The Ministry of Love

by O'Mahony, Jason

  But it was also a code word known only to him and an informant in the British Security Service. And it meant one thing.

  Run.

  He was out of the bath in moments, towelled off and got dressed. He always kept his bag packed for events such as this so was out the door of the room in under a minute and a half, hailing a taxi for St. Pancras Station.

  The authorities were onto him which meant the job was abandoned. He would not collect the balance of his fee which disappointed him, not as much for the money (which he didn’t really need) as much as the dent to his own ego and professional reputation. It was, however, less disappointing than being gunned down by a pair of handbrake skidders from CI5. That definitely held much less appeal.

  The Stoat subtly checked his surroundings as the taxi drove towards the Eurostar terminus.

  He reached into his jacket, as if to check his wallet. His hand stitched suit hid his automatic pistol nicely.

  The driver was paid quickly. He moved at a solid pace through the station, making his way to the Gents where he could change his disguise to match one of the three false passports he was carrying.

  In the cubicle, he quickly shaved off the moustache, put on the thick glasses, changed his jacket and trousers, putting on a ‘fat vest’ over his slim frame. He then put powder into the palm of this hands which he ran through his hair, creating grey patches, whilst also making him look a bit more dishevelled than his usual self. A handful of quick drying cream rubbed into his face accentuated the creases and lines, adding another ten years to his age. After popping a ball bearing in his left shoe which caused him to hobble, he was back out, heading towards the train.

  Two armed members of the Metropolitan Police were randomly checking passports as they boarded the train. He hobbled towards them, absent-mindedly looking for his passport but actually gripping his pistol, checking to see a spot just above the officers’ stab vests where he was confident he could hit them both before they could use their machine guns.

  He nodded at the taller of the two, giving him the universal raised-eyebrow and forehead of the ‘I’d-forget-my head-if-it-wasn’t-screwed-on’ look. The taller officer smiled and gestured for him to pass.

  The Stoat hobbled onto the train, located his seat and sat down. A shiver ran down his back, caused by the coldness of sweat which had collected on the back of newly acquired weight.

  • • •

  The local constabulary top brass turned out in force to meet Switzerland’s helicopter when it landed at the regional airport. He and his team were driven at high speed to county headquarters where an incident room had been set up. The divisional commanders and superintendents were briefed about Farrington, images were distributed and a canvass of holiday homes, hotels and bed and breakfasts was ordered. Switzerland deliberately avoided alerting the media, as he didn’t want Farrington to suddenly run. In fact, he was also dubious as to the benefit of ‘public assistance’ despite the Met’s official position. He’d witnessed too many ‘helpful’ members of the public wasting police resources identifying suspects on the grounds of “Well, E’s foreign, inee? E must have done it! You know what they’re all like!” He couldn’t help noting that some of the younger officers were shoving to get to the front of the crowd at the briefing and one or two even seemed to be surreptitiously trying to film him on their phones before being bollocked by their superior officers. When he pointed this out to the young DC, the officer wasn’t that surprised.

  “You’re the first celebrity they’ve ever met, sir.”

  • • •

  Fairfax and Spence had their only debate two weeks from polling day and by the accounts of both the commentariat and the instant polling firms, it was a tie. Not that it mattered. Debates were funny, often decided as much by the spin after the debate as the actual debate itself when the representatives for the candidate would wander amongst journalists pointing out what they deemed the highlights, and ‘interpreting’ what the candidate actually meant when he screwed up.

  The stream of unedited text messages that scrolled across the bottom of the screen told as much about the types of people who were voting as it did about the candidates. Spence got the majority of texts, mostly confirming how hot he was and how fat and/or old the Prime Minister was. Fairfax got the texts of people who could spell. The fact that a number of voters wanted to know when the singing was going to start was reassuring to Triscuit, who pointed out to the Prime Minister that people like that almost certainly would not be able to find the polling station anyway, or would probably stab themselves in the eye with the pencil.

  “Well, here’s hoping,” the chief of staff remarked.

  The latest polls had the Liberal Democrat-Labour Coalition dead even with the Tories.

  • • •

  The email arrived at the media outlets simultaneously, as well as New Scotland Yard. Assistant Commissioner Likker was onto Switzerland within minutes.

  “It’s an act of terrorism!” he bellowed down the phone.

  Switzerland asked for a few minutes to read the email which was downloaded to his Blackberry.

  The details were very specific. Whoever wrote this email was intimately involved in the murders, he had no doubt about that. He didn’t regard the demand in the email as an act of terrorism, but he could understand why his superior officer would think so. He showed it to the profiler who reaffirmed his analysis.

  “Yeah, it also confirms our suspicion. This is a war against the cult of celebrity and the dumbing down of the media. Why else would he make such a bizarre demand?”

  Switzerland nodded. Why else?

  CHAPTER 9

  ---

  MARRIED COUPLES TO SUE GOVERNMENT - The Times.

  ---

  The National Companionship Agency has dismissed as “frivolous” a collection of claims lodged by married couples on the grounds of discrimination. The claimants are alleging that because they were “forced” to marry their partners before the NCA became operational they were in effect discriminated against by having to find their partners themselves.

