by Phil Brett
Impressive indeed. It sounded a neat answer. I wasn’t sure how it would all work, but hey, who was quibbling? And on top of that: Cole knew what “symbiotic” meant.
Jackie pursed her lips, considering the option. It took less than a minute to decide.
‘Okay, but I will have to get it cleared both with the Exec and the Anchorage people. Assuming that they will go for it, you can continue. I think I can persuade the Exec, and I’m sure Anchorage will be all too happy to get rid of him for a while, so I can’t foresee any problems. You, Roijin and Asher will be the technical support, and you will be under the auspices of Pete, who I am co-opting to the President’s staff. You should understand that your actions will be open and above board. I’ll consult on what the best way to do that is. A report will be put before a full NWC meeting at the end of your investigations. I want to be kept informed throughout. Is that clear?’
‘Of course, Jackie.’
‘And Pete?’
Oh she remembered that I was here. Lovely. It almost gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. ‘Yes?’ I mumbled.
‘You’re not to be armed, Pete. I will authorise you, Vic, to carry a weapon, but I don’t think it’s wise for Pete to be, because we don’t want another incident . . .’
The fuzzy feeling went. A sharper one replaced it.
Victoria had put her phone away. For the last few minutes, she had been surprisingly supportive and friendly, but this too appeared to have disappeared. She gave me a look which could have frozen bush fires.
‘But one thing, Pete,’ Cole said. ‘I am not going to go through all the cop crap again that you are so fond of. I spent days hearing your oh-so-amusing jokes, banging on about the fact that I used to be a serving police officer. But now we have had the revolution, and we are both comrades. We’re equal. So, treat me with respect.’
She stopped, letting the silence dare me to disagree.
I didn’t.
7. Pilea involucrata
Travelling from the Battersea car park to Olivia Harrison’s house hadn’t taken too long. Indeed, we’d barely had chance to enjoy the Miles Davis track “Freddie Freeloader” or be swept away by Wynton Kelly’s piano, when the car had informed us, in the excited way it had been programmed to when it had good news to impart, that it estimated that we would be at our destination within two minutes. Its tone, cutting right through the jazz, was similar to that one you might have when announcing a new birth.
Cole had chosen the music – Davis’s “Kind of Blue”; one of my favourites. She had a worrying habit of getting inside of my head. I hadn't the faintest idea of how she knew of my personal musical preferences.
A daunting thought occurred to me that the probable answer wasn’t that she was spying on me for the forces of reaction, but that it was something more frightening, or at the very least, rather disconcerting: that she might almost now qualify as a friend. Or, at the very least, to being the nearest to one I had at present. Yet, conversely, I knew virtually nothing about her.
Once again, my thoughts were interrupted by the car. Smart cars could be bloody annoying. This time, it was a visual intrusion: a weather report popped up, announcing that it would be pretty snow-free for the next few days. However, the presenter – sporting a jumper which should carry the death penalty in any type of state, let alone a worker’s one – pulled a glum face. Maybe he’d seen himself in a monitor and realised the fashion crime he’d just committed. But no. He announced that the lack of new snow was at least in part due to just how cold it was going to be. Not being an expert in such matters, I never had understood how Siberia could have snow and yet be so cold, but we couldn’t. He didn't explain that. Or, indeed, his choice of knitwear. What he did do was to explain why we were now having such vicious weather. Basically, global warming was to blame.
With the heavy weight of his educational responsibility over, and having successfully beat off any thoughts that viewers might have that the snow was the work of the great cold weather monster, he moved to his political. Cheesily crossing his fingers, he said that, hopefully, the forthcoming international conference would tackle the issue. The world sighed with relief that it had his support. And wondered whether his jumper should be on the agenda too.
The car’s computer enthusiastically told us that the gleaming new build house from the 2030s, which we were now approaching, was the home of one Olivia Harrison.
