Sidetracked

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Sidetracked Page 14

by David Harley


  As he dressed Sophie’s cut and consoled his children with a glass of milk and some more biscuits, Matt wondered where Crouch would strike next. After Sophie and Jack had washed their hands and had begun quietly watching the cartoon channel in the living room, he went upstairs to the bathroom.

  Sitting on the edge of the bath, he held his head in his hands and wept. He hoped Jenny would arrive soon, and he would be free to disappear. He had put his political ambitions before his children’s safety, and he would never be able to forgive himself. For their sake, he wished they had never come back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Crouch and Penfold sat opposite each other in the prime minister’s study, Crouch in his favourite high-backed chair glowering down on Penfold, who was squashed into a corner of the low sofa.

  ‘You won’t want to hear this, Prime Minister, but it’s my duty to give you the facts, however unpalatable. For whatever reason – I can’t see any rational explanation – support for Barker’s movement continues to grow.’

  ‘I thought you told me he’s suffering from delusions and serious depression and he’s about to withdraw.’

  ‘That’s a slight exaggeration. The problem’s not Barker and his mental state, it’s about the shift in public opinion. The mood is volatile, but all the polls tell the same story: SOCA is gradually moving ahead. People are fed up with the traditional parties and the same old faces and they’re desperate for something new.’

  ‘But don’t they realise I’ve always been in favour of change – it’s my brand, it’s what I’m known for. I never stop reinventing myself. We’ve reformed our party structures, we’re proposing a series of radical new policies, we’ve slashed taxes - what more do they want?’

  ‘They probably don’t know themselves, Prime Minister, except they feel let down by the system, and some of them are blaming the ENP. Barker and SOCA are offering change, and much of the electorate seem prepared to take them on trust. However unlikely the prospect, if the trend continues, they could even win the election. We need to do something dramatic to regain the initiative. Our options are limited and we haven’t got much time.’

  Crouch walked over to his desk and, one by one, picked up the three silver-framed photographs and looked long and hard at each one – portraits of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, and a photo of Crouch himself being blessed by Pope Francis. He had recently removed the one of him shaking hands with Donald Trump in the Oval Office and placed it in in his bottom drawer. It was a pity, they had got on so well, but sic transit gloria mundi. Even presidents come and go and outlive their usefulness.

  He held up the photo of the Pope and made the sign of the cross. Crouch had always been good in a crisis. With God’s mercy on his side, he was confident he would find the right way forward.

  Martha Hunt stirred half a spoonful of sugar in her tea and smiled across at the prime minister in anticipation. From her relaxed demeanour, she probably assumed that this sudden summons to an unplanned meeting heralded a change of heart on Crouch’s part, or that he wanted to ask her a favour for which she would be suitably rewarded.

  ‘We’ve got one week to defeat our enemies,’ said James Crouch to the home secretary, ‘and this is how you’re going to do it.’

  Hunt’s face blanched and she carefully placed the teaspoon on the side of her saucer.

  ‘You’ll provoke a situation of general unrest, so we can then crack down with maximum force. Anyone suspected of supporting SOCA will be a legitimate target. You should expect fatalities.’

  Horrified, Hunt opened her eyes wide.

  ‘Would that be within the law?’ she asked. ‘Quite apart from the political risk?’

  ‘I’ll take care of the legal niceties,’ Crouch replied. ‘You get on with doing your job. As for the political implications, we’ll present the electorate with a clear choice, between a strong government defending the national interest, and a bunch of anarchists attacking the foundations of the state. I admit it’s a risk and a heavy responsibility, but we can’t afford to be sentimental. Believe me, it’s the right thing to do for the country.’

  Hunt shook her head, apparently not wholly convinced. Crouch made another effort.

  ‘Listen to me, Martha. This’ll be your chance to go down in history as a woman of great courage, who put the defence of public order before her own personal safety, by standing up to the rabble. First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll declare a national emergency in Cobra, and you’ll be granted special powers to take all necessary action. I’ll make sure the tabloid coverage is overwhelmingly positive.’

  Her hint of a smile encouraged him to continue.

  ‘Any previous suggestions that you’re weak and indecisive – which I never subscribed to myself – will be immediately forgotten. Your reputation will be transformed overnight, and you’ll become the undisputed favourite to succeed me, when I step down in a couple of years’ time. His Majesty the King will thank you personally.’

  She looked as if she was going to be sick. Crouch wondered if he had miscalculated. He didn’t want her bottling it – that would seriously jeopardise the plan. She was supposed to be his buffer, and the person both to take the flak and to carry the can if events got out of hand.

  ‘I know this won’t be easy for you. If you feel at all worried, let me put your mind at rest. I’ll make absolutely sure nothing untoward or unpleasant happens to you. I give you my solemn promise.’

  Her eyes gave a brief flicker of hope.

  ‘One more thing: I’ll be right behind you every step of the way. You can count on my unswerving loyalty and support.’

  From the way her face suddenly went blank, Crouch wasn’t sure if his stirring words had had the desired effect.

  ‘You can contact me any time, Martha,’ he called after her, as she shuffled out of his office, head bowed. ‘I’ll always be there for you.’

