Christopher Brookmyre - Parlabane 04 (19 page)

'Bang you're dead,' Parlabane said, flipping the lightswitch to reveal Vale, who was already pointing his fingers towards him in the shape of a gun.

'Call that one a draw, shall we?' Vale asked.

'What are you up to, Tim?' Parlabane replied, climbing back under the covers. 'Have you ever heard of knocking? Or what about that dashed handy contraption on the bedside table? Allows room-to-room conversation. Amazing thing. Dreamt up by a Scottish chappie, you know.'

'I've been knocking - softly, I admit - for two minutes. Didn't want to hammer the door because it might waken someone. Not
you
, clearly. It never 106

ceases to amaze me, Jack, that you can sleep through any amount of loud noise, but the minute sound of someone picking a lock brings you instantly to consciousness.'

'It's not that amazing. Somebody knocking my door represents an unnecessary interruption to my sleep. My mind knows I'd like them to fuck off, so takes no action. Attempted intrusion, on the other hand, sets off all the emergency alarms, which are on an extra-sensitive setting in my subconscious when I know
you
're in the building.'

'Well, I'm probably not your first uninvited guest tonight,' he said, taking a seat by the bureau-cum-dressing table.

'How so?'

'Have you tried your mobile since dinner?'

'No.'

Vale tossed it across. It landed in Parlabane's lap, bouncing a little on the sheets stretched over his crossed legs. He pressed the On button a couple of times to no response.

'What gives?'

'SIM card's been removed. Mine too. And probably anybody else's who didn't bring their mobile with them to dinner.'

'That's probably just me and you, then. To these business types, it's like a security blanket. They want you to think they're expecting a call on a milliondollar deal any minute. Anyway, UML hi-jinks?'

'I expect that's what Mr Baxter was up to that he couldn't attend dinner. Preparation indeed. They'll mop up what they missed at some point between now and tomorrow's activities. Tricks in store, I'd wager. Thought you'd want a heads up.'

'Cheers. But why didn't you phone?'

'I'd be surprised if Baxter or Campbell aren't listening in. They're here to play games with us, and as far as I can see they've got complete control of the environment. I noticed my room had been entered when I came back upstairs, and not by a turning-down service, either.'

'How did you know?'

'Trade secret, old boy. There are signs you can't help but read once you've learned to recognise them.'

'You must have loved it when Max talked about you pushing pens in the civil service. I was surprised to see you wading into that particular mire.'

'As was I that you weren't wallower-in-chief. I can only listen to so much ignorance when I'm on my own time. Men like Max are just immature, if you ask me: military fetishists in awe of real soldiers and seduced by the idea of simple solutions. Kill all the bad guys and hey presto: perfect world. That said, Kathy and Emily got my dander up too with their pseudo-totalitarian 107

nonsense. I really have to say that conspiracy theorists assume far too much competence, unity and organisation on the part of their imaginary enemies. If our security forces were anything like as synergised as those pair believed them to be, I'd sleep a lot easier at night.'

'Unless some git broke into your bedroom.'

'Petulant and self-important persecution fantasies,' Vale continued, ignoring the jibe. 'Just a political version of blaming the umpire because your team keeps losing.'

'To be fair, the umpire wasn't as impartial as he should have been in those days.'

'Maybe not, but he wasn't killing anybody. That's the offensive part of the persecution fantasy. It didn't happen and it wouldn't happen. Otherwise what's the point of what I was up to all those years? I've never been a "My country, right or wrong" type. I did some pretty distasteful things, and I did them because I believed in the ways in which we were better than the enemy. Safe to say a pretty bloody big one was that we don't kill our own citizens.'

'Except we did, in Gibraltar. Well, I suppose the point was the targets no longer wanted to be British citizens, or subjects rather, and in that much they certainly got their wish.'

'Flavius was an aberration. One that pissed me off, in fact. No sympathy for the IRA pond-life, but it sent out a very nasty and very irresponsible signal that everyone knew came from the top.'

