Lia had lain on her bed looking at the guidebook, immersing herself in its world, which was in such stark conflict with the events of the past evening. It helped her re-examine her feelings towards her environment. Emotions could be controlled. The innocent, good city the book described did not exist, but somewhere out there were its remnants.
She had slept soundly through the night.
In the morning Lia had visited her GP so he could look at her shoulder, which still hurt but could be moved. The muscle was badly strained but her shoulder wasn’t dislocated. Lia made up an explanation involving a run-in on the street with a motorcyclist. The painkiller the doctor prescribed took away the remainder of the aching.
‘I got off with a scare. But what I don’t understand is why those thugs reacted so aggressively,’ Lia said to Mari. ‘A couple of questions about Latvian prostitutes and they’re immediately trying to beat up a lone woman.’
If the men were running a pimping business involving a good number of customers and a lot of money, she could understand the heavy-handedness, Mari observed. Anyone who came around asking questions could be a risk.
‘Well, I’m certainly not going back there ever again,’ Lia said.
‘No, you aren’t. And investigating nightclubs alone isn’t a good idea at all,’ Mari said. ‘But we’ll come up with another way. Maybe Paddy could go to the clubs. I have to think.’
Lia looked around at Mari’s office, thinking how safe she felt at the Studio.
Silly. Just a few weeks ago this place felt so strange and mysterious.
‘You’re thinking about how your attitude towards this place has changed,’ Mari said.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Since you’re coming to the Studio so often now, would you like your own key? Then no one has to come to open the downstairs door for you any more.’
Lia couldn’t come up with any reason to say no.
‘And you can choose a research room to start using. Maggie is using one of them, but two rooms are usually free.’
That Lia had to consider longer. Having an office sounded sensible because then she would have a place for all of her papers. But then would she be working as one of Mari’s employees like everyone else?
‘I don’t think of you the same way I do the others,’ Mari said. ‘You aren’t working for me. We’re friends.’
That sounded good to Lia.
‘Right then. I’ll take an office, but I don’t work for you. I’ll do what I want here.’
Mari smiled, satisfied.
‘What next?’ Lia asked.
‘Wouldn’t a little rest be in order?’ Mari asked.
‘No,’ Lia replied.
If she got stuck at home nursing her wounds alone, she might think too much about the man with the bald head and end up being scared of going outside at all.
‘Well, since you ask, tomorrow evening there is this one event. I was thinking you could attend.’
‘Arthur Fried?’
‘Arthur Fried.’
20
Standing in the ice rink car park, Lia looked at the building welling sound and light into the evening twilight.
The Streatham Ice Arena was not a particularly grand place, but it was a big step forward from the little halls where Fair Rule had been holding meetings barely a year before.
This evening’s event was not an official party conference for making decisions about platforms or programmes. It was a spectacle for the faithful. A rally for the supporters who would be going out before the election to talk voters into getting behind the party.
Entrance was free, and even two hours before the event was due to begin, the place was already buzzing. No one paid any attention to a woman entering the arena alone.
In the entrance hall, Fair Rule workers bustled around a line of tables, putting out brochures and stash bearing party slogans that would be sold to raise campaign funds.
Lia climbed the stairs from the entrance hall towards the ice rink. Cardboard and plastic mats covered the rink, and more helpers were setting up chairs so that seating would be available for the audience elsewhere than in the stands surrounding the ice.
Lia sat in the stands to watch as volunteers hung posters on the walls.
Get Britain Back. Fight for Your Rights.
This would be an interesting evening.
On the far side of the rink was a large platform upon which a pair of young men were doing a sound check of the microphones. Behind them over the stage hung two large flags, and a third was being raised into place.
Lia had read about them as she prepared for the event. Pride of place behind the rostrum at Fair Rule gatherings was always reserved for these cloth banners bearing no text, only an image: the face of Arthur Fried. The flags had cost a lot given Fair Rule’s resources and had sparked no small controversy.
A reporter for the Independent had named them the ‘Great Leader Flags’ and observed that they injected a strange 1970s Soviet or Chinese air into British politics. All parties used images of their leaders as they campaigned, but only Fair Rule had gone so far.
Arthur Fried had defended the flags in several newspaper interviews. He had been the architect of the party’s recent rise in fortunes, and the mainstream media constantly overlooked small parties, never inviting them to participate in televised debates. What else could a beleaguered group of concerned citizens do to elevate the profiles of its leaders?
Lia sauntered around the rink watching the party workers and volunteers hard at work. Whenever an opportunity presented itself, she lent a hand. She carried boxes, hung placards and helped an older woman named Dorrie set out her trays of biscuits and paper coffee cups. This gave Lia a chance to ask various questions about Fair Rule business and the schedule for the evening’s event.
The ice arena provided ample space for more than a thousand visitors, but the workers didn’t think it would fill to capacity. Fair Rule had never turned out that many supporters on a weekday night. The party had booked the large hall for other reasons.
