Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  He started the engine and kicked it into gear. He glanced in the remains of the wing mirror, and pulled the van into a tight three-point turn. The van was barely a yard from the edge of the dock when he felt the arm circle his throat and tighten. He stamped on the brake and tried to struggle, but it was hopeless. He opened his mouth to shout. Nothing happened. He began to choke. There were red spots in front of his eyes, then the colour drained away, and everything turned into the same shade of grey, and he knew he was losing consciousness.

  His body went slack, and the pressure around his throat loosened. Gradually, very slowly, he was able to take in air again. His vision cleared. He looked up at the rear-view mirror. Gillespie’s face was next to his, his breath hot on Albie’s ear. He was wearing a combat jacket and a small woollen cap. He had gloves on.

  ‘Over there,’ Gillespie said, ‘by the boat.’

  Albie looked at him again, and pushed up, hard, from the seat, trying to catch him under the chin, the nose, token resistance, a sop to his pride. The choke hold tightened again.

  ‘Do it,’ Gillespie said. ‘Now.’

  Albie did his best to nod, to signal he’d had enough, but Gillespie’s eyes were elsewhere, looking out through the windshield, checking left and right. Albie let the clutch out, and backed the van very slowly away from the quayside. Then he inched it forwards until it was abreast of McNaught’s trawler.

  ‘Switch off the engine,’ Gillespie said.

  Albie did what he was told. The engine coughed and died. There was silence. Gillespie again, inches from his ear.

  ‘Tell me about the girl,’ he said, ‘I want to know about the girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  Gillespie laughed, a brief expulsion of stale air. Then he pushed hard on the back of Albie’s head, without warning. Albie saw the steering wheel coming up to meet him, then there was darkness as he shut his eyes, and an excruciating pain around his nose. Gillespie took a handful of his hair and pulled his head back and did it again. Albie tasted blood.

  ‘The girl who was working for Cartwright,’ Gillespie said, ‘the one who was on the ladder the night you gave me the diesel.’ He paused. ‘Remember?’

  Albie nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  A tooth had loosened. He nudged it with his tongue. Gillespie was still there, inches away, the voice in his ear.

  ‘So what happened to her?’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

  Albie shook his head, wincing with the pain.

  ‘I dunno,’ he said, ‘ask Cartwright.’

  ‘Did he kill her?’

  Albie looked up to the mirror, genuinely astonished.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did he kill her?’

  ‘Kill her?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Gillespie nodded. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘No. Of course he didn’t.’

  ‘Did you?’

  Albie gazed at Gillespie, completely out of his depth. The arm began to tighten again, and he kicked hard against the floor panels, arching his body, twisting to the left, throwing Gillespie momentarily off balance. There was a heavy rubber torch on the dashboard, and Albie seized it, lashing out behind him. Gillespie was too close for him to do real damage, but he felt the lens of the torch shatter on something bony, something hard, and when Gillespie emerged from his left, diving in over the back of the seat, there was blood running down his face.

  He lashed out again, using his fists, as Gillespie closed on him, forcing him back against the door. Gillespie was on top of him now, the two bodies wedged together between the steering wheel and the back of the seat. Albie brought his knee up, as hard as he could, feeling the bony arch at the bottom of Gillespie’s pelvis. Gillespie gasped with pain, his hands closing again around Albie’s neck, going for the jugular.

  Abruptly, Albie went limp. He began to make gurgling noises. His eyes started to widen. Gillespie held him a second or two longer, then let go, falling back against the passenger door, fumbling with the window, winding it down, leaning out in time to be sick over the cobbles. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Albie was still flat on his back, his chest heaving, forcing the air deep into his lungs.

  ‘Yes or no?’ Gillespie said.

  Albie tried to struggle upright, but gave up and sank back on the scuffed vinyl.

  ‘No,’ he said in a croak.

  ‘You hurt?’

