1990 (3 page)

'You will read me Mary Brave?' Mary was pleading.

He hugged her tightly, then released her as the door bell rang.

'We'll see, darling.' He crossed to answer it.

Three men stood stolidly in the porch.

'Dr Vickers,' the first stated, confidently.

'Yes.'

'Public Control Department, Doctor.'

'Oh?' Vickers was puzzled, unaware that they had been following him all day.

'You applied for an exit visa, Doctor?' It was more of a formal statement, than a question.

'Yes.'

The PCD inspector referred to a notebook. 'It was turned down...?'

Vickers nodded.

'...You appealed...?'

He nodded again, eyes narrowing with slow suspicion.

'...And your appeal was turned down...'

The man took a step forward and Vickers shifted his balance to block the door.

'...We do have right of entry, Doctor.' The inspector produced an official-looking card.

'What on earth for?' Vickers demanded furiously.

'We have reason to believe you may be in touch with criminals who are getting people out of this country without exit permits...'

Vickers stared at him with disbelieving hostility.

'...I must insist, Doctor.'

As the three strode into the house, Vickers made another token stand. He was pushed aside, not violently, but certainly with firmness. His wife stood transfixed behind him.

'Don't be alarmed, Ma'am. We'll be careful,' the first inspector tried to sound reassuring. 'It won't take long.'

He jerked his head at one of the others. 'Take upstairs.' And directed the third to the living room.

Katherine Vickers moved swiftly to stand between them and their targets. She looked flushed and determined and they could all hear the child crying and striving for breath in the room beyond.

One PCD inspector hesitated, as the other tried to slip past her. She turned to stop him and the second man sprang through the gap and up the stairs. The third cut neatly into the room.

She rushed after him, throwing herself at his back. As he thrust her off, she fell. Vickers shouted and surged forward, but the leader of the team held him securely in a well-practised grip.

'It's no good, Doctor. We do have the right and we don't like violence.'

Vickers struggled fiercely as his wife picked herself up, but he was no match for an expert. The man kept control easily, while the other started his search, checking the bookcase quickly and beginning to turn over the papers on top of the hi-fi.

Suddenly, Mary flew at him, clawing and kicking, with rasping breath. Almost guiltily, he tried to fend her off, but the child was frenzied. Mrs Vickers joined in the fight, knocking off his cap and grabbing his hair, as the second inspector returned down the stairs. He ran across the room to drag her back and, as she scratched at him, he hit her hard across the face.

Vickers let out a howl of anguish and rage, twisted away from his captor and ran to his wife.

'Fender!' shouted the leading inspector, angrily. The second man froze at the order and the third looked desperately towards them over the still battling Mary. Triumphantly, she snatched a book from him, ran wheezing and gasping to her parents and thrust it into her father's hand. Its title was 'Mary Brave.'

One section of the vast yard was busy with freight-liners - road juggernauts - and the rest was full of scrap metal pulped into huge, sculptural shapes, looming black against the dusk. In these days of restrictions and shortage, nothing was wasted: Everything had to be recycled and the old heaps of rusting vehicles, which had once encrusted suburbia and beauty spots across the country, had disappeared. The age of built-in obsolescence was over.

The few consumer durables available were made to be durable, with all metal parts rust-proofed and the articles themselves well finished and reliable. Unfortunately, as Britain exported most of her products and could no longer afford to import raw materials, there was a great shortage of such goods on the home market.

The orderly yard looked like a strange city, with paths and muddy ways dividing the tall blocks of metal. Kyle was walking down one of these with a burly man who looked as though he knew how to handle himself very well. Both were wearing safety helmets and neither spoke.

Nolan had been waiting for them for over an hour, but did not mention it. Kyle stared at him without encouragement. The young West Indian had expected nothing else. He explained about his job and the PCD inspectors.

'What do you mean, you can't stand being tied down?' Kyle interrupted aggressively.

'There's a world out there, man,' Nolan responded with some passion.

Kyle looked unimpressed. 'You can read and write. You seem of sound mind. You knew what you were doing when you signed Form P Seventeen.'

The black man began to look sulky. 'You sound like one of them.'

