Disengaged

by Mischa Hiller

  ‘No, they didn’t. I for one felt no need. How come you never told me about it before?’

  ‘Like Rami said, I saw sense and grew out of it. It wasn’t something I was especially proud of.’

  They’d walked in silence, passing Chelsea Football Club.

  Sheila had shaken her head. ‘She’s worried about becoming thirty next year. Thirty!’ She’d snorted. ‘Where the hell does he find them?’

  ‘I can’t believe he actually said he was going to tuck her in.’

  They’d laughed and she’d taken his arm. ‘I’m proud of you for standing up to Rami about this military contract, despite your Bolshevik past,’ she’d said, leaning in to him the rest of the way home, where, in the hallway, he’d helped her out of her dress, which in the privacy of their house he found incredibly sexy.

  Now, since he couldn’t get to sleep because of the heat, he decided on a shower to remove the cumulative stickiness of love-making and the warm night. He picked up his mobile and tiptoed to the en suite where he closed the door before putting on the light. He would have to talk to Rami properly about his mysterious lead and at least hear his proposal before dismissing it out of hand. Not that he had any intention of taking it on; it was just that he needed to at least listen properly to his partner, make time for him. He sent him a text, proposing they meet for breakfast in the morning.

  Showered and back in the bedroom, he stood naked before the mirror, where in the dim light he could fool himself that he had the same body he did when thirty. The illusion became difficult to sustain when he stood sideways on.

  Slipping into bed next to a gently breathing Sheila he wondered, not for the first time, whether he’d ever be able to tell her the truth about that final year at university and the years afterwards. The problem was he’d left it too long; at this stage it would do more harm than good. He could feel the familiar ache in his stomach. He decided, before he fell asleep, that he would go and see the analyst Dr Banerjee had recommended; if he couldn’t talk to Sheila, and he needed to tell someone, better it was someone paid to keep secrets.

  EIGHT

  Julian found Rami sitting at their usual table in a café on the Caledonian Road, not two minutes’ walk from the Hadfish offices. Rami had already ordered them both the full English breakfast, knowing that he’d be on time.

  ‘Cassandra get off all right?’ he asked Rami, as he swallowed some vitamin supplements with his tea.

  ‘Yes, fine, I’ve come straight from the airport. She seemed to hit it off with Sheila.’

  Julian nodded as if this was the expected response to such a declaration.

  ‘What’s with all the tablets?’

  ‘They give me the illusion that I am doing something about my health. Anyway, like I said in my text, I’d like to hear more about this job of yours before I dismiss it out of hand. But I’m not promising anything.’

  ‘That’s all I ask,’ Rami said, looking around him in case anyone could hear. But the place was empty apart from an old man in a flat cap nursing a mug of tea and a tabloid newspaper.

  Julian caught sight of a topless model as the man unfurled his paper. Did Rami know about Cassie’s implants? Sheila hadn’t said if he did and he couldn’t think of a way to bring up the topic. When she split up with him, which, if the past was anything to go by, Julian thought was only a matter of time, he’d be able to point it out as an obvious character flaw.

  ‘I got talking to someone from this software company,’ Rami was saying, ‘that has been contracted to produce a module of the software that is built into UAVs.’ He paused and looked at Julian. ‘You know, remotely operated drones. Basically it’s the brains in this thing, helps it fly to the right place using GPS. Thing is this is a new UAV that’s being developed, one of the biggest and with the longest range yet.’

  He stopped as a young man in an apron approached with their breakfasts and plonked them on the table. Julian immediately started to saw his bacon. One of the benefits of the endless medical tests he’d had done was that he knew his cholesterol level was fine.

  ‘Who’s developing the drone?’ he asked, as he layered egg on to his bacon.

  ‘I genuinely don’t know. My contact is wary of giving out details. They bid for the job and got it, probably on price, but in their tender they overplayed some of their technical strengths and now they need to fill the gaps asap.’ Rami pronounced ‘asap’ as a word rather than an acronym, something that struck Julian as an annoying Americanism.

  ‘Hmm, sounds familiar,’ Julian said, and they smiled at a shared memory of tender submissions they had exaggerated themselves.

  ‘What they’re looking for is someone to check the set-up and see if it’s robust. Make sure it passes the requirements in the tender. Since it’s to do with GPS it pricked up my ears. I think they’ve read your paper on GPS security.’

  ‘Have they? Well, that’s probably out of date now anyway.’

  The old man with the tabloid got up and left the café.

  ‘The thing is, even if I didn’t have an ethical problem with doing the job, I’d need to see the specification the tender was based on simply to be able to establish if we could, technically, do it.’

  Rami had thrust a forkful of egg, bacon and mushroom into his mouth so Julian waited for him to finish.

  ‘Yes, I can see that,’ Rami said, dabbing his lips. ‘Trouble is security is tight, and under the terms of their contract they’d have to get us security cleared for the subcontract. That could take weeks, and with me being Lebanese …’

  None of this sounded right to Julian; he was used to Rami being light on technical detail, after all it wasn’t his job, but being slapdash on the contractual side was not like him. Plenty of Lebanese emigrés worked on sensitive government contracts, and besides, surely Julian’s own stint at British Aerospace gave him some form, it wasn’t like when he’d left there’d been any suspicion of what he’d been up to while he was there. Still, the thought of being vetted gave him stomach cramps and he was beginning to regret his breakfast.

