by Phil Brett
Behind the desk – it was just too chic to call it a workstation – was a slim, sharply dressed woman sipping a cup of coffee. Hugging her chest was a white, tight-fitting, pure wool jumper with black hoops and a round neck. A string of white pearls hung from the neck. Neck and pearls both clearly stated elegance. Under the desk, you could see slender legs flowing from a short black skirt. As we approached her, she followed us with her eyes whilst continuing to drink from the china cup of coffee. Cole had been given a cursory glance, enough to sum her up and then dismiss her. I now had her full attention. She might be the epitome of cool, but my heart was improvising a cardiac arrest.
In front of her were two chairs. Cole hesitated. I didn’t. I unbuttoned my coat and carefully hung it on the back of one of them and sat down before being asked to. I was trying to match her power vibe. And not shake too much. Cole joined me in sitting.
Sophie Humes didn’t appear intimidated either by my little act or by being outnumbered. With a gesture to the cup, she uttered her first words on us entering there. ‘Excuse me.’ Not that she was in any way asking for our patience. With studied care, she put the cup on its saucer.
‘No problem. I wouldn’t mind one myself,’ I smartly said.
I could feel Victoria’s eyebrows rise, but I knew that Sophie here was playing a role. That was why the poor secretary had to meet us at the lift to guide us all of ten metres, and that was the purpose of the coffee. She was in control – that was the message. I had a message too.
A smile flickered across her lips. ‘Of course. Can we get you anything, Ms Cole?’
Victoria declined.
Humes touched the projection, which no doubt was crystal clear and from a computer that was top of the range, and spoke to her secretary. ‘Lucy, could you be a sweetie and get a medium cup of coffee; choose our best one. Not too much milk. No sugar. Thanks.’
Her smile lengthened just a fraction, making her look younger than her 42 years. She wore a touch of makeup, which made no attempt to hide the emergence of lines, and her lips had only the faintest of purple. Her black hair, which hung down the left side of her neck, showed no sign of grey. Dyed, then.
‘So, Pete Kalder and Victoria Cole, how can I help? I cannot imagine what brings you here at such time.’
It was Cole who answered. I would have preferred it to be me, but maybe my colleague wanted to send a body language memo of her own. ‘We have been asked by the National Workers Council to look into the murder of Olivia Harrison, a senior elected official in the energy industry. We are working closely with the Battersea Council where the murder took place. We are directly under the direction of Jackie Payne.’
The door opened. Smoothly, the secretary came in, passed me the coffee and left. It had almost been like a ballet; one single graceful movement.
‘So, exactly what power do you two . . .’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry, I am not, I can’t, call you comrades. So, what power do you two people have?’
‘As, I explained, Pete and I have been—’
‘Yes, Ms Cole. I understand from what authority you speak. You have explained that quite adequately. But I am still not clear what power you have.’
Their eyes locked.
Victoria replied, ‘Under Rule 134B of the Community Policing Motion, passed July 24th of last year: “Those people chosen by the appropriate workers’ council to investigate any anti-social or anti-working class activity will be given powers appropriate to the task”. This was amended by the Stewarding Act, which temporarily gives us similar powers previously used by the police service.’
‘So, basically, you are the police – without the uniforms.’
That provoked Victoria into a lengthy explanation of how accountable we were. She needn’t have bothered. Humes couldn’t have given a damn. She was still playing the game. Whilst she listened, she once more picked up her cup and finished her coffee. Although she, out of high-profile politeness, looked at Victoria whilst she spoke, occasionally she would take a sly look at me. I pretended not to notice and drank mine.
Deciding that she had dangled the string for long enough, she got serious. ‘Okay, so you have made it crystal clear which proclamations allow you to wield power. So the question is: how can I help you?’
‘Firstly, could you tell us what exactly is your job?’ Cole asked.
Humes answered in a manner somewhere between a declaration and an announcement. ‘I would have thought you would have found that out before coming here, Ms Cole.’
Mrs Humes paused just long enough to convey surprise at such inefficiency, before answering in a voice she probably used when explaining something to someone several fathoms lower down the pay scale. When such things had existed. ‘I am the senior manager of extraction areas of D5 and E1. I am sorry that sounds so Orwellian, but talk to your National Workers Council about that. Basically, I was on the board of directors for the British division of Hague Extraction, and then the new workers’ state . . .’ she articulated the words as if they had been dipped in arsenic, ‘decided that it would be useful to keep me here to continue managing the sectors whilst the handover of control continues.’
‘But what exactly is your job?’
She replied to Cole as if it had been the dumbest question ever asked. ‘To manage them, Ms Cole. Hague extraction had twelve plants. I have been given two more from what used to be our rivals, Mirza Power. Managing them involves ensuring that they have adequate staffing levels and ensure their smooth running in these, shall we say, difficult times. So I coordinate safety checks, extraction levels and so forth. How exact would you like me to be, Ms Cole?’
Sabres were rattling. Time for peace. I also didn’t want to appear to be Victoria’s pet monkey. ‘I think we understand, and we appreciate you finding time to meet us,’ I said, trading fake politeness with her. ‘So, when was the last time you met with Olivia Harrison?’
