by Rebecca Ward
‘This is where the real work happens Boudicca. You can get access to a number of high-level rooms and get near to restricted information. See documents before they’re shredded, even unattended computers. We already have a couple of key operatives on the inside there.’ Hatty and Morag exchange looks, Balt is getting a little carried away with the spy speak. ‘Your first shift begins tomorrow at 6am sharp. Same goes for you Evan.’
Evan’s face falls. ‘Seriously?! A cleaner? That’s the best you could do?’ Bodi sniggers in retaliation.
‘Unsurprisingly, as we are not whiter than white you’ll stick out like a sore thumb doing anything but that around there. It is not what you would call a ‘diverse environment.’
‘And me? Am I on toilets or sorry should that be waste control management?’ Reed’s question drips in sarcasm.
‘You, young man, have a bit of a challenge on your hands. I need you to resemble a junior clerk by 9am tomorrow morning. You are TrueSec’s newest post room boy. Again, junior level jobs means you can move around the building relatively freely and unnoticed.’
Before Reed can complain, Bodi asks a question.
‘How did you manage to get this sorted so quickly? I mean, all our paper work and contacting your inside men? Quite a feat in, like, two days.’ She tries to sound neutral but her words come out with an edge of attack. Reed nudges her with his elbow. ‘I mean, it’s really impressive how you’ve got it together, thank you Balt.’
‘Well, it’s not been easy Boudicca but we are lucky in how we have kept our contacts close for many years now. One important fact, Ruby’s prisoner number, it’s B4579D. Bravo 4579 Delta. You all got that? That’s what you’ve got to keep an eye out for.’ Bodi repeated the number over in her head.
‘You two, Boudicca and Evan, with me. Reed, you go with Morag and Fergus.’ Morag brandishes a pair of hair cutting scissors between her index finger and thumb, snipping the air, relishing Reed’s imminent short, back and sides. Reed leaves them begrudgingly.
‘Who knew the key to a successful mission was vacuuming?’ Bodi tries to make a joke but Evan just nods. He seems preoccupied again and so Bodi waits for Balt to come over to begin their training. Is he going to show them how to clean? She doesn’t think so. He pulled up a chair.
‘The key to successful information gathering…’
And so begins two long hours on what to look for in waste paper bins.
Bodi and Reed head back to Sam’s, their minds numbed by talk of shredders and office layouts. She is pleased to see Sam’s enduring smile and a huge pot of chilli on the stove. The birds are singing their evening chorus and the three of them sit down to a quiet meal.
‘What a feast Sam. Thank you.’ Bodi is genuinely moved.
They try to embrace their new routine and speak convivially for a while about the day: about Evan and Balt’s fight, about the books Fergus showed Reed and how Flip had been insanely pleased with her assignment. It is like recounting tales after a long school day…but a weird version where the kids are going undercover in a high security company.
‘So, honestly, how are you feeling about tomorrow? Ready for your day of glamour?!’ Sam finds it hard not to point out the funny side of things.
‘Sure. Can’t wait to get those rubber gloves on. Essential spy kit.’ Bodi tries to join in but just sounds flat.
‘It will be fine. You’ll be fine.’ He rummages in his jacket. ‘I need to give you your ID cards. I picked them up earlier from, well, you don’t need to know that bit.’
Reed and Bodi take their cards from Sam. What should be a serious moment is broken by Reed’s look of sheer disbelief. ‘What? Is there something wrong with them?’ Sam tries to grab the card back but Reed has passed it to Bodi, it reads “Maurice Applewhite”.
‘Maurice!’ Bodi bursts out laughing. ‘Maurice! Seriously?’ It feels good to laugh. He adopts a super nerdy voice.
‘Maurice Applewhite. I like train spotting and collecting glass ornaments and I’m 74 years old.’ He checks out Bodi’s ID ‘Irena Kowalski. Cool spy name.’
‘It was either Maurice or Kwame. I’m not sure you could’ve pulled off Kwame.’ Sam said deadpan.
‘Oh and one other thing.’ Sam reaches under the table and pulls out a box which he places gently on the table in front of Bodi. It is black hair dye. The laughter stops as Bodi registers what it is. Reed looks aghast.
‘We can’t risk it Bodi. You’re too distinct,’ Sam says.
Bodi picks up the box from Sam and leaves the table. Back to feeling like her life is in someone else’s hands again. It’s getting increasingly more difficult for her to remember who she is.
