Best Friend, Worst Enemy

by Menon, David

  ‘Well we’ve been watching Nicholas Trent intensely for a while now’ said Alec. ‘And it’s always seemed ... ‘

  ‘ ... personal?’

  ‘Yeah. So what is it between you and Nicholas Trent, boss?’

  ‘He tried to get me sacked when I had the audacity to suggest in an article back in 1987 when I was a young and pretty rookie reporter, that he might not win his seat at that year’s general election. The SDP Liberal alliance were pretty strong in that area of Cheshire at the time and they were closing in on him fast. But our Nicholas doesn’t take kindly to criticism and ever since then he’s had it in for me and has tried to get me sacked on several further occasions’.

  ‘He’s held that grudge for over twenty-five years?’

  ‘Oh yes’ said Henderson. ‘However much his majority went up, and he’s now sitting on one of the safest Tory seats in the country, he never stopped trying to use the old boy network with the owners to get rid of me. Thankfully they ignored him. They can’t stand the reptile anymore than I can. Listen, do you mind if I light up, mate? I’ll open the window’.

  Alec did wonder if the smell of fresh tobacco, plus the open window, might be better than the enclosed stench that was filling his nostrils. Henderson seemed to forget to use deodorant some days and the effect was palpable.

  ‘No, go ahead’ said Alec.

  ‘Thanks, mate’ said Henderson as he lit up and didn’t seem to notice that he blew the smoke straight into Alec’s face.

  ‘So what are you going to put in the first editorial?’

  ‘All about Nicholas Trent and his alleged wrong doings involving his friend and business partner Howard Phelps. If, as is suggested by Jackson’s information, it’s true that Howard Phelps has been accompanying Trent on official trips abroad, at the taxpayers’ expense, and using Trent’s access to foreign governments to secure contracts for the arms dealing business he shares with Trent and one other shareholder, then Trent will be in trouble even though he’s already resigned’.

  ‘Do we know who that third shareholder in the business is, boss?’

  ‘An Israeli friend of theirs called Eli Adelman who’s based in Tel Aviv and works on a consultancy basis for the current Israeli government. This is going to go far and wide, Alec, and this paper is going to be right in the middle of it’.

  *

  Craig and Dean went to the monthly meeting of the Manchester North Labour party. They’d both been shaken by the anonymous threatening letter and it had led to Dean taking the decision that no members of the public were being allowed to call at Craig’s constituency office for the time being. So the two hour ‘window’ for drop in visits by constituents was now withdrawn, and police had been at the office crawling through everything, looking desperately for clues as to who might have sent the letter with the Manchester Central postmark. They’d taken some things away and had promised to be back in touch very soon. But Dean was nervous. Ruby and Holly were both nervous. Craig seemed to be taking it all in his stride, being strong for Dean and everyone else around them.

  The car park of the youth hall where the meeting was always held was packed to the rafters which made Craig wonder what was going on. Then he saw Nina Barry, his party organiser, pull up in her car and realised there must be something serious happening. Without saying much she went into the meeting with them and sat beside Craig. A motion was put before the meeting calling on the local council’s Labour group to vote against the proposal to build a mosque on Bourne Road, particularly in light of the recent terrorist attack on Piccadilly station. Craig gave an impassioned plea for the motion to be defeated. To the silence of those in attendance, he argued that it was so important for the community of decent minded people to show that it wasn’t going to pander to the easy option of Islamaphobia.

  ‘We have to lead in the community’ Craig pleaded. ‘We have to take up the leadership of those who attended and show that we’re on the side of justice’.

  A group of five fairly elderly white members started saying that people weren’t racist necessarily but that they’d had enough of all the Muslims and their demands. Craig tried to take issue with them but he was silenced by one of the gang of five, a woman called Marilyn who said that she didn’t mind all the nice immigrants coming in, like the Australians and such like, but she thought there was just too many of what she called the ‘other’ sort.

  ‘Do you mean those with a different skin colour?’ Craig asked.

