You Think You Know Someone

by J B Holman

  ‘Stand up.’ His voice was serious and the command absolute. She stood, stared at him and waited for the fearsome retribution. A gun was held straight-armed against her temple.

  ‘Time to die . . .’ he said, as he cocked the gun. Anxiety stabbed hard at her heart.

  ‘Die . . . or obey. Your choice. But you make it now. Die or obey?’

  ‘Obey.’ Her voice was weak and querulous as the fight within her died. Her frustration of failure hid frightened behind her eyes. She was beaten, really beaten, and at his mercy.

  She wanted to say ‘Die’ and hoped he would make it quick; but she was too scared. She repeated, even more quietly, as much to herself as to him, ‘Obey.’

  ‘Strip.’

  She stared into his hard resolute eyes. They were different. They had stopped playing. They had lost their emotion. They demanded compliance. She unclipped her bra for him and let it fall. She stared at the gun, and bending, removed her remaining undergarment, dropped it to the floor, stood up and looked back at the gun. She was exposed and vulnerable. She dared not look at his eyes. It was awkward, embarrassing, humiliating, suppressing. She feared what he would do next.

  But he was not a pervert, he was a pragmatist. Naked people are easier to control.

  ‘Stand by that wall. Face it.’ She obeyed, she had no choice, not anymore. ‘Hands on your head. Spread-eagle. If you move, I will slash your back to pieces.’ She stood, compliant and defeated.

  He repacked the contents of the holdall, closed and secured the window, slipped the ankle ties up on the bed, ready for use. Then he stopped; and looked. He examined her standing motionless and obedient. Slim fingers knitted together at the back of her head, long hazel hair down to her shoulder blades, a slim smooth back, rounded Latin buttocks and legs many inches too short to be a supermodel. She thought herself plain. She was not. She lacked nothing in beauty, only in confidence. Now her visual torture would begin.

  ‘Turn.’ She stood, back to the wall, hands still on head, breasts flattened even more by the position she had no choice but to hold. He stared. It was not lust, it was punishment. She blushed, and squirmed a thousand internal embarrassments, as his eyes seized on her sensitivities.

  ‘Lie on the bed.’ He watched her move, slowly and dutifully. ‘No, on your back.’ She obeyed. ‘Spread-eagle. Spread your legs.’ More embarrassment. He used new cable ties to secure her ankles and her immodesty. He looped the handcuffs round the metalwork of the bedhead and stared into her eyes.

  ‘Put them on.’

  ‘But you know I can slip out of them.’

  ‘Yes. But I know you won’t.’ She clipped herself in and felt his eyes check each limb in turn. She lay obedient, subservient and silent. He knelt on the bed and straddled her body, a knee each side, sitting lightly on her pelvis, his eyes on hers, his knife resting between her flattened breasts. He was a killer, she was defenceless. Fear gripped deeper.

  ‘You should be dead. Your body should be on the floor, bleeding out as your heart pumps its last beats, sighing your last regrets, shedding a final tear as everything goes hazy then black. But you’re not. Why d’you suppose that is?’

  Silence was her petrified reply.

  ‘Because I need you. I need your help - fully and willingly. I have a plan. It needs to succeed and you are key to its success.’ She wanted to say nothing, but could not stop herself.

  ‘I’ve seen your plan; you’d better kill me, because I’m not helping.’

  ‘Alec is sweet.’

  ‘Who’s Alec?’

  ‘You know Alec. Adrian and Miranda’s kid. What is he now? Two? Three? You went to school with Miranda, didn’t you? She would never get over the death of her child, if anything happened to Alec? And Barbara, your mum? She’s at home with Barney her ugly dog. Steve is watching her - outside her house right now. He’s my accomplice. Her fingers will be removed, a digit at a time. One finger every time you foul up. Shall I go on? Daisy, Helen, Matt, Sindy, Lisa . . . definitely Lisa. She’s special isn’t she? You have her picture on your mantelpiece – you and her together.

