by Phil Brett
I smiled. A full smug smile. I thought I had. ‘Zero, eight, full stop, zero, five, full stop, eighteen zero eight,’ I said.
33. Pontederia cordata
The winter sun appeared to have given up any attempt at tickling warmth into the morning on the English south east coast. Despite the car’s heating, the atmosphere was rather chilly as we drove to the fracking plant to meet Janet Kovac. A plausible reason for the lack of warmth, was just how tired I felt. The combination of the late hour of getting into bed, with the early one of dragging myself out of it had sent my old body into shock. I think I'd managed an hour's sleep, which was perhaps why I had been rather touchy when Cole had picked me up this morning. An obscenely jolly Victoria Cole had arrived, feeling optimistic that we had at last had some idea what was going on. Her attempt at humour at my expense had propelled me into a bad mood of such sourness that no amount of pasteurisation would have improved it.
Seeing in my navy double-breasted overcoat, she had asked if I'd be warm enough, and then for good measure, informed me that comfort was more important than style. Obviously, she thought of herself as being a substitute Dr Brakus. She added insult to injury by laughing when I took it off before getting into her car. On seeing my suit, she asked if I thought I was going to a job interview. Yeah, funny woman. It was my burgundy three-piece with a seven button jacket (although the bottom two were too low to be buttoned). It had faint stripes and was tailored high enough so only the top of my white shirt and the knot of my canary yellow tie was showing. It would be one cool office employee who wore this to work! She had then found the need to comment that my winkle pickers would get ruined in the sludge, and then, finally, as I closed the car door, she had felt the urge say something derogatory about my socks. Seems they might distract when driving. I was blessed to receive such Wildean wit so early in morning. Since when had she become chief fashion commissariat? Style advice from a woman who not so long ago had worn a blue hat and a truncheon as accessories!
I was now having doubts that what I had discovered was just a figment of my imagination. Certainly, Asher had thought so. Maybe it was just desperation after such a long night.
Jackie Payne’s much heralded speech at the opening of the international environment conference was due at 5pm today. Ominously, it was titled, A World Safe in our Hands. Payne was going to reiterate our commitment to democracy and rights, not only to our own population, including anyone who disagreed with the National Workers Council, but also to the world itself, the actual ecology of the planet. But as we knew, someone hoped to cast doubt on that statement. And whilst there were many things we still didn’t know, one thing was for certain – this fracking centre was where whatever was going to happen was going to happen.
Reaching the front gates, a small group of very cold looking armed militia checked our ID and let us through. A large truck followed us in.
Parking, Janet Kovac met us with her usual wide grin. The first snowflakes were floating down, landing on her hair, making it glisten. Her smile matched it. She was, it seemed, another person who could do without sleep. After air kissing my cheek, she also felt the need to make a comment on my coat and shoes. The truck turned in the car park, splashing my trousers with its huge wheels.
‘Mind your lovely clothes,’ Janet yelled, with obvious and sincere concern.
Cole grinned, with sincere enjoyment.
I looked down at the legs of my trousers. My sulk got deeper.
We squelched and crunched our way through the frozen mud to the offices. Armed militia, wrapped in an assortment of bulky clothes, watched us from the perimeter fence. Seeing them made me wonder if my subdued feeling was maybe more to due to fear of what might be ahead of us than to hurt feelings. If things went wrong here, then there’d be more than quips being thrown at me.
Janet appeared to have taken the same happy pills as Victoria had. As she led us in, she jabbered away about the weather and how good it was to have visitors again. ‘I saw the news this morning. That photo you sent me is of the guy they have arrested for the murder of Olivia Harrison isn't it?’ I confirmed that it was.
On entering the building, she asked if we wanted to use the same place as before and whether we wanted any tea and coffee. To her surprise, Cole declined both, and instead marched in and curtly asked, ‘Where are the personal lockers?’
‘What?’
‘Where do the workers here keep their personal belongings?’
