The Ministry of Love

by O'Mahony, Jason

  To even someone cursed to her levels of self-centredness, Leeza recognised that something wasn’t right and was about to say something when her stomach grumbled. Then she felt the cramp, her stomach tightening as she felt its contents on the move. At the exact same time Premiership Hopeful suddenly leapt from the sofa and ran for the bathroom, nearly tripping over the three empty bottles of Vodka on the floor.

  Then Leeza felt her own bowel move and ran for the door of the toilet, her eight-inch high heels taking as much concentration as her bowel management. She flung open the door. Premiership Hopeful was sitting on the toilet looking distressed. The smell was eye-wateringly repulsive, hitting her like a thick fog and causing her to cough, which distracted her enough for a loud fart to escape.

  “I need the toilet!” she screamed, her bowels now in full Titanic evacuation mode.

  “Fuck off!” Premiership Hopeful said, the mixture of alcohol, drugs and bowel emergency dispelling his initial feelings of awe and sexual excitement at being in her presence earlier that evening, where they had had sex on a sofa in the nightclub.

  Then the second fella bundled into the bathroom, looking wild-eyed and red-faced.

  “Get off that fucking toilet, I’m bursting!” he shouted, and lunged at Premiership Hopeful.

  Premiership Hopeful clenched his hands in a fighting pose which, given his build, would have looked impressive save for the fact that he was sitting on a toilet with his trousers around his ankles. That combined with the toxic stench and the unnatural noises emanating from the bowl all resulted in a strange recreation of a medium sized orchestral wind section warming up. Badly.

  Leeza felt her bowels order a full-scale evacuation and screamed at him to get off the toilet, grabbing one of his outstretched arms. He shoved her back, causing her to totter on her high heels and breaking her concentration, allowing her clenched backside to momentarily open. She just managed to get her backside over the side of the bath when the faeces started running like water past her thong and down her leg.

  Somewhere in the recesses of her brain a sliver of dignity re-ignited itself, causing her to cry as she realised her situation. Not that it was noticed by the two men, who were now in a full blown brawl, save with their trousers around their ankles and faeces being flung everywhere as they grappled, their backsides emitting a loud soundtrack of toots and parps as they slid in each others’ filth.

  One of Leeza’s bandmates stumbled into the bathroom, complaining that she couldn’t get the other girl or guy to wake up. Blood ran down her upper lip from her nostril, but she didn’t notice that as she suddenly slipped in the thin film of shit on the bathroom floor and cracked her head off the toilet bowl, shattering her skull (and the toilet bowl), dying instantly.

  Leeza didn’t see this, as she had already joined them in permanent slumber, lying cold and open-eyed in a bath filled with her own excrement.

  CHAPTER 4

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  MI5 SMASH NCA HACKER RING - The Times

  ---

  Police raids across London this morning, coordinated by the security service, have arrested over a dozen individuals attempting to tamper with the National Companionship Agency database. The suspects were apparently engaged in a plan to allow them to gain personal information about applicants, including their psychological profiles, for blackmail purposes. This follows arrests last week of a number of university students who attempted to manipulate the NCA database in order to get themselves chosen as ideal candidates for certain celebrities who have applied to the programme.

  Dr. Julian Tredestrian, the NCA director, has assured the public that the NCA database is secure. “As the Prime Minister told the house, the level of security around the NCA database is comparable to that around the Trident missile system and the nation’s nuclear power plants. The NCA is a vital national interest and will be protected.”

  ---

  Susan was sure she could hear Bananarama’s ‘I Want You Back’ as she walked the corridor office. She was right. A door opened, and she walked into a small room with a desk and two chairs set up. An iPod was playing in the empty room.

  Susan turned to leave when Julian came in. She recognised him immediately, being one of that small fraction of the population who actually liked to keep themselves informed about current affairs and the people who played a role in them.

