Breaking Cover

by Stella Rimington

  As she emerged onto the now dark streets at Kentish Town station she was wondering if she should sell her flat and move nearer to Thames House. She remembered how thrilled she had been when she’d moved from the dark basement flat, which had been her first property purchase, to the much more airy and spacious accommodation on the ground floor. She had loved buying bits of furniture and ornaments for her new place and she and Martin had spent many a happy weekend in the junk shops of Camden Market and Islington.

  She thought that prices in Pimlico would probably be broadly on a par with those in Kentish Town, and she would be able to walk to work. But she knew, as she opened the door and her heart sank, that any thought of moving wasn’t about walking to work; it was because of the memories that seemed to haunt the flat.

  Martin Seurat had been dead four months. Liz knew this was early days in the normal schedule of grief, but it still felt like yesterday – and the idea that time would heal this wound seemed absurd. If it was two years before life felt at all normal again – as everyone seemed to say – how was she ever going to get through the next twenty months?

  She had just started to make herself some supper, doing her best to ignore the ghost-like memories, when the phone rang. She answered it on the fourth ring, hoping it was social – her mother, a friend – and not work. It was neither but a marketing company telling her she could get a grant for cavity-wall insulation. As she put the phone down she saw the red light glowing on her answering machine. When had that happened?

  She played back the message. A low male voice said, ‘Good evening, Liz. It’s Richard Pearson… Chief Constable Pearson, if you remember.’ He gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. ‘It’s been a while since we last met, but I’ve thought about you often and wondered how you were getting on. And I – er, I mean to say, I’m coming to London next month for a Chief Constables’ meeting, and I wondered if perhaps we could meet up. Lunch? Or coffee? Or a drink in the evening? Whatever suits you. Let me know when you can. It would be lovely to see you again.’ And he gave his number and rang off.

  Her initial reaction was to ignore this – and delete the message. Since Martin’s death she hadn’t thought about seeing anyone else – not even for coffee or a drink. It seemed a betrayal somehow. No one measured up to Martin right now in Liz’s mind.

  Yet there was something rather endearing about this message – Pearson’s hesitancy for one thing, not a trait he had shown in Manchester where he had seemed effortlessly in charge of the operation they’d worked on together. He’d been unflappable, brave even when the whole thing ended violently; in fact he had probably saved her life. Pearson was an attractive man – that she remembered – and she’d liked him, not least because of his obvious sympathy for her after things had gone so wrong in Paris and she’d lost Martin. Maybe she should have a drink with him, if only to be polite.

  She listened to the message again and then picked up the phone.

  5

  The lecture was surprisingly good. Over half the seats in the large auditorium were filled, which was a tribute to the speaker, since the title of Jasminder Kapoor’s lecture was never going to grab anyone by the lapels, though it was true that she had a growing reputation among those people concerned about the issues she was going to address. Guardian readers all, thought Peggy sardonically as she sat down next to Tim, a Guardian reader himself. She was there as a duty, to support him, but was pleasantly surprised within minutes of the start of the lecture to find her attention held by what Kapoor had to say.

  There was nothing revolutionary about her remarks, nothing that Peggy, on reflection, hadn’t thought herself. What was impressive was the calm, persuasive way in which Kapoor went to the heart of her subject: without prejudice as lawyers would say, dissecting the points before arriving at a conclusion. Whether one agreed with it or not, one could only admire her dispassionate thoughtfulness.

  There were many questions after the talk, and not everyone present seemed to appreciate Kapoor’s ability to look at both sides of a question. A few were actively hostile, implying that she was colluding in the massive programmes of government surveillance, which – they didn’t have to say it, it seemed to be assumed – were operating unchecked in the UK and USA. As the Q&A finally seemed to peter out, Tim suddenly shot up his hand.

  ‘Is there any credible evidence that surveillance by governments of the kind you seemed to be justifying tonight… I’m thinking especially about the indiscriminate interception of internet communications… has done one jot to prevent terrorist attacks?’

  Peggy suppressed a strong desire to give her boyfriend a good kick. How many evenings had she sat tensely at home, waiting for the results of another investigation, unable to tell him any detail about her work? If only you knew, she thought angrily.

  Jasminder Kapoor nodded politely as Tim went on. ‘More generally, is there actually any evidence that surveillance protects us more than invades us?’

  Jasminder thought for a moment. ‘I’d have thought so. Though obviously I’m not in a position to quote chapter and verse as I don’t have access to the information.’ She looked at him from the rostrum, slightly impatiently. ‘Look, I’m not here tonight as an apologist for state intrusions. And the last thing I want to see is carte blanche given to the authorities simply because they say it has to be that way in order to protect us. But at the same time, there is a danger – let’s be clear about that. Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Boko Haram – these are extremist groups intent on indiscriminate slaughter, and there are individuals and small groups who follow them and want to achieve some sort of heroic status by violence. Many of them are experts at using all the new forms of communication, particularly to recruit young people to join them. It seems to me that giving the state proportionate powers to keep tabs on these people, provided the use of those powers is supervised and controlled by law, is appropriate. To think otherwise is, in my view, naïve at best, dangerous at worst.’

