Intrusion (17 page)

‘
Nobody
hand-delivers letters. Look, you could have written to me at the Commons, written to my office, heck, you could have posted the letter to the house. If you’d looked me up, you would have seen how to book an appointment – there’s even my personal phone number.’ He tapped the earpiece of his glasses. ‘You’d have got a message, but I’d have got back to you. But hand-delivering a letter without a stamp … we have to treat that as a terrorist attempt. Like the anthrax letters, way back before you or I were born. Standing regulation – I had to call the police, and they had to scan it and analyse it. Wasted a good couple of hours.’

‘Surely a bit of common sense … ’

‘Out of my hands,’ said Crow. ‘It’s the rules. It’s the law, come to that. I admit it’s a nuisance, but still … ’

‘It makes you feel free, does it?’ Hope asked, tartly.

Crow grimaced. ‘Well, again … freer than being blown up or poisoned. Anyway … I have to admit I was a bit annoyed. I’m afraid that’s why I haven’t got around to replying.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Hope said. ‘But now that we’re here, maybe you could tell me what you think.’

‘About your problem?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well … ’ Crow took a deep breath, then let his shoulders slump. ‘I don’t agree with your stance, as I understand it, but I can certainly help you with practical matters – finding legal advice, dealing with the Health Centre, that sort of thing.’

‘I’d be very grateful for that,’ said Hope. ‘But I was kind of hoping you could, I don’t know, raise the matter in the House, or something? Because all it would take would be a tiny little tweak to the law, just to make a conscientious objection something that doesn’t need to be justified in terms of belief.’

‘Can’t help you there, I’m afraid,’ Crow said. ‘Personally, I think the exemptions go far too far as it is. And we can’t be seen to pass a law just to get around a judge’s ruling; it’d be interpreted as interference with the independence of the judiciary and the family courts. It would take a complete redraft of the relevant section of the Act, and to be honest, there’s not the slightest chance of any parliamentary time being allotted for that.’

‘You could put down an Early Day Motion,’ Hope persisted. ‘It wouldn’t have to be a law or anything, just … an expression of the sense of the House, isn’t that what it’s called?’

Crow took a step back, frowning. ‘You seem to have this worked out.’

‘I’ve been reading up on parliamentary procedure.’

‘Admirable,’ said Crow, still frowning. ‘So I’m sure you understand the practicalities. There’s no chance of anything getting through before – to be blunt – the matter becomes
moot as far as you’re concerned, and in any case, quite frankly, as I said I don’t agree with your objection, and I have a great deal on my plate as it is. So, practical help, as your MP, yes, of course, but otherwise, sorry, no.’

‘Why don’t you agree with it?’ Hope demanded. She rapped a thumbnail on her badge. ‘Doesn’t “Liberty” on that mean anything?’

‘Yes, it does,’ said Crow. ‘As I’ve been trying to explain.
Genuine
liberty, based on informed choice.’

‘What about
my
choice?’

‘If you want
that
sort of choice,’ said Crow, sounding as if he’d lost patience, ‘you can go to Russia.’

Hope stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘That’s totally uncalled for!’

‘I’m not sure it is,’ said Crow, frowning again and blinking rapidly. ‘If you look at the sources of a lot of this sort of so-called libertarian rhetoric, you’ll often find a stack of Russian money behind it. Not to mention Naxal ideological diversionary operations.’

‘Naxal?’ Hope cried, in such a dismayed tone that nearby heads turned.

Crow nodded, then took his glasses off and put them away, with a sudden self-satisfied smile. ‘In any case, I have to go. Do please contact my office for any help we can give you.’

Then, taking her by surprise, he shook her hand, smiled artificially, nodded vigorously, and turned away. He’d disappeared into the crowd, nodding and chatting and glad-handing, before she could gather her wits.

So much for that. Unexpectedly hungry for a snack, Hope wandered over to the stalls. She bought a sugar-free spun-sugar-like confection and chomped into it as she drifted down the line. At one stall she found Fingal, the guy she’d carried the banner with, in earnest conversation with Louise, the young woman who’d joined the flash mob to support her.

