Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  Suzanne looked at him. Her knee was beginning to throb and she knew, at all costs, that she had to get off the boat.

  ‘Yes,’ she said again.

  There was a long silence. Then Cartwright got up.

  ‘Then I suggest we make the call,’ he said. ‘All of us.’

  Mick recognized his cue and stood aside. Suzanne stepped out of the cabin and walked carefully along the companionway, steadying herself with one hand. The rail felt cold and greasy to the touch. Mick Rendall was a step or two behind her. She could hear the mutter of conversation back in the cabin. Cartwright talking to the Skipper.

  ‘When does everybody turn up?’ she said, over her shoulder.

  ‘Dunno,’ Mick said, ever friendly, making amends, ‘no one’s said.’

  Suzanne nodded and stepped out onto the deck. As she did so, she saw a movement up ahead, in the shadows beneath the quayside. Two men were climbing the iron ladder. One of them she recognized, the smallest of the threesome who’d surprised her in the cabin. He was carrying a large can. Something was slopping around inside. The other man was beneath him on the ladder, taller, also climbing with one hand. Mick saw them, too.

  ‘Albie,’ he called, ‘what’s up?’

  Albie paused. The other man on the ladder gestured, a brisk, impatient movement of the right hand. Albie began to climb again, got to the top, put the can down on the quayside. Suzanne glanced round at Mick. Mick was staring at the other man, puzzled, sensing danger, the unexpected, not knowing quite what to do.

  Suzanne stepped quickly down the slippery deck, towards the foot of the ladder, avoiding the coils of rope, and litter of abandoned fishing gear. She was half-way up the ladder, fighting to catch her breath, before she heard Mick in pursuit.

  ‘Here,’ he was saying, ‘steady on, girl.’

  She carried on climbing, ignoring the pain in her knee, tearing her hands on the rusty iron rungs, knowing only that she had to get to the top of the ladder, away from the boat, away from this strange collection of men, and their mattresses, and their empty bottles of Scotch, and their mystery destinations. She reached the top of the ladder and looked up. A tall, lean man stood watching her. He was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. He cast a long shadow. The gun in his right hand was pointing at the man with the can. She smiled at him, feeling faintly absurd, a stranger in someone else’s script, uninvited, eager to leave.

  ‘Help me,’ she said, ‘please.’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Pleasure.’

  He motioned the other man forward.

  ‘Leave the fuel,’ he said. ‘Just walk.’

  Albie did what he was told. When he’d walked ten yards or so, clearing the stern of the trawler, Gillespie told him to stop. He stopped. Cartwright appeared below, a silhouette in the lit doorway. He looked up. Saw Gillespie. Saw the gun. He glanced sideways, at Mick. Mick was still at the foot of the ladder.

  ‘Get up there,’ he said to Mick.

  Mick began to climb, one rung at a time, in no obvious hurry. Gillespie motioned Suzanne aside. Mick’s head appeared at the top of the ladder. Gillespie smiled at him, white teeth in the shadowed face. Then he kicked him, once, under his left ear. Mick disappeared with a grunt of surprise. There was a thud and a groan as he hit the deck. Gillespie picked up the fuel can and began to walk back, along the quay, towards the car. Suzanne followed him, limping, a yard behind. Beside Albie, Gillespie paused. The gun was inches from Albie’s neck. He waved him forward, to the edge of the quay, and smiled, regretful, extending his arm, the lightest of pressure, but enough to send Albie toppling off the quayside, and down into the darkness. Suzanne heard the splash, and then the sound of Albie surfacing, spitting water, cursing this strange man, with his revolver, and his can of fuel, and his crooked smile.

  ‘Gillespie,’ he kept shouting, ‘fucking Gillespie.’

  Annie saw Ingle the moment he entered the ward, a big untidy man in a dirty brown pullover and a pair of baggy cords. He paused for a moment, looking down at the long row of empty beds, taking in the feel of the place, the smell of disinfectant and cheap tobacco, the drab greens and thin yellows of the paint work.

