James Long - Sixth Column

The lack of such a structure at MI7 unnerved him and the prospect of a silent day waiting for some obscure instruction from the more or less invisible Sibley had not appealed. He had, it was true, the photo and address of this woman in Yorkshire to chase up but no one had yet told him what resources there were on hand to help. It wasn’t going to be like the old office; there terminals keyed you directly into the Social Security computer and anyone who’d ever registered with a doctor, paid National Insurance contributions or been issued with a birth certificate was on it and you could find them just like that. Then you’d start teasing out the usual trails, police and vehicle records, tax, bank and credit card data. The paper trail usually gave a pretty good picture and it was all on tap, but that was there and this was here and no one had told him where to start.

He was hailed by Adam Finberg as soon as he entered the room.

‘Johnny, come and say hello! You must know these guys?’

‘Some of them,’ Johnny said, seeing a few faces in the group round Finberg that stirred old office memories.

‘OK,’ said Finberg, ‘this reprobate here is Den Bramfield, the one hiding behind him is Sir James Brodie, Bart., don’t forget the Bart., and this is Erica who more than makes up for both of them. I give you Johnny Kay, ex-Five, now Seven.’

Erica had the sort of face you see in Country Life engagement photos, soft focus all the way, puppy fat blown into shape by the wind of gymkhanas but not quite set into its final form. Belying that, there was a hard pair of eyes fixed on him when he met her gaze. Bramfield and Brodie both had an expensive, tough, travelled look. Six, he thought, all three of them.

Brodie was looking at him. ‘I say,’ he said, and the tone was a touch affected, ‘of course. Wineglass. That was you, wasn’t it? Frightfully good show, that one.’

Johnny gave a quick, tight smile but Brodie didn’t follow it up. A story was being told and everybody wanted to hear the end.

‘Go on, Den,’ said Finberg. ‘They’re just back from a job, Johnny. Good yarn.’

‘Well, that was about it. Hardest part was finding out where the bloody miners were going next. We followed this bunch around for a week, couldn’t get ahead of them. Bunch of thugs they were, all right. I’ve never seen so many broken heads in my life. Erica did it in the end, cosied up to this out-of-work actor in some dive who’d do anything for a few lei. He went and bleated to the local lads about this village where his mother, who was of course a good Romanian, you know, pause for sliced onion and harp music or whatever they play, had been thrown out of her house by the brutal Magyars. Right, said the miners, where is it? They were just about to steam straight off there, which would have screwed it up all over again ’cos we wouldn’t have had enough time, so this little darling here,’ he gave Erica a somewhat intimate squeeze and she grinned, ‘told them the village was having a feast next evening and wouldn’t it be fun to break it up? Thinking on her feet, you see. Worked a treat. They got all steamed up and bombed off all ready to break heads but Sir Jimmy here got in there with the stuff. Told everyone it was market research, free samples and they’d get paid to drink it, handed out a few banknotes and that was that.’

‘What stuff?’ asked Johnny. There was a sudden pause and they all looked at him.

‘Jungle Juice,’ said Den. ‘Hasn’t Ivor filled you in?’ and Johnny, ever the outsider trying to be inside, didn’t choose to answer.

They dispersed to their desks and he looked at his terminal, wondering where to start. Just like the ones back at the office. Finberg came over and leaned on the partition.

‘Getting on all right?’

‘I think so. No one’s told me about data access, though. I’ve got a target to follow up and I don’t know what we’ve got.’

‘Bloody Ivor,’ said Finberg. ‘Same when I joined. He expects you to guess.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘Pretend you never left.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just what I say. Go on, give it a try,’ said Finberg, smiling broadly, and wandered off.

The woman would keep talking at him, and security were slow so she had plenty of time. She looked at his dog-tag. ‘Hello Mr Gerow. How do you say that? Is that Gerow with a ger or Jerow with a jer ?’

Like all the rest, whenever she confronted them, he didn’t seem able to talk, overcome by the awfulness of her proximity. She stepped sharply back as he reached out to grab her arm.

‘No, don’t do that, I bruise very easily. That’s actual bodily harm. Let’s see where our wonderful police force’s got to. The modplods take their time, don’t they?’ She gave him another broad smile. ‘I’d just like you to know while we’re waiting that I have every right to be here. This is my country. I don’t agree with what this place is doing and I really don’t think you should be doing it.’

He was trying to herd her into a corner of the wall, away from the desk. There was a little knot of technicians behind him and the supervisor was coming up fast from the far end but it seemed like no one wanted to get too close, as if she might bite.

She was talking again. ‘What do you think, Mr Gerow? How would you like it if we built a base in Texas or somewhere and started listening to your phones? Would you think that was fair? By the way that sounded like a very interesting call you picked up there. Was that who I think—’

At last. The Ministry of Defence police were there, three of them, surrounding her with arms outstretched, not touching, herding her towards the door.

‘Heather Weston, you are trespassing on private property. I am asking you to leave immediately,’ said one in a Yorkshire accent. He was in shirtsleeves, very red in the face, the man who should have been at the desk in the entrance to the bunker.

‘Come on. You’re doing it all wrong,’ she said. Her voice was musical, southern, full of memories of an expensive education. She turned to the third and youngest policeman, worried, thin faced, in his twenties. ‘You’re new, aren’t you? Don’t listen to them. They don’t know the law like real plods. When you’re a modplod the old MOD doesn’t bother to teach you the finer points, does it? What you have to say is that you’re acting on behalf of the occupier and then you can only take action if you ask me three times and I still don’t agree to go.’

‘Just button it,’ said the oldest of them, curtly, every inch the ex-Sergeant major. ‘On behalf of the occupier, we’re asking you to leave.’

‘Actually, I’ve come to talk to the occupier, so I’m not trespassing, am I? Can you just tell me who the occupier is and where I can find him… or her?’ She had a big, irritating smile on her face again.

‘The occupier does not wish to talk to you. The occupier wishes us to ask you to leave. This is a final warning.’

She knew when it was time to bend. ‘I’m leaving now,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to go back the same way I came in, because I sort of wandered all over the place and it might take quite a long time, or are you going to give me a lift in your nice big van?’

She was escorted out.

Pacman went some of the way down the corridor after them, watching her as she just went on and on talking at them. The shirtsleeved PC went behind his desk again.

‘How did she get past you?’ Pacman asked him.

He got a look of fury back. ‘I don’t have a clue, chum. Maybe she didn’t come in this way.’

Pacman was going to say there wasn’t any other way but thought better of it. Something on the wall caught his eye. The intruder poster was still there, but over the photo of Heather Weston someone had neatly stuck a picture of the Base Commander.