1990 (2 page)

'That's wishful thinking.'

'What?' Skardon was irritable.

'Kingdom Come. Joke,' she replied, heavily.

A sense of humour was totally wasted on Herbert Skardon, a self-righteous, hard-line bureaucrat. The only son of a power worker, he had picked up a Second in Law at a Redbrick university and behaved ever after as though he had gained a first at Cambridge.

Quick wit did not appeal to him and he often viewed Delly Lomas with disapproving suspicion, although he found it useful to play her off against Tasker. It kept them both in place.

Now, he simply frowned. 'It ill becomes you, Delly, to make smart alec remarks when Kyle is about to ditch us yet again.'

'We don't know for sure. We don't know...' she began.

'We know.' Skardon interrupted, tartly. 'We know Kyle has classified information about the Adult Rehabilitation Centres. We know he intends to publish it tomorrow, don't we, Henry?'

'We know,' echoed Tasker, smugly.

'You seem well plugged into Fleet Street, Henry,' said Delly, defensively, noting as always how smoothly he slid onto every bandwaggon.

Tasker was everything the progressive power-seeker ought to be; educated at Brixton Comprehensive and Essex University, happily married in Surbiton with the regulation two kids, a committed law and order man of the Left, passionately patriotic, snide - and black.

Originally, he had wanted to work on wildlife preservation in the Department of the Environment, but someone Up There had put him in the Home Office - at about the same time as they were recruiting coloured policemen. He carried out his imposed job with such inflexible dedication that some thought it was a pity he could not have worked it off on wildlife, instead of people.

The Controller glowered. 'This involves all of us, Delly. It's a matter of concern to this department that you were unaware Kyle had this story. I mean, he is your responsibility.'

'Perhaps you'd like to let Henry take him over.'

Skardon grinned, spitefully. 'Henry can't cook. Can you, Henry...?'

His male Deputy gave a bleak smile.

'...You can. And Kyle likes your cooking. It would require a long stretch of the imagination to see Kyle enjoying Henry's cooking.'

'Well, don't imply he's ever going to have an affair with me,' the woman replied with edge.

Skardon looked a shade disappointed. 'I'm sorry, but let's just admit that, from time to time, he has taken notice of you for reasons we'll not go into.'

'Why not? He fancies me. Or claims to.' Men like Skardon never changed, she thought with bored resignation. The old school never did. After ten years of sex equality, they still saw women as only being fit for bed and board. Delly knew it was not to her advantage that he disliked career women, but comforted herself with the thought that that included the entire contemporary female population, apart from children and OAPs.

A cunning look had come into her boss's eye. 'He might fancy you today and take your advice to withold the ARC story in the public interest.'

'He didn't call her back,' Tasker intruded with surly puritanism, offended by the whole discussion.

'No - and I do find that alarming.'

Delly, beginning to feel like a heifer at market, snapped again, 'Give him to Henry then!'

The Controller decided to deliver them a short lecture on the lines that both his Deputies had duties and responsibilities to match their status and, with regard to Kyle, Delly Lomas had natural qualifications not shared by Henry Tasker.

'He seems to be doing all right without my natural qualifications,' she retorted, scathingly.

There was a long pause as they looked at each other, warily. The meeting had become decidedly barbed and she had the distinct impression that Skardon had planned it this way, as a lead-in to one of his schemes. The Controller was not easily browbeaten by his political bosses, but Kyle's reports had been a growing source of embarrassment.

'I don't see why your status prevents you from visiting Kyle in Fleet Street,' he said, suddenly.

So that was it. He must be worried.

'We're already accused of too much intrusion into the press and TV,' she pointed out.

'Is that the only reason? Or are we above visiting?'

He got up from his desk and began pacing the office past the collection of soulless geometric paintings.

'It's in no-one's interest that Kyle goes ahead with a story that's open to the most blatant misinterpretation...'

Her mind automatically began to seize up at the coming humbug.

