by Phil Brett
‘It’s a scooter,’ I muttered. ‘Not a moped. It’s a scooter!’
‘Of course. Sorry.’ She spoke as you might to an uptight six-year-old. ‘Can’t you leave it here and pick it up tomorrow?’
‘No chance!’ I replied with a force I hoped would prevent her from asking why. It would be rather difficult to explain why I did not like leaving the bike overnight in places where I wasn’t. Not because I feared that it would get nicked or damaged, as vandalism and theft had almost disappeared, but from a nebulous reason which was harder to define. It just felt wrong; not in its correct place; not where it belonged. With me. I hated it when it was at my house and I was at the Anchorage.
She didn’t push the suggestion but came out with another one. ‘We’re not far from the Anchorage. It wouldn’t take us too long to get there.’
Pushing away the thought that she was now reading my mind, I looked at my watch. It was gone five. Dr Brakus would still be patrolling the corridors. I shook my head at both her suggestion and the idea of bumping into the good doctor.
Standing in what now felt ice-age temperatures maybe wasn’t the greatest of ideas, as, no doubt, the pair of NWC militia would vouch for. They were jumping up and down in a desperate effort to keep warm.
Victoria hadn’t said a word, but impatience was exploding off her at my awkwardness. Much longer, and the militia guards could warm their hands on it. With a persistence which should have won some kind of medal, she had another run at the thorny issue of where my scooter could lay its head. Only the accompanying sigh, which could be heard even above the sound of the increasing wind and my teeth chattering, spoilt it. ‘Well, I live about twenty minutes away. There’s safe parking there and you can leave it by my front door.’ Obviously, she would have preferred another option, but, no doubt, she calculated that it was either that or freeze to death. Trying to convince herself more than me, she added, ‘I’m also starving, so we could grab something to eat and plan how we’re going to spend this night.’
She paused, then with a grin, she added, ‘I think all this means that you’re going to miss your curfew.’
I was sold on the idea.
25. Peony phalaenopsis
With the roads growing ever more treacherous, I was grateful that Cole had kept her speed well down, allowing me to keep up. In these conditions, I didn’t feel confident enough to weave between the traffic or to have some fun pushing her to speed things up. Even when the traffic was minimal – as, surprisingly enough, Tottenham High Road was – we both were the epitome of sedate, conservative drivers.
We travelled deeper into Tottenham, home to our footie rivals, Spurs, who, like Arsenal, had become becalmed in these political waters. I had been here many times to watch the heated derby when, even in weather like this, our passions would keep us warm. I had been eight when my dad had first brought me here, and forever more I was hooked on the illogical but enticing spectacle of grown men kicking a ball around. Back then, Tottenham was a vastly different place: a multi-cultural working class district. Two major periods of gentrification had changed that, socially cleansing the area. I dimly remembered Cole telling me that she had grown up around here. No doubt, it was pure coincidence that the temperature appeared to drop a few degrees every hundred metres we travelled.
She indicated right, at what looked like a popular coffee bar, which – despite Tottenham now doing a fair impression of Siberia – had several couples chatting and sipping their lattes. Quickly, we found ourselves at the entrance of a small block of low-rise, modern(ish) flats. Passing pillars which had once supported the gates of a gated community, but which now stood as the symbol of the opening of once closed spaces, I briefly wondered what role she had played in their removal. No doubt, the lead.
These were the type of flats which had once been known as the landing craft of gentrification, both because their shape resembled such vehicles, and also because they tended to be built in the first waves of an area going seriously up-market. To be honest, many of us thought these pre-fabs wouldn’t last too long, but they had and were still here.
Cole parked and dared to poke her head out into strangling cold to shout the number twelve, to indicate where I was to park. I did as she told me and joined her.
She swiped her card key, went in and climbed two flights of stairs. Swiping again, she and I entered the hallowed, the sacred, home of Victoria Cole. Like a kid in a fancy toy shop, my eyes darted all over the place, keen to absorb all the goodies on show.
