Table of Contents
O N E Saturday Evening
T W O Sunday
T H R E E Monday
F O U R Tuesday
F I V E Wednesday
S I X Thursday
S E V E N Friday
E I G H T Friday, one week later
LAURENCE TODD
THE
RULES
Copyright © 2017 Laurence Todd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
The right of Laurence Todd to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
The Choir Press
ISBN 978-1-910864-91-3
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events in real locations or to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Thanks to everyone who’s helped, inspired, constructively criticised, encouraged and offered useful advice along the way. I hope you know who you are.
Thanks also to Harriet Evans for turning my attempts at using the English language into something readable.
O N E
Saturday evening
I was irritable but had manned up and was trying not to show it, because I was still on duty for the next few hours and in a state of high alert. It’d been a long day, approaching seven thirty in the evening. The event I was policing was about to begin and, despite the nervous tension associated with being here, this was not my idea of excitement on a Saturday night. I was also going to miss what looked like a particularly good Match of the Day later tonight, which didn’t improve my mood any.
I was currently on a temporary bodyguarding assignment. An almost perfect storm of personnel changes, promotions, resignations and long-term illnesses had decimated the section from which personnel for personal protection duties were selected, and it had temporarily found itself short of several key officers for protection duties. Heads of key departments in the Met had been approached about this situation and asked to suggest names they thought might be suitable for a temporary secondment, and my boss, the recently promoted Commander Smitherman, bless his heart, had forwarded mine.
“I’ve put your name forward for temporary service in the Specialist Protection Squad, Rob,” he’d told me in his office a couple of weeks ago.
The Specialist Protection Squad is the body whose main function is the bodily protection of leading political figures in the public eye. It’s similar to the role played by the US Secret Service, but, whereas US bodyguards are overt and proactive and make no secret of their presence, in the UK the squad is largely anonymous but always there. Watch the Prime Minister when he’s meeting members of the public or walking through a crowd, and discreetly around him in the foreground will usually be two or more detectives, members of the squad. They’re easily identifiable if you know what to look for, and I do. In those situations I can spot someone from SPS a mile away. However, knowing what they do isn’t the same as wanting to do it with them. And I didn’t.
“Temporarily it’s a little short of available manpower to provide protection duties to Government ministers and others who require it,” Smitherman said. “So, as you’ve nothing pressing and I thought you wouldn’t mind a change of scenery, tomorrow morning you’re to report to DCS Haines’ office, just along the road from here, at nine and he’ll brief you on your new duties. I think you’ll like your new role. It’s a good career opportunity; it’ll look good on your CV when they’re considering you for the top floor.” He smiled, as though he believed he was doing me a favour.
“Thanks,” I said sourly. “Why’d you volunteer me for this?”
“Why? Because you’ve got what they’re looking for.” He was still smiling, trying to soften the blow. “You’re bright, you’re observant, you’ll fit in and, if it comes to it, you can shoot.” He cast a wary eye over what I was wearing. “You’ll need to smarten up, though, as you could be in the public eye depending on who you’re guarding. None of that get-up.”
I was wearing an open-collared dark shirt, black Levi’s and trainers. He must have read the look on my face. I wasn’t convinced.
“Don’t worry,” he tried to reassure me. “It’s not forever, just for a month or so, maybe not even that long. Then, once their numbers are up to full complement, you’ll be under my tender mercies again.”
I sighed. “What exactly am I going to be doing?” I asked, with the same enthusiasm with which I ask about having root canal work.
“You’ll be part of a team guarding a top political figure, someone in the public eye. You just have to keep your eyes and ears open, watch the crowds, make sure nobody gets too close if there’s no reason for them to be doing so, liaise ahead with police or security on the ground if the situation requires, keep an eye open for anybody in or around a crowd acting suspiciously. You see anything untoward, or you see someone looking like they’re about do something endangering whoever you’re with, ensure your charge is got to safety as quick as possible and, if the threat materialises, neutralise it. It’s nothing you’ve not had experience of when you’ve had to do crowd control stuff at demonstrations. You’ve done that, haven’t you?”
“On several occasions.” I nodded my agreement.
“This is just on a bigger scale.” He looked solemn. “Being a bodyguard’s an important function, Rob.”
“So’s what I do here,” I countered.
“Glad you think so, but as of now you’re on secondment so, as I said, be at Haines’ office tomorrow and he’ll clue you in and assign you.” He sat back and smiled broadly. “Mentioning demos, did you know I was one of the officers on duty at Lewisham? Talk about a riot, bloody hell. I’d not even been out the army that long and it was my first real experience of policing a violent demonstration.”