  ‘Now don’t you make me out to be a racist, Craig’ said Marilyn, pointing her finger at him. ‘I’m not a racist. I just don’t care for Muslims’.

  ‘Sorry, then what’s that if it isn’t racism?’

  ‘I don’t mean it like that’ said Marilyn. ‘I was talking about all the Muslims who come here and want to set up their own country within ours’.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this at a Labour party meeting’ said Craig. ‘I’m profoundly shocked to be honest’.

  ‘Well I know what I mean’ Marilyn asserted. ‘I’m a feminist and I abhor the Muslim treatment of women. We haven’t come all this way on women’s rights only to have Muslim men being allowed to dictate to their women about where they go, how they dress and who they can talk to and who they can’t. We know what’s happening on our streets. There’s a battle going on and we shouldn’t allow people to come from outside and take back all the social progression we’ve made in recent years’.

  ‘I don’t recognise the situation as you describe it, Marilyn’.

  ‘You can’t hide from the truth, Craig’.

  ‘Or what you see as the truth’ Craig countered.

  ‘We have to make a stand after our city was attacked’ Marilyn insisted.

  ‘That was a criminal act and should be dealt with as such’.

  ‘A criminal act it may have been but it was an attack against our values and our social progression’.

  ‘Marilyn, do you really think that I would tolerate the rolling back of women’s rights or any other of the socially progressive measures that have benefitted our society over recent years? Come on, if you think that you don’t know me at all’.

  ‘I’m not saying you would, no, but I think that if we don’t make a stand now we may not have any choice in the future. You’ve been targeted by some mad man and who’s to say he isn’t Muslim?’

  Craig was beside himself with frustration. He never thought he’d come to a Labour party meeting and hear this kind of unreconstructed bollocks.

  ‘Look, I’ve campaigned against forced marriage all my working life and have intervened in partnership with the local police on more than one occasion when a young British citizen of Asian descent feels her life is being threatened’.

  ‘I know you have, Craig, and I supported you’ said Marilyn. ‘We all did’.

  ‘So don’t try and paint me as being soft for cultural reasons or because I don’t want to be attacked as racist. I fight anything that stops people from making their own free choices. That’s why I campaign on behalf of the Palestinians because the illegal Israeli occupation is leading to an apartheid state which is denying the Palestinians their free choices’.

  ‘I know but ... look, Craig, it’s not just women’s rights’ Marilyn went on. ‘They’re homophobic as well and shame on you for defending them’.

  ‘Some Christians are homophobic and believe that Dean and I will go to hell but they have to accept the laws on equality just like everybody else and I notice you’re not including them in this round up of people you don’t agree with? It’s this targeting of Muslims in the aftermath of the bombing and the terrible atmosphere there is in the city that is so dangerous. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see that we have to rise above it and become more open and tolerant as a society and not less? And don’t you care about the feelings of the four Muslim comrades sitting here tonight?’

  The vote was taken and the motion opposing the building of the mosque was carried by an overwhelming majority of mainly white members. The four Musli
m members quietly left. Dean went after them to make sure they were okay.

  ‘God give me strength’ said Craig. ‘This is just pandering to the far right. It’s appeasement to all those bigots who are intent on painting all Muslims as extremists. But this is the Labour party. We’re about equality. This motion goes against everything we stand for’. But as he spoke they all started to get up and leave. He sat back and despaired. What had happened just wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t just.

  Nina just stayed silent, like she had done throughout the meeting.

  *

  When Craig and Dean got home, Craig was distracted. Dean made them a late supper of salmon steaks and a green salad but Craig hardly touched it.

  ‘Do they have enough votes?’ Dean asked as he watched Craig playing with his food.

  ‘To persuade the council to vote against the building of the mosque? They can try and they won’t have to try very hard. Some of them in there tonight are mighty thick with some of them on the council. But fuck it, I’ve worked so bloody hard in this community! I’m not going to let them or some stupid, idiot fascist bombers put it all at risk’.

