Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

He measured out the facts, one by one, utterly logical, building the unanswerable case. Goodman paused again, letting the silence settle between them. Distantly, in the kitchen, he could hear the whisking of eggs.

  ‘And you?’ he said. ‘Would you go with them?’

  Cartwright, for the first time, permitted himself a genuine smile, a smile that touched his eyes.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  The little man looked away, out across the deserted restaurant. Then he shook the careful creases out of his napkin and tucked it into his collar, like a child.

  ‘I’ve lived in this city all my life,’ he said. ‘Why should I stop now?’

  Gillespie sat in front of the recruiting sergeant, waiting for the first question. He’d been at the police station for over an hour while the queue for registration slowly thinned. The sheer number of volunteers for the new Special Constabulary had taken the police by surprise. There’d been more bodies than chairs, and even now there were still a dozen men standing outside in the corridor.

  The sergeant behind the desk glanced up. The office was tiny: a single window, a desk, two filing cabinets.

  ‘Name?’ he said. He sounded weary.

  ‘Gillespie.’

  ‘Two “l”s is it?’

  Gillespie nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘“ie” at the end.’

  The sergeant pulled a computer keyboard towards him.

  ‘Date of birth, Mr Gillespie?’

  ‘17 November 1951.’

  The sergeant nodded and tapped in the name and the date. There was a brief pause. The sergeant loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. The central heating was on for some reason, and the room was uncomfortably hot. Lines of copy appeared on the screen. The sergeant began to check through it, methodically, one fact after another.

  ‘David Arthur?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘20 Glengarry Road?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Clean licence,’ he nodded, ‘that sounds hopeful.’ He paused, rubbed his eyes. ‘You in the Marines once?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sergeant? “B” Company? 43 Commando?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The sergeant made a note on the form and squinted at the screen again. Then he began to frown. Something was evidently out of order. Gillespie leaned forward, but the screen was invisible from his side of the desk.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

  The sergeant tinkered with the luminance control on the monitor screen. The lines of text brightened. The sergeant took a second look, and then a third.

  ‘We’ve got a “K” reference,’ he said, ‘211.’

  He tapped the three digits into the computer and sat back a moment while fresh copy scrolled onto the screen. He scanned it quickly, then glanced across at Gillespie.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘I think we may have a problem.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  The policeman looked at him a moment, gauging what best to do, then glanced at the door, and gestured for Gillespie to join him. Gillespie did so, absorbing the lines of green print on the screen. When he’d finished, he looked down at the sergeant.

  ‘Well?’ he said. He was totally unperturbed.

  The sergeant nodded at the screen.

  ‘Is that lot right?’

  Gillespie looked at him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘The date’s wrong. It was the twelfth. Not the tenth. But the rest is OK. ’85. Northern Ireland. Yeah …’ He glanced at the screen again, and scanned quickly through the rest of the details, his mouth moving silently, intoning the names, the map references, the Army designation of the road, the name of the reporting pathologist. Finally he looked up. ‘Yeah …’ he said, ‘spot on.’ He returned to his seat on the other side of the desk and sat down. There was something new in the police sergeant’s manner, and Gillespie recognized it at once. Respect.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ he began, ‘there’s a standing order about previous convictions.’

  ‘It wasn’t a conviction.’

  ‘I know, but …’ he shrugged, genuinely regretful, ‘a court-martial’s the next best thing.’

  ‘I wasn’t court-martialled, either.’ He nodded at the back of the screen. ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen anything in print, you know, written down.’

  The sergeant looked bewildered. ‘K’ references were obviously a rare event. He frowned at the screen again.

  ‘But the bloke did die, didn’t he?’

  Gillespie nodded. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘definitely.’

  ‘And you were responsible?’

  ‘I killed him,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘So what happened?’ He paused. ‘Afterwards?’

  ‘I resigned.’ He shrugged. ‘With a little gentle encouragement.’

  ‘Well, then …’ the sergeant sounded relieved, ‘that’s the same thing.’

