Exit Day: Brexit; An Assassin Stalks the Prime Minister

by David Laws

  Reverse direction down the hard shoulder, the GPS directing him down minor roads, with the constant worry: would he make it in time? Too late for a riot? He’d never live it down.

  He dumped the car in a side street and ran the last half-mile to the town centre. When he stopped panting and regained his breath, he could sense fear on the street. Figures lurked in shop doorways. A forbidding atmosphere laden with malevolent anticipation.

  He didn’t have long to wait. The marchers came from opposite ends of the town: the EuroSolidarity Remainer group from Pudding Lane in the north; and the Patriotic Front, the Leavers, from Jubilee Square by the bus station.

  Their route joined at the High Street. Destination for both was the Crown Court on the other side of the River Medway. A line of police patrolled down the centre of the wide boulevard, hoping to keep the rivals apart. Rather like policing a derby football match, the inspector said.

  The main bodies came on, funnelling together for the final section of the route, past the mock-Tudor bridal shop, the cafes, the pizza parlours and the big old iron cannon. Blaring megaphone insults were accompanied by catcalls and a fusillade of missiles. Orange trelliswork fences placed around a new concrete manhole cover made it easy for those bent on confrontation. Bits of fence flew through the air, as did dustbin lids, the rubbish left out ready for the binmen. The police, outnumbered and powerless to prevent the fusillade, could only duck. Rival banners mocked the other, ramping up the atmosphere of hostility and threat. Down With Little Englanders vied with Euro Weasels and Traitors All.

  Eventually the thin blue line broke under pressure of the crowd and a general struggle broke out as the competing columns reached the river bridges. The traffic, usually thick at the major crossroads, was completely stalled. To one side Harry could see a mass of shoving, punching and struggling figures. A man with a megaphone had been surrounded, isolated from his friends, the device ripped from his hands. Other hands were laid about him. There were ugly threats. Something about dumping him in the river.

  The mob had a victim in its clutches, he realised. This raised Harry’s hackles. But what should he do? He was an observer, not a participant. His job was to watch and describe.

  Describe a man being beaten by the mob?

  A vision came to him then of his father issuing a stern rebuke never to condone injustice. Harry strode to the bridge, looking over the parapet in horror at the raging torrent that was the Medway in full flood, swollen by recent rainfall.

  Faces were red, spittle flecked lips, aggression was a rising tide.

  “Traitor, troublemaker!”

  The unfortunate man was pinioned by the arms, hemmed in by a bridge parapet and a press of heaving bodies.

  “We’re going to settle your hash once and for all.”

  The chorus continued: “Chuck him in the river!”

  Harry barged his way to the centre of the crowd, breaking a neck-hold by a large man with tattoos all down his arms.

  “You wanna smashed face, mate?”

  “Leave him be.” Harry freed another arm. “He’s as much right as you to say what he thinks.”

  “You one of them?”

  “Free speech without violence.”

  “We’ll put you both in the river. Drown you out!”

  A chorus of approval.

  “Don’t count on it!” Harry knew he had to match aggression with aggression. “I’ll be back to see you in the dock for murder. And then you won’t be so full of it.”

  Tattoo leaned into Harry’s face. “This geezer’s been shouting the odds through his megaphone. He’s a menace. Needs shutting up.”

  Harry reached across and grabbed the megaphone. He hoisted it way above his head, then tossed it in a great arc over the parapet and into the swirling river. There was an audible splash. “There, does that solve your problem?”

  This was followed by a momentary silence, then a loud voice. “Reckon you’ve shut him up good and proper, mate,” someone said.

  Megaphone Man was recovering from his first fright. “What d’you do that for?”

  “You be quiet!” Harry’s reply was all venom. “You got yourself into this mess.”

  The harshness of his reaction seemed to deflate the anger around him. “Why are you sticking up for this geezer?” Tattoo wanted to know.

  “Because he’s got the same right as you to say what he thinks, even if you say he’s got it wrong.”

  “He has.”