  Craig stood up and went into the lounge. Dean decided to give him some space. He cleared away the dishes and busied himself around the kitchen for a while before pouring Craig a scotch and taking it in to him. Craig held his hand and kissed it.

  ‘Thank you’ he said. ‘Where’s yours?’

  Dean lifted up the glass of wine in his other hand. ‘I’m still on the wine’.

  ‘Come and sit down’ said Craig.

  Dean sat down and snuggled up beside Craig who put his arm round his lover.

  ‘How are we going to work all this out, Craig?’

  ‘I don’t know’ said Craig. ‘But I’m feeling pretty hopeless and that’s not me as you know. But there are forces at work here’.

  ‘What kind of forces?’

  ‘Ones that I don’t know if I can fight’ said Craig. ‘I’ve been reading that book by the Professor who narrowly missed getting shot. He says that we need to look at terrorism in a whole different way and that when nation states initiate a war on terror what they’re really doing is initiating a war on opponents, just like any other war and that we lose our credibility in the West by picking and choosing who’s a terrorist and who’s a hero. He argues that we’ve gone beyond terrorism’.

  ‘So how do you define what happened to Piccadilly station, Craig?’

  ‘How do you define our bombing of railway stations in countless countries across the world when we were building our empire? Why was that different? I’m not making excuses for anyone and I want the bombers of Piccadilly station caught and sent to jail as much as anyone. I’m just saying that this guy Abrahams has got some arguments worth considering if the world is going to get over this horrific fix it’s in’.

  ‘Well I’ll have to think about that’ said Dean. ‘Because all I see at this moment in time is a city, our city, with a massive black cloud hanging over it and communities on the verge of war with each other. All the theories in the world can’t alter the fact that that’s our immediate problem’.

  ‘Well if you really want to come back down to our little part of the world, Nina wants me out of this seat, I know that’.

  ‘You don’t know that, Craig’.

  ‘Yes I do’ Craig insisted. ‘The party machine have decided that I’m too much like hard work because I dare to have opinions, she’s dropped enough hints’.

  ‘But you’ve got plenty of support amongst the local party activists’ said Dean. ‘She wouldn’t be able to engineer a majority of votes against you if it came to it’.

  ‘She’d do something’ said Craig. ‘She was doing everything with her silence tonight. She did nothing to support me. She’s up to something. I know she is’.

  SEVEN

  ‘We’ve received confirmation from British Airways, sir’ said Joe Alexander as he sat back from staring at his computer screen.

  Tim walked up to Joe’s desk and leaned on the back of his chair. ‘And?’

  ‘Robert Jackson caught their flight from Houston to Heathrow Terminal five last Friday afternoon and when he landed on Saturday morning he connected onto their shuttle up to Manchester leaving at seven forty-five. We’ve talked to the crew on both flights. They didn’t notice anything unusual about his behaviour. He had a couple of glasses of wine on the Houston to London flight and was an overall model passenger. Now when he landed at Manchester we’ve got him on CCTV picking up his suitcase and catching a train into the city and then a Metrolink tram round to Shudehill from which it’s just a two minute walk to his apartment block’.

  ‘So when did he get home?’

  ‘At 9.46’ Joe continued. ‘The CCTV footage there shows Jackson entering the apartment block, suitcase and cabin bag in hand. He and Melanie Sanders leave together an hour later, holding hands and looking like your average young couple on a Saturday morning. They come back just before two that afternoon with bags of shopping which includes evidence that they’d been to the supermarket to stock up. Now in Melanie Sanders case, that was the last time she was seen alive. Neither she nor Jackson were seen leaving the apartment block again that day. Nor were either of them seen on the Sunday’.

  ‘Alternative exits?’

  ‘The apartment block is built on top of the eight storey Landmark hotel. There are three lifts on each floor, two of which only go as far as the apartment block foyer which has direct access on and off the street. But the third goes all the way down into the hotel reception, at the far end of which is a door leading to the covered car park attached to the hotel but which also has spaces marked out for the apartment dwellers, but neither Jackson nor Sanders kept a car there’.

