Dead in the Water (37 page)

64 London

At college Mark had been a keen rock climber. He loved the adrenaline buzz, thrived on the risk. When the phone rings at seven thirty on Thursday morning, however, as he’s about to leave the flat, and a voice identifying itself as belonging to Ben Parsons asks him to bring some files in to work, he finds himself trembling with a sapping apprehension that seems wholly unconnected to the powerful surge of excitement that he used to revel in when in physical danger. But he does as he’s been told. He rings a taxi on the number Robyn Westacott gave him; and the receptionist at the taxi firm asks for his name and address. Fifteen minutes later he’s standing on dried mud on the pavement outside his flat with a cardboard box full of files, wondering what he’ll do with them when he gets to work. No sign of the taxi, so he calls the number again, feigning indignation that they’ve let him down. There’s a peremptory apology and an assurance that the taxi will be there in five minutes. And Mark almost begins to believe in this strange fiction that has been concocted for him. His irritation is real enough, and he finds himself looking at his watch, willing the taxi to arrive; but the real target of his anger is not this stooge whom the security people have placed in the taxi firm, but the security services themselves, that they’re asking him to do their work. This crazy performance may be for the bloody terrorists, but his script’s been written by the deskbound spooks at Five.

He puts the box of files in the boot of the car, switches off his mobile just as the nice Miss Prim told him to, and presses the button to start the engine. There’s a hesitation. Just as there had been earlier. Although the delay is probably less than a second, it’s long enough for him to feel relief: if the car won’t start, he won’t have to go through this preposterous pretence. But the feeling is short lived and, in spite of the relative calm on the roads, the drive to the Parliament Square is as nerve wracking as taking his driving test had been in the centre of Manchester. Where the fuck is this surveillance stuff? What the fuck did they mean ‘the car’s bugged’? When the hell did they do it? And why? To catch him with Sara and blackmail him? Fat chance of that.

After glancing at his pass and asking him to gaze open eyed into their portable iris scanner, the armed police at the security gates leading to the underground car park wave him through. Their high-tech gadgetry may be able to detect identity theft, but it’s useless at recognising chronic anxiety. Assuming that everything he says and does is being monitored, he removes the box full of files from the boot and walks to the lift. At least he would if he could remember where the fucking lift was. Wandering around the underground car park carrying a heavy box, he could hardly be acting more suspiciously. Why don’t they just arrest him there and then? Where the fuck is he supposed to be going? Look purposeful. Contact a porter. Ask for the box to be taken to Cowley Street.

But there are no porters available and the guy on duty says he has strict instructions not to allow packages to be left without appropriate clearance. He can ring through; but it might take half an hour. Can Mark wait? Can he sit in the Porter’s Lodge, waiting on the arrival of a security officer, who’ll have a dozen other more important things to do? Bollocks to that. So he ends up trudging the two hundred metres or so to Cowley Street, carrying a box full of files that have been of no interest to him for at least six months. When he gets to Cowley Street his shirt is wet with perspiration and his eyes are stinging from dust eddying on a Mistral-like wind. He dumps the box beside his desk, minded to ask for all the files to be shredded; except that in due course he might just need some of the statistics they contain. Might.

But that is what he has to do today: statistics and reports, making damn certain there’s not a repeat of yesterday’s humiliation at the hand of the Select Committee.

Who invented this fucking charade?

65 Heathrow to Islington

There are more armed police at Heathrow than in the centre of Caracas. Rachel seems calm; Jeremy is anything but. There are forces at play in England every bit as ruthless as those he left behind in Venezuela. And his paranoia is ratcheted up a notch when he tries his credit card again in a cash machine, only for a sweetly innocent digital voice to remind him that it’s not valid.

The
Heathrow Express
is not as busy as he’d expected. They can talk without being overheard.

“
Have you got the digi-card?”

She gives him a tetchy look that implies he doesn’t need to ask.

“
You certain, are you?”

“
I told you I didn’t want to pretend to be your daughter. I’ve got it. OK.”

“
Where?”

“
It’s safe. I promise you.”

“
The camera was stolen.” He tells her about what happened at the store at Sao Paulo airport.

“
They got into your bag, swapped the camera for a stone, closed the bag again – all without you knowing. When did that happen?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Why not take the bag?”

“
I don’t know. We were exhausted, Rachel. We could have fallen asleep.” She looks more determined than distressed. She turns to look out of the window. They’re gliding smoothly past abandoned freight-yards and shabby old tenements as they approach Paddington.

“
The Embassy,” she says. “That’s the only time you didn’t have it with you.”

“
That’s crazy. The gatekeeper’s not going to risk his job ––”

“
Unless he was working to instructions.”

It’s more than a year since Jeremy was last in London, but this journey has hardly changed. A giant postmodern office block overlooks the tracks about a mile out from Paddington, but otherwise the view from the carriage is pretty much as it must have been fifty years ago.
The Triffid
as it has been nicknamed, corkscrews skywards then branches out into three smooth skinned towers with wind generators strung between them,

“
You have got the card?”

“
Jeremy. For goodness sake. Yes.”

“
Wasn’t it in your handbag?”

“
It was. But it’s not. It’s in a safe place. It’s not comfortable. But it’s safe.”

The tracks multiply exponentially as the train slows – a cue for everyone in the carriage to gather their things while Jeremy and Rachel wait in their seats. When the carriage doors open, they are overwhelmed by the heat and the stench: nothing Jeremy has read in the papers has prepared him for this. The barrios of Caracas never smelt so bad.