'I might be...' Kyle pointed out, then flipped through the pages of the dossier in his hand. 'Computer engineers aren't two a penny. It took years to train you. And you duck out just when you're useful...'

Baffled, Nolan began to feel scared. He did not know this place, but it was unlikely that a crowd would materialise and run to his aid if these two men jumped him. He had heard bad things about the methods of the Public Control Department.

Kyle read his thoughts, but kept his face severe. '...You seem to have tried the lot - Application for Exit Visa, Appeal, Ombudsman's Court. Which Ombudsman's Court?'

'The one in Leeds.'

'Those ventriloquists! When they say "No", you can see the Home Secretary's lips move...'

Nolan released his breath, slowly. His interrogator obviously wasn't one of them. Perhaps it was going to be all right. The questioning continued.

'...How did you go on with the Public Control Inspectors?'

'I kept my cool.'

'Do you know any personally?'

'None by name. Just the two I told your blokes about.'

Kyle turned to his companion. 'Did we approach him?'

Nolan responded, instantly, 'I told my girl I'd like to get out. Next thing, this bloke came up to me in the pub.'

Dave Brett took the dossier and scanned it, briefly. 'Jimmy's satisfied. So's Col,' he said.

Kyle glanced at Nolan. 'Who's your girl?'

Brett produced a photograph of a long-legged, laughing woman from the file.

'...Pretty...'

'And dependable,' the West Indian declared, earnestly.

'She's O.K. She's clear,' Brett assured Kyle, who studied Nolan heavily and said nothing.

There was a very long pause. Nolan tried to hold Kyle's look steadily. Appearing restless might make these men suspicious. His mouth felt dry.

'We have to be sure you're not just bait with bells on,' Kyle remarked at last, then grinned. 'Right, Nolan. You're on your way.'

The man sighed with relief and grabbed Kyle's hand enthusiastically. 'Can I put a few quid in towards costs?'

'Hang on to your wallet,' said Kyle. 'Send us a donation from the States when you're rich.' Then he handed over a slip of paper. 'Be there within two hours, wearing the gear on the list.'

Brett had already started to walk away.

'We're running late,' he shouted and Kyle hurried after him.

Minutes later, they were speeding blandly through Camden Town in Brett's exotic, high-powered car, latest BMW model - for export only.

Dave Brett had a way of getting goodies like this. Brash, ingenious and ruthless, he did well out of the system he despised. At thirty-three, he had a big house, a big car and a big business. He was allowed to move in and out of the U.K. as he liked - an unusual liberty in 1990. Yet he was still his own man, abrasive and tough.

A natural wheeler-dealer, he had come up the hard way, starting beside his father as a docker, elbowing in on chances, corrupting and fixing where necessary, until he got himself to the top of the heap as an import/export agent.

Now, he carried on a potent underground feud against the bureaucratic oligarchy which ran the country - but he would have fought a Sandhurst coup just as energetically. Bullyboys annoyed him.

Despite the rush hour, they travelled smoothly up Cannon Street and past the Mansion House. Few people owned cars and, of those who did, only the very privileged could bring them into London, with its restrictions on entry and parking.

Out along Commercial Road East towards Poplar, unchanged in thirty years. It was just after 7.00 p.m. when they arrived at the Port of London and drew up beside a freighter being loaded under floodlights in heavy rain.

'They know the risks,' Brett was saying. 'It's all for love and nothing in the back pocket.'

He leant over to collect some documents from the back seat.

'You
did
give 'em
something
?' Kyle asked, quickly.

The agent nodded. 'Yeah. And they're paying it back. How do you tell three merchant seamen that, if they get caught at this game, they get sentences twice as heavy if they did it for love not money?'

The two men had left the car and were walking towards the freighter.

'Evening, Mr Brett,' the voice sounded behind them.

The agent looked round casually to see two Emigration Officers coming towards them from the shadows.

'Bob,' he said easily to the senior man. 'Out on such a night! I'd have thought you'd be watching telly under a sun-lamp!'

'I'm a spartan. Who's your friend?'

But Kyle had beaten him to it and was holding out his fake identity card.

