Safe from Harm

by RJ Bailey

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. I walked down the corridor, knocked on Jess’s door and put my head in. ‘You OK?’

  She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her laptop next to her, the screen angled, as usual, so that I couldn’t see, but she was playing with her phone. ‘Yes, I’m just installing this game Dad showed me.’ I didn’t like her calling him Dad. It had taken a while for Paul to earn that title. To me he had never given it up. Matt, on the other hand, had abdicated that particular throne.

  ‘Matt, you mean.’

  She looked at me pityingly. ‘You can have two dads, you know. Niamh has two mums.’

  ‘What game did he show you?’ I tried to sound neutral. I was thinking Grand Theft Auto: The Amphetamine Connection.

  ‘Super Smash Bros in Las Vegas. It’s like Super Smash Bros . . .’

  ‘But set in Las Vegas.’

  ‘Exactly!’ She beamed. ‘Alisha has it. It’s very cool.’

  ‘Dad’, I saw, had gone up in her estimation. How come there wasn’t universal excitement when I finally put Candy Crush on my phone?

  ‘I’ll be out in a minute,’ she said, dismissing me.

  I went back into the living room, in no mood to beat about any bush. ‘What do you want, Matt?’

  ‘My father died. Funeral was this morning.’ That flapping sound was the wind leaving my sails. Me and my lucky guesses.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said, and meant it. ‘Why aren’t you at the after-party?’

  ‘After-party?’ A little bit of my old PPO world creeping back in. There were always ‘after-parties’ at every event to be screened, even if most of the job was media blocking – keeping the press outside where we wanted them. But you didn’t call them that at funerals.

  ‘Wake, then. Reception. Whatever. I liked your dad. He was a good guy.’

  He finished the thought for me. ‘Unlike me?’

  There were those who saw me marrying Matt as a major character flaw on my part. How could you? But they would be judging me on the Matt of the last five or ten years. The first incarnation of Matt, the one I hooked up with, was smart, funny, charming, caring, considerate, selfless, handsome and had money in the bank. The latter versions of Matt were only some of those things. Then again, he also gave me Jess, which stacked up well in the ‘plus’ column.

  ‘It’s just that . . . you know, a death makes you think about things. The bigger picture. Choices you’ve made. Like us.’

  Sod it, I thought, I do need a drink. Training could wait twelve hours. I went to the fridge behind the breakfast bar that separated the living and cooking areas and found two inches of Albarino in the door compartment. I tossed them into a glass. Matt had got up and was now leaning on the counter, still droning his fortune-cookie wisdom.

  ‘. . . all those years not seeing Jess. What a waste.’

  ‘And some child support might have been nice.’

  Matt looked pained. ‘You were earning more than me. Besides, I thought you liked being a minder.’

  I hate that word. Being called a minder was like being called a bouncer – we were light years away from that shaven-headed, dark-glasses-wearing world. ‘PPO. And it’s a living, true. But the hours can be shit. Meanwhile I had a husband who went on a stag weekend to Ibiza and never came back.’

  ‘I did come back.’

  I tapped the side of my head. ‘Not in here.’

  It was why I thought he might be dead. He had gone on one long drugs binge and I honestly thought he’d never come out of it alive.

  ‘I came back and found you shacked up with Paul.’

  ‘Talk about rewriting history. You came back, went back, came back. Told me having a kid and being chained to the marital bed was a mistake . . . no, hold on, you said only fucking one woman for the rest of your life was inconceivable. You were sorry. You asked for a divorce. Then you dived headfirst into a pile of Class As. Then you found the only way to support your habit was to start selling the shit. That’s the truth, no matter how you spin it.’

  He took a mouthful of beer and swilled it around like it was mouthwash. ‘Look, I’ve given all that up. The Class As. Young man’s game.’

  ‘Took you long enough to find out. You’re way past young man.’

  Matt looked me up and down like I was horseflesh. ‘Pot and kettle.’ He nodded at my glass of wine. ‘That won’t help anything. Not in the long run. I’m almost totally sober. Oh, I think a beer on the day I put my old man in a furnace is allowable. But most of the time . . .’ He gave a little whistle. ‘Clean. Look, I know I did some stupid things. And a postcard wouldn’t have gone amiss, I suppose. But what was I going to say?’