On the concourse at Paddington, Rachel uses a public phone to try her dad’s mobile. There’s no reply – he keeps it switched off at work. Jeremy tries the Cowley Street number; and gets his secretary. Boyd’s ‘in a meeting’. Of course. Where else? Wary of the possibility of phone taps, he doesn’t mention that he’s in London. “I’m going to be a bit difficult to get hold of for the next day or so. No point in him trying to call me back. I’ll ring again.” And he puts the phone down hurriedly.

“
I don’t have a key for his flat,” says Rachel.

“
We should stick together,” says Jeremy, wondering whether she’s going to dismiss the suggestion as paternalistic. But she just nods in agreement. He’s worried about her. For much of the time she wants to be in full control, and then she retreats way back into herself, a worrying grey fog descending over her.

“
We need to get the card copied,” he says.

This seems to shake her. “Yes. Right,” she says, forcing a half a lip smile.

They decide to take the tube to Islington. The people in the
One World
offices should be able to help.

The street frontage window has been recently reglazed – the transit stickers are still in place - but the front door’s locked, and there’s nobody to be seen inside. Peering through, the front office looks pretty much as Jeremy remembers it: campaign posters on the walls, leaflets on the counter and coffee table, notice-board covered with hand-written advertisements, business cards and announcements. They make their way round the back – and are pleased to find signs of life: bikes chained to the railings at the bottom of the metal fire-escape staircase, tea towels hanging on a makeshift washing line at the top. He’s surprised, therefore, that on a day as hot as this the back door at the top of the staircase is locked. Jeremy knocks. And waits. Then knocks again. Cathy unlocks and opens.

“
Goodness me!” Cathy looks shocked. She hasn’t seen Jeremy for a couple of years, and she doesn’t at first recognise Rachel. She gives them both big hugs; but she looks drained.

“
We’re having a meeting,” she says. “Make yourselves some drinks. There’s ice in the freezer. We won’t be more than ten minutes.” Although the sun doesn’t get round to the back of the building until late in the evening, it’s hotter in the little kitchen than it had been outside. Rachel tries to open a window, but it’s been nailed shut. She often used to pop in while she was in London doing her Masters at SOAS, when her dad worked here. She remembers the office as lively, but the air of despondency is choking. At least the iced water is welcome relief for her sore throat.

The meeting lasts another half an hour, during which time they look through various piles of photocopied leaflets. These give a pretty good sense of what has happened, describing the police raid and the vandalism, calling for vociferous condemnation of all kinds of terrorism and appealing for solidarity and support. But the earnest distinctions between direct action and violence reveal splits within the movement and growing public disaffection with radical environmentalism.

When the meeting ends Cathy suggests they go downstairs. “Best open up,” she says, unlocking the door. “At least make it look as if we’re in business.”

They still haven’t said why they’re here, and Cathy is so anxious, so obviously stressed, that she hasn’t asked.

“
At least look as if you’re in business?” says Jeremy, a rather tactless remark that sets Cathy off again:

“
Even the regular volunteers have stopped coming. I just don’t know what to do. Sorry. Low level police harassment. Public animosity. It just goes on and on. Even John. Remember John? He hasn’t turned up this morning. Can’t get him on his landline or his mobile. Sorry. I’m wittering.”

Jeremy gives her a tentative squeeze of the hand, a self-conscious gesture of solidarity. She responds with one of her big affectionate wrap-around hugs. “It’s lovely to see you, Jem. And you Rachel. Really lovely. Shame about the ––” and she completes her sentence with a wave at the leaflets he’s been reading. And then, as if taken aback by the extent of her own preoccupations, “Oh God, I’m so sorry. I don’t normally let it get to me. What on earth are you doing back here?”

Jeremy looks to Rachel, encouraging her to explain.

“
Go ahead,” says Rachel. “You know more about it than I do.”

Jeremy’s shortened, edited version energises Cathy, who is furious that the British media have given virtually no coverage to events in Venezuela.

“
Why would they report it? Things over here are bad enough. Who cares about trouble on other people’s streets? A bit of local political instability a long way away – what the hell. That’s what we’re here for, Cathy. People don’t know. We want to tell them.”

Jeremy’s fragile breeziness is no more convincing than Cathy’s has been earlier. But as the story unfolds, Cathy is increasingly horrified. They have to get the digi-card copied as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the police still have the office computers; and neither of the battered old laptops lent or given by volunteers have card-readers.

“
There’s somebody here you should meet,” says Cathy. “She’s from the BBC.
Newsnight
want to do something on the way the police have targeted green groups. It’s what our meeting was about.”

Half an hour later, Jeremy Peters, Rachel Boyd and Sara Davis are having a coffee together at an Islington café. Although there are tables on the pavement, they have chosen to sit inside, out of the sun, in a quiet corner where no-one can see them.

Sara hoped not to let them see how unsettled she was to meet up with Rachel again so unexpectedly. Although Mark has often talked about her, it’s more than two years since they last met and things have changed in that time. Still raw from Tuesday night, she tries to focus on Jeremy, sensing in him a haunted vulnerability that mirrors the way she feels. But she didn’t come to the One World office because of Mark; she came in spite of him. And she’s not here in a dark corner of a Pasta café at eleven in the morning to savour the coffee; she’s here because she’s a determined, ambitious professional, and this is about to be a bigger story than either Jeremy or Rachel realise.

She has other appointments this morning – she’s arranged an informal meeting with a police officer closely involved in the hunt for the terrorists – but that can wait. She’ll be in touch to rearrange. “Have you seen the video?” she asks.

“
Not all of it,” says Rachel. Jeremy shakes his head.

“
I can’t promise anything. I’m not the final decision maker. Are you willing to be interviewed for the programme?”

“
Newsnight
? Yes,” says Rachel. Jeremy, the slightly self-effacing, reserved Jeremy that Rachel has found so endearing and infuriating in equal measures, is more reluctant; but he agrees that it would be better if the two of them could appear together.