Knaves Over Queens

  ‘Did Ruskin perhaps go off-piste and fill his pockets?’

  ‘Nothing was found on him.’

  ‘So …’ That was Thin-and-Hungry again. ‘What happened in that room?’

  ‘That,’ says the DG, placing his finger on his desk, ‘is the question.’

  There’s a bit more chat after that. Charlie stays put when the DG gives the others leave to go, waits as he always does until the padded door has huffed close, waits some more as the DG paces, thinking. Then the DG looks up, as if realizing he’s there and nods that he can trot along too. It’s not as if he actually has anything real to contribute. He is but the catalyst for the DG’s thoughts as to which man raised an eyebrow, which tutted at the wrong moment.

  But it plays on Charlie as he takes the rickety lift down once again. He’s a bright lad, and he can’t help but consider the question. He knows how burglaries on assignment go. For the more involved ones, the dog is sometimes accompanied by an officer, who knows more exactly what to look for, inside the target itself. The public school chaps just love that, put up their hands and go ‘me, sir’ to get to climb in over windowsills and jemmy open drawers. So this one, unaccompanied, was meant to be straightforward. Here was a puzzle he knew about but was not involved in. And puzzles were his business. Provided he trod carefully perhaps here was an opportunity to show the DG that he was not just an ugly face.

  Who would know more about this, off the books?

  Which is how he finds himself on a date with Stella Loughbridge from the typing pool. They go to a Wimpy in town, which she raises an enormous eyebrow at as if he promised her the Ritz. She’s put on eye make-up as if she’s about to parachute into occupied Europe, if Europe was occupied by Mungo Jerry. The Wimpy is full of smokers. The telly’s on, a dusty old set behind the counter, because some masochist asked to see the news. It’s a bonus of Charlie’s work that what he does rarely features among the catalogue of strikes and queues for coal and ancient arseholes talking about bringing back rationing and national service. Charlie would not do well in national service. People were saying that in the next few months, unless things turned around, the electricity would be switched off for a couple of nights a week. Box was meant to have its own generator, but so much for anonymity, eh, if the building was the only one in Mayfair lit up like a Christmas tree?

  ‘We’ll go dancing later,’ he promises. Because he does know a club, a place where his short back and sides should get him laughed at, but doesn’t.

  ‘Don’t count your chickens,’ she says, holding the menu at arm’s length and fumbling for a fag. At last she orders a salad and Charlie opts for egg and chips. The girls in the typing pool ‘went out on dates’ in a vaguely American way. They didn’t necessarily mean anything by it. Charlie knew he needn’t feel he was in here. But that gave him leave to use the occasion for purposes other than romance. He was not, in any sense, a breaker of hearts.

  Charlie knows how to listen. He’s been on courses about it. He asks some everyday questions as they eat, and he nods a lot, and Stella, not used to being listened to, because it’s amazing, he’s found, how few women are used to being listened to, tells him a lot about how her day went, how her week went, what everyone else in the typing pool is up to. It’s brilliant, the sort of fine detail of life Charlie suddenly feels he’s missing, a bit, living in his bedsit. She’s warming to him too, pleased to be so listened to, but that’s a bit awkward now, because he’s led her into this under false pretences. He keeps nodding and listening, though, and finally she gets to the bit he’s after, about how someone’s boyfriend was the one tasked to sit at Ruskin’s hospital bed early on, and how the comatose man had whispered something to him, very dramatically.

  ‘What did he say?’ asks Charlie, letting his genuine interest show.

  ‘He said he’s worried that he let his country down. That he has to tell someone …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s it. He stopped there and went under again. Very dramatic. Must be driving the top floor up the wall, that.’