  ‘You serious?’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, and began to fold Gillespie’s application form in half. ‘A “K” reference rules you out.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Standing orders, Sergeant. Rules and regulations. You know the drill.’

  Gillespie looked at him a moment, wondering how far to take it, then changed his mind, and nodded goodbye, and left the room. Outside, in the corridor, the queue had lengthened again. The sergeant eyed the open door. ‘Next!’ he shouted. He sounded positively relieved.

  Albie Curtis pulled the big old Bedford van off the main road and into the narrow cul-de-sac between the two rows of terrace houses. At the end was a pair of tall wooden gates topped with barbed wire. He parked the van outside the gates and hooted. When nothing happened, he hooted again. Then he got out of the van, and crossed the pavement, and kicked the gates, violently, twice. A dog began to bark inside. Albie rattled the gates, shaking them hard. There was the sound of footsteps, and the scrape of bolts, metal against metal. One of the gates opened. A face appeared, old and exhausted under an ancient flat cap. Albie nodded at him.

  ‘Where’s Jack?’ he said.

  The old man gestured inside, and Albie pushed past him without a word, ignoring the lunge of the big, black Alsatian, chained to a ring on the wall. Inside the gates was a builder’s yard, piles of old bricks, breeze-blocks, timber, concrete, pipes. Beside the timber were four large drums. On the side, in black, they were stencilled MOD PROPERTY. DO NOT REMOVE.

  A door opened in the low wooden shack at the back of the yard. A small compact man stepped out. He wore a lumberjack shirt and a pair of old jeans. He nodded at Albie and kicked the dog. The dog stopped barking.

  ‘Mick’s been on,’ he said. ‘He’s trying to find you.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing. I said I didn’t know.’

  ‘Good.’

  Albie walked across to the big grey drums. There was a wrecking bar propped against the pile of timber. He picked up the wrecking bar and began to prise off one of the lids. The lid came off, clattering onto the ground at Albie’s feet. Albie peered into the drum. The drum was full of white paint. He dipped a finger in, testing the consistency, watching it drip back into the drum. He smiled and turned to the other man.

  ‘Bloke write the stuff OK?’ he said.

  The other man nodded.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Printer all right?’

  ‘A thousand run. Like you said.’

  ‘When’s he ready?’

  ‘Tonight.’ He paused. ‘I said you’d be round.’

  ‘Good.’

  Albie stooped to pick up the lid and fitted it back on the top of the drum, hammering it down at the edges with the wrecking bar. Then he tossed the bar to the other man. The other man caught it. Albie nodded at the drums.

  ‘Forty quid,’ he said. ‘The lot.’

  ‘Fifty.’

  ‘Forty.’

  The other man shrugged, turning away.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he
said. ‘But take the stuff with you, eh?’

  Martin Goodman and Oliver Davidson left the city at five o’clock, sitting together in the back of the big Rover while Corporal Evans, Goodman’s new bodyguard and driver, eased the car through the beginnings of the evening rush hour.

  Evans, Goodman had just met for the first time. He was tall, over six feet, with neatly cropped hair, and a wide, spare frame. His face – flat, neutral, guarded – gave nothing away, and he evidently had little inclination to talk. Davidson had handled the introductions at the kerbside, referring to Goodman as ‘Mr Controller’, a designation Evans had at once shortened to ‘sir’. Now, with the Rover pushing eighty-five on the rise of the motorway flyover, Goodman was aware of the man watching them in the rear-view mirror, his eyes flickering up from the road ahead, noting their expressions, their mannerisms, their relationship to each other, stowing away his first impressions, making up his mind.

  Goodman sat back against the contoured leather seat. Davidson had spent the afternoon away from the Civic Offices on something he referred to simply as ‘business’. When he returned by taxi at half-past four, Goodman had wondered whether to enquire further, to try and establish some kind of stewardship over the man from Whitehall, but in the end he’d decided against it. He’d yet to mention his own excursion to meet Harry Cartwright, their conversation about getting the wives and kids away, and on reflection he decided to keep it to himself. His relationship with Harry didn’t fit any official definitions and would be difficult to explain. Better, perhaps, to forget it.

