Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  He closed the curtain again and went through to the bathroom. He shaved quickly, splashed his face with cold water, and returned to the bedroom. Quietly, he dressed. Blue shirt, dark suit, muted red tie. Only when he was about to leave did he think to check his pager. He carried it with him everywhere. He frowned when he found it missing and searched quickly on his hands and knees on the carpet behind the canvas-backed director’s chair where he’d hung his jacket. Nothing. He crossed the room and bent briefly over the bed. It was underneath Suzanne’s pillow. He slid it out as carefully as he could, trying not to wake her. The tiny control on the side was switched to ‘off’.

  He peered down at her. With the curtains closed, the room was still in semi-darkness. Suzanne stirred and rolled over. She opened one eye and saw the pager in his hand. Her sudden smile was entirely unrepentant. Goodman gazed down at her, and returned the smile.

  ‘Naughty girl,’ he said.

  She looked up at him, and budded her mouth into a kiss. He leant over her, smelling the ripe, warm scent of her breath. Her hand guided his under the duvet, across the flat, firm belly, and down.

  ‘Naughty boy,’ she said.

  He smiled again, and massaged her slowly, and then kissed her one last time and stood up. As he left the flat, he heard the click of her bedside radio. The first of the day’s reports announced that an American missile submarine was adrift in the Barents Sea, a bare hundred miles from Russian territorial waters. With a nice sense of understatement, the resident pundit agreed that this latest crisis was, under the circumstances, ‘unhelpful’.

  Gillespie arrived back at his house at 7.35, too late for the meat of the seven o’clock news, and too early for the eight o’clock updates. From the Naval officers at the anchorage, he’d learned nothing more than the existence of a Requisitioning List. They’d been perfectly polite, even affable, but he knew far too much about the Service to doubt that they meant what they said. He’d seen lists like that before. He’d seen them in Northern Ireland, precautionary gestures against the total collapse of law and order. Once you made a list like that, you weren’t too far from chaos.

  Gillespie pushed in through the front door, collected a warm towel from the radiator in the hall, released the cat from the kitchen, and went through to the living room to switch on the TV. The living room ran the length of the house: a cool, tidy room, thoughtfully lit by spots on the wall, with a fitted carpet, and a small sofa, and an ancient leather-covered armchair which fitted him like a glove. The bookshelves were full of thrillers and military biographies and he’d hung a print from the Falklands campaign over the open fireplace.

  The print was a view of HMS Hermes returning to the city in midsummer, framed by the harbour mouth, saluted by thousands, an essay in greens and greys and the choking, tearful euphoria he remembered so well. Sandra had met him off the ship. The marriage had been over for more than a year, but they’d laid their differences aside for a night before real life crept back with the clatter of milk bottles on the door step, and the first pot of tea, and his own overpowering need to be out and away. Sean had watched him go from the upstairs bedroom window. For once, the boy hadn’t returned his cheerful wave.

  Gillespie turned on the TV and stepped back to towel himself dry. A pretty girl with almond eyes was sitting on a sofa interviewing an American actor. The actor was discussing the merits of the latest Californian diet. The crisis in Scandinavia was evidently postponed for a while. Gillespie swapped channels. More schlock. He turned down the sound and crossed the room towards the small government-surplus desk beneath the front window. There was a litter of bills, and petrol receipts, and a heap of untranscribed audio cassettes from a surveillance job he’d had to abandon after the client ran out of money.

  On one side of the desk, beside the telephone, was an answering machine with a message waiting. Gillespie frowned. He’d checked the machine before he’d left for his run. It was still very early for anyone to have phoned. He spooled back the tape. The tape began to play. A woman’s voice. Young. Impatient. Very London. Annie. Gillespie winced. He could picture her at the other end, cursing his gruff recorded message, wondering why the fuck he wasn’t there to do her bidding. The voice was huskier than usual. Evidently, she’d had a hard night. Too many cigarettes. Or worse.

