Best Friend, Worst Enemy

by Menon, David

  *

  Sara took Jacob to her favourite Chinese restaurant in Manchester, the Rice Bowl down on Cross Street. She’d stumbled across it one night but since she’d first gone down into its basement setting, past the giant fish tank, and sat amongst the overall white surroundings with their imported furniture direct from China, she’d been sold on the quality of the food and the friendliness of the service. She always brought people here and it looked like Jacob was enjoying himself. It was new to her to worry about whether or not her man was pleased with what she’d done for him. She’d freely admit that she hadn’t cared much about all that in the past. She hadn’t experienced this kind of need before. She watched him suck a sizzling prawn straight down in one and wondered what on earth this man was doing to her. Then she laughed when he coughed because the prawn had been too hot. She handed him a glass of water.

  ‘Thanks’ said Jacob as he wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘I got the sauce all over my mouth too’.

  ‘I know’ said Sara. ‘If we hadn’t have been in a restaurant I’d have leaned over and licked it all off’.

  ‘I’ll let you do that and a lot more besides later’ said Jacob.

  ‘I was counting on it’ said Sara. ‘Anyway, you said on the phone that you wanted to talk to me about something to do with Operation Daylight?’

  ‘That’s right’ said Jacob as he scooped into his bowl some more crispy noodles and some of the beef in black bean sauce that they’d ordered as their other main course. ‘The food here is fantastic, by the way’.

  ‘I thought you’d like it’ said Sara as she replenished their glasses with more of the bottle of Australian Cabernet Sauvignon. ‘So, let’s start, just to give my theory a bit of weight with some background, with the Balfour Declaration’.

  ‘The Balfour Declaration?’

  ‘It was called that after Lord Balfour who was then the foreign secretary and who drew the whole thing up back in 1917. He didn’t know what he’d started. Or perhaps the cunning little bastard did’. He picked up another sizzling prawn with his chopsticks only this time he bit small pieces out of it and let it go down slowly. ‘Without consulting the indigenous Palestinian population, Balfour promised Palestine to the Zionists for the creation of a national home for the Jewish people and in doing so he encouraged wave upon wave of Zionist immigration to Palestine whilst at the same time denying the right of the Palestinians to their freedom’.

  ‘So we shafted them? This Balfour guy shafted the Palestinians on behalf of the Jews?’

  ‘On behalf of the British’ Jacob corrected.

  ‘I don’t follow?’

  ‘Oh there was method in his madness’ said Jacob.

  ‘Being?’

  ‘By encouraging Jewish immigration to Palestine he thought of it as a way of stopping Jewish immigration to Britain’.

  ‘Cunning and crafty’.

  ‘You could say’.

  ‘With deadly consequences that are still going on today’.

  ‘Again, you’re absolutely right’ said Jacob. ‘And whilst Palestinian rights were suppressed by Britain, Jewish terrorism in the form of the Irgun intensified. They blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem, the British embassy in Rome, they tried to assassinate Ernest Bevin and they did assassinate Lord Moyne who was Britain’s minister in the Middle East’.

  ‘The Irgun is what Yitzhak Goldstein’s father belonged to’.

  ‘Yes, and then came the Palestinian catastrophe in 1948 which was when two-thirds of the Palestinians were made homeless by the creation of Israel and turned into refugees’.

  ‘Good God’ said Sara. ‘No wonder they’re so bloody pissed off’.

  ‘The bare faced hypocrisy and insensitivity of the state of Israel leaves me breathless’ Jacob admitted. ‘I have a Palestinian friend who’s a writer. He thought that by writing in Hebrew he might get through to ordinary Israelis about the plight of the Palestinians who are a people they live beside but know nothing about. Then one day his daughter was walking home from school and she was knocked down and killed by Israeli settlers. She’d been deliberately targeted but the Israeli police did nothing about it. But a few days later when the Israelis suspected a terrorist was hiding in the village where my friend and his family live, they turned everyone in the village out of their homes for days. They took some of the villagers into custody, including children, and they set fire to some of the houses. My friend now realizes that no matter what he does, he’ll never get through. We, the Jewish people, have created a situation where we believe our case is the only one with any legitimacy and the rest of the world has let us get away with it. To continue to deny the Palestinians their rights is wrong, Sara, and we know it’.

