A Dying Breed, page 18
When Lucia found red bills and reminders in the bureau drawers, where Rob had shoved them, she would pay them without comment. In time, she transferred the direct debits from his account to her own, again without asking any questions. Not even the most obvious one, the one that Rob asked himself on a regular basis: why can’t a man earning eighty grand a year pay his own way and provide for his family? The answer was that Rob was living beyond his means and borrowing unwisely. He travelled everywhere by black cab, he ate meals and took meetings in restaurants that he couldn’t afford, and he bought round upon round of drinks. Two weeks out of four, these days, the cashpoint would refuse to serve him. He drew the line at borrowing money from friends but instead borrowed from people he didn’t know at rates he didn’t bother to understand. He was neck deep in trouble and wading deeper, and the longer Lucia refused to judge him, the more judgemental Rob thought his wife had become.
The phone rang again, inches from his ear. Rob grabbed it with a wet hand and tossed it across the floor. It landed safely in a pile of his discarded clothes and continued its muffled call. Whoever it was, rang off before the message service clicked in, but seconds later the phone rang again. Rob ignored this call too, but when the caller tried a third time he climbed from the bath.
‘Hello?’ he snapped.
‘Hello, Rob, what’s going on? Screening your calls this evening?’ Graham spoke more slowly than usual. Slow enough, Rob thought, that a third person might easily listen in and perhaps even make notes.
‘I was in the bath.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb.’
‘Well you have. What do you want?
‘Just a chat.’
‘Yeah? Have you got another home movie you want to show me?’
‘Oh that, yes, I’m sorry about that, Rob. It’s nothing personal, you know that, it’s just business.’
Rob felt a sudden surge of anger. ‘Really? Well it feels pretty fucking personal to me, Graham.’
He had watched the DVD that Graham had handed him as soon as he got back to his office. It took him a few moments to work out what he was looking at: a neat little room, a folding chair, a single bed, all shot from somewhere up high, around the ceiling. The room rang bells but it wasn’t until he saw a blurred version of himself wander into frame that everything fell into place. The positioning of the camera was perfect. Rob watched himself smoke a cigarette, drink coffee, undress clumsily and then climb into bed. You hardly saw the woman’s face. Most of the time the camera caught only her back and the back of her head until the moment she stepped into bed and you saw Rob fumble with the clasp of her white bra and the curve of her right breast. By contrast, Mariscal’s every groan and gurn was caught on camera. Watching it back, again and then again, he couldn’t decide whether it was a blessing the sex act lasted so short a period of time, or an additional embarrassment. He had ejected the disc and hidden it deep in the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary. They had him over a barrel. If Lucia ever saw the film, he was finished. It’s one thing suspecting that your husband is screwing around. It’s quite another to sit down in your living room and watch it on wide-screen.
Graham gave a nervous cough. Rob thought he heard him cover the phone and whisper something. When he came back across the line he was talking at a more conversational speed.
‘Listen, Rob. A question for you. Why on earth would a good-looking twenty-year-old girl chase and seduce a knackered old hack like you? Did you ever wonder that?’ He waited for an answer but Rob had none. ‘No, I can’t think of a single reason either.’ Graham stifled a laugh. ‘Here’s a piece of advice for you, Rob, going forward: if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.’
This barb found its mark. Rob spat back down the line. ‘You know what I wonder, Graham? I wonder whether the Foreign Affairs Select Committee knows that you’re spending taxpayers’ money honey-trapping senior British journalists?’ As he spoke arcs of spittle flew from his mouth. At the other end of the line he heard a chortle.
‘The amount of stuff that committee doesn’t know could keep every paper shredder in Whitehall busy from now till kingdom come.’ Graham paused. When he spoke again he sounded a good deal more serious. ‘I hope that was a joke, by the way, Rob. Not some ham-fisted threat?’
‘Yeah, it was a joke. It’s all a fucking joke, isn’t it?’