‘Oh, right. It’s just up the corridor. The lockers—’
‘Good. Take us there.’
Despite looking a little put out – presumably she’d had some tasty biscuits especially brought in for us and was upset that Cole was passing them up – she led us down a corridor. It, like my poor trousers, had seen better days. Through one of the doors, we entered a room with approximately one hundred lockers lining the walls. Two low wooden tables were at the centre of the room. It looked like a changing room in some decrepit sports changing room. I half expected a grunting rugby team to come in at any moment, throwing sweaty jock-straps in all directions.
With one circular look, Cole sized up the place – presumably not with any phantom sports team in mind – and asked her who had the keys.
For a second, Janet looked puzzled, as if Cole had just spoken Latin. Then she understood, ‘Oh, no. None of them are locked. We trust each other here. No one is going to invade someone else’s personal space here, so what is the point of locking them? After all, comrade, it is a new trusting society which we are building.’
No sooner had Janet professed trust in people’s integrity than Cole had started opening doors and rummaging through the contents.
Janet looked aghast.
‘You start at the other end,’ Victoria told me. She took out what looked like a tiny pen. ‘These bomb sensors will locate one up to fifteen metres away, pretty much regardless of type and even if it is not activated. Touch the blue light and it comes on. If it turns red, you’ve found a bomb.’
She threw one at me and I caught it. It looked like a novelty Disney biro to me, but I took her word for it.
I nodded. Pulling a sympathetic face, I explained, ‘Sorry, Janet. We don’t have time for social niceties. Time is against us.’
But just before I was given a chance to ransack the place, my phone went. It was Jackie Payne. Victoria had told her where we were going to be, and what we were intending to do, so why she had decided to ring now I had no idea. To find out, I had the novel idea of answering it. The phone was on audio only. Jackie, herself, was on the setting of only-Jackie-will-speak. Without pausing or, it seemed, even breathing, she told me of the latest news from London. Once the information had been departed, she instructed me to pass it onto Victoria. Then she hung up.
Once I had processed what she had said, I laughed. Loudly. In doing so, I disturbed both Janet Kovac's awkward shuffling and Victoria’s impression of a housebreaker. Both looked at me.
‘Well,’ I said, stifling my rather juvenile amusement and trying hard remember why we were here. ‘We were right to have doubts over the guilt of Jack Foxton, because he is in the clear. That was Jackie. Someone has come forward to give him an alibi.’ I giggled.
They didn’t. Both women did look at me as if I had gone insane. They’d best talk to Dr Call-me-Sarah Brakus about that.
I explained. ‘A woman has said that he was with her at the times of the Ali's and Harrison's murders. Indeed, at quite a few other times, as well.’
‘And that can be verified?’
‘Totally. Bale has checked the woman's media footprint and, well, Foxton's feet are there too! Not to mention other parts of his anatomy.’
Cole didn't look surprised, but rather puzzled, by the news, ‘He was having sex with someone?'
"Yep!'
"Okay, well at least that confirms what we both thought - that Foxton isn't our man. But why didn’t he just say where he was?’
‘Because he may not have been our man, but he was definitely so
meone else's. There are a couple of reasons for his silence. The first being the woman is in a long term relationship and Jack was being touchingly old fashioned and chivalrous. He didn’t want the news to come out and damage the woman’s relationship. So, instead, he kept quiet and had his face all over the media as being a cold-blooded assassin. As opposed, that is, to being a warm-blooded love hound.’
Clearly, I was the only one seeing the humour here. Victoria didn’t respond, not even to crack a smile, but instead simply asked, ‘What’s the second? You mentioned that there were two reasons.’
‘It’s who the woman is. It's Hailey Reece, the Central Committee member. Jackie is not very happy about it one bit. Not for any moral reasons. She couldn’t give a damn about that; says it is a personal matter between Hailey and her partner. What has put her nose out of joint is that at the times when Hailey and Jack were together, she should have been hard at work, organising, urm, the party’s “Be Happy, Be Healthy and Be Safe” sex education campaign. At that, my pretence of being sensible and mature just gave up, and I roared with laughter.
