Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  Later, composed again, she phoned her mother in Wales. Her mother assured her that the caravan was ready and available. They’d all be welcome, any time.

  Annie McPhee pulled her borrowed Escort into the car park of Wessex TV and killed the engine. The studio was barely a year old, a low, squat two-storey building, unpainted ribbed aluminium cladding on a simple steel frame, one of a handful of off-the-shelf designs generated by the recent explosion in regional broadcasting. The builders had taken a record four months to complete the structure, and the architect had assured the Board that his design could easily be converted into a supermarket, or a carpet warehouse, with the minimum of effort. In the ruthless new world of multi-channel broadcasting, agreed the Company Director of Finance, you couldn’t be too careful.

  Annie retrieved her satchel from the car boot and walked across the car park towards Reception. She’d been working at Wessex TV for a month now, using the studio as a production base while she drew up preliminary plans for her documentary series. She’d taken the idea to Wessex at the turn of the year, attracted by the reputation of their Programme Controller, Duggie Bullock.

  Bullock was a big, bluff, plain-speaking Yorkshireman, an ex-producer of real class with a fine record for carefully crafted, hard-hitting topical documentaries, and an instinctive talent for making what he termed ‘mischief’. One of the many casualties of the break-up of the ITV system, he’d come south in search of autonomy and some kind of programme base. Wessex TV, with its three-counties transmission area and its hundred or so employees was no bigger than any of the other new regional TV outfits. But certain members of the Board were keen to dilute the usual schlock with a stylish news operation and the occasional showpiece series. Bullock had the experience to provide both. His brief had therefore been simple: profits and profile. The former had been axiomatic. Wessex TV was no charity. But the latter was equally important. The Company wanted to earn respect as programme makers, and the Chairman had made it clear from the outset that he was keen to make a splash in the world of international broadcasting. There were local businessmen on the Board, he said with a twinkle, who quite fancied the idea of a trip to Cannes, or New York, or any of the countless other festivals which dotted the broadcasting calendar, and he was quite certain that Bullock would come up with the appropriate ideas. Providing the subject was right, and the sums made reasonable sense, the Board would back him all the way.

  Annie McPhee, with her push, and her grin, and her impressive track record, had therefore made her pitch at exactly the right time. She’d left the BBC after a particularly vicious row with her Executive Producer, wisely taking with her a handful of programme files. Two of the latter had dealt with various aspects of the Falklands War, and she’d often asked herself why no one had yet produced the definitive series about that extraordinary episode. There’d been plenty of in-depth documentaries, sure, and a couple had been truly excellent. But there was still room, she was certain, for something larger, something truly comprehensive, something which would put the whole giddy episode under pitiless review, and reveal it for what she considered it was: a blatant exercise in self-interest by the current ruling class, fogged by jingoism, cloaked in all kinds of phoney exhortations about freedom, and democracy, and the inalienable rights of a handful of kelpers. As such, the project fitted neatly into Annie’s preconceptions about post-imperialism, and the covert workings of the British Establishment. From the start she’d been keen to construct a series that would open the public eye to the realities of State power.

  Her initial meeting with Bullock had gone well. She’d liked the man on sight. He was solid, and gruff, and witty, and difficult to bullshit. He was familiar with her work, and knew at once what she was after. The idea made perfect sense for Wessex TV, home of the Task Force, and he anticipated no problems underwriting the production budget with pre-sales abroad. But he warned her from the start that his acceptance of the idea would come with strings. She’d have to be careful with the editorial line. She’d have to sustain and develop her thesis with new and carefully researched material – interviews, incidents from people on the ground, people who’d been out there at the sharp end. He wasn’t interested in disappointed politicians with axes to grind, or acres of young widows with a couple of fatherless kids. He wanted to be shocked, yes, and angered too. But there were to be no short cuts.

  After that first meeting, Annie had withdrawn to London for a couple of days, sobered by the exchange. She didn’t argue for a moment with what Bullock wanted – it simply confirmed all the good things she’d heard about him – but she was by now too experienced to underestimate the size of the mountain she had to climb. The Falklands had begun and ended as a media war. The raw material at her disposal had been under intense scrutiny from the very beginning. Could she really find enough new gems to sustain a series?

  At first, she’d thought no. Then Bullock had phoned up and offered her a modest development budget, enough for her to trawl around for a month or so, following up old contacts, probing key bits of evidence and witnesses, and trying to assess whether, in the end, she could deliver what Bullock wanted.

  The first month had gone badly. Admirals gave her fifteen minutes between meetings and refused to add to the record. A left-wing radio journalist talked darkly about ‘incidents’ during the latter half of the campaign, but shook his head when asked to elaborate. Tory politicians lectured her about national self-respect, and about a chain of events they’d already distorted beyond belief. And a young diplomat from the Foreign Office’s South American Department declined to comment on wilder rumours about missing briefing papers, bungled analyses, and disregarded intelligence intercepts.