  ‘Must be.’ Charlie becomes aware of noises around him. This lot are cheering something. Is it good news for once? He looks round and sees that the Prime Minister is on the telly. Which must have been why some arse wanted it on. Churchill’s got his best ‘fight them on the beaches’ face on. A couple of the older blokes have stood up, anticipating that the old bugger’s going to announce that they’re going to war again or something. Who with? It’s not as if they’re going to fight the Ruskies on their own. A couple of minutes into the familiar drone, though, and it’s clear the PM’s just taken up BBC time to bash the strikers, who he says are part of the Soviet threat to the free people of the West. He still says every sentence as if it’s going to be engraved in stone one day, but this is not one of his finest hours. Charlie turns back to Stella, who’s still hanging on every word. ‘Bloody Churchill.’

  Stella looks shocked. ‘Shh! Everyone will hear you!’ She looks around, and it becomes clear that’s not true. There are lots of frowns and sighs among the straight backs and attentive faces. Not that it would matter. It’s not as if this is Stalingrad. Not yet. She looks back to the screen. ‘He’s doing so well for his age.’

  ‘He must have a picture in the attic.’ Charlie doesn’t even try to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. The British turning aside from the matter of just how the Prime Minister can keep on being an active political presence at the age of bloody one hundred is extraordinary to him. Of course, everyone’s guessed what must have happened. You get Private Eye referring to it sidelong every now and then, when they talk about the PM’s ‘unfortunate condition’. But nobody wants to say it out loud. It wouldn’t be cricket, old chap, to say that the most respected figure in British public life has got a bit of the ace to him now. That he himself has been made a bit special. If the old bastard did say it out loud he’d be doing a service to the whole culture of aces and especially bloody jokers, the poor sods. But no, it’s still the superpower that dare not speak its name. How very bloody British. ‘They say he’s going to have a big parade for his hundredth birthday.’

  ‘That’ll be lovely.’

  ‘Nice for him. As long as he stays in the posh areas.’ Charlie’s sure she’s heard the same gossip he has, that the DG is often the recipient of orders in the dead of night straight from the PM’s office. One of them recently, it’s said, was asking for a full-on intelligence group to be set up, tasked with electronic surveillance of the coalminers. The DG is supposed to have batted that one back, asking next morning if it was a mistake. That’s all anyone’s heard and nothing’s happened. Everyone in the Civil Service has heard of old Winston’s infamous night orders, which come straight out of a bottle. The chiefs of various branches of the establishment therefore keep having to make individual judgement calls on whether or not the leader of the nation is actually, officially, asking them to do something terrible. Because it always is something terrible. The fact that, in those moments, those blokes and Winston’s cognac are, completely unaccountably, running the country between them, that one of those blokes might one night decide one of those orders sounded like a good idea, chills Charlie to the bone.

  Stella stubs out her cigarette. ‘Actually, I don’t feel much like dancing.’

  Charlie knows it’s his own fault. He’s let his face fall. It’s for the best. ‘Let’s find your bus then. I’ve got somewhere to go on to.’

  She looks him up and down, unimpressed. ‘Have you?’

  In Charlie’s experience, Shad Thames is always wet. That’s his memory of it, even in the height of summer. The tall edifices of the giant warehouses are always dripping down onto the narrow streets below. Some of those streets are still cobbled. Down here it could be 1874. The warehouses haven’t been used as such for years, and now most of them are derelict. Some of them are official housing, slums more like, some of them squats. There are washing lines with clothes on them, hanging between the buildings, silhouetted against the moon. Some of t
he clothes are too big for normal people. There’s graffiti all over the wet old brick. A lot of it incomprehensible, some of it artistic. It reminds Charlie of West Berlin. Graffiti as a badge of pride. Of what you can’t get away with in the dictatorship next door. There are rough, locally made posters for bands and comedy nights. There isn’t a lot of rubbish. Probably because it doesn’t get taken away. So the smell of refuse fires hangs in these wet old streets. Charlie can hear distant music, a baby crying somewhere high up in the warehouses, where lights show in gaps and in the few places where windows have been put in. That cry doesn’t quite sound as if it’s coming from a throat built in the usual way. The buildings are too high for the sound to echo downwards, so it always feels quiet on the ground here, which contributes to the sense of threat. How do they get up there? Nobody’s going to be paying electricity bills, are they? And nobody’s going to risk those old grain elevators. These are the people who take the stairs.