  Albie nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  There was a silence. Gillespie wiped his mouth again. The last five minutes had taken more out of him than he liked to admit. More running, he thought. Get back out there. Into shape. Albie got up on his elbows. He looked terrible. There was blood all over the bottom half of his face and his nose changed direction half-way down. He ran his tongue around his mouth in pursuit of something small and hard, and finally produced a tooth. He took it out and looked at it. Then up at Gillespie.

  ‘You done, then, have you?’

  Gillespie nodded, feeling behind him for the door handle.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, opening the door, ‘for now.’

  He got out of the van and glanced briefly back inside. Albie was sitting upright, examining the damage in the mirror, aware of Gillespie at the open window. He fingered the area around his nose, very gently, scowling at the pain.

  ‘They’re right about you, Gillespie,’ he said, ‘you’re off your fucking head.’

  Annie McPhee had been in the Bunker for most of the morning before she realized what was happening.

  She’d decided to split the filming into three parts. First, she did a preliminary interview with Goodman, covering the nuts and bolts of the period underground, who sat where, who did what, how the procedures worked, how one man could possibly orchestrate the life of an entire city.

  This part of the filming went moderately well. Goodman sat in front of the Situations Board, describing the command structures, the careful division of responsibility, the enormous task addressed by a tiny corps of local government officers, most of them too young even to have done National Service. It was, he said, a triumph of teamwork, a round-the-clock effort by a selfless group of dedicated professionals. Annie had taken this line a little further, probing the effects of claustrophobia, and anxiety, and sheer exhaustion. These were men and women, after all, who must have been a lot closer than the rest of the population to incoming reports from Central Europe and the Barents Sea. They knew how critical the situation had become. They’d every reason to expect the call from Fylingdales, the inbound blips on the big radar screens, the first airbursts blossoming over the city. Hadn’t they been worried about their families? Their loved ones? How could they possibly cope?

  At this, Goodman smiled and nodded, agreeing that it had been a problem. Annie had explored the question further. Were there special arrangements for wives and kids? Some way of lessening the tensions? Easing the burden? Goodman had smiled again. Yes, he’d said, there’d naturally been provision for Bunker dependants. It would have been foolish not to have anticipated the problem. But thankfully, the Emergency had been over before he’d had time to properly action the plan. When Annie asked for details – a destination, say – he’d shaken his head, statesman-like, maintaining a proper reticence, and said he’d prefer these arrangements to remain confidential.

  After this first interview, Annie set up a series of shots around the Bunker. Most of the key officers had been told to attend. They sat at their desks, shrouded in their NBC suits, wooden faced, awkward, pretending to discharge their civic duties, doing again what all of them preferred to forget. Annie did her best, trying to create a genuine feeling of tension, trying to ensure the tiniest details were right, the NBC masks in the in-trays, the half drunk cups of coffee, the litter of old memos, the red winking eye of the Attack Imminent alarm.

  Some of it, she thought, might work. With the right sound effects, and a chord or two of music, it might begin to suggest the way it must have been. But the harder she tried, and the more ambitious the shots she set up, the more she became aware of the watchin
g eyes of Goodman, and the young assistant he’d introduced, in a casual aside, as Mr Jones. The latter was supposed to be local, some functionary from the Civic Centre, but Annie found this line increasingly hard to swallow. On one or two occasions, he seemed vague about the city’s geography, and when – mid-morning over coffee and biscuits – she asked him point blank where he lived, he offered her an uneasy smile and side-stepped the question. It was a bit tricky, he said. He was in transit just now between addresses. In fact he often asked himself the same question: where did he live? Annie laughed dutifully into her coffee, knowing full well that he actually came from somewhere else, probably London, probably sent down to keep an eye on things. What were they frightened of? She began to wonder. What had really happened?