  I felt a mean little worm raise its head. ‘Wish you were here. The gear is A-1 and there’s always some Swedish girl who’ll suck my cock.’

  ‘Don’t be nasty. It’s unbecoming.’

  ‘What about Christmas and birthdays? It was a long time before Jess accepted that nothing, not even a card, was arriving from Daddy.’

  ‘Well, I’d like to do something about that.’

  ‘What, you’ve got a sack of the cards you never sent? Wheel ’em in.’ He winced. I tried a little touch of the conciliatory. ‘Come on, Matt, we went different ways, that’s all. I admit, I did blame you for a while. I mean, it was your decision to split, not mine. But that feeling faded. And now we aren’t the same people.’

  ‘Don’t say that. That’s why I am here. To start again. I just want you to tell me this.’ He reached over and let his hand rest on my arm. ‘How can I get you and Jess back into my life for good?’

  That’s when I hit him.

  THIRTEEN

  A hammer. A hammer and a long screwdriver. That is the sum total of what I have managed to find to defend myself in the seconds it took for the lift to descend to our level. I put the hammer in my right hand and weigh it. It is light. I struggle to lift the screwdriver with my left. Trying to make a fist, even with the good fingers, causes me to gasp. Fire shoots up my arm. And when I lift the screwdriver, it seems to me it weighs more than the hammer, such is the effort of raising the limb. I have to face it: I am single-handed in every sense of the word.

  I opt for the hammer and take the eight paces to be back at her side. She grips my waistband and I run the back of my left hand over her hair as gently as I can. Even the softest touch sends needles of pain up my arm.

  Not long to wait now.

  I have been here before. Not here, exactly, but in situations like this, waiting for some insurgents to break through a door or a window, feeling that mix of fear and excitement. But back then, I had four or five good men with me, lads from the bottom rung of society, who by some odd alchemy had been turned into a fighting force, albeit a particularly foul-mouthed and often misogynistic one.

  ‘So a woman turns up to work on a building site and the boss says no women allowed. But she picks up a bit of wood, saws it into pieces, then builds a bench before his very eyes. He sits on it. Tasty. OK, then, he says, you’re on, but we work by hand signals. If I do this – he mimes twisting a screw in – it means I want a screwdriver. If I do this – he demonstrates banging a nail in – a hammer. So she goes off to work and things are going well until the afternoon, when the boss makes the screwdriver sign to her across the building site. She tries to shout something but he can’t hear. So she fondles her tits, rubs her belly and then feels her crotch. What? he asks. So she does it again – breasts, belly, crotch. Eventually he walks over and she does it again. Tits: “It’s in your top pocket”. Belly: “You fat”. Crotch: “Cunt”.’

  Gerry’s favourite joke. What I wouldn’t give for him by my side. And his SA-80.

  Clunk. Lift down. A heartbeat of silence. ‘Doors opening.’ Loud now.

  I put the hammer in my armpit and look at the useless phone one more time, praying for it to work. Nothing.

  I step forward as the doors part to bleed out a vertical bar of white-hot light. Within a second, the whole garage is flooded with it, and I see the b
lurred outline of the men within, stepping out from the glow like aliens emerging from a spaceship in a sci-fi movie. And another, unmistakable, noise.

  That of a round being chambered into the barrel of a gun.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘You’re ready to go then?’ Ben asked over his shoulder as he lowered the blinds in his office.

  He had given me the eyes-up-and-down of a suspicious border control officer when I walked in. I was in a dark linen dress with a jacket with three-quarter sleeves over it, black shoes with low heels, and was carrying a leather document bag-cum-briefcase. My hair was freshly cut, my make-up minimal but effective, my lower areas trimmed to perfection. And I was wearing matching underwear, Myla, no less. I felt good and didn’t care who knew it.

  Outside, the sun was shining, flaring off the building opposite. Ben had lowered the blinds enough to kill the glare and he turned up the air conditioning a notch.