  Annie watched him carefully. For a big man, he moved lightly, on the balls of his feet. He might have been an athlete, Annie thought, a runner or a footballer, years back, before the belly and the folds of flesh around his chin began to appear. He stopped at the foot of the bed, and looked at her speculatively, not bothering with the usual formalities, the minor detail of a name or a handshake, but bump-starting the conversation at once, as if he’d known her for years.

  ‘We’ve got some photographs,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit of a puzzle.’

  Annie didn’t answer. She’d had a full hour to work out her relationship to this place, what she was doing here, what rights she had, what kind of line to draw. She looked up at him, this big man at her bedside, saw that she needed some help of her own, the odd clue, and that he seemed the best place to start.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said.

  ‘My name’s Ingle.’

  ‘And what’s this place?’

  ‘The nuthouse,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I’m afraid it’s the best we could do.’

  She looked at him a moment. The voice was slightly hoarse, the accent flat, East London, or maybe south of the river, Southwark or Rotherhithe, somewhere like that. She guessed he was Intelligence or Special Branch, had to be; yet he was the reverse of what she’d expected. He was close-in, candid. His whole manner invited instant intimacy. She should talk to this man. She should trust him.

  Clever, she thought, pulling the sheet towards her. Ingle smiled, following her every step of the way, knowing exactly the conclusions she’d come to, knowing he’d been right all along, knowing it wouldn’t be easy.

  ‘Photos,’ he said again.

  She nodded. ‘Photos,’ she agreed, wondering exactly what he meant.

  Ingle let the conversation lapse. The first set of prints from Gillespie’s camera, the shots featuring Goodman and the girl on the bench, were now lying on his desk. They confirmed what Reese had already established, that Gillespie had been in the park with a camera. The detail of the shots, the framing, the choice of angle, had favoured the girl, and Ingle had already tucked away in his mind the possibility that Gillespie had been on some kind of job. He did, after all, work for a solicitor. Solicitors dealt in evidence. The photographs would be admissible in court. Perhaps a divorce case. Perhaps a tussle over a matrimonial settlement. But all that was minor detail. What was really important was Annie McPhee. How much did she know about the grainy black and white images on his desk? Why was she carrying the film in the first place? How well did she know Gillespie? What, exactly, was the relationship between them? As soon as Reese got back in touch, he’d pull the man in, tackle it from both ends, but in the meantime this was all he had, a girl in an empty psychiatric ward, very canny, very smart.

  The Special Branch file had impressed him. Her address book, photographed one lunchtime after she’d been lured away on a hoax call, read like a directory of the radical left. She had all the right contacts, all the right political connections, and her professional record suggested that she was determined to secure a far wider audience for all the twaddle about freedom of information and the workings of the Secret State. Here, in the city, she’d found herself in the dress circle, the one place in the country where the curtains had been truly parted. A command performance. Everything out front, down stage, perfectly lit, perfectly choreographed. She was sitting on the career opportunity of a lifetime. Problem was: did she know it?

  Now, from the bed, she smiled at him.

  ‘Done something wrong, have I? Taking snaps?’

  He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘oh, no.’

  ‘Then why all this?’

  She nodded round the ward. Ingle looked faintly apologetic, the accommodation not quite up to scratch.

  ‘A precaution,’ he said. ‘In case you get into
trouble.’

  ‘Ah …’ Annie nodded, duly grateful. ‘Saving me from myself.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘An act of charity?’

  She smiled at him, and folded back the sheet, and began to get out of bed. The movement was a gesture, a declaration. She’d had enough. She was leaving. Ingle leaned forward and restrained her. His strength surprised her. Beneath the banter and bonhomie, there was no ambiguity about their private rules of engagement. She’d been ordered into bed. And there she’d stay. The big man leaned back and folded his arms.

  ‘It’s a lousy night,’ he said briefly. ‘You’re better off where you are.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Tell me …’ she said, ‘am I under arrest?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just detained?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For the duration?’

  He nodded at her, speculatively.

