1990 (15 page)

'We can't use it, of course. Section 5 of the Public Control Act. Quote "Importation or publication of any unapproved Foreign media product is punishable by prison, compulsory bankruptcy and removal of all State privileges".' The fat man looked wistful, for a moment. 'They'll be banning cowboy films next, in case people remember what a good guy looks like.'

'We'd be better off working for Skardon,' commented Greaves.

'In a way we are working for him. With eighty per cent of advertising bought by the Government, they could fold us tomorrow,' the other declared. 'We only exist because the few foreign countries that trade with the U.K. read our squawks and libels and truth, and then believe the financial pages we're forced to print. We're just a front to add credibility to the economic profiles and the five-year plans.'

'Love your idealism,' Kyle drawled and tossed the transcript onto the desk. 'What do we do with this?'

'Get an interview with Wainwright. Play it again, Charlie. Authenticate it with a voice-print and publish it,' Greaves said, decisively. 'Problem. Find somebody Wainwright trusts.'

'Answer. Dave Brett.' Kyle quickly depressed the receiver rest as the news editor grabbed for the telephone. 'That telephone's come a long way since Alexander Graham Bell invented it,' he warned, rapping the desk with his knuckles. 'Tap, tap. Give my surveillance bug to Pearce and I'll find Dave.'

Tiny Greaves had already pushed the intercom button and Tom Pearce appeared in the doorway.

'Impersonation time, Mr Pearce,' Kyle said to his passable double.

As they left the room together, the Chief Emigration Officer entered Skardon's office, insensitive to panic, as always.

The Controller was ticking a check-list of monitoring facilities with Delly Lomas at his shoulder.

'What are you up to, Nichols?'

'The investigation you asked for into Leisure Centre 28.'

'Any joy?'

'We have reasonable grounds for thinking some illegal emigrants have met their helpers there,' Nichols responded in a flat monotone, like a policeman being cross-examined by defence counsel.

Skardon switched the subject. 'I want you to double passenger control at Heathrow and personally supervise the arrival of one Charles Wainwright.'

'If he arrives,' Delly repeated.

'He's embarked. I've checked,' her boss confirmed, before turning back to the chief officer and saying with deliberate pedantry, 'Discreetly, Nichols. You will take the fully-monitored diplomatic vehicle. And you will sit with Wainwright and be as affable as is compatible with your character.' It was Herbert Skardon's headmaster act, the spelling-out for a dull pupil.

'Yes, sir,' Nichols stared ahead. 'May I ask the reason for picking up subject?' His lapse into jargon was automatic whenever he had to deal with the PCD boss.

'No, you may not. On this occasion, you're better off as a genial motorised cavalryman. Yours not to reason why.'

'Some parts of Heathrow are rather like the Crimea now, sir.' He managed a deadpan retort against Skardon's heavy patronage before hurrying away.

The Controller turned to his deputy and instructed, 'We now check very carefully that no-one makes public any part of the video-tape of the Wainwright speech.'

'Unlikely. Except for Kyle.'

'Where is he now?'

She picked up a telephone and said, simply, 'Kyle.' Waited for a moment and then, 'Thank you,' replacing the receiver. 'Surveillance say that their tracer is giving signals from his office.'

'Electronics are fine, but I'm still traditionalist enough to back them up with the personal touch,' asserted her boss. 'Keep a tailing squad on him, Delly.'

As he issued this directive, the two journalists were already exchanging clothes in the newspaper archives room.

'My dossier says I'm fond of curries and frequent a tandoori joint called the Star of Bradford,' Kyle said, with a grin.

'You might be, but I'm not,' Pearce retorted, ruefully, picking up the other's jacket. 'I hate horse meat.'

'Beats betting on it,' Kyle responded unsympathetically over his shoulder as he headed for the exit.

Leisure Centre 28 was housed, like many other Leisure Centres, in a large, converted church which had never quite lost its ascetic atmosphere. A few customers queued patiently in the bleak reception area, waiting to push their different coloured entry cards into the slotted machine which operated the doors.

George, a heavy set man of about fifty, with the souvenirs of knuckles on his face, stood supervising and on the wall behind him were two notices :

IT IS AN OFFENCE TO USE A BEVERAGE

CARD FOR ADMISSION ONCE THE

WEEKLY AMENITY ALLOCATION HAS

BEEN CONSUMED.

and

CITIZENS ARE WARNED THAT BEVERAGE

CARDS ARE VALID ONLY FOR THE WORK

STATUS MARKED.

