by Debi Alper
Stan stopped flailing. ‘Koi Korner? I don’t understand. Gunther recommended them… He persuaded me to keep fish.’
Click. The final piece of the puzzle slotted into place. I could tell from the bewilderment in Stan’s voice that he had no idea of the significance. I locked eyes with Ali.
‘Stan – this fascist conspiracy business – where’s it operating from?’
‘We…gasp…we hadn’t found out yet. We’d narrowed it down…wheeze. We reckoned either Eltham or Newham… Oh please. Please. For pity’s sake…’ he moaned.
So there you have it. Stan had had teams of researchers working for months, getting paid awesome amounts by our standards. Yet in less than one month we had dug up information they hadn’t even come close to.
It all made perfect sense. Koi Korner would have to be seen as operating a legitimate business with a respectable clientele. Gunther had manipulated Stan into becoming one of those clients. No wonder he’d freaked out when he’d heard about the TV programme. He’d assumed the steel toecap had been on the other foot and Stan had been the one doing the manipulating. Gunther must have thought he’d led Stan straight to the nerve centre. What he hadn’t reckoned on was Stan being too stupid to recognise it – let alone manipulate the lead out of him.
I checked Ali again. I could see by his face he’d come to roughly the same conclusion.
’Anything I’ve missed?’ I asked him.
Again the impassive shrug, this time accompanied by a brief shake of his head.
‘OK then. Let’s get him up.’
Easier said than done. We leaned over as far as we dared and told Stan to reach up with his hands. He flapped about until we grabbed hold. Terror lent steel to his grip. For a moment I thought he might pull hard and yank us both over the edge. If he did contemplate it, he must have thought better of the idea.
Ali and I each grabbed a foot and a hand. We dragged, scraped and hauled Stan up the side of the building and over the rail. He crashed down on to the roof and lay sobbing in a foetal position.
Ali picked up the toolbag and we disappeared back through the hatch. As the lift clattered downwards, I allowed myself the luxury of visualising Stan’s next few hours. He would be able to unclamp the chain from the railing, but he had no way of removing it from the cuff round his ankle. So there’s this guy, wearing a leather bodysuit cut away to reveal a red-striped arse; an enormous leather codpiece; and a chain round his ankle. No money, no credit cards, no mobile. Trying to get home from the middle of an estate on the Old Kent Road.
I started to giggle. Ali raised a questioning eyebrow at me. I shared my vision with him. Before we knew it, we were holding each other up, weak with hysterical laughter, as the lift lurched and shuddered downwards.
We tumbled out of the block and back to the van. Every so often, as we drove home, the laughter rose up and threatened to engulf me again. But I was becoming more and more aware how edgy it was.
And how much there still was to do.
32
STRANGE BUSINESS, THIS living on the edge. It plays wild tricks with your libido. Ali and I headed home to the best sex I’ve ever had. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I had a thought. I jumped up, pulled on a T-shirt and scribbled off five identical notes. The Nirvana call to arms. I slipped them under the appropriate doors before crawling back into bed next to a slumbering Ali.
When I woke up it was mid-morning and I was alone. I made some black coffee, strong and thick enough to slice with a knife, and took it into the bathroom. I hadn’t taken the multitudinous layers of slap off my face before I’d plunged into bed with Ali the night before. With infinite care and half a bottle of baby lotion, I cleaned my ravaged face. Some of the swelling had subsided, but the spectacular bruising had taken on several new shades. I decided to let them have their moment of glory and made no attempt to camouflage them.
I heated up the leftover soup from yesterday and took a bowl into the front room. The answer-machine light winked at me. I hadn’t thought to check it last night. Guess who?
‘Jennifer? It’s Kate. I’m calling to say the post-mortem verdict was death from natural causes. The authorities are refusing our demand for an inquest. It’s outrageous, of course, and clearly a cover-up. But anyway, the result is they’ve released Daddy’s body for burial.’
Reeling from the effort of trying to equate the word ‘Daddy’ with the evil old git I could barely manage to think of as my father, I didn’t take in the details of the funeral. Just that it was about a week away and it was considered ‘the very least I could do’ to put in an appearance. Something niggled in my brain about the date and venue, but I was in no mood to examine the niggle and see where it would take me.