  I know all your friends. I raided your Facebook and your address book, the one you keep in the top drawer in the lounge. I will devastate everyone you care about, one by one in ways you cannot even contemplate, unless you do everything, and I mean absolutely everything, I want. I have a plan and you are instrumental in it. You have no choice. My plan must not fail. Do you understand me? Speak!’

  ‘Yes. I understand you.’

  ‘What do you understand?’

  ‘I have to help you. I know there’s a plan to kill the Prime Minister after the first attempt failed. And you need my help.’

  ‘D’you know when his death is scheduled for?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tomorrow.

  Will you help me?’

  It took a long time to come, but it came; slowly, reluctantly, almost imperceptibly, but it was there and it was all that was needed.

  A nod.

  Welcome to today’s Fiery Phone-In. We want to hear your views.

  The Prime Minister dodged a bullet, but is still in the firing line to get a good deal from Europe. His negotiations have been described as ‘a farce’ so far. The Leader of the Opposition described him as ‘a stubborn, muddle-minded, arrogant buffoon who’s giving the Crown Jewels away and getting nothing in return.’ Do you agree?

  The new Census form: Do you know what your grandparents did during the war? The Census has always asked about ethnicity, but now it’s asking about family history. Does the Government have the right to ask?

  The Social Services Reform Bill will change the way the system works so that ‘People who deserve more get more, and those that don’t deserve anything, get nothing.’ Who do you think deserves to get more?

  The Brighton Murder. Killing policemen; d’you think we should bring back the death penalty?’

  Call us now and tell us what you think. Let’s go to our first caller . . .

  6

  Saturday Morning

  Richard Thomas Buchanan, the Deputy Prime Minister, was not enjoying the conversation. Bettie Slaker was as skilful as she was annoying. They had known each other from school, but he had made it his successful duty to avoid her for over twenty-five years. University had been the escape from her demonic schoolgirl clutches and a career in Law had kept him in a different world. Had he not been lured into the immoral world of politics, then he would have avoided her still. He was a politician of conscience; he wanted to make a difference, drive change, serve the people. She wanted a position of power and manipulation. He disliked the lies, half-truths and distortions. She thrived on them.

  Bettie Slaker revelled in pushing his buttons and exercising her inestimable skills of exasperation to trigger a deputy-prime-ministerial explosion. It is what hostage negotiators called the Theatre of Blood. When she got the explosion, she’d won - for today, and would be a calmer force for good; until tomorrow . . . when she would need to generate her endorphins again by stirring up his adrenalin-cortisol mix. His temperature was rising.

  ‘Look, I know you wrote a series of brilliant speeches for the PM which won him the election, but let’s not forget the other thing.’

  ‘What other thing?’

  ‘You got fired.’ Her face denied that it had ever happened. ‘He fired you for being patronising and condescending. Just saying: don’t get fired twice.’

  ‘I’m never condescending. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve only been in politics five minutes.’

  ‘I’m a lawyer. I got a degree in condescension. I spent fifteen years as a partner of a major law firm and patronised whomsoever I wanted. But I will not be patronised by you or anyone. I’m only with you because we have history.’ His voice was agitated.

  ‘Yes, we do. And because you like me.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Nobody likes you. And for the record, this is the last time we’re meeting at your house, like it’s some covert witches’ coven
. You will come to the local constituency party office or to my office in Westminster.’

  ‘Will you send a car for me?’

  ‘No, get a cab like anybody else.’ He was shouting, but her reply was dismissive.

  ‘Of course you’ll get a car for me, if I ask.’

  ‘I won’t. I’m not your puppet.’ He looked deep into her eyes and could hear them shout back at him, Yes, actually that’s exactly what you are. ‘I’m not,’ he repeated.

  ‘Then you won’t be Prime Minister.’

  ‘Right now, I don’t want to be Prime Minister; or at least not the PM of a failing, ailing, out-dated, outmoded, imploding, dissolving Government that is rife with internecine struggles and as bereft of power as it is of original ideas. If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right, or rather when the time is right. I don’t want it as a default option because the Government is in a mess.’ He sat. She waited silently. She was a game player and he was being played. The silence lingered.

