by Mark A. King
Iona
Iona looked at her reflection in the mirror of the ladies’ toilets.
She looked as professional as she could muster, giving a rare outing to her only skirt and blouse. Her usual uniform—hoodie, trainers, and jeans—had been dumped in her backpack, which was stuffed into her locker.
She knew this meeting wouldn’t go well. Her chances of a reprimand, and the severity of any subsequent punishment, might—just—be diluted if she could appear to be taking the job seriously—like her plum-voiced, knock-off Armani-suited colleagues.
She rehearsed the inevitable argument she was about to have with her director, Verity Armitage.
I did it to nail the case. Too box-set TV.
I did it for you, Verity. Unbelievable—Armitage would clearly see through the lies; that was her job, after all.
I did it because I’m fed up with chasing shadows. I’m physically knackered by the retina-burning hours of LCD monitors and sore fingertips prodding grubby keyboards. I’m emotionally exhausted by the fact that every time I get a lead, it disappears like a magician throwing flashbang at the gullible audience. Too honest.
She’d have to take the punishment, however it was dished out. Iona thought about her director, her mentor, how she would react to Iona’s insubordination. No matter how much Iona tried to justify it, she had no excuse. She’d been told enough times to stay focused, to let her fingers do the work of a hundred police officers. She had a natural talent; hacking came easy to her. It was wasteful and distrustful to ignore the orders she’d been given.
In the mirror Iona’s image was just a projection of what they wanted her to be. Refined. Authoritative. Part of the machinery of government. Her ash-blond hair was tied back, pulled tight to make her skin look firm, a no-nonsense and unreadable hairstyle—no signs of her scalp like she used to wear it, buzzed short. She ran her hands over her sleeves, which were always worn long now, even in the blistering summer heat—covering her scars, the crags and crevices of the person inside buried beneath the clothing. It was easier to hide—no dirty looks, no assumptions, no probing questions tarted-up to make them seem like the concern of a peer.
She washed her hands. The steam rose in twisted skyward arcs like the ghost of a phoenix. On the curved, sparkling surface of the tap, her face warped in convex and concave shapes. She looked and felt like an image in a circus hall of mirrors.
She trudged along the corridors of glass offices and monochromatic carpet-squares, trying to straighten her spine, raise her chin, puff out her chest. The effort was like blowing air into a punctured balloon.
She knuckle-tapped the office door. It was supposed to be open, as per the semi-fascist policies of the HR department, but since the director had returned to work, she’d kept it firmly shut. Iona couldn’t blame her; given the circumstances, she’d have done the same.
“Come in, Detective Stone,” Director Armitage shouted through the door. This is bad, Iona thought. She only ever uses titles when she’s reached the point of no-compromise.
Iona opened the door. “Director Armitage,” she said, following the lead of her superior officer. “You wanted to see me. I guess it’s ab—”
“That’s your problem, Detective Stone, too much guessing, not enough thinking,” Armitage snapped.
Iona stood by the door a few feet away from Armitage’s desk that was uncharacteristically littered by crumpled chocolate wrappers, popped painkiller packets, unwashed mugs, scattered papers, and child-like scrawled dog-eared sticky notes. Everyone deals with grief in different ways, Iona thought, trying to keep her distance from the desk, hands behind her back, her mild OCD kicking in. “May I take this opportunity to apologise?” She looked at Verity’s hair, normally impeccable; it rested, limp and flagging, on her shoulders, a dull brown mass of barely-brushed strands. Her clothes were days-old and un-pressed. Her eyes were almost purple, the blue irises encircled by red fissures. Grief and stress combined were a bad combination.
Verity Armitage pushed aside the scattered debris on the desk and motioned for Iona to sit down. “What exactly are you apologising for? For not doing the job you are paid to do? For insubordination, again? For the disrespect you have shown this unit? Do you know how much I stuck my neck out for you to get this job? And how much flack I got when you screwed up last time?”