‘That’s the spirit. Anyway, I didn’t call to pick a fight. I have some news.’ His voice slowed again, back to dictation speed. ‘You’ll hear this officially within the hour, but one of your journalists has been kidnapped on the outskirts of Kabul.’
The colour drained from Mariscal’s face. ‘Oh, shit! William. Who by?’
‘No. Not Carver. Turns out Carver didn’t take you up on that kind offer of the poppy trip. He sent Patrick Reid in his place. It’s Reid they’ve taken; Reid and your local translator. A chap called Karim Mumtaz.’
Marsical felt his stomach tighten. ‘Shit,’ he whispered, ‘Patrick? He’s as green as it gets. Just a kid. So where’s William?’
‘Carver’s still in the BBC house. Right as rain and still a royal pain in the arse as far as my lot are concerned. That’s where you come in.’ Rob switched the phone from one hand to the other. He guessed what was coming. ‘You’ll get a call pretty soon from work. They’ll ask you to go and manage things from the Kabul end and you’ll say “yes”.’
Mariscal was silent; he was thinking about Patrick.
‘Did you hear me, Rob?’
‘Yes I heard you. They’ll call. I’ll say yes.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then what?’
‘We’ll talk about the details later but basically, you’re to get close to Carver, find out what he’s got. That’ll do for starters. We need to know everything, Rob.’
‘Fine. And you’ll work on getting Patrick back?’
‘What? Yes, we’ll do everything we can. The more you deliver, Rob, the more we’ll be able to do. We’re going to have to trust each other if we’re going to resolve this one. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Good man. And Rob, don’t forget, when you get the call, when your boss tells you what’s happened, remember to act surprised.’
Rob had been back in the bath for less than a minute when the next call came. He checked the screen: private number.
‘Hello?’ The hesitant voice at the other end belonged to Lance Fletcher, Rob’s boss, the BBC’s Head of News. He took a moment to clear his throat and finish chewing whatever it was that he had in his mouth.
‘Hello?’ Rob almost shouted.
Fletcher swallowed and then spoke. ‘Sorry Rob, you’ve been engaged so long, I didn’t expect the call to go through.’
Why call then, Rob wondered. ‘I’m sorry, Lance. Got a lot of family stuff going on. How are you?’
‘Fine, fine. I’m fine, Rob, thank you. But, er, listen mate. I’ve got some rather bad news. Are you sitting down?’
Mariscal looked down at his wet, marble-white and water-wrinkled body. ‘Yeah.’
‘Good. Look, there’s no easy way to say this. I’ve just heard that one of your producers has been kidnapped. Patrick Reid. It happened earlier today, just outside Kabul.’
Mariscal pulled himself up in the tub and exhaled slowly, emitting a soft wheeze. ‘Oh my God. That’s terrible. That’s—oh, fucking hell, Lance, that’s—’
Fletcher took a gulp of air. ‘For Christ’s sake, Rob, don’t you start to panic. I’ve got enough of that going on at this end. It’s going to be fine. The Embassy in Kabul is on the case. They reckon it’s probably just one of those opportunistic things, grab a westerner, demand a ransom …’
‘Right, yes, that makes sense, Lance. Okay …’
‘Reid had a translator with him, an Afghan chap and I’m afraid they took him too.’
‘Karim Mumtaz.’
‘That’s right, Mumtaz. You know him, do you? He’s freelance. Not on the BBC books so not our responsibility, strictly speaking.’
‘That must be a big relief.’
‘Sorry?’ Fletcher had a talent for not hearing the words he didn’t want to hear. ‘’Fraid I didn’t catch that, Rob. But anyway, this isn’t just a courtesy call I’m making here. I need to ask you something.’
‘Right. What is it?’
‘We need you to go out there and oversee things. Be our eyes and ears on the ground, deal with the Embassy, and the press. Do you think you can do it?’
Rob paused. Counted to two, three. Long enough for Fletcher to think a decision was being made. ‘Sure.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure. I’ll go.’
‘Good. You don’t need to think about it, talk to the little lady?’