She didn’t check a diary, or consult a lackey, or even pause to reflect, but answered immediately: ‘The 15th of last month. Of course, I’ve met Olivia Harrison several times, which I would assume wouldn’t surprise you, because, as you say, she was the senior elected official for the energy sector. Her position in the regime meant that our paths often crossed. On the 15th, she summoned me to her office at the National Workers’ Council. I remember it well because that was the first time I had been there. And, hopefully, the last. I must say that it seemed rather chaotic to me. Still, it was an interesting experience. Everyone was polite and well meaning, but I wasn’t overly impressed by the efficiency being shown there. Harrison wanted to discuss the future of the extraction industry. I found her to be well informed and highly intelligent.’
‘What sort of things did you discuss? How the process works? Its dangers?’
‘I did not need to. She knew the basics, and I should point out to you, as I did to her, that our safety record can match other forms of energy production. But Harrison knew that too. She wanted to know the maximum output we could produce. I provided the figures for the past three years. Even during the past upheavals, we have kept producing. We could, I believe, if there was the political will, increase it by 10%, but because the anti-fracking brigade have been so successful in their propaganda campaign, I do not see much possibility in that. Quite the opposite, which is what, in the main, she wanted to talk to me about. The negativity being shown to various power providers since . . .’
She wanted to say coup, she so wanted to say coup, and left me waiting for her to say it, but after the tease, she continued, ‘. . . since the NWC took power has led to us to encounter several operating problems. Absenteeism has rocketed, causing problems with maintenance, monitoring and management. What Ms Harrison was keen to avoid was a haphazard and dangerous running down of the extraction plants. She, to her credit, said that when the NWC orders their termination, she wanted a sensible and controlled scale down.’
‘I thought fracking was finished. Resources gone. Political will gone.’
‘Peter, I would
have to confess that I disagree with two of those three sentences’.
‘We're not here to debate energy policy with you, Sophie. What I don't understand is that Olivia was interested in how to safely run down the fracking, but yet she also asks how you can improve productivity?’
She flicked an imaginary speck of dust off her desk. Although there wasn’t the slightest hint of any such material in this rarefied throne room. In a tone pouring with condensation, she replied, ‘I know this might upset you, but one of the qualities which she had was that she was an extremely competent manager. She was inclined to close us down because of fears about contamination and geological damage, but her job was to run the industry in the meantime, as efficiently as possible, and that meant seeking my help.’
She stopped and looked at me. Cole looked at her and then me, probably wondering why Humes appeared to be paying moi so much attention. Was it my boyish charm, the dead cool hair cut, or my shirt?
Cole returned her focus back to Humes. ‘Could you give us a brief explanation of how the actual process of extraction works?’
Perhaps because she felt Victoria was beyond being patronised, Mrs Humes spoke in an authoritative voice. She explained how the gas was extracted from the deep shale formations by drilling and how that process had been refined as the more accessible reservoirs had started to run out. Either from a concern that the technical vocabulary might obscure what was ostensibly a simple process or that she basically thought us a little dumb, she took care to explain it as clearly as she could. We were even were favoured with definitions of anything which we might not understand.
When she had finished what she had charmingly called her idiot’s guide, she waited for questions. We didn’t ask any; we were looking for a killer not thinking about setting up a fracking plant. I was interested on how the industry was organised.
‘Well, the day after we woke up to discover that we were no longer a parliamentary democracy, all the energy companies were informed that we were to be nationalised. As you know, we are now one big happy family under the auspices of the power workers’ section of the NWC. Ms Harrison was elected the “commissar”.’ She made a face indicating that a word had just slipped out, something which she had not intended. Of course, she had. She was having a dig. Nonetheless, she corrected herself and gave Olivia her correct title. ‘Sorry. I should say that Ms Harrison had been elected National Organiser of all Energy Resources. Under her are regional . . .’ she paused, but decided that having made the commissar quip once already, it would be gauche to repeat it, ‘. . . organisers who work with the management teams for each plant.’
‘Would Olivia have had much personal contact with the different extraction plants?’
‘I’d have to be honest and say yes, she would. As I previously said, I found her to be very able, and – dare I say it? – professional in her management of the energy industry as a whole, including the extraction wing. We are a beast that has many tentacles and she did a good job controlling it. She worked hard, and from what I hear, was very visible on the ground. And, of course, underground.’ She smiled at her witticism. No one else did. ‘She was someone who liked to see things first hand and talk to people face to face. She also understood the possible risks which her politics could bring.’
‘What risks?’ I asked.
‘The ones I mentioned earlier: that the industry was being run down too rapidly, with many of the staff refusing to work for a regime they didn’t believe in and in an industry they think is doomed because the regime doesn’t believe in it.’
Cole asked her if Olivia had given her any ideas as to how this might be resolved.