  ‘No wonder many on your own side hate you’.

  ‘I only speak the truth as I see it’.

  ‘You’re a brave man too’.

  ‘Well I don’t know about that but look, it was when you told me about the arrest of Yitzhak Goldstein and the guns found at his house that it dawned on me what could be going on here. I mean, what’s really going on in connection with all the cases you’re investigating, the bombing, the shoot out, and what the link between them all is’.

  ‘You have my absolute undivided attention’.

  ‘Well this is going to sound a little far-fetched, but hear me out and if I’m right, then you really have got one hell of a problem on your hands’.

  *

  The desk sergeant said there was someone at reception who had what he thought was important information for the police on Operation Daylight. He said he’d seen the press conference and felt like he had to respond, although he had to be certain that he would not be identified as the source of the information. Adrian Bradshaw was the only senior member of the squad present at the time so he collected his phone and his notebook and went down to the interview room where whoever it was had been taken.

  When Luca Johnson stood up and shook hands he immediately captured that part of Adrian that was turned on by men. He’d once taken refuge in the belief that his former lover Matt Schofield had been a one-off, a diversion along the path of an otherwise straight life. But now he realised that he must be somewhat bisexual because of the need he often felt for a man in his bed. The young man sitting opposite him was well over six foot tall with broad shoulders, short blond hair and crystal blue eyes. His torso was straight and solid and Adrian could see his upper arm muscles beneath the short sleeves of his t-shirt. Despite his physical attractiveness the young man looked troubled and disturbed by something.

  ‘I don’t know if what I’ve got will help but I’d like to think it would’ said Luca as he patted his leather shoulder bag with his hand. ‘I have a file in here which might mean something to you’.

  ‘In relation to what?’

  ‘The Piccadilly station bombing’.

  That was enough to get Adrian’s full and complete attention and he was desperate to see what was inside the file. ‘So what’s in the file about the bombing and where and how did you get it exactly?’

  Luca looked a little unsure of himself for a moment and then raised his head. ‘I’m an escort. A gay escort. I entertain men and I make a living out of it. A bloody good living actually’.

  ‘I don’t doubt that’ Adrian muttered under his breath despite his resolve.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Adrian blushed. ‘I meant that ... well a good looking lad like you’.

  Luca blushed now too. ‘Well I’m a bit more than a lad. I’m actually twenty-four years old and I thought you’d read me the riot act’.

  ‘Absolutely not’ said Adrian. ‘I personally couldn’t care less if you entertain men for cash as long as it was your decision and yours alone to get into it and there’s no pimp involved’.

  ‘No, no pimp. I’m fully independent. I got into it because I needed the cash. I had a commodity to sell which was my body and decided to use it. It was supposed to be my gap year. Some of my friends from university went travelling but I couldn’t a
fford it. I came out of university with a lot of debts, some to do with studies and some to do with partying I have to admit, and I only planned to do it for a year. But that was two years ago now and despite getting a first class degree, I still haven’t been able to get a job. I’m not complaining though or coming across with some sob story. I’ll get where I want to be eventually’.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve got the right attitude’.

  ‘Well what I do is better than stacking shelves at the local supermarket and when you enjoy sex as much as I do then its like pennies from heaven’.

  Adrian paused whilst he fantasised about fucking Luca right up the arse. He could see his legs wrapped around Luca’s neck and he could imagine that the young man would give fantastic head. But he had to get back to the real business.

  ‘I can imagine’ said Adrian. ‘But tell me how you came to be in possession of this file that you think we might want to look at?’

  ‘When I first started I managed to secure a few regular clients and then one in particular started treating me really well. He’d email me tickets to go and meet him in places like Berlin, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and usually Brussels was on the itinerary about once a month. I was having the time of my life. We dined out in the flashiest of restaurants and he spent a fortune on me. He isn’t bad looking either so it wasn’t hard to find the enthusiasm once we got to bed. He said if circumstances were different he’d allow himself to fall in love with me and we’d travel the world together. Anyway, he was always a bit kinky, he liked to use handcuffs and he loved being spanked. But whenever we were abroad he always had a room in a hotel with a connecting door. And whilst we were making out the connecting door would be wide open but I was never permitted to see who was sitting in there in the next room, getting off on the two of us getting off’.

