The Freedom Building

by Martin Kendall

  THE

  FREEDOM

  BUILDING

  Martin Kendall

  Copyright © 2019 Martin Kendall

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: mkendall80@yahoo.co.uk

  Also available in paperback

  Book cover design by BEAUTeBOOK

  ISBN: 978-1-9162990-0-9

  www.martinkendall.com

  Table of Contents

  1

  2 - 3

  4 - 5 - 6

  7 - 8 - 9 - 10

  11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15

  1

  John Gowan didn’t like summing up his life but did it constantly: He was forty-eight years old. He was an architect. He built his house in the leafy countryside between the towns of Blanworth and Toxon. He grew up in Blanworth, had a contented childhood with decent parents – now deceased – and happy memories from school. He met his future wife at college and, a few years later, they had a daughter. But the marriage disintegrated and, when his daughter grew up, his wife left him. He hadn’t spoken to either of them for a long while. His wife spent his money on holidays to New Zealand and lived with friends. He would be getting a divorce soon.

  ‘Go on, overtake me!’ he said, looking into his rear-view mirror at the car pressing up his backside.

  He was proud of his firm, Gowan Partnerships: set it up in Toxon with his friend Pete Williams, not long after college. Pete didn’t have any cash, but John had money from his inheritance so they used his name. They handled bigger clients as time went on; and now, they were well-known locally.

  The countryside dispersed, and Toxon’s first roundabout appeared with a line of traffic. The town was set in a valley, and its dirty streets reflected a pale spring sun that scattered deadweight over the town. Red brick slums oozed false pride onto the entrapped town centre. Those who earned enough fled to the far-reaching countryside in the early evening but retraced their steps the following morning. The tallest buildings stood dirty – grey stains stained by greyer stains – with concrete balconies and washing hanging out to dry. The odd care was taken, every six or so stories up, with potted flowers and clean windows.

  He parked in the multi-storey and walked into the adjoining mall. People seemed unusual, chatting in small groups. He eyed the newspapers in the newsagents and was amazed by the headline:

  ‘HUGE EXPLOSION AT ZENITH STAR

  BUILDING– MANY FEARED DEAD’

  Beneath the title, there was a photograph of police and debris, presumably in the middle of Blanworth, but the location was unrecognisable. He went to a café nearby, bought a cup of tea and read:

  ‘Yesterday afternoon, at about 4.30 p.m., there was an enormous explosion at the Zenith Star Holdings plc building in the centre of Blanworth. Emergency services rushed to the scene amid a spate of 999 calls to find the building had collapsed. Many Zenith office workers, Zenith Star Security, employees of the building’s high street shops, and members of the public are feared dead. The city’s fire brigade is leading a major rescue operation. Relatives, friends and colleagues of the missing anxiously await news. Below is a hotline number for more information.

  ‘The cause of the explosion is yet to be ascertained, but police are not ruling out the possibility it is terrorist related. Nobody has yet claimed responsibility. Gas engineers and fire department experts cannot begin their investigation until the rescue operation is completed and the building, or what is left of it, has been made safe.

  ‘Graham Fielding was walking home from Murphy’s pub on the High Street when he heard a tremendous explosion: “I’ve never heard anything like it before. I looked to my right and saw the Zenith building collapse in smoke.” A fire department spokesman said that Mr Fielding was a very lucky man to escape injury from flying glass.

  ‘Late last night, council workers cleared the public highway of glass and debris, and the road was reopened in time for this morning’s rush hour traffic.’

  The building had been one of those faceless, modern glass constructions that lacked humanity, John thought. Maybe a compassionate architect pushed the button!

  Outside the shopping centre, life seemed pretty normal. The cobbled High Street was busy, and hooded teenagers swarmed the area before school, searching for intimidations and other destructive enjoyments. The church bell struck the hour, reliving its medieval fantasy. One shop window was boarded up from the weekend’s ‘festivities’.

  Across the centre of town, John approached the building where he worked. It loomed above the others. Unfortunately, it was a throw up from the ‘60s’ era, like the high-rise council flats elsewhere in town, but it was spacious and practical inside with a round reception desk in the centre of the foyer. Here, a well-groomed young man, with a designer beard, disliked the repetitive cold draft that flew through the electric doors and into his face. To the left were the lifts from where John’s personal assistant, Janice, emerged.

  ‘Heard the news?’ she asked, holding a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Yes, terrible.’

  She looked at him with the knowing look that he was being sarcastic as far as the building, itself, went, and she tucked one side of her auburn hair behind her ear before passing him. In the lift, he imagined the ugly Zenith building falling in slow motion to the ground and wondered whether he knew any of the fatalities. He didn’t know any Zenith employees but had once bumped into the elusive CEO, Mr Wilkinson, at a Chamber of Commerce meeting.

  In the Gowan Partnerships’ office, a few employees turned and acknowledged him with smiles. Most desks had computers, others had drawing boards. The walls were white with framed posters of famous buildings, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Spain and The Portland Building in America. On the left side was a line of windows looking out onto Toxon. To the right were a couple of rooms including the private office of his business partner, Pete Williams, where John knocked and walked in.