Half an hour later, Bodi watches as her identity snakes down the drain as sludgy brown water. One more rinse and she will be Irena Kowalski. So much has happened since she was in this bathroom this morning. Bodi looks in the mirror that hangs over the sink. She doesn’t even recognize herself so she guesses that is a good thing. She has managed to get the dye all round the edge of her face so she rubs at it with her shirt. She has never used dye before, in fact she is quite an amateur at anything to do with hair and makeup. She has been brought up to believe that she doesn’t need it, and maybe Boudicca Jones doesn’t, but Irena does. She wraps her shirt around her head and scrubs at her face a bit more. She has circles under her eyes and she looks paler than normal. Her rosy glow has faded to off white.
Lying on her bed is her work uniform: a blue nylon dress, some unremarkable trainers, some nasty tan tights and grubby white ankle socks. Bodi puts it all in a neat pile at the foot of the bed and adds a nub of an eyeliner pencil that Flip had given her earlier ‘to help her look older’. She takes the Map of Inspiration out of her backpack and tacks it up on the wall beside her bed. If she is going to stay here for a few days then she wants to feel a little more at home. She stares at the scraps of faces and the faded quotes. It isn’t giving her any answers today. Sam, or maybe Reed, has left a cup of warm milk with honey next to the bed and she sips it. She falls asleep. It is barely 10.
Ruby reached up the bannister, stretching her leg out to cross the hole where the step should have been. Cal looked down the stairs at her, laughing.
‘Oh yeah, we should really fix that,’ he said with the hollow commitment of an alcoholic caretaker. ‘Come on.’ He grabbed her hand and pulled her the rest of the way up the stairs.
A mismatch of multi-coloured fabric hung like medieval pennants from the walls, pinned up with metal tacks. Most of them were patterned: gold tinged African batik tumbled over silk stripes running into swirling paisley. Some had slogans roughly hand painted on them in large black letters. ‘I’m too young to be this ANGRY’, ‘Time to wake up’ and ‘We are the 99%’. Ruby ran her free hand along the walls feeling the fibres beneath her finger tips. The landing exploded in graffiti. An army of tiny pandas in tin hats were working together to attack a giant robot with mini cannons.
‘This is where you live?’ Ruby asked, trying not to sound too horrified.
‘I’m staying with my brother for a while, and some of his friends,’ Cal said proudly. ‘Good, isn’t it?’
Ruby swallowed her shock. This was not quite what she had imagined when Cal had asked her to come meet his family. That scenario had been terrifying enough and she had had minor palpitations deciding what to wear. Good job she hadn’t gone with the ‘I’m a nice girl really’ dress and settled for some jeans and a stripy top. When he had met her by the tube Cal had greeted her with a ‘you look nice?’ clearly wondering why she would bother. And now she knew why. She doubted she would be making familial small talk about the weather over lasagne in this house.
‘It’s cool. Yeah.’ She agreed though was at a loss as to what it was at all. Was it a squat?
He bundled her into a room which was suddenly bright after the hellish ascent of the stairway. The room had two disconnected old bathtubs sat in the middle of it, adrift like abandoned sail boats, they were piled high with books. The windows were bare excep
t for some newspaper taped across it to keep out prying eyes. She followed him through this room and into a kitchen behind it. There she found a bundle of people gathered around a kitchen table loaded with mugs and half-eaten packs of ginger biscuits.
‘The gallivanting young buck has returned!’ a guy shouted from the stove. Then seeing Ruby apologised ‘Oops! Sorry bruth.’ Cal shrugged it off but it made Ruby wonder just how many girls Cal had brought back. The man rubbed his hands on a tea towel and walked over to her.
‘Hello there…?’ he looked at Cal enquiring about the name of their guest.
‘Ruby’, Cal said pointedly.
‘Hello there Ruby. So pleased you could join us. I’m this reprobate’s brother, Sam,’ he smiled broadly and gestured round the room. ‘And this is everybody. Everybody, say hello to Ruby.’
The motley assembled stopped their heated conversation momentarily to crow ‘Hello Ruby’. She blushed and waved. She was not one to blush and normally had a lot to say, but this whole episode was entirely leftfield. She was mentally prepared for parental chit chat over a dining room table, not a squat of banners, books and bathtubs.
