by Nick Jones
‘Where have you been,’ he said quietly, not hiding his anger at having to find her. ‘She wants to meet you.’
‘Who is she?’ Jen asked.
‘Government, high up, asked for you specifically.’
Jen felt a pulse push up through her temples. Government? Was this something to do with Callaghan? She was suddenly nervous and wished she could grab her coat and leave, forget the whole thing.
‘What’s her name?’ she asked, but it was too late. The woman turned her head and smiled and the men stopped talking.
‘Ms Logan, a pleasure,’ the woman said, stretching out her hand. ‘My name is Zido Zitagi. I have heard so much about you.’
Jen was sure she had never seen such perfectly straight hair. It was pulled back and pressed against the woman’s head and sculpted into a beautiful bob. Her outstretched hand looked doll-like, and when Jen took it she found it to cool to the touch, like porcelain. Ravenscroft towered over all of them. Before becoming a strategist with MI5 he’d been a copper and had conducted Jen’s initial interview. She always remembered him for ducking under doors. Since then, she had only seen him at regional briefings and the odd function. He was red-cheeked and looked drunk, or close to it. She didn’t know the other two men but suspected they were senior ranking officers from another region. They all seemed nervous. Jen guessed they didn’t know the woman either, but their attentive nature suggested they knew she was important.
Richards stepped in. ‘Ms Zitagi. As you know, Sergeant Logan has been with Duality – my department – for two years.’
Over three, you dick.
‘In that time, she’s been –’
‘Thank you, Chief Superintendent,’ Zitagi cut him dead. ‘I am going to steal Ms Logan away from you.’ Her eyes remained fixed on him, her expression cool and controlled. Richards’ mouth was open but no words came. He wasn’t used to being talked over. Ravenscroft was smirking.
Zitagi said, ‘Only for a short while.’ She turned to Jen and gestured towards a large spiral staircase leading to what appeared to be a cocktail bar above the main restaurant. ‘May I steal you away?’
Jen’s heart was racing, but she managed a confident nod and caught Richards scowling as they climbed the stairs, his face grey, jaw twitching. At the top of the stairs was an empty cocktail bar, no staff, and low lighting.
Zitagi turned, smiled and said, ‘I apologise for dragging you away from your friends and colleagues, but this is important.’
‘You asked to meet me specifically,’ Jen said. ‘Why?’
Zitagi nodded carefully. ‘You and I work for the same people, the same Government, but I…’ She paused and took a breath. ‘Well, let’s just say I work for a department with a unique remit.’
Zido Zitagi clearly didn’t believe in warming up her engines. They weren’t even going to sit.
She continued. ‘Your record. Four years National Service, relief work in India, Thailand. Five years US Military. Tactical Operations.’ She stopped deliberately, for emphasis. ‘Then back to England, the Met and then Duality.’
Jen nodded.
Zitagi’s gaze burned into her. ‘Initially that struck me as a little odd.’
‘That I should choose Duality?’
‘Yes. It’s a little… pedestrian, for a woman of your talents. But then it made sense to me. You are a woman of morals and principles. Duality is honourable work. I admire that.’
Jen nodded again. ‘Tell me more about what you do?’ she asked, trying to stay calm, pleased that so far Callaghan’s name hadn’t come up.
Zitagi smiled gracefully. ‘We have peace, but peace doesn’t last. History proves that, Ms Logan.’
‘Perhaps this time it will,’ Jen replied, sounding more argumentative than she had intended.
‘My job is to keep the peace we have fought so hard to attain,’ Zitagi shot back.
‘So why are you here tonight? Why do you want to talk to me?’
‘A good question.’ Zitagi leant forward and passed her a data card, eyes sparkling, mischievous and alive. ‘The right question.’
‘What’s on this?’
‘My details. Not many people get those.’
‘Why would I need to contact you?’ Jen asked defensively.
‘These are interesting times, Sergeant Logan… Transitional. Loyalties will be tested. I need people I can trust. People who are willing to stand.’
‘Loyalties?’
‘Duality has a leak, and it isn’t you.’
Jen processed the information, considering her response carefully.
‘With all due respect, Ms. Zitagi, how do you know you can trust me?’
‘Jennifer,’ she said formally. ‘Trust is earned. I am simply advising you. If there is anything you feel you think I should know, then please, call me.’
Her superiors words came to mind. Richards had a similar, slippery tone.
I would urge you to consider tonight an opportunity.
There was no time to think; the conversation was over. Zitagi shook her hand and left, walking away with an elegance Jen knew she would never have. This woman was intriguing but also worrying, pretty much in equal measure. Jen rejoined the group, wondering what their exchange had actually meant, unsure if Zitagi was the snake or the snake charmer. Richards’ head kept popping up over the crowd, searching for her. He would be desperate to cross-question her. The night went slowly after that. Zitagi appeared to have left shortly after their conversation. As people were leaving, Mac asked Jen about their meeting.
‘You know me, Mac,’ she said, brushing it aside. ‘I hate the political side of things.’
Jen waited until it was polite to leave and stepped out into the cold air, the weight of the data card heavy in her pocket. Zitagi’s arrival was no coincidence. It was obviously linked to Callaghan and her dream somehow, she just didn’t know how yet.
