The Dark Horizon, page 5
‘Ok.’
‘No, I mean really absolutely utterly strictly. This is off the record, off the record.’
‘That’s really off the record.’
‘I’m not joking,’ came the steely don’t-be smart-with me reply.
‘Ok, ok.’
‘It was a copy of the plans of the foundations of Resurgam.’
‘What, just the plans and nothing else? No note or anything?’
‘No note, nothing else apart from a razor blade.’
Dan frowned as he toyed with the thought. ‘Granted that’s a bit weird. But it’s hardly terrifying. It’s just symbolism from one of the protesters, surely?’
Adam shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Because those plans have never been seen in public. Due to all the threats to Resurgam and the possibility of an attack, they were classified as secret.’
CHAPTER 7
It was a beautiful morning to hunt a hunch. The stars were so close they felt like fireflies hovering in the air.
Ok, so it was cold, but that was a familiar enemy. Layers were the secret solution. A vest, a T-shirt, a shirt, a scarf, his faithful old body warmer, with a coat on top and he was plenty warm enough. Mittens for his fingers, just enough to keep the hands cosy, but never to slow the pulse of a reaction to snap that sacred shot.
There was the hat too, a thick black beanie, pulled low. Dan once said it made him look like a bank robber. But it did its job, kept his head warm and his reflexes ready.
So here he waited, hoped and hoped again for the hunch to pay off.
Last night, after the call to the attack on Resurgam, Dirty El had done something which didn’t come easily. He’d forced himself to sit in his flat and think. Not hang around outside a club or bar, waiting for a snap of a half-cut minor celebrity in a state of indecency. Not tap up some contacts for the latest gossip on who was illicitly entwined with who. But instead, to think.
Of one man. The man, that man, the man of the moment. The Cashman.
Around El, on the dusty floor of his cluttered living room lay the cuttings of the Cashman’s appearances. And in his mind a pattern had started to emerge.
Firstly, the Cashman always struck exactly on the hour. That was agreed by the eyewitnesses from each story. Secondly, he always chose a landmark. It was never just a random stop in a street or park to hurl out his bags of cash. And thirdly, since the bizarre legend began, he had struck every day without fail. Which meant tomorrow he would appear again - somewhere.
El took out his map of Plymouth and circled the obvious places the Cashman hadn’t yet chosen. There were a few, but not that many. This was no New York. He would need luck and it would require an early start. Even then, the odds had to be against success, but that was fine.
For the bounty on offer, it had to be worth a try. El would vanquish those other paparazzi, show them who was boss on this turf, and triumph by unmasking the Cashman.
With some difficulty, El pulled his bulky frame up from the floor and waddled off to the kitchen. He made himself a cup of tea and settled upon the location he would choose to lie in wait.
Of all the landmarks of Plymouth, it had to be here the Cashman would come next. It was iconic, known the world over. The fabled beauty of its views, spanning two of England’s fairest counties, the sentinel lighthouse, the great grassy vista. It was an irresistible lure for tourists and locals alike.
So it was that on a bench, overlooking the darkly shifting waters of the silent sea, in the middle of the Hoe, El sat and waited.
It was ten to seven on a December Wednesday morning. Dawn was beginning to kindle her fires in the eastern sky. The Hoe was quiet, just the odd dog walker or worker making their way to meet the day’s demands. All were coddled down low in their coats, sheltering from the blades of the morning’s cold.
El rubbed his hands together and waited.
The earliest the Cashman had struck was five o’clock in the morning. That had been at the fish market on the Barbican, quite a surprise for the dozens of trawlermen gathered there, selling the day’s catches.
Otherwise, he tended to appear later in the day. El wasn’t sure whether that meant he should bet his time on lurking in the waning hours of the afternoon, or think it was the moment for another early strike.
A jogger skipped by, panting hard, face flushed, her fluorescent vest glowing in the streetlights. The time slipped on to five to seven.
El rose from his bench, stretched, and began to pace back and forth across the expanse of tarmac.
The world shrinks in the wintertime. Horizons tighten in the lacklustre light. But still the rhythms of life run, however routine.
From Millbay Docks a ferry glided out, heading for the Channel. In the sky a gang of seagulls swooped and soared, riding on the awakening winds. A street sweeper wandered along the pavement, picking at the discarded litter of the night before. Unseen bottles clinked in a glass symphony as a delivery lorry rumbled past. A car slowed and stopped.
El peered through the half-light. Someone was getting out of the back.
He strained his eyes. Whoever it was had begun putting something on their head.
El didn’t hesitate. He began to run, heart lurching to a drummer’s beat.
The figure’s back was turned. But its arms were reaching into the car.
To find the bags full of money?
Surely. Please, surely.
A bank of cloud slowly shifted. The sun edged above the horizon. The red light of dawn washed across the Hoe, chasing shadows before it.
The figure was turning around.
El’s practiced fingers framed the shot. His was the moment and now was the time.
But it was an elderly lady, wearing a hat and holding a leash, a reluctant spaniel peering out from the back seats.
‘Lovely day,’ she chirped, in a finishing school voice. ‘Are you photographing the dawn?’
