The Sanction

by Mark Sennen

  Milligan reached for a remote control and blipped the volume on the TV monitor up several notches. Sirens in the background. A reporter talking to camera. A blast of music as the channel went to an ad break. Milligan shook his head and mouthed the word no. He reached for his jacket on the back of his chair and stood.

  ‘Let’s take a walk,’ he said.

  * * *

  Light chinked through the curtains and fell on Holm’s face. He blinked awake, aware of traffic noise in the street outside, the growl of a heavy goods vehicle, the beep of a horn. Then somebody pounding on something. Bang bang bang. Holm screwed his eyes shut. He had a beast of a hangover for which Palmer was entirely to blame. As Holm was leaving work the previous evening, a text from his friend had bleeped into his phone.

  ‘If you’re going to drown your sorrows, best not to do it alone, eh?’ Palmer signed off with a winking emoji, and half an hour later they were starting their second pint in the Morpeth Arms at the bottom of Millbank, ostensibly to celebrate Holm’s new job.

  The night had gone downhill from there, ending with a curry that Palmer insisted on paying for.

  ‘The way you’ve been talking, it sounds like you could be taking early retirement soon,’ he said. ‘Best save your pennies.’

  One Madras and several bottles of Cobra later, Palmer was bundling Holm into a taxi for the ride home. He could remember little else except the taxi driver’s shake of the head when Holm had stepped out and vomited on his own front step. Drinking with Palmer tended to be like that.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Holm heaved the words out and pulled a pillow over his head.

  Bang bang bang.

  The pounding came again. Then a pattering on the window. Stones or earth hitting the glass. Holm pushed off the pillow and cast the duvet aside. He staggered to the window, drew back the curtains and looked down into the street.

  Farakh Javed grinned up at him before gesturing at the front door. Holm bent and lifted the sash window.

  ‘Boss. Are you going to let me in or what?’ The smile again. Like a bright sunbeam and about as welcome.

  Holm groaned. This wasn’t the sort of morning he’d been expecting. He’d hoped to phone in sick and lie in bed for a couple of hours. Later, when he eventually got up, to cook a hearty breakfast and veg out in front of some daytime TV.

  ‘Well?’

  Holm nodded and moved to the hallway. He buzzed the entry lock and a minute later the door to Holm’s flat swung open and Javed stepped in.

  ‘Some dirty wino’s spewed on your front step,’ he said. ‘This neighbourhood’s going to the dogs.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Holm crossed the room. He wondered about closing the curtains because the light was altogether too strong for his eyes. Instead he dropped onto the sofa. Javed was bouncing like a first-round featherweight who’d yet to land a punch. ‘Sit down, you’re making me nervous. Besides, what are you doing here?’

  Javed stopped moving for a moment. ‘You look like you could do with some fresh air.’

  Holm shook his head and started to protest, but Javed was already moving back towards the hallway and heading for the front door.

  * * *

  Five minutes later Silva and Milligan were leaving the busy centre and strolling into Highgate Cemetery. Stillness. The peace of the dead. Milligan hadn’t spoken since they’d left the agency and now he led the way in silence, following a path that wound beneath huge trees, the light from above filtered to a soft lime by a canopy of leaves.

  ‘What’s going on, Neil?’ Silva said, trying to keep up. ‘What exactly was it my mother was working on?’

  ‘I told you, the trafficking story.’ Milligan hunched over and shuffled along. ‘She wanted to do a series, a piece on each country involved, she was interviewing the actors and—’

  ‘You said.’

  ‘I did?’ Milligan stopped walking and shook his head. His eyes were wide open but his pupils tiny. He glanced back the way they’d come. ‘Sorry. The past few weeks have been stressful. I’ve been under a lot of pressure.’

  ‘I’m sure you have. It must be difficult when one of your journalists is deliberately targeted because of a story she was working on.’

