by Phil Brett
Cole returned the look. ‘Comrades, we’re looking for Gita Devar.’
Our challenger stroked her three button sleeve, ‘Why?’ she demanded. Conversation, or at least any sentence longer than five words, was not the main thing here. Judging from how both were looking at Cole’s armband and at our party badges, I guessed that this was due to holding a somewhat suspicious attitude towards either party members or stewards. Or both.
‘We want to talk to her about Olivia Harrison. I don’t know if you are aware, but comrade Harrison has been murdered. We think she was killed by reactionary forces under the control of the former prime minister. Jackie Payne has asked us to look into it.’
If the intention to name drop Jackie was to impress them, it failed.
‘And what exactly are you looking into?’
You could have built a bridge in the deepest jungle from the amount of stilts in the stilted atmosphere in the room. Even the flowers were visibly giving up any attempt at life. I knew the feeling. But Cole was getting bored with this. No doubt, previously, she would have gotten out a rubber truncheon, but here she simply turned to the younger, smaller and slighter plumper of the two women, who unlike the translucent one, looked of Indian descent. She was wearing rather badly fitting jeans and a baggy jumper which wouldn’t have looked out of place on a trawler. Her hair was also black, but looked natural and was cut in a straight bob and tucked behind one ear, thus showing a very pretty, and large, collection of silver ear rings. ‘Are you Gita?’
She fiddled with her black glasses. I wondered if she was summoning up something in her micro-computer.
‘Maybe, but who are you? You've informed us of your grand mission but neglected to mention your names,’ she replied. Obviously, if there was a computer in those specs, she wasn’t looking up Dorothy Parker one-liners.
‘Victoria Cole, United Revolutionary Socialist Party; technician assigned to support and assisting the National Workers Council and, at present, doing so for Jackie Payne.’
Her reply had been so stiffly delivered that, for a brief second, I wondered if Cole expected the two women, and no doubt me as well, to salute.
The woman-we-suspected-to-be-Gita didn’t, but instead, in a tone which managed to be both quiet but still only a hair’s breath away from a sneer, said, ‘“Technical support?” So you used to be a pig?’
Cole, without shame, nodded. They exchanged looks. You didn’t need a degree in body language to know how these two sisters in front of us felt about her previous employment. The Police Federation wouldn’t be holding too many benefits for its unemployed members in this building.
‘And do you also give “technical support”?’ she asked, turning her attention to me.
Now that was a good question. Did I? Bearing in mind that my field of study had previously been the history of art, I wasn’t too sure. I mean, I could lecture all day about the role of Baroque art in the Catholic Church’s fight back against creeping Protestantism, but discussions on Bernini weren’t really called for here.
‘Er,’ I said profoundly, thinking of something to say. ‘I’m Pete Kalder; I’m a URSP member too.’
For a moment or two, all just looked at me, but then something happened behind Gita’s eyes. Maybe she was calling up my pithy lectures on mid-eighteenth century art, but certainly something registered. She turned to look at the other woman, who had the same look and mumbled, ‘Right.’ Maybe she was watching them too.
Might-be-Gita spoke, ‘Are you the Pete Kalder who was involved in the Alan Wiltshire thing? Got banged up for it?’
‘Er,’ I said, really flexing my conversational muscles, ‘yes, that’s me.’
‘Cool,’ she said, grinning. ‘Great to meet you. Good work, comrade.’ The coldness had lifted and genuine warmth sprang from her smile. Leaning forward, she held out her hand. A little bashfully, I shook it.
‘Taking down that piece of shit. In our world, you got a round of applause. Should have got a medal – if we believed in that sort of thing.’ She chuckled. ‘It was disgusting what your party did to you!’ She let go of my hand and shared a smile and appreciative nod with her ally, before using it and the anarchist nickname for us (oh so cleverly gleaned from our initials) to make at least a token political snipe. ‘Still, what do you expect from the Usurps?’ On getting no reaction, she introduced herself. ‘Yeah, I’m Gita, Green Anarchist Collective. This sister here is Emily Messager, she’s likewise. Messager, not messenger, she’ll be at pains to tell you.’