  ‘Well it’s high risk but that’s got to be the route through which Jackson either escaped or was taken through against his will’ said Tim.

  ‘Make it the latter, sir’ said Joe, who’d been going through the rest of his messages and had potentially struck gold. ‘Take a look at this’.

  The film showed Robert Jackson being led through the hotel reception and through the door to the car park. Tim had seen that kind of walk before. Jackson was under duress alright. It was as clear as day.

  ‘Well, well, well’ said Tim. ‘This could be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. Good work, Joe’. He then turned to DS Bradshaw who was sitting at a desk facing Joe Alexander. ‘Adrian?’

  ‘I’ve been in touch with the Houston police, sir’ Adrian declared. ‘They’ve managed to find out that Jackson got himself a little girlfriend whilst he was there’.

  ‘Really? He was only there a week’.

  ‘And he was supposed to be engaged to be married’ said Joe, shaking his head in disgust. ‘Some of these lads seem to know no shame’.

  ‘Perhaps he was sowing a few wild oats before he got married?’ Adrian suggested. ‘It’s not against the law’. Adrian himself could do with sowing a few wild oats of his own. Being a widower was painful enough but when you’re as highly sexed as Adrian it became doubly excruciating. What he wanted was a night of uncomplicated sex. That’s what he needed to find. Just somebody who wants a good seeing to a couple or three times a week with no complications. But that’s the trouble. Most people come with some complication or another and women especially thought that sex was an entry point into every other area of a man’s life. That’s where men were less complicated when it came to sex. They could do it, add some conversation and friendship, but then it’s left there, no strings, no promises, and that’s the kind of arrangement Adrian needed. He had three children to bring up alone. He had a welter of guilt over how his wife Penny had been murdered. He didn’t want to have to consider anyone’s feelings. He just wanted sex.

  Some of the single women at work made him smile. They were the ones who wore just a touch too much perfume in his presence and prolonged the conversation just that sentence or two beyond comfortable. He knew what his reputation had always been at the sta
tion. He knew he was considered the John Hamm of the plain clothes ranks and that was flattering. Now he was on his own he was fair game. But he didn’t want any of that. He just wanted to get his end away. And he didn’t actually care if it was a woman or a man who provided the receptacle for his cock. There were out gay men at work too but he steered clear of them. If he was going to dip his toe in that particular water again then it wouldn’t be at work. It would have to be far away from prying eyes and the office rumour mill.

  ‘Adrian?’

  ‘Sorry, boss’ said Adrian. He cleared his throat. ‘The Houston police interviewed Miss Miriam Gonzales who said that Jackson had been visited by someone on the last night of his stay in the city and although she didn’t meet them Jackson told her that it was a man and that he was English. Now journalists have lots of acquaintances but according to Miss Gonzales, Jackson said he couldn’t wait to tell his editor back at the Chronicle what he’d found out’.

  ‘James Henderson?’ said Tim.

  ‘Yes’ said Adrian, still looking at the screen. ‘And according to Robert Jackson’s mobile phone records, he made two calls to Henderson on the Saturday he disappeared and Henderson made one call to him. And yet in his interview, Henderson said he hadn’t spoken to Jackson at all after he’d got back from Houston’.

  ‘So he’s lying’ said Tim. ‘Right, well we’ll go and see him again and this time he’d better not lie or I’ll fucking charge him’.

  *

  ‘Do you know either of the two men who are with Jackson, sir?’ asked Adrian who’d come with Tim to confront Henderson. They were using the footage to pressure Henderson into telling the truth. They wanted to put him under as much pressure as they could.

  ‘No’ Henderson replied, looking at the stills taken from the CCTV footage. He felt himself begin to sweat. ‘I’ve never seen them before’.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘I’ve never seen either of them before, detectives’.

  ‘Well if you look closely it doesn’t look like Jackson is going with them willingly’ said Adrian. ‘He looks tense, in shock, scared bloody shitless I’d say’.