by K J Griffin
Crouching at the entrance, Smedley peered into the shaft then crammed the canvas bag inside the aperture. He had to twist his shoulders sideways to squeeze his head and torso into the shaft, and the pressure of his head pushed the bag a few grudging inches along. His shoulders pressed so tightly against the sides of the passage it seemed impossible he could ever propel himself forward. But he had done it before. It had nearly cost him dearly each time, but he knew his mission as feasible.
Once his whole frame was inside, it took skill and a good deal of grunting to manoeuvre the grille back across the entrance—an excessive precaution, perhaps, but Smedley was a fastidious man. From here on he would reacquaint himself with the torture of the crawl, nudging the canvas bag yard by yard along the vent till he reached his destination.
It did not take long before his shoulders and lungs burned with oxygen deprivation and he could feel rivulets of hot sweat coursing in syrupy beads inside his coveralls. He started counting, just as he had counted when he had done those other painful runs. Push, breath, one. Push, breath, two. Push, breath, three. Head giddy and screaming for air. Push, breath, again. Think of the anger, Neil! Push, breath, again. All these years on there was still one son of a miner from Thornton Colliery who didn’t like the view from the top of the slagheap where They had chucked his dad and all his mates.
Push, breath, again. And why’d they closed ’t bloody pit?—’cause they can buy coal cheaper from Poland, Neil lad. Market economics, int’it? Push, breath, again. And what a bloody brave new world Free Market Britannia had become—a nation of insurance peddlers, security guards, switchboard operators, investment fund jugglers and burger flippers. Push, breath again.
Sod that! When she was alive, Thatcher thought she’d break us up by ripping our communities apart. Then big business bought out the Labour Party, filled its ranks with free market stooges and made it ‘t same as t’ bloody Tories. Aye, then you won’t get no more trouble from ‘t buggers! Push, breath, again. Instead of a job for life with real money, benefits and rights, we’ll take all them part-time and temporary jobs, paid by the hour and shat on for life. Push, breath, again. Just enough for a couple of pints of lager and a National Lottery ticket. Push, breath, again. And what was it all for? Where was this New World Order heading which the turbo-capitalists had foisted on the world? Into an over-populated, over-polluted future more hellish than this bloody shaft!
At last, Smedley felt the front of the canvas bag sag gently downwards. Hold on! Gently does it, Neil lad. You’d better be careful with this little lot! He squeezed his hands right up against the top of the shaft, levering them through till his fingertips curled over the straps, then lowered the bag into the dip ahead. It would have to fall the last few feet.
He listened for the splash, hoping that none of the contents would be damaged. Then, pushing his head out of the top of the vent, a luscious trace of fresh night air washed over his sweat-saturated face, seeping through the manhole cover about fifteen feet above. The bag was some six feet below, lying on the bottom of the shaft.
He arrived headfirst at the lip of the vent and had to twist awkwardly to pull himself out. Shit! His fingers slipped and he fell down the remaining feet, landing on one side in the six inches of water at the bottom of the drain. Despite the danger of the location Smedley couldn’t stifle a dull groan. But the pain only gave him a surge of additional energy.
Struggling to his feet, he pulled a pen-shaped torch from his pocket and started to examine the canvas bag by the ultra-dull, lime-green glow of the torch. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the contents were undamaged and properly sealed. He lifted the bag onto an inclined shelf above the drain and paused to catch his breath. With the satisfaction of a job well done, he would cushion his injured side during the torturous wriggle back down the shaft. It would soon be worth all the pain. Omar would see to that.
Thirty-five minutes later, Smedley was back in the main tunnel where his work crew was reaching the end of its shift. The foreman couldn’t remember having seen Smedley for some time, but he wasn’t too upset and he must have been hard at, judging by the horrendous sweat he had worked up. If Neil went AWOL for the odd hour once in a while, or took a sickie now and then, he wasn’t going to be the one to complain. No one worked harder than Neil when it really mattered, no one did the toughest jobs better or more often, told better jokes, or bought more rounds in the pub afterwards. Yea, Neil was a star, all right. Who cared if the big Yorkshire lad disappeared in the tunnel now and again?
