by Graham Marks
In essence, it said that the country’s CCTV network was the envy of the policed world and long may it remain so. Whatever the critics argued – and there were plenty of them – the document continued, the general public had clearly bought into the idea of the benevolent watchers, bought in big time, and no one in any position of responsibility wanted this situation to change. As with so much to do with government, it was all about the status quo. Changes, especially when they came from outside, were never a good thing.
Mercer knew the statistics in the Omega Place leaflet were accurate and that there really was one camera for every fourteen people in the country, give or take, and over a quarter of a million of them in London alone. The figures were actually quite extraordinary as they meant that tabs could be kept on a hell of a lot of people, in a hell of a lot of places. George Orwell must be looking down, nodding sagely and saying to himself, ‘I told you so. I just got the year wrong…’, as the public at large didn’t appear to mind the CCTV network. Perceived wisdom said it made them feel safe, and that any thoughts they might have about ‘Big Brother’ made them think of some inane TV reality show, not a highly organised invasion of their privacy.
Flicking through the papers, Mercer wondered about Omega Place. The files told her next to nothing about them, because sod all was precisely what they knew. She sat back and looked up at the random patterns in the ceiling tiles above her, trying to visualise what her next moves should be. Just like the patterns, there was nothing immediately obvious.
In terms of ‘threat to the nation’, Omega Place figured about as high up the list as the Boy Scouts. If all they were doing was putting a few CCTV cameras out of action – some of which probably weren’t even operational anyway – then this would all be a proverbial storm in a teacup. But, as Markham had very pointedly made clear, it wasn’t what they were doing that had got the Home Secretary so worked up, it was what they were saying, which was where the TOP SECRET document in the folder came into play.
She turned over pages until she found it, and scanned the first few paragraphs. If the general public became aware of the facts behind the government’s Remotely Piloted Aircraft Programme they might not be as laid back about it as they were about the proliferation of static CCTV cameras. Tiny RPAs – basically, remotely controlled spy planes equipped with all kinds of cameras, which had been successfully road tested in Iraq and Afghanistan – were apparently now undergoing classified trials in urban situations here at home. Eyes in the sky: small enough, quiet enough and manoeuvrable enough to go anywhere. Quite frightening, really. If you were ‘them’ and not ‘us’. It all depended, she supposed, on whether you trusted the people in charge. Trusted them not to misuse their power.
Mercer, who liked to believe she was on the side of the angels, picked up a ballpoint cap and began chewing on it. The fact was, even she wasn’t supposed to know about this, let alone a bunch of misanthropes with anti-establishment tendencies who were littering the streets with the news in their so-called Manifesto 3. The only positive thing was that, so far, the press hadn’t picked up the story, but surely it wouldn’t be long before they did.
So, to put it simply, what she had to do was (1) stop this Omega Place lot from disseminating any more highly classified information, and (2) find out how the hell they got hold of said info in the first place, and then (3) close the bastards down.
The reason she was feeling so nervous and antsy was because this knowledge was black. It didn’t exist, outside of certain very secure walls. She chewed harder on the pen cap. Someone pretty high up the ladder had either screwed up or gone bad. And it was her job to find out who that person was. But no one liked internal investigations. Or the investigators. Her future, she knew, depended on finding the right person (failure wasn’t good for career prospects) and it also depended on who it turned out to be. The wrong kind of ‘right person’ could mean no career prospects for her at all.
Like the jokers always said, just because you were paranoid didn’t mean they weren’t after you.
Mercer had almost finished going through the first two files when her computer dinged to let her know she’d just received an email. She stopped reading and opened it to find a message from someone in Oversight, otherwise known as Eavesdroppers Inc., the electronic surveillance department. This someone, who signed off as C. Farmer, was passing on, as requested by S. Pearce in Threat Evaluation, ‘all the information so far gathered’. Mercer scrolled down, attempting to discover what information had been gathered about whom, and found an attached document.