Cal sat on a chair and went to pull Ruby onto his lap. Mortified, she pulled away, sitting further round the table. Almost everyone around the table was around ten years older than her. She wanted to hold her own, not be the ditzy girlfriend. Cal scowled at her but she ignored him and tried to focus on what was being discussed. Cal rocked on the back legs of his chair and leaned into the fridge to grab two beers. He slid one along the table to Ruby who stopped it dead but left it unopened.
‘All I’m saying is that that date won’t work. There’s too much police presence around the Cenotaph. Clement said we need to think round the problem a bit more. It’s not Populus’ style.’
‘Well, if Clement says so. Maybe we should consider Marble Arch…’
Things were quite heated and Ruby wondered what they were discussing and who Clement was. He was clearly held in much reverence.
One of the men gave Ruby the once over, aware she was studying them. ‘Maybe we should stop guys. You know…’
‘You’re fine Balt. I’m sure Ruby’s heard all this before.’ Sam said conspiratorially. ‘Right Ruby?’
‘Yeah. Don’t stop on my account.’ Ruby said, trying to look entirely clued up and retrieve her eyes from their stalks. Cal laughed knowingly, watching Ruby get sucked up into it.
‘What’s Populus? she asked naively.
THURSDAY
Fuelled by nervous energy, Bodi’s internal alarm clock goes off around 4am and she lies staring at the ceiling. A few rogue birds are welcoming a sun that is far from up, making the smallest dent in the heavy silence. As she wakes she hears what she thinks is whale song, but it is a peculiar mix of police sirens and urban foxes calling to each other.
Yesterday flew by so quickly, Bodi can’t imagine they are in anyway ready, but the more time they spend working on the plan the harder it will be to reach her Mum. She turns on the torch she uses as a night light. Shadows stretch their fingers up the walls. She puts the huge fur coat she is using as a blanket on her shoulders, steps into her boots on and heads downstairs.
Sam is already up. She spies a half-drunk bottle of whisky on the kitchen table and realises he hasn’t been to bed. When she walks in he jumps. ‘Jesus Christ! Going to take some getting used to, that look.’ He slurs, waving his right hand in front of his face as if he is wiping the image of the new Bodi away. His head teeters on the knuckles of his left hand like it might come crashing down at any second. ‘Ivanka?’
‘Irena. Sam, seriously. Now? You choose now to pour yourself into a bottle?’ Bodi goes over to the stove and puts the kettle on.
‘I promised him. I promised Cal. ‘Keep the boy out of it,’ he says. ‘Keep him away from them.’ Sweet Cal, baby brother Cal. Always wanting to change the world to make it a better place but well, look where it got you, eh? That’s him.’ Sam waves a tiny snap shot at her. ‘Us two before all this lunacy began. Before we started thinking we were the new bleedin’ IRA. Brighton beach. Had a bit of money in our pockets and went off for the day on the train. Glorious.’ His eyes fill with the tears of precious memories.
‘Do you think it’s time for bed Sam?’ Bodi suggests, kindly.
‘Don’t wanna go to bed. Big day. Sending you all off…to jump off a cliff! Need to send you off properly.’ He starts singing. ‘Cheerio chin chin, pip pip, toodle oo, goodbyee!’
The kettle whistle blows. ‘AttenSHUN!’ Sam shouts, standing up and nearly tumbling to the floor. He steadies himself on the table and clinging to the furniture walks through to the library, collapses on the chair and passes out. Bodi turns the gas off, and drapes her fur coat over him. ‘A lot of sadness under all that jollity,’ she whispers.
Feeling the morning chill, she runs upstairs to grab a jumper. Reed comes lumbering out of his room.
‘Whas goin on?’ he slurs. Barely awake, and with no hair to hide behind, he looks particularly vulnerable. His eyes snap open at the sight of Bodi standing there in her underwear and boots. Her straight black hair drapes around her face making her eyes look bigger than normal and her pale skin even paler. She can’t move and he can’t stop looking at her.
She pulls at her hair ‘It’s the hair right? Can’t quite believe it’s me either.’ She tries to sound amused but it comes across as melancholy.
‘Oh yeah, the hair.’ Reed says unconvincingly. He takes a step towards her and she doesn’t move. He takes the strands of hair that she is holding from her and gives them a cursory glance. ‘Just so different.’ His eyes glance down but come back to her face. ‘Your eyes.’ He runs his fingers across her brow to push her hair away, avoiding her smarting eye. ‘And your skin’. His eyes follow as his fingers move down to graze along her collarbone. She can smell his morning breathe and it isn’t that hideous, more warm and sweet.
