1990 (5 page)

Kyle said, calmly, 'This office could be bugged.'

Vickers shrugged, not caring, and Kyle smiled. 'All they're getting now is a screech that's ripping their eardrums apart.'

The doctor did not look at all surprised. Everyone knew this sort of thing went on; bugs, phone tapping, spying. They were all becoming almost commonplace.

'Did she have any final advice?' Kyle asked.

'An appeal to the Ombudsman's Court.'

'Where some tame time-servers will shake their heads and maybe recommend you for treatment at one of these new Rehabilitation Centres.'

'I'd leave illegally first,' Vickers blurted out. 'I don't wish to be an involuntary guinea pig for their experiments with M and H pills.'

'M and H?'

'Happiness and misery pills as rewards and punishments.'

Kyle's eyes were hard. 'The old stick and carrot routine up-dated?'

Vickers nodded. 'I
would
leave illegally. I mean it.'

'You didn't tell milady that?' Kyle asked, hastily.

'All I said was that I'd see you and the rest of the media.'

'I bet that made her laugh.'

'Well, she smiled.'

Kyle made a few notes on a pad and then looked up. 'Where can I get in touch...?'

Vickers presented his card.

'...In case I do a piece. I'm not hopeful. These cases aren't news any more, too familiar.' He stood up and shook hands. 'I'll get someone to show you out.'

Vickers tried to hide his disappointment. After all, he had not really expected results. 'I'll find my own way, thanks,' he replied, and left.

Kyle picked up the phone and dialled a number.

The voice at the other end answered, 'Home Office. Public Control Department.'

'Miss Lomas, please..?' Kyle asked. Then, 'Delly. I'm clear now. Come over when you like.' His voice was invitingly warm.

Shortly after seeing the lift carry Delly Lomas towards the ground floor, Henry Tasker hurried in the opposite direction to the Surveillance Room. He hesitated outside the door, tugged his jacket straight and tried to make a random-looking entry.

It was a huge and circular place, taking up the whole of the headquarters' top floor like an air traffic control room. Men and women, wearing headsets, listened bored at various posts. Some of these were unmanned, with their recording machines switching on automatically at the sound of voices.

Directly opposite the door was a bank of sonar based monitors. Checkers prowled along them and Peter Randall, one of the supervisors, was sitting at the central desk.

Deputy Controller Tasker strolled among the machines observantly for a few minutes before approaching Randall.

'I suppose Miss Lomas didn't arrange for her movements to be recorded?' He tried to appear offhand.

Randall checked his lists and replied, 'No, sir, did you expect her to?'

'I was only thinking of her own security,' Tasker said, lamely.

Randall knew he was lying. Everyone in the Department was aware of the professional clash between the two Deputies. But Tasker was gazing distantly at one of the V.I.P. monitors.

'Who's red today, Peter?' He indicated the red blip on the screen.

'It's that M.P., Frensham,' answered Randall. 'The one who's put down questions to the Home Secretary about the new ARCs.'

Tasker began to query the other colours. Blue? The civil rights protestor, Claydon. Green? A history lecturer who disliked the new history books for schools.

Tasker raised his eyebrows. 'Who wants
him
tabbed?'

Randall referred to his order book. 'The chit was signed by Mr Teviot.'

'Teviot?' queried the Deputy Controller, suspiciously.

'The new Chief Assistant Inspector of Culture.'

'Oh, him,' Tasker relaxed and then wondered, almost as an afterthought, whether Kyle's blip had done its customary vanishing trick.

Randall pointed, almost boasting, to a yellow blip. 'He seems to be in his office.'

'That proves nothing,' Tasker said, severely.

The supervisor checked a second register and verified that Kyle was also under personal surveillance for the day.

'Oh, really?' Tasker forgot to sound uninterested. 'Who authorised that?'

'Mr Skardon, sir. And Mr Kyle hasn't left his office.'

Tasker looked extremely sceptical.

There had been a lot of trouble about this Kyle business recently and it worried Randall. Because early prejudices had held him back, it had taken a long time to reach the position of supervisor. But, for several years now, he had felt safely established. Not sufficiently ambitious to be a threat to any superiors, he had also proved dependable. Lately, however, he had become less sure. The puritan backlash was beginning and he sometimes wondered how long it would be before homosexuals were once again on the outside.