'So, just between you and me, do you think it's possible that certain official elements might have been tempted to kill in seeking that simple solution you talked about? I mean, look what's coming out in the wash about Pat Finucane.'

'You have to understand, Jack, the army mentality over there, despite the official line, was that they were at war, battling a merciless and deceitful enemy, same as if they were overseas. That's the pity of it: they adopted attitudes and did things there that they'd never dream on the mainland. Nobody's ever opened fire on a bunch of white, middle-class British demonstrators, have they?'

'The wogs start at Belfast, then?'

'I'm not excusing it, just saying it generally isn't security services policy to assassinate people.'

'Yeah, but what about Alastair Dalgleish and his enforcer George Knight, for God's sake. They left a long trail of corpses and tried to add plenty more to the list, including yours truly.'

'Knight's lot were a private dirty-tricks department, not a government assassination unit. Granted they were a very well-connected bunch and they called in a lot of high-level, ask-no-questions favours, but it wasn't a state conspiracy, was it, Jack? Even you'd have to admit that.'

108

'I would. But given that there were people involved so close to government, and that there were security forces personnel - even just ex-personnel

- prepared to do those things, it leaves open some scary possibilities.'

'Rogue elements, rogue individuals are always a possibility. But the point is that they
would be
rogue, and rogue is all they'd ever be. The infrastructure makes it very hard and very risky to find co-conspirators for something like that, never mind multi-level complicity and approval. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, though it would have to be on a very small scale, but to be honest, like time travel, if it was ever going to, it would have happened by now.'

'How so?'

'What I mean is, the kind of political climate that might have nurtured such a notion is long gone.'

'The Eighties, you mean? Thatcher?'

Vale chuckled.

'Good God, no. That's what was most farcical about tonight's discussion. They all thought the Eighties was some kind of defining era in the polarisation of British politics, when it was really just the era in which they started paying attention. The late Sixties and Seventies was when Kathy and Emily would really have had something to be paranoid about. Never mind MI5 bugging Arthur Scargill - what about MI6 bugging Harold Wilson? Around the time of the three-day week, there was genuine fear in certain circles and lip-licking anticipation in others - that we were going to have a military coup; that the army was going to have to move in because the government couldn't control unchecked subversion from the unions.'

'Really? I don't remember much about that.'

'Of course you don't, and neither do that lot we just had dinner with, because while all this was going on, you shower were riding Chopper bikes and watching
Mary, Mungo and Midge
. It's like we were talking about on the road up here: the politics of the Eighties felt extreme to you, and to the others, because you were at an age when
all
your feelings were extreme.'

'Aye, true enough. I'd admit age has had a mellowing effect even on me. The downside is that I can no longer blame everything on a bunch of homicidal right-wing nutters out to kill all the lefties and silence the dissidents.'

'God forbid you should have to work for a living, Jack.'

Red Bull had nothing on embarrassment. If clubbers wanted a little extra help to lever up those heavy eyelids, there was no need to hold their noses and swallow back a concoction that looked and tasted like some nocturnal mammal's piss. Instead, they should crack open some quality Australian Shiraz and let their tongues make twats of them: sustained wakefulness guaranteed. 109

UML would sure have their work cut out creating a sense of unity and togetherness in the morning, though at least they'd know how the red team and the blue team should really line up. What a mess. Emily knew she wouldn't be the only one feeling it (or at least hoped she wasn't the only one feeling it), but given her and Kathy's PR role, it was all the more embarrassing to have been such major combatants. Ironically, it had been the success of the proceedings up until that point that had caused everyone to let their guards down and be less circumspect than was normal or wise at a table of comparative strangers. In her case, this was far less forgivable, but in mitigation, with everyone getting along so well and displaying such open enthusiasm, it had made her lose focus of her already indistinct role. Yes, she and Kathy were there because they had responsibility for UML's PR, but they were also there as guests and to take in the whole experience from a client's point of view. If there had been no such blurring, she'd have been there as a professional: watched what she drank, watched closer what she said, bitten her lip when she heard something she didn't like and deftly redirected discussions into more comfortable territory.