  Pete was sat at a desk with a large window behind him which displayed Toxon’s hills, stacked with red houses. He had thick black-framed glasses, smartly combed hair to one side and a pink bow tie.

  ‘I only just found out,’ John said, sitting in front of the desk. The desk was made of bright plastic with three-dimensional tree grains and sensuously curved edges.

  ‘I tried calling your mobile,’ Pete said, in a low-pitched, nasal voice.

  ‘I wonder what will go in its place.’

  ‘Well, we certainly won’t have anything to do with it. Some famous fuck will do it.’

  ‘Nice to dream though.’

  A few minutes later, John stood in his private office, located at the end of the main office, staring out of the window onto Toxon. The church in the centre of town stood defiantly, reaching up to God. But regardless of who or what it was for, John thought, that architect had had drive and passion for the building. John hadn’t left his mark yet.

  He left his office abruptly and stopped at Janice’s desk: ‘Cancel the meeting. Thought I might go and have a look at the wreckage, see what’s happening and talk to some people. You never know, an opportunity may come our way.’

  ‘Really?’ Janice asked.

  He felt embarrassed. Zenith Star Holdings was an international firm, and the destroyed building was its head office with high street shops on the ground floor. As Pete implied, it would be foolish to think they would be chosen for a project on such large prime real estate, but John couldn’t help but dream.

  Not far from his office was the dilapidated train station where he decided to go rather than taking the slower car journey. He waited impatiently on the platform before the old train scre
eched and let him on. It sliced through granite cliffs as it exited Toxon valley, continuing through rugged terrain for a couple of miles until the countryside became more placid, with distant cooling towers bellowing grey smoke in the distance.

  He thought of the people in the building – one second, alive; the next, dead. It was tragic. But what did the future hold? Perhaps Zenith might allow anybody to compete for the contract… But there would be time for grieving first, of course.

  The land flattened and dulled as Blanworth appeared. The station was bigger than Toxon’s on account of Blanworth being a city, and it took a minute to walk to a taxi outside.

  ‘Traffic bad today?’ John asked as they drove out.

  ‘Yes, mate, getting worse. Wait till the rest of the world’s media gets here.’

  They turned off the inner ring road, drove through the edge of a Muslim neighbourhood, with red brick terraced houses, and progressed towards the heart of the city, where the buildings became whiter and larger. The cab stopped at the bottom of the High Street.

  Blanworth City Centre was cleaner and tidier than Toxon but more fake, lying about its true nature which lay in the surrounding council estates. There were gentrified areas too, like the golf course and yachting lake, but all computer-generated and adding to the sense of fakery and claustrophobia. The council decided whether a tree, bush or park was tamed enough. The council decided whether a man could build an extension on his house. The council decided whether a proposed building was too tall. And the city’s wildlife embraced it from a loser’s standpoint. Pigeons were obtrusive, insects were dutiful and people were both. The local newspaper encouraged the reader to believe that the football team was doing better. Every season they were either at the top of one league or the bottom of the other, with the club’s owner taking handsome profits for himself, selling off the only good players, and laughing. He was a character, and a character is admired. And yet, thought John, the explosion showed a glimmer of hope…

  He walked up the High Street toward a crowd of people in City Square. On the other side of the Square, there was no building, just a pile of outstretching rubble and diagonal shafts of metal that towered above the crowd. People seemed more exhilarated than mournful, taking videos with phones and professional cameras. Police had cordoned off the area. There were several fire engines and numerous police cars. The eastern sun, thinly veiled by clouds, hovered in the skyline’s gap.

  No buildings had been connected to the Zenith building, but the High Street in front of it was full of debris with ravaged shop buildings on the other side: walls were caved in; rooms were laid bare; and any red-tiled roofs that remained were lopsided. On the right side of what used to be the Zenith building, the nearest structure was largely unaffected with only a few broken windows overlooking the side road that separated them.

  John passed a dishevelled tramp sitting on a bench and tried talking to a stranger at the back of the crowd: ‘Have they recovered any bodies?’

  ‘Several.’

  John pushed through the crowd for a while, towards the front. There had to be at least four hundred people here. He made it to the police tape. A couple of firemen were leaning against a fire engine and drinking bottles of water.

  ‘Gruesome work,’ John shouted.

  They remained silent and looked elsewhere.

  John stood in awe of the rubble where a building had stood for practically his entire life, before moving out of the crowd again.

  ‘Do you have a cigarette, sir?’ a voice said to his side, the accent faintly Scottish.

  John turned and saw the tramp staring up from his bench. He was famous in the city. Legend had it that he used to be a wealthy reporter, working in London, but couldn’t handle the pressure so adopted this lifestyle. Probably bullshit. He grabbed a cigarette from John with crimson fingernails and eagerly inhaled from John’s lighter.

  ‘Were you anywhere near here last night?’ John asked.

  ‘Sitting right here.’

  ‘You saw everything, then!’

  ‘Aye, a big bang.’

  ‘Maybe for the best – quite an ugly building.’

  The tramp stared emotionlessly at him, and John walked away before turning back to take a final look at the rubble.