  Davidson pulled a small folded handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his brow. The rain had stopped by now, but it was warm for September. Goodman glanced at his watch. The Wessex TV nightly magazine started at six. He’d promised to be there with half an hour to spare. At this speed, they’d arrive slightly early. Davidson returned the handkerchief to his pocket.

  ‘Tell me about Bullock,’ he said. ‘How well do you know him?’

  ‘A little,’ he said, ‘on a social basis.’

  Davidson nodded, gazing out at the flat expanse of the upper harbour as they crossed the bridge onto the mainland and began to filter into the traffic on the big east-west motorway.

  ‘New, isn’t he? Relatively speaking?’

  ‘Yes. Been here a year or so. Since the station went on air.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Davidson inched down the electric windows, letting the rasp of the wind cloak their conversation, ‘is he … ah … one of us?’

  Goodman thought about the question for a moment or two. One brief, casual meeting at the grammar school play. A shared platform on a Rotary debate. A couple of halves in the pub across the road afterwards.

  ‘No,’ he said carefully, ‘I don’t think he is.’ He paused. ‘Does that matter?’

  Davidson glanced at him, the eyes as pale as ever.

  ‘Not really,’ he said, ‘not after tomorrow.’

  Duggie Bullock and Annie McPhee sat in the tiny studio canteen. Annie was nursing a glass of fresh orange juice. Bullock was gazing into the remains of yet another coffee. He’d intended to chat about the Falklands project, but for the third time that day he found himself talking about events in the city.

  ‘So what’s going to happen?’ he said simply.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight. Tomorrow.’

  ‘They’ll take over. It’s obvious.’ She smiled at him, surprised at his naïvety. ‘Where’ve you been, Duggie? All these years?’

  He returned the smile, feeling far from amused.

  ‘Simple as that?’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘Simple as that,’ she agreed. ‘Give or take the odd detention camp. The political arrests. All the old guff they’ll trot out about subversion and the defence of the realm.’ She grinned, eyeing her Falklands notes. ‘Same old garbage. Only slightly more obvious. The world being the way it is.’

  ‘So should we be interested?’

  ‘As human beings?’

  ‘As programme makers.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He paused. ‘Should you be interested?’ he said.

  Annie hesitated a moment, finally recognizing his drift, the purpose and point behind his near-obsession with what was happening down the road. Her problem was the Falklands. She’d invested a great deal in the project. She’d mastered the material, and developed a credible line of her own, and soon, once Gillespie had delivered, she’d be on her way. The thing looked very promising. Anything else would be a diversion. An irrelevance. Even the possibility of another war.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘It depends.’

  Bullock looked at her for a moment, understanding her preoccupation, but determined to prick the bubble she’d made her own.

  ‘There’s a man coming in for tonight’s show,’ he said finally, ‘his name’s Goodman. Martin Goodman. If we start anywhere, we start with him.’ He paused and glanced at his watch. ‘He’s due any time,’ he said, ‘the interview’s towards the end of the programme. Make sure you watch it.’

  It was nearly half-past five before Evans pulled the big, black Rover through the gates of the Wessex TV studios and dropped Davidson and Goodman at the entrance to the main reception area. Goodman, who’d been to the studios before, led the way through the double glass doors. The receptionist recognized him at once, and phoned through to Bullock’s secretary.

  Seconds later, the secretary appeared. She thanked them for coming and led them towards the newsroom.

  Annie, back at her borrowed desk by the window, looked up as the two men came in. She watched them carefully as they followed Bullock’s secretary the length of the newsroom. She’d never seen either man before, but she suspected at once that Goodman was the younger of the two. He fitted the brief description that Bullock had given her as they returned from the canteen: the easy manner, the poise, the quick smile to the pretty girl on the copy desk, the way he very evidently felt immediately at home in the place. She’d seen the mannerisms before, in the better class of politician, the young high-flyers who made a name for themselves in some remote ministry or other, glad-handing their way through thickets of obstructive officials and difficult constituency meetings to a post downstage in the limelight.