  The last part of the filming should have given her the answer. She set up another interview with Goodman, different location, up in his office, the man in charge, the focus tighter, the questions sharper. The success of this kind of interview always depended on research, little pockets of prior knowledge acquired by stealth or diligence, concealed from the interviewee, the necessary antidote to the usual evasions and bluster and half truths. On this occasion, though, Annie knew that much of the material she could rely on was already public knowledge: the arms convoys, the rationing of food and fuel, the curfew. To this, admittedly, she could add her own experience – the assault at the roadblock, summary arrest, hospital wards full of detainees – but even so, it didn’t really add up to very much. The situation plainly warranted emergency measures. As Controller, Goodman would have been irresponsible not to have implemented them.

  Even so, she tried her best again, seating Goodman behind the big desk, lighting him in a certain way, heavy key light, minimal fill, more than a hint of Leni Riefenstahl. She put the questions to him as artfully as she knew how, trying to voice the surprise that ordinary people must have felt, glimpsing the extent of the power they’d handed to this man, the limitless sweep of the actions he could take. Goodman sensed at once what she was trying to do, and rode the interrogation with ease, giving each question careful thought, deflecting it with the kind of sincere concern politicians reserve for the trickier issues. It was wholly convincing, the purest reassurance, and Annie soon recognized that she was getting nowhere. What had begun as an investigation, was fast turning into a whitewash. At this rate, she thought grimly, she might just as well try interior decoration.

  She shifted in her chair, trying to retrieve the initiative. Goodman watched her from behind the desk, composed, at ease, a man with absolutely nothing to hide. A man who’d simply done the job he’d been paid for. A man, in short, you could trust.

  ‘So why did you impose a curfew?’ Annie asked.

  Goodman acknowledged the question with a nod.

  ‘To keep people at home. It was a matter of…’ He paused, frowning, feeling his way towards a conclusion, doing his thinking on camera, the way they taught you at the £400-a-day TV schooling sessions.

  ‘Control?’ suggested Annie.

  He smiled. Cheap point.

  ‘Information,’ he said. ‘It was important that people kept in touch.’

  ‘Is that why you took over radio and television?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’ He paused again. ‘Can you suggest a better alternative?’

  Annie looked at him, driven to the frontal assault.

  ‘How about telling people the truth?’ she suggested. ‘For a change?’

  ‘That’s exactly what we did.’

  ‘All those game shows? Cartoons? Sit coms? All that pap?’

  Goodman smiled at her earnestness, playing the man in the street.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know…’ he said, ‘our job was to offer as much information, and as much reassurance, as we could. Information, as it happened, was hard to come by. Reassurance was on the shelf. Is there something wrong in making people laugh?’ He paused, the smile broadening. ‘Have you seen the viewing figures for that week? They were sensational.’

  Annie blinked.

  ‘Are you suggesting people prefer game shows to the truth?’ she said.

  Goodman spread his hands wide, the mock innocent, the interview falling into his lap.

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ he said. ‘I’m simply telling you that we tried to keep life as normal as possible.’ He paused again. ‘Who knows?’ he said finally. ‘Perhaps that amounts to the same thing.’

  Gillespie met the estate agent outside the seafront block of flats, as arranged. Since leaving Albie at the dock, he’d had time to go home, shower and change. He’d done his best with the gash on his forehead, but the swelling was already there, and he knew there was no way of disguising it.

  The agent arrived late, a young man in a suit and a tie, stepping out of a smart new Honda, glancing apologetically at his Swatch watch, and shaking Gillespie by the hand. They took the lift to the ninth floor, while the agent extracted the particulars from a file, and ran through what he termed ‘the major features’.

  Gillespie nodded, not listening, wondering who’d got in that night, who’d tempted the girl to the door and talked her into opening it. He’d seen no evidence of a forced entry, no splintered wood, none of the scars from a wrecking bar or a sledgehammer. At first, he’d assumed her death had some connection with events at the dock – Cartwright, Rendall, Curtis – but five minutes in the back of Albie’s van had made him wonder. Men under extreme physical pressure rarely lie, and he’d seen the expression on Albie’s face when he’d told him about the girl’s death. He’d been astounded. More important, he’d been insulted. Whoever killed Suzanne Wallace, it certainly wasn’t Albie Curtis.