  “So, have you never got anything wrong in your life?”

  There was a loud guffaw from somewhere over Harry’s shoulder. Tattoo, it seemed, was well known in the district. Considered a character. “You should ask his missus,” another voice suggested, “she’ll tell you. She usually does.”

  A further catcall: “Where’s old Sheila today? Still down the bingo?”

  Tattoo yelled back, “And you can shut up too!”

  Laughter defused the anger, the press of bodies easing, the crowd beginning to drift, attention diverted, eager to string banners to the courthouse door.

  Enemies of the People, the big sign said when the mob had completed its handiwork, by which time Harry and Megaphone Man had been able to slip away.

  Chapter 26

  15 days to go

  Erika was at home turning over in her mind every aspect of Fischer’s proposal; thinking it through, considering the outcome, weighing the risks. He was long gone, and he’d left her with the big decision. He needed her answer by Friday.

  She recalled each facet of their conversation. It was when he’d told her Harry was “a problem” that she reacted.

  “I know you,” she said, pointing an accusing finger. “You’d like to take him out – but no way!” She was yelling, off her stool and in Fischer’s face. “I’m warning you now, if anything happens to him, all bets are off. I’ll squeal the full story about you to the cops. Give the papers all your details. And your picture. Don’t think I won’t!”

  “Think of your loyalty to the comrades,” he said.

  “What? Like the loyalty you showed to me?”

  He put up a placating hand. “I can see you’ve lost nothing of your old spirit. All that aggression and volatile nature… that’s good, that’s what we need.”

  “Don’t flannel me, I mean it.”

  “Of course you do. I promise. No harm will come to your Harry.” He smiled at her, his reassuring smile. “We have a much bigger target than him. He’s just a nuisance, for sure – but you’re clever enough to sort things out without the need for any… shall we say, unpleasant outcomes?”

  “Whatever else he is, he’s a good man and I won’t have any action taken against him.”

  “Solemn promise, OK?”

  She glared.

  He added, “You’ll just have to find a way to nullify his efforts, that’s all. Get the list off him. Stop this investigation.”

  “Far too late for that. You can’t get the list back; even now he’s discussing all the details with his newspaper people.” She wasn’t going to tell the truth; that Harry was just a couple of miles away in the press box at the Bury court. “Discussing how they’re going to expose it,” she said. “They’ll already know all about it. Everything.”

  “Damn!” Silence. Then he said, “We’ll just have to warn our people, but do what you can to put him off, muddy the water, send him down the wrong track.”

  “What I won’t do is have him hurt.”

  She was guarded. She didn’t trust Fischer, but he had spoken some elements of the truth. Those parts of her life which had been a disaster, the before and the after. The battered childhood, her ordeal at the hands of the Stasi and the depression before he rescued her from obscurity and made her part of his team.

  She remembered how she felt back then and her desperate need to avenge all the hurt that had been visited upon her. Fis
cher had given her the opportunity and the justification, and she knew she was good at what she did. Then had come the aftermath, the stand-down from the Kameraden.

  Perhaps, after all, keeping herself in trim – the running, jogging, biking, climbing and shooting – was all for this. Perhaps this was meant to be. A better life, a new start for her and Stefan.

  But did she really want to revisit this angry part of herself? Could she find the motivation for action once more? Reinvent her angry self to give her the necessary courage for one last job?

  For Stefan’s sake, could she refuse?

  She breathed out, looked out at the back garden and the long grasses waving gently in the wind. Such a peaceful picture. Nevertheless, she would give the signal. She would agree.

  Chapter 27

  Friday 15th March 2019; 14 days to go

  Next on Harry’s target list of subjects to interview was the trickiest customer so far: Dr Leonard Gifford, senior lecturer in history, ringmaster, instigator, ideologue, master manipulator and the man who set up the Stasi network in Britain way back in the ’80s.