  The two men paused briefly outside Bullock’s office while the secretary knocked on the glass partition door. Annie saw Bullock get up and gesture the two men into the office, advancing with his hand outstretched, and a small, tight smile on his face. Annie grinned, watching the ritual handshakes. She knew Bullock well enough by now to recognize that he didn’t like Goodman at all, and she suspected that Goodman was far too acute not to know it.

  Inside the office, there was a brief silence, while the secretary closed the door and the two men settled into their respective chairs. Goodman spoke first, his tone friendly, even intimate. It assumed at once a shared point of view, common values, joint membership of the same indefinable club.

  Long time …’ he said, ‘no see. How’s Wendy? The kids? I thought Tom was marvellous in the grammar play the other day. Racine’s bloody hard for adults. Let alone kids.’ Bullock accepted the compliment with a nod. He was already eyeing the clock over their heads.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I thought he was good, too. It’s kind of you both to come along.’

  He picked up the programme running order, finalized only minutes before, and ran his finger down the list of items.

  ‘We’ve given you a decent spot at the end of the programme,’ he said, ‘live, of course. You should be away by seven at the latest.’

  Goodman nodded. ‘That sounds fine. What else have you got?’ Bullock looked up. His voice was sharper than he intended.

  ‘Beg pardon?’ he said.

  Goodman smiled, emollient, friendly, reassuring.

  ‘Tonight’s programme…’ He paused. ‘I was simply wondering how … exactly … you’ll be treating today’s … ah … events …’

  ‘Oh,’ Bullock shrugged, ‘pretty straight. We’re not shor
t of stories, as you can imagine.’ He glanced at the running order again. ‘We’re leading with the refugees. I had a very good girl down at the Ferryport. She did well. It’s powerful stuff.’

  ‘Refugees?’ Goodman replied mildly. ‘You mean tourists, surely?’

  Bullock gazed at him for a moment, one finger still anchored on the running order. Then, abruptly, he leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, looking at the ceiling, recognizing the conversation for what it was. Davidson stirred by the window.

  ‘What else are you running?’ he said.

  ‘The motorway story. As you’d expect.’

  ‘Ah …’ Goodman took up the running again, the same smile, the same utterly reasonable tone. ‘The repairs …’

  ‘No. The midday closures. Our first taste of the Essential Service Routes.’ Bullock let his chair tilt forward, bringing his eyeline level with Goodman’s. ‘We like to think of it as a service to viewers. Where to drive and where not to drive. How to avoid a nuclear depth charge convoy.’

  Goodman looked regretful.

  ‘Is that strictly necessary?’ he said. ‘Given the circumstances?’

  ‘We think so.’ Bullock picked up the running order again and slid it across the desk towards Goodman. ‘And since we’re talking about your city, there’s item six. Today’s little demo. The peace protest at the War Memorial. I’m afraid most of the pictures are far too explicit to run at this time of night, but I must say the NF boys made their point. Not that the police took much notice. Half a dozen people in hospital and not a whisper of a charge.’

  ‘Oh,’ Goodman frowned, ‘surely not.’

  Bullock nodded, determined to keep the anger out of his voice.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘oh yeah.’

  The two men looked at each other, a mutual acceptance of totally opposed interests. Then Bullock leaned back again, his voice softer, more accommodating.

  ‘Listen, my friend,’ he said, ‘if what we hear is true, you’ve got a helluva job on your hands. In a minute we’re going to stop playing these games, and you’re going to ask me to make it easier for you. It’s a reasonable request. If I was in your shoes, I’d probably be playing it exactly the same way. But I’m not in your shoes. And I might not quite see it the way you do.’ He paused and retrieved the running order. ‘You can’t tell me what to transmit. Not yet, you can’t.’