Soon after, the others arrived, each responding to the state of my face with their own individual brand of anger, horror or revulsion.
Robin – eyes out on stalks, followed by a gurgle in his throat and a total inability to look at me for the rest of the meeting. Mags – red-hot rage and a revenge rant. Frank – ‘Far-kinell, Jen,’ followed by tears. Gaia – an emergency mission back home, whence she returned clutching lotions, potions and magical remedies representing every indigenous culture on the planet. Ali – well, to Ali it was old news anyway. Even so, I doubt if it would have provoked a reaction. I didn’t mind. If his impassive nature was the result of inhibitions or repressions, there had been no sign of them last night.
I brought them up to date with the events of the previous night. In spite of their obvious shock, they took it all in their stride – even the bit about abducting their erstwhile house-guest and dangling him from a twenty-storey tower block. We’d come a long way from the censorious reaction I’d got for flinging an axe just a few short weeks previously. We agreed the plan and set the schedule. We had to move super-fast to take the initiative before Gunther and his mates could get to us first.
Tomorrow it was, then. That left the rest of the afternoon and the evening. The others had agreed to organise the details so I could take a break to recuperate. I couldn’t be sure what the results of tomorrow’s actions would be, but I knew I was in no state to deliver the rest of the posters for Della’s funeral that night. On the other hand, if anything happened to me, I needed to know I had done all I could to uphold my promise to Philip Courtney. It’s called putting your affairs in order.
I scribbled a note to Cathy and put it in an envelope with the remaining posters. I knew she would have heard about Della by now and could be trusted to deal with their distribution. As I slid the posters into the envelope, I glanced at the details. There was a little niggle in the nether regions of my brain, like the one I’d felt earlier listening to Straight Kate’s phone message. This time, the niggle was too strong to ignore.
I replayed the message. What a strange phenomenon fate, karma, kismet or whatever you want to call it is. My father’s funeral was scheduled for the slot immediately before Della’s in the same cemetery on the same day.
33
THE NEXT MORNING at ten o’clock, we all gathered at Nick’s. The vibe was reminiscent of Mayday, except this time Mags was with us. And Stan wasn’t next door, cowering in my space like a malevolent baby cuckoo. In fact, I had no idea where Stan was at that point and cared even less. For all I knew, he might still have been on the roof of Boddington Heights, trying to figure out a way to get home.
The other main difference between today’s mission and Mayday was that this time the enemy was more immediate and tangible than the global economy and multinational corporations. And it wasn’t raining.
We piled into the transit, Ali at the wheel, Robin next to him. The rest of us squatted in unaccustomed silence in the back. The floor space was filled with piles of leaflets and posters, several buckets of flour-and-water paste and some broad two-swipes-and-they’re-up brushes. I scanned the leaflets. They were articulate, visually striking and grammatically perfect. Mags’s politics, Robin’s spelling and Nick’s laptop. A formidable combination of skill and technology.
We crossed the Old Kent Road into the Bermondsey heartland. Ali parked in a back street and we all tumbled out. I don’t know what we were expecting, but it didn’t look like an area about to be rocked by a minor revolution. Some of the passers-by looked at us with mild curiosity, but no one challenged us. Up on the left-hand side, I could see the smoked-glass windows of Koi Korner. Now I knew the real business that went on behind the fancy fish floating in their aquaria, it hit me just how out of place the shop looked.
My heart was pounding. The only friendly faces were with me. And there were only six of us. Where were the others?
‘What are we going to do?’ hissed Frank in my ear. ‘Do we keep on walking?’
‘Don’t panic,’ I replied out of the corner of my mouth. ‘We’re dealing with people not renowned for their time-keeping.’ I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt.
By the time we were directly opposite Koi Korner, we had to make a decision. We stopped outside a boarded-up shop, and without hesitation Mags began smothering the hoarding with posters, using great sweeps of the dripping paste brush. She worked oblivious to the stares of the passers-by, who were confronted by Ali thrusting leaflets at them. The rest of us followed suit.