Dragging it on to her desktop, she made a mental note to read it just as soon as she’d finished going through everything else that was on the desk in front of her. She had to have everything ready for an early start tomorrow. The first day of the rest of her life…
* * *
Henry Garden looked at the printout he’d brought with him from home. He’d deleted the original email before shutting down his computer and coming to work, and would shred this paper in a minute or two. He’d spent the weekend waiting for some communication from Nick – no call to his mobile or landline, no email. Nothing. Until this morning. And now this. Not what you wanted to read first thing on a Monday morning. Quite how he’d managed not to buy a packet of fags over the last two days, he did not know. He scanned the email again and felt his gut tighten, like it did just before he made a bet…
Subject: Contact
Date:
Monday 31 July, 2006 7.46 a.m.
From:
N. J. H.
To:
Henry Garden
Got yr message, Friday p.m. Be at St Martin’s Lane box, 7.00 p.m. tonight.
Something was wrong.
It had to be when the only secure way to get in touch was through a public phone booth in St Martin’s Lane. But what the hell was it? Today was going to be a bloody nightmare. He could already feel the tension building up in his neck; just one long wait until he could go home, with one single thought on his mind: exactly how much of the mud that was more than likely about to be flung was going to come his way?
Garden leaned over and fed the printout into the piranha teeth of his shredder, listening to them shriek as it ate the paper and spat the bits into the bin below. He sat for a moment, then got up, took the strands of paper out of the otherwise empty bin, tore them in half as he walked over to the blue recycling bin and dropped them in. You could never be too careful. Ever.
11
Monday 31st July, M1 southbound
Another day, another van. A Merc this time, taken the night before from a motorway service station car park. Rob seemed to treat these places as his personal rental company – drop off, pick up, no charge, no mileage. For all that he was some kind of a one-man crime wave, Paul had to admit that Rob was genuinely impressive to watch at work. And he took his work very seriously – if they caught you because you were lazy and slack, you only got what you deserved, he said. And because he could sometimes act like such an obnoxious chancer, it had been weird to discover that he didn’t take any unnecessary risks, like he insisted everyone always drove pretty much within speed limits. Nice and easy, monkey don’t get catchee, he said.
Last night they’d tried three car parks before Rob was satisfied everything was right. He’d chosen the Merc van because it had newish tyres for its age and seemed reasonably well looked after. It was also parked behind a larger truck, obscuring it from view from the shop and cafe while he broke in and they changed the plates, using one of the fake sets, backed with industrial-strength, double-sided sticky tape they had with them. The transfer of ownership had taken minutes and then they were off again. London bound.
And now here they were, according to the last sign, with just thirty miles to go before they’d be there. Paul glanced across at Terri, taking her turn in the driving seat.
‘Have you told Orlando, Terri?’
‘Told him what?’
Rob, his feet up on
the dashboard, was drumming along to some track on the radio. ‘Poor old Pauly’s getting twitchy, sis… put him out of his misery, eh?’
‘No, I haven’t spoken to him, Pauly, cos he’s not called me… and we don’t call him, remember, Rob? Security, right?’ Terri indicated, pulled out and overtook a loaded car transporter in the middle lane. ‘You’ll just have to wait. We’re all gonna have to wait at the next service area anyway, if he hasn’t called before then.’
Rob stopped drumming on his legs. ‘Why?’
‘Cos the squat was raided. They had to move to a new place, and we don’t know where it is.’
‘Shit! When did that happen? You never said a bloody word!’
‘Didn’t I?’
‘Don’t try and bullshit a bullshitter, man – when did you find out? Did Or-bloody-lando tell you not to say anything to me, or what? Didn’t youse two trust me?’
‘No, he never said not to tell you, Rob, OK? All I got was a text, no details, and I forgot, right? Sorr-ee…’ Terri rammed the gear stick up into fifth and started to accelerate. ‘What would you have done if I had remembered to tell you? You never liked the stupid place anyway, always moaning that the sodding room you were in was too small.’