  The lift began to slow. The agent was returning the particulars to his briefcase. The door opened and they stepped out onto the landing. Gillespie nodded at Suzanne’s door. Number 913.

  ‘Place vacant?’ he said.

  The agent nodded, fumbling in his pocket for the keys.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you’re lucky.’

  ‘Who was the previous owner?’

  The agent frowned, coaxing the key into the lower lock.

  ‘I don’t know. To tell you the truth,’ he turned the key, ‘we’re handling the sale for the Treasury Solicitor. I gather it’s a liquidation case.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Gillespie frowned. The Treasury Solicitor normally dealt with estates where there was no known next-of-kin. He remembered the funeral, the vicar and his bicycle at the graveside, the total absence of mourners. Maybe this was the explanation. The girl died without relatives. No one, quite literally, to wave her goodbye.

  The agent turned the key in the second lock and stepped into the flat. Gillespie followed. The place smelled of fresh paint. They walked through to the lounge. The walls were white. He remembered a different colour, a hint of blue. He looked round. The carpet was spotless. No trace of the blood spills near the window. He crossed slowly to the big sliding doors that led out onto the balcony.

  ‘Nice view,’ he said automatically.

  The agent nodded, glancing at his watch again.

  ‘Magnificent,’ he said.

  Gillespie paused at the window. He unlocked the catch on the door and glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He slid the door open and walked out onto the balcony. The morning was bright, but cool, the wind off the sea. The island was very clear, an arm’s reach away, and a gusting wind was slicing the tops off the bigger waves. Gillespie ran a thoughtful finger along the top of the parapet. He glanced over. Same drop. Same concrete. Same spread-eagled figure imprinted on his memory. He looked out to sea again, feeling the old tug, the old affection, and then turned away and went back into the flat. The agent, a busy young man, was obviously eager to get away. Gillespie sank into one of the armchairs. Last time he’d seen it, it had been on its side, by the wall. He leaned back, made himself comfortable. The loose covers felt newly washed and ironed. Someone had done a thorough job.

&nb
sp; ‘What happens to all this stuff?’ he enquired. ‘The furniture? The pictures?’

  The agent glanced round.

  ‘I gather it’s all on offer. We’d negotiate separately on that.’

  ‘I see.’ Gillespie paused, fingering the linen of the loose covers. ‘Good condition, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ the agent nodded. ‘We think presentation’s important.’

  ‘We?’

  The young man caught the inflection in Gillespie’s voice, the tiny shift of emphasis, a definite question.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘You had this place cleaned?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Bit of a state, was it?’

  The agent frowned.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘to tell you the truth. I know there’s money in the estate.’ He smiled. ‘You can see it. It’s a nice place.’ He shrugged. ‘So I imagine we spent a penny or two really getting it up together.’ He paused. ‘Do I take it you’re interested?’

  Gillespie nodded. ‘Very.’ He got up and circled the room. ‘This cleaning up business…’ he said slowly, ‘on whose instructions would you have done that?’

  The agent frowned, not following the logic of Gillespie’s questions. Clients normally asked about the central heating and the rates. Not stuff like this.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘to tell you the truth.’

  ‘But it would have been somebody? Somebody outside the firm?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he shrugged, ‘maybe not.’

  Gillespie nodded.

  ‘Who instructed you?’

  ‘I’ve told you. The Treasury Solicitors.’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And who instructed them?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea.’

  Gillespie nodded again, kneeling by the wall, and running a finger along the skirting board. New paintwork. Thick gloss. He looked up.

  ‘What happened to the vendor?’ he said.

  The agent opened the file again. He was clearly getting tired of it all.

  ‘A Miss Wallace,’ he said finally.

  ‘That’s her name. I asked you what happened to her.’