The camera drooped. Across the city a clock rang out seven. There wasn’t another car in sight, no Robin Hood mask, not a hint of the Cashman.
El sat back on the bench and stared sightlessly at the view. The glory of the new day daubing its colours across field and cliff hardly registered in his downcast eyes.
It was quarter past seven when El’s mobile stirred him from the miserable reverie. He answered, then plodded for the car and drove to the bus station. He didn’t turn on the radio, didn’t put on any music, didn’t do anything except drive.
A line of buses was waiting, bottled in the depot by the mass of humanity milling outside. People were hugging each other, smiling, laughing. One man was lamenting how the earliness of the hour meant the pubs weren’t yet open.
‘Cheers to the beautiful Cashman!’ he yelled.
‘I’m throwing a sicky to do some shopping,’ a young woman giggled, holding up a fistful of bags of money. ‘Sixty quid in each. Sixty!’
A couple of discarded sheets of paper blew along the pavement. They bore the letters A B C D E F G H. On both sheets, the F was circled.
El didn’t even bother to raise the camera. All the action was over. A distant aftermath never sold a snap.
Particularly not when your competitors had far more tempting fare to offer. And there, around the crowd as though forming a protective ring, were the other paparazzi. The London snappers, with their shiny little scooters, designer leather jackets and top of the range cameras.
And amongst them was the tall one, the one with the pop star stubble and film star looks. The one renowned for some of the most famous shots in paparazzi folklore. The smooth talking one, the rich one. The one all the girls adored and who all El’s contacts seemed unable to stop themselves swooning before and spewing their secrets upon.
The one who had charmed his way into the affections of everyone here in this city which was El’s manor. His! His home, his patch, his workplace. His heart and his soul.
The one who was waving at El, smiling, so self-satisfied, self-assured, the other paparazzi also joining the taunt.
The one they said had come from Milan to try his trade in a new country, and was doing so with stunning success. The Italian, they called him.
El looked down at his anorak and battered body warmer, bulging around the girth of his stomach. His tatty jeans and scuffed old boots.
He turned and trudged away, accompanied only by the cold.
CHAPTER 8
Against the backdrop of the red orb of the rising sun, Resurgam could have been an ancient monolith. Few are the man-made intrusions upon the planet which can rival the effortless spectacles of the natural world. But here, with human ingenuity and endless bloody-minded persistence, was one. It was an affront to nature, a wound in the sky with its soaring presence, high enough to puncture the heavens.
The day began bitter once more, the iciness enhanced by a growing wind gathering at sea. Dan pulled his coat tighter and stamped his feet. They would always be the first parts of his body to register freezing conditions. The phenomenon had only grown worse as he’d reluctantly aged into the decade of the forties.
Nigel had positioned them just inside the long plain of the shadow, to film the moment the light broke through from the building’s side. It would make a striking shot to start a report.
Other journalists, cameramen and photographers were arriving, most carrying take away teas and coffees. It would be a sizeable pack which gathered here once more. The talk was all speculation of what they were about to witness, what would be the latest storyline in this extraordinary epic.
Nigel checked his watch. ‘You’re ok,’ Dan told him. ‘The great leader’s statement isn’t for another fifteen minutes.’
The morning in the flat had run as smoothly as a Penny Farthing trying to negotiate a cobbled street.
They’d both woken just before seven and gone through a yawning, stretching, rising from the covers routine.
‘I’ll take Rutherford for a run,’ Claire said. ‘I know you’ll be busy today.’
‘I was going to. It’s how I like to start the day – how I always have.’
‘We could both do it.’
Dan thought that an opportune moment to make a cup of tea. Couples jogging together sounded far too much like one of the hits of his personal annals of horror. As he carried the mugs back to the bedroom, the phone rang.
‘The Cashman again,’ he explained to Claire. ‘Got to go.’
In the bathroom whirl of a quick wash the mobile rang once more. Ellen Dance would be at Resurgam at eight to make a statement about last night’s attack. The word from the excitable marketing department was that she had incisive views to impart.
Lizzie was suggesting Dan should be there, in the considerate way that people are invited to their own execution. Another reporter would cover the Cashman.
‘I’ve still got to go,’ he said, in response to Claire’s quizzical look, ‘Just for a different reason.’
As Dan dressed, one more call came in to buffet his course. It was El. He was, he bemoaned, lower than a soul singer with a sore throat.
‘Yes, I appreciate it’s very difficult for you. Yes, sorry, I mean soul-destroying,’ Dan soothed. ‘No, I’m not sure it is the end of the world as we know it. But yes, I know there’s a huge bounty for the Cashman. Yes, I will help, of course. It’s just – I’m a little busy right now.’
He slung a coat around his shoulders and made for the door, then stuck his head back in, patted Rutherford and finally pecked Claire on the cheek.
Ten minutes to the promised revelations. To be a good professional, and to try to distract himself from the cold, Dan fished out a disorganised wad of notes from his satchel and re-visited the profile of Ellen Dance.
It was compiled back in the silly season of the high summer, when Wessex Tonight was short of news. Lizzie had become obsessed by an inspired idea to ‘give the programme a distinctive edge’.
