by Peter Cocks
I don’t believe in ghosts, but as the tunes washed over me I realized that if you keep enough of someone – their smell, their favourite food and the music they loved – then you can almost re-create a sense of them. You can feel them in the room. I could feel Steve with me, watching me.
I looked up at the ceiling of the bedroom that had been my boyhood refuge for as long as I could remember, every crack and cobweb familiar and comforting. And it occurred to me that, after tonight, I was leaving my boyhood well and truly behind.
SIX
Tony was picking me up at ten. I got up early and packed my bags. I still felt pretty sick. I don’t think it was the curry, just my nerves. I had kept waking up all through the night, staring at the ceiling, worrying.
Ma cooked me eggs and bacon, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. I forced it down to please her and washed it down with a mug of strong tea.
When Tony arrived, Mum did her best not to make a scene and so did I; she told him to look after me, or he’d have her to answer to. Tony promised he would, then we both kissed her and left.
The rush hour was pretty much over, but New Cross was still clogged up with traffic as we cut down into Deptford. The cars were mostly scruffy vans on local business, or shiny Beemers with black blokes flexing their muscles and their stereos. I couldn’t help noting faces, wondering what sort of work other people were doing, and got steely stares in return.
I would have to be more subtle, I thought.
Tony turned down towards the river, humming along to a terrible tune on the radio that was beginning to get on my nerves. He pulled up outside a block of flats along the riverfront: a new development, faced in steel, glass and wood. To one side there was a scrapyard piled high with the rusting wrecks of old cars. On the other side, a second new block, shiny and metallic, that stretched upwards, with a neat line of glossy, prestige motors lined up outside. It was like the new world colliding with the old, and it wasn’t clear which was winning: whether the shiny and new was taking over the scrapyard or whether the scrapyard was rotting the new stuff with rust and corrosion, dragging it down to its level.
“Welcome to your new home.” Tony presented the block to me with a wave of his hand.
“You what?” I said.
“Your flat.” He laughed. “But you won’t have much company, I’m afraid – the block’s half-empty. It was built for all the yuppies and City boys who were supposed to be flooding this area.”
“So where did they go?” I asked.
“They either didn’t exist in the first place, or they’ve gone skint in the meantime…” He grinned. “Merchant bankers,” he added with a gesture of his wrist.
Tony punched in a code on the heavy steel and glass door. There were no numbers on the buttons, but they made different tones.
“No numbers?” I asked.
“No. It’s more secure without. You’ll have to remember the tone sequence, but don’t worry just yet. Early days.” The door clicked open and we walked across a cool, marble-floored hallway towards a steel lift door. It hissed open.
“This is your safe house,” Tony explained, pressing the button for the fifth floor. “The people who buy this kind of gaff like their security, so you’ll be safe as houses, so to speak. It’s quiet down here. Just be discreet and don’t get too chummy with your neighbours. You probably won’t see much of them anyway. They tend to go to work early and come back late, and none of them are families.”
He passed me a piece of paper with the PIN tone sequence for the outside door and another number combination for the flat. The lift stopped at the top floor.
“Memorize the numbers, then eat that,” Tony said.
The look on my face made him laugh.
“Only joking, mate.” He slapped my shoulder. “Just don’t leave it anywhere silly.”
I pressed in the code to open Flat 501 and walked through the door. The trapped air hit me in the face and everything smelt new. Tony flicked on the lights and I felt a tingle of excitement as I took in the big, open space.
There was a comfy-looking sofa and a couple of leather armchairs. A thick, modern rug covered the floor between them, and there was a glass coffee table with a stack of books and a fruit bowl. There was a large, framed vintage film poster on the wall: James Bond – Dr. No. Tony saw my reaction and winked at me.
“My house-warming present,” he said. “A bit of a joke.”
Underneath the poster was a desk with a silver Apple laptop on it. Tony lifted the lid and booted it up. In the toolbar at the top, my new name was already entered: Eddie Savage. The screen saver was the same as the view from the window that ran the width of the flat; the Docklands skyline, Canary Wharf towering in the middle. Tony clicked on my name then on Guest Account and the whole screen swivelled around, revealing a second desktop. Tony typed in another password: 3dd13.
I frowned. How was I going to remember all these codes and numbers?
“3dd13, Eddie … get it?” Tony asked. “Thought of that myself.”
“Catchy.”
“It’ll be your pass for all the work you do for us, OK?”
I nodded.
“This desktop is for all the confidential stuff. It has a separate email, web browser, everything.” He clicked on my name again and the Canary Wharf skyline spun back into view. “This desktop you can do with what you like. Just make sure it looks like the desktop of an average seventeen-year-old bloke.”
“Sure, Tony.” I was pretty chuffed with the laptop. I’d only had shared use of the clunky old Dell at home and this was state of the art, thin as a wafer and sleek as a Ferrari.
“Fill it up with rap music and porn, if you like, but just remember, both sets of emails and web histories will be under surveillance, I’m afraid.”
I must have blushed a little because Tony looked out of the window and coughed, sorry that he had embarrassed me.