  ‘So you’d want us to take on this work off the books, as it were?’

  ‘No, not entirely.’ Rami leaned forward and Julian could smell his subtle aftershave. ‘Look, there’ll be a contract, it’ll just be for something innocent. It’s not unusual for companies to subcontract bits of a sensitive project without divulging the real nature of the whole project.’

  ‘So why didn’t they do that in our case? Why not just come up with a spec that didn’t relate to the real purpose of the project? Why be open about it to you but not want to commit to it on paper?’

  ‘I’ve explained why. It was less work this way. If they’d gone by the book they’d have to explain to their client why they needed to use another company, something they hadn’t declared in their tender.’

  ‘But no specification, no deliverables, nothing written down.’

  ‘They’re in a jam, Julian. They need us’ – he gestured at Julian – ‘they need you, your expertise. That’s why they’re willing to pay above the odds.’

  Julian shook his head and mopped his plate with a crust of toast. ‘I don’t like it. Who is this company? What are they called?’

  Rami pulled a reluctant face. ‘All I know is that they’re based in Leeds and that they’ve been involved in developing software for the military before.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me you want me to work for a client we don’t even know the name of, with no written spec. Please, Rami.’

  ‘We would obviously get some more information if we showed interest. But since you don’t want to do it anyway then it doesn’t really matter, does it? Let me ask you this: if I had a spec, security clearance, a proper contract, etc., would you take it on then?’

  Julian sipped his tea and sat back. ‘I would at least consider it, because I would know what I was dealing with.’ He put his mug down and pushed his empty plate aside. ‘You know what these drones do, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, they fly over plac
es and take surveillance photo-graphs.’

  ‘Don’t be disingenuous, man. They’re used to hit human targets. Extrajudicial killing, I think they call it.’

  ‘You really need to stop reading the Guardian. So they take out a few Muslims, some al-Qaeda or Taliban scum. Big fucking deal. Who’s going to miss them?’

  ‘I don’t know, their families?’

  Rami was a Maronite Christian and his dislike of Muslims was nothing new to Julian. He insisted that they, along with the Palestinians, had ruined his country of origin. ‘Besides, they don’t just take out “bad guys”, Rami, they take out women and children. A whole wedding party in Afghanistan. Remember that? You want our software in a machine that does that?’

  ‘That’s like blaming Facebook because paedophiles use it.’

  ‘No, it’s not the same thing at all. We’d be designing software for the purpose of killing. If Facebook were making software specifically for paedophiles, then we would rightly blame them, but they’re not.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be our software. We’d just be testing it.’

  ‘Come on. Is that supposed to make it OK?’

  Rami sat back and sighed, showing Julian his palms in defeat. ‘To be honest I thought you’d want to be involved in something more interesting than making faster and cheaper graphics cards for gaming teenagers.’

  ‘We’ve done OK by it, and it’s not just gamers who benefit,’ Julian said, secretly agreeing that he found no pleasure in the work. It lacked purpose and direction and Sheila thought it laughable despite the fact that estate agents weren’t held in the highest esteem. ‘Isn’t there something else in the pipeline?’ he asked, trying to steer things on to more productive ground.

  ‘Some bits and pieces, nothing major like this. Nothing that could lead to other lucrative work.’ He took a breath. ‘You know, Jules, I’ve worked hard to make our company what it is, but you do not seem to have the same investment in its future as I do.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Rami—’

  ‘No, listen. If your politics are going to get in the way of business then maybe we have a problem.’

  Rami was avoiding his gaze; Julian had never seen him so worked up.

  ‘This is really an issue for you, isn’t it?’

  Rami looked at the heavens and held up his hands. ‘Finally you take me seriously.’

  ‘I always take you seriously,’ Julian said, smiling.

  ‘Bullshit.’ He stood up and threw some money on the table. ‘I’m going to the office.’ He strode off without waiting for Julian, who was left studying the remains of his breakfast. He tucked the money under a plate with the bill and checked his phone for emails and messages before leaving, just to give Rami a head start.

  NINE

  The six-floor property (including basement) on Onslow Square was one of many in a smart line of white terraced houses. Sheila knew that a lot of these houses had been divided into flats, so she was extremely pleased with herself for landing a whole house to sell. The years of networking and being diligent at her job had paid off.

  The houses had their numbers painted in black on the white pillars standing on either side of steps that formed deep Doric porches complete with coach lights. Although she loved this part of London, a lot of the buyers here were investment companies rather than people setting up home. At one time rich Arabs had snapped up properties in the area, and Rami had been a good contact in that regard, but the last few years had seen an increase in Russian buyers, who sent their kids to private schools in the UK and made an investment at the same time. She liked selling houses because she liked meeting people, even though her super-rich clients were a breed unto themselves. It was the less rarefied bit of the market that she enjoyed most, like where she lived with Jules, but even that, she knew, was out of the reach of most. After years of working for others, she now owned her own business, with one occasional employee, David, and ran a virtual office, thinking of herself more as a matching service than an estate agent; a kind of dating agency for people and houses, where they came to her with their requirements and she actively found something for them, sometimes even if it wasn’t on the market. Her clients didn’t go into estate agents on the high street, nor did they surf the web looking for properties. They had an area in mind, a size requirement or a type of house and occasionally, just occasionally, a price bracket.