  ‘Yes, it…’ Milligan’s affirmative nodding stopped and changed to another shake of the head. He started to walk on. ‘No, Rebecca, not deliberately. Your mother was killed by terrorists in league with the people traffickers. Their target was the head of a charity providing help to refugees, and your mother and the other victims were bystanders unwittingly caught up in the attack.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. If it was really true then why couldn’t we have this conversation in your office? Why did somebody break into my mother’s house? Why was I followed by a mysterious car on the motorway and then later pushed into the weir?’

  ‘This isn’t a discussion I want to have, OK?’ Milligan increased his pace, striding away. Silva followed. ‘You’ve had a warning, you might say a lucky escape. Take my advice and move on.’

  ‘Move on? Are you fucking joking?’ Silva caught up with Milligan. She was angry at the way he was being so dismissive. ‘My mother was murdered and I’m beginning to suspect the facts aren’t as simple as the authorities are making out.’

  ‘Forget it, right? Forget whatever you think you know.’

  ‘It’s Hope, isn’t it? Karen Hope?’

  Milligan stopped and spun round. He shot a hand out and grabbed Silva by the wrist. ‘For God’s sake don’t mention her name.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because I told you not to, OK?’

  Silva paused and lowered her voice. ‘How has it come to this, Neil?’

  Milligan let go of Silva’s arm. He stared down at the asphalt path. The surface was dotted with the white blotches of discarded chewing gum and he moved his right foot and scuffed at a piece. After a moment he looked up, his face drained of colour.

  ‘I’ve got three children, Rebecca. They walk half a mile to school and back every day. Do you know how easy it would be for a car to mount the kerb and run them over? How easy it would be for someone to sweep past and throw acid at them? I’m not easily frightened, but I couldn’t live with myself if…’ Milligan’s words trailed off as he looked across to an elaborate tomb where a cherub stood on a plinth. ‘I’ve resisted pressure before but that’s always come from big business or hapless politicians or tinpot dictators. This is different. This is much, much bigger. Global.’

  ‘Global?’ Silva was thrown. Milligan was opening up but now she was wondering if he was slipping into fantasy. ‘Are you saying there’s some kind of conspiracy?’

  ‘Yes.’ Milligan gulped and swallowed. Sweat beaded on his forehead as if he had a fever. ‘Too many people have too much riding on this to contemplate the alternative. I’ve always believed in speaking truth to power, but the power in this case is too strong. I can’t fight against them without losing everything.’

  ‘Does anyone else have the story?’

  ‘There is no story. I’ve told you nothing, Rebecca, nothing, understand?’

  ‘At least tell me what happened to my mother’s files so I can follow this up.’

  Milligan glanced round, scanning the shadows under the trees. He stepped off the path, beckoned Silva to follow and darted away into a stand of thick laurel. Silva jogged after him and pushed under a tangle of branches into a little clearing. Milligan stood on the far side. He held his hands up.

  ‘Stop.’ He clenched his fists, fighting something internally before letting his hands fall to his sides. ‘This is all I tell you, OK? You promise you won’t try to contact me again? Promise you won’t tell anybody we met?’

  ‘I promise,’ Silva said.

  ‘The laptop was taken away by a couple of intelligence officers. They said it contained evidence that would help them track down the terrorists. When I logged on to our system and tried to discover what happened to the files your mother had backed up to the cloud, I found nothing. All the material had bee
n deleted without trace.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘That’s it. I don’t want to hear another word.’ Milligan stepped away. ‘We can’t meet again, not alone like this. It’s too risky.’

  ‘Neil, you’ve got to help me get to the truth!’

  ‘I’m sorry about your mother, more sorry than you can know, but I’m done with this, understand?’ Milligan turned around and started to go back the way they’d come. When Silva took a step after him he held up his hands. ‘Let it go, Rebecca. For your own good. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted you to pursue this at the cost of the lives of the people she loved.’

  Milligan trotted off into the trees, dodged through a gap in a tall box hedge and was gone.

  * * *

  Outside the sun was brighter than ever and Holm squinted against the glare. His headache had subsided, but the last thing he wanted to be doing was chasing after Javed.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Holm stepped across the pavement. Javed was indicating the park over the road, so they crossed and went in.