“Anyway, don’t get comfortable just yet. Dump your stuff and bring your overnight bag.”
He helped me take my cases into the bedroom, just off the main living area. The bed was vast and white, more than twice the size of my bunk at home. It looked like a cool hotel room, with bedside lights fixed to the wall either side and another picture over the bed. This was a piece of abstract art, the poster for an exhibition that had been on at the Tate Modern a couple of years before. There was a sliding door that led out onto a balcony that faced directly over the river. I slid it open and stepped outside. The midday sun was bouncing off the futuristic city opposite, and upriver I could see the outline of the Gherkin and the dome of St Paul’s. Below me, the river ran by, slow and murky, making pools and eddies around the slippery green legs of the small jetties that stuck out from the riverbank. Despite the unfamiliarity of my new place, I felt a feeling of warmth spread through me and wanted to do nothing more than throw myself back on the big white mattress, switch on the widescreen TV at the end of the bed and chill out for the rest of the day.
Tony had different ideas. He looked at his watch and made noises about getting going, so I put my stuff in the overnight bag while he packed up the laptop and, five minutes later, we shut the door of my new flat behind us.
SEVEN
We cut down through Greenwich, past the park and the National Maritime Museum then through the Blackwall Tunnel. The industrial landscape north of the river was pretty foreign to me. I’d had no reason to go there before. Eventually Tony swung off left into a slip road and we drove into a run-down residential area, the streets lined with Indian groceries, kebab shops and Mediterranean delis.
“Where are we, Tony?” I asked. I looked out at the mix of people spotted around the streets.
“Dalston,” he said.
Although it could have been no more than a few miles from where I lived, I’d never heard of Dalston before. It felt different from south of the river. Don’t know why. Just not my territory perhaps.
“Rough as arseholes round here,” said Tony. ”Not like the leafy avenues and bo
ulevards of New Cross and Peckham,” he added, grinning.
We drove on through Hackney and Islington, then up the Holloway Road until signs began to signal the North Circular.
“So where’s this place we’re going?”
“Out towards Beaconsfield,” Tony replied. “But the less you know about it, the better. Should have blindfolded you.”
Tony seemed to be enjoying himself today with his lame jokes. I suppose he was just trying to make light of my nervousness. We sat in silence for the remainder of the drive.
The building looked like a school. It stood at the end of a long drive with modern blocks dotted around it. We were checked by security then waved up to the main building where Tony parked in a bay marked Staff. At a reception desk we signed in and a woman in a uniform gave me a badge in a plastic sleeve.
It didn’t feel exciting or glamorous, it was more like signing on the dole or getting a tetanus jab. The walls were covered with government posters and health-and-safety warnings. My shoes squeaked as we walked down a corridor with a polished lino floor. No one acknowledged us, or gave any sign that they knew Tony as we walked out of the main building and across a yard into one of the modern blocks. Sitting behind a desk, surrounded by computers and piles of files and papers, was Ian Baylis. He didn’t look particularly pleased to see me.
“All right, Ian?” Tony asked cheerily. Baylis gave his thin smile and looked at me.
“Better get started,” he said. “We haven’t got all that long.”
“I’m going to leave you in Ian’s capable hands,” Tony told me, and I suddenly felt the urge to grab hold of him, to keep him there, as if I were a kid on his first day at school. Tony patted me on the back.
“I’ll check up on you in a few days.”
“A few days?” I asked. “How long will I be here?” I was shocked; I had thought it was just overnight.
“A week,” Baylis said. “Just about long enough to knock you into shape.”
For the rest of the day, Baylis had me in front of a computer, doing IQ tests and tests of initiative. He checked my results and timed my responses, but it was hard to tell how well I was doing.
One test was to remember a cover story and the details of a new identity, not my own. Ian gave me exactly two minutes to read the cover, then ten seconds to answer each question. I clicked the mouse and turned the page on the computer:
You’re stationed in Transeuratania. You’re a vegetarian and the food isn’t especially good in Metropoligrad – unlike the coffee, which costs less than a shilling for a pot at the best hotel. Your name is Stephen Johnson. You were born on 14 December 1974 in Skegness. At A level, you gained an A in Geography, an A in French and a B in Economics. You have two sisters and a brother. You studied Geology at university and now work as a management consultant for a company called British Coal Associates.
I read the cover story again and again, and tried to put pictures to the words – like visualizing a carrot for the vegetarianism. I knew Skegness because we’d stayed at Butlins there, so I formed a picture of the holiday camp in my mind. My brother’s name was Stephen, so that was easy… I tried to remember the exam grades… A for Geography, A in French… Time up.
The page disappeared and a map of the imaginary country of Transeuratania popped up. Numbers were pinned to the map and I could answer the questions in any order… I clicked on number one.