Soon, we discovered it was one which had all the mod cons. Soon after that, we further learnt that not one of them was working. The heating was dead and the house was as cold as a morgue. The lights were useless, as was the case with anything which required power. Someone had bled the home computer, causing anything which required power to be cut. The household auto-cleaners had obviously been on a mid-cleaning rota, because they lay smashed on the floor – a tangle of brushes, air streams and circuitry.
Just getting in had been difficult enough; the fob simply hadn’t worked. Victoria had solved that particular tech failure by getting some kind of hand battering ram out of her car and smashing down the door. Eco-insulated it may have been, but not Cole-proof. Especially, with her DIY siege kit. Nick Morgan was going to have some home repairs to do. Well, it would take his mind off his grief. Gaining entry, however, was to be our only piece of luck whilst there.
With all house’s software having been wiped and the hardware slowly burning out, there was – in tech speak – bugger all to help us. The cloud back-up had, of course, also been cleaned. Not that we were entirely surprised, as whoever had killed Olivia Harrison hadn’t gone to all this bother just to disrupt the housework. Every type of computer – indeed, anything with a memory, including her alarm clock – had been wiped as clean as a showroom window. The difference was that there was no high value commodity to salivate over.
It all looked like your basic politico family three-bedroom house, full of political and personal mementos, and those which interspersed the two. If one ignored the fallen cleaning drones, it all looked immaculate.
With an originality which Albert Einstein would have envied, the party cloud was named the Red Cloud. Controlled, operated and defended by the party, it was supposed to be invulnerable from attack. Not, though, against our killer. They had been thorough, but had been rather lucky too. Most people still liked at least the occasional use of a quant old form of communication called writing, even if it was on a post-it on the fridge. Olivia, however, didn’t appear to do this, because there wasn’t a scrap of notepaper in the house.
Without feeling any guilt that we were trampling on someone’s grave, Cole had proceeded to open every drawer, cupboard and, indeed, any place where she might possibly find a handwritten note. The saving grace was that at least she didn't toss the contents up in the air and onto the floor. Credit where it was due, she did carefully put everything back. I exhaled heavily, and joined in.
All we found, though, was the manifestations of domestic life. No helpful pads of notes, codes, annotated photos or a scribbled A4 page with HE IS THE CLASS TRAITOR written in blood. In actual fact, after two hours of searching, in the cold, without any refreshment, there wasn’t even a scrawled message about buying some milk or picking up the kids, let alone anything worthwhile. The nearest we got to any revealing research on spies, special agents or brutal class oppression were the teddies in the kids' rooms.
After drawing the biggest blank you could imagine, as in a huge white canvas without even a frame, we sat at the dining room table. Cole was on her phone, having a conference with Asher Joseph and Roijin Kemal. Following a brief discussion, she went through what they should do next. It all sounded like standard procedure and all very correct. And also very mundane and laborious.
‘Life was simpler when people wrote,’ she sighed, after finishing issuing her orders.
‘Some of us still do,’ I pointed out, proud to be a dinosaur.
‘Not Olivia Harrison. She was one woman who embraced technology. I’m actually surprised that's she’s not got a driverless car. A
combi seems rather old hat for her.’
No reply was required, because after the micro-second spent on frivolity, she repeated what Kemal and Joseph had told her. Roijin had confirmed that there had been no satellite coverage for Britain that day. Or, to be more accurate, none that we had access to. No doubt, the CIA was still watching. That then left the old fashioned CCTV. Although several CCTVs had been removed, Kemal had been able to trace the path of CCTV interruptions to William Morris Junction which had none to interrupt in the first place. From there onwards, the local workers’ council had been more zealous and all cameras had been taken down. Just to make the job even harder, there had been a demonstration of approximately two hundred people protesting against the NWC policy on animal welfare passing through at that time. This fact was convenient for the killer, assuming that they hadn’t organised it in the first place, as it had meant that they could easily lose themselves in the crowd.
