The Ministry of Love

by O'Mahony, Jason

  Boo shouldered the door onto the roof open, and then pulled Julian with her through it. Once through, she slammed the door behind her and looked around for something to block it with. There was nothing.

  “Any other roof and there’d be a few sodding chairs or some fucking thing,” she muttered in disbelief, before giving up and frogmarching the doctor over to a metal and concrete structure that contained the building’s air conditioning system.

  “Right, this gives me some cover and a fire-zone to try and keep these chaps inside.” She pointed her weapon at the door. Boo gestured with her head at a point further away from structure.

  “You get over there, Doctor. They won’t be able to see you, but you won’t be too close to me. I’ll draw their fire. I’m afraid I was a bit cheeky about your security instructions. I’ve had a squad from CI5 sitting in a van across from the entrance. They’re on their way. I hope.”

  Julian nodded, moving over to where she had instructed him.

  “You know Captain Bradley, I’m sort of glad that you did,” he admitted, before reaching the spot.

  “Eh, what do I do now?” he asked.

  “Sit down, keep your head down and hope that CI5 are moving faster than I am using up ammunition.”

  • • •

  He peered through the powerful sight on his rifle, watching Boo and her charge on the roof. The Stoat recognised her from the BNP fiasco and he had to admit he was impressed once again. She knew how to handle herself, and here she was, getting ready to face down superior numbers of attackers. She didn’t know, as he had observed, that CI5 had already made a nice casserole out of half of his collection of morons. He just so admired professionalism in other people and even though she was his enemy, he didn’t take it personally. He was paid to do a job as was she. It was one of the downsides of the job, he found. It was lonely. He would so love to be able to spend an evening discussing his trade with others who understood, comparing tactics, weapons, passing tips on about the best gunsmith in Genoa or who makes the best fake passports in Copenhagen. Just relaxing and talking shop. Watching her prepare, he hoped that the Dante clown would get her but he wasn’t counting on it. He’d make sure that the shot that killed her would be nice and clean and painless. It was a matter of professional courtesy.

  • • •

  Dante and the two remaining idiots shouldered the door open onto the roof, where one of them was immediately felled by Boo’s weapon. Then it jammed. She pulled her other gun from the holster in the small of her back and let off another round, knocking down the idiot beside Dante, before he rushed her, hitting her to the ground with a lucky punch. As he went to pull his gun up and bear it on her, she brought the edge of her hand down onto his wrist, shattering it and causing him to release the AK47, letting it hang uselessly from its strap wrapped around his shoulder. Dante fell to his knees, the eye-watering pain in his wrist overriding any political indoctrination, pulling the balaclava off and pleading with her to stop. She recovered her weapon, keeping it pointed at him. He was quite good looking, she thought, but not exactly terrorist material.

  “Help! Help!” He suddenly started shouting, waving his good arm. Who on Earth was he calling for help from?

  She followed his eye-line across to the top of the building opposite,where she saw him. A sniper pointing his rifle at Julian. He was too far away for her hand-weapon to reach, and he knew it too, judging by his brazen positioning.

  Boo knew her orders. She spun, aimed and fired in a microsecond, hitting Julian square in the chest.

  CHAPTER 8

  ---

  NCA TO CHARGE ‘SECOND TIMERS’ - The Times

  ---

  The NCA has announced that individuals who voluntarily leave relationships recommended by the Agency will be charged a £10,000 fee if they wish to enter the agency’s relationship process for a second time. An NCA spokesman commented: “We’re not running a pick‘n’mix stand here. There are people who have entered relationships who seem to think that at the first sign of trouble they can ‘put in’ for a new partner. Well, life isn’t like that. We don’t guarantee a perfect relationship, we recommend relationships that have a good chance of working, but people have to be willing to put in the work themselves.” The Agency also stressed that the psychological profiling candidates go through removes “the overwhelming majority” of serial daters. “They can chance their arm down the Rat and Carrot,” the spokesman concluded.

