Gone Underground

by Phil Brett

  I wasn’t too sure whether she wanted me to answer her questions and, if so, in what order. Or were they rhetorical questions? You know, the type teachers dish out when you’ve done something wrong.

  ‘I’m not going to lie again to get you out of the shit!’ she snapped.

  Her haughty manner and tone, which made it obvious that she felt that I was in need of a good chiding, was beginning to irritate me. She was edging dangerously close to the limits of my forbearance.

  ‘And you can’t rely on Ash and Roijin to do so either—’

  Okay, she’d reached it.

  ‘You won’t have to,’ I fired back. ‘You didn’t have to last time. Don't you get it? All Jackie said back there – she has to say that. It’s only right that she does, and I understand why she has to, but ask yourself: why she has got you looking into this? Why you, Victoria? Jackie’s not dumb. You must know that she doesn’t believe the official story of what happened last time, with you and me. So, why has she asked you to investigate? And why, after half-hearted opposition, has she agreed for me to get involved? Believe me, Victoria, if Jackie did not really want me involved, then I wouldn’t be anywhere near it. When she says no, it is no. N.O. She is battling the counter-revolution on several fronts, and we are just a one element of that. She sees me as trustworthy enough to investigate it but also independent enough to curtail a few democratic niceties.’

  I stopped, waiting for to reply. When she didn't, I wasn't too sure what to say next. So, I merely reiterated what I had said, adding that if we did not take all personal steps to disrupt reactionary violence, we would be committing a greater crime than upsetting Jackie or Youssef.

  To my surprise, she didn’t argue anymore. Instead, she thought for a second and then informed me that, on arrival, she had looked on her scanner and was picking up that no one was home. The only heat source showing was, judging from its shape, the pet cat, presently on a bed upstairs. She presumed it was asleep.

  The fact that she had done so made me presume that whatever she might say, she was in full agreement with this. Hence, no debates in the street on personal liberty.

  I looked at the Victorian terraced house in front of us. Red slates; bay window woodwork painted white, flaking in parts and uncovering patches of rot; brown wooden blinds, all closed. The door was red. Well, it would be, wouldn't it?

  ‘Can you get us in?’ I asked.

  I swear she blinked hard.

  ‘Well? How did you get into houses when you were after suspects? I don’t remember the Met waiting for polite invitations. What’s it to be? A sledge-hammer to the door? Break a window? Or something more subtle? I’d rather the subtle approach, with no smashed woodwork to have to explain away.’

  She offered no opposition. ‘Hang on.’ Leaning into her car, and reaching into the glove compartment, which I knew was like bloody Aladdin’s cave. She got something out which was the size of a lighter.

  ‘This will do it.’

  I couldn't see how.

  We walked up the front garden’s short path, which was barely big enough to contain a tub of summer bulbs. There was a tub, but it was full of snow. Despite what Cole had said about no one being home – apart from the cat – I rang the bell anyway. No one answered. Not even pussy.

  She looked at me, and although she didn’t say a word, the look shouted “Why the hell do I listen to you?” She placed her gismo by the lock. It opened in seconds.

  I looked at her, rather impressed.

  She smiled but didn’t say anything. She took a step back. Whether it was from politeness or a desire not to be the one who led the breaking and entering of a leading comrade’s home, I couldn’t tell you, but she obviously wanted me to go in first.

  For a moment, I thought about suggesting that she might want to get her gun out, but then I remembered that her scanner had indicated that no one was home.

  Despite that fact, I was pleased that she didn’t suggest that we separate and search the house. Instead, she followed me in. It looked your typical Muswell Hill home: tasteful, in a safe middle-of-the-road type of way. The hall had parquet flooring and the pegs held a collection of overcoats, hats and gloves.

  The first room was the lounge: a smallish but pleasantly decorated room with a two-person sofa and armchair in tasteful pale green stripes. The walls were decorated with a smattering of books and a few paintings of what looked like Hyde Park. Casting my expert eye over them, I thought they were quite good pastiches of German Expressionism. They looked to me like the stuff you'd get at a semi-pro pop-up gallery. Something you buy to fill the walls with colour. However, on closer inspection, I could see that there was Ali’s signature in the corner of each. I never knew he was a painter. They were rather good, but now wasn't the time to ponder his brush strokes.