1. What is your name?
A: John Stephenson
B: Stephan Johnston
C: Stephen Johnson
Easy one. I chose C as the clock ticked down from ten. Three seconds. Question 2…
2. What is the currency of Transeuratania?
A: Transeuratanian rouble
B: Transeuratanian zloty
C: Transeuratanian shilling
I remembered the coffee. Pressed C. Next question…
3. What is your favourite meal?
A. Mushroom Risotto
B: Duck à l’Orange
C: Roasted Vegetables with Lamb
Got to be risotto – I remembered the carrot image and clicked on A. Next question…
4. What were your grades at A-level?
Once more the clock ticked down from ten at the side of the window. The letters began to swim in front of my eyes.
A: ABB
B: CAB
C: AAB
I nearly pressed A. No, it’s C. I think. Look again. Four seconds left. I stab C with one second on the clock. Begin to sweat a bit…
5. What company are you working for?
Oh, no. An acronym. More letters. I know it was something to do with British and coal, but which one…?
A: CBA
B: ABC
C: BCA
I’m sure it was C. Or was it B? Time’s running out. Three seconds. I pause too long and press B. Sure I’m wrong… Move on.
6. What was your degree in?
A: Geology
B: Geography
C: Management
I know this. It’s A. Move on…
7. What's your brother's name?
Easy.
A: John Stephenson
B: John Johnson
C: Stephen Johnston
I click on C then instantly regret it. C is supposed to be my name … and the surname shouldn’t have a T. I’ve fallen into an easy trap.
8. What’s your date of birth?
A: 17 December 1974
B: 14 December 1974
C: 19 December 1974
I’ve gone to pieces now. All the letters and numbers are beginning to look the same and the clock is already down to three seconds … two … one. I click on A.
“Pathetic,” came Ian Baylis’s voice from the other side of the office, where he had been noting my answers and timings on his own computer. I looked up in time to see him mime an imaginary pistol with his index finger and thumb and shoot it at my head. “You’re dead,” he said. “You got five out of eight. On a simple one like this you should have got them all right. Even one slip could have blown your cover.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I’m just a bit nervous. It was quite confusing.”
“Don’t apologize to me, you twat,” said Baylis. “I’m not the one who’ll be getting the bullet in the head or who’s being filmed while he’s carved up by terrorists and posted on the Internet. We’re going to have to work harder on you than I thought.”
EIGHT
Ian Baylis was true to his word. I didn’t like him any more now than I had at first, but I had to admire the way he coached me. The memory games, tests, random questions, going over my cover story again and again:
“What’s your name?”
“Eddie Savage.”
“Date of birth?”
“23 May.”
“Born?”
“Lewisham Hospital, London.”
“Parents?”
“Both dead. Dad cancer, Mum too.”
“What sort of cancer did she have?”
“Breast.”
“Brothers and sisters?”
“No.”
“School?”
“St George’s, New Cross.”
“What’s your middle name?”
“Arthur, after my granddad.”
“Brother’s name?”
“I…”
“You hesitated. Start again.”
And on he would go, asking questions about my childhood; about pets I never had and holidays I never went on. He kept going until I began to believe all the stories myself. I could even picture my imaginary childhood and the house that I never lived in.
They had created a new me.
There were other tests, physical ones, on the treadmill and in the gym. Pulse rate, blood pressure, recovery time. There was often another man hovering around – Ian Baylis just called him Oliver. Said I would see him around. He just seemed to be in the background, observing.
On the evening of day four, Ian took me out to the pub, somewhere in the country near wherever
we were. He bought me a pint and we sat there, sipping Guinness and crunching handfuls of nuts. He didn’t say much at first, but then he seemed to relax a little. After a while he looked at me and told me I wasn’t a “complete bloody disaster”, which, coming from him, I took as a compliment. Then he asked if I played pool. I said I did, so we played best of five and he thrashed me.
“You need to improve your tactics,” he said. “Think about the game a bit more instead of knocking balls all over the table. Set up traps. Make things a bit awkward for your opponent.”
The following morning Baylis introduced me to the martial arts instructor, who said much the same. I had done a bit of judo and boxing as a kid, but this guy told me I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper bag. That aside, his advice was never to start a fight. To walk away if at all possible but, if I had to engage, to make sure I got the upper hand quickly – and by whatever means. He showed me stuff that would never go down in judo or the boxing ring. Streetfighting tactics, like how to punch and ram your thumb into the other bloke’s eye, how to bring the heel of your hand up under someone’s nose. How to hit with your fist going forward, and again with a slashing motion on the backstroke. To stun with an elbow in the solar plexus or the temple; a knee to the heart. To stab someone in the windpipe with a ballpoint, to garrotte them with pen and a shoelace.
In his hands, he said, a ballpoint pen was all he would need to survive in the department of dirty tricks. He went into some detail about how much pain the sharp end of a pen would cause if rammed into someone’s ear, how fatal it would be if you hammered it home with the heel of a shoe. Equally, if you pushed the pen or even a sharp pencil into the eye hard enough, it would burst through the orbit and penetrate the brain.
Nice. Dangerous things, pens.
The instructor was stocky and flat-nosed with a head like a bull terrier. He shouted at me in a rasping Welsh voice as I punched the heavy bag and threw hooks into pads that he held up. He bawled at me as I worked the speedball and insulted me as he dropped medicine balls on my tensed stomach.