Lewisham in the summer of 1977 had seen a march by a far-right group, the National Front, confronted by a large counter-demonstration by anti-fascists, whose numbers were much greater than the Front’s, and it had turned nasty very quickly. Missiles were thrown and attempts made to breach police lines as each group tried to attack each other. The police lines had been breached on a few occasions and some vicious fighting had occurred before more police arrived and managed to separate the two sides. It had been the ugliest public order breakdown in London for many years. I’d seen newsreel footage of it as a trainee cadet at Hendon Police College, being taught how to react in hostile crowd control situations, and whilst I’d policed several demonstrations when in uniform, I was glad I’d never been caught up in anything as nasty as that.
“Most demos today are a walk on the beach compared to that one.” He was reminiscing. He closed his laptop, indicating this session was concluded.
“I don’t even like the current Government,” I said, standing up.
“Join the club, but the Specialist Protection Squad has to keep them alive so they can do their job. So consider this a lateral promotion, of sorts.” He grinned unconvincingly.
“Don’t suppose this comes with a pay rise, does it?” I asked hopefully. He ignored me.
*
I duly turned up at nine next morning, mustering all the enthusiasm I usually reserve for a visit to a proctologist, and was greeted by DCS George Haines himself. I recognised him from seeing him interviewed on TV news, talking about contentious policing issues when the views of a senior police officer had been require
d. He’d been a police officer almost as long as Smitherman, meaning practically forever, and had gathered an impressive track record of arrests. He was a robust and florid individual who had the enviable knack of making people feel at ease almost immediately, which was an advantage when the person he was talking to was convinced they shouldn’t be sitting where they were and not looking forward to what they were going to be doing. Like me. He spent a few minutes instructing me on the function of the Specialist Protection Squad and why its work was important, and what my role would be.
“Thus, because you’ve come highly recommended by my old friend Jack Smitherman, and you look like you can handle a challenge, I’m assigning you to the team protecting the new leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition, Ian Mulvehill.”
He looked at me as though I was supposed to be grateful. I certainly didn’t feel grateful.
“You’ll work under DCI Bracewell. Worked in this section forever, so he knows how it all works.” He stood up. “No time like the present; let’s go meet your new boss.”
He led the way along the corridor on the second floor of the nondescript central London building just off Victoria Street where the squad had its HQ, stopping by room 206. He told me to go in. I did.
Bracewell was behind his desk. He seemed about as interested in me as I was in being there. I sat and listened, trying to give the impression I was interested in what was being said, as he largely reiterated what Haines had told me. He also said I wouldn’t need to do the intensive training course for protecting high-profile individuals in the public eye as I had already done this upon joining Special Branch.
He asked if I’d any questions. Apart from the obvious unspoken one of “what have I done to deserve this?” I said I hadn’t. He then told me the job could unofficially be described as a “ninety-nine to one”.
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning ninety-nine percent of the time you’ll be bored rigid, lots of standing around and waiting, keeping your wits about you whilst twiddling your thumbs, but for one percent of the time you’ll have an adrenaline overload pumping through your veins and you’ll quite likely be scared shitless.” Was that a smirk? “But it’s all part of the fun.”
Feeling less than enthusiastic, I joined the protection team that same day. We drove the ridiculously short distance to the Palace of Westminster when it would have been quicker to walk and, once through security and parked up in the underground car park, I was taken upstairs to the office of the leader of the opposition to be introduced to Ian Mulvehill so he’d know who I was when he saw me following along. I was introduced to him as one of his new shadows, the unofficial term for squad officers, who’d be part of his protection detail for a while. I recognised him immediately. Unless you’d been living underground for the past couple of months, you couldn’t have missed him, because his picture and profile had been all over the media.
He’d recently been elected as leader of the opposition. The previous incumbent had resigned because the parliamentary Labour party and especially the grassroots membership, after Labour’s recent poor performance in bye-elections, had lost faith in his ability to lead them to victory at the next general election in two years’ time.
Ian Mulvehill was in his mid-fifties and had been a politician since leaving his post as a lecturer at Queen Mary’s University, first as a councillor in North London and, since 1987, as an MP. He had a track record of espousing and supporting radical causes the whole of his adult life, and his candidacy for the party leadership had been a surprise to many, both in his own party and in the media. Given he stood well to the left on just about every issue, and had voted against his own party leadership on several occasions, his election to being Labour leader was an even bigger one.
Whatever the case, his election to the party leadership had certainly reinvigorated political debate in the media as, unlike most previous Labour leaders, he was an atheist republican and very firmly left-wing, believing the UK should renounce its nuclear weapons, all of which were positions the tabloid press gleefully attacked him for. I suspected Richard Clements was one of his supporters.
I recognised him the moment I was led into his office and saw him standing by the ornate bookshelf looking at something. I was introduced to him and he greeted me warmly, told me to call him Ian, not Mr Mulvehill and definitely not Sir, and welcomed me on board.