Kemal was continuing to see if there was any other possible video coverage, such as a domestic home or vehicular sensor or chance coverage by phones. The problem was: even with so many people willing to help, it was going to be a huge task.
From what Cole said, Joseph had been pretty much sat on his arse watching TV. His only contribution had been to tell us that the media was extensively covering the Olivia Harrison’s murder. Networks who were pro NWC and those claiming to be neutral were discussing the theory that security forces loyal to the prime minister were attempting to behead the movement by executing leading cadre and destabilising the country.
Those on the right, including supporters of the former PM, claimed that it was the fascist far-right who were responsible, which just went to show how one extreme bred another. Many across the spectrum expressed the fear that the revolution could not bring stability without bringing in Stalinist waves of terror. The danger was that this latest killing could herald a period of a crackdown, with the Party planning to use its majority in the workers’ councils to pass emergency powers to curb liberty.
Joseph had indeed been hard at work watching the news. It wasn’t quite what I had expected to be his area of forensic analysis. Didn’t CSIs search for hairs, fingerprints or the like? Shouldn't he be dissecting Olivia, making deep incisions and morbid jokes? That's what they did on the TV. He seemed merely to be channel surfing. We could have just called in the nearest student for that!
Cole read my mind and, always ready to jump to the defence of her team, said, ‘I think this is pertinent to our investigation. The party is vehemently denying any idea of a crackdown, but there is no doubt that it is worrying people, even our anarchist allies. It may be fairly obvious propaganda to undermine the revolution, but it is sowing seeds of doubt in people’s heads.’
Maybe so, but I still hoped that he was going to do more than munch biscuits and watch the news.
‘Someone, somewhere, is making mischief.’ She sounded like some pipe-smoking Victorian. Then, for reasons best known only to herself, she felt the urge to tell me, in depth, what her instructions had been to her two sidekicks. Or, in her-speak, ‘what they had agreed’. I wasn’t exactly sure why she felt the need to do this. I had been there when she’d been telling them. All was no doubt the standard procedure and was the right and correct course to take. And yes, very slow, unimaginative and boring.
I had a better idea. ‘Youssef Ali,’ I said, finishing a sentence, which had started in my head.
‘What about him?’ Cole asked, having not been privy to its beginning. Thank God. The last thing I wanted was her any more inside my thoughts. I had enough problems up there without her adding to them.
‘They were really close. I mean really close. Brother and sister close. It was the type of comradeship where they felt free to bounce ideas off each other. If Olivia was investigating something, then I would bet my entire wardrobe that she would have confided in Ali. I think we should talk to him.’
There wasn’t a swoon of appreciation. ‘If she hadn’t told her partner, why would she have told Ali?’ Cole asked.
Good point. Still . . .
‘What have we got to lose?’ I asked, as if that was an answer.
She shrugged. She hadn’t a better one. ‘Let’s go.’ She got to her feet and then asked, ‘Where is he?’
It was my turn to shrug.
We headed eastwards. Cole had simply asked Red Cloud where we could find Yousef Ali. It had told us that he was at the National Workers’ Council, at an evening meeting. Previously, the NWC had met in what had formerly been known as the Royal Albert Hall, but which the movement had renamed Workers’ Hall. Now, it was called a bomb site. That was due to the great defender of democracy, our former prime minister, who, during his attempt to be the strong man in a crisis, had ordered an air strike against it. The idea being that if you could not beat us in elections, then atomising us in a rocket attack was a good Plan B. Sadly for him, such a novel attitude to suffrage was foiled because, fearing such an eventuality, the NWC had, one hour before the air strike, decamped to another site.
The only people still in the building when the rockets had struck had been the teams of workers who were dismantling the audio equipment and carefully packing various historic pieces away into storage units for safety. The Victorian building had been smashed and the roof and two sides collapsed. Ninety-seven workers had been killed. Twelve miraculously had survived. As had the NWC.