* * * *
Folly Bridge, Oxford: 9:30 p.m.
‘Here you are, Omar, the latest news,’ said the young woman, handing three pages of assorted, decrypted e-mails to Al-Ajnabi in the downstairs office. They were alone.
‘Very good, Linda,’ Al-Ajnabi sighed after reading the first two items. ‘Why don’t you get some rest? It’s getting late.’
‘That would be very nice,’ Linda smiled, collecting her jacket with a weary sigh and making for the door. Hasan, coming the other way, waited patiently in the corridor, holding the door open.
‘Khalid and Brendan McLaughlin have checked in,’ said Al-Ajnabi, waving the transcript at Hasan. It was in moments like this, when he caught Hasan’s stony face staring at him in the doorway that Al-Ajnabi wondered whether it would have been simpler to stand back and let the executioner swipe off that last head. True, for ten years now Hasan had proved to be the most trusted and capable of allies, but he was also a man with a half-buried grudge and a Somali’s love of a feud.
‘Very good, Hadratak. You wish me to reply on Wednesday?’
‘Yes. Have Khalid come here for the party. He is an unknown. If he is seen, he will be untraceable; they will think he is from the Embassy. But tell McLaughlin to keep his head down. Did you get the photos?’
Hasan slapped an envelope on the bureau,
‘Here are the printouts. The images from my CCTV camera were not so clear. These with the camera are much better.’
‘Good, that was quick work,’ Al-Ajnabi grunted, frowning in distaste as he flicked through the black-and-white shots. ‘And from Ramliyya?’
‘Salah called this morning, Hadratak. He has arranged everything as you instructed for the twenty-first.’
‘Good.’
‘Mr Smedley also called while you were busy, Hadratak.’
‘And?’
‘He has also been successful. The last of the equipment is in position.’
Al-Ajnabi nodded, got to his feet and started to pace the room in silent satisfaction. It was a good start, but there were still so many variables, so many loose connections, any one of which could abruptly scupper the whole plan.
Brooding over all the information that had filtered in that evening, Al-Ajnabi started to pace the room, stopping eventually by the bureau, to pick up his papers and resume his reading.
The last and longest message was from Yokochi. Al-Ajnabi took his time to read the two-page communiqué and then re-read it before passing the sheets to Hasan.
‘That’s it, then, Hasan!’ he sighed, throwing the papers on the bureau. ‘Provided the dinner party is a success, we will be ready for the thirty-first, as planned.’
Hasan’s smile was, as ever, enigmatic. There was never any point in conversation with Hasan, whatever his lieutenant was thinking, so instead, he made for the door.
Sophie froze in the hallway when she saw Al-Ajnabi coming out of ‘the computer nerds, secret sanctuary.’ For the last three days she had been avoiding him, partly still embarrassed about her drunken interruption, partly trying to avoid thinking about the next ‘bed duty’.
The momentary confusion was mutual. It was Al-Ajnabi who broke the awkward silence.
‘Good evening, Miss Palmer, allow me,’ he offered, seeing Sophie fumbling for keys in her jacket pocket while trying to balance a huge pile of books on the other arm.
She passed him the books and flicked a couple of loose strands of hair from her eyes.
‘Why have I been demoted to Miss Palmer again, Omar?’
He smiled at her observation, almost amicably, she thought.
‘Forgive me, Sophie. That was unintentional. And I’m truly delighted that you have decided to stay on in my house.’
‘Look,’ she said, fiddling nervously with a bracelet. ‘I’m sorry about the other day, I…’
‘Don’t mention it. I quite understand.’
For the first time their eyes lingered. For a change, there seemed to be some warmth in Omar’s smile.
‘Oh, sorry,’ she flustered, ‘Let me take those from you. Can I get you a drink? I’m afraid I haven’t got much to offer.’