'...and we all know what the enemies of the State will try to make of our Adult Rehabilitation Centres, unless we condition the public first.' He had stopped before a sculpture of three figures - a blast furnace operator, a North Sea oil rigger and miner with his drill. 'In half an hour I am going to have to disclose to the Home Secretary what Kyle intends to print tomorrow. I don't relish the thought of having his miner's boot up my backside.'

'He wears hand-made Swiss shoes now,' Delly murmured.

'I should like, by the end of the day, to be able to reassure him that that story will not come out in the morning.'

'He'll get nowhere with the proprietors. He never does,' Tasker remarked, gloomily.

Skardon smirked. 'And our worthy Permanent Secretary will get nowhere with the editor of that rag...' It would be an excellent piece of one-upmanship if his department could resolve the entire matter. '...The independent newspapers, and especially that one, seem bent on suicide.'

'We should lean on them,' Tasker put in, fiercely. 'After all, the government pays eighty per cent of their advertising revenue.'

The Controller leered at Delly. 'I'm sure it would be far more civilised for Ms Lomas to lean on Kyle...'

She returned his look, icily, stood up and strode out of the room.

Hunched hugely over his desk, Greaves, the news editor, read the ARC copy with unconcealed delight.

'I like it. I like it,' he gloated.

Two TV monitors flickered silently beside him, one showing the House of Commons and the other Reuters' news-flashes coming up like Ceefax. Apart from a couple of young reporters, the big newsroom was empty, most of the boys having adjourned to the Strand Leisure Centre for the lunchtime gargle.

'I thought you'd been going soft on 'em lately.' Greaves glanced sideways at Kyle, who was leaning against the window ledge nearby. 'Do they know you're on to it?'

The columnist nodded. 'Delly Lomas keeps trying to call me.'

Greaves read on with a pleased expression. '...Keep this up and the Home Secretary will be sending you to the coal mines.'

'He got out of them himself rather neatly,' grinned Kyle.

The two men worked well together and Kyle was conscious that it was the news editor's connivance which kept him in business. Greaves was a man whose acute and dangerous brain was belied by an enormous, slow-moving hulk of a body. He had been to Eton, before it went officially 'comprehensive' - with entry restricted to the offspring of politicians, civil servants and similar important citizens. Greaves was a snob with guts and subtlety, who detested the bourgeois and Authority equally. By instinct, temperament and upbringing, he was a resister.

As he finished reading, he buttoned his intercom and waved the manuscript happily. 'You might even be the first guinea pig at one of these ARCs.'

Kyle shrugged, amicably, 'I should think I'm way down the list, though I'm trying to lay hands on that, actually.'

Greaves looked interested.

A voice from the intercom said, 'Picture Editor.'

The news editor turned to it. 'Frank. Let's see what you've got on the ARCs.'

'Channel Two. O.K?' replied the intercom.

Greaves switched off the House of Commons show and, after a momentary blank, a photo-still of a country mansion came up on the screen. It was followed by another, white, elegant and tranquil - on an estate agent's brochure.

Kyle looked disappointed. 'Library stuff? I thought we had someone out shooting new pictures?'

A third, peaceful-looking country house came up on the screen. 'He should be showing that place through the barbed wire they've put round it.'

Greaves nodded. 'Kemp tried. But someone wearing Size Tens trod on his camera.'

The fourth house floated into place.

'That's the lot, Tiny,' said the intercom voice.

'You've sent Kemp a fresh camera?' queried Greaves.

'No point,' replied the voice. 'They have him inside for interrogation.'

'Get three more photographers out there. Snatch what they can!' ordered the news editor.

'That's more like it,' Kyle approved.

Marly put her head round the door to say, 'You're wanted.'

Kyle nodded, then noticed Wilkie staring at him. He held the reporter's eye deliberately, until the other looked away. Then he discreetly drew the bug froth his pocket and slipped it into Greaves' blotter.

'They seem lost without knowing where I am, so give them a false scent, Tiny,' he murmured, as he went out.

The news editor immediately called over Pearce, the second reporter and a man of similar build to the home affairs correspondent. Handing him a photostat of a Ceefax Reuters' newsflash and the radio bug, he said briskly, 'Take this for a ride round London, John.'