  ‘Pretty much,’ I said. I was enjoying the twin feelings in my stomach. One was of muscles that had tightened up over the past four weeks, the other the little frisson of getting back to work. Like a little drip-feed of adrenaline, just enough to cause a pleasant buzz.

  Some – like Nina – would say the job is boring. That nothing ever happens. But that’s only true if you do the job right. We don’t want excitement. Excitement equals failure. Some say it is like the army, where 95 per cent of the time boredom is the real enemy. But in the army you – or, you hope, someone higher up – have a good idea where the next attack might come from. As a PPO you have no forewarning. So boredom isn’t an option.

  Ben returned to behind his desk, sat, shot cuffs adorned with fat gold cufflinks so heavy they must have constituted a daily workout whenever he lifted a cup of coffee, and fixed me with his tell-the-truth stare. ‘And childcare?’

  ‘A live-out au pair.’ It sounded so easy when I said it. But the interview process had been tortuous. I had started thinking of au pairs like Elena, but with only two bedrooms in the flat, a live-in was impossible. Eventually I had found Laura, in her mid-twenties, with a degree in media from Bournemouth, living at home and saving for travel in a year’s time. She was smart, fashionable and near enough to Jess’s age for my daughter to engage with. Jess had given her a thumbs-up, the references checked out, so I gave Laura the job.

  Now it was my turn to audition.

  ‘You’ve not done the cyber-security diploma, have you?’

  I didn’t know there was a cyber-security diploma. ‘No. Is that a problem?’

  ‘Not for what I am about to offer you. Could be in the future. Some clients demand computer skills.’

  ‘Never my strong suit,’ I admitted.

  ‘Not to worry. Something to look at later, perhaps.’ Ben pushed two folders across the top of his desk towards me. ‘I’ve kept you north for now. Is that OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Although you won’t be surprised to know we are getting a lot of requests from Holland Park and Knightsbridge, so if these don’t work out, we’ll reconsider the geography.’

  ‘Islington is on a tube line, you know.’

  He looked doubtful about that. ‘So, this is what we have that springs to mind. One Russian national. One Pakistani national. Request for female PPO, in the first case to keep away unwanted media attention from the wife and in the second, fear of kidnap.’

  ‘Of the Principal?’

  ‘Or child. Daughter, age twelve. There was an older son, too, but he died.’

  ‘How?’

  He frowned as he studied his computer screen. ‘The earthquake in Nepal. He was on a trekking holiday. Nothing suspicious.’

  ‘What is the kidnap risk assessment?’

  ‘Low. A family member was taken in Islamabad two years ago, but it was an express K&E.’

  An express kidnapping and extortion was when someone is held just long enough to clean out their bank accounts with whatever cards are in the victim’s wallet or handbag or using whichever online passwords could be bullied or tortured out of them. K&R was kidnap and ransom, when someone else was expected to pony up the cash. You worried more about K&R because the motive might not always be money. And they were the cases that usually ended with a body.

  I reached over for the files. He placed his right hand on them, fingers spread. The gold cufflink sat there like a paperweight. ‘I want you to go for both of them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Things have changed since you were last in the game. You need the practice. By the way, as you might expect, the family here –’ he tapped the green folder ‘– are Muslim. Will that be a problem?’

  I shook my head. I knew what he was referring to. Not any innate prejudice on my part – PPOs don’t have prejudices, they get in the way – but the fact that it was considered very likely that Paul had been killed by one of the cell he had been watching. Word had reached the Civil Nuclear Authority of a threat by members of an organisation called BOI – Blade of Islam. The day he died he had spent a shift in a van watching a café and phone shop where BOI were believed to have some sort of information exchange or letter drop. On his way home, as I had asked him to, Paul had stopped to buy some dinner for Jess. Just popped into a corner shop for comfort food. Bread, beans, bacon, eggs, ice cream. And when he came out, they were waiting for him. Bang. Bang. To the face.

