Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

‘Well, people voted for him round here, I can tell you.’

Maggie felt a little warmer towards this woman at hearing that. ‘So about this file?’

‘Well, you’d need to fill out a form and we’d have to process the request, then I’d have to get Terry – our janitorial manager – to go down to the basement and retrieve it. So if you were able to come back, say next Thursday, then I-’

Instead of a frustrated grimace, Maggie managed to give her an apologetic smile. ‘The problem, I’m afraid, is that I’m based in Washington, DC. I can’t be here for a full week.’

‘We could mail it to you. If you just leave your address, I’m sure-’

‘Sadly, there is a degree of urgency. The courts will need notification of intestacy, before we can proceed to the probate process.’ She saw the baffled expression on the secretary’s face and pressed ahead, dredging her memory for any jargon she could remember that would sound suitably intimidating. ‘This will require an immediate declaration of kinship, heredity and outstanding claims on the estate. It’s a legal process and the courts could issue a subpoena against any person or individual who obstructs that process. Which would mean this school. Or indeed you.’ She felt cruel doing this to the poor woman, but there was too much at stake to play nice.

The smile had gone now.

‘There is one more thing I should explain. The policyholder left behind a considerable sum of money. There is scope in the terms of the policy for a facility fee.’ Maggie said these last two words slowly, so that they might sink in, then repeated them: ‘A facility fee to be paid to anyone who assists in the disbursement of funds.’ She leaned forward, ensuring that eye contact remained locked. ‘That too could of course include you.’

‘I’m not sure I follow, Miss Muir.’

‘The point is that we believe the policyholder died without a will. We think he left a lot of money with no one to give it to. My duty is to be absolutely sure that he did not leave any family or dependants behind and – once I’m sure of that – well, then the sum has to be distributed somehow, doesn’t it?’ She laughed and the secretary’s eyes widened.

‘In previous situations like this, schools have been recipients for such monies. And of course there would be compensation for your time and effort in helping us conduct our inquiries.’

‘So what would you need exactly?’

‘All I would need is for you to take me to wherever those files are kept, so that I can take a quick look at the one belonging to our client and then I will be on my way.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all. I’m in the business of friends and family. That’s what I’m looking for: friends and family.’

The smell of bullshit was filling her own nostrils, but somehow Maggie sensed it was working.

The light was fluorescent, the smell stale. Upon rows and rows of metal shelves, mounted on Meccano-style uprights, were hundreds of cardboard boxes. Each one was labelled in the thick but fading ink of a marker pen. She began reading off the years. 2001-2, 2000-1…

The secretary had just asked the difficult question Maggie had been hoping to avoid – whose file is it you’re looking for? – when she was called away to deal with a fourteen-year-old boy with a nosebleed. She nudged Maggie through a pair of double-doors, then unlocked another dark green door before rushing upstairs with a pack of tissues, calling back over her shoulder, ‘I’ll be back shortly!’

Maggie was left alone, accompanied only by the gurgling of hot water pipes. She didn’t have much time. With her head angled, she read quickly along the sides of these old brown boxes. 1979-80, 1978-79, 1977-78…

Turning the corner, she found at last the right year. She pulled the box down and, with no table to rest on, set it on the ground and knelt beside it, coughing as the dust of the floor rose to her throat.

Inside were two parallel rails on which hung a series of dark green files. She did a quick flick through the Bs: the Baker file was gone, no doubt removed during last year’s campaign, when journalists kept asking for it. A few Cs, a large number of Ds, a handful of Es; on and on until, at last, there it was.

Jackson, Robert Andrew

There was a home address, which Maggie swiftly scribbled in a notebook. There was a mother, Catherine Jackson, but by the word ‘father’ only a blank.

Copies of his school report, including praise for his leadership of the debate team. High scores for history and for Spanish, decent in maths. Not what she needed. She turned the pages fast, hoping something would pop out, something that-

What was that?

A sound, close by. Metallic, but not the banging of a pipe. It came from further away and yet it was definitely down here, in the bowels of this building. It sounded somehow deliberate. Man-made.

She scoured the file, speed-reading. There was another reference to the debate team, written by a Mr Schilling. The date was three years after the first one: Jackson would have been seventeen.

… Robert’s contribution to the debate team has not been quite as enthusiastic as it was previously. I suspect the loss of the captaincy of the team made him a little sore. If he is to pursue a political career, he needs to learn that every career includes its defeats!

A political career. Maggie kept going. A letter to Mrs Jackson from the Principal, suggesting a meeting at the school to resolve the ‘disciplinary matter we discussed on the phone’. A reference accompanying an application to Harvard. A rejection letter from Harvard.

Finally, at the back of the file, a photocopied page from the high school yearbook. In the photograph Jackson wore the same expression Maggie had seen on his CIA file: smiling and hopeful, but with a hint of something else, too. Arrogance, determination or youthful ambition – it was hard to tell.

Keeping the file on the floor, she replaced the box on the shelf and was just reaching for the lid when she heard the same metallic sound again, this time nearer. Inside the room.

Over her right shoulder she saw nothing but more rows of boxes. Over the other were the heavy pipes of the school heating system. Suddenly aware that she was alone in a closed, dark underground room, she felt a desperate need to get out.

The sound came again and it was getting closer.

She bent down to pick up the file, pausing to shepherd a few loose sheets back between the covers, and when she came back up, she could tell the light had changed. The area where she had stood was no longer in shadow.

She turned around. There, framed in the light between two rows of shelves, just a few feet away from her, was the outline of a man. Fixed, still – and staring at her.

Washington, DC, Friday March 24, 12.00

‘Are we on a secure line?’

‘Always, Governor.’

‘You’re not telling me you consider the United States Congress secure, are you?’

‘I am not, sir, no. We have our own encryption equipment in this office.’

‘That’s smart, Senator.’

‘I thank you.’

‘You sure you not from Louisiana?’ A loud thunder of laughter down the phone, the way politicians used to laugh half a century ago: the sound of a big, Southern man who could fill a room with his own charisma. This, Senator Rick Franklin guessed, is how Huey Long would have laughed. Conventional wisdom said they didn’t make them like that any more, but Governor Orville Tett begged to differ.

‘I also want to thank you for getting in touch, Governor. I’m most grate-’

‘We can cut the formal bullshit. We’re busy men and we’re on the same side, ain’t we?’