Heavy, p.8
Heavy, page 8
This was all very well and all very interesting, Maureen thought, lounging in her beret in the café across the road, watching the incident with a hand mirror she’d been obliged to buy for this precise purpose, but until she knew what was on those papers they might as well be offloading copies of the Beano.
Walking to the bus stop, Maureen considered that it was just about possible that Mr. Ridell was merely Moonlighting. Of course, she had no principled objection to this activity as any behaviour demonstrating a lack of loyalty to the capitalist stranglehold on valuable labour was inherently revolutionary, but…
But he was almost certainly playing Both Ends Against The Middle somehow, Maureen thought firmly, as she tried to squeeze onto the bus behind some shop girls. One couldn’t escape the fact that he had a Handler. That didn’t bode well for the innocent greed of his actions.
* * *
About a week after this, when Maureen’s suspicions were suspended in order to contemplate the discussion order for the next Chapel meeting, when she was supposed to be talking about the possibility of Organising the shop floor at Golding Holdings (poor) and the fertility for sympathy strikes from the Telecommunications Industry, with other trades (exceptionally poor), the suspicions in question were dramatically vindicated.
The smoke of the city had overlaid a hot sun with a grey shroud and turned lunch into a period not unlike living burial, and Mr. Ridell had not come in to work today.
It was most unlike him, Maureen thought, having formed a firm opinion of his activities by now. She queued for her limp, almost-certainly-cheese and probably-not-ham sandwich in the staff canteen with her cigarette glowing in furious anticipation, it was most unlike anyone. Lily Dawkins had come into work every single day when she had the vomiting bug and everyone had solidly wished she hadn’t; Maureen herself had come in after the fight with the union-buster down in the Pool of London that she’d weighed in on, and she hadn’t actually been home because of the terribly condemning black eye she’d sustained.
One simply didn’t not turn up; Mr. Wallace would dock not only the day’s wages but the week’s if he felt aggrieved, and even if Mr. Ridell was one of the Surt Survivors like that wretch Dawkins had imputed, it wouldn’t do to trade on that for long.
She returned to her desk after the sandwich with a fresh cigarette, an illicit tin mug full of water, and a nagging suspicion.
The empty desk glared at her like a missing tooth.
Bugger, thought Maureen, with uncharacteristic profanity. Blast, too.
Mr. Wallace’s personal secretary, Matilda Bainbridge, waddled in. One tried not to be uncharitable, but there was simply no other word for her gait. She was terribly self-important and terribly spherical; her hands were child hands and her voice was a child voice and her hair looked as if it had been requisitioned from a dog, according to Lily Dawkins.
“Oh,” said Bainbridge, immediately vexed into a frown that crumbled her moonlike face. “I thought he was in here.”
“He’s still at lunch,” said Maureen helpfully. “It’s not two yet.”
“There’s a phone call,” grumbled Bainbridge, her podgy little fingers clasping a note pad and pen like a shield against the mockery of the calling floor. “A very important phone call.”
“I’ll tell him if I see him,” Maureen promised, aware that Bainbridge was not listening to a word.
“It’s about the,” Bainbridge frowned some more, “the Ridell man.”
Maureen was quite sure this wasn’t how one was supposed to refer to anyone but her curiosity was piqued; she kept her remonstrance to herself. “Oh yes?”
Bainbridge’s piggy little eyes refocused from the middle distance and caught Maureen in their glare for the first time. “None of your business,” she squeaked, and waddled away.
* * *
Mr. Ridell was back at his desk the following day. Mr. Wallace did not appear to consider this strange. Maureen nearly jabbed herself in the hand with her own hair pin, trying to appear nonchalant while examining him for some sign of Nefarious Business.
* * *
After Mr. Sharples had called the meeting to order, and Henry Perkins had dropped his pencil a few times, and Bill Pole had been woken up from his doze, Maureen stood.