Emily Messager-not-Messenger chimed in with praise for me. She too smiled, leaning up and shaking my hand.
Neither did so for Victoria. She didn’t even get a smile. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Gita nodded to two chairs in front of them, although I got the distinct impression that they were only really interested in one of them being occupied. Cole didn’t get the hint, or if she did, she simply ignored it.
We both sat down, whilst they commiserated about Olivia’s death. They approved of her, it seemed, and made it plain that they did so not solely out of revolutionary solidarity but of personal feelings as well. I watched as both Gita and Emily spoke of Olivia as a woman, rather than merely a political representation. She was, they both said, funny and clever. Moody, they conceded, but nothing that ever lasted too long.
It was blatantly obvious to both Victoria and yours truly that it would be better if I asked the questions, so I asked how they knew her.
Emily quickly replied that, in truth, it was mainly through her work. ‘Olivia and I worked and agitated in similar spheres. I wouldn’t say we were friends, but we were on good enough terms to talk about matters other than politics. She’s got a couple of kids, hasn’t she? How are they going to take it? Do they know?’
I confirmed that she did have children and guessed that they probably didn’t yet know about their mother. My guess was that Nick, their dad and Olivia’s partner, would be the one to tell them.
Gita and Emily nodded, mumbling commiserations and a vague acknowledgement that they knew who Nick Morgan was. Keen not to show just how little knowledge I had about her life, I asked what sort of spheres she meant.
‘Energy. To clarify what Gita said, I’m a Green Anarchist, so obviously the debates in the movement about power, eco conservation and such like are of interest to me. I was elected to power sub-com a few months back. It was Olivia who proposed me, actually, I think as a consequence of the power-sharing - in both senses of the phrase - agreement. You know, let us Anarchos have a few toys of responsibility to keep us happy and out of trouble.’
Whilst her attitude had lightened a slight amount since our arrival, she was hardly kissy and cuddly. She suddenly stopped, like halting at a mistimed traffic light. She had nothing else to say, so I turned my attention to Gita. After all, she was the one we'd come to meet.
I let her experience, first-hand, my clinical, scalpel-sharp interrogation technique. ‘And how do you know her?’
Okay, that wasn’t a great start. But she was happy to talk. She seemed friendlier than Emily. Or at least slightly less inclined to wallop us.
‘Oh I’ve known Olivia for yonks. Pretty much for the same reason as Emily. I guess I first really met her, as opposed to know of her, three odd years ago, on some environmental campaign or other. Then we kept meeting on them. I always found her a decent soul. No one worked harder than she did, and many of us on the outside of the power industries were appreciative of someone on the inside who was so supportive. Whenever we had a protest, she’d organise her members from the union to join us. Eventually, we started to co-organise them. A good sister.’
She recounted numerous eco-actions they’d taken together. Whilst she did, I took off my overcoat before I overheated. Carefully folding it over the arm of the chair, I pondered whether to remove my jacket, whilst she reminisced over anti-fracking sit-ins, anti-nuke demos and pro-green energy campaigns. Eventually, I decided that it looked better on and checked that the bottom button was undone.
&n
bsp; Feeling a little more relaxed, if nothing else not feeling claustrophobic from sweltering in wearing winter coats indoors, I thought about what to ask next. Okay, Emily, Gita and Olivia were fellow environmental activists and had shared placards, but I didn’t feel that was the important thing here. Finding a pause, I changed direction. ‘She made a point of meeting you recently. What was that about?’
Gita didn’t appear to be put out by the question. Obviously my fame – or was it infamy? – gave me a certain licence to ask them questions. Even if I was a Usurp. She answered freely, ‘We’d lost contact for a while, you know, what with the chaos of the civil war. She remained in London, but I was sent to the Midlands to help out. I saw her again a month or so after it quietened down a bit.’ She smiled.