Back in his own office, Kyle was changing from a suit into a crew-necked jersey. Marly had opened a small wall-safe and brought out a stack of identity cards. Every one carried a photograph of her boss.

He looked down from his window to see John Pearce climbing into a taxi. The surrounding Inns and Law Courts had hardly changed, while Fleet Street itself had been transformed.

It was now merely an extension of the City, many of the original newspaper offices having been taken over by commercial firms. An insurance company occupied the former premises of a major national daily. Reuters and most other press agencies were government controlled and
The Times
had become the principal government organ. Long before that, the Associated Newspaper buildings had been sold to an asset stripper, sold again, demolished and replaced by Whitehall extensions.

Kyle felt a momentary depression at the memory of his excitement at just walking down the Street for the first time, searching for famous by-lines among the passing faces. The promise of the place had been tangible and even the shabbiest structures had seemed to throb with busy glamour.

Fresh from the provinces, he had imagined the wires of the world humming here, presses rolling, 'phones being snatched and hard-faced men snapping 'Copy' and 'City Desk', just like in the movies. Yet, even then, the blight had been present and spreading.

'What's the betting the Union will blame poor old Kemp for trying to get pictures of the ARCs and accuse him of bringing the profession into disrepute?' he said softly to himself, then looked across to the Dickensian relic opposite. Somehow, the Lord's Day Observance Society still survived. It would outlive them all, he thought, wryly.

Marly was flipping through the identity cards. 'Import/export agent. That the one?' she asked.

He nodded and struggled into a pair of heavy slacks. She rifled through his jacket pockets. 'Where are they?'

He indicated his discarded trousers and she took his wallet from the back pocket, extracted his real identity and press cards and placed them in the safe.

By now, Tom Pearce would be a fair distance across London, carrying Kyle's bug. Kyle could picture its green blip on the radio location monitor in the PCD Surveillance Room. Someone would be reporting to Delly Lomas that he was on the move, probably speeding towards Victoria.

He pulled on an anorak, slipped the fake identity card into his pocket and headed for the door.

Alan Vickers reached his small, detached house with relief. Darkness had fallen early and it had been a tiring day. He was glad that it was not his night for evening surgery.

As he opened the door, the car carrying his three ominous shadows pulled up, unnoticed, across the road.

The figure of a little girl hurtled into his arms. 'Daddy! You came home to tell me a story.'

He swung her round gently and smiled, 'It's not bed-time yet, not even yours.'

Mary clung to him tensely, breathing with noisy difficulty. 'I want you to read me Mary Brave,' she gasped.

'Mary Brave?' Full of the protective anxiety he always felt for her, he set her down in the living room.

'You know Mary Brave,' she insisted.

'Mary Brave is a British girl in the 1970s, who wanted to save the polar bears,' said Vickers' wife, kissing him. 'She tried to get the money from rich men but they wouldn't cough up. So the Government gave her the money. And she saved the polar bears. And lived happily ever after, having married and had the standard two kids.'

'Good God! Who published that rubbish?' Vickers exclaimed.

'Daddy!' objected his seven-year-old daughter.

'His Majesty's Stationery Office. It's in all the schools,' replied his wife.

The young doctor looked down rather worriedly at Mary, snuggling up to him on the sofa and still straining to breathe. Long black hair and pale skin accentuated her frailty, together with the over-large eyes and slightly hollowed cheeks so often seen in people suffering from respiratory disease. Breathing used up all her energy, leaving her spindly and weak.

Had it not been for her asthma, Vickers would have honoured his enforced contract with the State without protest. He had known when he began his training that he would have to remain and practise in Britain for ten years after its completion. This was the condition imposed by the government upon all skilled and professional students to stem the brain drain, and he had been quite content to accept it at the time.

But conditions had changed drastically during the past decade. Mary's birth had brought the unexpected problem of raising an ailing child in an unsuitably damp climate. His standard of living had continued to fall, as his work load and accompanying frustrations had increased. More recently, the effect of the total take-over of education by the regime, with the introduction of new government-controlled text books, had become alarmingly obvious and Vickers had felt unable to accept the situation any longer.