by Phil Brett
It was the latest in a series of provocative acts which were designed to force the NWC into drastic anti-democratic actions which the perpetrators hoped would cause a backlash, thereby destabilising the workers’ state. It was all part of their strategy, and five workers had lost their lives because of it.
We left the NWC car park and headed home.
10. Dianthus barbatus
It didn’t take too long to decide on the day’s threads because, even after bribing two-doors-down Steve with some chocolate in exchange for his extra wardrobe, I only had limited hanging space for suits and shirts. Neither guests nor staff had been overly concerned at the situation. Depending on to whom I had been speaking, I had been fobbed off and told that it was too petty for consideration or that it was a sign of my alienation, which shouldn’t be pandered to. Or that it was pointless because I didn’t need smart clobber in this place. All were true, in principle, but beside the point.
I scanned what I had brought with me and tried to decide on what would be best. Apart from the minor matter of what might be awaiting Victoria and me today, there was also the weather. It had now dropped to -13, so thin layers weren’t going to be much good. That said, chunky woollies would be too hot and sweaty if we were inside and, in any case, they weren’t really me. On the other hand, there might be a lengthy power strike, so even if we were indoors, I’d be cold.
Whilst deliberating the sartorial challenge of the day, the early morning news was of the National Workers Council of Portugal, who had declared that they had no faith in their parliament and were demanding that it be disbanded. The alliance of various revolutionary, radical and green organizations enjoyed both the support of most of the major workplaces and a slight majority in the Portuguese Parliament. This, they felt, gave the demand legitimacy. Tomorrow, there would be an online national plebiscite whether to keep or disband the institution. The elegant newsreader pointed out that the plan was controversial in the extreme, with criticism coming from both the left and the right. Not surprisingly, the minority prime minister called it a coup by social media, arguing that the home of democracy was being overthrown by just a touch of a screen. Despite supporting our sister organization, we had some reservations over the use of the plebiscite. Effectively, though, whatever their tactics, they were following us in a workers’ revolution. Whatever the nature of the media coverage or the pundits who were wheeled out to pontificate, and whoever controlled it, or them, everyone was agreed that this was a momentous point in history. The alliance of powers, headed by the US and China, to isolate us was cracking.
As important as I knew it to be, and as inspiring as it was to see jubilant crowds in Lisbon and Porto, I was as excited as a kid on his first date with my day release. I’d had a good night’s sleep, completely dream-free, and felt more awake than I had been for months. Then again, on these meds, I usually did. I had no doubt though that my feeling of positivity was due to the fact that I had something real to do.
Even my most recent chat with the good doctor Sarah Brakus had been okay. She’d been up when I returned the previous night, and after pointing out that I was fourteen minutes late, she had called me into her office for a cocoa and a session of hugging a cushion or, as she described it, a discussion about my ‘position in regard to my inner and outer world’. She had told me that Jackie had consulted with her and a couple of her colleagues about whether I was in any fit state to take on such a stressful task. To my surprise – actually, make that shock – they had said I was, as long as I was given support and not put into any possible violent confrontations. For a moment, I wondered what parallel universe they lived in, where they thought that investigating a murderous MI5 agent, or more likely murderous agents, would lead to anything but possible violent confrontations. Still, it had been agreed: my terms of ‘support treatment’ would be temporarily relaxed, although the planned scale-down of my medicinal support would be put on hold whilst I helped in the enquiry. The relevant committee would be set up to monitor my progress.
Which was why, at quarter to eight on a cold winter’s morning, I was in my dressing gown deciding what to wear. In the end, I plumbed for a three-piece heavy tweed suit, a thick red button down shirt, brogues and my warmest overcoat. With it, a thick scarf and Breton cap.
Putting them on and checking that, first, the waist coat was straight and then my cap was at a suitably jaunty angle, I said goodbye to Red, who was enjoying the warmth of my duvet. I left my room and crossed the lounge. Mark Groves was where he usually was, in front of the monitor's image, doing what he normally did: haranguing us or those whom he perceived to be allied to us. This time, he was muttering one of his favourite recent ‘jokes’: ‘Soviet weather for Soviet times.’
I must have been feeling chipper because today I didn’t feel the need to argue. Instead, I gave him a nod and grabbed a coffee. By the time I was washing the cup out, I saw Cole’s car rapidly pulling up. Dead on 8am. As arranged. She stayed in the car, whilst I left Groves mumbling racist abuse to the population and to those of the Iberian Peninsula in general.
The community hall where it had been arranged for the Community Information Meeting to take place wasn’t that far from the car park where Olivia had been murdered. On the way, Cole had questioned me about what Brakus had said and what we had discussed. I fended her off with vague generalities. We might be what you might call colleagues, but we were not friends. We weren’t yet at the point where we’d be going ten-pin bowling together. The question nagging at the back of my head, beneath the rather stylish cap, was whether I considered us comrades or not. Once, the answer had been simple and would have involved a number of expletives, but now I wasn’t so sure. I guess, in practice, we were. Nonetheless, it was a question which I put to one side to ponder more seriously at a later date.