The two of them stand there, Reed’s hand resting on the base of Bodi’s neck, staring at each other, half in shock, half exhilarated. Her heart races, their breath mingling between them. They are inches apart, wrapped in the silence of the early day.
‘You going to be okay today?’ he asks so gently she can barely hear. She nods, looking at the floor.
‘Who knows what today will be like if this is how it starts?’ she wonders.
Reed lifts her chin up and looks her square in the eyes. ‘It will be alright B. I’ll make sure you’re safe.’ She smiles at him and he leans in and gives her the smallest, most tender kiss on the cheek and then goes back to his room.
✽✽✽
Bodi meets Evan on the corner a block from TrueSec House. When she stands next to him he does a double take. ‘Boo? Is that you? What the…?! I thought I looked different.’ Evan has taken out his earring, removed his necklace and trimmed his hair but is still ostensibly himself. ‘Mega vamp!’ He laughs, making the sign of the cross with his fingers. ‘Don’t bite me! Actually, on second thoughts.’ Bodi has drawn lines of kohl around her eyes and despite the uniform under her coat looks like she is a paid up fan of the dark side.
‘We’re very big on goth in Poland.’ She tries out her Polish accent on Evan.
‘Oh man, it is way too early for this. Cool, though. Very convincing.’ She smiles appreciatively. ‘But I miss my flame haired Boo. Hope she gets to come home soon.’
He pulls out a pair of round-framed glasses and puts them on. Hooking them over his ears he says, ‘Meet Kwame Akoto.’
‘So you got Kwame then.’ She flashes her ID card at him. ‘Hi Kwame, I’m Irena.’
‘Irena and Kwame. The Polish goth and the Ghanaian nerd. Let’s hope Reed doesn’t need to do an accent, he’s terrible at them.’
‘You mean ‘Maurice’.’
‘Maurice! You’re having a laugh. Seriously man. Maurice! Oh my days.’
Bodi feels a little disloyal talking about Reed like that, especially with Evan. The Evan that’s been following her. She changes the subject. ‘Time t
o go?’
Evan looks at his watch. ‘Yeah it’s six. You go Irena. I’ll be right behind you. Our contact is Hardeep. See you on the other side.’ He gives her a nudge in the direction of the staff entrance.
She doesn’t know what to do with her fidgeting hands so shoves them in her coat pocket. Luckily it is fairly dark so no one can see she is agitated. She joins the queue at the staff entrance. The other staff give her a cursory look but they all have their own stuff going on. No one cares about yet another temp coming in to clean yet another office. Mostly the others are moaning about being cold and tired. The universal language of an early morning shift. Evan walks past and gives her the smallest wink, his head covered by the hood of his parka. Bodi looks up above her, this faceless tower is her Everest. To be conquered in record time.
The doors open and they start shuffling in. Regulars show their passes and go to pick up their cleaning equipment.
‘New temps, this side.’ A short man in a maroon turban indicates a desk behind him. His name badge says ‘Hardeep’. Barely making eye contact Bodi nervously offers her ID card to him.
‘Irena. Irena Kowalski.’ Hardeep looks at her, nothing registers on his face.
‘Wait in there please.’ He points to a side room and she pushes open the door to find a table and some plastic chairs. Nothing to be scared of. She sits on one of the chairs, her hands still in her pockets. It doesn’t feel like they have put the heating on in the offices. Probably doesn’t come on until the ‘real’ workers clock in. She squints in the harsh strip lighting. She is momentarily lost in the sensation of Reed’s kiss on her cheek and his hand on her collarbone.
A few minutes later Evan comes in. Swiftly followed by Hardeep, who shuts the door firmly behind him.
‘We haven’t got much time,’ he says. ‘In two seconds I’m going to take you to get your equipment and we’re going to head to the 7th floor. This is where the most recent records are kept. They’re written down before they’re inputted into the computer system. You’re going to have 30 minutes max before I have to move you onto another section. Plus you’ve got to try to do some cleaning in there or else my head will be on the block. Also security cameras. They will have a little malfunction in that area between 6.35 and 6.50 so that’s basically your window. ‘