  ‘That is a bit kinky’.

  ‘Until one night, we were in Copenhagen, my client went for a piss and I sneaked a peak next door. And it was the foreign secretary, Nicholas Trent, sitting there. He was still in his post then. This was before he resigned’.

  ‘You don’t say?’ said Adrian who felt like he’d been pulled out of a stormy sea. ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘No, I made sure I wasn’t seen’.

  ‘And I presume, from all the recent press reports, that your client was… is Howard Phelps?’

  ‘Spot on’ said Luca who recognised the look in the detective’s eyes. He was a straight man who liked to lick the other side of the stamp occasionally. He liked to have sex with men but he’d never want to live a gay lifestyle. He’d seen it so many times in so many of his clients. They weren’t all as handsome as this particular boy in blue though. He was hot.

  ‘What did he mean by “if circumstances were different”?’

  ‘Trent and Howard have a very strange relationship’ Luca revealed. ‘Trent loves Howard but he can’t bring himself to have a physical relationship with him. But Howard is very highly sexed and for some unfathomable reason he loves Trent and can’t bear to be without him. I fill in the sex gap’.

  ‘You’d make a fortune if you took all this to the press’.

  ‘Well I’ll tell you why I haven’t gone to them and why I’ve come to the police instead. Besides, I don’t want my other clients to think that I’d go blabbing to the press if I found out something juicy about them. It wouldn’t be professional’.

  ‘Quite’ said Adrian. ‘But before you go on, why did Trent like to listen to you and Howard Phelps making out? I mean, I’m no prude and I’ve seen a lot of stuff in this job that would make Jackie Collins recoil in horror, but that’s seriously weird?’

  ‘Jackie who?’

  ‘Never mind’ said Adrian.

  ‘Well yeah, it was weird and what pisses me off big time is that Howard took it for granted that I wouldn’t spill about it. Surely he knew I’d try and see who it was in the next room? Once I knew it was Nicholas Trent everything started falling into place’.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I did some research on the net’ Luca continued. ‘Every time he flew me out to some foreign city there was a summit, a meeting of some kind going on between Nicholas Trent and local politicians or, in the case of Brussels, an EU or a NATO summit. So it was always him in the next room. Howard has a flat here in Manchester and that’s where I always went to entertain him. Trent isn’t there on those occasions. He’s always at home with his wife’.

  ‘What a bloody set up’ said Adrian.

  ‘Yeah, but like I said before, I’m here for another reason. I’m not thick, detective. I can put two and two together and stop when I make four but sometimes that’s enough to make me realise that something pretty sinister is going on’.

  ‘Let me be the judge of that, Luca’ said Adrian, slipping right back into police officer mode without a crack to expose the difference. ‘You just tell me what you know’.

  ‘My Mum was killed in the Piccadilly station bombing’ said Luca, quietly. His eyes filled up and he crossed his arms and legs over. ‘Sorry, it’s still a bit raw’.

  ‘That’s okay, I understand, and I’m really sorry to hear that. Were you close?’

  ‘Very’ said Luca as he wiped his cheeks with his fingers. ‘I never knew my Dad. My Mum brought me up as a single parent. I can’t believe I’m never going to see her again’.

  ‘Looks like she did a bloody good job to me though’.

  ‘I think she did alright’ said Luca. ‘She’d been on a night out with some of her girlfriends and they were all getting the train home to Bolton. None of them made it’.

  ‘That must’ve been pretty tough to take in, Luca’.

  ‘It was’ Luca answered. ‘It is. You see, I was never really interested in finding my Dad. I always thought it might be disrespectful to my Mum and all she’d done for me, you know? I don’t know the circumstances because my Mum never really spoke about him but I guess he was married or something and let her down badly’.

  ‘You’re remarkably composed for someone who’s gone through such a loss’.

  ‘I have my moments’ said Luca. ‘I really wish I could go to my Dad now and find some kind of comfort but ... well, he hasn’t been there for me these past twenty-four years so why should he be there for me now?’