She explained that the atmosphere of the office was hostile or indifferent to organised labour; she explained that the working conditions were “just on the right side of acceptable for the majority” but that they did not meet with standards as laid out by the Ministry of Labour in some cases. She explained that, in her view, there was Something Else Going On in the office, and that recent discoveries had borne this out.
Bill Pole snorted. “Everyone’s out to get our Maureen P, aren’t they?”
Maureen did not trouble to deliver a dirty look.
“I am only keeping you abreast of what I have encountered at Golding Holdings,” she said, as primly as she could. It lacked a certain something. Maureen had been rather more infamous for flying off the handle and giving speeches and occasion hurled board dusters than for her tact and propriety, as everyone was fond of reminding her.
Pole shrugged and brought up something in the back of his throat.
“Accusations of paranoia aside,” said Mr. Sharples, “have you observed anything concrete that might lead, lead you to this. To this conclusion, Miss Phelps?” He rubbed his elbow spasmodically for a moment. The rest of the meeting – they were ten, today, a good turn-out – peered at her through the cigarette smoke.
“I saw one of my fellow-workers meeting with someone who I believe to be a Government Intelligence Agent,” Maureen said, sticking out her chin.
“Believe to be,” Pole repeated, into the collar of his shirt.
Henry Perkins raised his hand. “M-maybe he – maybe – I mean it’s not – it could be, you know, one of Them.”
Mr. Sharples gave a long, exasperated sigh, and held up his hand for the minutes to stop being taken. “Perkins,” he said, with a kindly tone that didn’t reach his face, “for the last time. The Greyshirts are just a story.”
* * *
In Chelsea, Irene Gaitskill sorted surveillance shots. They had been through one set of sorting already, before development: now it was necessary to determine which shots were suitable for which individuals appearing in them, and which group images need to be repeated for inclusion in several files.
The light was wholly artificial. The magnifying lens was polished and without smears or scratches. Irene’s scalp hurt from the ferocity of her trim, unassuming hairstyle, and the determination with which she tried to straighten her hair. Untidiness is unprofessional: unprofessional individuals are never promoted.
There were fourteen shots. Irene examined them in turn.
One was in Bayswater. The simple transaction between a greengrocer, mixed, with a housewife, white, of a sum of money, negligible, for a peach, prohibited. Irene carefully selected the correct form from the filing cabinet below, and marked the appropriate boxes with a ball point pen. She noted the appearance of background characters in the scene, and added a note: Prohibited goods (nature: peach, 1 in shot. Others may be assumed).
In Bayswater, once, a man in a shop selling predominantly hardware downgraded her from ‘Miss’ to ‘Missy’ when he noticed her hair. She still went back: after this he only ever called her ‘Missy’ and once just “Hey you.”
The next shot was of a car. This was colour film, suggesting the details of hue were important: Irene marked at once the man in the background, late twenties, carrying a newspaper, The Times, with something circled in red. The appropriate form, a category B form, was harder to locate, and she was obliged to stand and search for it in the cabinet behind her.
The photograph was taken in Piccadilly, she noted in the Locational Details section – the information was printed on the rear of the photograph in neat pen by the developer and confirmed by the photographer, but Irene has always made it her business to recognise the locations herself in case of photographer misremembrance. Piccadilly represented a meeting point of several different subcultures within the city.
Irene’s telephone gave a discrete, muted jangle.
She laid down her ball point and answered with today’s number.
“Miss Gaitskill,” said her boss, who only called her by this name on the phone, when their conversations are the subject of unconditional eavesdropping. “A moment of your time?”
“Yes, sir.”
Irene replaced the photographs in their appropriate folders. She locked the filing cabinets. She locked the door behind her. She walked down the corridor, through the tunnel under the road, and up a flight of stairs.
She knocked today’s Morse on the door.
Captain Foley opened the bolt and beamed at her. Irene checked that her hair was entirely in place, and rubbed the front of one shoe on the back of her stocking.
She closed the door behind her, and the bolt shot automatically.