Duality, a leak? Jen doubted it. That all felt like an excuse, a way to intimidate her into sharing any hidden secrets. For the first time in months, Jen felt lonely. She considered calling Thomas but knew she would just be covering up the problem. She dialed Callaghan instead, on a secure line. Nothing.
She hung up and her thoughts returned to her dream. She hailed an auto-car, knowing what she needed to do. She needed to go back to the place she grew up, back to Brook Mill Farm and that churchyard. She just hoped that whatever her father had buried was still there.
Chapter 19
Just before eight on Saturday morning, Jen left her apartment and set off towards Oxford. The option of a flight into Brize Norton had crossed her mind, but that would mean easy tracking of her position. She wanted to at least try and do this without everyone knowing her whereabouts. She had packed an overnight rucksack and, despite the cold, decided to travel by motorcycle. Snow was forecast for Monday – Christmas Eve – but she planned to be back in London before then.
Home. It had been a long time.
Her journey would take in the rural zones, large areas of Great Britain exclusively designated to agriculture. People had abandoned the once-desirable countryside for the safety and security of the major towns and cities, UN Hibernation subsidies being the biggest incentive of them all.
In the cities, living was good. Jen could see it all around her. Affluence. It would be in stark contrast to where she was heading.
The solar embedded roads of greater London gave way to regular tarmac as she reached the outer checkpoints. Here, most of the vehicles were either carrying supplies or workers. She entered the priority lane and pulled up in front of a booth.
A droid asked her to flip her visor, its green light flashing across her retina.
‘Reason for travel?’ the droid asked.
‘Leisure,’ she replied.
Once past this checkpoint, if they wanted to know her whereabouts, they would have to track her. She still couldn’t believe she had to think like this. Her frequent use of the word they was worrying. Were they really now the enemy?
Th
e droid opened the barrier and Jen pulled away, the road ahead strangely quiet. To her left, huge buildings flashed gold, bathed in the reflective glow of the morning sun. She decided to make the most of the decent road surface and pushed her bike up a notch. Twenty minutes later and the buildings of the past were all but gone, replaced by fields of crop and huge processing plants. Every few miles small, town-like communities would appear, their sole purpose to house farm workers and technicians. Feeding the UK was big business.
Above her the vapour trails of light air travel were broken by a huge transport ship descending into an airport just south of Thame. She tucked her head down and rode on. Despite her heated clothing the wind chill was starting to eat at her bones. The sun had disappeared by the time she reached Burford, smothered by dark clouds that sat ominously over the old town. She remembered the tourist attraction it had once been, thought back to her childhood when she would beg her parents to take her to the old-style sweet shop there. Even then the town had been struggling, the shops slowly closing down, the city migration already underway. Aldsworth, her destination, was seven miles ahead, but out of curiosity she turned right, wanting to see the high street again. As she dropped down the sloping hill her bike’s tyres adapted to the road surface, which was potholed and uneven.
Burford was quiet. The Cotswold stone cottages lining the once-pretty descent were covered in ivy and some of the windows were smashed. She could see a few people, most of them wearing the familiar overalls of land workers. The shops she remembered were gone, closed up or converted into open-fronted garages housing machinery. The old-style country pubs she remembered were still standing, but only one appeared to be trading. It was tired looking with a cluster of street sellers plying their trade on the pavement outside.
She had heard stories of how the old towns were almost dead. They were right. This place was a ghost town. A group of workers eyed her suspiciously. Jen guessed they didn’t see many motorbikes this way, particularly modern electric ones. The atmosphere here was unnerving. It felt almost lawless, like something out of the Wild West films her father had enjoyed. Bad things could happen out here and no one would know.
Her thoughts returned to the job in hand. She turned the bike around and sped back up the high street. This time she didn’t look anywhere except ahead.
Just before the turning to Aldsworth, she pulled in and watched huge farming machines hovering over fields that stretched on for miles. They were the size of passenger aircraft, yet she could see at least nine. She noticed a group of men in white protective clothing hosing down what looked like a large harvester. The days of manned farming had ended years ago, but people were still needed to maintain and manage the process.
She was only three miles from home and her nervousness was tangible. Home was a place of mixed memories. She took a long, deep breath, closed her eyes and fired up her bike.
Chapter 20
As she pulled into the driveway, her heart sank. The entrance gate was hidden from view, tall grass pushing through its railings. The once-beautiful garden was now wild, the buildings suffocated in creeping ivy. Jen attempted to interface with the security and maintenance droid. They were built for longevity and she’d seen bots survive worse conditions.
Nothing.
Through the tall grass she could just make out the porch. She walked, crunching gravel and roots underfoot, pushing through the tough grass until something made her stop. There, wrapped in a tangle of weeds, was an old wooden sign. She tugged it free and brushed her hand across its rough flaking surface, the words BROOK MILL FARM still readable after all these years. She remembered the annual coat of paint her father would apply and how her mother kept saying they needed a new sign.