  ‘Depends …’ he said.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On how well we get on …’ He paused. ‘There’s someone we ought to talk about.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Annie picked up a small thread of cotton from the sheet. The hems were falling apart. She looked up.

  ‘And who would that be?’

  Ingle grinned. A big, wide grin.

  ‘Mate of yours,’ he said. ‘Bloke called Gillespie.’

  Gillespie drove fast out of the dock, putting distance between himself and the chaos aboard the trawler. The fuel can lay on the back seat. The girl sat beside him. Her perfume got the better of the diesel, but only just.

  He glanced sideways at her, her face shadowed by the passing street lights. She’d got her breath back now, but she was obviously shocked, her eyes fixed on the road ahead, one hand still massaging her knee. She was younger than he’d first suspected, photographing her in the park, 120 mm at 30 metres. Late twenties, he thought, maybe even younger. He swerved briefly to avoid a baulk of timber in the road. Her other hand reached forward, instinctively, for the dashboard.

  The old Cortina settled down again. A car appeared in the road in front of them, driving fast, lights on full beam. The car flashed past, a big estate. Gillespie glimpsed kids’ faces in the back, pressed up against the window, and wondered briefly where they were off to, what they were up to, on a road that led nowhere but the dock. He glanced at the girl again, Suzanne Wallace. 913 Ocean Towers.

  ‘Those blokes back there,’ he said, ‘you know them?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Only the older one,’ she said, ‘in the suit.’

  ‘Harry Cartwright?’

  She looked across at him. ‘That’s right,’ she said, surprised.

  ‘Accountant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gillespie nodded.

  ‘Dodgy reputation,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ She paused and fingered a tiny mole on her face. ‘But yes, I expect so.’

  Gillespie dropped the car down through the gear box, gliding to a halt in a tiny lay-by in the shadow of the city’s cathedral. He turned off the engine and wound the window down. There was a rustle of wet leaves from the trees overhead. The darkness smelled of autumn. The girl had stiffened again, wooden, braced for the next shock, the next hideous twist in the story. Gillespie stared ahead, out through the greasy windscreen.

  ‘The rest of them,’ he said. ‘The young bloke. And the one I put in the water.’ He looked across. ‘Rough trade, love. You should be careful, company like that.’

  Suzanne nodded, a small token movement of her head. She was fast losing track of events. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be back in the flat, with the door locked, and Martin making cocoa in the kitchen, and the rest of it irrelevant, someone else’s business. Gillespie hesitated for a moment before pushing the conversation on.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said at last, ‘what were you doing there?’

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, knowing there was no longer any point in avoiding the issue, in keeping anything back. She hadn’t a clue who this man was, with his beaten-up old car and his gun and his precious can of fuel, but there was something about him that she trusted, a curious stillness, some kind of strange integrity. She cleared her throat, and told him about the plan to get the wives and families out of the city, about the existence of a list, officially approved, about her own role, finding a destination, a landfall at journey’s end, and about her afternoon on the telephone at Cartwright’s office. She ended by telling him about the call she’d overheard in the office, about the fax she’d so nearly intercepted, and about her suspicions that the official evacuation was merely a front for something else. Gillespie followed the story carefully, stage by stage, making mental notes, the way he did for Jenner, steady, methodical, listing the details in his mind. When she’d finished, he nodded, patting the thing into shape, committing it all to memory.

  ‘So two lists …’ he said. ‘One official. And one …’ he shrugged, ‘freelance.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He smiled. It was very Harry Cartwright.

  ‘Neat,’ he said, ‘clever.’

  He glanced across at her. The obvious question.

  ‘Your boyfriend know about this?’

  She stared at him, eyes wide.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Your boyfriend. Goodman,’ Gillespie hesitated. ‘He know about this?’

  She paused, the breath gone from her body. How did he know about Martin? How did anyone? Their relationship? Their careful secrets? She swallowed hard, wondering whether to deny it, or to challenge the man, demanding an explanation. Gillespie, reading her mind, waved it all away, irrelevant.