  There was once talk of doing up this area, making it fashionable, even. But that would require money. And even if anyone had any, it wouldn’t happen here, not now. Because here is where the opposite of money lives. Here’s the hatred that dare not speak its name.

  Docklands is jokertown.

  Charlie went to Australia, once. Everywhere he went, he expected to meet an aborigine, but he never did. Even in tourist places which they were meant to own. Still a white bloke at the desk. He never asked where they were. You just weren’t ever going to meet such a person. It was as if they were fairies.

  As he’s got older, he’s made the connection to places like this. There have always been jokertowns, and there always will be. All of Docklands and the Isle of Dogs is unofficially where they live. And if they come into town it causes a bit of a commotion. And nobody ever talks about it. So to get to Woolwich or Canning Town, or anywhere south of West Ham, really, you can’t get a cab, you have to take a series of obscure bus routes. Obscure, that is, unless you read specialist publications like an intelligence analyst with an interest in this facet of human nature tends to. It’s as if there’s a grey area around the Thames, where industry and commerce have failed, and been replaced by infection. Until you get down to Greenwich, and then, bingo, all is empire and sea power and did you know we invented time?

  It’s not just jokers down here, of course. It never is. Those specialist publications leave you certain about that. Those bus routes are known to other communities too. As Charlie walks along the street in his nice new mac, he can hear his footsteps echo. Maybe they were sitting out on their steps before he turned the corner. He doesn’t know enough to give whatever signs the other visitors give. He knows he’s in danger, but he’s pretty sure he’s not in as much danger as he’s meant to be. And if he gets as far as being able to have a conversation, he knows the lingo.

  Still, he doesn’t quite know why he’s here. He thinks it through. He realized he knew a bit more about Foxton, Ruskin’s handler, than most people did. He was aware of his interest in a rather obscure musician, for a start. Again, he’s letting himself be led by that little bit of knowledge, hoping for advancement through cleverness, that’s what he’s doing. Is that pride going before a fall? Bit late to think about that now, Charlie-boy.

  There’s a particular pub, the Prospect of Norway, which lies out on an actual dock, jutting out into the Thames. It used to be for dockworkers and seafarers, but it’s had to move with the times. Charlie’s been there on a couple of occasions, and it still looks the same: blacked-out windows; lamps outside making it shine closer against the distant lights along the opposite shore; no board outside announcing chicken in a basket, nothing to draw too much attention, even here. From inside is coming the sound of very loud rock music. That’s why Charlie is wondering if Foxton will be here tonight, because the Prospect brings together this evening at least two of his favourite things.

  Charlie enters, and immediately finds himself looking up at an enormous joker bouncer, something like a beetle with a big moustache on its twisted face under several big black eyes. It’s wearing a T-shirt with the name of the pub on it. Charlie gives it a cheery grin, and after a moment, it slaps him on the arse with a mandible or something and tells him to go on in, then.

  The downstairs bar is reasonably empty. Black brick, posters all over, a message board with desperate scrawls and adverts, some of them for things which really could scare the horses. Charlie has to shout over the din from upstairs to get a pint of mild. But as the joker barman, or Charlie assumes he’s a joker, because he’s wearing sunglasses in this murk, is pulling it, the noise reaches a crescendo of applause and then stops. It turns into the trundle of lots of shifting feet, and Charlie’s glad he’s got his beer in, because down the big wooden stairs comes a rush of people, mostly jokers, almost no women, a couple of transvestites. Charlie gets to a table and puts his foot up on the rail, watching. And it turns out he was right, because there’s Foxton. The man’s got a receding hairline, and a nervous, bureaucrat’s face, so it’s odd to see him in a casual sweater and very clean tight jeans. He’s talking to a couple of other blokes, and they look rougher, probably locals. Still, he looks as if he fits in.

  Foxton glances over and clocks Charlie. He freezes, a look on his face as if he’s thinking of making a run for it. His companions look over too, angry or worried. Charlie raises his glass. Foxton obviously realizes there’s no point in leaving. Instead, he tells his friends it’s fine, heads on over. ‘I come here for the music,’ he says, before any greeting.

