by Scott Innes
I welled up with emotion. That was a lovely gesture.
‘But… this is a library,’ Caroline said, frowning quizzically. ‘Even if you’d found a book to give to him, it’d only have had to come back a few weeks later.’
‘Then what happened?’ I pressed on.
‘I was scanning the shelves on my tod in here,’ Gerry said, straining to recall. ‘Then… I heard a noise behind me, from that room over there.’
He pointed at an unremarkable door in the corner with a small PRIVATE sign on the front.
‘What?’ said Caroline, looking alarmed. ‘Are you absolutely sure it was in there?’
‘One hundred percent,’ Gerry said. ‘I heard it with my own eyes.’
‘But that… oh no,’ Caroline said, rubbing her forehead. I hadn’t seen anyone look that stressed out since I tried to explain the twenty-four-hour clock to Steven Taylor.
‘What’s the problem?’ I said to Caroline. ‘What’s in that room?’
‘That’s the server room,’ she said in a quiet whisper. ‘One of three in the Compound. The others are in the infirmary and in Fort Emmeline. They all contain the same information; they’re spread out to avoid overloading any one connection point. They are where all the data is stored. Oh, Christ…’
‘What kind of data?’ I asked. This was getting dangerously close to being too technical for me. The first time I tried to use the internet on my home PC, I was following instructions that Gareth Southgate had written up for me. The first direction was: open a window. It was January – I nearly got bloody hypothermia sitting there. Never again.
‘Everything,’ Caroline said anxiously. ‘Every electronic communication, every inventory of personnel or equipment – it all goes through these server banks. They’re strictly off limits; that’s why we don’t put a sign on the door identifying what it is – no one’s allowed in. Even I don’t have a key.’
‘Well, someone does,’ Gerry said obstinately. ‘Because I definitely heard someone rooting around in there. That’s how I ended up in this mess – I walked over to the door, being a bit nosey and all that, and tried the knob. It wouldn’t open, but obviously whoever was in there knew I’d rumbled them because next thing you know, the door flies open, hits me in the mush and I go flying back against that wall. All I could see was stars blowing up in front of my eyes, everything was a blur – then whoever it was squeezed me in behind the bookcase and smashed it into me until I stopped moving. I passed out, then next thing I know I’m on the floor with all of you around me.’
‘Oh, this is really bad, Kevin,’ Caroline said. ‘We need to report this immediately.’
‘Don’t worry, Gerry’s fine,’ I said reassuringly. ‘Look at him, good as new. No harm done.’
‘Not that!’ she cried. ‘The spy got into the server bank – if they know what they’re doing, which is pretty likely given how clever they’ve been in evading detection so far, they’ll have managed to access everything they could wish for: documentation of the General’s meetings with the Alliance top brass, tactical decisions he’s made, everything! This could be catastrophic.’
‘Surely it can’t be that easy,’ I said doubtfully. ‘It can’t just be a case of breaking into one of these server rooms and looking at a screen.’
‘Well, no,’ Caroline said. ‘Of course not. Even if someone tried to hack in it would take many dozens of hours. There’s a strong firewall.’
I frowned – Mr Al-Fayed had once tried to make us use that illegal tactic to defend free kicks at Fulham but I refused point blank to have any of my players set ablaze just to prevent a goal being scored.
‘The only way of accessing the information on the servers is to use a Q7 Keycard,’ she went on. ‘But there are only five of those in the entire Compound and they cannot be copied or spoofed.’
‘Five Keycards,’ I repeated. ‘Where are they kept then?’
‘Nowhere,’ Caroline said. ‘They’re not just lying around – they’re issued to each of the five members of the Compound Council. They’re the only ones approved by the Alliance to have access.’
My eyes widened.
‘So you’re saying…’ There was a long pause while I desperately hoped for someone to answer my half-finished question. No bugger did, so I sighed and admitted defeat. ‘What are you saying?’
‘It would appear…’ Caroline began in a heavy voice.
‘… the spy has their own Keycard,’ Rodway finished slowly. ‘The spy… is on the Compound Council.’