  The room was neat and tidy, with the exception of a smattering of cat hair. It oozed politeness. I couldn’t see anything even vaguely amiss. But then, what was I expecting – a big hand-painted sign saying GONE INTO HIDING, BUT YOU CAN FIND ME AT THIS ADDRESS? Sadly, there wasn't one; not even in a neo-Expressionistic style.

  The next room on the ground floor was the dining room. It housed a small oblong metal table with four metal chairs, all boasting cream cushions. On the wall, more paintings, this time, I guessed, of Brighton. Everything was clean and neat, with no big signs.

  We walked along the hall to the kitchen. The hall was also neat, polite and very tasteful. There were also more paintings. These looked to be of the canals which criss-crossed London. I was betting that the kitchen would be all highly polished chrome, with all the up-to-date utensils, and there'd be more paintings. It was also going to be nice and neat.

  We opened the door.

  It wasn’t nice and neat.

  It most definitely wasn't.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, with his head wrenched back, sat Ali. Or, I should say, with half his head wrenched back. The rest of it was splattered against the wall behind him.

  22. Sanguinaria

  ‘Shit,’ Cole muttered, before giving a fine display of multi-tasking: slipping out her gun and immediately contacting one of her confederates, whilst simultaneously adopting one of those intense looks of concentration that children have when pretending that they can answer a question, which in reality, they haven't a clue about. I quickly surmised that the phone call was to Roijin Kemal.

  ‘Roijin?’

  That was the big clue. My detective skills were sharpening.

  ‘We’ve found Youssef Ali. He’s been killed. We’re at his place now. Yeah, I’m just about to. You know the drill. Cheers.’

  Cole went straight to the rear kitchen door. Once she had confirmed that it was locked, she glanced again at Youssef Ali and then in a voice which you might use to a toddler, told me not to touch anything. And there was I, about to start cleaning up. Once she had ensured that I wasn’t about to destroy any evidence with soap and water, she announced that she was going to check the rest of the house.

  Staring at the body, I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure what she thought she might find. She’d scanned the house to find no living humans present, so unless she was fingering right-wing zombie killers for Ali’s death, all this was purely routine. Still, if she wanted to put on a show, then I was a liberal kind of guy. Let her. I was more intrigued as to why Ali didn’t smell. Looking at the waxy blue skin, it appeared to me, from my vast experience of forensic TV cop shows, very much like he had been dead for a while, yet there was only a faint whiff emanating from it. Indeed, was he now an 'it', or should he still be classed as a him? What exactly was the etiquette for corpses?

  I looked around and saw a designer-made kitchen, dripping in gadgets. Ali’s blood wasn’t. That had congealed hours ago, mainly up against the far wall. Beneath it, I could see a small yellow flashing light. I walked past what was left of comrade Ali and looked closer. It was on a tile about the size of a paperback, probably a novella. It was an Odour Neutralizer and Extraction unit – a ONE. Acclaimed as th
e most efficient device ever created, not to just remove or even cover smells, but to destroy them. Lisa had wanted one. Her mum and I had argued that who’d want to remove life’s smells? I smiled, remembering her reply: that if ONE could get rid of mine, then it would be worth the money. The ONE here had been turned on; hence, no smell.

  Upstairs, I could hear Cole doing her ninja bit whilst I stood, surveying the scene. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it didn’t upset me. I felt no sickness, vomiting or nausea, just an interest that bordered on the academic. My happy pills were dulling any reaction and, frankly, I hadn’t been that surprised to see him like this. No one went missing by chance these days. One way or another, if you were under the radar, it was because either you or someone else wanted you to be. I knew; I knew we would find him without a pulse.

  Maybe I should have felt something: sadness, regret, horror, something. But nothing. I looked around as if I was sitting bored in a doctor’s waiting room. On the table was a short, typed piece of white paper. A few splashes of his brains decorated it, but it was clearly legible.