  The network, which Harry was convinced was still fully functional, would be alive to the danger he represented. Doubtless a Kameraden crew would be on call. It would be like trying to cross the old Berlin Wall in reverse and bust open the gates at Hohenschönhausen Prison. There would be a ring of protection around Gifford. The tough guy Bruno, so recently frustrated in his bid to grab Harry at Highbury, would be waiting, trap baited, having been afforded ample time to guess at the next twist in Harry’s Blue List quest.

  However, Harry had one thing going for him that he had not anticipated – a call from Toby McIntosh. His old friend sounded conscience-stricken and defensive on the phone. “I want you to know I’m being as cooperative as I possibly can.”

  “That’s good to know,” said Harry, glimpsing the continuing fear of exposure that had triggered this response.

  “I’ve got some information. Not direct from the horse’s mouth, you understand, but through a chain of contacts and friends.”

  “And what do these chatterboxes say?”

  “Word on the quad is, Gifford is back in town.”

  “Didn’t realise he’d been away.”

  “Absent for long periods. Keeping a low profile, visits abroad and so forth, but he’s back today doing tutorials, so they say. Possibly, your opportunity.”

  Harry pointed the nose of Scobie’s Sunbeam in the direction of Cambridge and turned on the radio to get the latest news. And the word from the Brexit talks in Brussels was not encouraging: the UK was being told to accept a quota of at least a million EU immigrants every year.

  “I wonder what part Christopher Tresham has played in that little ploy,” Harry said out loud to himself, more than ever determined to expose the traitor in the Cabinet. However, to accomplish this he would need incontrovertible evidence. Gifford would doubtless have it… but how to squeeze it out of him? And how could Harry, acting alone, doorstep a hostile and reluctant agent ring-fenced by what amounted to his own private security detail?

  The answer was Dameon, third mechanic at the Bury repair shop. Like Harry, the boy owned a Triumph Bonneville, which happily blurred the customer-dealer relationship. “Fifty quid for the day, plus expenses,” Harry said, “and all you’ve got to do is a spot of tailgating.”

  Once in Cambridge, Harry had the Sunbeam parked well back by the big open field at Parker’s Piece. This allowed an easy approach on foot to the pedestrian entrance to St Jude’s College on Sidney Street. Cars, buses and taxis ground past the tiny gateway that led straight from the noisy street into the peaceful sanctuary of a grassy quad. Harry studied the elaborate carving above the ancient timber door, marvelling at the jumble of bikes clustered around it, but never daring to put a foot inside the entrance. The passage beyond led straight past the porter’s lodge, no doubt infiltrated by Bruno’s watchers. Harry’s aim was to approach Gifford when he was out on the street and unprotected.

  For this purpose he bought a baseball cap and blue anorak from a charity shop before approaching the seller of The Big Issue at the corner of Drummer Street. There was another £50 note outstretched in his hand. Minutes later he was incognito and in place with his stock of magazines, just fifty yards from the gate. In an inside pocket was a picture of his quarry, culled from the university website.

  The human traffic was constant – students, staff, porters, tourists, service engineers and the occasional academic. But of Gifford there was no sign all morning.

  Harry’s stomach began to rumble. Breakfast had been a cup of tea. Would Gifford eat at the refectory or go out for lunch? The stock of Big Issues was diminishing fast. Perhaps he’d have to stock up on risqué magazines for the afternoon.

  And then he had his reward. Almost certainly Gifford. The man looked remarkably like a sports master Harry had hated in his schooldays: abrasive, supercilious, a stubbly beard trimmed to obsessive perfection. He had his arm wrapped around the shoulders of a woman younger than him by at least twenty years. They appeared in the gateway, chatting, turned to their right and walked smartly towards the city centre, locked in each other’s company.

  Harry hesitated briefly, hanging back to see if he could spot a shadow, perhaps a part of the protection team. He scanned the faces, reckoning he would recognise anyone from overseas by the cut of their clothes and their walk, but then Bruno could have recruited locally. Might Harry be up against an old copper?