A year earlier, Arthur Fried had initiated a change in policy. Support for the party had been static, and its political initiatives had not been able make a media breakthrough. Fried had crafted a new strategy: the only way to get big fast was to start acting like you already were.
So, Fair Rule began grinding out opinions on every issue the main parties dealt with, and Fried poured oil on the rhetorical fire. Incendiary words like deception, threat, crime and destruction served as a challenge to the powers that be and netted new voters. The party began to organise its events at ever larger venues and with ever more pageantry. At every opportunity they focused media attention on Fried in hopes of making his face universally recognised.
This new, theatrical approach had succeeded in drawing larger crowds.
There was also a practical reason for booking the Streatham Arena: they had got it cheap because the party’s financial secretary knew the arena’s marketing director and had managed to convince him that the party meeting would attract a new clientele.
Lia wondered whether the marketing director would really have wanted this particular customer base. Low-skilled, working class, mostly ageing white males. Lia believed she understood why they came. The only thing in their lives over which they had absolute control was what pub they spent their money in. Here they felt powerful.
Fifteen minutes still remained until the event was set to begin. Lia slipped into the long corridor that ran behind the rink and offered access to the locker rooms and storage spaces.
There was a commotion at one locker room door. Lia recognised the reason from his pictures in the news: Arthur Fried.
Dozens of men were pushing, trying to reach the party leader, most of them lacking the patience to queue. Fried was stuck in the corridor shaking hands.
Arthur Fried had a knack, Lia had to admit. He listened to the beginning of each supporter’s story, then interrupted and answered briefly. He sounded decisive but did not promise anyone
anything.
Each man had what he thought were brilliant campaign ideas that he had to tell the party leader about. They expressed deep concern about vague fears, such as the spread of Islam in Europe.
Some just felt impelled to tell Fried, ‘Go and show them, Arthur.’
Although Lia found it impossible to share their opinions, she recognised their feelings.
They want Fried to kick the shit out of the world for them.
When the background music in the hall faded and the first speaker of the evening was announced on stage, Arthur Fried said goodbye to his supporters milling in the corridor and disappeared into a back room. The corridor emptied in next to no time as the men moved into the stands.
Lia chose a seat near the platform, a little to one side.
The first speaker was a man in his sixties who said he worked for a warehousing company and that he had lost faith in politics until he read the Fair Rule party literature and heard Arthur Fried speak. He reiterated the party’s key objectives – no social support without work requirements and the reining-in of special rights for immigrants – to raucous applause.
Lia listened to the rhythm of the speech rather than the content. She knew the pattern the evening would be built around, beginning with untrained speakers and moving towards more skilled orators until Fried himself took the stage.
Articles about Arthur Fried often touched on how good he was at inspiring a crowd. He described it himself as surrender. He said that when he was younger he tried to be anything but a politician. He had tried to make his living leading companies, making money. But, over time, he had realised that what he knew best was speaking in front of people and raising their hopes. This had been an important insight for him, he said. He had known immediately that he would succeed at it. Once he had surrendered himself to this fact, his career had taken off.
Forty-five minutes and three stiff speakers later, Lia was wondering whether the evening would ever get going at all. She could not think of any reason for choosing such conventional presenters other than that each of them came from a different part of England.
A young man in a black blazer came onstage and the announcer introduced him as Andy Cargill, the assistant director of the Future Rule youth programme. He took the microphone, and the volume of his voice was startling.
‘We’ve seen what isn’t working in Britain, and we know how to respond. We are Future Rule, and we have a question. What are we waiting for?’
Cargill’s roar made the young men in the crowd spring to their feet.
Lia watched the crowd. The uniformity of their dress was plain frightening. Black jeans and black jackets, short-cropped hair and burning eyes.
Cargill and his ferocious followers played a specific role in the show – to raise the pulse of the crowd. They focused on one theme only, the restoration of the privileges of the white race.
Actually they didn’t use the word race. Lia knew that the party leadership had banned its use since the term would have brought universal condemnation. But they didn’t need the word.
Cargill’s performance also energised the older generation. For the last minute of his speech, he simply repeated one slogan. The scene resembled a rock concert with the audience howling in adoration.
‘GET BRITAIN BACK!’
The audience responded: ‘Get Britain Back!’
‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’
‘Get Britain Back!’
‘LET’S DO IT NOW! GET BRITAIN BACK!’
After Cargill finished, most of his audience appeared willing to march out onto the streets to do battle that very moment. But two more speakers remained in the queue.
‘Next we will be pleased to hear from the chairman of Fair Rule North, Mr Simon Lord!’
Lord continued on the same themes at nearly the same volume as Cargill. The main message was that Britain should withdraw from all international agreements that allowed immigration from poor countries.
Preventing herself from getting worked up was impossible for Lia as she listened to this. The idea recurred often in the party’s public statements and represented their vision of a new period of independence for Britain. Of course there was no practical way to carry it out – but Lia had no interest in discussing that with this audience.