Without noticeably reducing speed, we swung into a tiny car park. The hall was attached to a small church, which probably had once been the local village parish church. Centuries later, it, like so many, had found itself smack in the middle of a London borough, this particular one being in the south west of the capital. Despite being early, there was only one space free. Either we could expect quite a sizeable meeting, or the local vicar had organised early morning bingo.
En route, Cole had felt the need to tell me in tedious detail that there had been a lengthy discussion about the location for this meeting – should it be at the NWC, or local to Harrison's home or where she was killed? For some unknown reason, she thought I would be interested in this. Our arrival saved me from an analysis on why this particular church had been chosen by Cole performing a fine impression of how to take a pit stop at a Grand Prix – hitting the space at speed and then leaping out the car.
Maybe she was keen for a chat with the vicar over the meaning of Book of Revelation. You never knew with Cole. She briskly strode towards a tall, slim, middle-aged white woman. Getting out the car in less of a rush, I noted a white strip under the chin of the woman. So this was the vicar. For some reason, she was standing in the middle of the car park. Directing her flock no doubt. I took my time joining them and quickly discovered that, yes, it was the vicar and, no, she wasn’t educating Cole on the Holy Book. Instead, she was telling Victoria that it was okay to park there and that the meeting hadn’t yet started.
We thanked her, smiled, and then headed inside as quickly as we could, avoiding the whip-crack of the cold. I sincerely hoped that the woman of the book had been able to swing it with Him upstairs and the hall had heating. Entering the hall, it was apparent that she had. The heating was thankfully on, although the twenty or so people who were already here had felt the need to keep their coats on because He wasn’t being exactly over munificent in the radiator department.
After showing our ID and proving that we had been invited, I looked around the room. It was your usual standard community hall with over-bright bulbs which cruelly showed the need for a new lick of paint on the walls. Standard – and pretty much timeless – issue blue plastic chairs li
ned up in rows. I’d been in places such as this half my life. The subject of the meetings had changed, and so had the size of the attendance. Some things had stayed the same, mind. Up front was the ubiquitous table, always with drinks: water during the summer; coffee during the winter; anti-freeze during this winter.
Circling the meeting on pitted notice boards were posters of worthy causes. In the past, they'd often been amusingly out of sync with the nature of the meeting. But, with the upturn of industrial and political activity, every community had been radicalised, with action being seen as the norm, so the distance between them and us had lessened. Indeed, the party, despite being an atheist organisation, now included not only sizeable numbers of people from all faiths but also a few priests, Imams, rabbis and vicars. Was our friend here a member? Or just community minded? The posters weren't much help in answering that, as they advertised 24-hour communal canteens and crèches and quoted the NWC on how child-care was for everyone. Others listed the services of the church next door, the mosque up the road and the synagogue ten minutes’ walk away.
Just then, the vicar rushed in, and in that very polite and always slightly out of breath way which all Church of England clergy seem to have, apologised and raced to front. What she was apologising for, only God knew. She joined a young black guy who was busy with the imaging. The 2D was fine, but the 3D presently had three pencil-thin ten metre creatures with long necks jerkily moving across the front. So, unless we were linking up with the Milky Way in solidarity with our alien brothers, the perspective was awry. The vicar remained calm, polite and out of breath. He, less so, with an internal battle of irritation and surrender taking place over the joys of technology.
To their left sat another white woman. She was studying what, from my angle, looked like an agenda, so I presumed she was to be the chairperson of this meeting. Certainly, she had that nervous expectation that those about to chair had. She boasted an enormous amount of black wavy hair and a jumper which you could insulate a house with. She appeared to be totally oblivious to any technical blips or the efforts which were being made to solve them. Instead, she was talking into the air, I presumed into to her handless phone. Alternatively, she was talking to herself. I hoped, for the smooth running of the meeting, that it wasn't the latter. Chairpersons with delusions could really muck up the agenda. That was one thing I had learnt from the Anchorage. It wasn't always an Anchorage guest doing it, either.
The customary game of when first arriving at a meeting is to play ‘where shall we sit?’ The opening moves are to hover and look each way, as if about to cross a busy road. Those with added finesse would nod hello to people they knew, or thought they knew. Finally, you would either sit at the end of a row, thereby obstructing people taking the middle seats, or in the middle, pushing past those on the end. But Victoria Cole wasn't the type to play games. Instead, she just saw two seats right at the front and sat down. I might have guessed she’d be that sort. No hiding at the back for her. I followed and looked around. The hall was filling up quickly, with roughly half the hundred seats taken.
At least my inexperienced colleague couldn’t spoil the next game: watching people come in and watching them deciding where to sit. Would they sit with friends, comrades, colleagues or people they’d brought? Would they seek security with fellow members from their political persuasion, or would they fan out to make it seem like their politics were rooted in the community? Most appeared to be grouping, which I presumed reflected the fact that this was not an open public meeting. People had been invited because they represented certain groups with an interest in the investigation, or those needed in the pursuance of the investigation, which was the point of the Community Information Meeting. It was rather depressing that Victoria suggested I save two seats for Roijin and Asher. So, I was in the Cop Sect. Great.