Some of the shoppers stepped into the road to avoid us. Others took the leaflets, glanced at them, then crumpled them into balls. But there were some who walked off reading them, their eyes flickering over to Koi Korner, puzzled frowns on their faces.
After a few minutes, a man stepped out of the shop on to the pavement opposite. He wore a smart suit with a shirt and tie. He looked like any respectable businessman – if there is such a thing. He stared across the road at us, squinting to make out the wording on the posters. He spoke into a mobile and made to cross the road towards us, waiting for a break in the traffic. At the same time, I glanced up the road and saw two cops also making their way in our direction.
It looked like it might all be over before it started, leaving us worse off than before. If this didn’t work…well, let’s just say I’d reached the bottom of the proactive-ideas-that-might-just-save-our-lives-and-protect-freedom-as-we-know-it barrel with this one.
I closed my eyes, fighting despair. Just as I was gathering myself sufficiently to tell the others we’d blown it, I heard Frank yell:
‘Look! It’s the cavalry!’
My eyes popped open. A convoy of three day-glo coaches, several battered camper vans and a cavalcade of bicycles was heading for us through the traffic.
Ali ran to the lead coach and shouted something to the driver, then loped to the second coach and issued more directions. The lead coach rumbled about twenty yards past us before the driver wrenched the wheel and right-angled the vehicle so that it blocked both lanes of the road. The second coach allowed the traffic coming towards it to pass before executing the same manoeuvre forty yards behind the first, leaving a vast traffic-free stretch in front of Koi Korner.
Horns blared, voices cursed and pedestrians stared open-mouthed as the doors to the vehicles crashed open. Out piled over a hundred warriors. There were rainbow-coloured crusties, black-clad anarchists, a posse of Wombles and a couple of vanloads of Asian youths. I also recognised several members of Mags’s extended family. Mags has a big family.
I watched in triumph as the guy opposite gawped at the tableau unfolding before his eyes. He ducked back into the shop, leaving the street outside to the Forces of Good. Gaia yelled as the multicoloured crowd swelled across the street:
‘Be careful, right? No violence. There are innocent fish in there.’
A murmur of assent went through the throng.
I pushed my way across the street, hailing familiar faces and moving to the beat of a group of drummers. When I reached Koi Korner, I began pasting posters on the windows. Several people helped me. The door was locked. It was impossible to see through the smoked glass. Over the drumming, yelling and blowing horns, I could hear sirens approaching.
‘Heads up,’ Robin yelled over the tumult. ‘Here come the cameras.’
A TV crew was sprinting down Southwark Park Road towards us. They must have been stuck in the traffic. Robin muscled his way over to them. I watched as they stuck a giant mike up to his mouth. He was talking with wide expansive gestures. I couldn’t hear, but I knew I could trust him with this. In spite of his long plait and scraggy beard, the reality was that people would be more likely to take him seriously, when they heard his plummy voice, than any of the rest of us.
The cops were arriving in force, running up the road towards us in both directions, a navy torrent of riot shields, helmets and drawn truncheons. A shudder went through the packed crowd. There are no leaders in a group like this. There seems to be a phenomenon I can only describe as collective will, which makes people act as one, with no individual issuing orders. The political grapevine the Nirvanans had tapped into had not only resulted in this spontaneous uprising, it had also done the job well enough to ensure that everyone knew why they were there, how important it was and the best way to achieve the desired result.
With the efficiency of a well-enacted Mexican wave, everyone sat down on the ground. So long as there were no infiltrators prepared to act as agents provocateurs, there would be no violence from the crowd. The cops, under the unremitting scrutiny of the media (now two TV crews and several shutter-clicking photographers), would have to be seen to take on our demands to investigate Koi Korner.