  ---

  Mr Justice Lisburn frowned at the piece of paper before him. He was a big man, tall and well built, so when he sat at his desk he couldn’t help but loom menacingly over the warrant.

  He hummed as he went line by line through the warrant with a fountain pen, tapping the odd word with the nib, scrunching his forehead up as he recalled, from memory, the relevant sections from the National Security (Surveillance) Act.

  Switzerland and the profiler stood awkwardly in his study, as if waiting for their homework to be corrected. She had asked to come as she’d never seen a ‘Big Eye’ warrant issued before. In a way, she was lucky to have gotten Lisburn as the judge, as it was very much a masterclass in how the judiciary is supposed to operate in a modern democracy.

  Switzerland both loved and hated getting Lisburn. He hated getting him because, unlike some of his colleagues who were eager to get to their club and have their dinner, and would therefore scribble their signatures on a subscription form for Bare Arses Monthly if it was poked under their noses, Lisburn was meticulous in his study of detail. It was hard to get a warrant from Lisburn but when you did get it, it was locked tight. That was the bit Switzerland loved and appreciated. Other judges, seeing that it had been signed by Lisburn, tended to refuse any challenges to it in any trial, or more importantly, the evidence gathered by it.

  “It’s a bit open, isn’t it?” Lisburn asked, in his mildly lyrical Northern Irish accent.

  The warrant was to allow Switzerland to use a software programme known as the Surveillance Image Database National Search Engine. This would permit him to enter Farrington’s image into the system which would search in every single linked up CCTV system in the country for Farrington’s whereabouts. This was made all the more scary by the fact that for the past five years every single CCTV system installed or updated in Britain was required by law to be linked to the SIDNSE. Considering that Britain has 10% of the world’s CCTV cameras and that the average Briton was caught on CCTV over 300 times per day, it made SIDNSE a powerful tool in the fight against crime and terrorism.

  Or a challenge to basic civil liberties and the right to privacy, Prime Minister Fairfax had decided, and had taken New Labour’s ‘Tough on Liberty, Tough on the Causes of Liberty’ laws and added safeguards. One of these limiters was that SIDNSE could only be utilised after applying for a warrant from a designated National Security Judge like Lisburn. In fact, Fairfax had been very careful not to nominate judges who Daily Mail readers automatically applauded, or one of those Islington ‘all-criminals-need-is-a-good-hug’ style judges either. Instead, he’d gone for tough old style civil libertarians who recognised the world that was lived in today but had no problem making policemen sweat. Lisburn was their poster child.

  “Judge?” Switzerland asked.

  The judge peered over the top of his glasses.

  “This gentleman, Farrington, is not even a solid suspect. He matches your profile but you have no evidence on him.”

  “That’s true Judge, but we are just looking to speak to him so we can rule him out from our enquiries. As Section 30 of the Act permits us to,” Switzerland replied.

  Lisburn glowered at him.

  “I know what Section 30 says, Chief Inspector. I am a High Court Judge. I don’t wear a wig as some sort of Lily Savage homage. It is a dangerous law, despite the safeguards. Tracking people because they meet the profile — next we’ll be tracking people because they fit the profile of someone who may commit a crime in the future.”

  The Judge glowered at the profiler.
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br />   “Don’t get me wrong. I accept that profiling is a useful tool but in a free society, people have a right to look guilty. This is getting very close to the wire.”

  He tapped the paper before him.

  “Nevertheless, Chief Inspector, you are right. If I had my way I would not be signing this as I believe it to be a dangerous law, but law it is, passed by our elected representatives. And if Mr. Spence is our new Prime Minister, I understand that you will be able to sign your own McWarrants on the way to the crime scene. Still, at least you can actually write which is more than can be said for some of your colleagues who seem to believe that textspeak is appropriate for one of His Majesty’s warrants. I look forward to overturning all sorts of rubbish on the Supreme Court.”

  His fountain pen scratched his signature across the bottom of the warrant and he jabbed the paper at the policeman.