As people came in, I always liked to guess their politics. Some, like Cole, were easy because they were wearing party badges. I could see a group of a half dozen Green Socialists arrive, followed by a couple of Democratic Lefts. Of course, some would not be actively aligned with anyone, although in days like these that was growing ever more unusual. Sometimes, one clue to their allegiance could be their attire, but right now we all looked like Arctic explorers, so this was more difficult than usual. In any case, it was a pretty hit-or-miss method, as people usually saw how I was dressed and thought I was a conservative from a public relations company, rather than a sharp, if aging and rather vain, revolutionary.
My other impressive array of techniques for 'guess-the-politics' was stopped when Gita Devar and Emily Messager entered the room. After proving to those at the door that they weren’t groupies of early morning meetings in cold, badly furnished halls, they looked around, doing the 'where to sit' game. They decided to do so at the back. Gita gave me a slight smile and a nod of acknowledgment.
Others followed who I did not recognise, nor could I guess the reason for them being there. One I did recognise was Youssef Ali, who shuffled rather than walked in. He looked grey, with his mind far away. He chose the end seat of the only empty row.
We'd been waiting for over a quarter of an hour and a sense of restlessness in the hall was growing. The big haired, chunky jumper woman now had stopped talking to her phone - or her phone - and spoke to the young man next to her. With our vicar pulling an apologetic face and departing, I guessed that the technical hitch had been as sorted as it would ever be. I predicted meeting lift-off in thirty seconds.
‘Okay, sisters and brothers, we should make a start,’ announced the chairperson, in an accent which sounded Polish. And we had lift-off! It was probably just as well that we were starting, because my scarf was almost throttling me whilst I rubber-necked the people attending. I turned back to face the front. The 3D image remained distorted, but the 2D was clear. The chairperson began to set out the lengthy agenda. Twelve points in all, resembling the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I should have brought a sleeping bag.
At that moment, the rest of the bad company I was keeping trooped in. Roijin and Asher arrived, warmly greeting Victoria and coldly blanking me. Asher all but grimaced when he discovered that he would be sitting next to me and not his beloved Detective Cole. Likewise, mate.
The chairperson introduced the young man next to her as Michael Parker, who I found out was a fellow party member. He stood. He was an attractive man: tall, slim and wearing a denim jacket over a black roll neck. His black skin didn't have a line on it, and with his high hairline, cut in a straight line, and flattened cheek bones and sparkling eyes, it gave him the appearance of being a male model. He explained that he worked and lived in the area and would start the meeting by briefly explaining what had happened and why we were here. He did so in a clear, articulate way.
Once he had finished, he sat down. The chairperson thanked him and announced that Jackie Payne, although unable to attend, did want to address the meeting. ‘Technology allowing’, she would be doing so in a minute or two. With that, a rather shaky 3D image appeared. The president was standing in front of the table. Jackie was wearing a pair of black trousers and a light-weight flecked cardigan over a white shirt. It didn’t look nearly enough to keep her warm.
Fashion analysis was interrupted by the noisy arrival of someone planting themselves at the front desk between the chair person and Michael Parker. Parker silently nodded a hello. Chunky hair and knitwear wobbled with the crashing arrival. I groaned. This just got better and better. It was surprising that our late arrival had made such an entrance, with him physically being a lanky piece of piss and possessing the personality of a blank sheet of paper. Making himself comfortable, he scratched his head, slightly ruffling his hair, which had evidently been cut with garden secateurs. Knowing how little he cared for appearances, I’d guess that either he had cut it himself or there was an offer on at the barbers. His pale face resembled a stoat, as did his body, from which a pair of slim jeans and a worn puffer jacket hung. He looked positively brittle next to her. I would be perfectly happy
for her to snap him in half. She could put that on the agenda. For it was Glen Bale. Just great. Glen bloody Bale.
Bale had been in the United Revolutionary Socialist Party for nearly as long as I had, but that was perhaps the only thing we had in common. If I was feeling so inclined, then I would maybe admit that an unusually large number of people rated him. He was clearly a leading member, not just in the particular industry he hailed from – Information Technology – but in the revolutionary movement as a whole. He was widely respected and was a hot tip to getting elected onto the party’s Central Committee. Personally, I found him a bore. My last ditch hope that he was here to fix the imaging was a forlorn one. He was too top dog for that. He was already a bright light in the NWC and an executive member. Indeed, he had been thought of highly enough to have been personally chosen by Jackie to be on the committee tasked with organising against the counter-revolution last spring. That was when I had last had dealings with him. I had even, at one point, investigated the possibility of whether he himself had been acting for MI5. Sadly, he hadn’t been, and a fine chance to have him locked away had been lost. As always, meeting him had been a pain in the arse. He found me a cynical, unreliable, shallow dilettante. I, in turn, thought him smug, dull and one dimensional. Not surprisingly, he hadn’t visited me at the Anchorage. Or even sent a card.