To her surprise, he accepted the invitation without hesitation. Taking a phone from his pocket, he gabbled in Arabic into the receiver, probably to Mousa, probably ordering the drinks she had offered.
They had to step around the unpacked boxes cluttering the doorway. Sophie joked nervously about the ironies of hosting a host while Al-Ajnabi took a seat on the sofa. He was dressed smart-casual in chinos and an open cream shirt, which accentuated his deep tan and an impressive physique. More than ever, the notion that Omar was an Arab prince seemed totally ridiculous and the myriad possibilities of hidden identities made Sophie fiddle with the ends of her hair. Mousa knocked and they ordered. Al-Ajnabi waited till they were alone before speaking.
‘Since you have decided to stay on here in my house, Sophie, I take it I can expect you to join my dinner party on Wednesday evening?’
Sophie frowned, fiddling with an ornamental ashtray on the coffee table.
‘Yes, I suppose so, but…how did you find out about Marcus?’
‘I thought I should check up on my rival!’ he joked. ‘I must have had Hasan find out for me. I hope I wasn’t being too nosy. Nothing sinister was intended, I can assure you.’
Sophie squirmed with embarrassment and let out a gasp of surprise, ‘Look, Omar…umm…I think I’d better make it quite clear: just because I’m doing this ‘bed duty’ with you, it doesn’t mean I’ll be breaking with my boyfriend. I thought it was understood that our ‘arrangement’ is strictly business only. Please, don’t read anything more into it than that. You’ll make it too difficult for me to carry on, if you do.’
Al-Ajnabi laughed,
‘You are quite right, Sophie, and I have not forgotten my promise. But I do have another proposal for you. Ah, good,’ he broke off, responding to a knock on the door. ‘Mousa has returned with our drinks.’
Waving Mousa aside, he poured Sophie’s beer and helped himself to a large Scotch in a cut crystal glass large enough to accommodate a glacier of ice cubes.
‘Another proposal?’ Sophie asked, suspicious again.
“Yes. But before I make it, I want you to promise not to be offended—because that is certainly not my intention. The offer I will make you is quite serious, but I also want to prove a more general theory to you.’
Despite a feeling of impending discomfort that he always managed to induce in her, Sophie was intrigued, as much by the unusual softness of his tone as anything he was saying.
‘You are asking for a false commitment, Omar,’ she answered in her tutorial voice. ‘I don’t think you would ever agree to sign one of your business proposals before you were fully aware of what was involved in the deal.’
He nodded and smiled at her, taking a long pull on his drink. The sound of crackling ice cubes in his whisky amplified the tension. Eventually, he sat forward in his chair and his eyes met Sophie’s.
‘How would you feel if this house belonged to you?’ he asked nonchalantly.
Even by Al-Ajnabi’s standards, the offer made Sophie jump. But suspicion quickly stifled her delight and she gave him a hard stare, puckering up her nose and cheeks.
‘And what would the downside of that be?’
‘Let me explain a little first,’ he continued, waving a hand theatrically, ‘and make my offer sound less theoretical. Suppose that my business here in Oxford were successfully concluded in a month’s time, and that I would be leaving Britain. I would be unlikely to want to return to this house again. It would make sense for me to sell it.’
Sophie put her beer down, looking less suspicious and more interested.
‘You will be leaving, won’t you Omar? I know that the security guards are only hired on short-term contracts. So what then? What will happen with our ‘arrangement’?’
Again he smiled and nodded.
‘That is where my next proposal comes in.’
“Which is?’
“That I would sign over the deeds of the house to you. Just imagine—you would be the owner of this fine mansion, and I would also leave you the rest of your year’s allowance plus five others to boot.’
‘On condition that…?’ she asked as casually as she could despite the fact that her heart was racing. She daren’t risk showing him her desperation to accept; there would surely be a catch, as there was with all Omar’s grand offers.
He lent ever closer as he continued.