I wondered if they were hoping for me to leave the party and join them. Their admiration for my actions was allowing us to talk to them. If Victoria had been alone here, I had no doubt that chairs, flowers and lumps of flesh would be flying all over the place.
A recruitment speech didn’t, however, follow. Instead, Gita continued, ‘She popped into the AF centre, wanting to talk to people about the St. Paul’s bombing. Of course, you’ll remember full well that Parliament and their media puppets tried to pin it on us. That was the time when they tried to discredit us by accusing us of terrorism and to create a divide between you and us. They failed on both counts, but still, because of that, some sisters and brothers were a bit touchy about talking about it. Let’s face it, it was recent history and we’d been fighting for lives in the civil war, so it was hardly surprising that it wasn’t a popular topic of debate. But I thought smatters, I thought her a decent sister, so I spoke to her.’
I smiled. ‘Smatters’ brought back happy memories of my daughter Lisa. It was, for a time, her favourite word which, she had informed me in a tone of someone talking to a complete imbecile, was short for what does it matter? For a second or two, I zoned out and remembered my dear daughter, so cruelly killed in that car crash. If I hadn’t lost control on that Italian road, would she have been an anarchist like the young woman in front of me? Or would she be a party member, or even, just to annoy me, a supporter of the replaced parliament? Nah, she would never have been that, even to piss me off. She would have been an anarchist, sitting here with Gita, giving off attitude.
But the present was calling me and I turned back to Gita, who was explaining what had actually had happened with the St Paul’s Cathedral bombing.
‘We had quickly been able to find who had set us up. Disgustingly, it turned out to be people actually in the Anarchist Federation. Two special branch officers, posing as a couple, had managed to get some of our national organisers to the vicinity of St Paul’s. We heard it was under the pretext to discuss further army desertions. Special Branch timed the bombings so that there could be footage splashed across the media of the national organisers at the scene.’
Emily joined in, virtually spitting with bile, ‘They couldn’t give the reason which had got them there, because there were members of the armed forces joining us. Before it could be investigated further, our organisers were murdered by state forces in an ambush.’
‘What happened to the infiltrators?’
‘They got lucky and heard somehow that they had been found out. So they crawled off to hide under some rock before we could do some Kalder justice on ‘em.’
Inwardly, my wincing competed with smiling at her comment.
‘But it was pretty much wrapped up as to who and how it was done. Olivia kept asking if there had been anyone else, but there wasn't. That particular sewer had been thoroughly cleaned.’
‘You don’t think there were others?’
She shook her head. ‘Nah, not with that thing, but as for elsewhere in the Federation, yeah, I’d guess there are. I’d bet that’s true in the Usurps too, wouldn’t you?’
I gave a non-committal movement of my head. ‘Was she convinced?’ I asked.
‘Not really. That’s why I arranged, in the following week, for her to meet Emily here. Emily had known the couple so she can claim the credit for unmasking them.’ Gita’s voice retained its hatred. ‘I didn’t really know them that well. Oh, I’d seen them about at various things and I knew that they had been elected to be our lead organisers working with the armed forces, but nothing stood out as being remarkable or odd. I would love to say that there were suspicions, but there weren't any. As it turned out, they were not militant eco-warriors but agents of the state.’
‘So how did you find out?’
‘Organising that meeting so close to St Paul’s was a risky operation. The National Committee asked me to look into why our sisters and brothers had met there in the first place. I looked into their past history, or alleged past, and found obvious holes in it. But before I could take it to the NC, they fled.’
‘And that was it?’ I asked, after she had finished. ‘Olivia was satisfied?’
Gita spoke again. ‘We thought so, at the time. Neither Emily nor I heard anything more about it. I would regularly see her here, but we never talked of the matter. That is until a month ago, she called and said she wanted to ask both of us some more questions. I thought it was well odd, and I told her that I had nothing else to say, but she was insistent, so we met here.’