  The Saturday meeting she had been attending had been not unpleasant. The meeting place, a small tasteful hotel set in well manicured grounds, was taken over by the NCA for the weekend, where the NCA hoped to ‘advise and assist’ over four thousand women. This particular event was specifically for heterosexual women, the single biggest group of applicants to the Agency and a cluster of tough-looking female security personnel were deployed to ensure that it remained a female-only event. The NCA regarded this as part of the confidence building process, in that the women could meet other women, and that they together could begin their journey without the prying eyes of men, or indeed without the pressure from other women getting competitive if prospective suitors were around.

  Susan was surprised at the types of women who turned up. She subconsciously put herself into the pecking order when she entered the room, rating her attractiveness against the other women present, and found that she was coming out quite respectably. Some women were with friends though, judging by the nervous eyes, most were there alone and were pretty much clutching to hope. A number of women seemed to Susan to be far too attractive to be here. One or two women were really quite striking and she wondered what on Earth they were doing here. Surely they didn’t need something like the NCA? Yet when she got talking to one of them, she realised the reality — here was a beautiful woman who had been shattered by a man, her former husband, who had ground her down and broken her to the extent that she had lost confidence in herself. It was her friends who had convinced her to give the NCA a try.

  As they broke into groups, encouraged by the NCA staff to have a coffee and a biscuit, they all opened up with their stories. What struck Susan was that the ones who had signed up ‘for a laugh’ found themselves getting pretty short shrift from the other women. The majority were taking this thing seriously, as a means of putting some hope into their lives and ending the loneliness.

  After registration, a cheerful, short brunette named Michelle introduced herself as a Relationships Enhancement Officer and spoke to the room, explaining how the process would work that day. The purpose of the day, she noted, was for each client to meet with an assigned REO such as her who would go through her original application and then help her through the psychological evaluation.

  “Where are all the men?” one younger woman asked.

  “We keep them on pallets around the back,” Michelle replied, with a smile, before explaining that other groups of clients would be processed differently.

  “Men aren’t processed in groups like this, well, not heterosexual ones anyway. We tend to find that straight men can’t be processed in groups because the lad culture skews the answers they give. Men in private admit to looking for different things in women than they will admit to amongst other men.”

  Michelle then started guiding the women into separate rooms to meet with their REOs.

  Two hours later, Susan found herself wandering the top floor of the hotel with a slip of paper, looking for a final interview, when she heard the music coming from the room she was supposed to attend.

  “I’m sorry. They said second right…Sorry. Wrong turn somewhere.” She apologised.

  “No, no, you are in the right place. I’m Julian Tredestrian.” He stuck out a hand, turning off the iPod and speakers with the other.

  “Yes, I know who you are. You’re doing the interviews yourself?” She asked.

  “Some of them, yes. Have to be at the coalface, you know, on the ground. Now, Susan Fisher isn’t it?” He consulted a clipboard, gesturing her to sit on a seat.

  “Now, Ms. Fisher. Let me explain what happens next. I know you and the other first set of our
volunteers have been through the DVD explaining how it works. Are you happy enough? Any questions? I know you were asked that at the presentation but we’re very big here at the NCA at keeping people informed.”

  “Well, I was wondering why so many questions were so similar. I mean, I must have answered over 200 questions and a lot of them seemed to be variations on the same thing.”

  Tredestrian nodded enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically, like a bobbing dog toy on the back-shelf of a car.

  “Well spotted, you are quite right. You see — fascinating stuff this, actually — people tend to have a tendency to try to paint themselves in a good light when engaged in this manner of thing. They also get bored and stop thinking about the answers they are giving and in some cases don’t even read the question before answering. That’s why we ask variations, so that we can compare three or four questions to get an average answer from an individual. That’s why we also use the polygraph. It’s nowhere near as reliable as the Americans would have you believe, by the way, but a good pointer. Actually, I’d have preferred to drug you all.”

  Her wide-eyed stare alerted him to his faux pas.

  “I’m sorry, I meant to help you relax, to give more honest answers. Not Rohypnol or anything. No, we wouldn’t use that, no.”