‘This is completely
insane
,’ Louise was saying. ‘There’s no way the unions have enough power to pressurise employers to take on women rather than just declare their workplaces unsafe, so all we’re doing is just pushing women further back into the home or into small-business employment, where they don’t have any union representation at all!’

‘It’s a question of the balance of forces, innit?’ Fingal explained.

Yeah, thought Hope, you could say that.

Louise leaned forward to reply. Hope couldn’t catch her words, but from her tone it was clear she was giving Fingal a piece of her mind, giving as good as she got. Hope hadn’t the heart to get involved in the discussion. The candy floss suddenly tasted like paper. She tossed it in a bin, sucked her fingers and licked around her lips, careless of how unladylike this looked, and stomped off home.

On the second of May, Geena walked to Hayes for the first time since her interrogation. For weeks now she’d been taking the bus, to and from work. She hadn’t been able to face walking the same roads. But today the weather had cleared and she was feeling better for the day off, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. She hadn’t spent it well.

Her boyfriend Liam had worked the Bank Holiday, leaving Geena in bed. She’d dutifully trudged to the window, waved, and then retreated under the duvet. She huddled there for half the morning, dozing, until she’d really had to pee, and that was what had finally propelled her out of bed. In the bathroom she’d been overcome with weeping, and showered away most of the evidence, applying make-up to the rest. She’d then spent the best part of the day moping around the flat and shutter-shopping in Uxbridge High Street, feeling like a
zombie drawn inexorably and inexplicably to a closed mall in an old movie.

It began as another routine day in the dry lab, except that Brian made them all laugh by reading out what the
Daily Mail
thought of the previous day’s demos: the huge loss to the economy, the waste of police time, the outrageous misuse of public money and resources for party-political propaganda, and the shocking demagogy of what some MPs and even ministers had proclaimed from shaky platforms.

Geena duly added this to her notes – it was one of the few scraps of directly political comment she’d observed here – wrote a little more of her thesis draft, and turned to her slow, painstaking investigation of the Morrison family’s genomes. There was plenty of software for running comparisons, but all of it assumed you knew what was significant, and Geena didn’t. Apart from some of the more common disease-linked loci, she had to look up everything as she went along. Right now she was looking at the RHO gene on chromosome 3, where Hugh Morrison and his son Nick shared a small mutation, and she had no idea of its significance. Her searches weren’t turning up anything: evidently it hadn’t been investigated or documented. This was in itself odd, in that rhodopsin mutations were associated with a number of well-known pathologies of the retina.

The medical records for the man and his son showed no problems with vision. Geena felt a small surge of excitement. This might be something new, or at least unusual. Maybe now would be the time to ask one of the guys to run her a predictive sim of the gene’s functioning. The easiest to approach, and the
one least likely to ask questions, would be Joe Goonwardeene, the shy Sri Lankan. He was working on his own at the moment, not elbow-deep in the VR rig at the table.

At that point Geena’s eyes brimmed with tears. She turned away into the corner, dabbing with a tissue. She felt desperately guilty about Joe. Nearly as guilty as she felt about Maya, and she was going to have to face that soon. She should have faced it ages ago, the very first day, just as she had with Ahmed. But it was different with Ahmed. He was a man of the world. A made man. Ahmed could take it. He had resources. He had connections. He had nothing to worry about.

She took a deep breath, saved her work, stood up, grabbed her jacket and walked over to Joe. She cleared her throat. Joe lowered his glasses, flexed his hands and peered at her over the top rims.

‘Yes?’

‘Uh, Joe, could you possibly … take a break for a few minutes? There’s something I’d like to ask you about and I don’t want to disturb the others.’

Joe glanced at Brian, who hadn’t been too absorbed to notice. Brian nodded to him, and gave Geena a sly, questioning glance.

‘Just some background stuff,’ Geena said. She shrugged one shoulder. ‘Maybe a bit personal. We can go outside.’

Brian waved. ‘Go, go.’