Dan and Nigel would depart on a little tour of the country. They were to visit notorious environmental protests where Esther had featured to compile a film about her life. Upon return to Devon, they would produce a matching version on the character of Ellen Dance.
The films would run on consecutive evenings, under the heading Two Women – Two Visions – One Battle.
It was, Lizzie proclaimed without a dust grain of modesty, rather Hollywood.
A chance tangle with the Prime Minister brought Ellen Dance into politics. Just over a decade ago, the hapless man was on an election campaign visit to Exmoor, to talk about the importance of tourism. A couple of years before, Dance had bought a small, run-down and ramshackle hotel on the moor, and refurbished it as an upmarket retreat for deer hunters. All of which would have been of no consequence to the nation, had not the great statesman’s entourage decided the quintessential English beauty of the village of Exford would make a fine backdrop for the photographers. Out he had emerged, shaken a couple of bemused local hands, and was ambushed.
Dance had seen the photo opportunity unfolding from her window, as if a gift from the Angel of the Heavens whose department it was to look after the little people. ‘Point one, bureaucracy,’ she hectored in the legendary news clip. ‘How the hell are we supposed to run a business with your endless health and safety regulations, inspections, and stupid Whitehall diktats from people who’ve never even been to the countryside? Point two, the rates. They keep going up, when business is going down. And point three, taxes. You want us to create some wealth, then give us a damned chance and stop bleeding us for every penny…’
So it went on, delivered at a rate approximately twenty per cent faster than most people can think, complete with wagging finger. ‘You want my vote, you’d better listen and damn well work for it,’ was her fond farewell.
‘You should go into politics,’ the leader of all he surveyed remarked as he finally made his sweet escape, a heartily unconvincing smile fixed upon his face.
They were words Ellen Dance heeded well.
First it was election to the district council, then the county. Initially, Dance made her name as a passionate supporter of rural communities, but as she grew more experienced it was business which became her defining theme.
The great controversy over wind farms came first. Unusually amongst her peers, Dance supported them as a source of investment and energy. A battle over a tidal barrage followed, then a new power station in the south of Devon.
The pictures of one protest featured placards daubed with Dance the Destroyer. But she had fire and wouldn’t be silenced. She visited a picket line, talked to the campaigners, and gave an interview with arguments as passionate as those of her opponents.
‘Yes, the south west’s beauty is its strength,’ Dance said. ‘But who’s going to live here if there’s no electricity, no business, no companies, no jobs? We can balance the landscape with innovation and development, surely? We must, or we have no future aside from being the nation’s holiday park.’
The next shift of ambition came with the creation of Regional Development Councils, to be overseen by an elected President. Ellen Dance ran for the post. Many sneered, said surely it could be only for a bet.
She had always been an independent councillor, time and again proclaiming her only affiliation was the electorate. But with such freedom came a price. Without the powerful party machinery to back her, what hope could Dance have of such high office?
She had an answer to that. Or perhaps her omnipresent aide, Jackie Denyer did, because by this time the two had become inseparable. And the question was raised that had persisted since – which was the true brains, motivation, and street fighter of the partnership?
Their solution to the lack of a party machine was the grassroots. Fundraising and campaigning was run via the internet, creating a network of supporters and activists.
And now came a notable shift in Dance’s nature. Opinion polls demonstrated she had a clear chance of winning, and suddenly she became a target for the other candidates. Dance was relentlessly briefed against with the shady whispers that politicians so favour.
Little experience… lacking in substance… questionable judgement… no job for an amateur…
The growing pressure of the campaign was blamed for Dance splitting from her partner of a dozen years. And perhaps for a new bitterness of strategy.
In the fortnight before the election, stories began to emerge in the media about her rival candidates. There were sexual peccadilloes for the Liberal Democrats’ woman, flirtations with extreme politics in younger years for the Conservatives’ man.
Where they came from remained a mystery, for journalists must always protect their sources. But the suspicion was that perhaps it was the network of Dance supporters feeding information to campaign headquarters, which was then leaked.
Be all that as it may, it worked. Ellen Dance won.
The early sun was starting to flicker around the edge of Resurgam, like the light cast from a ruby. It crept across the tarmac of the approach road and the discourteous bulk of the encircling wall. Most of the debris from the gatehouse had already been cleared, but there were still a couple of piles of rubble, tumbled pyramids of brick, metal and shattered glass. A pitiful line of masonry formed the remainder of the structure itself.
More barriers had been brought in to reinforce the gate, patrolled by a line of watchful security men and women. A couple of others stood further up the road, stopping any lorries to check their business. A series of trucks was disappearing from view, slipping down the ramps into the underground car park.
It was one of those mornings where anything that lived or functioned was giving off the fog of existence; steamy breaths from mouths, clouds of engine gases from exhaust pipes, plumes of smoke from chimneys and flues.
The great doors of the skyscraper opened and a short, squat woman with cropped blonde hair marched out. She was carrying a fat file of papers and a mobile phone.
‘Oh no, here comes Denyer,’ one of the photographers whispered. ‘Get ready to be organised.’