  After a horribly pregnant pause, the doctor got back on the original track.

  “Anyway, after the tests we have a computer programme that starts to build a profile of what your personality is like and starts to match it to possible matches.”

  “But isn’t there a question period where I get asked about my dream partner?” Susan asked, instantly regretting the Mills and Boon phrasing.

  “Oh yes! But we tend to find that most people have a fairly superficial idea as to what they’re looking for that just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. People say they’ll never date a smoker, or a person over a certain age, or with an accent but when you add just that little sprinkle of fairy dust…”

  “Yes?” Susan asked expectantly. He looked at her. “Well, you know, love’s funny. We can improve the variables, but there are all the little things that people themselves don’t even know they like. Dimples, the way someone flicks their hair.”

  “I thought you meant Cupid 12.”

  “People tend to overestimate the effect Cupid 12 can have. It adjusts certain chemicals, makes people more receptive. It’s not, you know, like slipping a Mickey.”

  Her silent reaction alerted him.

  “A Mickey Finn, you know, a sleeping draught, knockout pills? Like in the old Raymond Chandler books? Cupid 12 doesn’t completely overpower people’s senses, one’s ability to make rational choices. I sometimes think the media tends to overhype the whole thing. It’s not, you know, a love potion, as such. It won’t make one love someone that they would have never loved. It just lowers one’s inhibitions, makes one more open to possibilities.”

  Julian finally sat down in front of her and took a moment to review her file.

  “Alright, Susan, this is what happens next. We have built up a profile as to who you are. We will now build up a profile as to whom you would like to meet. As previously, this will involve a lot of questions but also a lot of monitoring your reactions to different images of men, women, places…”

  “Women?”

  “Oh yes. You claim to be heterosexual. You might even think you are, but…”

  “What?” Susan almost jumped up from her seat.

  Julian grimaced. He had done this twice already and still hadn’t got the wording right. One woman had already gone to the tabloids saying that the NCA was forcing her to be a lesbian, a story the tabloids had lapped up.

  The Sun had illustrated the story with a 12-page ‘photo reconstruction’ of what enforced lesbianism might look like if four of their Page 3 Stunnas were the ‘victims’. The Daily Mail had blamed the EU and Brussels. The Socialist Worker blamed the bosses and called for an immediate general strike.

  Fortunately the National Companionship Agency gave the NCA immunity from such nonsense.

  “I’m sorry, Susan, forgive me. I misspoke. What I mean is that in a small number of cases we have helped men and women with doubts about their sexuality confirm their sexual identity. Please be assured that your file gives no indication that you are a heterosexual woman. I’m sorry. That you are anything other than a heterosexual woman. As I was saying, when we complete this stage, we will then begin the process of matching you with a potential candidate. We will then, having found them, show both you and him video interviews of the other. Bear in mind that at any time you may withdraw from the programme, and that your identity and files remain absolutely confidential. If you both express an interest in the proposed candidates, then we administer the Cupid 12 and set you up on your first date.”

  “And if the first date goes wrong?”

  “Well, we will try to determine what went wrong. If candidates don’t like each other, we’ll review all the data, including that on the date itself, to see if there was an error by the software, an unknown variable, a bad reaction to Cupid 12 or simple nervousness. Then we will recommend your next step. Perhaps a second date or else we could look for another candidate.”

  “That’s why there’s so much surveillance?” Susan asked, an issue which had caught on in the media. The NCA had decided, after much debate, to purchase a failing coastal resort in Cornwall and set up a large-scale facility to accommodate introductions. The idea was that it would be easier to monitor the first dates and analyse as to whether the software predictions were right about potential matches and about the actual personalities of the candidates themselves. The facility, Port Bexley, had been likened to a mass Moonie wedding but the NCA had hit back, comparing in to a Club Med resort where the sexually transmitted infections had been screened out (they were, as part of the application medical), alongside the drunken violence and large crowds of Englishmen taunting Germans about wars neither had actually fought in.