  • • •

  If the liberal Guardian-reading classes were of a mind to burn someone in effigy (in some form of low carbon emitting Fairtrade® hand-sewn hemp figure) Edward Tinyjack would almost certainly be on the shortlist. Tinyjack was a far smarter man than he pretended to be but in his column for one of the middle-brow tabloids, he chose to turn his considerable intelligence to confirming his readers’ various ignorant prejudices.

  In his Britain, a mixture of terrorists, paedophiles and welfare scroungers were plotting regularly to kidnap your children, blow up the royal family and get their luxury holidays paid for by the department of Social Harmony. He knew what he was doing; by simplifying every argument into a simple goodies and baddies argument, every decent right thinking person could only come to one conclusion. His.

  Tinyjack awoke, head cloudy as if his brain was wrapped in insulation, a side effect from the drug that had been used on him. He could remember the previous hour when he had been in a television studio defending his column of the previous week supporting the use of torture on “people that we all know are terrorists”. He then went on to accuse the Prime Minister, who was not a fan of torture, of being a “broken-wristed pansy who’d bent over for Bin Laden”.

  He remembered been quite pleased with that one, the just right amount of toilet humour for the blue rinses to giggle and imagine that while they got the joke (“it’s about sodomy, isn’t it Bunty?”) none of their bridge-playing pals would understand.

  Tinyjack realised that he was secured rather tightly to a board with his head tilted back at an angle. His face was covered with his feet and hands tied. He recognised the position which was further confirmed when he heard a tap filling what sounded like a large bucket.

  “Now, Mr. Tinyjack. Comfortable?” the voice inquired.

  “Who are you? And what do you want?” Tinyjack asked, making sure to keep his voice calm.

  “Oh, I’m a fan, Mr. Tinyjack. A big fan. You see, I read your columns and I was particularly moved by your piece about how torture is justifiable against people we all know are terrorists and paedophiles. I liked your reasoning, the way you justify the use of water-boarding as a means of intelligence gathering and getting confessions from, oh, what was your phrase? Known criminals?”

  Tinyjack could hear his heart begin to thump loudly, as if it was inside his head rather than his chest.

  “I’m not a known criminal!” he shouted, a little too loudly.

  “But I think you are, Mr. Tinyjack. I think you are a terrorist. I could be wrong and under the namby-pampy liberal legal system I’d have to have evidence, wouldn’t I? But you and I are men of the world, Mr. Tinyjack. We don’t believe in all this civil liberties nonsense, do we? Protecting criminals and terrorists and child pornographers? I’ve read your articles, and you’ve said it’s alright to torture to get a confession. So let’s see if we can get a confession out of you.”

  “You can’t do this! I have rights!” Tinyjack screamed through the cellophane bag over his head, now abandoning all pretence of calmness.

  “Rights, Mr. Tinyjack? You mean the right to freedom from torture? Do you know, you’re right. You do. Under the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights you’ve a right to freedom from torture. Are you invoking that right now?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m invoking that right now!”

  “I’m disappointed to hear that, Mr. Tinyjack. Didn’t you call for Britain to pull out of the EU, and the European Convention on Human Rights?”

  “I was wrong, I was wrong!”

  “You know, this could all be a prank, you do realise that? We could be a group of left wing protestors who kidnapped you to humiliate you, film this and put it on the internet. Edward Tinyjack, the voice of the ordinary bloke in the street, pissing himself and demanding his rights as an EU citizen be respected.”

  Tinyjack hadn’t thought of that, and felt himself going red with embarrassment. In the back of his mind he was already thinking as to whether he could get a court injunction to stop any of the media showing the footage. Ironically, he’d have to use his Human Rights Act right to privacy to stop them. Had he written anything attacking that? Probably. There was very little he hadn’t attacked in his column. Other than the commercial interests of his publisher, of course. He wasn’t that stupid.

  “Which brings us to your support for terrorists. You’re a terrorist, aren’t you, Mr. Tinyjack?”

  By now he’d composed himself to some degree and decided to put on the best performance he could, on the off-chance this footage did get out. At least the television channel he worked for could show the good bits, of him standing up to his kidnappers.