Iona had wondered how long it would take her boss to get to that. “That was almost a year ago. With all due respect, you can’t keep bringing it up.”
“I can and I will. Do I need to remind you that you’re still under formal warning?”
“No. I understand that.”
“You can’t just make it up as you go along. We don’t need extra scrutiny. I had to work hard to get this unit created. You know I’ve had to use budgets that should have been allocated elsewhere. People want to see us fail. They’d rather have police on the beat than have people sitting in offices. Last time I told you not to get involved, and yet you managed to leak information to one of your shady acquaintances. That hardly worked out, did it?”
Iona didn’t answer. She dipped her head, examining her only pair of formal shoes. Iona thought about all the crimes she’d helped stop, the vital information she’d obtained on terrorism and smuggling and trafficking. She tugged the self-customised modular phone from her pocket, loaded the photo app, and tapped the first photo in the case folder.
She thrust the screen inches from Armitage’s face. “Sophia, eighteen. Do you remember her, Director Armitage? Her family, and almost everyone in her village in Georgia, saved everything they had for her future. Thousands of pounds. They managed to get her here. Only for her to be controlled, farmed out to whoever would pay money to her new owners for whatever they wanted. She became dependent on drugs. As you know, this is how the traffickers and slave-masters work. Sophia was found dead, riddled with bruises and disease, almost unrecognisable to her own family. They struggled to identify her only six months after her arrival.”
Verity Armitage looked away from the image.
Iona swivelled the phone back and swiped it to the next image.
“Adnan. Ten. Originally from Syria. He watched his family being butchered. He hid in the rubble and ruins of Aleppo. Listened to the screams of fighter jets, the thunder of explosions, the growl of the fires. He pleaded with strangers to ride in the back of pickup trucks to escape the city. Smuggled himself onto an inflatable boat, though he was barely fit to cross a pond, let alone the Mediterranean Sea. From Greece to France. From France to England. Into London, the promised land, to find people only too glad to take him in. He was found dehydrated, shaking and terrified, working day and night in a house so squalid that Dickens would cry. That’s what I’m trying to stop, Verity.”
Armitage jolted upright, knocking over empty cans of energy drink. “It’s Director Armitage. I run this unit, not you. Do you understand me? Two people are dead. Is that clear enough for you? You were there. Don’t deny it. You’ve put me and the unit in an incredibly compromised position. Questions will be asked. Why where you there at the newsagents’ on Green Street? Why didn’t you intervene? Now we have a missing girl to deal with as well.
“As for those pictures and your attempt to shock me, who do you think you are, Detective Stone? A lesson on the purpose of our unit is a bit rich coming from you. I created the unit! It is supposed to focus primarily on cyber-crime prevention, large scale phishing, corporate blackmail, infrastructure assurance. Only a small amount of our work is to pass information on to the Modern Slavery Task-Force. It’s their job to act on any information, not yours. They are responsible for child trafficking, forced labour, criminal and sexual exploitation, domestic servitude—not you. You know where the boundaries are, yet you still chose to cross them. You’ve been spending far too much time on this. You’ve managed to get one of your own friends hospitalised as a result of your inability to follow orders. Operation Scythe is a worthy cause, and we’re supposed to help where we can, not spend day and night on it. You’ve been
warned before. You’re neglecting your core duties and disobeying orders, Stone.” Verity Armitage paused for breath, her brow furrowed. “How dare you question me or attempt to influence my stance with those pictures.”
Iona ran her hands on either side of her ears and sighed. “I’m sorry, Director Armitage. You know this case is everything to me.”