Not that there was much to see. The small hallway only betrayed doors to three rooms. One barely deserved the title, being not more than a cupboard. Squeezed in were some weights, a dumb bell and a running machine. Her gym. The next room gave a glimpse of a sink, suggesting the bathroom. The last door was shut. Assuming that she did have to sleep, then that would be the bedroom. We walked into the open-plan lounge/kitchen area. At the far end was the famous pointed window which gave these cuboids their distinctive shape and cause for their nickname.
Throwing her jacket over the back of one of the three cream armchairs, she asked if I wanted something to drink. I looked around for somewhere to hang my coat, but seeing nowhere, I laid it over the back of another armchair and accepted the offer of a coffee.
This room was the real Vic Cole. If I was expecting something gob smacking, I was disappointed. It seemed a pretty bog-standard comfortable, if uninspired, home for the single professional. Usual inhabitants would have been in advertising, rather than police officers turned revolutionaries.
Plain pastel walls were the norm, with the exception of the obligatory one carrying crazy wallpaper, which, in this case, was William Morris meets Sanskrit tattoos. This, as herds of interior designers had explained, provided a contrast. It also showed just how wacky and individual the owner was. They all had walls like this.
There wasn’t much to set the heart pounding with originality anywhere else, either. There was a coffee table and a communications screen and that was about it. The carpet was a functional pale green. It all looked pretty bare to me. But then, my home was rammed – in, I had to stress, a tasteful, artful, homey, and yet at the same time stylish way – with books, vintage compact discs, pictures and lamps. Mine looked interesting and classy; this looked like a show home, with the bare minimum of personal touches.
Something did catch my eye: a small shelf of a dozen or so books. How retro! I dutifully inspected them, expecting to find that they were either on criminology, fast cars or truncheon designs. Rather surprisingly, they were map books or, to be more precise, the history of cartography. There was a metaphor in there somewhere.
To their right were photographs, all in identical steel frames. With the subtlety of a woolly mammoth rampaging through a glass factory, I strolled over to look at them. Some were obviously of family. I thought I could recognise in the young girl, with a serious look but an obvious fondness for sport, a young V. Cole. The middle-aged woman with her was probably her mum. Mum's hair was black, dyed I’d guess. She had a penchant for bright makeup, but the nose, cheeks and forehead were pure Victoria. A couple had been taken abroad (one looked like Paris to me), but there was one taken inside the old Spurs ground during a match. Cole looked barely in double figures of age and was wrapped in a thick scarf. The family were all grins and were standing with the pitch behind them. Although blurry, I could make out the Spurs' colours. Looking closer, I thought I could make out red and white, and wondered if we'd been playing. Perhaps, years ago, in a different age, I had stood in the opposite end to her family. Another metaphor seemed to pop up, but again I decided to keep it in my head.
Below it, was one of her and her mum in a Tottenham street, in front of what looked like a fish stall, in the days before these landing craft had hit the N17 beach. The next was of more interest. Cole was in full uniform, marching purposefully somewhere – pride and honour glowing from every cell of her body. And there it was, still on her wall. In contrast and contradiction to it were several of Cole in revol
utionary action mode, on demonstrations, street battles and marches over the last two years. Here, she had swapped sides and, gun in hand, red arm band on her arm and rebellion swelling her heart, she could be seen fighting the good fight.
What was of interest was, despite what we had gone through together and what I reluctantly had to admit I owed her, it was still a fact that that the photograph of her in blue disturbed me too much for those of her in red to compensate.
‘Learning anything?’ she asked from her position in the kitchen, with more than a hint of sarcasm.
I didn’t want to, or could not, answer truthfully, that yes, actually I had. For starters, that whilst she had come to terms with her past, I had not. So I did what I did as I always do in an awkward situation – I talked bollocks. Dr Brakus had discussed this reaction many times and would have been overjoyed to have been here to hear this particular example. ‘Only that you suffered as a child from being forced to support a truly crap team. I’m surprised that social services weren’t called in.’