  Interestingly, one of the curious side effects of the programme was a spike in the violent crimes rate in Spanish resorts frequented by young British men after the creation of the NCA. As more British women applied to the NCA, they weren’t going on ‘sun and sex’ holidays which meant that there was now a shortage of sexually promiscuous British women at the traditional Mediterranean resorts. This in turn caused young British men to drink more, get involved in violence to deal with their increased sexual frustration and also a spike in morning-after murders as increased numbers of sexually frustrated young British men awoke from a morning of drunken gay sex with their mates and proceeded to beat them to death.

  Julian smiled.

  “You are well briefed. Excellent. We want to make sure the predictions the software is making about the potential candidates are right. The only way is to watch how you interact with each other, and to record and study it.”

  “We’re not going to be wired up to heart monitors, surely?” Susan asked incredulously.

  “Oh no! No, we have cameras that can read your pupil dilation. And microphones that can pick up your pulse. Won’t be intrusive at all. Unless you break wind, obviously.”

  Susan looked at the man who had invented all of this and wondered what the hell was she doing there. Then she thought of her face on the front of a romance novel, in the arms of a nice accountant on a beach somewhere. Julian Tredestrian was, she reckoned, a nut. But a caring nut, it had to be said.

  • • •

  The Stoat was in a quandary and he knew it too. Killing Julian Tredestrian would not be that difficult, despite the increased security. The truth was that assassinating people, particularly people who were in the public eye, wasn’t that hard. It was an unspoken rule of the bodyguarding world that they were not there as much to protect the principal as make sure that whoever had taken the initial strike was either apprehended or killed themselves — which was a fair deterrent to people taking a crack in the first place.

  Getting away with it was really the hard bit, not only t
he initial physical escape but also avoiding being hounded across the planet by the world’s security services. You just never could escape that niggling fear of getting hit on the back of the head on a street in Rio, bundled into a van, being bound and gagged in a rolled up carpet and eventually waking up in a Tel Aviv basement with a thousand volts being run through one’s testicles by an Israeli agent or an Egyptian secret policeman who really enjoyed his two weeks in Orlando courtesy of the CIA.

  As the old adage went, assassins are strikers. They only have to be lucky once, whereas bodyguards are goalkeepers and have to be lucky always.

  The Stoat had gained his reputation from an extraordinary ability to plan ahead, storing little fragments of information or contacts or other resources for later use, perhaps even years later. When he wasn’t on an active job, he would holiday in major cities where likely future jobs would appear, keeping an eye out for useful idiots who could take the fall when necessary. He was always a master of what illusionists called ‘misdirection’, in that he knew that the best way to survive after killing someone was to set someone else up to take the blame or to do a ‘Lee Harvey’ as they called it in the trade.

  He had already used up one group of clowns — the neo-nazis — and he was a bit annoyed about it as it had taken him a while to cultivate them, but it couldn’t be helped. It did mean, however, that he had to move onto the next group. He reviewed his notes. He would have to be careful with these ones. The neo-nazis had just been a collection of thugs fuelled by their own petty bigotry, frustration and won over by access to free alcohol. This lot would not be as easy to manipulate. This lot were ideological.

  Idiots still, but the worst kind. Ideological idiots.

  • • •

  DCI Switzerland adjusted his tie for the fourth time, opened his Filofax for the ninth time to look after his notes and shut it again. He was nervous and he didn’t mind admitting it. It wasn’t everyday that the Prime Minister personally requested a briefing on a case although it wasn’t surprising given how hysterical the media was over it. They had salivated over THE GERMAINES murders, managing to be both sanctimonious and hypocritical in the special way that only the British tabloids can be. They had riled against the ‘monster’ who could have poisoned the cocaine and then laced it with laxatives and caused such a humiliating death. Then they had run page after page of the humiliating images, smuggled out by a photographer tipped off by one of the hotel staff just before the police arrived.