Armitage scowled and shook her head. “There you go again, not listening. I tried to give you a chance. My last warning was supposed to be my way of helping you. But you ignored it, like you’re still ignoring me now.” Armitage riffled through her paperwork, stopping on a scrawled note she had made on a Post-it. “Did you know Maria Mathan, the missing girl, was only here to visit her father—a UK citizen and London native? He’s seen the events on the news. He’s been in contact, Detective Stone. He’ll probably appear on the TV appeal, and what do you think that will do to our reputation? Maria was here to fulfil a dream, and it’s turned into the worst nightmare possible for her. You were not supposed to be there. Then you chose to watch it happen. Do you know how this looks? You know the press will be lapping this up. I can’t protect you, Iona. I just can’t.”
Iona’s shoulders and neck wanted to sink into a hangdog submissive stance. What could she do? Argue the facts? The facts were clear enough. She couldn’t defend her actions, regardless of her motives. And the girl was still missing. Her flight had been replaying in Iona’s mind.
Iona knew she should have stopped her, regardless of self-preservation instincts. Iona sprung from her chair, clattering it into the glass wall. “I apologise to you and to the unit. Let me fix this. Let me find Maria Mathan. I have to make it right. I shouldn’t have been there, and I take full responsibility for that. I froze when I realised I’d screwed up. I was following a lead, Leo Jeffers, a lowlife petty criminal who’s been taking orders from someone we know. Remember Ryan Thistle? He works for Jimmy Kinsella.”
Armitage shifted uneasily in her chair. “Of course. Everyone knows Jimmy. An old-time gangster. He’s become a bit of a caricature. This isn’t his M.O, Stone, and you know it.”
“No. But Thistle is ruthless. He’d think nothing of it.”
“If Leo Jeffers really was working for Ryan Thistle on something like this, all hell would break lose. It wouldn’t happen, full stop. Not while Thistle is still working for Jimmy Kinsella. Jimmy wouldn’t allow it. Besides, why are you still talking? I’ve told you to drop this. It further compromises your judgement.”
Iona knew she was on shaky ground, but her director needed to hear how close she was to finally getting the breakthrough. She needed Armitage to understand. “I intercepted a number of calls. Leo arranged the robbery to help pay for a human trafficking exchange later that day. I wanted to catch him in the act. You know how hard this case has been. Every time I’ve gotten close, I’ve lost the trail. If this is linked to Operation Scythe, then there are no lengths that those higher up in the criminal chain wouldn’t go to. This was the big opportunity I had to bring someone connected to the network in for questioning, to help prevent further victims. You’ve seen what the organised crime network are capable of. They’ll want to avoid all connections to this robbery. Maria Mathan is at risk. She’s witnessed this bungled robbery, she’s seen her mum murdered—she has some evidence—”
“What evidence?” Armitage shrilled.
“A phone—one of the criminals dropped a phone.”
Armitage’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yeah. The girl had something in her hands. I asked her what it was. That’s when she said she didn’t trust me.”
“You talked to her?”
“I was stuck. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I couldn’t imagine what she’d just gone through. That’s why I’m so worried. I wasn’t thinking at the time, but now I realise it’s more than her safety on the street that’s an issue. She’s a witness, but she’s also got something that belongs to the criminals in the network that Operation Scythe is trying to bring down. You know as well as I do that phones are as good as DNA; it’s what we specialise in. Digital evidence is hard to argue with. They’ll kill her before she becomes a problem for them. I can’t undo what I’ve done, but let me try to put this right. Let me find her. I won’t let you down.”
Armitage learned back in her chair and tapped a heavily-chewed pen-tip against her dimpled chin. She seemed to be playing out the judge and jury routine longer than necessary. “No. I can’t do that. You won’t be finding anyone. You won’t even be doing the tasks you were assigned to do. It’s too late, Stone. I tried to help you, but you’ve screwed up too many times. I can’t justify members of my staff deliberately ignoring orders. Now you’re creating conspiracy theories involving criminals who have no interest in trafficking. I can’t condone one of my specialist officers interfering in tasks that are beyond their remit. What do you expect me to say when I’m asked why one of my officers was there, stood by, watched it happen, and then allowed a young, vulnerable girl to escape?”