‘No, I’ll go, I want to go. He’s my man and it was my decision to send him.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Fletcher said cheerfully. He had obviously been expecting an argument. ‘You’re a good man, Rob. A good man.’ He paused, weighing up whether to reveal his hand a little further. He couldn’t see why not. ‘Seeing as how you’ve been so good about this, Rob, I don’t mind telling you, that this idea – the idea to send you out to manage all this – it came right from the top. The very top, Rob!’ He warmed to his tale. ‘I’ve got to admit, I was a little surprised when they asked for you. Usually a job like this would go to a more senior fellow. Like me, perhaps. But I sure as hell didn’t want to go and now I hear how keen you are, it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?’ He chuckled down the line. ‘They usually know what they’re doing, up there at the top of Broadcasting House, don’t they, Rob?’
Mariscal could not have disagreed more profoundly with this analysis of senior management, the group Fletcher often and lovingly referred to as ‘the higher ups’. In Rob’s experience, the higher ups rarely knew their collective arse from their elbow. As for this decision? Good or bad, it was not of their making. ‘Couldn’t agree more, Lance. I’ll pack a bag and get the office to start sorting a flight right now.’ He could sense Fletcher nodding away at the other end of the phone line: a problem was being dealt with, action taken, responsibility delegated – the Head of News was happy. Now was the time to ask.
‘There’s one thing though, Lance. A bit of a favour really. Could I have a quick chat with you before I fly off? Face to face?’
There was an audible inhalation of breath at the other end of the phone. Rob waited while Fletcher made a calculation. It was obvious that Mariscal wanted something. Probably money because that’s what he usually wanted. Fletcher wasn’t in a position to give Rob another pay rise, but refusing to meet the man would be poor form, particularly now. He would have to say ‘yes’.
‘Sure Rob, no problem at all. Call Sally first thing and she’ll sort it out.’
17 Captivity
DATELINE: Outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, July 5th
The first thing Patrick did was measure the room. The width of one hand was about four inches, three of those to the foot, so by placing his palm on the cool concrete and turning it across one wall, then the next, he calculated the size of his cell: seven feet and a few fingers long. Just five feet across. That gave him thirty-five square feet of floor space. And most of that was already taken up by a metal camp bed. He sat on the folded grey blankets, which served as a mattress, and surveyed the other items in his cell: a white plastic picnic chair and a red bucket. His life was suddenly very simple. He was expected to sleep on the bed, sit on the chair and crap in the bucket. He had no idea what else was expected of him; nothing, it seemed. Nothing other than to wait. Patrick couldn’t stand up straight in the room – the ceiling was too low – so every now and then he would shuffle about hunchbacked in his filthy black cotton ankle socks, the only footwear he had left since his shoes had been taken from him along with his rucksack and laptop. He knew prisoners sometimes had their shoelaces taken from them, but the shoes as well? These were the things that Patrick thought about as he waited.
It was hot; at least ninety degrees, he guessed. Sour grey sweat marks had formed under both arms and down his back. He had removed his travel jacket long ago and considered stripping off his dirty white shirt and trousers several times since, but pride and an instinct for self-preservation stopped him. He didn’t want to look any more vulnerable than he already did. Letting the men who had taken him see his skinny frame and pigeon-chest was an invitation to beat and abuse. Even with his clothes on, he knew he looked far from invulnerable; his blond hair was plastered to his head and now both legs had developed that excruciating under-exercised itch and his feet were starting to cramp, even though he’d only been locked up for—for how long? A day? He imagined he could already feel the muscles in his legs beginning to waste, so he lay flat on his back on the strip of floor between the bed and the wall, hoisted himself up on to his elbows, lifted his long legs into the air and started to pedal. Keep going. That was the important thing. Don’t panic. Don’t crack. Keep going.
The cell looked larger from upside down, but no less dismal. The walls were made from rough-cut concrete blocks and painted an uneven grey. There was no window, no ventilation, no sockets, no light fittings. The steel door was also grey but with black skid marks and dents from repeated kicks and punches, and as he stared at it from his upside-down position, it moved on its hinges. Just a little. And with each movement of the door came a dull slapping sound.