  She didn’t look back. At least she hadn’t resigned. Over the next few days, she would have a vital role to perform as a political shield. After that, she would have served her purpose and he could send her to the House of Lords. She would probably be begging for mercy by that stage.

  Crouch reached for the phone and had his private secretary set up a secure conference call with the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Commissioner of the Met.

  ‘Start moving into position,’ said the prime minister, when they came on the line. ‘Operation Bonecrusher starts at midnight tonight.’

  James Crouch settled down for a long evening. He sat on the sofa in the small living room of the flat above Number 10, sharing a bottle of prosecco with the lustrous Valentina. He had never expected he would become so dependent on her. From the first moment they met – she had been designated as his official interpreter during a trade mission in Donetsk – something had clicked between them and she had shown unfailing loyalty ever since. It annoyed him that the excessively polite and up-themselves Downing Street staff had never accepted her. Penfold had once explained that they had nothing against Valentina personally or her Russian nationality, it was the principle of the prime minister having a live-in mistress above the shop. It was felt that this might set an unfortunate precedent. Crouch resolved to start his next term of office by terminating the service of some of the stuffier retainers among the staff. Their social attitudes were so outdated.

  As the first reports of street violence and the uncompromising military riposte began to come in, Crouch snuggled up to Valentina and refilled their glasses. This was going to be a night to remember. Even by his own high standards of self-congratulation, the first phase was turning out exactly as planned. It had only taken a few simultaneous sparks to light the tinderbox – firebombs thrown by anonymous demonstrators at half-a-dozen SOCA offices located in different regions - and the flames soon fanned out all over the country.

  When Sir Christopher Jenks sent up a detailed report of the numbers of killed and wounded, Crouch asked Valentina to bring him a black tie. When she came back, without saying
a word she brushed some fluff off his jacket collar, as he stood in front of the mirror and shaved with an electric razor. If the situation deteriorated during the night and he had to address the nation on TV, he would be ready. After giving Valentina a friendly pat on the bum as he dispatched her to bed, Crouch waited, alone and statesmanlike, to learn the country’s fate. How little people understood the loneliness of power.

  He sat down and made himself comfortable, stretching out his legs in readiness for further reports on the mounting violence. Regrettably but inevitably, by midnight the death toll was approaching a hundred. Over twenty people had been killed in one incident in London alone, when the army had shown commendable decisiveness by coldly machine-gunning a group of protesters that had occupied the National Bank of China in Threadneedle Street.

  Crouch noted down the place-names and the numbers of fatalities. Fires were raging, alongside widespread looting, in the centres of all England’s main cities – including Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, and Bristol. Waves of racist attacks and hate crimes had been perpetrated in different parts of the country. The police presence was so minimal that, in some areas, the anti-migrant movement had the streets to itself. Scores of halal butchers and Polish food stores had their windows smashed and their produce destroyed. “The government appears powerless in the face of such widespread violence, and the country is sliding into anarchy,” chirruped the BBC’s slightly excitable political editor, Emily Marshall. The operation had been perfectly executed and its objectives secured.

  At five o’clock in the morning, Crouch decided he wouldn’t need the black tie after all, and put it back in a drawer. After congratulating the army and police commanders on the success of their exemplary action, which he asked them to continue, Crouch informed Penfold and Jenks that he would be taking a step back. He would refuse all media appearances until further notice. He instructed them to impose a total news blackout. The more the panic and mayhem spread over the next two days, the stronger his position would become.

  He went upstairs, undressed and slipped under the silky sheets alongside his lover. Her gentle snores gave way to a sharp intake of breath and then a susurration of low groans, as the prime minister, taking her from behind, claimed his recompense for a hard night’s work. As he lay back, panting and flicking off pearls of sweat after reaching his clammy climax, he promised that Valentina would receive her due in the next birthday honours.

  Over the next two days, while the repression continued unabated, Crouch disappeared from view. The Downing Street switchboard was instructed to divert all calls for the prime minister to the cabinet secretary. When the questions raised were legally complex but politically innocuous, Jenks was to pass them on to the home secretary. Apart from issuing a brief statement to say that ‘The prime minister is devoting all his energies to defeating this grave threat to our democracy,’ no contact was made with the increasingly irate and hysterical media.

  As Number Ten came under siege, Crouch observed that Sir Christopher Jenks, usually so unflappable, appeared to be losing his grip. After several hours of enforced inactivity behind a wall of silence, in an unprecedented breach of protocol, Jenks burst into the prime minister’s office without knocking.

  ‘You’ve got to address the nation – the people need your reassurance,’ he said. ‘And the White House is unhappy. They’re not used to being kept in the dark by their closest ally.’

  The prime minister was unmoved.

  ‘We’ve just got to keep our nerve for another twenty-four hours,’ he replied.

  At five o’clock on the second day, when the number of fatalities had reached two hundred, he sent in the Special Forces and the anti-riot police. First they distributed water, food parcels and fuel to those taking the government’s side. Once the ENP’s supporters had received enough essential supplies to keep them quiet for a few more days, the work of repression began in earnest.