  2

  A few days later, John looked through the bedroom window to the distant gate at the top of the driveway, wondering whether the newspaper had yet been delivered. Information released earlier this week had described a long wheelbase Ford Transit Van gaining access to the Zenith, underground car park, presumably duping the security guards in the process. Miraculously preserved CCTV footage showed a man of dark complexion, sporting sunglasses and wearing blue overalls, walking quickly away from the car park entrance three minutes before the car bomb rendered the building history. A terrorist group from North Africa had claimed responsibility for the attack, and a massive manhunt was underway across Europe for five British men.

  158 bodies had been recovered; twenty-three people were still missing; three survivors had been found and were expected to make a full recovery; and neither the Zenith Chairman, Mr Wilkinson, nor his employee son, Mr Wilkinson Junior, was in the building at the time.

  Zenith was a wholesale clothing company which supplied clothes around the world, including a contract with the Israeli Defence Forces for military clothing. On a business trip to Israel last year, the Chairman’s son had made disparaging remarks about Muslims wanting to take back land from the Israelis. He later apologised, but his comments went public.

  Robust television coverage asked endless leading questions put a hundred different ways to ‘experts’. The Prime Minister sounded confident as he patronised and implored the general public to ‘Carry on as usual’.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, John made breakfast. The kitchen had been the most expensive room in the house with tiled flooring, marble work surfaces and an impressive AGA cooker. The wife had wanted her mod con kitchen, but there were far too many appliances, even for three people in the house, and now many of them were derelict and dusty.

  Leaving an egg in the frying pan, John walked up the long, bendy driveway to the gate. The wind was strong away from the house, and the conifer trees on the perimeter of his land rustled like waving hands. Farmers’ fields stretched beyond. He opened the back of the letterbox, which was housed inside the right gate pillar, and took out the newspaper:

  ‘ZENITH STAR SHARES SUSPENDED

  ‘Just as we were going to press on Thursday morning, shares in Zenith Star Holdings plc, listed on the AIM market, were suspended following a collapse in the share price precipitated by the terrorist outrage on the company’s principal asset. A statement was subsequently released to the LSE. (See “Company Comment” on page 3.)’

  John turned to page 3:

  ‘The destroyed Head Office of Zenith Star Holdings plc, its principle asset, occupies a prime commercial site of half an acre in the centre of the City of Blanworth. The company joined the AIM market six months prior to the attack, exuding confidence that recent events have dispelled. A statement to the LSE confirmed that Zenith’s insurance cover for acts of terrorism had not been renewed. In an interview with the Chairman, our financial reporter was informed that the decision to exclude terrorism had been taken at the previous Board meeting, as part of a policy to trim costs – a fateful decision indeed! It now remains to be seen what can be salvaged from this tragedy. As the principle creditors are a banking consortium, the final outcome could well be a debt for equity swap, leaving private investors owning little or nothing of the company.’

  With the news that Zenith wasn’t insured for terrorism, and the fact that the Zenith building was their principle asset, it seemed unlikely Zenith would construct a new building. But somebody would: the site was too valuable to remain unoccupied for long.

  Two weeks later, on a Sunday evening, having gone into the office only a couple of times since the attack, John sat in the cosy lamplight of his study, situated at the top/back of the h
ouse. The oak pedestal desk, positioned in front of the window, looked out onto a gently descending lawn. On the desk was a green lamp, and by its side stood an antique drawing board, made of oak with cast iron legs, and a matching wooden stool. He worked in his study far more than he did at the office, designing garages, small blocks of flats for the council and occasionally more fulfilling projects, such as an imitation of a Roman bath house with modern comforts.

  Also on the desk was an open bottle of whisky that had scented the room overnight. Beside it were scribbled notes about designing the new Zenith building:

  ‘...am I mad? How could I ever, even hope to be the designer of the new Zenith building in the heart of Blanworth? I’ve never designed anything remotely the size, and I’m just a local architect, nothing compared to the bigger names. And yet, I feel something I haven’t felt for a long time. The atmosphere, the very nature of things has changed. The buildings, the people, the sky...’

  He felt inspired by his drunken ramblings and thought of the new building that could fill the old site. Couldn’t he go to the site tonight, take measurements and get more of a sense of it? His mobile rang abruptly.

  ‘Hi, Janice, what’s up?’ he said.

  ‘You haven’t been in much for the past few weeks. Just wondering if everything is okay?’

  ‘Fine. You know it’s Sunday, don’t you?’

  ‘Are you still thinking of the Zenith building?’

  ‘A bit,’ he said, knowing how ludicrous it seemed to her – wishing to design the next building. ‘Anyway, Janice, nice of you to ring. Got to get on with something.’

  ‘You in tomorrow?’

  She was either worried about him, keen on him or both. Probably the former.

  ‘Maybe.’

  He collected his notepad and then his torch from a kitchen cupboard, went outside to the garage, which was a few metres to the side of the house, and drove his Jaguar into the spring dusk. The stars were beginning to shine, and a new moon hovered low in the sky. He accelerated through the iron gates at the top of the driveway and along the medieval road which meandered through ancient woodlands and land holdings.