  Dear Nevin,

  You are a fine and decent man and I have not enjoyed deceiving you. You should know that I have been working for the state security services for most of my adult life. It appears that this fact is about to be discovered and, with the international situation as it is, escape is not an option. I will not become an exhibit to be paraded as evidence of the evil of capitalism, so I have decided to do this.

  Goodbye.

  It was signed Youssef, in a blue fountain pen, which lay neatly parallel to the paper.

  Short and to the point. It wasn’t destined to be included in any anthologies of letters. Lord Byron could rest easy, as could Saint Augustine, because it wasn’t much of an explanation of his actions either. It was, it had to be said, a rather stilted note. I guess literary flourishes weren't a vital requirement in the espionage world.

  Whilst pondering its simplicity, my foot accidently kicked something. Looking down, I saw a gun, the gun, by my left, and his right, foot. Pinching my trousers at the knees, I bent down and inspected it. An AA12. I’d seen one before, up close and personal, and this was indeed an AA12 – the gun of choice for your MI5 assassin. No doubt, it was the same one which had been used to kill Olivia Harrison.

  It was as I was staring at it that Cole came marching in, announcing that it was all clear. No zombie killers, then. Ignoring me, she started to inspect the scene and reel off the people who were on their way. It was some guest list. I was surprised that that Elvis and Henry VIII weren't included. Everyone else appeared to be, including Jackie Payne.

  ‘Quite a party,’ I muttered, to no one in particular.

  ‘First impressions?’ she asked, in between taking photographs.

  Getting to my feet, I was distinctly aware that I had nothing profound to say. Shrugging, I just said, ‘Suicide. Or made to look like suicide.’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised. Did you expect to find him like this?’

  Now could have been the time embellish and take a step up in the credibility ladder, but instead, I just told her that I hadn’t believed for a second that he was beavering away on his party work, with all devices turned off. We were all far too hooked on social media for that to happen. Most got a nosebleed if they were offline for more than ten minutes. But, that said, I hadn’t expected exactly this – but no, I wasn’t too surprised.

  Cole didn’t say much more. She was too busy getting down to whatever you did when first approaching a crime scene. She did make one pointed remark, however, that I could go outside and wait for the comrades to arrive and “facilitate their work”. Or, in other words: “Get out of my hair and sod off.”

  Not wanting to do as I was told – not straight away, anyway – I meandered upstairs, hearing once more the demand “not to touch anything”.

  It was a small house. Nosing about in the top two bedrooms, I could see that it was all tasteful decor with just the right amounts of interest, set against just the right amount of tones. There was the occasional framed political poster and a few more of Ali's paintings. On the shelves were some carefully chosen tomes aside humorously OTT objects, added to create a contrast. I did as I was told and didn’t touch anything. I just looked. In their bedroom, one thing did catch my eye: stuck onto a photo by the bedside was a note. Unlike the one downstairs, it was handwritten:

  Dear You’,

  Look after yourself and don’t work too hard. Don’t be too jealous of me living it up in fabuleux France. Ooh la la. I’ll be back soon and take you out for a wine (French, of course). If we can find some. I’ve left some goodies in the fridge for you.

  Missing you already.

  Love, Nev xx

  Below it was drawn a cartoon of someone who quite plainly was Ali.

  It had been handled several times. The edges were curled over and creases zigzagged the paper. Love emanated from the very lettering. Carefully, using my finger tip, I lifted up a corner to see what the photo was below it. Ali’s arms were wrapped around Nevin’s waist. Both were sporting tans and – it has to be said – muscles to die for. They were pulling faces at the camera on some idyllic beach somewhere. Nothing else seemed of interest and as I had no intention of searching their smalls, I gazed out the window, trying to make sense of this latest development. Then, I had an idea. I decided to make a call to someone who had the distinction of being one of the few comrades in the western world who hadn’t been invited here.

  After several rings, Jack Foxton answered, but on voice only. ‘Er, yes?’ he asked, sounding as if I had caught him doing something that he would rather not interrupt by answering a phone. Dismissing visions of rampant sex, straining on a toilet or him sporting a large pink bunny onesie, I got straight to the point.