  One by one, every SOCA office was broken into, ransacked and razed to the ground, while its occupants were arrested and imprisoned under the revised Prevention of Terrorism Act. Under the unprecedentedly harsh legislation that Martha Hunt had rushed through, under orders, at the end of the outgoing parliament, the police had the power to detain suspects without charge for forty days. The liberal outcry to these draconian measures had barely lasted a few days – Crouch knew that, in the new England, habeas corpus was a dead letter. Nobody in power cared any more. In parallel the ETP – the emergency torture programme that had been approved by the Privy Council but kept out of the public domain - was activated to obtain all relevant intelligence.

  It was time to claim victory. James Crouch had the crested lectern installed in the street outside, facing the massed ranks of the waiting press. He knew better than to betray any signs of self-satisfaction or complacency. As he put on a crisp white shirt and took the black tie out of the drawer, he softly hummed the chorus from “Danny Boy”. In front of the mirror, he practised speaking with the right balance of gravity, authority and humility in his voice and expression. Dabbing on some gel and combing back his hair, he rattled off his statement. “Today our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of these heinous crimes and their loved ones, friends and colleagues. No words of mine can begin to express the pain they feel, but we will always remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives. Thanks to the bravery of our armed forces and the police, I am able to tell you that the rebellion has been crushed. Our country is safe again.”

  Pitch perfect. In his imagination he heard the spontaneous applause from the assembled journalists. Looking suitably grim, he bowed to himself in the mirror and went downstairs, to deliver his historic statement to the waiting world.

  On the other side of London, at a hastily arranged press conference in a church hall before a much smaller audience, Matt struggled to find the words to condemn both the violence and the cynical attitude of the prime minister. His message was not getting through.

  ‘These acts are unspeakable,’ he said. ‘While we share the grief of the families of the victims, one person alone is responsible for this tragedy: James Crouch. I accuse the prime minister of deliberately provoking the violence that led to their deaths, and call for an independent inquiry to establish the full facts. He has brought anarchy upon this country for base political reasons, because he knew he was losing the election. We can’t let him get away with this despicable crime.’

  The questions thrown at him were all hostile.

  ‘Won’t you admit any responsibility yourself? Will you withdraw from the election out of respect for the dead? Rather than blaming Crouch, didn’t SOCA start the violence? Have you any proof that the prime minister acted illegally? What’s your message to the families of those that have died?’

  Why didn’t they understand? Were they all Crouch’s stooges? As he shouted above the uproar, he was surprised to hear the mounting anger and bitterness in his own voice.

  ‘We’ll make sure they haven’t died in vain. We’ll take revenge by fighting the nationalists in the streets and through the ballot box. We’ll hunt them down and make them pay for what they’ve done - ’

  Sam pulled him off the platform and led him away from the baying pack.

  ‘SOCA calls for revenge and armed insurrection’ was the headline of the first agency reports shown to the prime minister.

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ said Crouch to Penfold. ‘Why did this idiot ever go into politics?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  In his recurrent nightmares through the nights that followed, Matt heard the screams of his friends and supporters as they refused to reveal his identity or whereabouts, while having their faces slashed or their bones broken. Even if he only saw these scenes in a dream, their pain was his fault. He knew he had to help them but didn’t know how. If he sent in the trade-union militias, they would be slaughtered. If he did nothing, the Alliance would lose all hope of winning the election.

  Late in the evening, Matt was sitting alone in his flat, at hi
s lowest ebb, when Sam came home with her shirt ripped and her face covered in blood. Leaning against the door, gasping for breath, she told him what had happened.

  ‘They beat me up on my way home from the office … I did my best to resist but never stood a chance. Four of them dragged me down a side street opposite the bus station … they went on hitting me and kicking me until I lost consciousness. Two neighbours who I vaguely recognised eventually came by and helped me home. They said I ought to go to hospital, but I preferred to come back here. I didn’t want to have to explain to anyone what they’d done to me.’

  ‘The bastards,’ Matt said. ‘My poor love.’

  ‘They called me “Barker’s little slut”.

  He put his arms round her and led her to the armchair in front of the fireplace. He brought her dressing gown from the bedroom. As he placed it over her shoulders, he could feel her trembling. A rivulet of blood was dripping down her face. As Matt started wiping her cheek, Sam snatched the cloth away from him.

  ‘I don’t need your sympathy,’ she said. ‘I want to know when you’re going to get off your arse and start fighting back.’

  He flinched and gave a little shake of his head, but said nothing. She was in shock, understandably. It wasn’t the right time to try and explain his thoughts, in all their complexity and contradictions. Doubtless she was expecting him to leap into action and join battle at once, for her and for their common cause. If only things were that simple.

  He stood motionless with his back to the window. The world was collapsing around him and now this latest disaster. None of this was supposed to happen.

  ‘Our people have suffered terribly and want to see action – of course I understand all that,’ said Matt. ‘But we’ve got to choose the right moment to fight back - there’s no point in launching an attack if we’re going to be massacred. I’m not interested in glory for its own sake. You know we can’t take on the army – we haven’t got the means. We can only win by convincing people to support our ideas and our values, not through more bloodshed.’

 

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