‘On condition that for the duration of my stay here, instead of just sleeping in my bed during the “bed duty”, as you put it, you agree that we sleep together—as man and woman, yaani.’
‘You mean you want to have sex with me?’ she gasped with despair rather than anger. Something like this had been coming all along, but she could no longer summon up the same defiant outrage she had shown when he had first propositioned her after the “interview”. It was past all that.
‘I just don’t understand why, Omar,’ she sighed. “Why you are doing this to me—or yourself come to that? You didn’t even want to sleep in the same bed with me last time I was in there. What’s the point? If you really want sex, why don’t you just get a prostitute?’
“I’m sorry. Let me be clearer,” he continued casually, taking a long sip of whisky and nibbling some peanuts that Mousa had brought in a silver bowl to accompany the drinks.
At least his tone was still softer and more natural than it had ever been before, a minor consolation. Better still, that stilted, semi-formal mockery had slipped from his repertoire too. And his accent – in the intimacy of the moment it had slipped to something that sounded almost plain English.
‘Whatever you are thinking, Sophie, I beg you not to overreact this time. My intention is not to humiliate you.’
‘Oh really? You could have fooled me, Omar!’ But even as she spoke the words, Sophie found if hard to summon up the due indignation.
‘No, not at all,’ he continued. ‘Think of it once again as a kind of psychological experiment—for your benefit as well as mine. The offer is very real; you needn’t worry about that. And frankly, whichever choice you make is unimportant to me. Oh don’t get me wrong,’ he rushed on, holding up his hand to prevent a further perceived rebellion. ‘You are an exceptionally attractive young lady, and I would very much like to sleep with you—you are quite wrong to say that your physical presence repulses me. But physical desire is not the sole motive behind my offer.’
Sophie felt her cheeks burning. She took a hurried swig of her beer and could not bring herself to return his frank stare.
“Look, I’m very relieved to hear you fancy me,’ she stammered, flicking nervously at her hair, ‘but don’t think for a minute that it’s going to make me accept your degrading offer.’
She expected him to challenge her refusal, but increased persuasion didn’t come. Instead Omar leant back again in his chair; he didn’t seem to have listened to a word she had just said. He rattled the ice cubes in the bottom of his glass again. Brooding. And when he finally spoke, it was delivered with a sigh.
‘Tell me, Sophie. Do you accept the principle that ‘might is right’?’
‘Accept it? No, of course not,’ she shrugged, perplexed by the sudden change of direction. ‘But it is all too often the way of the world. It’s hard to do anything about the rich, the mighty and the powerful, if that’s what you mean—but you should know all about that, Omar!’
He ignored the jibe and smiled.
‘So you do accept that in the day-to-day world, this principle is inevitably, if undesirably, the golden rule?’
‘I suppose you could put it that way. Though brave people throughout the course of history have tried to fight against it.’
‘Quite right,’ he agreed, with some gusto, shaking his head energetically. ‘But if you agree that the principle does hold sway, then my asking you to have sex with me is merely another example of the rich, the powerful, the chauvinists and the privileged exerting their influence over the weak and vulnerable. I am rich. I am powerful. I could increase my offer any number of times until you would eventually be forced to reconsider your natural (and understandable) inclination to reject my offer out of hand and slap me in the face!’
‘Or I could just walk out of here, however much you offer.’
‘Could you?” He asked, looking intensely alert. ‘Could you really, Sophie? Even if I offered not only this house and five years’ allowance, but five million instead, so that you could live in it like one of the ancient aristocrats who once owned it? Are you sure I could never out-tempt your repugnance?’
She looked up at him sulkily from under her long, curled lashes.
‘So what are you trying to prove, Omar? Rich and powerful people are immoral? What’s new about that? Who cares?’
He seemed to find her last remark privately amusing and nodded his head vigorously again.
‘Quite right! Who cares? Who really cares about such things?’ he smiled wistfully to himself. Then, ‘Yet you care about me making my offer. You find it degrading and insulting?’