Иэн Рэнкин - Watchman

‘You’ll drink best malt whiskey, my lad, and you’ll thank me for it. Do you know what they add to bourbon to give it that flavor?’

‘No.’

‘Neither do I. That’s reason enough to stick to whiskey, don’t you agree?’

They were laughing as they entered the living room, where Sheila sat with an Open University textbook on her lap and a pencil gripped hard between her teeth. She had been listening to their laughter as it left the study and came toward her, rumbling like some ancient beast. Her teeth bit through wood toward lead, and she could almost taste blood in her mouth. Did she want anything to drink? No, she did not want anything to drink. They seemed massive, father and son, filling her space and her peace and her thoughts with their bulk. When they turned their backs to her at the drinks table, she stuck out her tongue at them and felt better for it. Then they sat down, expecting no doubt that she would put away her work and listen to their conversation, rising only to make tea and sandwiches. She held the pencil fast, sucking back the saliva that threatened to drip from the sides of her mouth. She was the wolf, hungry, angry, and she watched as they sat in their woolly smugness, cradling their glasses as though protecting the tribal fire.

Then Miles asked her a question, and she had to choose whether to ignore him, answer with a grunt, or take the pencil from her mouth. She grunted.

‘Yes,’ said Miles, raising the glass to his lips, ‘I thought you’d agree.’

‘What OU course are you doing, Mum?’ asked Jack. She slipped the pencil from between her teeth.

‘A bit of everything,’ she said.

He nodded and turned back to his father. Their questions were politeness, she knew. The sort of things one would say to a child so that it wouldn’t feel excluded from the general conversation. She felt more isolated than ever. Then she remembered her secret.

To his eternal chagrin, Harold Sizewell had not been born in England. His father had been a professor of history, and while on a sabbatical teaching year in Paris, had found his wife to be rather more fecund than the expensive doctors back in London had diagnosed.

So Harry Sizewell was born French and educated outside Windsor, and though he had never, so to speak, had a French thought in his life, it was hard — devilish hard — to throw off the tag.

For one thing, the media could always use it against him. Not that this bothered him particularly; there was little that could, to an MP, be termed ‘bad publicity,’ even the nickname ‘Harry the Frog.’ He had entered politics solely because his father had forbidden him to do so, and it was his misfortune to have been left an orphan before he gained his seat in the House. Still, he had it now, and his father would have been appalled by his quick and unhindered success. Appalled, the old socialist. The thought pleased Harry Sizewell, and he toasted himself with his breakfast tomato juice.

The morning mail — heavy as usual — gave little succor. Once, he had employed a secretary to open his mail for him and to send out the acknowledgments of receipt, but that had proved unsatisfactory: one could never be sure how open to misinterpretation or potentially incriminatory one’s mail could be. And so he had decided to start opening his own mail, most of which, however, consisted of bills.

The damage to his Rover was estimated at nine hundred pounds. Nine hundred pounds for a couple of dents and a scraping of paint. That bloody fool of a Renault driver, hurtling away from the lights like that when all he had wanted to do was squeeze through his own red light so as not to be late at the House.

The day ahead promised little; Parliament was still in recess and the conference season had ended. He loathed conferences, and spent too much time shaking hands with complete strangers and listening to tittle-tattle.

‘I hear you’re on this committee that’s looking into defense funding,’ someone had said over a cocktail at some grandee’s party.

‘How did you hear that?’

‘A little birdie told me. Well, one just does hear, doesn’t one?’

Yes, one did. It was surprising just how many strangers had known so much about him. Who were they all? Defense was a touchy subject these days. He would rather as few people as possible knew of his involvement, especially when one considered what else the committee was investigating. Political dynamite, it was.

‘Oh yes, Sizewell, of course. I knew your father at university.’

‘Did you, sir? You must be older than you look.’

‘Flattery, Sizewell, flattery. Your father was known for it, too. A bit of a success with the young ladies when we were undergraduates together. I suppose you are too, eh? Chip off the old block.’

A success with the ladies... Hardly. The PM had dropped a hint, by way of an equerry, that marriage would improve Harry Sizewell’s standing within both the community and the party. It had not been a threat, just a suggestion...

Ah, but there had been other threats to deal with, real threats, not just the rumblings of disgruntled constituents. Yes, real threats, lucid, cogent, to the point. The telephone rang, and, his mind elsewhere, he answered it.

‘Remember this, Sizewell,’ the voice hissed. ‘I’m going to have you if you don’t listen to me. I really am going to have you.’

In horror, Harry Sizewell slammed down the receiver and stared at it, then lifted it off the hook quickly and set it down on the table. But the voice was still there, loud and clear as though from the next room, spitting out from the earpiece.

‘You can’t hide forever, Sizewell. You can’t hide from me.’

‘Go away!’ screamed Harry Sizewell, running into the next room, slamming the door shut. ‘Just go away.’

Pete Saville had a recurring dream, and in this dream he was trapped within Armorgeddon 2000, really trapped, twisted up in circuitry and flashing lights. The screen was there, real to the touch, and through it he could see the outside world, operating as normal. No one noticed that he was trapped within his console, that the game held him while the auto-play mode sent him reeling around his own set of maps and scenarios, trying to stop the ultimate war.

He never won.

Today’s dream, however, had a twist, for someone was sitting at the console playing the game. This was worse even than auto-mode, for the player made mistakes that sent Pete roaring out of existence or careering around the most deadly battle zones. Dragging himself up to the screen during a lull, he looked out onto the smiling face of Miles Flint, then collapsed.

He woke to utter exhaustion. It seemed to him that he was sacrificing his sanity for a game. It was all he lived for, night and day, day after night.

The phone rang, and he stumbled through the cold hallway.

‘Hello?’

‘Is that Peter Saville?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Peter, some of the security chaps would like a word.’

Pete felt his life crumbling like a crashed computer program. He held on to the telephone with both hands, his voice becoming a whisper.

‘Oh yes?’

‘Nothing very important, I daresay. They’ll be along about eleven.’

‘What, here?’

‘Of course not.’ The voice seemed amused. ‘They’ll send for you at your office. You are going in today?’

‘Yes, oh yes.’

‘Good.’

And the telephone went dead. Only then did it occur to Pete that he had not asked who was calling; had not the faintest idea whose voice had brought him to this standstill. One movement, he felt, and he would flake away to nothing but dust, like a wall with dry rot. He was worried now all right, worried and mentally exhausted. It was a bad combination.