  The day of the murder Paul had gone to St John’s Wood – the facility there was not only a huge electricity sub-station for London, but since the 2012 Olympics it had held the Civil Nuclear Constabulary Metropolitan armoury. There he had drawn a standard-issue Glock 17 and an ASP telescopic baton and travelled by Ford S-Max to the stakeout location, where he transferred to a surveillance Transit. The regular police believed the surveillance was compromised and that he was murdered by a BOI hit team. Various Muslim groups certainly claimed the ‘execution’ on their websites over the following days. I didn’t tar all of Islam with the same blood-soaked brush. I knew better than that. But I did sometimes dream about finding myself in a room full of BOI and a handful of weaponry. Who wouldn’t?

  ‘There’s rather a basic Principal profile in each one. Could do with fleshing out. And there is an equally crude Risk Assessment Report and PVC.’ Potential Vulnerability Considerations. Dear God, The Circuit loves its acronyms. ‘Maybe you can beef them up too. First meeting is with the Russian tomorrow at two in the afternoon. The next is the day after, at midday. Addresses are in the file. Plus the phone number of the primary residential security officer.’

  His hand finally lifted and I took the files and slid them into my document bag. It wouldn’t leave my side now. Any file detailing protection measures could easily be turned to become an offensive blueprint. It was why I had recently had a key and combination safe installed in the flat.

  ‘I’ll report back,’ I said, stood and smoothed down my skirt.

  ‘Good.’ He leaned back in his chair as I turned to leave. ‘By the way . . .’ I looked back over my shoulder. ‘Looking good.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Make sure this –’ he tapped his head ‘– is as fit as the outside.’

  When I got home I asked Laura to stay on for an extra two hours, which she was happy to do. She and Jess were creating a vlog. Jess had decided she would become an internet celebrity. The fact she had very little to say was not a hindrance to this ambition. Their first one was going to involve visiting Rosemary Gardens and filming on Jess’s phone all the dogs they could find (with, I suggested, the owners’ permission) and having a virtual canine beauty contest online, with sardonic Come Dine With Me-style voiceover.

  ‘You’ve done your homework?’ I asked.

  ‘She has,’ Laura confirmed. ‘I stood over her while she did it. We’ll be about forty-five minutes and I’ll make her something to eat before I go.’

  I felt a rush of gratitude towards this young woman in her tight jeans, Doc Martens and ‘Beckham for DKNY’ T-shirt. With no make-up and her dark hair plaited, she hardly looked older than Jess. A
part from the nose stud. I wondered how long before Jess would start feeling her life was incomplete without a similar adornment. Well, it would be two years or more before Mum said yes to that.

  When they had gone I took out the files and laid them on the new desk I had bought myself (a KLUNK or something similar from IKEA – Heal’s kind of money wouldn’t start flowing for a while) and opened the laptop. I did a Google search on my prospective employers, starting with the Russian, Andrei Asparov. Sexist, I know, when the job will be PPO to the wife, but in my experience the husbands tend to leave the bigger footprint all over the net. And, of course, it is usually them paying your salary. The wife only comes into focus gradually, and sometimes remains a ghostly figure. But there was surprisingly little on Mr Asparov. I wondered if he had hired an ICC – an internet cleaning company – an outfit paid to make sure his profile stayed low.

  One item, though, made several appearances, particularly in the Evening Standard and the Mail. Mr Asparov had been in a planning dispute with his neighbours in Holland Park over his mega-basement. It had been an acrimonious row by all accounts between Asparov and a member of a 90s rock band who had invested his money in a quiet street and didn’t fancy two years of excavation to build a subterranean city. In the end, Mr Asparov had decamped to The Bishops Avenue and bought somewhere that already had an underground domain. He also disappeared from view. There were pictures of his wife, however, who looked dramatically different in each photo, until I realised he was on wife number three. The latest one was a real beauty, although that didn’t extend to her eyes, which looked like black holes. I was reminded of a shark.

  I called Nina and left a message, asking if she had any information on him. Somewhere in the Guardian there would be a briefing file on him that all journalists could access, if only to list subjects that might generate letters from m’learned friends. Most billionaires have something they would prefer to keep out of the newspapers.