  ‘Alright, so what do you want me to do now?’ he asked, as she flicked through her papers, too busy to give him an immediate answer.

  Bettie had been in the shadows of politics for most of her adult life. She was a speech writer, lobbyist, strategist or any amoral role that required well-developed skills of manipulation, as long as she was not in the limelight. She was a consummate support act, the puller of strings; all she needed was a marionette.

  He had been a respected and well paid lawyer. It had suited him: the job had rules, it gave him the guidance he needed. He was a conformist, albeit a highly charismatic one, with an adept mind, who argued a legal case well, but in the middle of his successful career at the Bar, he had been seized by conscience and the Liberal Party. He’d won a seat the first time he stood as an MP. Four years later he was re-elected and became a de facto shadow minister. Two years later, he was elected leader of the Party and just over a year after that, he led the Liberals to the best election results they had seen for generations, which put them in coalition with the dilapidated, fragmented and humiliated Tory Party.

  Then Bettie appeared.

  She had turned the Tory fortunes round at the end of the campaign. They had been lined up for certain and crushing defeat, but she urged them, through trickery and manipulation, to change strategy at the eleventh hour: a high risk manoeuvre that worked. She underpinned it with some of the greatest political speeches ever written and the Tories crawled over the line with more seats than any other party, just; but no overall majority in the House.

  She bludgeoned the Tory and Liberal parties into partnership, an alliance which was inevitable in any case, but her contribution was to negotiate the terms of Richard Buchanan’s appointment as DPM. In America, if anything happens to the President, the Vice President automatically takes office. Not so in the UK; until now. Bettie had ensured that this principle of succession was a fundamental element that had to be agreed if the Tories wanted Liberal support.

  The Tories had no choice and the deal was done. The concept of a Liberal leading the Tory Party, for as long as it remained in coalition, had become a constitutional reality. She’d also brokered a deal with the three Welsh Nationalist Party MPs and the two Green Party members, either of which could swing the balance of power in any vote on any issue, to form the flimsiest, mismatched coalition in the history of the UK.

  Buchanan had berated the Government for being bereft of ideas, but ironically original thought was not his strongest suit. He needed to be given an idea, then he could embellish it, develop it, refine it and hone it until he owned it. Then he could sell it. He was powerful, credible, empathetic and appealing; a superb mouthpiece and an ideal puppet for any manipulator to handle.

  He appealed enormously to Bettie, both personally and professionally, even though she was as asexual as she was amoral. He would have been quite a catch for any woman, but had established himself as a confirmed bachelor; not gay, just insular. He told himself that he’d been turned off intimate relationships by his first and only real girlfriend, a demon-bitch-girl woman from hell that had ruled, ran and ruined his life from his pre-pubescent to his pre-university teenage years.

  Now here she was, making his political aspirations come true. He despised her and needed her in equal measure.

  ‘When the PM is finished with Brexit, Britain will be finished with him,’ Bettie continued. ‘I labelled him the worst Prime Minister ever, and now everyone is saying it.’

  ‘No,’ argued Buchanan. ‘The Prime Minister before him was the worst Prime Minster ever, the one that set up the referendum, simply because he was too weak to control his back benches. Then he lost the referendum and ran away into obscurity. He was the worst - Neville Chamberlain bad. They both allowed us to get trounced by Europe.’

  ‘The country has spoken. Brexit is a reality.’

  ‘Yes, because he was so goddam weak in the Middle East. He let it get out of control. If he’d had the balls to go in and sort it out, there wouldn’t have been a million and a half refugees heading our way, which means Europe and the UK would not have had a massive illegal immigration problem, so all the bigoted xenophobes in the UK would not have balloted their racist vote.