  She had done well over the years, and was proud to be financially independent of Julian. She’d heard many of her friends pontificating about feminism, or relying on their husband’s income to pursue a hobby dressed up as a business. But for her this was what it boiled down to: having the ability to survive economically on your own. She’d had this drilled into her by her mother, a woman trapped in a loveless marriage with a husband who was moderately successful as a minor diplomat. She’d accepted material things from him, the value of which were inversely proportional to the attention he paid her, so she’d told Sheila after her father’s death, confiding that she’d resorted to seeking physical affection elsewhere. Cassie, she felt, understood this, despite the boob job. She clearly worked hard. Maybe the boobs were just her way of gaming what was a male-orientated system, turning what was expected of her to her advantage. No, until a woman achieved financial independence, any pretensions of being a feminist were just that. Sheila had even put enough money away in the hope that when she and Jules had children, she would not be dependent on him for the period she chose to be off work, and would be able to pay for childcare herself. But the children hadn’t happened. He’d never been keen. There existed a side to Jules he held back, something unrevealed she couldn’t put her finger on. It was a straitjacket, whatever it was, that kept him from being himself. He was scared of showing any vulnerability, like last night’s silly business with the dress she was wearing, and the fact that he’d kept his politics at university quiet. He hadn’t minded the dress when they’d got home, quite the opposite.

  She unlocked the gloss-black door using keys from a carefully numbered bunch and stepped into the empty house. Jules was afflicted with fear, she thought. Fear of what, she wasn’t sure, but there had been several points in their relationship, especially when he’d been at British Aerospace, when she’d wondered if he was seeing someone from work. Sexual betrayal was something one half-expected in men, after all, but to her mind a much worse crime was his confiding in another woman. For him to whisper his deepest fears to another didn’t bear thinking about. Ironically, all this had driven her, she believed, to an indiscretion of her own, one that made her cringe when she thought of it now. It was after that lapse of judgement that she’d stopped mentioning children. And now, of course, it was too late.

  Standing inside the front door she took a moment to savour the feeling. This was a part of the job she loved, being alone in empty houses and apartments, the creak of the uncovered floorboards, the echo of her footfalls. It evoked new beginnings and possibilities. This house was huge; she was looking forward to going through it properly on her own. First things first: she found the downstairs bathroom and sat on the toilet with the door wide open, her view down the hall to the front door unimpeded. The sound of her urine splashing against the enamel sounded pleasingly loud in the empty space. She looked round to see no toilet paper but she always carried tissues in her bag, knowing from experience that the rich often took these small things with them when they moved house. Sometimes even the light bulbs were gone. She washed her hands and had a pleasant recollection of last night’s sex. That was when Jules seemed most able to be himself, during sex. It was like opening a door into a hidden room. He became direct, responsive and confident. Masterful, even, although she would never tell him that. She smiled at her reflection, holding it rictus-like to study the resulting wrinkles. Laughter wrinkles, Jules called them, bless him, yet she knew he could see her ageing, just as she could. Some things were made harder for a woman.

  ‘You’re fucking amazing,’ she said loudly to her reflection, repeating what he had said to her last ni
ght. Not straight after relaxing on to her back, she happily taking his weight, him still panting in her ear. Not even as they lay on their backs, her head on his damp chest, his hand resting in the small of her back. But later, as he came out of the shower smelling of sandalwood, and she was passing him naked to use the shower herself. He’d grabbed her and said it then, and she’d felt like a teenager again.

  Singing loudly, she went round the house with a rubbish bag and inspected cupboards and drawers: in the kitchen (nothing), built-in wardrobes upstairs (a lonely shoe with a broken heel), cabinets in the three bathrooms (an empty bottle of conditioner for blonde hair). She also took measurements of the rooms and photos using her smartphone.

  She checked the time: when she was done here she’d walk to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on the Fulham Road, where she had an appointment. She’d been volunteering there one afternoon a week for over a year, something she kept from Jules because she could hear his cynical scoff, telling her that she was just soothing her liberal guilt. Perhaps he thought it best, like him, to do nothing. But volunteering at the hospital had not just given her a sense of satisfaction, it had also presented an opportunity to put some of her savings and time to even better use, which was what she was going to explore at her lunchtime meeting.

  TEN

  Boris sat in the back of his taxi across from the building where Hadfish Systems rented office space. It was on York Way, just a few minutes’ walk from King’s Cross station, and a nightmare for parking; he’d been lucky to find his spot on a side street running past the building – it had its own underground parking that he couldn’t access – and he’d already received a parking ticket. From his vantage point he could just about see the car-park entrance. He had established his own office in the back of his taxi, hidden from passers-by thanks to the tinted windows.