Dark Clouds (23 page)

‘Rudi?’

‘Hi – how are you doing?’

There’s a pause, followed by a burst dam load of unhappiness.

‘I honestly don’t see the point of anything I’m doing any longer,’ she tells me. ‘I’m depressed, and Michael’s living in another world … I don’t know my brother, Mohammed.’

Carla’s pressed the speaker button at the bottom of my phone and she’s nodding.

‘Are you coming to London tomorrow?’ I ask.

‘No. But I’ll be there on Saturday and I’ll call you.’

She’s breaking up, so I say how much I’m looking forward to seeing her and that I’ve got all sorts of possibilities on offer. I’m thinking of Fiona and maybe Daisy Glover on the social side. They’re right at the centre of a glamorous party scene, and I’m sure Fiona would love Sulima.

‘It’s a pity we don’t have a picture of this guy, Pele Kalim,’ Carla says when I’ve switched off my phone. She’s got up again and is musing over by the window. OK – I was unlucky. I messed up with the first camera she gave me and Pele’s back-up got my second. Maybe there’ll be another opportunity for me to make it third time lucky.

‘So you think he loves Sulima – and she feels the same about him?’

Yes – definitely. Although she doesn’t approve of the jihad stuff, and she wants to put some distance between herself and her brother.

‘If you were Kalim, Rudi, and you knew that this beautiful woman you loved was coming to London, you would try to contact her – yes?’

Of course.

‘So if we keep her in the frame, we might get to Mr Big?’

I don’t like this idea of using Sulima as bait to net Pele. There is another possibility, I suggest, and it’s enough to get Carla away from her consideration of the old asylum building.

‘I know a Tunisian,’ I tell her, ‘who’s in touch with some of the people Rashid Kumar was involved with.’

She’s interested, although a part of her is furious because I haven’t mentioned it previously.

‘I’ll contact him.’

‘When?

‘Tomorrow – if Dr Zakir lets me go home.’

‘You can’t return to Crowndale Square – it’s too risky.’

‘OK – ’

‘But there’s a hotel in Islington where you can stay. It’s pretty anonymous, and Robson or one of Earl’s team could keep an eye on you there.’

She won’t let me go yet. I do however still have my Khalad card to play.

‘I need to rest,’ I tell her, and she gets up reluctantly from the chair she’s moved to. ‘But I’ll call my contact tomorrow and I’ll let you know how it goes when I’ve seen him.’

In any other circumstances, I feel I’d be grilled relentlessly. This may still happen, but my Controller is biting her lower lip and I’m waiting.

‘The Israelis think our Mukhtar scientist guy is in Tehran,’ she says.

Well – it looks like nuclear Ali is getting around.

‘Anyway … we’ll speak again tomorrow.’

*  *  *  *  *

The
Desperate Housewives
are splitting into cliques along Wisteria Lane and they’re being criticised increasingly by their precocious kids. I’m falling asleep, but on the BBC there’s a serious academic talking about shifting alliances in British politics. ‘
For a long time,’
he says
, ‘we’ve all been Labour, Conservative or Liberal voters …increasingly, however, we’re getting more Nationalist supporters who oppose what they see as alliances between Afro-Caribbeans and Muslim Asians …
’ It’s a depressing debate, and I’m thinking of Ingrid when I smell coffee and hear a reassuring voice.

‘Well, you had a fair old sleep then, didn’t you?’

Nurse Reilly is grinning with a breakfast tray and the sun is coming through my window.

‘How long?’ I ask.

‘Almost twelve hours … and I believe they’re going to let you out today.’

There is still a bump on my head and my arm is a bit numb. But the scrambled eggs, coffee and toast with marmalade is a welcome treat.

‘How come you were on last evening and now this morning?’ I ask Nurse Reilly.

She does split shifts sometimes, she tells me, which means she can then get more time off in small blocks to spend with her fireman boy friend.

‘But you had a lot of strange people here last night – and your police guard’s still outside … so if you’re not a gangster – what are you?’

A wink and a finger to my lips. I can’t say a word. Nurse Reilly thinks I’m mad, and she’s pouring me another cup of coffee when a young doctor arrives.