  ‘You thought this was Taher, right?’ Javed began to stroll up a path that curved round a kids’ playground. ‘Directly involved or behind the scenes, but ultimately responsible?’

  ‘Yes.’ Holm glanced over to where a toddler had tripped and taken a face plant. His dad was trying to console the little boy. ‘Even if nobody believes me.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said nobody else believes you.’

  ‘So you do think it was Taher?’

  Javed turned his attention to a pair of pigeons crossing the path ahead. He stopped and watched as they squabbled over a discarded burger.

  ‘Well?’ Holm was running out of patience. He began to walk on. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Here.’ Javed pulled out his phone and thrust it at Holm. ‘I’ve got a Twitter account. Personal. I don’t use it for much though. The occasional message to friends, plus I like to follow some footie stuff. Arsenal mostly.’

  Holm raised an eyebrow. He couldn’t imagine Javed as a football fan. ‘So?’

  ‘This was posted last night. It was to me and about half a dozen other Gunners fans, but when you read the message you’ll see the other recipients were just a blind.’

  Holm peered down at the phone. The tweet was in Arabic and he struggled to get beyond one or two words.

  ‘A football fan who communicates in Arabic. So what?’

  ‘I’ll translate, shall I?’ Javed smiled. ‘The innocent one wakes. He seeks to avenge the wrongs which have been done. He shall punish the transgressors but others will fall as well. Women and children and babes in arms. Who can say if this is justice? Who will listen to my voice? Who will stop this madness?’

  Holm stopped in his tracks. ‘Say the first bit again.’

  ‘The innocent one. That’s what the name Taher means, isn’t it? Innocent, pure, clean, chaste.’

  Holm pushed the phone away. ‘I’m done with this, Farakh. Taher is strictly off-limits, remember? If you’re worried home-grown extremism might have spread to football fans then you should have a word with Huxtable. She’ll find somebody to look into it for you.’

  ‘The Spider? No, I don’t think you understand and she certainly wouldn’t.’ Javed shoved the phone back towards Holm. He was agitated, upset almost. ‘Take a look at the username.’

  Holm peered at the screen again, more to placate Javed than with any real interest. ‘It’s a bunch of letters and numbers. Makes no sense.’

  ‘TCXGP1505. The digits. Do they mean anything to you?’

  ‘1505?’ Holm laughed. ‘The fifteenth of May. Coincidentally, it’s my birthday.’

  ‘Now take the letters. It’s a simple rotation cipher. Shifted by two. Child’s play.’

  ‘TCXGP.’ Holm did the decoding in his head and as he did so a chill spread across the back of his hands. ‘RAVEN.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘MI5’s code name for Taher.’ Despite the warm sun Holm shivered. A smidgeon of nausea began to rise from his stomach. ‘Christ.’

  ‘Your birthday and a code name supposedly known only to the security services sent in a social media message to me.’ Javed took the phone back. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as just a little bit odd?’

  Chapter Eight

  Silva went to the Costa on the high street opposite the agency. She bought a cup of coffee and a muffin and sat at a window seat. Milligan was inside because she’d seen him come to a window and peer out nervously. This wasn’t the Neil Milligan her mother had told her stories about. In his time as a front-line journalist he’d covered wars, famines and natural disasters. He’d been shot in the leg in the Balkans, captured by Angolan rebels in Africa and faced trial in Singapore for refusing to reveal a source. He’d won awards for his work. Silva concluded he’d either lost it or had a genuine reason to be frightened. Considering what had happened to her at the weir, she was inclined to think the latter and that wasn’t comforting. She turned her head and scanned the cafe. Milligan’s paranoia was infectious.

  When she’d eaten the muffin and finished the coffee, she drummed her fingers on the table for a couple of minutes. She’d planned to wait for Milligan to emerge so she could try to talk to him again, but now, having seen him at the window, she came to the conclusion he wasn’t going to open up to her.