Anxiously, he went over to consult one of the checkers and returned to Tasker looking relieved. 'Miss Lomas has just been seen arriving at Kyle's office, sir.'

Henry Tasker's features almost yielded to a smile.

She was looking round his office with a mixture of curiosity and disappointment, taking in the battered filing cabinets and threadbare rug, as well as the detailed wall map and the heavily framed, poor Impressionist reproduction, looking oddly out of place in the corner. Probably covering a wall safe, she guessed.

Kyle watched, reading Delly's reactions with amusement. 'You expected something more exotic?'

'No. More style,' she returned, which was true. She had never been in a newspaper office before, but she had seen a lot of movies.

'This isn't the civil service, Delly. You lot have it made these days. I'd not mind an original oil painting or two like yours.'

'Your envy's showing.' She folded herself elegantly into a badly sprung chair.

But Kyle was not so conveniently deflected. 'Who'd have thought the bureaucrats and snoopers would be the last of the big spenders? Shop for art in Bond Street with our Whitehall masters. I don't know where Sotheby's and Christie's would be without you,' he jibed, then added before she had time to argue. 'I'm surprised you've not slummed it in Fleet Street before.'

'You never asked me down,' she almost flirted.

'Down's the word.' He obviously wasn't going to let anything go. 'But don't assume these are permanent postures.'

Ignoring the implicit attack, Delly stood up and stepped towards the wall map. He noticed that, unlike most girls over 5' 7", she moved quite unselfconsciously, as though she enjoyed being tall.

Examining the marking flags and pins, she nodded, 'Not bad. Nearly up to date.'

'Make any additions you feel inclined to disclose,' Kyle urged, sardonically.

To his surprise, she took the last red magnetic disc from a container on his desk and planted it in the heart of Cumberland.

'Not another!' he exclaimed, taken aback.

'Six Adult Rehabilitation Centres, not five. See how wrong you can be, Kyle?' Delly goaded and went on to point out with mock regret that she could have added four more ARCs, due to be set up the following week, if only he had had more discs.

Enjoying his obvious bewilderment, she began to insinuate that his sources were unreliable until he observed, calmly, 'Five out of five right. I was one short, that's all. Now what is it you're after?'

He was not nearly as easy to provoke as Henry Tasker, she thought to herself, deciding on a more direct attack. 'I don't see why you have it in for our Department. We have a job to do.'

He snorted. 'And what a job! Anyway, I help you now and then.'

'When you're good, you're very very good,' she said. 'When you're bad, you're loud and nasty. And misinformed.'

'Thanks for the citation. I hope you'll see I'm in the next King's Birthday Honours list.'

'There might not be another.' She trailed it neatly before him.

'I could be taping this,' he claimed.

Delly produced a small device from her coat pocket and lazily waved it at him. 'And this will be wiping it...'

Kyle looked at it with interest. It must have been newly developed for the PCD. He made a mental note to obtain one for himself. It might be better than his own.

She continued, 'Let me repeat. There'll be no more King's Birthday Honours lists.'

'That's on the record?'

'That depends...' She paused, crossed her legs and lit a cigarette.

He waited for Catch 22, his mind not totally on business. 'Not in the way I want!' Then he continued, more seriously, 'Why should I sit up and beg when I have the run of the larder?'

'Because we're putting locks on the larder,' she retaliated. He knew she was bluffing. 'I could give you more inside stuff than Faceless.'

Kyle felt his pulse jerk, and his eyelids drooped automatically to hide his alarm. 'Faceless?'

'Old Faceless, you call him,' Delly said.

'You've been reading too many fairy stories published by His Majesty's Stationery Office.' He remained carefully relaxed, aware that she had been specially trained to watch for nervous reactions or any sudden fidgeting.

'You'll clearly never disclose his identity,' she accepted.

'Not unless they force it out of me using some new technique in one of your Adult Rehabilitation Centres,' he said acidly.

'There's no risk of that, Kyle,' she sighed. 'You're exaggerating again. It's one of the habits of your trade.'

He turned on her, savagely reminding her of Professor Ellis and Doctor Boswell, and adding that they made the Beast of Belsen look like an amateur.