'Not another!' exclaimed the official. 'You import/export agents must be minting it!'

'Well, the State didn't when they took us over,' remarked Brett. 'They couldn't trade a toffee apple and it was "Come back! All is forgiven".'

'They're not as keen on the ready as you boys,' the other commented tartly.

Brett looked suitably pained and shrugged towards Kyle. 'He gets a cut of my percentage. We're both on the breadline,' he protested.

The Emigration Officer waved towards the car, lying glossily under the floodlight. 'They give those away on Supplementary Benefit now, do they?'

It was an old wrangle the two resurrected sociably each time they met.

'See if they'll commute your pension,' advised Brett. 'Then you can buy one.'

'I'm too cautious,' the other replied, almost regretfully.

A half-drunk seaman staggered past them on his way to the ship. Kyle and Brett followed him up the gangplank, where he stumbled by the waiting duty seaman, who turned towards them.

'Mr Brett.'

'We're just checking freight against manifests, Steve. You on check-point a bit yet?'

Steve Harper, the young seaman, nodded.

'Half an hour, that's all,' Brett promised.

The two Emigration Officers were still watching from the quay as he and Kyle went below.

They made their way to the end of a short passage, where Brett knocked sharply four times and a door was opened into a spacious cabin. Its portholes were firmly shut and the interior was lit by a dim electric bulb. The four men were not surprised to see them. Two were playing a board game, another lay reading on a bunk and the fourth stood by the door. They looked bored yet tense, with the same mixture of excitement and fear generated by any group of imprisoned men planning an escape.

'Any complaints?' Brett asked.

'We're still O.K. for oxygen,' answered the man who had let them in.

'Hello, Kendall,' Kyle greeted him. 'I thought you'd be spokesman somehow. You could have sold me a second-hand car any day.'

The man laughed. 'All I've ever sold is ideas.'

'Lousy ones, if the Department of Science is to be believed,' responded Kyle.

The other grimaced. 'I'm no Einstein.'

'No - I'll take your word for that,' Kyle gagged.. 'I'm surprised they even tried to stop you getting out.'

The emigrant chuckled. A recent member of the government think-tank on energy and now on his way to the U.S.A., he could afford not to be offended.

Brett had tugged open a radiator panel by one of the bunks. Now he pressed a button and a section of wall panelling, some 18" wide, slid back. Kyle peered into the gap.

'We can get thirty in there, if pushed,' his partner said and tapped two nozzles set into the wall. '...Oxygen intake.'

'How about Customs rummage crews?' Kyle asked.

Brett pointed to the panelling. 'Tap it. If you get hollow sound, you'll be the first.'

Kyle rapped with his knuckles. The sound was heavy and solid.

'X-rays?' he queried.

'Nothing shows through,' Dave Brett insisted, proudly. 'It's a new metal from Germany.'

On deck, Harper, the duty seaman, was still watching the two Emigration Officers from the head of the gangplank. Another seaman wandered past them and came up towards him, producing a pass. He checked it, looked into the man's unknown face and shouted to a mate. Grabbing the seaman, he hurried him to the passage below.

Kendall opened the door when he heard the signal and Harper pushed Nolan, disguised as a seaman, into the cabin. Kendall held out his hand to the dazed West Indian. 'Welcome to the getaway set.'

'I think we'd best get back there,' Harper urged. 'Tarrant's on look-out, but the E.Os. are sniffing.'

Kyle and Brett quickly followed him and were soon on the quay again beside the two officials.

Brett pulled out a hip flask. 'I know,' he said accusingly to them. 'You're after a duty-free rum.'

He took a swig and offered it to the senior man. 'It's the next best thing - Napoleon brandy.'

The other shook his head, reluctantly.

'A tot of brandy's not corruption,' the agent persuaded.

'That's corrupt,' the official asserted. 'You didn't wipe it!'

Brett wiped the mouth of the flask and the first officer took a long swig, before passing it to his second, who refused, primly. Kyle also declined.

Every third Tuesday in the month was surgery day - constituency surgery day for Fred Bingham, M.P. He found the task dull, because his constituency was dull and his constituents were dull, and those who came to the morning surgery were the dullest of the lot.