Captain Foley’s office was lit only with the desk lamp today. He looked mysterious, overworked, a little haunted. He rubbed his forehead with his fingers.
“I’m afraid I have to dump a little extra on you this afternoon,” said Captain Foley, with an embarrassed smile. He was still wearing his jacket. His hair wanted combing. “Ordinarily, Irene, you know I wouldn’t pull you from your work like this, but the truth is—” he leant across the desk and said in an exaggerated whisper, “the truth is Bryant is an idiot and I’d rather have someone sensible handle this one. We need someone we can trust. Braithwaite puts faith in me.”
Irene nodded, trying not to imply that she, too, thought that Bryant was an idiot. Until this moment she hadn’t conceived an opinion of Bryant, but in hindsight she can see his point. She kept her hands folded in her lap. “Sir?”
“One sec,” said Captain Foley, rummaging under his desk with a frown. “Ah, there it is.”
He passed her a plain, buff folder with a name stamped on the front, and a number underneath. Irene’s heart delicately skipped a beat: this was agent data, not civilian. The degree of trust evoked is unmistakeable: a careless gesture which breathed faint suggestions of consideration for rank.
She opened the folder. There was a very old identification photograph next to a slightly more recent photograph. The young man – and slightly older man – was possessed of high cheekbones, dark eyes, a nose that was almost a snub, and hair that, in the later picture, had begun to form tight curls as it grew out.
Irene skimmed the preliminary information. He was older than her by some significant degree, at thirty years. His parentage was in question, but his race was not: mixed. There was a note to the effect of suspicions relating to his degree of loyalty, made in blue fountain pen.
She looked up. “Sir?”
“He’s in I-14,” said Captain Foley, with an expansive sigh. “I have to process someone else in—” he glanced at his watch, “Oh, about fifteen minutes ago. Dickens is on the paperwork but I need someone to deal with the personnel side of things.”
Irene was not, under her usual remit, given to dealing with the personnel side of things. She was too memorable, not commanding enough, too – the criticisms have been many, and all of them have shied around what they mean: too young. Too female. Too dark. Captain Foley has never uttered or implied any of these criticisms himself. He always reports them to her with an air of disgust. Something must have changed to allow her closer to these roles now.
“Yes, sir,” she said, as he takes the folder back.
Captain Foley stood. “He’s not dead yet, but I’m sure he will be presently. Be an angel and keep an eye on Bryant for me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s a certain amount of administrative bilge to be dealt with around this one,” Captain Foley explained. “He didn’t confess, and Bryant’s twitchy, and he might decide to include a C-5 regardless of its absence, just to make up numbers. Don’t let him. Braithwaite needs us to be accurate, and so,” he added almost as an afterthought, “does the country.”
“No, Sir,” said Irene, obliquely revolted by Bryant’s lack of professionalism.
Captain Foley showed her back to the door with a sense of palpable relief. “Really, Irene, I have no idea what I’d do without you.”
Bryant was, as directed, in O-14 – Observation-14, aligned to Interrogation-14. He gave her a cursory glance as she came in, and went back to his crossword.
“’M I in trouble with His Nibs?” he asked, lowering his weasly head over the black boxes.
“No,” said Irene, meaning ‘yes’. “I’m just here for training.”
Bryant brightened. “Spiffing,” he said, pushing a box of prints and forms towards her. “Get cracking.”
Irene looked down into the box. There was a sheaf of papers covering most of the prints. The topmost form was the C-5, which Bryant had mercifully not filled in yet. She lifted it out.
Underneath there were six or seven prints. The majority were close-ups, and all were in black and white. Bryant made a satisfied noise and scribbled on his crossword: Irene, still standing, spreads out the prints on the second desk, around Bryant’s discarded coffee mug and half-empty packet of Woodley’s Digestive Biscuits [Made With Norwegian Wheat Only].