She glanced at her watch. Almost half past eight. Lord started revving up the audience for the final speaker of the evening.
‘We have the man who will get Britain back! Who is he?’
‘Arthur Fried!’ the audience shouted.
The passion that filled the ice arena made Lia’s heart pound. She felt like covering her ears.
When Fried appeared on stage, the entire audience stood as one man, bellowing Fried’s name and pumping their right fists rhythmically in the air.
Lia surveyed the frenzy.
This is his power. This is why Mari thinks Fried is so dangerous.
Arthur Fried made a show of calling for calm, but allowed the chanting to continue for a full minute. Then he took the microphone and raised his hands in the air. The audience fell silent before their leader.
‘Friends,’ Arthur Fried began. ‘Friends, thank you for your faith.’
Fried spoke well, in short sentences, pausing frequently to allow the audience room to call out in response, which served further to charge the atmosphere.
Fried used the introduction of his address to describe the rise of the party. Polling figures, TV appearances, statements quoted in the media. This was not a new story, but he made it sound as though it was a credit to them all.
Fried moved to a small news item. Lia knew to expect this as standard procedure at party events, bait for any journalists in attendance.
‘Friends, I am happy and proud to be able to tell you that I have just completed drafting my programme for Britain’s new defence policy. It will be published next week. This will be our trump card next year when we enter Parliament in an unprecedented landslide at the ballot box.’
They would publish the details later, but Fried wanted to tell his ‘friends’ the main points. The programme was called ‘A Better Britain’ and promised to restore the honour and influence of the native peoples of the United Kingdom.
‘We demand that Britain enter into defence agreements only with those countries that share our values.’
The audience clapped uncertainly, not knowing precisely what this meant.
‘For all of this, we need you. Every single Briton you can recruit to our cause of creating a new, better Britain. Everyone’s contribution is important. We need every man and woman,’ Fried said, motioning to one side of the stage.
Out walked his wife, and the howling of the audience returned to fever pitch.
Anna Belle Fried walked to her husband and extended her hand. Away from the microphone, Fried said something sweet to his wife. They knew the choreography by heart: Lia had already seen it online in videos of previous Fair Rule events.
Anna Belle Fried was a heavily made-up, buxom woman. Her blonde curls, a thigh-revealing slit skirt and high heels made her look like a doll.
Anna Belle, you would have been beautiful without all the dressing up too.
Turning to the crowd, Arthur Fried took a step towards the front of the stage, leading his wife along. Fried laughed and winked at the audience: my woman. In the glow of the bright spotlights, they looked unreal, as if everything they did appeared in slow motion.
Some of the black-clad young men in the front row whistled and barked astonishingly lewd suggestions at Anna Belle. Lia saw her freeze, staring somewhere into the middle distance, trying to ignore the shouts.
Arthur Fried set his wife in motion with a jerk of his left arm and raised his own right hand, clenched in a fist. He smiled at the black jackets in the front rows. They shouted even louder.
Lia stared at Arthur Fried’s hand holding his wife, squeezing tightly.
Anna Belle took a step to the side, intending to retire from the stage. Arthur Fried did not look at his wife, but Lia saw
how his grip made her flinch. Her struggling ended instantly.
Fried likes this. He likes them treating his wife like a whore.
The loudspeakers carried Fried’s voice over the roar of the audience.
‘We are going to Parliament! And you, you and you, all of you here, are coming with us!’
21
Lia opened the door to the Studio with some effort: she was carrying two large boxes of papers and newspaper clippings, and her left shoulder was still sore. The papers dealt with Arthur Fried and the Latvian case.
Entering one of the free offices, she set her load down on the desk. She wondered whether she should go and tell Mari she had arrived but then remembered: the orange circle on the office floor had already told the surveillance computer.
A moment later, Mari arrived to greet her.
‘It’s nice you’re moving in.’
‘I think so too. Nice and weird. Less weird and more nice as I get used to the idea though,’ Lia said.
She reported on the frenzied party rally of the previous evening.
‘Fried is even more talented in front of a crowd than I had expected. The news stories, videos and TV appearances can’t show you what he’s like in person. He has this ability to unite the aspirations of such different people and make it sound like he supports them all,’ Lia said.
She described the young paramilitary-looking men in the front rows. As they called Arthur Fried out onto the stage, they looked like neo-Nazis ushering on their saviour.
Mari asked about Fair Rule’s Better Britain programme, but Lia didn’t have any more detailed information. The event had only received a brief mention in the papers because no reporters had been in attendance at the ice arena.
‘It’s strange how they can make it sound as if their bunch had some sort of ability to shape political programmes,’ Lia said.
‘Well, when they publish it, the commentators will make sure that all the most absurd parts receive plenty of coverage,’ Mari said. ‘But that’s still publicity. They don’t have to make sensible proposals to increase their popularity.’
Cold Courage Page 15