“You know it wasn’t like that.” Iona wanted to lean across the desk and shake Armitage until she returned to her old self. What had happened to her mentor? Was grief really the only reason?
“Enough! You’re suspended, on full pay, pending an internal investigation. I’ll need your building access card. You can keep your warrant card; after all, you are still technically in our employment and may be called upon in an emergency. However, you are to leave this office and return home. Don’t come back until this process has finished.”
Cal
I first met him after my fifth therapy session, when I’d started to get the hang of the mindfulness programme. I’d come to realise that labelling therapy and counselling as hippy bollocks wasn’t really getting me anywhere. I never saw the point in therapists. I guess it’s since my mum shacked up with one when she was still married to my stepdad. No kid likes that. No kid likes the name-calling and beatings that come from having a messed-up family—and when the hippy tosser had tried to reassure me with new-age techniques that mostly consisted of answering any given situation with the words, ‘and how did that make you feel?’ I’d wanted to scream.
Being an Underground driver means you don’t accept help. Well, not the kind that anyone sees. Of course, the official lines are: seek help, you’re not alone and we’re here for you. But it’s just a front. They don’t mean it. Not really.
My co-workers don’t admit that they see therapists, but I see it in their short-notice medical appointments or their time off for family problems. Others rely on more accepted methods; alcohol (always off-duty, of course), cigarettes, vaping, coffee, or brain-frying legal highs. Sometimes I see it in the distracted eyes of those addicted to lifestyle-drugs: the freaks throwing themselves into gym memberships, the faithful tucked into the warm blanket of religion, the risk-takers gambling away their retirement, and the fad-dieters eating only food tasting of pulped chipboard.
In reality, we’re all avoiding the inevitability of seeking help—but better to fight it than to be seen as weak and unable to cope.
I’d struggled to deal with the numerous suicides—the jumpers. It’s no way to go. They say the suicide pits and platform barriers have helped, but they’re not everywhere. You can’t stop someone if they’re truly desperate, and I have seen an element of desperation in most faces.
My adult life, my job, had seemed like a world of oncoming darkness—until the station platforms where the blinding lights whitewash the faces of the commuters in shades of skeletal bones.
Each time there was a jumper, I always hoped it was the last. I was not alone in this. My work colleagues would join me as we tried to brush it off. Drinks. Banter. Talk about football. Forget about it. Talking is pointless. Talking is for the politicians and the weak. Talking might make the bosses doubt our competence to deal with it. What good is a twitchy Tube driver to anyone? We got enough stick as it was. Tube drivers? That’s easy money. Give me a job where I can sit on my arse for fifty K.
Do th
ey think about the hours in isolation? The stress of safety? The trauma of wondering when the next person will jump?
Reluctantly, I came to the harsh understanding that I was wrong about seeking help.
My job paid too well to quit it. What else would I do? What else could I do? I loved the Underground, the tunnels, the solitude, and the sense of living in another world while the daylight blinded the city-dwellers. I travelled the world beneath them, unseen, unheard, in perpetual darkness while they made their murky city dealings in the sunlight.
Above the ground the trees grew and people watched the leaves sway and the birds nest. But it was underground that the tree thrived, grew, and was nourished. And so it was with the city. When I realised this, I understood that I would never work as anything other than an Underground driver.
It was this or a life above ground. The slow death in an office. Sales targets. Expensive suits replaced because the lapels were not curved enough for this season’s fashionista critics. Customer Charters and Mission Statements, our company cares—it cares more than all the others, (with a higher level of insincerity and banal bullshit statements). No.
At least I had a guaranteed seat on the train every day.
My mentor, Serious Steve, tried to put me off from day one.
“Don’t do it, son,” he said during his first motivational talk.
“Don’t do what?” I replied. Wasn’t a mentor supposed to be an encouraging and positive role model?
“Train driving, you tool.” He gave me a look, a curious mix of exhaustion and anger.