  ‘No games,’ he said, ‘just tell me.’

  She shrugged, robbed even of indignation, her privacy so blatantly ignored.

  ‘He organized it,’ she said, ‘if that’s what you mean. The official part. But the rest …’ she frowned, ‘no, I’m sure he doesn’t. In fact they wanted me to phone him. Tell him everything was OK. That’s where we were going. Just now. Back there …’ She lapsed into silence.

  Gillespie glanced across at her. She was thinking of Goodman. It showed on her face.

  ‘How well do you know him?’ he said.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘You trust him?’

  She looked at him. Her eyes were beginning to moisten.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘completely.’ She paused. ‘They can’t leave without his permission.’ She added, ‘He’s the one in charge.’

  ‘So I gather,’ Gillespie said drily, reaching for the ignition keys.

  She followed his movements, frightened again, thinking she’d gone too far, said too much, that they were going back to the dock. Gillespie put his hand briefly on her arm, reading her mind, one step ahead.

  ‘Harry’s place,’ he said ‘We need the fax.’

  Nigel Quinn sat at his desk in the Bunker, looking at the fire axe. By the big clock on the wall, it was nearly eight. In an hour or so, after the Queen’s and Goodman’s broadcasts, they were due to rehearse the fire and contamination drills, break out the NBC suits, each member of the Bunker with a buddy, working as a team, checking that the wretched things fitted properly, checking the over-boots and thick rubber gloves, checking the seals around the tight-fitting rubber face masks, tidying each other into the bulky dark green suits that should – in theory – preserve them from gas or chemical attack.

  It was a manoeuvre that most of them had practised on the two-day Civil Defence exercises and everybody hated it. The suits were hot. They made you sweat. They were claustrophobic. They sealed you into a world of your own, and cut you off from all the normal clues. You no longer knew who was who. You addressed people by the names on the ID tags they wore on their chests, and you took it on trust that the names were correct. Voices were barely audible, muffled by the thick rubber masks. Expressions were impossible to gauge, totally invisible. You no longer knew whether people were smiling,
or frowning, or looking apprehensive. They were simply a pair of eyes in a mask, faces from a nightmare. It was like living underwater, and even for a man like Quinn, who viewed complaint as a form of moral weakness, the bloody things were hateful.

  But that wasn’t the point. The point was that the plan called for NBC suits. It was his job to administer the plan, to make sure that the system continued to function as effectively as it could, for as long as it could. And if that meant Noddy Suits and rubber gloves, and the sour taste of your own sweat, then so be it. Except that the keys were still missing. And that Goodman was still refusing to authorize the obvious alternative.

  He studied the fire axe. The storeroom was double-locked, with a heavy metal door. It wouldn’t be easy smashing it down, but it would have to be done. He pushed his chair back from the desk and began to get up. As he did so, the door to the Telex room opened, and Davidson stepped out. He’d already made it clear to both Quinn and Goodman that access to the Telex room was restricted to himself. Anything incoming for the city would be circulated at once. Anything else was strictly at his discretion.

  Davidson hurried the length of the Bunker, a roll of telex paper in his hand. He knocked once on Goodman’s door and went in. Through the thick glass panel, Quinn watched Goodman looking up from the paperwork on his desk, accepting the telex, scanning it quickly, glancing up at Davidson, some comment, some question, then reaching for the white internal telephone on his desk. Quinn’s own phone began to trill, and it took him a second or two to associate the two events. He picked up the phone. It was Goodman.

  ‘Nigel,’ he said, ‘a word.’

  Quinn got up and hurried over to Goodman’s office. Davidson was still standing by the desk. He was beginning to look grey with fatigue. Goodman glanced up and handed Quinn the telex. He read it quickly, then again. The telex quoted from a GCHQ intercept. The Russians were preparing to board the crippled submarine. The President was reported to have left Washington, by helicopter, for an undisclosed destination. SAC bombers were on two minutes’ readiness to move. War was expected to break out before midnight. Quinn looked up, chilled.