  She decided instead to return to her mother’s place and take a good look through all the documents in the upstairs room. She dodged through the traffic and headed west, arriving at the cottage mid-afternoon. She sat astride the bike and removed her helmet. Listened. Nothing but the water tumbling through the weir. She kicked down the stand and dismounted. The attack had spooked her and she was angry it had changed her feelings about being here. After a minute’s contemplation she went inside.

  She spent several hours going through all the box files. There were documents relating to research her mother had done years ago as well as more recent material, but there was nothing that mentioned Karen Hope.

  The sun had sunk by the time she’d finished. Down in the kitchen she found a tin of curry in a cupboard. There was dried rice in a jar on the side. Two saucepans went on the stove. In another cupboard a rack held several bottles of red wine. Silva smiled to herself; her mother enjoyed a drink and it wasn’t hard to imagine her pouring a large glass and taking it outside to sit by the weir on a summer’s evening such as this one. Silva opened a bottle and checked the rice and curry. While she was waiting for the rice to cook, she drifted through to the living room. Above the fireplace there was a corkboard with photographs and postcards. There were several pictures of Silva as a child, some of her with her shooting medals, one of her standing beside a Foxhound armoured vehicle in Afghanistan. Silva pulled off some of the postcards. These were from friends, and she recognised the names of various people who’d come to the funeral. Like her mother, the friends were well travelled. Peru. Japan. New Zealand. South Africa. Chichester Harbour. Chichester Harbour? Silva turned the picture over, interested to know which of her mother’s friends would send a card from a little over fifty miles away. Presumably it was an attempt at ironic humour.

  18 August

  Dear Rebecca, remember the beach we used to go to here? West something or other, wasn’t it? Those were happy times, good memories, a place with buried treasure and hidden secrets to be passed on from one generation to the next. I so enjoyed the many times we visited. I definitely Hope you did too. Love always and forever, Mum.

  Silva stepped back from the mantelpiece and sat down heavily in an armchair. She’d never received this postcard. It was correctly addressed to Silva’s boat at the boatyard, but there was no stamp. The card had never been posted. Had her mother meant to send the card and forgotten? All of a sudden Silva felt a wave of regret. If the card had been posted, if Silva had received it, things might have been different. She might have phoned her mother and perhaps the call could have changed events in some small way. A tiny ripple moving forward in time, disrupting the flow of atoms and altering hist
ory. The butterfly effect, but in this case not causing a storm but preventing it. Silva dropped the card into her lap. The cold shock at seeing the message had gone and now she found herself crying again, unable to reconcile the present with the past, reality with what might have been.

  After a while she stood and went back to the kitchen. The rice was done and she drained it and served the curry. Poured herself some wine. She sat at the kitchen table, the postcard in front of her. She sobbed but as she read again she found herself unable to stifle a laugh. Nothing was right. For a start the card was post-dated. The eighteenth of August was several weeks off and yet her mother must have written it before she left for Tunisia months ago. Then the actual message on the postcard was all wrong. Remember the beach we used to go to here? West something or other, wasn’t it? West something referred to West Wittering, a beach Silva had been to with her father, but certainly not with her mother. Her father had taught her to sail on the waters of Chichester Harbour and they’d beached their dinghy at West Wittering on occasion. Her mother had hated sailing and hadn’t cared much for the sea. The message made no sense. Hidden secrets to be passed on… She turned the card over. The picture was of Chichester Harbour from the air and showed the vast expanse of water with all the little inlets. On a rising tide you could explore the creeks and, indeed, that was just what she’d done with her father.

  Was that what her mother meant? That there was some kind of secret buried like pirate gold deep in a mudbank up a lonely creek? She turned the card back over and read the final line.

  I so enjoyed the many times we visited. I definitely Hope you did too. Love always and forever, Mum.

  As a journalist, her mother was unfailingly accurate in matters of grammar and punctuation, but in this case it looked as if she’d written the card in a rush. I definitely Hope you did too. The words definitely Hope was not only bad English, hope had a capital H, an obvious error and one Silva was positive her mother wouldn’t have made.