  By now Gifford was at the corner close to Harry’s favourite building in the city, the old Fosters Bank, a vast neo-Gothic frontage with a clock tower. He’d spent hours inside the banking hall, marvelling at the decorative floor, the arcade and the dramatic dome. It reminded him of a Russian church.

  He abandoned his pitch and tailed the couple from the other side of the street. Past the smart new eateries with people sitting at tables on the pavement, past the coffee shops, sandwich bars and street sellers outside the church, and into the midday crowds strolling through tiny streets cleared of traffic. Would these two go to a gym, a bookshop, a bank or another office?

  Harry had an eyeball on Gifford’s grey hair. He feared they would turn left and become lost in the thickest of the crowds on Market Street. But no – straight on, past the bookshop where Harry and Toby had met just a few days before, out towards Sussex College and past a musician hiding inside a litter bin, serenading the crowds unseen from his absurdly clamped metal box.

  Finally, a turn into Green Street.

  Harry had to be on his toes to spot them entering the Arcadia restaurant, at which point he dallied in the street, looking in shop windows, apparently glued to a display of high-class shoes and boots with price tags way beyond him. Could he spot a likely shadow? Anyone doing the same as he? It was ironic to think he was now walking in the footsteps of people whom, in an earlier life, he would have scorned.

  Finally Harry jettisoned his street-seller uniform and entered the restaurant which was crowded with lunchtime diners. Gifford and his woman friend were on the far side, off guard, wrapped up in each other, not on the lookout for danger. Harry studied their faces. Discreetly, he took from his pocket the printed photo of Gifford and compared. Yes, this was the man. And the woman? Conversational and, by all appearances, eager. If Gifford was as duplicitous in sexual matters as he was in the espionage business, there was every hope he wouldn’t be going straight home after work.

  This was Harry’s chance. He’d posted Dameon in the university car park pretending to be a messenger on his lunch break. Actually, he was having a somewhat extended lunch, making a cheese-and-salami sandwich from the deli on St Andrews last for most of the afternoon.

  After lunch Harry didn’t bother tailing the couple back to the university. He had every confidence Gifford would not disappoint.

  And he didn’t. At 4.30, Dameon, also armed with the website picture, made the vital phone ca
ll: “He’s mobile. Black Citroën, with female, heading out of car park, heading north along Hobson Street.”

  Ten minutes later, another call. “Both indoors at Number 94 MacKenzie Avenue. Obviously nicely tucked up for the evening. GLX16OXZ is parked around the corner on the left side. So, what now?”

  “Thanks, Dameon, job done,” Harry said. “I’ll take it from here.”

  This was the reason Harry had left his bike at home. Playing the snoop in suburbia was easier from a parked car. Bruno’s watchers would be keeping guard at the university and at Gifford’s home, wherever that might be, but they hadn’t got the restaurant covered and Gifford had understandably failed to inform them of his new illicit location.

  Harry settled down. He knew it would be a long wait and it was. The vigil, assisted by a cut-price packet of supermarket Bath buns and a couple of bottles of Spitfire beer, lasted until well past midnight. Finally, the front door of Number 94 opened and Gifford tiptoed quietly down the garden path, clearly anxious not to alert the neighbours. Harry slipped out of the Sunbeam and cut him off at the corner.

  “Good morning, Mandelbaum,” was his opening line when they almost collided.

  “Who the hell are you?” It was a hoarse whisper, designed to maintain discretion.

  “Your nemesis. Your past has caught up with you.”

  “Get lost!” Gifford brushed past, but Harry caught him by the sleeve. He then got ahead of him in the race to the parked black Citroën and stood flat against the side clutching the roof rim, barring the driver’s door.

  “We need to talk.”

  Gifford spluttered, decided against a wrestling match to open his car door, and opted for a jog instead. Perhaps he hoped to outpace this stranger, but Harry, prodded into increased fitness by Erika, was able to keep pace as they loped down the deserted street. Through short bursts of breath, he said, “Got you taped, old man. I know where you live, know where you lecture, know who you’re shagging, what you did in the past, and a fair inkling of what you’re doing now.”