When his candidacy was first announced, I remembered reading he’d made it very clear he didn’t want Special Branch protection around the clock if he won, and wouldn’t take it if offered to him. But, upon being elected party leader, he’d been visited by MI5 chiefs and told, politely but firmly, he had no say in the matter, given he was now the leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition. Under the UK’s constitutional arrangements, he was potentially the Prime-Minister-in-waiting, and part of the security services’ brief was protection of leading political leaders. After being informed he’d have protection officers alongside him around the clock irrespective of his own desires, he’d reluctantly acceded to security’s requirements. This meant using official Government-provided Land Rovers with blackened windows, bulletproof doors, sophisticated locking systems and specialised communications facilities, rather than taking the tube or cycling from his north London home to his parliamentary office, which had been his normal practice for years.
He then told me what his plans were for the rest of the day, so I was up to speed. He asked if I had any questions. I said no. He thanked me before returning to work at his desk. I was instructed to wait in the corridor until he left and then to go with him.
After an hour of staring at the wall, and occasionally wandering along the corridor to maintain blood circulation to ensure I was still alive, at midday he walked from his office to the main Commons chamber for Prime Minister’s Questions. I waited for him in the lobby, watching MPs and others walking between the chambers, as well as looking at some of the impressive artwork on the walls, whilst another officer waited behind the Speaker’s chair.
In the lobby I stood out like a daffodil in a rose bush. I noticed more than one politician glancing at me and wondering what the hell I was doing hanging about in the lobby, hands clasped together in front, trying not to look out of place. But at least I’d smartened up. I was wearing a dark jacket, dark trousers and a tie, albeit not quite done up to the top button. Standing by Churchill’s statue I impressed myself with the number of leading politicians from all sides of the political divide I’d recognised, including a few I wished I hadn’t.
I also spotted Debbie Frost crossing the lobby. She was talking to two other people, one of whom looked familiar, but I couldn’t immediately place him. Glancing around as she walked, she did a double take when she saw me, giving me a what the . . . ? look before continuing on her way.
Afterwards, we followed Mulvehill back to his office, then back to the chamber for a debate, during which I took up my position in the lobby again, and then got into the Land Rover taking him to his flat in his constituency of Holborn and St Pancras.
This was now largely my working day, and it stayed that way for the next three weeks. Mulvehill, like all top politicians, seemed to spend a disproportionate amount of time at meetings. They were mainly to do with routine internal party matters and attended by leading party functionaries, though he did meet twice with Labour’s campaign team, as well as the party’s candidate for the London mayoral election. Last week he’d spoken at a campaign meeting in Central Hall, the imposing and impressive masonic-looking building the other side of Parliament Square, in support of Labour’s candidate.
I spent a lot of time standing outside rooms where meetings were being held. So much so that at times the boredom came close to life-threatening. I spent so much time in corridors I was reminded of the famous Monty Python sketch “The Four Yorkshiremen”, where Michael Palin, attempting to get one up in terms of how hard his childhood had been compared to the other three, had said, “Oh, we used to dream of living in t’corridor.” I felt
like I was. There was an awful lot of ninety-nine percent in my life.
*
Tonight we were in Mulvehill’s constituency, where he was due to speak at an election campaign meeting in Camden Town. The meeting, in the main hall of the Joan of Arc comprehensive school on Tufnell Park Road, had initially been billed as being an all-party affair where either the candidates or accredited representatives from all the main parties were due to speak in support of their parties’ candidates in the current race to become Mayor of London. But, upon learning who else was on the platform at this meeting, the speakers on behalf of the Tory, Lib Dem and Green parties plus an independent candidate had all withdrawn. The Labour candidate was currently recovering from appendicitis but, because of his seniority as a long-serving MP, Mulvehill was stepping in to speak on behalf of his old friend.
The other person due to share the platform was a Syrian academic, Khaled al-Ebouli, who was speaking on behalf of a Muslim candidate. Al-Ebouli was notorious because he held views about the West which made Mulvehill sound like Margaret Thatcher. He was an apologist for the London bombings in July 2005, where more than fifty people had lost their lives, and he’d refused to condemn them when invited to do so on Newsnight last year. Westerners to him were simply infidels who worshipped nothing, had no values and were “spiritually devoid of the soul”. I thought, after the meeting, I might ask someone exactly what that meant.
Al-Ebouli had been a last-minute addition to the speakers list. Mulvehill had already agreed to speak and, to the media’s dismay, refused to withdraw. Another candidate representing some far-left political party also refused to withdraw from the meeting. But, for me, the good news was that seven speakers had been reduced to three. I might get off early after all.
The Rules Page 1