There was one full-body shot of a thirty-year-old man whose clothes had been removed. Irene did not consider the impropriety of allowing her to see this: the surveillance materials she has reviewed in the past have inured her to the idea that this was as sexless and clinical as nursing. And the Church did not need to know any more than they need to know about where she worked.
The man’s body was a mass of bruises. His shoulders sat out of their sockets.
Irene looked at another photo, which documented the way in which his feet were turned inward.
Another demonstrated the marks left by a manacle of some kind around his wrists. The close-up was intense enough that she could see, in the stark light, the goosebumps on his skin. He was alive in this photograph.
She reviewed the next print: here the man had no fingernails on his left hand, only weeping nail beds. There was no blood, but there were no bandages.
Irene stepped back from the table and glanced at the C-5. It had a name type-printed in one field already, to save confusion later. It matched the name on the folder Captain Foley showed her; this was the right set of documents.
“Everything alright?” Bryant asked, with a snicker in his voice. He thought she was queasy, perhaps, too weak for this work.
Irene opened the door. “I forgot to ask you if you wanted another cup of coffee,” she said.
“Very kind of you,” said Bryant, without raising his head. “Sugar in mine. Two, and make sure at least one of them’s the cane stuff and not that revolting beet stuff they fob you girls off with.”
In the corridor Irene saw “I-14” printed on the next door down. It was heavy and grey-painted and metal and barred from the outside, although not padlocked.
She walked to the end of the corridor.
Coming in the opposite direction with his head down was one of Captain Foley’s temporary recruits. He was wearing an armband with a civilian suit and he was taller than her by a foot. He looked strong enough. She remembered him – his face, at least, was distinctive – from some lift-and-carry jobs recently.
“Miss,” said the civilian, stepping backward out of her way. “I’m here to collect—”
“The body from I-14,” said Irene, briskly. “Yes?”
He just nodded. “I was told to put him where he is supposed to go.”
Where he is supposed to go, Irene echoed, in her mind. He needed the hospital, but that was a traceable objective, and these days they were as much kill as cure. She read the reports herself, and censored some of them. He was supposed to be in the morgue. Sooner or later.
Irene considered recent surveillance materials. There was a house in Putney. Wandsworth. A couple in Kilburn. Walthamstow. All filled with people. Her heart was pounding. He was supposed to be dead.
“Follow me, please,” said Irene, holding her head up. She wished she’d brought a clip board. People listened to the clip board when they didn’t listen to her.
She wasn’t supposed to deal with bodies, but she was. And his was still warm, its heart still fighting towards life, expired once over. Hers matched it, fluttering beat for drummer’s march.
He followed without question. Irene opened the door, and turned away from the contents.
“Wrap him,” she said.
When the Civilian Recruit – one of Captain Foley’s long-term projects, she suspected – had acquired his sad, flopping bundle in its grey, rough blanket, and carried the whole package awkwardly in his arms, she pulled the door to behind him, and set off at a trot down the corridor. The sound of her shoes on the bare floor was metronomic: the sound of his behind her was uneven.
In the garage the only car available that she had the authority and therefore keys for was a Morris. It was dark red.
“Sit in the back,” she instructed.
“Miss,” said the CR, stooping to get into the back seat. He spread his blanket-swaddled burden and sat in a stooped, uncomfortable pietà.
Irene thanked God in the Heavens above that the CR had no idea where the morgue was and that this was not even close to normal operating procedure. She pulled out of the garage, out of the mews, into Chelsea, holding her breath.
She headed north, mentally marshalling every potential house. Kilburn were too cautious; Highbury had enough above board activities to call the police without fear. St Ann’s were out of the question; Holloway too close to an operational centre.
“Miss, he’s breathing,” said the CR in the back seat.
“See that this continues,” Irene said, holding her own breath as if this would confer it to the broken remains of a man draped across the CR’s knees. She listened for the sound of breath herself, but over the noise of the Morris, her heartbeat, and the snuffling, ugly breaths of the CR it was impossible to hear anything.