All Leisure Centres were government-owned and controlled and alcohol was severely rationed.

George looked bored, nostalgic for the days when he had been a beer-bellied bouncer for a lady publican in Kilburn, paid in comfort, consumption and cash.

An unimaginative, official effort had been made to introduce a certain liveliness to the interior of the Centre, by pasting up propaganda posters, each of which carried a State message illustrated without subtlety.

WORK SHARING IS NOW COMPULSORY. IT HELPS THE NATIONAL INTEREST TO HELP YOU showed an intellectual-looking technician and a brawny labourer working together on the same machine.

P.C.D. STATUS CARDS MUST BE CARRIED AT ALL TIMES. PUBLIC CONTROL IS IN YOUR INTEREST was more like one of the old insurance advertisements, with a PCD card-holding couple beaming out from under the protective shelter of the State umbrella.

The rectangular room was divided into three colour-coded sections, separated from each other by floor to ceiling wire mesh. Each section contained booths and a bar, over which drink was served according to card classification and work status.

The white bar served near-beer to essential fringe and unclassified, unskilled workers. The red bar was for skilled workers and served real beer, stout and cider. Blue was more comfortable and furnished accordingly, serving beer, wine and spirits to classified skilled workers, government and local authority employees and trade union officials.

As drinks in each bar were handed over, barmen collected the money from the customers, together with their allocation cards, which were stamped in a machine at the side of the till. When each card was fully stamped, no more drink was available to that holder that week.

Dave Brett, expensively and casually dressed, was lounging in a booth in the red section with Agnes Culmore. He poured two solid slugs of brandy from a Finnegan's hip flask in black leather and silver and pushed one across to her, accompanied by an appreciative wink.

'Oh, Mr. Brett, I shouldn't,' she said, bridling extravagantly. 'As co-ordinator of this Leisure Centre, I'm classified as a Grade 7DQ Civil Servant.' Her easy laugh showed how seriously she took the title.

A semi-genuine blonde, well-rounded without being blowsy, Agnes in middle age was that combination of sympathy, sex object and maternal figure which makes the ideal barmaid. She laughed again, enjoying Brett's attention, as most women did.

'At heart you're still the same buxom barmaid who used to slip me drinks when I was under age in Liverpool,' he teased, affectionately, as she sniffed at the brandy fumes happily before taking a first sip.

'And lent you money to buy Supercham for that married woman,' she reminded him.

'Charity, Agnes. Her husband was on shifts,' Brett topped up his own glass again. 'Whatever became of Supercham?'

'It was classified as counterproductive. The factory makes industrial alcohol now.'

They were the only two in the entire Leisure Centre who looked as though they might be enjoying themselves. Drinking was a serious and gloom-filled business in 1990, which the average customer approached more as a duty than an indulgence. It was done with the minimum of talking and all wore identical weighty expressions.

Dave Brett let his eyes wander boldly over her ripe bosom. 'It was you I was really after. Two halves of bitter and I wanted to take you away from all this. Tango till dawn.' She wriggled her shoulders and pulled a face as he continued, expansively, 'You with a rose between your teeth and your hair brushing the floor. Then to nibble strawberries and cream from your cleavage.'

She looked archly pleased, 'Proper Little George Raft.'

'Whoever he was.'

'And look at you now. A big-time official spiv. Thanks for the case of brandy, by the way.'

'Think nothing of it. Fell off the back of a diplomatic limousine,' Dave Brett shrugged and then added, in mock reproach, 'And not spiv, Agnes. An import/export agent. A rare breed. With freedom to move because the country needs the money. Patriot, even. It deserves some perks.'

'You'd see to that,' the woman chuckled. 'And "perks" is banned as a word. It's called fringe and status benefits now.'

'Sorry. Didn't mean to use bad language.'

George ambled up to the booth and handed a note to Brett, who read it, snapped on his lighter and burnt it, his face suddenly serious.

'Friend of mine due in, Agnes. I may need the back room.'

'No need,' she got up, tugging the skirt of her lurex dress straight and pointing to the wall of the booth. 'George re-circuited the microphone.'