We’d taken a huge risk. The rolling cameras were crucial to our plan. Stan had told us the fascists were powerful and well connected, so we couldn’t just go to the papers with our story. If it was suppressed, and there was a strong possibility it would be, it would leave us even more exposed than before. Going direct to the cops would have had even less chance of success. And they were unlikely to approve of evidence obtained by dangling a guy from the roof of a tower block. Unless they were doing the dangling…
By exposing Koi Korner as a nerve centre for an international fascist conspiracy live on TV, we hoped the cops would be forced to take action. And also (so the theory went) they would be less prone to kicking the shit out of everyone within boot range. Give thanks for the twenty-four-hour digital news channels alerted by Robin earlier.
The cops formed themselves into rows, standing shoulder to shoulder behind the coaches. They’d hemmed us in, but we didn’t mind this time. We were there by choice and had no intention of moving just yet. Several of them began to beat a rhythm on their riot shields with their truncheons. Undeterred, a chant went up from the massed ranks of the protesters:
‘You’ve got body armour, but we’ve got pranayama.’
The camera crews were locked in with us. A deputation of three cops, led by a flat-capped officer with chiselled features, walked through the police lines and made their way over to where Robin was still being interviewed. The rows of riot cops edged forwards too. They were lined up in front of the coaches now, squeezing us into a smaller area. Behind their ranks I could see others, herding away the bemused onlookers and attempting to clear the grid-locked traffic. Two helicopters whirred overhead. One was clearly a police chopper, but the other looked like a radio station ‘flying eye’. Maximum coverage. Just what we needed.
We were packed in too tightly for me to make my way over to Robin. I could see him arguing with the officer. Around them flashbulbs were popping and a boom mike hovered like a giant furry dildo. The top cop turned and conferred with his companions. He backed off a little way and spoke into his radio.
Robin stood eyeball to eyeball with the remaining cops. I felt a rush of affection for him. He’d always just been Nick’s mildly irritating mate. Now that Nick wasn’t around, Robin had come into his own. The officer rejoined his mates as ten more cops walked through the police lines. Together with the original three, they made their way across the road to Koi Korner. The seated protesters swayed aside to let them pass, like the Red Sea parting for Moses.
I was on the pavement outside the shop with my bucket and posters. I st
ood up as the cops approached. The lead officer hesitated a moment and stared deep into my eyes. His were colder and more devoid of feeling than any of those floating round in the tanks inside. My mouth felt dry. I swallowed with difficulty but refused to lower my gaze. Fisheyes rapped hard on the smoked-glass door. It was opened by Harriet Pugh, the woman who had so intimidated Frank the last time I’d been there. She didn’t look like she could intimidate a hamster at that point. The defiant tilt of her head was belied by a death-like pallor and a trembling lower lip. She stood aside and the cops filed in, the last one closing the door in my face.
The drummers drummed, the helicopters hummed, the cops scowled and the minutes crawled. When the door finally reopened, the cops emerged escorting Harriet and half a dozen men, including the one I’d seen outside earlier. Gunther wasn’t among them. The crowd hissed and there were cries of ‘Nazi scum!’ A woman I recognised as a cousin of Mags spat full in the face of one of the men as he passed. He turned in horror and rage, but before he could react two cops pinned him from each side and frogmarched him through the volatile throng. Another uniformed posse went back inside Koi Korner, while a dozen more formed a protective line in front of the shop.
Fisheyes stood next to them with a megaphone. A hush fell over the crowd as he addressed us. He said that our presence constituted an illegal gathering. If we didn’t proceed to clear the area immediately, we would all be liable for arrest for obstruction and causing a breach of the peace.
‘What about the fascists?’ a familiar voice demanded.
I turned, to see Frank on his feet. Mags, Ali and Gaia were beside him.
‘I can assure you all that the allegations made here today will be investigated with the full force of the law.’
I turned to check if the cameras were getting this. They were. He repeated his demand for us to disperse. Why not? We’d done what we came to do. People began getting to their feet. The riot cops moved back like synchronised swimmers, forming a passage to allow the protesters to return to their vehicles. I half expected them to lay into people as they ran the gauntlet, but the watching cameras forced them to repress the urge. I could see some of them grinding their teeth as their enemy moved good-naturedly past, laughing and joking. To the victor the spoils. Most people there had known few victories. I knew I had no need to feel grateful for what they had helped achieve that day. It was they who would be grateful for the opportunity to participate.