  He created the worst possible environment, then unleashed the vote and expected to win. He was a fool that has irrevocably damaged the UK on the world stage. Then he does a runner and hands the baton of indecision to Palmer, who is a rigid, intransigent buffoon busy doing the worst deal possible with Europe, ruining future trade hopes, weakening our defences and doing nothing about the immigration problem.’

  ‘Yes, and it would take a genius to get us all out of this mess and turn it around.’

  ‘It certainly would.’

  ‘Exactly. A genius strategist, planner and speech writer; and a credible, good looking, persuasive, upper-middle-class mouth piece to put it into action. This is a one-time offer. We can turn this around; you and me. We can create strength from the remnants of weakness and seize victory from the jaws of defeat. We can take politics to a new level and take the country to new heights of success. Do you want to be Prime Minister of the strongest country in Europe and preside over the greatest period of growth and success this country has seen for decades? Are you in or are you out?’

  ‘I’m in.’

  ‘Then stop whingeing. We need to be clever and we need to be unorthodox. Be quiet and listen.’

  Storrington was not at home, but he was feeling at home in his army fatigues, in a top secret army base, in a briefing room, in the middle of Salisbury Plain, looking at the highly trained operatives who would be the solution to his problem. The six men sitting in front of him exuded confidence. They were the right team.

  They had been the wrong side of enemy lines in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and a dozen other countries where they shouldn’t have been. They had rescued colleagues, blown up critical targets, extracted unwilling prisoners and executed enemies of the State on foreign soil. They trained hard, revelled in danger, lived for a challenge and dedicated themselves to serving the best interests of their country. All Black Ops; and not all of their missions were sanctioned at the highest level. It was sometimes better that the top people didn’t know. They broke the rules, broke the law and broke with convention, but they always got the job done.

  ‘Some of you know each other, some don’t. Introductions later. You’ll be eating, sleeping, breathing and living together for the next week or the next year; however long it takes to complete your mission,’ began Commander Storrington. ‘Your social arrangements just got cancelled. Do any of you have anything more important to do than serve god and country?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said five voices in unison.

  ‘No, sir,’ said the sixth, ‘only my kid’s sixth birthday party next Saturday, so no, sir - nothing more important.’

  ‘Then you’d better catch this bastard by Friday night.’ The door opened. In walked man number seven, except she was not a man.

  ‘You’re late!’

  Sh
e had just flown in overnight from Syria. She’d been in hostile territory when she got the call and had had to run through a kill zone, steal a motorbike, drive under fire, and get a plane to Brize Norton. She had run to the car, come straight to the Base and had sprinted from Hut 233 where the driver dropped her.

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again, sir.’ She sat at the end of the row of chairs and despite the chastisement looked confident, assured, but half the size of the smallest of her male colleagues.

  ‘This is Maria de la Casa. She will be your captain.’

  There was nodding and acknowledgement.

  ‘I have a job for you. If you don’t want it, I will throw you back into whatever you were doing yesterday, no hard feelings. But I have chosen you personally because I have worked with you all before and I trust you to get the job done. It’s a job that sounds simple. I need you to capture and detain the would-be assassin of the PM of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That’s all. At ease. Speak freely. Ask any questions first. I’ll fill in details afterwards.’

  ‘Why us, sir? Why not the police?’ asked Man Three.

  ‘There are sensitive elements to it, and your methods may need to be imaginative, so I want to keep this in-house.’

  ‘Do we know who he is, sir?’ asked Captain de la Casa.

  ‘His name is Eduard Foxx, or at least it is at the moment.’

  ‘So, this is an anti-terrorist op. Is he a converted Jihadi?’ responded Captain Maria.

  ‘I heard it was a woman,’ added Number Five.

  ‘I can tell you he’s not a woman, a Jehadi, nor a terrorist. He is one of us. He works for PM-SSS. That’s why you’re handling it. The police will no doubt find someone to pin it on. Al Akbar J’zeer is the current target; a hostile who needs to come off the street. But we need to find the real culprit. On the signal you will go, capture him and bring him back. I want him in Safe House 421 in the Leicestershire countryside.’

  ‘Will you question him?’