‘She indicated that the NWC fully intended to honour its commitment that all power employees in the fossil fuel and nuclear industry would be redeployed, and that the state would look after them. I know that she held meetings, big and small, to convey that message. So, congrats to her on that. She also made assurances that the council would continue to transfer engineers with comparable skills to add support to any industry which required them. That, I have to say, is where she does lose points; it is simply not the case that understaffing has been addressed. In some places, it is chronic.’
‘What was Olivia’s view?’ Cole asked.
‘She didn’t care to share that with me.’
Feeling tiredness weighing down on me, I decided to wind the meeting up. ‘Did she ask about the South Downs Extraction plant, in particular?’
‘No, that’s Zone B3, different area. Actually, I did raise with her these bureaucratic designations we have. I pointed out that we did have such things as counties, and that they could be called Hampshire or Northumberland, unless, that is, the “workers” had deemed them too bourgeois and abolished them too.’
She smiled and touched her lip with one of her carefully manicured nails. ‘Olivia laughed at that and promised me that it was an unlikely scenario. Yes, I am being totally sincere when I say it is a shame what happened to her, but I guess that is the price you pay for overthrowing long-standing and established structures of governance.’
‘Is there anything you could tell us which might be of help with our investigation?’
She simply shook her head. ‘Sorry, no.’
Cole had also seen and heard enough. We rose, and as I put my cup on her table, I thanked her for the perfect cup of coffee.
She smiled. ‘I’m glad we didn’t put too much milk in.’
Within seconds, her secretary had appeared and escorted us to the lift. Waving adieus to Lucy, who stoically said goodbye, we left.
Almost gasping as the cold grabbed our throats, we briskly walked to the car.
‘So, what’s with you and Sophie Humes?’ Cole asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, come on. Despite the ridiculous time, you knew she’d be there. Then, when we got there, we only get granted an audience with her majesty when she hears your name. And Jesus! During it, there’s some bizarre game playing going on that I was obviously not party to.’
Stepping off the curb, I concentrated more on not getting hit by a passing car than answering her question.
Following me, she continued with the theme. ‘So, do you have a history with her?’
‘Yeah,’ I conceded.
‘Before Caroline, I presume.’ Judging from the stupid grin on her face, she was clearly enjoying this.
‘Well before.’
‘So, tell me!’
I sighed. ‘When I first met her, she wasn’t called Sophie Humes: that’s her married name. She’s a conservative in most things and so, unlike everyone else, she changed it when she said, “I do.” When I first knew her, from the day she was born, she was called Sophie Kalder. She’s my sister.’
Cole stopped dead in the centre of the road.
‘Victoria, I suggest you move or you’ll get yourself run over if you’re not careful.’
16. Helleborus viridis
We made good time heading to the south coast. Victoria’s penchant for speeding had been given plenty of scope on the journey. Due to the NWC’s policy of demilitarising society, the sight of tanks, army tracks and troop carriers – which recently had been as much a feature of British roads as caravans heading off to Hayling Island – had now all but disappeared. All being confined to barracks. Militia traffic was also at the minimum, with security being maintained locally by local people. Indeed, even general traffic – the old fashioned type which doesn’t have automatic weapons hanging out of every window – had also been reduced through a NWC campaign persuading people to choose either alternative ways of travelling or doing whatever needed locally. With people in control of the country, feeling that it was theirs to look after, it was proving to be successful. Not with us, though. Trying to prise Cole from her fancy wheels was a damn sight more difficult than prising the ruling class from their wealth.
To be fair, I was missing my – more modest – pair of wheels. Hopefully, with the snow cleared off most of the roads, it would be
safe enough for the scooter to be used. Dr Brakus wouldn’t like it, but that was tough. Indeed, it made it even more of an attractive option.
When Victoria had picked me up this morning, she hadn’t tried to press me on our meeting with my sister. Obviously, she’d learnt from my stubborn refusal to say anything last night that it was a pointless to do so. Instead, she spent the first part of the journey consulting with Asher Joseph and Roijin Kemal about what should be done next. Feeling that the road surface might still be slippery, she had opted for manual steering and control. This also had enabled her to take the speed controls offline, which slightly undermined the very reason for doing it in the first place. Likewise, the fact that, whilst it was hands-free voice, her phone conference appeared to be taking a greater amount of her concentration than it ought.
Not that I had been paying either that or the road much notice. I was more interested in watching the BBC News, which was reporting from Portugal. With the plebiscite coming in at 67% in favour of moving to workers’ control, the parliament had, in heated and sometimes violent scenes, voted to disband itself.
Across Portugal, there were tumultuous scenes of jubilation. Following live reports from various cities, we had returned to a London studio, where “experts” of various political outlooks and intelligence had sombrely discussed what might be the reaction of the Portuguese armed forces to this decision. Not having resolved that, they had moved on to how this would affect Britain. Opinion was divided as to the strength of Portugal’s revolution and the reaction of her neighbours, but, tellingly, there were two things which they all agreed on: that after the failed attempt to intervene in Britain, any attempt to use external force to do so in Portugal was unlikely; and, secondly, that this would greatly help the Brit revolution by breaking our isolation. Whether that would be permanent or not, and whether it was a good thing or not, was left unanswered, with each “expert” finishing the “debate” as they had started.