  Tim was shaking his head. ‘You haven’t answered my question. Is there any evidence that surveillance does any good? Or do we have to take it on faith?’ he added scornfully.

  Jasminder looked at him coolly. ‘If you’re asking if we should take it for granted that government agencies are working on our behalf and not against us, then my answer is a qualified yes. Governments and their agencies need oversight, they need accountability; I’m completely committed to ensuring we have both of them. But they also need our recognition that they are working to protect us.’

  This sounded deeply felt, if not designed to win the applause of her audience. Peggy found it annoying that Tim was still cynically shaking his head, and was relieved when the chairperson stepped forward and called an end to the Q&A.

  After the talk there were drinks in a common room for the audience, but Tim seemed reluctant to go. ‘Oh, let’s,’ said Peggy, thinking that otherwise the evening was going to end with an argument over leftover macaroni cheese back in their flat. A dismal prospect.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d like to meet the speaker. I thought she was very impressive.’

  Tim groaned. ‘If we must,’ he said grudgingly.

  At first they just talked to some of Tim’s colleagues and drank the warm white wine. The consensus seemed to be that the lecturer had been brave to tackle the subject but had not been altogether convincing. There was a blonde woman who joined them after a bit; she was expensively dressed in a smart coat and polished leather boots, and didn’t look to Peggy like an academic. A journalist maybe. Whoever she was, she was very interested in the subject, and she and Tim were soon deep in conversation about the talk while Peggy kept one eye on Jasminder Kapoor – she was surrounded by an argumentative group of dissenters, and seemed to be having rather a rough time. At last, her critics let up for a moment, and seeing this, Peggy went over to introduce herself.

  Face to face, the Jasminder who had appeared so confident on the rostrum seemed a little shy. Peggy’s opening remark that she must be exhausted made
her smile and from then on the conversation took off. She was clearly delighted to talk about something other than civil liberties and, when Peggy admired her embroidered jacket, told her about her mother in India who had sent it. Peggy had noticed from her seat in the second row the nasty bruise on Jasminder’s cheek, even though she had clearly tried to disguise it with makeup. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  Jasminder laughed. ‘I’m sure I should say it’s nothing, but actually it was rather awful. I got it the other night. Two men tried to mug me when I was walking home from the theatre. Fortunately someone came past and chased them off. They ran away and dropped my bag and briefcase – but I got this and some other bruises that you can’t see.’ And she touched the purplish mark on her face gently.

  ‘How terrible,’ said Peggy. She could see that for all her lightness of tone, Jasminder had been through a shocking experience. ‘Did the police catch them?’

  ‘They didn’t get the chance. The man who chased them off said they’d be long gone; he thought calling the police would be a waste of time.’

  This seemed wrong to Peggy, but then she hadn’t been the one attacked. ‘Well, he sounds pretty heroic. Did they do him any harm? Did they have weapons?’

  ‘One of them had a knife. But this man just kicked it out of his hand. It was like something out of a film. Quite thrilling if I hadn’t been so scared.’

  Peggy laughed. ‘Well, you didn’t seem very scared by the attackers tonight. I’m sorry about Tim; he was the one who asked the last question. He’s a colleague of yours at King’s – he’s in the English department. I thought you saw him off excellently. We live together but I don’t share his views.’

  They kept chatting easily for a few minutes, and when Jasminder asked Peggy what she did for a living, Peggy barely hesitated. ‘I’m at the Ministry of Defence. I work in HR.’

  The other woman looked at her thoughtfully, as if she had heard this white lie before. She either decided to believe it, or else to pretend to believe it, for she moved on and started talking about how much she disliked winter in London. Then after a few minutes she announced she had to go to dinner with her hosts, as well as some other colleagues. ‘But I’d love to talk to you some more some time. Would you like to meet for lunch?’

  ‘I’d like that very much,’ said Peggy. They exchanged numbers and went their separate ways. Peggy rejoined Tim, who was grumbling with a colleague about their teaching loads. ‘So you met the great apologist, I see,’ he said sourly.

  ‘I like her,’ said Peggy firmly, and after that to her relief Tim left the subject alone.

  6

  It had been ten days since she had been attacked, the bruises had gone and Jasminder had decided she was over it. She wasn’t going to think about it any more, and above all she wasn’t going to let it alter her life one bit. She had walked by herself down Barnsbury Street and alongside the gardens of the square twice now, though admittedly not at eleven o’clock at night. She’d gone back to work the following day, though she had felt very shaky. She’d taken her tutorials at the college and gone on in the afternoons to the charity where she advised clients on cases involving civil liberties or immigration (often both at the same time). She’d even managed to give her public lecture a few days after the incident, where she’d handled some difficult questions from members of the audience, some of whom had clearly come expecting to hear something rather different from what she’d said.

  That was the problem. People liked a Manichean view of the world, a black-and-white perspective on even the most complex questions, to reinforce whatever prejudices they held. Jasminder prided herself on not being like that. She knew that she had acquired a reputation as a radical civil libertarian, but though there was an element of truth to this, she felt it didn’t do her justice. Her position was more subtle. Above all she knew that there was nothing to be gained by exaggerating the flaws she wanted to fix or by impugning the motives of people merely because they took a different point of view.