‘Hugh Benson,’ he says, beaming. ‘And how are you, Mr Flynn?’

Better than yesterday, thanks, and could I please have my clothes?

‘Of course – we’ll bring them up and I’ll give you IBUPROFEN in case you have any discomfort from your injuries … we’d also like to check your arm wound again in a few days.’ And that’s it. We shake hands and I wait until a shaven-headed Polish orderly delivers my stuff in a plastic bag.

‘You are a victim of crime?’ he asks.

Most certainly. Some grinning bastard hugely enjoyed gunning me down.

‘We do not have any crime in Poland,’ he says. ‘And this is because we are all Poles. There are no foreigners, so no trouble.’

I’m thinking concentration camp guards from a few years back, and the way locals treated Jews from the ghetto. I have no enthusiasm about the thought of visiting Warsaw or Austria anytime soon. ‘
So thank you Hans or Zachowski …and I’m sorry, I can’t give you a tip. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed now …and I hope you have a nice day.
’

I should really be more tolerant. I have nothing against Poles or Austrians personally. It’s just that I find them a little creepy. There was a Polish Pope, who seemed OK, but there was another who had once saluted Adolph as a member of the Hitler Youth. Only I need to check here because the more intellectual guy was, I think, a German.

There are repeats of the Oz soap
Neighbours
coming up on my TV. It’s all a bit small town villagey and adolescent and I’m switching to
The Producers
singing ‘
Spring time for Hitler
’ when there’s a knock on my room door.

‘Yes?’

It’s Robson, and he’s tentative.

‘I’ve been sent to collect you.’

‘Right … so where are we off to?’

‘Islington … there’s a hotel. You have a top floor suite, and Mr Connors has asked me to get you anything you need from your house.’

The security service people carrier is parked in a space reserved for ambulances at the hospital entrance. The radio is on and a news reader is getting excited about a Muslim demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in London.

‘Mukhtar Ali was shot earlier in Amman,’ Robson explains.

‘By the Israelis?’

He’s nodding, while waving at a furious hospital parking supervisor.

‘That’s what it looks like … or should I say, that’s the story and a lot of people want to believe it.’

I suppose Carla and her colleagues have good contacts with Mossad and the Shin Beth, and Mukhtar was seen as a threat on the nuclear side. Robson, however, is more interested in the next news item. It’s about clashes between Nationalists and the Muslim community in the Essex town of Harlow, which I don’t know.

‘This seems to be happening a lot now,’ I say when the news reader moves on to an item about grape subsidies within the European Community.

‘I suppose it’s difficult for you to imagine what England was like before the last war and in the ten or twenty years afterwards,’ Robson says when we stop at traffic lights.

On the contrary, my man. I read Enid Blyton and Dr Doolittle when I was a kid in California. I know all about stiff upper lips and understatement, and I quite liked the work of Noel Coward, Graham Green – and who was the toff guy who wrote the Bond stories? Also, I reckon Robson wasn’t born until sometime in the early seventies, so he can’t know that much about England from the thirties to the sixties.

‘That’s not the point,’ he snaps when I say that old England is long gone and that we’ve now all moved on in to the new millennium. ‘We value our history and traditions, just as much as you do in America. Also – how would you feel if you suddenly woke up and found that were surrounded by foreigners who didn’t really want to be a part of your society?’

He’s angry. I can see that, and I think he could overheat if we get into an argument.

‘So this street stuff now with the Nationalists is because they feel the way you do?’

He’s stopped the people carrier, which is worrying. We’re quite close to Hackney police station. But I’m not really fit enough to defend myself if he starts expressing himself physically.

‘Listen,’ he says when we’ve parked with two wheels on the pavement. ‘Forget all of this bollox you’ve heard about London being the greatest and most multicultural city in the world. That’s party political bullshit for elections, and you’d better believe it. This is England, mate … and the English are not happy about what’s happened to their country. We’ve been overrun see by people who don’t share anything with us … and we don’t like it. Can you understand that?’

I’m going to have to speak with Carla or Earl about this guy. He’s in danger of over-heating, which could make it more difficult for him to carry out his duties for Her Majesty. So I breathe in deeply and give him as hard a stare as I can manage.