  ‘Do you have other family?’

  ‘Oh yeah’ said Luca. ‘Aunts, Uncles, Cousins but look, none of that is why I’m here. When I told Howard about my Mum being killed he couldn’t have cared less. He said that in every war there are what he called regrettable casualties, and that I should just move on. Move on? Move fucking on? My Mum had been murdered by cold hearted terrorists and he’s telling me to move on? Fuck off! So I decided to do a little digging of my own and see what I could get on him. He was up here last week and I went through his files when he had to nip out to take a phone call. I went into his bag and pulled out a file’.

  ‘You took a big risk’.

  Luca took the file out of his shoulder bag and handed it to Adrian. ‘As you can see there are detailed plans of the city and a chart showing exactly where the bombs were planted. Now you tell me why he had those? He knows something about the bombing’.

  Adrian couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This could turn out to be way more explosive than mere dynamite. ‘Jesus Christ! The plans here are so bloody detailed. But what I don’t understand is ... the maps I can read and the implications of what’s going on here are clearly evident. But all the text is in a language I’ve never seen before. What’s that all about?’

  ‘It’s Hebrew’.

  ‘Hebrew?’

  ‘Every word of every sentence is in Hebrew. I don’t know why’.

  SEVENTEEN

  Craig was sitting in his constituency office putting the finishing touches to a speech he was going to make at a peace and reconciliation rally in the centre of Manchester that was due to take place in a few days time.

  ‘ ... people need jobs, not hatred. They need security on the streets, not hatred. They need growth in the econ
omy, not hatred. They need fairness, not hatred. They need social justice, not hatred. They fear for the future and that’s understandable in this ever uncertain world where the balance of power is shifting and nobody knows anymore where the next threat to our way of life, a way of life that has seen decades of struggle for equality and fairness, is going to come from. But that’s not a reason to fool ourselves into thinking that the answer is to demonise a whole section of society and call for their removal from the country. We should be uniting against the message of intolerance, racism, and Islamophobia that is fast turning into populism. The fascists are on the rise all over Europe and friends, too many people let all this happen seventy years ago. The names of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Belsen, to name but three, became synonymous with the same message that is filling our communities today. The Nazi’s demonised the Jews. The opponents of freedom today are demonising Muslims. Friends, they must be stopped. We must never let it happen again. We won’t let it happen again … ‘

  He still had some way to go before he could be satisfied that he’d said all he wanted to say and he could call it finished and ready. He was going to look through his current bible of political thinking by Professor Jacob Abrahams for further inspiration. It had stimulated his thinking to such a degree that he’d asked Dean to contact the professor to see if he’d be interested in meeting up to discuss his views. Craig knew that the professor was a member of the Labour party and so he shouldn’t have too much trouble in asking him to engage in conversation, especially as Craig’s own opinions chimed rather well with what he’d read in the professor’s book.

  He hadn’t spoken to Nina Barry since her treachery had confirmed his suspicion that he couldn’t trust her as far as he could piss. He knew darn well she’d been behind him losing his seat. There’d been a very ominous silence from her end although she had sent Dean an email asking if he could organise some of their activists to go and help campaign in a council by-election in Salford. Fucking cheeky bitch. No doubt he’d be accused of throwing his toys out the pram because he’d lost his seat but they could all get to fuck as far as he was concerned. If doing it for the cause had become a one-way street then he was happy to be at the self-serving end for a change. He’d never looked at the scenery from this end before. He’d never been the kind of MP who used every event as an opportunity to promote himself. One of his colleagues in a nearby constituency would turn a visit to the toilet into a piece of self- promotion if he could. Another was on twitter and Facebook all fucking day telling the whole fucking world that he was about to ‘get on a tram in Mosley Street’ or ‘go shopping for food after a long but extremely satisfying day serving his constituents’. It was all pretty vomit inducing to Craig. People don’t have time to listen to all that meaningless shit and in any case, that kind of blatant self-promotion had never been his thing. He believed in engaging on the issues and the only ones to have objected to that were the Labour party machine. They can’t have MPs engaging frankly with the public.