the only contact she’d had with him aside from a package he’d sent her containing the keys to her mother’s place in Wiltshire and some documents relating to the will Silva had to sign and return.

  ‘You need to come and visit, Rebecca,’ he said. ‘Asap. Think you can make it tomorrow?’

  ‘Today was my first shift back at work, Dad,’ Silva said. ‘What is it, are you ill?’

  ‘I’m fine, you’re the one who needs to be ill. Tomorrow. Tell them you’re mental again. That you might infect those letters. Get here before lunch. Shall we say eleven hundred hours, sharp?’

  That evening she ran through the city. Followed the route she’d taken on her delivery round and pounded the same streets as she’d walked earlier. After the run she went to the seafront. A fleet of dinghies raced in the evening sun, and the ferry to Santander headed for the horizon. She returned to her boat and sat in the cockpit with a cup of cocoa. A swell caressed the hull and rocked her gently back and forth. Motion. Not staying still. It hadn’t struck her until then that the constant movement was why she’d ended up living on a boat. Back when she’d bought the little yacht the intention was simply for it to be a place to go to when on leave from the army. Her mother’s house was too small and her father’s… well, there was no way she could have stayed there for more than a day or two.

  The boat had turned out to be a godsend, providing a bolthole to retreat to after she’d completed her prison sentence. It was berthed in a marina that hugged the west bank of the river Plym. A collection of decaying pontoons and equally decaying yachts sat opposite an industrial quay where aggregate rumbled along conveyors from ship to shore pretty much 24/7. Freddie, the security guard who lived on the marina site in a Portakabin, was pushing seventy, but assured her he was more than a match for men half his age. He had two Dobermanns to help him but their natures could be deduced from their names: Beauty and Cinders. More often than not the dogs could be found curled up at Freddie’s feet in the cabin, while he worked his way through an ArrowWords puzzle magazine, only occasionally glancing at the CCTV monitors. Still, the haphazard set-up suited Silva. Nobody came down the pontoon to chat to her; nobody, aside from Freddie, knew her name.

  The last thing she wanted to do was visit her father. They weren’t close and never had been. He was all stiff upper lip and polish your boots until you could see your face. What was on the surface was what the world saw and what was inside you kept private. Somewhere deep down there might have been some sort of love and affection for her, but if there was she’d never seen any sign of it. Her mother had been the polar opposite, wearing her heart on her sleeve, baring her soul, always telling Silva how much she loved her.

  Silva sighed to herself. She owed it to her mother to go and see what her father wanted. Hard as it was to imagine, at some point her parents had cared for each other and Silva was a direct result of their union.

  The next morning she called in sick. Said her first day back had been too stressful and she needed a little while longer to recover. She took her motorbike and rode hard up-country towards London. Her father lived an hour west of the city in a big old house inherited from his own father. Silva remembered the place from childhood visits to her grandparents, but she’d never lived there. Several acres of garden surrounded the house, a winding drive curling past a lake to an expanse of gravel. She followed the drive and parked up alongside a black Range Rover with smoked-glass windows. She got off her bike, removed her leather jacket, her helmet and gloves, and stood by the Range Rover for a while. She wondered if her father had all of a sudden given up his miserliness and decided to splash out on the smart new vehicle. Silva shrugged and went to the house.

  Mrs Collins, her dad’s long-suffering housekeeper, showed her in and through to the back where her father sat in a chair on the terrace. Next to him there was a glass-topped metal table on which stood a jug of cloudy lemonade and three glasses. The ice cubes in the jug had sharp edges and the surface of the jug was beginning to mist with condensation.

  ‘Rebecca,’ her father said as she walked over and bent to kiss him. He sat still while she did so and then brushed her away. ‘You’re late.’

  Silva glanced at her watch. One minute past eleven. ‘One hundred and fifty miles and I’m sixty seconds late. I’d say that was pretty good.’

  ‘Pretty good, yes.’ Her father watched her as she sat down. ‘But not perfect.’

  Silva wasn’t surprised by her father’s opprobrium. As a child she’d had to live up to his exacting standards, all too often failing to meet them. He’d treated her mother the same way until she’d grown tired of having the minutiae of her life controlled and micro-managed. When Silva was ten, her mother had upped and left, taking Silva with her. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, Silva wondered if her father’s nature could have been altered by his experiences in the Gulf. PTSD affected people in different ways, and his desire to control everything might have b
een a response to the stress he’d faced in the deserts of southern Iraq. Then again, it might not.

  ‘You look fine,’ Silva said, trying not to rise to the bait. ‘I thought you might be poorly.’

  ‘I told you I wasn’t ill on the phone. Didn’t you believe me?’

  ‘There are times when people don’t like to admit something’s wrong with them.’

  ‘Not me.’ Her father paused and then knocked the table with his right fist. ‘You got the keys and the documents I forwarded from the solicitor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll go there on your way back to Plymouth? Check the house is OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ Silva agreed without much enthusiasm. She changed the subject and gestured at the three glasses on the table. ‘Are we expecting a guest? Or are you going ask your servant to join us?’

  ‘Don’t wind me up, Rebecca. Mrs Collins isn’t my servant.’

  ‘Lover?’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Well, this is nice.’ Silva leaned back in her chair. Below the terrace a large area of lawn led down to the lake. There was a boathouse at one end and a small island in the centre. ‘Just think, I could have been delivering the mail to the good people of Plymouth instead of sitting here getting bored.’

  ‘When were you last up?’

  ‘Must be a year ago. You’ve repaired the boathouse, I see.’

  ‘Repaired the boathouse, dredged and restocked the lake. A lot’s been done in the house too. You’ll see later.’

  ‘Later?’

  ‘You’re staying over.’

  ‘I am?’ Silva turned to look at the house. ‘You’ve hardly been in touch in the past few years and now you want to play happy families? I don’t think so.’

  ‘This isn’t about me, this is about you.’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m OK with where I live, OK with my job. I know you don’t think being a postie is any kind of living, but it’s risk free.’