  ‘Hi …’ the voice said, ‘it’s me. It’s … ah … six-thirty. Just after. And there’s no way I’m going to be down by nine. The traffic’s unbelievable. Everyone’s leaving town. So say “Hi” to the crew for me. Tell them to set up. That’s technical for get ready. OK? See you …’

  The phone went dead. Gillespie stared at it a moment, towelling the last of the run from his face and neck. Crew? Setting up? He frowned, trying to fit the words together, trying to tease out some kind of sense. He’d known the girl six months at the most. She’d said she worked in television. She was producing a big series. It would be on some network or other. It was all about the Falklands War. It would be definitive, she’d said, and she wanted a meet. She used the phrase knowingly, exhibiting it like a badge at the end of the sentence. It meant she’d been around a bit, mixed in certain circles, knew blokes from the police or the military.

  Gillespie, on the phone, had been non-committal. The Falklands was way back. He’d nothing to say. Why didn’t she try someone else? But the girl had been persistent, ringing back time and time again until he’d agreed to a drink, and a chat, and maybe a meal afterwards.

  She’d come down within days, a tall, rangy twenty-six-year-old, mixed blood, probably Scouse and Caribbean. She was cheerful and forthright, with a big Afro haircut and a wide face and a smile she used to some effect. She was the kind of person who built bridges at once, touched and leant in close, like a good boxer, light on her feet, and deft, and quite fearless, with a sense of instant intimacy that could have been a turn-off but somehow wasn’t. The way she dressed underlined it all: an ancient blue and red check shirt under an old leather jacket, faded Levis, and last year’s Reeboks.

  She’d arrived in a friend’s borrowed Ford Escort, and they’d driven across the city and shared a couple of pints at a harbourside pub. Afterwards, she’d insisted on a meal, and he’d suggested one of the seedier Indian restaurants where the service was intermittent but the food was great. She’d told him most of her life story, and said nothing about the Falklands until the very end. Then she said she’d talked to some friends of his, old buddies from 43 Commando. She said it the way it should be said, Four three. These contacts of hers had all mentioned Gillespie by name. He was, they said, the man.

  Gillespie, nearly flattered, had asked why, and she’d said he’d seen the worst of it. That was her phrase. The worst of it. Gillespie had shrugged. The phrase, he said, meant nothing, sod all. You go to war, you expect to fight. You fight, you expect to take casualties. You take casualties, you expect some of them to be friends of yours, buddies, mates you’ve yomped with, and got pissed with, and helped out of the shit. Sure, some of them got blown away. Sure, some of it had been hideous. But the Corps never trained you to be a public librarian. They trained you to kill. Simple as that. Kill, or be killed.

  It was the first time he’d said more than a sentence or two to her, and the effect he remembered all too well. She’d listened to him very intently, eyes wide, her body bent slightly forward over the half-empty dishes. Whenever he paused for a moment to hunt for a word, she’d nod, as if urging him on, tugging out the story, line by line. And at the end of it all, she leant slowly back against the flock wallpaper, and let out her breath in a low, soft whistle, a gesture of amazement and applause. It was, for Gillespie’s taste, a hopelessly dramatic thing to do. It belonged to the world of showbusiness, and phoniness, and funny metropolitan ways, but the curry had been good, and there was no denying she was an attractive piece, and next time she came down they both got drunk and she stayed the night.

  There’d been other nights since. It was never predictable, always at her prompting, a message on the Ansaphone, a call from the end
of the street. Happen to be passing. Be nice to drop by. Gillespie liked the arrangement. It was loose and easy and free of commitment. He liked her company, and she liked his, and the girl was funny, and bold, and brilliant in bed. She asked nothing of him except himself, and he played the game willingly, no questions asked.