This time, I wasn’t alone. Janet joined in, rubbing her eyes beneath her glasses and then, finally, even Victoria allowed herself a chuckle.
After a few moments, we eventually remembered our ages and why we were there, and pulled ourselves together. So, after a few platitudes from Cole about what needed to be done in light of this and a few attempts from me to further drag the joke out, we set about searching the lockers from opposite ends of the room. Most had the debris from work you'd expect: the odd biscuit, pack of tea bags, some spare clothes and the odd handbag. As the minutes past, we did uncover such treasure as chocolate bars, apples, pain killers and tampons. I had never pretended to be a chemistry student, but I was pretty sure that these were not the components of a bomb. That was a shame, because basically that was what we were looking for. We weren’t subtle in doing it. Issues of invading personal space weren’t really taken into account as we turned bags upside down, pulled out pockets and generally did a fair impression of immigration officials conducting a search after snorting a gram of coke they'd previously seized. Janet seemed less inclined to be as rigorous as the pair of us and only half- heartedly picked up the occasional bag to peer into.
After half an hour of searching, we had achieved in making a huge pile of stuff on the table and truly upsetting Janet. But we had found nothing of importance.
Victoria didn’t look too surprised at our failure. ‘Oh, well,’ she sighed. ‘It was a long shot. This late in the day, any bomb would already be in place.’
‘Bomb!’ Janet’s glasses almost fell off her face.
Neither of us felt the need to explain. Instead, Victoria simply asked for a schematic of the whole extraction site. Conversely, Janet didn’t feel the need to ask why she might want such a thing, and instead placed her phone on the pile of clothes. She, like me, had quickly accepted that it was easier to simply do as you were told by this young woman. Or, maybe, she was just shocked at the possibility of a bomb being here. Moving a stray sock out the way, she pressed a few buttons and a screen appeared, swiftly followed by a pretty photograph of the centre, which had obviously been taken on a lovely summer’s day with the sun out, the grass green and the sky blue. She switched from the picture to a plan. Now, with her earlier joviality erased, she asked, in a voice dripping with concern and confusion, what Cole wanted to see.
‘If you were to plant a bomb which would do the maximum damage, where would you place it?’
She flinched at the b-word again, but said nothing. Instead, she zoomed into the area labelled administration. ‘If the intention is to cause loss of life to the staff, then the greatest number will be here. To destabilise the plant, to close it down, then here would be the place.’ She changed the picture to a room labelled control room. It wouldn’t take much . . . er . . . explosives in either case.’ She paused and looked at the both of us. ‘Do you really think that there is a bomb here?’
Cole replied curtly, ‘Yes. Don’t you? You’ve been expecting an attack. That’s why you have such heavy security. It was mentioned last time we were here.’
Janet went from pale to translucent.
‘When we arrived this morning, the car park seemed full.’
‘I suppose that’s because management have asked everyone in today for a full system’s analysis. We are at full allocation today. Both shifts are in.’
‘Who, exactly, asked everyone to be in?’
‘The plant management team. We elect who goes on it and they run the plant.’
‘And was it their idea, or were they told to do that?’
She shrugged. ‘No idea.’
Today of all days – all the staff were here, and yet the security was at a third.
‘Where would they place a bomb if they wanted to sabotage the local water supply?’ I asked.
She tapped a few keys and switched the picture to a split screen showing five pipe junctions.
Victoria stuffed her hands in her pockets. Maybe her thick fake wool-lined flying jacket wasn't keeping her as warm as she hoped. ‘Can you enlarge and go to 3D?’
‘Sure.’ Janet did as she had been requested and up they came. We circled around them but could see nothing which looked dodgy – explosive dodgy, that is.