'What to?' asked the agent.

'Radio One,' she gave a saucy giggle. 'If the PCD want to play patriotic songs all day, they can listen to them I say.'

She went off without waiting to finish her drink, giving a quick wave and swing of her hips in Kyle's direction as he walked briskly in.

His first question came straight to the point and the agent answered, 'Sure, I know Charles Wainwright, from the days when he and my old man were fire-breathing organisers together. He was best man at Mum and Dad's wedding.'

'Do you still see him?' the journalist asked, and the other hesitated. 'Come on, Dave. It's important.'

'Who for? You?'

'Mostly for Wainwright.'

'O.K. I bring in the odd foreign report and magazine for him. Nothing sinister. Union stuff. It's just that they're banned here.'

Kyle wondered if a meeting could be arranged between him and the trade union leader, but Brett was dubious. 'It won't be easy. He calls your rag "The Last Gasp." Of reaction, that is.'

'I've got to see Wainwright. Tonight,' the newsman said, urgently.

The agent looked incredulous. 'And my next trick will be with loaves and fishes.' He downed his brandy. 'Tonight?'

George came up again, carrying a cloth and, as he wiped the table, busily, he tapped it three times with the middle finger of his left hand.

Brett's features sharpened. 'P.C.D.'

'Blow! Quick!' the journalist rapped.

The agent reeled out of the booth and disappeared, leaving his distinctive hip-flask on the table.

In the white bar at the other end of the room, a squad of PCD officers, led by Jack Nichols, began checking the cards of all customers and two of his men had gone behind the bar to verify the accuracy of the registration counters at the sides of the tills.

As the group marched into the red bar, the Chief Emigration Officer recognised Kyle and spoke to one of the officials, 'Call Miss Lomas. I think one of her cases is here.'

Minutes later, Delly strode up and leant on the table, registering the hip flask and two glasses first and then the newspaper man, who grinned and said, with assumed innocence, 'Well, if it isn't the PCD's leading lady, delicious Miss Lomas: Delly, for short.'

'In person. Your friend disappeared in a hurry.'

'He's shy,' Kyle offered, unconvincingly.

She sipped at Agnes' unfinished drink and commented, 'He needs to be, if he drinks imported brandy of this quality.'

'He's a shy connoisseur,' agreed the columnist, pocketing the hip-flask and waving to the empty seat. 'Nice to see you, anyway.'

She shook her head at the invitation. 'I'm working. And, if that was Faceless, he deserves the name. The Department has its doubts about the clientele here and it looks as if we were right.'

Kyle disclaimed the connection, maintaining that Leisure Centres were too antiseptic for Faceless. 'I used to like pubs, with sawdust and people laughing and some hammer-fingered pianist playing "Lily of Laguna".'

She looked at him with disapproval, pointing out that pubs were obsolete and inefficient and adding that she preferred the Centres, where citizens were graded according to their importance to society and could drink accordingly.

Public duty did not become her, he thought to himself. It took the fluidity out of her movements and gave her a crabbed, unattractive expression. He could see how she was going to look in twenty years' time.

'Spirits for shop stewards and civil servants only. Beer for essential proles. Wine for local-authority form-pushers,' Kyle indicated each shabby bar as he listed the categories with a sneer. 'And the poor sods without status cards can queue all night at the State pharmacies for their allocation of happy pills.'

'Recreation should be directed - as well as work,' Delly Lomas insisted.

He raised a provocative eyebrow. 'With double the figures for alcoholism and three thousand deaths a year from home-brewed moonshine.'

She took a step back from him, her body stiffening. 'I take it you have a stamped card for these drinks here.'

'I use private stock. Like you and Skardon,' Kyle claimed, regarding her with suddenly dull eyes. 'Don't push me, Delly. Not unless you want a large feature on officialdom's leading booze-hounds, with private Customs receipts to back it up. And I still live in hope of access to your cellar.'

She relaxed again and smiled, 'When you're thirsty enough, Kyle. And in my time.'

'And, meanwhile, if I had a talking picture of...' he hesitated, significantly, before concluding '...Wainwright.'

He got to his feet. A large PCD officer materialised behind Delly Lomas and placed a ham-sized hand on his chest. The deputy controller nodded at the official, who withdrew his physical threat reluctantly, allowing the journalist to leave.