  Now, he respooled the machine and replayed the message. They had a loose agreement that one day he might consider doing an interview on film. Quite what he was meant to talk about was never clear, but she’d always dismissed his qualms, and said that stuff was better coming out spontaneously. Gillespie hadn’t much liked the sound of that, and so he’d simply forgotten about it, assumed it would never happen. Now, though, he realized that he’d been wrong. Because here she was, evidently somewhere between London and the South Coast, planning to descend on him with her little list of questions, and her neat preconceptions, and her cameraman, and God knows who else. And all this on a day when, by all accounts, the country was on the edge of another war. At any other time, the prospect of an interview would have been bad enough. Just now, it was out of the question. The girl would simply have to find something else to film.

  Martin Goodman drove north through the city, against the first of the morning rush hour. The radio was full of reports from Oslo on the expected outcome of talks between the new Socialist Government and the Soviet delegation from Moscow. The Russians had been in and out of the Foreign Ministry now for three days, and informed sources were talking about some kind of draft agreement. Quite what this agreement would contain wasn’t yet clear, but the spokesman from the Institute for Strategic Studies left his interviewer in no doubt about the consequences should the new Norwegian Prime Minister make good his pledge to withdraw from NATO. It would, he said, open the northern door to the heartlands of Western Europe. It would jeopardize the NATO alliance. And it would make the Americans very nervous indeed.

  Goodman followed the arguments as best he could, but it was difficult to relate the warnings of impending catastrophe to the queues of commuter cars streaming past him into the city, and the last of the mist lifting from the saltings at the head of the harbour with the memory of Suzanne still fresh and warm in his mind.

  The night before, for the first time, they’d discussed a permanent life together. After they’d come back from the French restaurant, and settled down on the sofa with a cup of thick black Turkish coffee and glasses of Armagnac, he’d heard himself talking about certain kinds of colour schemes, and the merits of owning a dishwasher, and whether or not it was wise to invest in solar heating. This kind of small print had never had the slightest relevance to their relationship. On the contrary, they’d created a world on the very edges of everyone else’s life, a relationship walled in by secret notes, and stolen telephone calls, and snatched hours together in bistros, and pubs, and darkened car parks. In a sense, it had been a kind of war, the two of them underground in some hostile country, their kisses and their lovemaking sharpened by the ever-present possibility of discovery or betrayal. The consequences of either were too awful to contemplate, but taking the risk somehow made him feel alive and young. It had offered a constant sense of infinite possibility, a defiance of the laws of emotional gravity that made him feel literally weightless, utterly free. He and Suzanne, their bubble, was a world away from strategy meetings about the city’s five-year expansion plan, or the sewage problems posed by the new Marina Complex. It was clean, and totally unrestrained by life’s normal ration of ballast.

  And yet the conversation last night, with its fond domesticities, had somehow changed the mood, brought them down to earth. Some bits of it had fascinated him. About others, he wasn’t so sure. The last thing he needed was another dollop of real life.

  He dropped a gear, and joined the queue of traffic driving over the creek onto the mainland. Up on the hill, overlooking the city, he could see the morning sunshine glittering on the big french windows at the back of his house. He glanced at his watch. By now, Joanna would be rousing the children. With luck, he’d arrive in time to share their porridge.

  *

  Gillespie sat at his kitchen table, adding up his debts. The morning’s post had brought him his monthly Access account, plus a final reminder on the phone bill. In all, according to his pencilled calculations, he now owed nearly £400.

  He never worried unduly about money, but lately work had been thin. He picked up most of his jobs from a local solicitor, a man in his late forties called Jenner. Jenner ran a small practice from a couple of offices in one of the city’s more elegant areas. He was a peaceable, mild-tempered man, with low blood pressure and an appalling dress sense. He had a small, highly organized wife, a collection of chaotic kids, and a large rambling house on the outskirts of a village about seven miles inland. Most of his work was Legal Aid, and he’d built a reputation for defending victims of the city’s chronic housing shortage: young couples ripped off by unscrupulous estate agents, elderly spinsters harried by greedy landlords, students with nowhere to live but a sleeping bag. The work would never earn him a fortune, he said, but he slept well at night, and he’d come to know a great deal about human nature.