  One of the claimants Billy Burke, a 42 year-old taxi driver, told reporters “just look at the rubbish I had to marry! She sits there smoking like a chimney, watching the X Factor and getting fatter by the day. Yet I see fellas on the telly, some of them certainly foreign, getting top quality totty off the NCA? Where’s the justice in that? I mean, I saw a guy named William Saxe-Coburg Gothe on the telly. Don’t tell me he’s not some sort of wop or kraut! Did we really have millions of true Brits die on the beaches of the Falklands for that? I don’t think so!”

  ---

  DCI Switzerland scanned the yellow piece of A4 paper and placed it back down on the desk. He had just added the Edward Tinyjack killing to his growing pile of cases. Now this?

  “The local constabulary didn’t think much of this, until they discovered who the victim was. That’s when they notified us. Apparently — and I did not know this — there’s a National Celebrity Incident Record. One of Likker’s ‘innovations’,” he commended, sliding the paper over the profiler.

  “So they didn’t think much of a mob kicking a man to death on a public street?” she asked, looking nonplussed about the whole thing.

  “It’s the paedophile hysteria, isn’t it? The media love it, because it is just so black and white. Much better to whip up a panic about evil monsters kidnapping kids than point out that most child deaths are at the hands of their parents. But this was clever. This has Psychological Operations all over it, doesn’t it? Emotionally manipulating an easily malleable mob to do your bidding for you. Same with the Sammii killing. This guy is disturbingly good.”

  “Will we investigate it?”

  “We’ll have to. The proprietor of The Saturn employed both Tinyjack and Trellis, so he’s issuing a reward, which I presume he intends to reap a hundred times over by whipping up viewer figures with a nice dollop of hysteria. I mean, have you seen the reports?”

  He pointed at one of the te
levisions which was running a 24 hour news channel.

  “They’re suggesting that the mob that kicked Trellis to death were somehow hypnotised, for fuck’s sake! Hypnotised!”

  He slumped back into his seat, leaned back with his eyes closed and pointed at another pile of documents.

  “I’ve looked over the local files, and I can’t see that they’ve neglected to do anything, to be honest. They’ve questioned local villagers, and can prove that a group of thirty of them were at the scene. They’ve gotten forensic evidence too. Kicking a man’s head in is a messy business, and they’ll probably be able to get half a dozen names to the CPS but at the end of the day, it was murder by remote control. About two hundred of the leaflets were done up and distributed mostly around a council estate near the village, late at night. Nobody saw anything. The paper and printing itself could have been done on any household printer. It’s a simple, brilliant crime calculated at playing on stupid people’s emotions to get them to do his dirty work for them. Maybe it should count as hypnotism!”

  “Stupid people? Isn’t that a bit hard, Chief Inspector?” she suggested.

  “No it’s not. Do you know what is hard? Getting decent men to volunteer to work with the young. Local sports clubs, scouts groups, youth clubs, all will tell you the same thing. They are all struggling to get volunteers because we have created a society where men are now seen as potential paedophiles, especially if they want to actually work with children. So they don’t for their own safety and society pays that price, so that people like the late Eddie Trellis could sell newspapers.”

  “Not anymore. There’s a certain irony to Mr. Trellis being killed by people who had chosen to buy into the paranoia he created in his newspapers?”

  “I’m sure that occurred to him as the Doc Martens crushed his skull,” the DCI mused.

  • • •

  “I’m a terrorist. I’ve planted bombs on buses, I’m a fucking terrorist!” The voice was hysterical, although clearly recognisable. The red face, wild-eyed and covered in a mixture of water, sweat, vomit and snot was framed by normally well-managed hair now damply stuck to his forehead. Switzerland muted the screen.

  “National News were given the location anonymously, where they found the body and the disc,” the young DC confirmed.

  “Which they copied before they tipped us off, I see. Surely that’s tampering with evidence?” the profiler asked.

  “They lawyered up quickly. Maintain that they did not know it was evidence until they had viewed and copied it, and they were very careful with the original, which they have passed onto us. They even filmed the location for us before they entered it.” Thompson said.

  “How good of them. Amazing the way people who didn’t know it was a crime scene nevertheless managed to adhere to CSI protocols to avoid being accused of perverting the course of justice,” the DCI muttered.

  He looked again at the coverage National News were giving on the murder of their chief shit-stirrer, using the old trick of displaying this shockingly humiliating footage of him as an homage. They were offering £1 million in reward money for the murderer. Terms and conditions applied, Switzerland suspected. Like National News getting full rights to interviews and evidence before they were submitted to the police. He’d complained to Likker about this but he had sided with National News, which really wasn’t that much of a surprise. The man had practically become moist on the phone to National News’s Director of Operations. In fact, any more excited and he would have needed a box of hankies.

  “Are we sure this is our guy? I mean, does Tinyjack count as a mindless celebrity?”

  The profiler took her glasses off, and nibbled on one of the arms.

  “Not quite. I mean, he is — was — a smart man. The tabloid people, like the agents and people who create modern celebrities, tend to be very smart. But I’d say he fits into the profile as another component in our dumb-down culture. But what’s more interesting is that our serial killer knew how to waterboard. I spoke to a pal in the military, showed her the crime scene images and she reckons that whomever had done this knew what they were doing.”