I could feel excitement taking to the battlefield against the medication, or at least I thought I could locate where such a feeling should be. ‘What did she ask?’
‘More about the couple,’ Gita replied. ‘She wanted to know what particular group they were in. You know: were they green anarchists, in the Marxist As, United War against Class, et cetera, et cetera? To be honest, I wasn't sure. I'd only hadn't known them that well.’
‘I did,’ interjected Emily, quietly. ‘Both were in the Industrial Rebellion, a small group who think we should be more strident, and I have to say, more violent, in our activities. They’re based mainly in London. Olivia was very interested in the group. Obviously, she had vaguely heard of them. She wanted to know in what areas they were strong. I told them, for the most part, the young unemployed. She was quite pressing.’
‘Yeah,’ Gita replied. ‘She questioned us for a good part of an hour, if I remember correctly; wanted to know how they joined and what they were responsible for. She also wanted to know if they had any links with industry, but, like Emily said, their group is mainly from the unemployed. I told her that I knew a few in the public sector housing in south London and . . .’
She continued for a minute or two with a membership list of the group. I tried to look interested.
‘She seemed disappointed,’ Emily interjected, saving me from losing the will to live.
‘Why?’ I asked her, regaining my interest.
‘No idea, but she wanted to know where the couple worked. What jobs they had. I told her that the treacherous scum who should face the death penalty.’
Again, I felt a look, the look, the look of respect. I was fast becoming a pinup for firing squad sentencing.
‘Posed as the unemployed. They didn’t have jobs. Or pretended not to.’
‘What were their names?’ I asked. Maybe this Bonnie and Clyde of MI5 had killed Olivia. Perhaps she had located them.
Without blinking – perhaps her eye-studs were getting heavy? – Emily told us, ‘Ian and Maria Gibbett-Hope. Should’ve guessed they weren’t for real – with a double barrelled name.’
‘Indeed, that was the give-away,’ I muttered, unable to keep the sarcasm hidden at the belief that it was that easy. Before they had any chance to halt any cooperation, or Messager giving us a head butt whilst the smaller Gita worked on our kneecaps, I thought it best to growl, ‘Bastards!’ After further displaying my disapproval of class-enemies, I asked if they could give us any more details about the pair.
‘Not offhand, but I could send it to you.’
For the first time in a while, Victoria spoke. ‘Send it to a comrade Roijin Kemal. She can see if she can find anything about them.’
Gita a
nd Emily stared at her.
‘Another “technician”.’ I grinned, before shrugging with my shoulders in a way that said what-can-you-do?
My puppy dog look must have worked, as they didn’t even challenge Victoria when she pointed her phone at them and transmitted Kemal’s number. Knowing VC here, she had just scanned Gita’s phone and tech glasses at the same time.
The thought hadn’t appeared to have occurred to either Gita or Emily, and just as surprisingly, they didn’t enquire as to what this Roijin might be able to do. They probably had an inflated view of the power of the likes of us and thought we were snooping on one and all. The reality was - even though these two would never believe it – we hadn’t, didn’t and would never want to, run a state like that. I doubted actually, that we even had the know-how. We'd struggle to steam open a letter.
Gita glanced at her phone and nodded, before taking up the baton of story-telling duties. ‘So, anyway, she left. And, as Emily said, she was obviously disappointed. Whatever she had wanted to find out, she hadn’t.’
‘Was that the end of the matter?’ I asked.
Gita shook her head. ‘A couple of days ago, she contacted me, but I was out of the country. We talked over the phone, but she said that she didn’t want to go into details. She wanted to do it in person. She’d tell me where. We arranged to meet when I got back. She was very determined about that. Almost demanding to talk to me, which, I have to say, was unlike her. Normally, she was as nice as pie. I s’pose, on retrospect, she was worried. Tense, even.’
‘And you have no idea what about?’ I asked.