  ‘Jack, its Pete Kalder. Sorry to bother you. Did you manage to find out what exactly Olivia Harrison was doing visiting Battersea electric sub-station?’

  His answer sounded like the voice my sister Sophie used to give to our dad when he asked whether she’d done her homework. Rather vague, as if there was something which wasn't being said. ‘Yeah, I did. I've just been there. No one was too sure about the reason for the visit. They did say that the person she wanted to see hadn’t actually been there, so she’d had a meeting with someone else. But he was off, not his shift, when I went there, so I couldn’t speak to him.’

  I tried to translate what he had just said. ‘So, Olivia went to the sub-station to talk to someone, but they hadn’t been there. So she spoke to another person, but they weren’t there when you visited?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Do we have a name for this person? The one she went to see but wasn't there?’

  ‘Yeah, she asked about some comrade called Terry. He had worked there for a while, but he’d been transferred on.’

  ‘Have we a last name?’ I said, drawing blood from a stone.

  ‘Oh, er, yeah, Terry Walker . . . Walls, no – Walsh. That’s it! Terry Walsh.’

  ‘Any idea why she wanted to talk to this Terry Walsh?’ I asked, already guessing the answer.

  ‘No, just that she wanted to talk to him, but he now works on the tube.’

  So, basically, he still hadn’t found out the reason for Olivia Harrison visiting the sub-station, which was what he had been asked to do. I tried not to let him know that I found this bloody annoying. After all, young Jack here was new at this. Even so, it was more than bloody annoying. I replied in the voice Dad would use when replying to my sister, slower than usual, taking care with every word I spoke. It was an important point which needed clarifying.

  ‘Let's be clear – no one had any idea why Olivia wanted to talk to Terry Walsh?’

  ‘Sorry, what? Oh, er, no. Not really.’

  My Lord, Dad had it easy. Sophie was never this bad.

  ‘What does this comrade Walsh do there?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Do we know what job they do?’

  ‘An engineer.’
<
br />   That narrowed it down to a few million. Everybody nowadays was either an engineer or technician, even if they worked in a beauty parlour, they’d be a nail technician or follicle engineer.

  ‘Do we know precisely what type?’

  ‘Sorry, I forgot to ask.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, slowing my speech down even more to a point where he would have good reason to complain that I was treating him as if he was a moron. Because I was. And he was. ‘Have we a name of the person Olivia did meet with, and maybe their phone number?’

  Praise be! This he did have, and sounding pleased to tell me both.

  ‘I’ll contact them myself, if you want,’ he said, trying to sound helpful.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jack,’ I said, suppressing a sigh, thinking that if we waited much longer for sleeping Jack F here to stir himself, half the party would be dead. I told him not to bother.

  Okay, Kalder, stay calm. Medication can only do so much. I was now resisting a growing urge to pop downstairs and grab the AA12 and pay dopy Foxton a visit.

  ‘No worries,’ I said. ‘We can find out when we go there. Jack, did she speak to anyone else?’

  ‘I asked around, and there were a couple of the guys who did briefly natter to her – just about boring stuff about air conditioning and the mechanics of air flow in this weather.’

  Interesting, because it was boring. Why would she want to know about that? ‘Did you find out why she was so interested in air conditioning?’

  ‘No one knew and didn’t feel the need to ask. After all, she was the lead member of the power-workers, so if she wanted to know all about pumped oxygen then why not tell her?’

  Fair point. I could do a little bit of research myself into the matter. It was obvious that Jacky boy here wasn’t too keen to jaw-jaw.

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked, expecting more vacillating.

  ‘No. Look, sorry, comrade, but I gotta go . . .’

  ‘Before you do,’ I said, knowing that this wasn’t going to please him, ‘I want you to go back to everyone we’ve spoken to who was around the car park when Olivia was killed and ask them if they remembered seeing Youssef Ali in the area. Take a photo off one of the party web sites to show. You’ll need to get the local workers’ council to help you. You can also see if the computer matches his picture with any of the composites we have.’