She didn’t answer, and I got the uncomfortable feeling that she knew full well that my comment was a pitiful attempt to avoid saying anything meaningful. Walking around the cream work-service which served as a divider between the kitchen and lounge, she passed me the coffee in a white china cup and saucer. ‘My knicker drawer is in my bedroom, if you want to snoop about.’
I think that was what passed for humour in her world. I smiled and couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. Instead, I looked at the oak brown colour of the drink, treasured its aroma and took a sip of the coffee, finding to my surprise that it was rather a fine blend. I knew the blockade was slackening a little, but it was still an impressive feat to have managed to get hold of some.
‘So . . .’ She smiled, before sipping the drink and enjoying both it and my evident discomfort.
‘Live here on your own?’ I asked, making a game attempt at small talk. My guess was that she did. This flat had the mark of one person.
‘Yep, just me. Not even a cat for company.’
I nodded, and we tripped into an uneasy silence, standing there, staring at nothing and drinking coffee. We could have sat down and chin-wagged about her life. I could have found out about her past and discovered why exactly a Tottenham girl had chosen to join, of all things, the police force. Or what her family, friends and neighbours had thought about it. She could have enlightened me on the milestones of the journey from wonder-kid detective to the revolution’s woman to turn to. And what did ma and pa say about that turn of events? Were they still alive? Ah, yes, I could have learnt so much. But I didn’t. Such a conversation would have prompted her to ask about mine.
Then, there was the dark mystery of her personal life. Okay, so no one else lived here, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a man or woman or transgender person, or people in the plural, around somewhere. But again, that would have been met either by haughty silence or worse, a pally desire to poke into mine. Asking about what once had been my family, my beloved Caroline and our intelligent, beautiful and bloody-minded daughter, Lisa. They now resided in a room which only I could enter.
So we stood there.
‘Hungry?’ she asked, perhaps wearying of studying blankness.
That might appear to be a simpler question than the ones which had been raised and left answered in my head, but the meds had managed to make my appetite erratic to say the least. I hadn’t actually eaten for ages, but was I hungry?
She evidently had decided that we were. ‘I’ve got some pasta I could heat up and we could talk about tonight. It’s going to be a long one, so I think we need something to eat.’
‘Sounds good.’ I said, trying to adopt my most sociable tone.
I followed her to the kitchen and stood by the work surface.
Deciding on the policy that talking about the case was a lot safer than anything else, I asked her what she thought of the organisation of the investigation. She shrugged and spooned the pasta from one pot into another.
‘Not impressed, then.’
She gave another shrug, ‘As we’ve said before, we are all learning the new ways and so there are going to be mistakes. The old system of policing had been around for a couple of hundred years, so we have to give this a chance.’
God, I was getting tired of hearing that.
‘And, of course,’ she continued, ‘I wouldn't say we've found an efficient way of working. But it has new ways, with a new perspective and priorities, with new people. So, I think, all things considered, we're doing okay.’
‘Not many of your old colleagues have come over to us, I hear.’
She grinned. ‘I thought you'd be pleased with that, Pete. You find us three hard enough.’ She turned on the oven. ‘No, I think those who wanted to actively and violently oppose us have, at least temporarily, gone underground. Most, though, are sulking in their homes, relieved that the fears of mass firing squads were just propaganda, but still not happy. They'll emerge if there is any weakness from our side. Some, especially the technicians, did have skills we could use, so whatever you might think, it is a shame, but we’ll manage.’
For a moment, even my imagination, wrapped as it was in medicated cotton wool, and my emotions, which were strapped securely down, felt regret that we had been so decent and civilised and had not done as the Prime Minister had said we would. He had predicted mass executions. But we had forgiven, if not forgotten. Now, they sat at home, stewing in their own indignation. Those, that is, who hadn't taken up a more active stance.