I felt a horrible weight in the pit of my stomach – like when I went to Nick Faldo’s dinner party and found a golf ball inside my curry that I swallowed whole because I was too polite to say anything. Surely it couldn’t be true? One of the five people entrusted to keep us safe in our day-to-day lives in the Compound conspiring against us? Everyone knew who they were – there was the General of course, Gillian too; there was the dour head of the Compound education board, Doreen McNab; the eccentric billionaire philanthropist Sir Michael Bowes-Davies; and then there was Dr Andre Pebble-Mill, chief of medicine at the infirmary. Could Caroline honestly have been suggesting that one of these five was the spy?
We all stood there in a circle, processing this terrible information in silence. I hadn’t seen such ashen faces since the day Joey Barton brought that German shepherd in to training one morning. The poor bloke was terrified. He couldn’t speak a word of English; he had no idea what the hell was going on.
‘It must be a conspiracy,’ Rodway said. ‘Has to be.’
‘Doubt it,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Though having said that, I used to be big on conspiracy theories myself – at one point I was going round telling people that Elvis was still alive. Mind you, that was in 1974 and he was.’
‘We need to report this,’ Caroline said. ‘I’ll send word to Fort Emmeline immediately requesting General Leigh’s attention as a matter of urgency.’
‘Hold your horses there,’ I cut across her. ‘We’re not telling the General anything.’
‘What?’ Caroline said, appalled. ‘Kevin, do you not realise how serious—’
‘Too bloody right I do,’ I said. ‘And that’s exactly why we can’t tell that prat about this. Think about it, everybody! Leigh is one of the five Council members! What if… look, I hate to speak ill of anybody, but what if General Leigh is in fact the spy?’
A hush fell again. Everyone looked mortified by the suggestion (except Gerry, who was still arching his back painfully and didn’t appear to be fully paying attention) but none of them could deny that this, however unlikely, was a genuine possibility. And a terrifying one at that. If it was true, the damage a man with his power – a man with the nuclear launch codes – could unleash if his secret was uncovered was simply unfathomable.
‘So… what then?’ Caroline asked, waving her arms in exasperation. ‘We do nothing?’
‘Far from it,’ I said. ‘Like I say, we report it. Just not to Leigh. There’s only one person on that Council board whom I know and trust. She may have frittered away potential funding for my football club to fund daft things like the library—’ Caroline looked stung ‘—but she’s someone I’d trust implicitly in matters like this. She’s a bog-standard chairwoman, yes, but she’s a solid, upstanding citizen. I’m going to speak to Gillian.’
The strength of my feeling on the matter surprised even me – sure, Gillian and I had been frequently at loggerheads during our time working together at Palangonia FC, but her organising my coming-home party and laying on the top-drawer buffet the night before (as well as the affectionate peck on the cheek she’d given me) had convinced me that, at the end of the day, her heart was surely in the right place and that she was on our side.
I’d expected Caroline to be pleased with this compromise but she looked troubled.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think we can tell Gillian,’ she said slowly.
‘Why ever not?’
‘Just before Barrington12 found
Gerry,’ Caroline said delicately, ‘I’d narrowed down the one name that appeared on the borrower history of all the books you’d identified.’
I didn’t want to hear what Caroline said next but I had no choice. I closed my eyes pre-emptively and pinched the bridge of my nose in disbelief.
‘It’s Gillian. Her name came up again and again. Kevin, it’s… it’s entirely possible that Gillian is in fact the spy. And has been all along.’
NONE SO ARROGANT
Could it really be true? Could it?
I lay there in bed, tossing and turning, unable to switch off. I glanced over at the digital clock on my bedside table – it was gone midnight. I got up and padded into the kitchen to get a glass of water then sat down at the kitchen table among the festering remnants of the welcome home buffet and sighed heavily.
I had to admit, the pieces did all seem to fit: not only did her role on the Council give her Keycard access to the computerised what-have-you room, she’d borrowed almost all of the titles from the library that we’d identified as being potential spy bait.