‘I see where you’re coming from,’ I tell him assertively. ‘If I were English I might have similar feelings. But frankly, I’m not sure if this is really relevant to what we’re trying to do.’

I’m taking a risk. He might just say, ‘
fuck off!
’ or worse before pushing me out onto the sidewalk. He might even punch me. But being firm seems to work.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, pulling back to his own side of the vehicle. ‘I didn’t mean to have a go at you, mate. It’s just that I feel very strongly about what’s going on here at the moment.’

Sure. That’s clear. My great uncle George was in the
America First
movement in the nineteen thirties. They didn’t want us to get involved in the Second World War and were strongly opposed to mass migration into the States from countries they perceived as being ‘foreign’. They only wanted white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or Catholics at a push

‘So you reckon the English Nationalists have had enough and that’s why they’ve taken to expressing themselves on the streets.’

I’m offering this in a spirit of reconciliation and Robson responds with an appreciative nod as he re-starts the people carrier.

‘You could say that, mate … and I think it’s going to continue.’

We’re moving on now to sport and in particular to yet another very impressive Russian tennis player. I think her name is Oglova, and she certainly has a way of melting the hearts of whoever’s watching every time she throws a ball up into the air and then slams it across the court. I’m feeling that Robson needs a decent female influence in his life when we get to Islington and I see the anonymous chain hotel where I’m being temporarily billeted.

‘Could you please write down whatever it is you need from your house,’ Robson says. ‘And I’ll get it for you. There’ll be one of our people here 27/7 to keep an eye on you – and if there’s anything you’re unhappy about, call this number.’

He’s put it on the back of a cab company card, and before I get out of the people carrier, he extends his hand.

‘I’m sorry about the way I spoke earlier,’ he says. ‘Only there’s a lot of anger amongst ordinary English people at the moment … and I’m no exception.’

I’m shaking hands with a serious Nationalist supporter. It equates roughly with a liberal democrat pressing the flesh with a Republican neo-con, or indeed an
America First
supporter. It’s not a problem though, and we’re grinning at each other when I get out of the vehicle and walk up the steps to the hotel entrance.

‘Your suite’s on the top floor, sir,’ a reception guy says. ‘And if there’s anything you need, please just pick up the phone.’

I can’t see a possible minder in the lobby, although there is a guy in trainers and jeans holding the
Financial Times
upside down. He’s sitting in a leather sofa that’s just along a corridor from the lift doors, but he seems to be asleep. The whole place is unusually quiet. I suspect it’s a middle range tourist venue, whose visitors are now staying away because of the increasing chaos on London’s streets.

There’s a lot of light in the top floor corridor, and when I open the door of my new quarters, the sun is streaming over a balconied terrace. There’s a flat screen TV with a box full of movies in the spacious sitting room and the balconied bedroom also faces south. Already, I’m picking out London landmarks like the eye and a phallus-shaped City tower. I think I’ll be all right here. I do need to make some calls, but if the room service is OK, I could have a snack and watch
From Here to Eternity
with Burt Lancaster and that cool English woman who lies with him on a beach as the tide comes in.

First off though, I’m opening a concealed fridge with a fancy wood door. There’s ice and three miniature bottles of whisky. I take them out carefully and put them on a sideboard. I then put ice cubes into a glass and unscrew the first shot of Jack Jameson’s best drop of the creathur. I have the second soon afterwards, and I’m thinking about a third when Robson calls to say t he can’t find the drawer where I keep my socks and underpants in the house at Crowndale Square.

Chapter 19

I’ve left a message on Khalad’s mobile. He doesn’t come back for a while, and when he does, I’m falling asleep with the
Bridges of Madison County
playing on the television. Clint and Meryl are really getting it together, but Khalad has more pressing concerns.

‘The situation here is polarising, Rudi. There is a lot of concern, particularly amongst moderate Muslims, who feel they’re regarded as the enemy by English Nationalists.’

Sure. It’s tense and tricky. But we need to find a way forward, for everyone.

‘I heard you had been shot,’ he says.

‘Who told you?’

He won’t say, and I’m wondering if I should alert Carla or Robson.

‘Do you know where Dalston is?’ he asks.