  “Which points again to a military background,” he commented.

  She watched the images on National News. The Tinyjack murder had now acquired its own logo and theme music, surely confirmation of how important a story was.

  “You know, murder is murder, but I’m finding it hard to actually miss any of these people.”

  Switzerland raised an eyebrow.

  She shrugged a shoulder.

  “I’m just saying.”

  • • •

  “Well, this is surprising,” Boo commented, as Julian finished his phone-call, allowing her to speak. The car was driving down the country road they’d travelled before.

  “What is?” he asked.

  “That he would agree to see you again. He seemed pretty adamant last time.”

  “He was not enamoured at me calling him, that’s true. But I have something to show him. Something he’ll want to see. You know you reminded me of something when I was sitting there in hospital. All the people on the project had recorded video diaries about why we were doing what we were doing. You know, for posterity. I remembered that Rebecca had recorded one too. I asked him did he wish to see it.”

  “That’s a bit sneaky, isn’t it?”

  “What? How?”

  “Well, you could have emailed it to him. To use it to get in the door, that’s almost blackmail.”

  “You’re not a very civil civil servant, are you?” he observed.

  “Like you, Julian, I do this job because I wish to, not because I need to. As a result, I don’t have to doff my cap. Not too much anyway.”

  “I must have the bolshiest bodyguard in Britain.”

  “Possibly, but also the one that looks best in a Louise Kennedy dress and matching Manolo Blahniks.”

  “Well, that goes without saying,” Julian admitted.

  Baker looked unimpressed to see them, but showed them into the house.

  “Are they the discs?” he asked, gesturing to the package in Julian’s hand.

  “You can take them, and watch them in your own time, but I would like to show you one segment.”

  Baker remained dead faced.

  “You know, Julian, I could have asked you to email these to me and I know you well enough to know that you’re a decent man, and you would have. Yet you came all this way. So I presumed you wanted to show me something.”

  Julian nodded, and opened the package, which held six discs, each in its own plastic cover.

  “I’ve downloaded the part I wanted to show you onto its own disc, to save time.”

  He inserted the disc, grabbed the remote control, and sat down in a seat. Baker and Boo joined him.

  “These were interviewed by one of the university students.”

  He pressed play on the remote control. The screen held the image of a pretty, freckled woman in her mid-thirties, with a snub nose and short, bobbed brown hair. The camera was quite close. Boo recognised Rebecca Baker from the well-kept photos around the room.

  “Is this not playing God, Dr. Baker?” the interviewer asked.

  Her brown eyes crinkled, revealing little worry lines under them which curiously added to her attractiveness. Her voice was soft, with a Scottish burr.

  “Well, we don’t regard cutting out tumours as playing God. Why is that? Is it because we feel that we are engaged in a physical act, whereas what we are doing here is on an emotional level? That a physical sickness should be fought, but an emotional sickness shouldn’t?”

  “But is grieving a sickness? Or part of the process of dealing with tragedy?”

  Boo looked at Baker, who was struggling to contain himself, watching his wife and listening to her speak about grieving. She reached over and squeezed his hand. He gave her a quick look of thanks.

  Julian just looked awkward, and uncomfortable at the whole thing.

  Rebecca continued.

  “No,
grieving is important. We all have to learn how to deal with tragedy and suffering, but that doesn’t mean that we should let it totally incapacitate someone, and paralyse an otherwise useful life. That’s where, in certain limited circumstances, Cupid-9 could prove very helpful.”

  Boo looked at Julian. She’d never heard of Cupid-9.

  “Some of your colleagues suggest that Cupid-9 could cause more social problems than it solves.”

  Rebecca nodded, pausing to sip a glass of water. She accidentally spilled some, and apologised to the interviewer. Thomas smiled.

  “Where was I? Yes, Cupid-9. I agree with my colleagues. That is why we will not be submitting it to the European Drugs Board for general approval. A drug that allows people to effectively wipe away much of the pain of a trauma they have endured could be very useful for people who have suffered violent attacks, rapes, major incidents. My colleagues are afraid, and I agree with them, that in today’s consumer climate teenagers would be taking it every time somebody is voted off Celebrity Slut. We’d end up with a generation refusing to actually experience the lows as well as the highs of life, and that’s not healthy.”

  Baker turned to face Julian, who paused the DVD.

  “This is what you’re talking about. Cupid-9. You want to wipe Rebecca from my memory?”

  “Absolutely not. Watch this.”

  He pressed Play again.

  “Are we talking about wiping someone’s memories?” The interviewer asked.

  “No, certainly not. That would not be healthy at all, and who would wish to lose the memories of a loved one they had lost? The best way to describe this is the old adage that ‘time heals’. It’s true. Your brain gets used to the trauma and begins to deal with it. You don’t forget your pain, you just become able to manage it as you get more and more used to it. Have you ever had someone close to you die?”

  The interviewer hesitated.

  “Eh, yes. My granny died bout three years ago.”

  “Were you close?”