Outside, on Dawley Road, Geena struck out to the right, towards the bridge over the railway. The usual traffic mumbled past. The pavement was dusty as usual, scuffed, and, most
importantly, deserted. Apart from the old man sitting in a deckchair in the tiny front garden of one of the row of houses, who glared across the road at them as if their footsteps disturbed his peace. Geena had seen him do this before. He wasn’t sunbathing. He was waiting for the aliens. So the rumour went.

‘Well, Geena,’ said Joe after a silence of fifty yards, ‘what is it?’

Geena glanced at him sideways. Eye to eye, a rare thing for her.

‘Uh, Joe,’ she said, ‘I have a confession to make. A few weeks ago I was stopped by the police and, uh, questioned.’

Joe looked straight ahead. ‘You named me.’

‘I’m afraid I did,’ Geena admitted.

‘What did you say?’

‘The first thing that came into my head, of course. You can guess.’

‘Tamil Tigers?’

‘That’s the one,’ Geena said.

Joe’s light laughter pealed.

‘You have no imagination, Geena. Neither have I.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I have confessed the same myself,’ said Joe. ‘Several times. It seems to satisfy them.’

They walked up the curving slope to the bridge over the railway and looked down for a while at the tracks.

‘Hmm,’ said Geena. ‘Well, I wanted to say I’m sorry, that’s all.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ said Joe. Another sideways glance.
‘Was there something else? I notice you seem to be doing some … technical work.’

‘Well, yes actually,’ said Geena. ‘I would like you to run a predictive sim on a gene. Unofficially, of course.’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ said Joe. ‘About six – would that suit you?’

It wouldn’t suit Geena at all, but she supposed she’d better agree.

‘Perfect!’ she said. ‘Brilliant! Thank you so much!’

They walked back to the works entrance. At the gate, Geena hesitated.

‘Tell the guys I’m taking the rest of the day off,’ she said. ‘Library work, you know?’

‘Very good,’ said Joe. ‘Study is vital!’ He said it so enthusiastically that she half-expected him to repeat it as a shout, with his fist clenched to the sky.

‘Thanks,’ she said, with a wan smile. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’

‘Six sharp,’ said Joe.

‘I’ll be there,’ said Geena. ‘See you then.’

She turned around and walked quickly away, down the long canyon of Blyth Road to the high street.

‘You’ve left this a bit
late
,’ said Maya, when Geena had finished.

‘I know, I know!’ Geena cried, almost sobbing. ‘I’m so sorry, Maya.’

Maya, on the other side of her desk in a tiny office in the
Advice Centre that smelled faintly and (to Geena) foully of illicit smokes, looked at her with sympathetic puzzlement.

‘But it’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s not
too
late. We’re not talking statute of limitations here. You turned down the trauma counselling, OK, not good, and you signed the chit, but we can wangle a way round that. Lemme think about this for a minute … ’

She gazed off into the distance and drummed her fingers on the desk, as if typing – which, for all Geena knew, she was.

‘What?’ said Geena.

Maya gave her a look. ‘You want me to put in a complaint, yes?’

‘Oh no!’ said Geena. ‘No, no. I don’t want any fuss.’

Maya’s smooth brow creased. ‘So why are you telling me all this?’

‘You’re not upset?’

‘I’m upset for you, all right,’ said Maya. ‘Good grief, it sounds horrible.’

‘No, I meant upset with me.’

‘What for?’

‘Maya, I
betrayed
you. I’m so, so sorry.’

Maya’s expression changed. She jumped up, came around the desk and hugged Geena.

‘Oh, you silly girl,’ she said.

She stepped back and sat on the edge of the desk.

‘Look, Geena,’ she said. ‘These guys you rushed past in the waiting room, yeah? The ones skulking around the side of the building for a smoke, too? Half the fuckers have shopped me for
something. Terrorist sympathies? Hah! They’ve fingered me for a lot worse than that. Drug dealing. Corruption. Running prostitution rings. Molesting their children.
Plausible
stuff, you know? Then they come crying to me. “Oooh, Miss Maya, I do terrible thing, how can you for
give
me?”’