  She hadn’t heard from her rescuer, Laurenz Hansen, and had decided that probably she never would. She had parked him in a mental pending tray but was beginning to think of moving him to ‘Out’. Nothing to be done about that, she told herself – there are other fish in the sea. But in fact her life was fish-less at the moment, since the end of a three-year relationship she’d had with a young barrister from one of the civil liberties chambers. He had been kind and was a good lawyer, but his political sympathies, superficially akin to hers, had not extended to his plans for their relationship. He’d have had Jasminder in a pinny, tending an Edwardian semi in a London suburb, taking their 2.4 children to school and watching the afternoon film on TV until he came home, ready for supper. It had never crossed her mind that anyone with such an antediluvian vision of a relationship was a serious prospect.

  Since him, her weekends were spent working, seeing plays or films with her friend Emma, or occasionally going to dinner as the ‘single woman’ with friends who tried to set her up with men who were ‘available’ – which seemed to mean, in most cases, divorced.

  She was at the charity’s office in Camden Town reading a deposition from a Somali client. The young woman had come to the UK eighteen months before, and was now facing deportation – something made more likely by her husband’s pending trial for terrorist offences. Yet Jasminder was convinced the woman was innocent of any illegal activities herself, and was busy listing arguments for her release from detention when her mobile phone rang.

  Impatiently she took it out of her bag and hit the answer button. ‘Is that Jasminder?’ a voice asked. It sounded slightly foreign.

  ‘Yes. Who is it?’ Her mind was still on the brief she was composing.

  ‘You can call me the White Knight if you like.’

  ‘What?’ If this was a cold call from a marketing company it wasn’t an appealing one.

  ‘Sorry, it’s Laurenz Hansen. Do you remember me? The week before last. I hope you haven’t been having nightmares.’

  ‘Oh, hello. I hadn’t heard from you and…’

  ‘I’ve been out of town or I would have rung sooner. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. Busy, but fine.’ She wondered what he wanted.

  ‘I hope I’m not calling you at a bad time…’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘I thought it might be nice to meet up. Maybe go somewhere for a drink?’

  She looked a little guiltily at the brief she had been working on. Actually, there was no reason why she couldn’t finish it later this evening. So she said, ‘That would be nice. When were you thinking of?’

  ‘Could you manage tonight? Or perhaps another evening this week?’

  ‘Tonight would be fine. I’m working in Camden Town. Where are you?’

  They met in a wine bar across the road from Camden Market. It turned out that they both liked to wander round the stalls there on Saturday mornings. Jasminder was wearing an ivory cameo brooch which she’d picked up at one of the second-hand jewellery stalls; he said he’d found a first edition of The Thirty-Nine Steps for a fiver.

  Then he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind but I Googled you. I saw you were giving a talk at the university. I would have liked to come but I was away on business.’

  ‘Do you travel a lot?’ she asked, realising she didn’t even know what he did.

  ‘More than I’d like. Though soon I should have permanent residency in the UK, and then I hope I can do something that won’t have me on an aeroplane twice a week.’

  ‘What takes you away so often?’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he said with mock seriousness. He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I’m a banker,’ he whispered.

  Jasminder laughed. ‘Don’t worry – your secret’s safe with me. Do you think it’s that bad?’

  ‘Well,’ he said with a shrug, ‘I work for a private bank. We manage the money of wealthy clients, not the man in the street, so I don’t think anyone can blame the banking crisis on us. My job is keeping
rich people rich – though most of them would say I’m supposed to make them even richer. I don’t think it does a lot of harm, but I wouldn’t say it was a noble calling.’

  ‘Did you always want to be a banker?’

  Laurenz looked slightly startled. ‘Good heavens, no. I’m not sure anyone does. I wish I’d studied law. I envy you.’

  ‘The law has plenty of drawbacks too.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it does for lots of people. But what you do is truly important.’

  The waiter came with the bottle of Beaujolais they’d ordered and filled their glasses. When he left, Jasminder said, ‘I don’t know about that. It’s not as if we can always see the effect of what we do. At least you know whether your clients are happy or not.’

  ‘But I’m not saving them from prison – or, worse, from what an asylum seeker gets if they’re sent back to the country they’re fleeing from.’

  ‘What brought you to the UK to begin with?’

  Laurenz shrugged. ‘Work. The bank is based in Bermuda and that’s where I used to be. But we have a number of British clients and a London office to look after them. When a job came up here I was happy to volunteer, partly because my wife wanted to be in London.’

  So, he was married. At least he was honest enough to tell her from the start. ‘Is she British, your wife?’ asked Jasminder, hoping she sounded interested.

  He shook his head. ‘Oh, no. She’s Norwegian, like me. She’s back in Oslo now. She found out she didn’t like it here as much as she thought she would.’

  ‘That must be difficult. Do you get to see each other very often?’

  ‘No.’ He didn’t seem unhappy about this. ‘We’re only communicating these days through lawyers. Another three months and we won’t have to communicate at all. I may be penniless after that, but it’s a price worth paying. This is not what anyone would call an amicable separation.’