‘But, comrades,’ Janet said, clearly thinking that we were wasting our time, ‘even if they blew up all five pressurisation junctions, the contamination would only be a possibility and would be a slow process. Alarms would immediately go off and security would be alerted and sent to investigate. Our response would be very quick. We would stop the plant, so the contamination would be minor. Even if they managed to turn all the security monitors off, then the pressure loss would appear in the control room in a matter of hours. The contamination would be more serious, but we would still have enough time to warn residents not to drink the water whilst we purified it. At most, there’d be dodgy tummies and the organisational hassle of bringing in water trucks.’
It was pretty much what my sister had said. It was hardly enough to embarrass Jackie on the world stage.
Victoria pointed at the images. ‘Are these cameras always on?’
‘Yes, the whole underground site is covered with visual security in case of any unlikely malfunctions which the Control Centre doesn’t pick up on.’
‘So, this Control Centre would have the exact locations?’
‘Of course. You can see the coordinates in the right hand corner for each pipe junction. That one there is Zone C4, Section Delta, Level 4, Point 32, 34.’
And there was me thinking they’d have snappy and witty names such as Clapham Junction or Baker Street Junction. That last one would be an elementary one, I silently joked to myself.
Ignoring the strange grin which had appeared on my face for reasons which I could hardly share, Victoria asked her whether each junction was easy to access.
‘Yes. We’re a modern engineering plant here. The donkeys and canaries have been long pensioned off. We don’t have pick axes either.’
Cole didn’t laugh, smile or even share any rib-tickling puns of her own surname. Instead, she coolly replied, ‘That was coal mining, over a hundred years ago; this is gas extraction. That said, both are dead industries. Can you take us there? Start with the one located at Zone C4.’
Ouch. And that was why I hadn’t mentioned by Sherlock Holmes elementary joke. My fellow comrade in detection only did humour when it was at my expense. With her attempt at wit unmercifully crushed, Kovac picked up her phone and told us to follow her.
We did. I looked behind at the mess we had created. Someone was not going to be happy when they saw it. But then, we had bigger things to worry about.
Leaving the way we came in, Janet took a sharp left and opened a rather dull, non-descript door. That opened up into a small floor with three lifts. Pressing the button for the middle one, the door opened. Getting in, she pressed level 4.
We were only in there for a matter of s
econds, and it had felt that we hadn’t moved, but I would guess we had gone pretty deep, pretty quickly. Still, on leaving the lift, if I had expected dripping water, bare rock faces and bats, I was disappointed. It was just a brightly lit grey-painted tunnel, which was big enough to fit two people walking side by side.
‘We can walk from here. It’s not far. Most of the work here is automated and deep in the rock, so there is no need whatsoever to have access to it. The actual extraction process is huge and spreads out like an octopus underground, but what areas can be reached by foot is actually pretty small.’
She was right. We got there in less than a couple of minutes. There wasn’t much to see in the tunnels, just the occasional sign and the odd dial or gauge. There was no need for a torch because the lights blazed away, oblivious to the waste of energy of having lit tunnels where few people ever came. To me, the pipe junction looked like a huge heart valve belonging to some intergalactic underwater creature. But perhaps that was me just being melodramatic.
The three of us looked around it and saw nothing which resembled a bomb. Cole and I used our pens, but the light stayed blue. Indeed, I could not see as much as a rivet or even a speck of rust. All was smooth and grey. It did strike me that it was in stark contrast to above ground, which all looked ramshackle and well past its sell-by date.
Victoria looked along one of the pipes which led upwards. ‘What would happen if a bomb was let off here? Both in the short and long term.’
‘Not much. There might be a very slight tremor for the sheep above, but it would only be for a second. A rupture here would lead to water escaping and pressure dropping. The tunnel would start to fill, but the Control Centre would instantly cut the flow, so even if it was to go off now, as long as we weren’t next to the blast of the direct burst of the water, we’d get drenched but that’s about it.’
‘Hmm, thanks.’