‘Who’s there?’ he called out uselessly, rolling himself back on to his knees. He crawled tentatively forwards and put his hands to the metal frame. The slapping sound continued. A slap followed by a rapid, quieter patting. What the hell was it? Patrick put his ear on the ground. He closed one eye and with the other looked through the slim gap between door and floor and then recoiled, gasping, as a lump of coarse mortar landed just the other side of the divide and was scraped up with a trowel. The slapping sound continued. They were cementing him in.
‘Stop! Please stop. You’re insane! I’ll talk to you. Just ask me. What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Oh God,’ he faltered, ‘who are you?’ Patrick kicked hard at the door with the sole of his foot. He felt a sharp pain travel up his leg, stopping at his knee. He staggered backwards and sat down heavily, the legs of the white picnic chair splaying under the sudden weight. He pressed the heels of his hands deep into his eye sockets and struggled for breath. Piss darkened his trousers. It dripped through the slats of the chair and pooled on the cement floor beneath him.
18 Next of Kin
DATELINE: Peckham, south London, SE15, July 5th
Peckham Green Primary School had seen better days. At least Rebecca hoped it had, or else the people who’d built it should have been arrested. But despite its crumbling gunmetal-grey walls and a floor plan that broke every ergonomic rule, Rebecca loved her classroom. And she loved it best at this time of day. Before eight, it was quiet and orderly with a slight smell of floor cleaner and chalk. She took the marked homework books from her bag and placed each carefully on the desk of its owner. She fetched a box of pencils from the store cupboard, sharpened them in the electric sharpener and placed one next to each homework book. For the care Rebecca took she might have been preparing for a Cabinet meeting or a peace summit at Camp David. Once finished, she stood behind her desk and took a long, satisfied look around. After finishing her coffee she wrote the day, month and year neatly in the top right-hand corner of the old blackboard that had been back in service ever since someone had broken in and stolen the interactive whiteboard. Rebecca didn’t condone theft but this was one break-in where, as far as she was concerned, the vandals had done the school a favour. She rubbed the chalk from her fingers with the hem of her skirt and listened. The school was coming to life now. She could hear scooters, bike tyres on the tarmac and the thump of a football on the playground wall. With squeaking trainers and the loud dragging of chairs, her students slowly filled the room and found their places. She looked at them. Thirty-four pairs of expectant eyes looked back. A few months ago the class had watched her in a different way. When she started they watched, waiting for her to slip up, to crack and then scarper like several substitute teachers before her. They didn’t doubt it would happen. But Miss Black had stayed and now the word in the staffroom was that the Year Six Problem had been solved.
‘What’s with the books on the desk, Miss?’ Charlene hadn’t touched her homework book or pencil. She was staring at them, suspiciously.
‘I thought I’d spoil you all a little.’
‘I like it better when you Frisbee them, Miss.’
‘I’ll chuck them to you next week, then, Steven.’
‘Okay. Can I sit at the back of the class next week?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘My dad says you put me here to keep an eye on me, ’cos you think I’m lazy.’
‘I put you there because your surname begins with the letter B, Steven.’
‘My dad says teachers always put the thick kids at the front.’
More difficult: how to reassure Steven without informing him that his father was an arse. ‘I’m afraid your dad’s wrong on that one, Steven. If your dad came and sat in my class, I’d put him in the same spot because his surname also begins with B.’
‘Are you sure you’re not discriminatin’ against me, Miss, ’cos I’m black and a Muslim an’ that?’
Rebecca took a long draw on her now empty coffee cup. ‘Do me a favour and hand me your lunch box, please, Steven.’
‘Why?’
‘Come on.’ The boy passed his Chelsea FC lunch box up from under his desk and Rebecca opened it. ‘You see this, Steven? This is a ham sandwich. Do you know what that tells me?’