She looked up – windows smashed – the place worse than expected. Through a jagged hole in the roof a pair of birds appeared. They looked down at her before pushing off, wings cracking loudly, calling out. They flew gracefully overhead and out over the surrounding fields. The image took Jen back, in her mind, to the day she herself had flown from here.
It had been early morning, a week before her eighteenth birthday. As dawn light feathered through the wood she’d played in as a child, she stuffed her belongings into a rucksack and left Brook Mill for good. She remembered walking the driveway, crying for the lost years, closeness made distant by uncontrollable forces, a happy family torn apart by grief. Her plan of National Service wouldn’t be an easy ride – her mother would have tried to talk her out of it – but Jen was determined.
That legendary Logan determination.
She’d been told many times she possessed it, her father’s resolve. It was a compliment, but harder to hear in the weeks following his funeral.
She would imagine her sarcastic reply. ‘I’m sure he would be pleased to hear that. If only he had been more determined to stay alive, eh? He’s in the ground now, you see, so I can’t tell him… oh, yeah, he was determined to get six feet down. That legendary ‘Logan determination,’ get right down there, Daddy…’
She knew it wasn’t fair to take her loss out on other people. It wasn’t their fault. She just hated their sorrowful, pitying smiles and the ‘inner strength’ of it all.
Jen sighed, a thickness building in her throat. She stood on the overgrown driveway and watched the two birds until they were almost out of view. She often thought of her mother waking that day, discovering Jen gone. In her dreams she would go to her and they would hug and cry. Jen would thank her for all she’d done, tell her she understood her pain. The reality was not so kind. Jen had left her mother a long explanatory letter on the kitchen table, a neatly made bed and another empty space where love should have been. They hadn’t spoken since.
Some days you never forget.
Jen shrugged and sighed again. It was a long time ago.
She approached the front door and pushed it open, the smell of urine and long-term neglect leaking through the gap. How long had the place been empty? If the rumours were true, her mother had left a few years after Jen. She’d sold every possession, every piece of furniture, locked the doors and never looked back. Jen presumed Veronica Logan made it to her precious France and settled, perhaps even found love.
Brook Mill Farm was now like most properties in the area, abandoned and practically worthless. Jen stepped into the hallway and saw the security and maintenance droid propped up against the wall. It buzzed into life, its solar backup providing just enough power to produce an activity report which read like an apology. For the first few years it had managed the property well, but then the squatters arrived and some of its parts needed replacing. Jen didn’t need to read the remaining pages; she could see it for herself.
Upstairs, her mother’s bedroom door was closed. Jen decided to leave it that way and entered her old bedroom. The smell of urine was stronger here, with an odour akin to sour milk sitting thick above it. The dampness would get to you after a while; even the squatters had moved on. Her eyes drank in the forgotten familiarity, eventually settling on a small black air vent in the wall next to where her bed used to be. Seeing it, cracked and dusty like the old garden sign, transported her back in time again.
She recalled how her mother’s familiar sobs would drift from that vent at night and how disappointed she felt to hear them. No matter how much she tried to keep her mother’s mood buoyant, some days there was no avoiding the decline. When jobs were done and friends drifted away, when the dying embers of the fire gave up hope, the night tightened its suffocating grip on Veronica Logan. Lying in bed, Jen would hear her muffled sorrow and try to pick out words or phrases in the darkness, attempting to learn the shape of her mother’s grief. Occasionally the sounds would sharpen into something recognisable.
‘I told you not to go.’
And then her father’s name repeated over and over.
‘Jacob, oh Jacob. Not you. Why you?’
Once, Jen overheard her mother confiding in a friend. She had described the darkness as all consuming, explaining how it was worse
living out here now that people had left for the cities. The fields, the space, the peaceful garden – it had suited them once. The three of them. Her father, splitting his time between London and Cheltenham, was always home at weekends. Somehow, throughout all the troubles, the epidemics, the rationing and the hardship, their family life contained much happiness and love.
His death changed all of that. Life was never the same again. How could it be? Jen prayed that her mother’s grief might eventually subside, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, it settled on her, spreading like a dark stain on her heart. Jen had stopped going to her, learning from experience that any offer of comfort would be unwelcome, that her mother could no longer accept love even if she wanted to. Instead Jen would lie in the darkness and cover her ears, and in the muffled silence, watch the shadows of trees swaying and dancing across the ceiling, waiting for sleep to take her away.
The sound of scratching in the loft space sent the past drifting away like smoke pulled through a fan. Older, but just as alone, she was left feeling vulnerable and empty, second-guessing her decision to come home.
No more looking back, Jen. Time to move on.
She walked to the gable window, dodging animal droppings on the bare floorboards, and looked out. Below her she could see the wild garden and driveway, beyond that more buildings in a similar state. Her eyes drifted up and there, dark against the horizon, she saw it. The church steeple.
Her father had buried something there, something he wanted her to forget, something they wanted back. And tonight she was going to find out what.
Tonight she was going to dig.
Chapter 21
Nathan O’Brien raised the tranquillizer gun, took a deep breath and fired. This time his target stumbled, managed a weak groan and hit the ground hard. The man was Matthew Anderson, a news reporter for a London-based network, lured here on the promise of some dirt on a local politician. He was also the last person to see Nathan’s wife alive.