  Gillespie had first met Jenner at the time of his own divorce. His gut instinct had been to give Sandra the lot, but Jenner had pulled him back from the brink of insolvency and drawn up a settlement which was both fair and honourable. The last of this business had been conducted over a drink, and the two men found themselves forging the beginnings of a relationship.

  Jenner had just dispensed with the latest of a long series of law school graduates, a breed he referred to collectively as ‘duds’. What he really wanted was someone with an organized mind, uncluttered by over-education or fancy ideas. Someone with a spot of self-discipline, who’d be able to pick up the ins and outs of conveyancing, and the delivery of writs, and the keeping of tabs on this and that, and the odd spot of something he called ‘research’. The latter turned out to involve surveillance work, and after some thought Gillespie agreed to have a go. He’d never been over-concerned with other people’s lives, but he liked Jenner, and he needed the money.

  The first jobs had been straightforward. Accompanying clients to court. Taking statements from key witnesses. Holding the fort on the rare afternoons when Jenner was away. But then came the evening when Jenner invited him along on a repossession case. When things became unpleasant, and Jenner was pulled from his Renault by a prominent local heavy, it was Gillespie who stepped out onto the pavement, loosened the man’s grip on Jenner’s collar, turned him carefully round, and hit him so hard that he broke his cheek-bone in two places. Jenner, while grateful, had given Gillespie a stern lecture on what he termed ‘gratuitous violence’. Gillespie hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, but nodded at key points and promised to send flowers to the hospital. The incident had cemented the rapport between the two men, and Gillespie had been in more or less regular work ever since.

  Lately though, the jobs had begun to dry up. Not because Jenner was any less keen on his services, but because – for some reason – people had suddenly started to be nicer to each other, and no longer, it seemed, needed the services of a solicitor. Jenner, ever philosophical, had welcomed the collective change of heart. He said it presaged an altogether gentler world. Gillespie, on the other hand, said it was bullshit. Most people were animals. Only fear of the consequences kept them in line.

  Now, in the kitchen, Gillespie eyed the bills a final time, and then reached for the kettle. The kettle was empty. He was about to fill it when there was a knock at the front door. He inched open the kitchen door with his foot. There was a shadow in the rippled glass at the end of the hall. Medium height. Bulky. Gillespie hesitated a moment, and then headed down the hall. When he opened the front door, he found a girl of about 25 standing outside. She was wearing a large blue anorak and was holding a clipboard against her chest. At the kerbside was a light beige Volvo estate car with the tailgate open and two men unloading silver boxes onto the pavement. Gillespie looked back at
the girl on his doorstep. He was still holding the empty kettle.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  The girl looked faintly nonplussed.

  ‘Mr Gillespie?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘We’re from Wessex TV …’ She hesitated. ‘Is Annie here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But she did tell you we were coming ..?’

  She smiled, still uncertain. Gillespie looked at the Volvo. There was a tripod on the back seat and the bigger of the two men was carefully removing a camera from one of the silver boxes. He turned back to the girl again.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she did.’

  ‘So …’ she nodded past him, up the hall, ‘can we come in?’

  Gillespie hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, love. No, you can’t.’

  The girl looked confused. Then angry. Then confused again.

  ‘Can’t?’

  ‘Yes, love. Can’t.’ He smiled at her, and put a finger to his lips. ‘There’s a war on,’ he said, ‘Mum’s the word.’

  Goodman first saw the black Rover when he rounded the bend at the foot of the hill. It was parked outside his house. Closer, as he slowed to drive past it and then turn into his own drive, he saw the Home Office sticker on the back window, and the splatters of dried mud curving back from the wheel arches. Someone with Whitehall connections. Someone who’d put his foot down.

  He eased the big Granada through the open gate, turned carefully across the square of gravel, and rolled to a halt outside the front door. The bedroom curtains upstairs were still drawn. He frowned, retrieving his briefcase from the back seat, and got out of the car.