  Then, after five weeks’ work, came her first real lead, an ex-Marine in Plymouth who’d abandoned the Service, and was driving a taxi for a living. She’d found him through a mutual friend, and she’d taken him to lunch in a pub near the Millbay Docks. He was a sensitive, embittered young man, old beyond his years, still scarred by what he’d seen, by what he’d been part of. Some of his stories she’d frankly disbelieved, but time and again the same name cropped up. Someone they’d all respected. Someone who’d been in the very thick of it. The man who’d copped the roughest deal of all. Gillespie.

  Annie pushed in through the double glass doors at the front of the studios and entered the newsroom. The newsroom occupied most of the front of the building, a wide, sunny, open-plan space jigsawed with desks. Here there was room for the secretaries, and copy girls, and half a dozen on-screen journalists who wrote and edited their own material, tapping out their scripts onto the linked computer screens that fed directly into Duggie Bullock’s office at the far end of the room. In an outfit as lean as Wessex TV, Bullock doubled as Head of News and Current Affairs, a post which gave him hands-on control of the nightly news magazine, and satisfied his appetite for sharp-end involvement. As Annie knocked on his door, he was studying from a ratings report, a list of figures compiled weekly which told him how many viewers he’d pulled, and what kind of disposable income they represented. The South was a wealthy area, and judging by the smile on his face, the latest figures were evidently excellent.

  Bullock glanced up from the report and motioned Annie into the office. Over the last few weeks they’d established a comfortable working rapport – mutual respect with slightly fatherly overtones – and Bullock enjoyed the whiff of radical London that always accompanied Annie’s little visits.

  ‘How’s things?’ he asked, pushing the ratings report to one side and waving her into a chair. Anne pulled a face.

  ‘Terrible,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Gillespie didn’t deliver.’ She corrected herself. ‘Wouldn’t deliver.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure. I think he’s a bit shy.’

  ‘Shy.’ He savoured the word for a moment or two, turning it, inevitably, into a question. ‘Shy?’

  ‘Yes. When it came to it, he backed off.’

&nb
sp; ‘That surprise you?’

  He looked at her, direct, appraising. She realized he’d guessed the answer before he’d even phrased the question. There was no point trying to flannel the man. He’d been there before.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘he blamed it on the situation … the crisis … but no, I’m not surprised.’

  Bullock nodded, and turned away from her, gazing out of the window. He appeared to be totally unconcerned. Indeed, she sensed he’d lost interest in the subject altogether.

  ‘You were down there this morning,’ he said after a while, ‘down in the city.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course.’

  ‘How was it?’

  She looked blank.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘same as usual.’

  ‘Any sign of …’ he shrugged, ‘… atmosphere? Tension?’

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘Queues for food?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘See anything of the demo?’

  ‘Demo?’

  ‘Families against the Bomb. Mid morning. War Memorial.’ He paused. ‘Broken up by our NF friends.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’ He fingered the portable keyboard on the small metal trolley beside his desk. Lines of green copy appeared on the screen. He read out the details. ‘Four men in hospital. Two of them detained.’ He smiled. ‘Both Poly lecturers.’

  ‘Arrests?’

  ‘None.’ He keyed in more copy, shifting his body slighdy in the chair so that Annie could look over this shoulder at the screen. She scanned the lines of type. Police appealing for special constables. Hospital administrators cancelling all non-urgent operations. Supermarket limits on the purchase of certain foods. Rumours of petrol rationing. He glanced over his shoulder at her.

  ‘Interested?’ he said.

  Annie frowned.

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘No?’ He paused, then cleared the screen of copy with a single stab of his middle finger. His chair slowly revolved towards her. He looked thoughtful.

  ‘I’m still game for the Falklands,’ he said after a moment or two, ‘and I go along with most of your thesis.’ He paused. ‘There’s only one problem.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I think we might have the wrong war.’ He nodded back towards the now-empty screen. ‘Down the road is one of the biggest cities in the south. Things look grim. It’s an obvious target. In a day or so, if things get worse, anyone with any sense is going to be packing their bags. That’s maybe a hundred and fifty thousand people. With nowhere to go.’ He smiled at her. ‘So what are our Masters going to do about it?’ He turned towards the screen again. ‘With me now?’

  Mick and Albie left Harry Cartwright’s office at a quarter to twelve. After confirming the forty-eight hour deadline for the repayment of Mick’s principal debts, Cartwright had softened the blow a little. He’d accompanied them both to the door of his office, where his secretary stood waiting to show them out of the building. They’d all paused a moment, Mick subdued, Albie impassive, Cartwright wholly in charge. He’d reached up and patted Mick on the shoulder.

  ‘A new scheme, Michael,’ he’d said, ‘a new idea. But something with a little substance to it. Eh, my friend?’