But it was the introduction she had been waiting for. 'Ellis and Boswell will not be in charge of Centres Three and Five,' she stated, flatly. Then, catching Kyle's look of derision, 'you don't trust me?'

'Oh, implicitly,' he replied with heavy sarcasm.

'Their appointments have
not
been confirmed, and that's going to make you look very egg-faced in the morning.'

It had to be a trick. 'I'll stand by my story.'

Delly shrugged. 'It's your reputation. Get it wrong too often and you'll find yourself a clerk in the civil service.'

'Think of the pension!' He was ruffled. She would never be clumsy enough to try to suppress a story with a direct lie which could be blown up into a major scandal later, quite apart from totally destroying any future co-operation between them.

'Ellis and Boswell are not the men,' she was saying in measured tones. 'Kill tomorrow's story and I'll give you the real facts within a week.'

'The facts!' He looked up to heaven in disbelief.

'The real appointments,' she confirmed, with a slight smile.

'No deal,' he said. 'I have tomorrow's lead.'

'I'll give you an alternative. After all, you have two anti-Public Control Department stories in hand for tomorrow. The Ellis-Boswell lie... And the poor doctor with the asthmatic child we won't allow out to Arizona to earn a ransom.'

Kyle's face stayed blank, as he waited for the double-cross.

'Drop the Ellis-Boswell lie and I'll tell you about the King's Birthday Honours list...' she haggled.

Kyle half committed himself with a nod.

'The next one will be scotched,' she went on. 'And it'll be the last...' She could see he was genuinely interested now. 'The Home Secretary's been pressing this in Cabinet. And he's got it through.'

She waited. They studied each other. Finally, he said, 'Fair swop. That's a lead...'

At least that would get Skardon off her back, she thought, instantly. And keep Henry Tasker in his place.

'...I hear you told that doctor to apply to the Ombudsman's Court?' Kyle said: 'D'you think they'll let him out?' Kyle was asking.

But the bargaining was over and she was not going to be drawn into this one. 'Do you?' she answered, coolly. 'This country needs every doctor it can hold on to.'

'What was it Pitt said? "Necessity is the creed of slaves"?' Kyle taunted.

'Somebody else said, "Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline",' she parried, rather stuffily.

He smiled. 'I'm writing no pleas for Doctor Vickers.'

Betrayals happened in a variety of ways, some through trusting the wrong people, others through reports by citizens with a strong sense of duty, some through anonymous tip-offs to the authorities, probably inspired by the age-old jealously of brawn for brains. And some were accidental like seaman Tyler's. Tyler was always talkative after a few Scotches and had been overheard by a stevedore who, not unaware of the government bounty for such information, told an Emigration Officer, who told Jack Nichols, the Chief Emigration Officer, who told Skardon.

Delly and Tasker were summoned and arrived jostling for position. Skardon repeated the information and concluded, 'Something good for a change, so let's have no cock-up.'

'Not even a rat could get off that ship now,' Jack Nichols claimed confidently.

'It was mice last time, Mr Nichols. I recall your saying not even a mouse could get aboard without being seen by your Emigrating Officers.' It was Delly Lomas. 'But that Concorde got out of Heathrow with four illegals for New York.'

The Chief Emigration Officer flushed. A middle-aged bachelor, he was shy with women and had never learnt how to cope with Delly Lomas' sharp tongue.

'You're in no position to have a go at Jack,' Skardon intervened. 'You spent a long time with Kyle getting not very far.'

Delly looked bewildered and rather cross.

Tasker observed, cattily, 'You were with him a long time.'

Then she began to understand and glared at the three men, indignantly. 'Somebody kept tabs on my movements?'

Tasker realised he should not have pushed the subject. 'Forget it.'

'Who?' she demanded.

'It was an error,' Skardon looked guilty.

'Some error! Who?'

Embarrassed, Skardon quickly asked Jack Nichols to leave the room.

The row which followed was short and sour.

Although Delly Lomas was accustomed to having other people tabbed, she found it preposterous that it should happen to her. But the Controller and Tasker played it as a team, giving nothing away, and she was left staring accusingly at Tasker, but unable to prove anything.