Instead she had brought too much of her real self to the table - they all had

- and the results had been horrible. She winced when she recalled her 'you don't see a Tory for ages' remark, especially in the light of her having claimed Thatcher fostered division. How much more 'them and us' could she have made it? Liz had looked more insulted and alienated by that line than the

'fascist state' stuff, and she'd been right when she pointed out how intolerant it was. But if she felt regret for her downright rudeness - even in the face of a provocative blowhard like Max - then what Vale had said just made her feel like an idiot. He sounded like a man who knew what he was talking about and a lot more besides, his position given further weight by his measured words and lack of any apparent agenda. He made her accusations sound like what they really were: self-important histrionics and ignorant, self-pitying conjecture.

Vale hadn't elaborated on what his former civil service job had entailed and he therefore had no verifiable authority about what he said. He could, like Max suggested, have been the lowliest pen-pusher in the dullest department, with access to no more and no different sources of information than the rest of them on the subject at hand. But she still knew he was right. He'd made her feel like a rebellious but stupid teenager, which stung all the more because it pointed to a hard lesson still not fully learnt.

God, all that invective flying around, all those unfounded assertions and accusations, moral outrage a quick-fix substitute for knowledge. Old habits that had never died. Despite everything that had passed, there were clearly still vast seams of anger unmined, and not too far below the surface, either. 110

Though it was no consolation, she hadn't been the worst, and not even the worst on the left. That distinction went to Kathy, who had weighed in with unrestrained and unwary enthusiasm, loyally tying her colours to Emily's mast in the perhaps guilty knowledge that her partner had been the one more actively involved way back when. That made her feel bad too, because Kathy didn't know all she ought to about Emily's political past. It wasn't a time she liked to dwell upon, but she knew it would be hard keeping it out of her stubbornly wakeful head after the time-tunnel they'd all been peering through tonight.

And flash! That was when it hit her: the answer to the question she'd thought might keep her awake before the dinner-party debacle unfolded. Mirror, mirror on the wall: who's the leftiest of them all?

111

Motivational Oratory (ii)

'You've got what it takes, otherwise you wouldn't be here.'

Shiach walked back and forth across the floor, the men standing to attention in two rows, heads high, eagerly awaiting what he had to say. It was late, but they wouldn't sleep tonight anyway, he knew, much as they might need it before such an occasion. It would be worse than the night before Christmas when they were kids. In fact, for most of them it was maybe more like the young player before his big debut: nervous anticipation keeping him awake, all the time aware that the lack of shut-eye wasn't going to help his sharpness when the time finally came to step on to the pitch. And, naturally, the more you worried about things like that, the harder it was to relax and get even close to nodding off.

They knew you didn't get two chances at something like this. Only Marko and Bruce were the genuine article, as well as himself, of course; and not forgetting Fotheringham, though his professionalism was less martially manifest. The rest were what Fotheringham had disparaged as 'trialists and tourists': eager for the chance to practice the abilities and aptitudes some knew - and some merely thought they knew - they had.

Selby's people had never flushed out those closest and most loyal to him, contenting themselves with merely cutting off the head, but it hadn't killed the body. All these years on, he still had some valuable and eager contacts, allowing him to recruit the personnel he needed to relaunch his enterprise. Right now, he'd concede that collectively they didn't make the most impressive bunch, but nor would he have expected them to be. It wasn't the men who began this operation who should be judged as a unit, but the ones who ended it.

You've got what it takes, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
That was a joke, in as much as it didn't refer to their mettle but the non-returnable bonds they had lodged in order to prove how much they wanted this chance. Savings had been cashed, homes remortgaged, prized possessions sold off to get on board this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Some of them would have what it took, some would manage pass marks and no more, and others would inevitably fail. The first test would be when they saw what they were being armed with. 113