  Now, sitting outside in the BMW, Mick permitted himself a sigh of relief. His debts were huge. It could have been much worse. Something would come up. Bound to. Albie pulled the big car out into the stream of traffic heading in towards the city centre and glanced across.

  ‘Where to?’ he said.

  Mick glanced at his watch.

  ‘The Ensign,’ he said, naming a pub by the waterside. ‘We need a drink.’

  ‘What about the garage?’

  ‘Stuff the garage.’

  Albie looked across at him.

  ‘The Ensign is the other way,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  Albie shrugged and pulled the car into a tight U-turn, leaving a thin film of rubber on the newly-laid tarmac. At the end of the road, he braked sharply and turned left, into a garage. Mick glanced across at the fuel gauge. It was nearly empty. He leaned back and adjusted the recline on the seat, enjoying the smell and the assurance of the firm black leather. For some reason, he felt better already. Maybe the session on the rowing machine. Maybe the scene they’d just been through, sitting in with Harry, and getting his bollocks chewed off, and walking right out of it all, intact. A young attendant walked across to the car. Albie lowered the electric window and nodded at the four star pump.

  ‘Fill her up,’ he said.

  The attendant hesitated a moment, and glanced over his shoulder. An older man in a suit was watching him from behind the cash desk. The attendant looked at Albie again.

  ‘Sorry, chief …’ he began.

  Albie frowned.

  ‘Yer what?’

  The attendant smiled uneasily. ‘I said I’m sorry. Five quid’s worth. That’s all you’re allowed.’

  Albie looked at him. ‘I said fill it up,’ he repeated. ‘All right?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Albie reached for the door handle and began to get out. Mick leaned across, restraining him. He knew the youth from way back.

  ‘What’s the matter, son?’ he said. ‘My credit run out?’

  The youth, who was edging uneasily backwards, looked relieved.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s the same for everyone. Five quid’s all we’re allowed to sell.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘The Guvnor.’ He jerked his thumb in the direction of the office. ‘New rule.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Or the next day.’

  ‘And what happens then?’

  The youth began to reach down and unscrew the filler cap.

  ‘We close down,’ he said. ‘Because there’s no more fuel to be had.’ He looked up again, and shrugged. ‘Same all round.’

  It was nearly midday at the Conference Room at the Civic Centre before Davidson dropped his bombshell. He’d been talking in some detail about the relationship between Central Government and the Regions. He’d confirmed that authority would shortly be devolved to Regional Commissioners, and through them to Regional Sub-Commissioners. He’d pointed out the precise geographical limits to Martin Goodman’s authority as Controller, responsible to one of the Regional Sub-Commissioners. But it was only in response to another question from Nigel Quinn that he got to the real meat of the issue. It was a moment that everyone in the room would remember for a very long time, and in a sense, Goodman realized, it explained exactly why Davidson had come south in the first place.

  Nigel Quinn’s question was about the ESRs. ESRs were Essential Service Routes, designated lengths of trunk road and motorway which would be closed for periods of time and reserved for exclusively military use. These roads criss-crossed the country, north-south, east-west, and an important part of the network lay on the south coast, providing safe passage for personnel and military supplies to the Channel ports. One of the most vital ESRs connected the city to the nuclear weapons dumps in Wiltshire, and Nigel Quinn wanted to know how often the city’s major link to the mainland would be closed. There were only three roads off the island, he reminded Davidson, and the traffic implications were not inconsiderable. The Navy’s request for a two-hour closure at midday had already caused chaos.

  Davidson accepted the point with a smile. He regretted that he lacked detailed information about the Navy’s demands on the ESRs but he was sure that Tony Belling, the Flag Officer’s ADC, might be able to help. He understood that the Navy had in fact been ferrying in nuclear depth charges for days, using hired trucks from commercial companies, but once a State of Emergency had been formally declared, Davidson felt sure that the Navy would need to organize more orthodox convoys, which would require regular closure of the motorway. Belling, to Davidson’s right, nodded agreement and began to get to his feet, but Davidson put a restraining hand on his shoulder, and smiled apologetically, and said that he had on
e more matter to address.

  The Government, he said, had been concerned for some time with the difficult issue of population movement. Under certain circumstances, the planners felt that the principal danger to law and order would be the massive outflows of people from major centres of population. Alarmed by the prospect of a real war, families living in, say, London, or Birmingham, would understandably feel the urge to get away. To the west, perhaps, or to the countryside.

  Now the consequences of such an exodus would be deeply disruptive, and the Government would therefore be doing everything it could to persuade the population to stay at home. Special TV programmes had already been recorded pointing out the difficulties facing families on the run. Sympathetic newspapers had been primed to run feature articles about food shortages, and fuel rationing, and the likelihood of sixty-mile traffic queues. There’d be further appeals on local and national radio for listeners to stay at home, keeping a roof over their heads and a neighbourly eye on others less well able to fend for themselves. All these measures would help, but the exodus was still bound to happen and the Government accepted that, in the end, there was little else they could do about it.