‘Slow down. You’re going eighty.’
‘Piss off.’
Paul could feel the van was still accelerating as Terri moved into the fast lane. If he leaned back, the speedometer was just about visible, and as the needle crept round the dial the tension in the van was ramping up with it. How fast was she going now – ninety? Ninety-five? Terri was only doing it to wind Rob up, but that wasn’t such a cool thing to do right here, right now. This was like when his parents had been falling apart, just before the divorce, and every drive had been a murderous experience. He’d sit in the back of the car, desperate for them to stop nagging and bitching at each other and feeling that it – whatever the ‘it’ was they were arguing about – was all his fault, that if he’d not ever been there they’d somehow be OK with each other.
The three of them stuck here in this claustrophobic space for hours and hours on end was enough to drive anyone gaga without the added stress of a crap argument, but what was he supposed to do? Paul stole a look to his right: Terri, gripping the wheel like she was fighting it, staring straight ahead, speedo approaching launch velocity, ferchrissake! To his left Rob had leaned forward, one hand on the dash, and was eyeballing Terri with a homicidal stare. Great. Mexican stand-off.
Which was when he saw a sign.
It said London Gateway Services, next exit. This had to be the one Terri was talking about. And then, up ahead, he saw the sign with the three diagonal white stripes on a blue background, which meant the exit was coming up and they were still rocketing down the fast lane. Now or never…
‘Is this where we have to wait?’
‘What?’ Terri almost barked.
‘London Gateway… is this where we have to wait for that call from, you know, Orlando?’
‘Christ!’
Terri went all flight-deck commander – braking, checking her mirrors, indicating left, dropping a gear, then another – as she scythed the van across two motorway lanes towards the fast-approaching exit slip road, just making it as the sound of some pissed-off driver’s horn faded away down the motorway. As she slowed the van to thirty, coasting round on to the road that would take them over the carriageway below and through into the service area, Paul stopped pressing hard on the imaginary brake pedal and relaxed a bit.
No one said a word as Terri drove across the car park and found a space close to the exit back on to the motorway. When she finally stopped she pulled up the handbrake, switched off the engine, sat back and started rolling a cigarette. Still nothing. Paul sat there, piggy-in-the-middle, remembering that often, with his parents, the silences had been worse than the arguments. Cold, empty spaces; vacuums lined with razor blades… enter at your peril. At least if people were talking – even shouting – at each other there was a chance they’d sort shit out.
Paul had no idea why he said it, but the words ‘Are we there yet?’ just kind of escaped from his brain and out of his mouth in a childish whine. The pressure bubble burst and all three of them were cackling like hyenas on laughing gas, Terri banging the steering wheel with her fist, Rob stumbling out of the cabin, tears running down his cheeks and claiming he was about to piss himself.
As he held on to his aching sides, Paul wondered why it had never been that easy with his parents.
Rob swung the van into the multi-storey car park Orlando had told them to go to when he’d finally rung up. He pulled up and took the ticket the automatic machine stuck out like a tongue.
‘Where did he say? Top floor?’
Terri nodded. ‘Yeah. They’ll be in a red Almera, he said.’
‘Saloon?’
‘I don’t know!’ Terri shook her head.
‘Prob’ly is… he doesn’t like estates. Who’s with him?’
‘Sky, who else?’
Rob dropped a gear and slowed for the tight bend that would take them on to the ramp to the first floor. ‘So where is the new place?’
‘He wouldn’t say.’
‘Why?’
‘Security, Rob.’ Terri nudged Paul in the ribs. ‘Got to check the newbie out first, right?’
Paul sat looking straight ahead. What the hell was he doing, letting himself be put through this shit? Did he really need this? Right from the moment Terri had finished the call from Orlando and told him and Rob what the plan was, right from then he could have walked. They’d been having coffee at the service area when her mobile had finally gone. The moment he’d found out about this crap ‘security meeting’ (in a bloody multi-storey car park ferchrissake, like some cop show!) he could have got up from the table, taken his stuff from the van and gone off to look for another lift.