There were also the little things that pointed towards Gillian’s culpability. I kept thinking of those photos on her desk, a bloke and two youngsters that no one had ever seen in the flesh. She’d never even mentioned them in conversation; I wouldn’t have known they existed if not for those pictures. And that was surely the point – they didn’t exist. That much was now clear – they were a front, a way to make herself seem more respectable, just a regular non-spying member of the Compound community. Little wonder she kept so few friends – she was ready to leave at the drop of a hat once her cowardly business was concluded. I remembered too how I’d been impressed by Gillian’s unexpectedly strong handshake and had, on occasion, seen her walking home through the Compound Square carrying up to six heavily laden shopping bags without even breaking a sweat; I’d felt a hernia coming on just watching. Had she been secretly beefing up in anticipation of a potential battle to come? Either way, she was more than capable of bundling Gerry behind a bookcase and smashing him to pieces with it, there was no question about that. And, of course, there was also the fact that Gillian had callously and systematically starved my beloved club of funding. It probably didn’t tie into her campaign of espionage but was testament to how unsavoury a character she now clearly was. How foolish I’d been in starting to sympathise with her! Clearly I’d been right first time. Gillian was the spy. All the pieces fit. I should never have doubted my gut instinct – it’s never done me wrong. It’s like when I pulled out all the stops to sign Les Ferdinand at Newcastle – Les wasn’t completely sure about the move and kept dithering but I knew in my heart I simply had to have him. I’d heard that Les had a bit of a sweet tooth so I assured him he’d be well catered for if he signed. ‘If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit,’ I told him, ‘join our club.’
‘But hang on a second though,’ Gerry had said as we’d walked home from our day in the library. He was limping a bit but seemed otherwise okay after his brush with death. ‘If Gillian is the spy, why did she suggest that you try and uncover their identity?’
This was a valid question and one I had been pondering myself – Gillian had told me at my shindig the night before that the only hope for restoring Palangonia FC to life would be for me to find the culprit myself. She’d been joking of course, but the seed had been planted and now here we were.
‘There’s none so arrogant,’ I said to him, ‘as those who think they won’t get caught.’
Nevertheless, before calling it a day I decided to split up our little posse of spy-catchers with instructions to spend the rest of the afternoon inconspicuously tailing the other Council members and keeping an eye out for anything fishy or untoward. It wasn’t inconceivable, either, that more than one Council member was involved. Doreen McNab looked like a woman who lacked any sort of excitement in her life – was this how she got her kicks? And Sir Michael – well, with the best will in the world, the man was an absolute crank and it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that he might have stumbled into becoming a spy by mistake. I wasn’t genuinely prepared at this point to indulge the idea that Leigh might actually be the spy – as much as I loathed the buffoon, were you to cut him he’d surely bleed Alliance loyalty. Plus, more to the point, we couldn’t exactly follow him around inside Fort Emmeline unseen. So, I dispatched Rodway to follow Dr Pebble-Mill and Gerry to Doreen McNab, while Barrington12 was sent to keep tabs on Sir Michael. I went to look for Gillian. We regrouped at dusk to report back.
‘If Doreen is the spy,’ Gerry sighed as we convened around a picnic table in the quiet square as it wound down for the day, ‘then I know nothing about nothing. Seriously, Kev, I haven’t been that bored since Graeme Le Saux’s birthday party when he gave us that three-hour presentation listing all the historical anachronisms in Braveheart.’
Gerry detailed his tedious afternoon browsing the notice boards at the education department as he kept tabs on Doreen – she spent ninety-five minutes counting and re-counting the paperclips in her drawer and then took a long conference call with the head of a school in a neighbouring system.
‘Almost two hours blathering non-stop about the optimal size for Post-it notes,’ Gerry grumbled in dismay. ‘I genuinely thought I might die, Kev. My body felt like it was shutting down to protect itself.’
Rodway’s report on Dr Pebble-Mill was a little more dramatic: he had performed complex keyhole surgeries on two patients who had fallen asleep and landed on upturned garden shears (unconnected incidents) and he had spent a good forty minutes gently consoling a bereaved woman whose husband had died (though it later transpired the man had been at the pub all afternoon and that she had jumped to conclusions).
‘If Pebble-Mill is the spy, he’s the nicest one in the world,’ Rodway concluded. ‘I followed him around all day pretending I was a junior doctor assigned to shadow him. I was worried he’d see straight through the fake hospital ID badge I showed him but he just nodded and said it was good to see young people taking an interest in medicine and allowed me to tag along during his rounds. Honestly, he seems like a genuinely cracking bloke. I kind of wished he was my dad. That’s probably a weird thing to say, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, then turned to Barrington12.