  ‘Obviously,’ says Charlie, trying to sound sincere. Foxton is one of a handful of Box officers who’ve pretty obviously taken to avoiding him in the corridors. They’re the ones, Charlie thinks, who really have got something to hide, the ones who’ve bought the DG’s bluff that Charlie can see into their souls. But, and it’s pretty lucky for those lads that Charlie thinks this, he reckons anyone working for Moscow would know better than to be so obvious about it. He’d very much like to be able to tell Foxton that he really can’t see through him. Well, not in any special way. Charlie isn’t one of those lads who enjoy people squirming at the sight of them. But that’d compromise his value to the DG. That’d be letting the old man down. ‘You like these Anthony Newley types.’

  ‘He’s changed his sound.’ And suddenly, which is a relief, Foxton feels he’s talking to a fellow enthusiast. ‘And his band—’

  ‘The Spiders?’ Charlie has seen the name on the posters. ‘Delightful.’

  ‘Jokers, most of them.’ That’s slightly more dodgy ground. Box employees are tested for the virus, which had been the subject of some Civil Service consternation a few years back, so it’s no longer a question of aces and jokers being subjects for vetting. But they’re still the cause of raised eyebrows. Everyone is happy with them being contained in the Silver Helix. Nobody talks about it. Charlie suddenly realizes that his date tonight would have heard the gossip about him, and was giving him the benefit of the doubt, which makes him think kindly of her. Foxton being seen here would raise eyebrows further, on a couple of counts. Charlie thinks Foxton might now be wondering if Charlie is actually here on business, or if this is now a secret they both share. If Charlie is admitting to something.

  ‘Good for him.’ That’s sincere as well. He hopes Foxton hears that sincerity. Maybe now would be a good time to ask his questions, but Foxton is looking back up the stairs.

  ‘Oh. Here they come.’

  Down the stairs, to the growing applause and the occasional whoop of the crowd in the bar, is striding an extraordinary group of people. Their leader, holding up a palm to acknowledge the crowd, is incredibly thin, in a stage costume and make-up that he could only get away with in here. Behind him is a writhing bunch of tentacles above a loping body, wearing some sort of glittering tabard, a literally skeletal figure with what looks like transparent skin over his bones, in something more like their leader’s jumpsuit, and a tree-like mass of wood in vaguely human form with, seemingly, no modesty to preserve. Their leader ac
cepts a beer from an acolyte and heads over to their table, grinning at Foxton. ‘Hello, Seb. Who’s your friend?’ The accent isn’t quite East End. It isn’t quite anywhere.

  ‘This is Mr White,’ says Foxton, using an offhand Box pseudonym to indicate to Charlie that real names aren’t on the cards here.

  ‘Client of yours?’

  Foxton looks awkwardly at Charlie. ‘Just a friend. I only represent a handful of artistes.’

  Charlie finds himself breaking into the most enormous smile. You old rogue, Sebastian. And, bless him, he’s playing it largely by the book in terms of the job. Though they’re really supposed to say they’re just a pen-pusher in the Civil Service, not an agent who could make you a star, kid. He shakes the man’s hand. ‘Charlie.’

  ‘David.’ The wooden joker taps David on the shoulder and he raises a very rehearsed hand. ‘No, give us a second, this is important. Come over to my table, yeah?’

  He means just Foxton, but Charlie goes too, and the band-leader accepts this immediately. He’s right about this being his table. A space is cleared for him, drinks brought as they sit down, the patrons nearby stand just close enough to feel they’re being included in the conversation. ‘I’ve really turned things around,’ he begins. ‘You were right about cutting out the space shit. That’s why my band are just The Spiders now. Nobody’s ready for science fiction again, not after the wild card. You saw that audience. We’re ready for the big time.’

  Foxton considers. He may not be what he claims to be, but he’s still a fan, and he can at least bring to bear the skills of a case officer. ‘You’re big in this community. But … how do I put this …?’ Charlie sees David’s eyes narrow just a little; he feels much the same way.