  “Don’t be preposterous!” he bellowed, hoping that sounded good.

  “Come on, just admit it. You’ve blown innocents up, haven’t you? A big hard man like you, planting bombs on buses to kill children and pensioners. Sure, I’ve no evidence but I don’t need evidence, do I? I just know you’re a terrorist.”

  “You’re the terrorist mate, not me!” Tinyjack cracked, getting into it, feeling good about himself.

  The first wave of water shocked him as it was colder than he’d ever experienced in his natural life. He automatically held his breath for as long as he could but it wasn’t enough. He struggled for breath, opening his mouth and swallowing a large volume of water, which caused him to gag and vomit. His torturer’s hand grabbed his hea, and pulled the hood up slightly, clearing his mouth of water and vomit, before pulling the hood back down and repeating the process.

  By the fourth wave, Tinyjack had urinated over himself and could feel his lungs ready to explode. Such was his deranged state, he didn’t realise that his violent thrashing on the board had shattered both his ankles.

  “Just confess, Edward: You have said that waterboarding isn’t torture, and should be used to gather intelligence on criminals, so confess; admit you’re a terrorist and we stop.”

  During the sixth wave he cracked.

  • • •

  “You shot me!” Julian blurted out, seconds after he awoke in a hospital bed. His eyes focussed on Boo who was sitting by the bed, watching Jeremy Kyle castigate a gormless dough-faced youth for having sex with his mother’s sister’s daughter’s only cousin.

  She muted the screen and pulled back her jacket, revealing her sidearm.

  “Electric projectile stun gun. My standard firearm jammed. Anyway, you were about to be shot by a sniper so I needed you on the ground and out of his line of sight rapidly.”

  She removed the weapon from her hip holster and wiggled it at him.

  “You’ll be fine. No side effects apart from maybe your dignity. You’ll be fine.”

  There was a tap on the door and Alexander Fairfax poked his head around the door, carrying a large bag of grapes.

  “Dr. Tredestrian, haven’t you been in the wars.”

  The Prime Minister nodded to Boo and took a seat beside Julian.

  Boo stepped out of the room leaving them to chat. Fairfax was out in five minutes.

  “Well done, Captain Bradley. Really top bodyguarding there. Should we be concerned?”

 
; Boo put her phone away.

  “Sir, this was a professional hit. The attack itself, going from the terrorists we captured, was a fabrication to get me to evacuate to the roof where the real assassin was waiting. There is a pretty serious plan behind this — these were just kids manipulated into something.”

  Fairfax looked surprised at this.

  “Manipulated, Captain Bradley? This wasn’t a choice between Coke and Pepsi. They attacked a government agency with assault weapons, willing to use them.”

  “That’s true, sir. But I’ve sat in on some of the interviews. These people are so shallow and self-obsessed, they regard themselves as victims. One even lectured me about suing for compensation for being shot at by CI5. But they’ve all talking about two influential figures, a politics lecturer and some Eastern European woman, neither of whom were picked up. These people were patsies and well chosen patsies at that.”

  “Yes, it does look that way, doesn’t it? But who paid these manipulators?” Fairfax asked.

  “I’m afraid that’s your realm, sir. Is it that fantastic to believe that an interest, or perhaps a coalition of interests, is not exactly enamoured with the prospect of your re-election and has decided to take direct action? Killing Dr. Tredestrian, the architect of the Government’s most popular policy, would I suspect, reflect badly upon your chances of re-election, I would have thought. However, that does raise other quandaries.”

  The Prime Minister rolled his eyes.

  “You know I can’t ask you to investigate the most likely suspects.”

  “I suspect that there is a precedent against breaking into one’s political opponents headquarters looking for damaging information,” Boo suggested helpfully.

  Fairfax nodded his head in agreement.

  “However, that does not stop me from going after the assassin himself. CI5 have interrogated the two remaining attackers, and it all points to a professional operative. Pursuing him is an option.”

  “I would have thought that such an individual would be pretty adept at keeping his identity hidden,” the PM wondered out loud.