Barrington12’s encounter with Sir Michael Bowes-Davies had been predictably inane. His appointment to the Council had been highly controversial and had been purely a gesture of acknowledgement for his generous contributions to charity down the years back on Earth, particularly the £52m he had donated to Children in Need in the hope of finally fixing Pudsey Bear’s bandaged eye, which had ultimately proved unsuccessful. The man was ninety-three years old, had a loose bag of marbles rolling around up top and people were liable to lose a whole day to his rambling anecdotes if they so much as caught his eye on the street.
‘SIR MICHAEL SPOTTED ME FOLLOWING HIM AND WITH A WINK HE INFORMED ME THAT IF HE WERE SIX DECADES YOUNGER, HE’D HAVE CERTAINLY BEEN INTERESTED IN ME. I WAS UNSURE AS TO HIS MEANING SO I ASKED HIM OUTRIGHT WHETHER OR NOT HE WAS THE COMPOUND SPY.’
‘Bloody hell, son,’ I muttered. ‘So much for going incognito! What did he say to that?’
‘FOR REASONS THAT REMAIN UNCLEAR TO ME, HE RESPONDED BY ASKING FOR MY VIEW – WITHOUT ALLOWING ME THE SPACE IN THE CONVERSATION TO OFFER IT – OF A CAR INSURANCE CLAIM LODGED AGAINST HIS SON AT A T-JUNCTION IN INVERNESS IN 1996. I EVENTUALLY HAD TO INITIATE LOW-POWER MODE IN ORDER TO CONSERVE MY BATTERY UNTIL HE LOST INTEREST AND WALKED AWAY, OTHERWISE I WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ABLE TO COME BACK TO YOU WITH THIS REPORT. I FEEL VERY SECURE IN SAYING THAT THE LIKELIHOOD OF THIS INDIVIDUAL CONDUCTING COVERT OPERATIONS IN THE COMPOUND IS EXTREMELY REMOTE.’
‘Well, I guess that just leaves Gillian,’ Rodway said quietly.
It did indeed. In truth, I had discerned little from loitering around the empty stadium where she still kept an office, hoping to see her making a covert phone call or skulking around in the corridors. In the end, she h
ad spent the entire time cooped up behind her desk, typing away and completing paperwork, seeing or speaking to nobody whatsoever in all that time. She had still been there when I finally threw in the towel.
I felt confident now in ruling out the others, and anyway, the facts seemed indisputable. Caroline couldn’t enter the server room in the library, but she was able to access the swipe panel on the door and there it was on the user history, clear as day, no room for ambiguity: G. Routledge. She’d accessed the room that very afternoon. There was really no question, as much as I hated having to face up to it.
As I sat there stewing in my kitchen with only the distant screech of a flock of Winged Terrors on the prowl somewhere out there in the darkness far beyond the walls of the Compound, I decided there was only one thing for it. I was going to have to return to the stadium in the morning to confront Gillian. She and I needed to have it out and, once she had admitted to her crimes against humanity, I could hand her over to General Leigh who – feeling chuffed at my saving his bacon – would then reinstate Palangonia FC with extra funding and install a chair sympathetic to the needs of my club. No more ‘You have twelve strikers on the books already’ fob-offs, no more ‘Are you sure the offside rule is just optional?’ training-ground interventions. It was perfect. All I had to do was get her to confess, because there was no way Leigh was going to believe me otherwise. I could present all the evidence I liked but he’d never believe it if it came from me.
I went back to bed and tried to sleep but my mind was racing, knowing what I had to do the following day. I lay there wide awake for at least forty seconds before I finally drifted off into an uneasy ten-hour sleep.
With a heavy knot in my heart, I approached the stadium gates. Gerry had implored me to speak to Gillian peaceably, even handing me a bottle of wine to give to her to demonstrate there would be no hard feelings if she owned up.
‘No chance,’ I told him. ‘And anyway, Gerry, this isn’t wine, it’s vegetable oil.’