They mightn’t have let him, but he didn’t even try.
He could’ve told Terri to let him out when Rob had stopped to get the ticket for this place – his last chance to make a move.
But he didn’t.
He’d stayed put and not said a peep and now he was being driven up to the top of this shopping-mall car park to be checked out. Given the once-over by Orlando and Sky, who both sounded like characters from some dumb, kids’ Saturday morning TV show… a stripy orange fuzzy blob and a blue one, each with silly voices. Why hadn’t he asked more questions? What if these people actually were seriously deranged?
Rob accelerated up the final ramp, paused at the top and turned right.
‘Red Almera, was it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll do a go-round. Keep your eyes peeled.’
Paul coughed and cleared his throat. ‘What happens if they, like, say no?’
Rob winked at him. ‘Sky shoots you. Single bullet in the back of the head, man. SS-style.’
‘It’s SAS, you berk…’ Terri turned from her car search. ‘And if they decide it’s a “no”, you’ve had a totally unique free ride down to London and you walk away. Simple as that. That’s why we’re doing this, so’s you don’t know anything important, right?’
‘There it is, Terri, over in the corner.’
Paul looked where Rob was pointing and saw a red saloon in the shadows. Then its headlights flashed once. This was it.
Rob flicked the beam control to return the signal. ‘I’ll park this up; there was a space just on the other side.’
As they drove past the red car Paul could see the silhouettes of two people inside. Neither moved.
‘Get everything of yours out the back, OK, Paul?’ Terri undid her seat belt. ‘Whatever happens, we’re leaving the van here.’
Then her mobile started to ring.
* * *
Paul sat alone in the Merc. Again. Terri and Rob had taken their bags and stuff to go and talk to Orlando, which was what the phone call had been about. Leave him to stew while they talk about him behind his back. Tense, he fiddled with his Celtic-style ring. He looked
at his backpack, sitting next to him on the seat, and wondered why he wasn’t taking this last opportunity to walk away. What was it about this whole thing that had so got under his skin?
Was it that he felt kind of more alive than he ever had? That he wanted more of the adrenalin rush, more of the freedom and the gypsy life? Even though, if they did take him in, he wouldn’t be actually spending that much time with Terri. Because, best be honest with himself, she was another reason why staying was more of an option than going. Not that he’d got a chance of getting anywhere with her. Well out of his range. But he’d never know for sure if he didn’t stay, would he?
So here he was in London, possibly at the start of something, maybe not. The main thing was he wasn’t still up in Newcastle. His mam always talked about the times she’d visited, and now he’d made it. Paul got his phone out… he wouldn’t tell her where he was… just that he was OK. After sending the text he thought about sending another one to Dave, just so’s someone else would know he’d done it, broken away, come south, even if it was only for a few weeks. But he didn’t. Just being here wasn’t enough, he wanted to be able to tell Dave he had a job – any bloody job would do – and a place to live. That he was doing all right.
Lost in his daydream he didn’t see the bloke get out of the Almera. Paul only noticed him when he was walking up to the van. He was quite tall, with straggly, greying hair and a grey moustache, dressed in what looked like black Reeboks, jeans, a check shirt over a white T-shirt and a dark grey denim jacket. It wasn’t until he got closer that he saw the man wasn’t as young as he looked, that, from the lines on his face, he was probably quite old. Paul guessed probably older than his dad… in his late forties, something like that. It was hard to tell exactly.
Watching the man approach the passenger side of the van he wondered if this was Orlando or if it was Sky, figuring, from what little Rob and Terri had said, that it was probably Sky, Orlando apparently being the background type. This time he’d locked the doors, so when the man tried to open the van he had to wait for Paul to reach over and let him in. Sitting back behind the wheel, Paul left his rucksack on the seat, like a demarcation line – my side, your side – and watched the man climb in and close the door.