The delegates from workplaces, industries and communities now met at the Queen Mary University buildings in Mile End, East London.
Despite the Palace of Westminster now being empty and unused, the NWC had not moved in. Many delegates hadn't wanted the workers’ republic to be associated with the old order. Whether to move in or not had been the subject of much debate within the NWC. Those opposed to decamping there were at present a small majority, so Westminster remained the province of an army of cleaners and a smattering of NWC stewards protecting it against the more anarchic ultra-nihilists, who saw the very existence of the building as an insult and wanted it blown up. Its future use was still up for discussion.
Interestingly, despite a real craze for renaming buildings, parks, transport facilities and roads – indeed, anything which both didn’t move and had anything connected with the former class society – the Queen's building remained just that. Not all remained the same, though, from its days of bring an educational establishment. Aside from the replacement of academics with delegates walking its corridors, it could now boast an array of army vehicles surrounding it with anti-aircraft missile batteries that rather spoiled its grand façade.
Such precautions were not paranoia – attacks, although of a much smaller scale than previously, were still continuing. The large news screens outside were showing images from the night before, with the breaking news that a “reactionary small military commando force” had succeeded in paralysing a wind farm in Norfolk.
Still, the NWC had been caught between the need for security and the desire for it not to be a fenced-off centre of remote power. The weaponry suggested the former, but the relative ease by which we had gained entry was evidence that the latter was a powerful force. It seemed Cole’s ID and armband were enough. I had tired of wearing the one with WC emblazoned on and had slipped it under the car seat. No doubt, my sweet smile helped as well. I presumed that there were sensors all over the place busy sensing, or whatever the verb was, for bombs, explosives, chemicals etc. etc. At least, I hoped that was the case. Judging from the commotion, people were too busy to check for anything.
I was tempted to compare the people rushing about to a football crowd. But that would have been incorrect, as such crowds tend to move in one direction, usually with hot dogs hanging out their gobs. Here, though, it appeared that everyone was going in all directions – and I don’t mean politically – although seeing the array of representatives, from the variety of groups that had representatives here, that was a realistic possibility. People were scurrying in and out, up and down stairs, down that corridor and up that on
e. There also didn’t appear to be any hot dogs.
Hubbub was a suitable word to use, and the building throbbed with conversations, arguments and monologues. Everyone appeared to be talking. If the corridors were like this, heaven knows what the meeting halls must be like. I tried to think of a quip to make to Victoria about the corridors of power, but I was distracted when two delegates came past with large boxes on trolleys.
Gamely, we tried to find someone who might know where we could find Youssef Ali. As we did, I could see that, despite the throb of revolutionary debate, people appeared to be in good humour. Faces were often strained and tired, but also smiling. Finally, we found a young man (though calling him a man was pushing it, because he seemed barely out of school) who was smiling but not talking. Always a winning combination, so we pounced.
We were in luck. It seemed that he knew Ali because he was in the same industry. Even luckier, he knew where could find him and kindly told us that Ali was in a meeting, concerning water supplies – in particular, water conservation. That figured. Ali was the leading party member for the water industry.
Following the young man’s directions, we battled against the tide of people going in the opposite way. A flood of quips and puns concerning water filled my head but were held at bay because of the crowds. It was hard enough getting through the corridor, without doing so with humour. I'd use them when we eventually found Ali. Encountering a group of four people who appeared to be going our way, we snuck in behind them, using them as battering ram. After a minute or two, we arrived at the door we wanted. We knew it was the one through cunning detection. That, and the large hologram floating in front of it – an image of a red fist and running water – the logo of the Water Workers’ Council.
For some reason, I had found myself in front of Victoria and so I was again, just as when we had spoken to Nick Morgan, the one who was confronted with that age-old problem of to knock or not to knock. I chose not to, and instead followed the age-old convention, when entering a strange room, of opening the door slowly.