Whilst I had been locked up waiting a trial for murder, in addition to the bloody battle on the Thames that had culminated with the MI6 building being blown up, MI5, Special Branch and other such departments had erased all their records, before they too, had gone up with a bang. Many good comrades had been caught in the explosions trying to discover the murky secrets of the secret state. As had any poor sod within the blast radius. Even that had been minor compared to what had happened in GCHQ. There, a dirty bomb had gone off, infecting the area for kilometres around.
Getting the plates and cutlery out, she pulled herself away from thoughts. ‘And you still agree that the tube explosion is relevant?’
‘Alongside the fracking site,’ I added.
She looked at the pasta and scrunched up her nose to smell it. I didn’t know about close up, but it smelt good from where I was standing. A glass of red would go with it superbly, I thought to myself.
She nodded. ‘What links them?’
‘They’re both underground.’
She gave me one of her looks – all wide eyed and scoffing, whilst attempting to be understanding of my slow wittedness. I was beginning to recognise the look. ‘Okay, why would that be an issue?’
I had no idea. I also, as I admitted to her, had no idea why the fracking centre would be a target. Everyone knew that the party wanted them all closed. It was only because we had lost the NWC vote that they were still operating. Even then, those opposing closure had only done so because they wanted time to consider how they would be replaced. People considered fracking as dangerous, eco-unfriendly and out of date, so any attack would just give us more reason to close them.
Dishing the food out, she agreed. ‘I am also stumped as to the why that particular one is fully staffed. All the others seem to be running on a skeleton crew.’
The same thought had occurred to me.
‘Did your sister have any ideas on the matter?’
Oh, that was cleverly and sneakily done. Slipped right in, and in a way that I could not avoid talking about her.
‘Not really. She is still hopeful that there is a future in the industry.’ I quickly considered how much of what Sophie had said to me I should say, before deciding that Cole could make do with a resume. ‘She did say that some shady characters had shown an interest in the industry, but nothing was of note.’
I didn’t look at Cole. Instead, I pretended to find her fridge freezer incredibly interesting. I could tell that she w
anted to know more but had decided not to press me on the matter.
She passed me the plate. ‘There’s salt and pepper if you need it.’
I took a mouthful. It tasted good. Being well brought up, I both thanked and complimented her.
Ignoring my social niceties, she said, ‘So, here’s what I think we should do. We need to get over to the Battersea Sub-station and see if we can find out a bit more than Jack Foxton managed to. From there, we visit the possible underground stations which Olivia could have visited and see if there is a link.’
‘Apart from being underground,’ I mumbled, with my mouth full. ‘Nick, her partner, did say that she had said something about moles.’
‘Yeah, that’s helpful. Thanks, Pete.’
I guessed that she wasn’t being totally sincere.
‘Roijin has found ten tube stations she might have visited which have that ventilation system, so we need to see them tonight. I thought we could go by bus to each one.’ She paused, waiting no doubt for applause for her humour, as I was enjoying the food she’d made me.
Feeling magnanimous, I smiled.
‘No, actually,’ she said, ‘I thought we could drive to the Battersea power sub-station, then catch the tube from Vauxhall onto the Hackney East line and then work our way through the stations. It’s going to be a long haul, but we have to do it.’
Sitting awkwardly on a stool, I nodded, ate, and thought that I could kiss goodbye a night’s sleep. I vacantly stared at the photographs on the wall, avoiding the one with Cole in uniform, and gazed at the one at the match. I did miss footie. As I looked, something occurred to me. Something bloody obvious.
‘Terry Walsh,’ I muttered.
She gave me that look. ‘Yeah, he was the engineer that Olivia had wanted to see in Battersea, and he’d been transferred to the underground, but—’
‘Kemal and Joseph could not find any mention of him. Yeah, I know that, Victoria. But maybe he was in the personnel records under another name, under Thierry Walsh? A Thierry Walsh was one of the people killed in the explosion at the tube station. I remember it because he was named after the great Arsenal striker. What if he anglicised it and just went as Terry? Surely, it’s too much of a coincidence. I think we should forget about the other stations and just head to Hackney East, the scene of the explosion and the death of one T. Walsh.’