Gridlock (21 page)

Whilst Deborah and General Ali plotted against Sam Turk, Ingmar Bresslaw plotted to fulfil the promise he had made to the Prime Minister that he would bring the road-building plans back into public favour. He was absolutely determined that the public would be persuaded, by fair means or foul, that they wanted nothing less from their government than an epoch-making era of public road building.

A plan had been forming in Ingmar's mind, almost since the very moment that Digby had disgraced himself. It was an outrageous and audacious plan, requiring meticulous detail in its planning and split-second timing in its execution. Ingmar had held long and deep discussions with engineers, town planners, publicists and lobbyists and was now ready to assemble the undercover team that would be required for the job. It was for this purpose that Ingmar had gone to visit Bill 'Bogus' Bottomley, a senior operative at MI5.

'Look, I'd love to help, Ingmar, you know I would,' said Bogus, 'but we really do try and avoid the dodgy stuff these days. Can't risk it you see. Do something dodgy, next thing you know, there's a book out about it, have to be terribly careful. Actually, I've got a book planned myself for after I retire, all the blokes have, it's terribly competitive. In fact, I've been meaning to ask you a favour on that score. You see the truth of the matter is, my book's going to be rather dull I'm afraid, never even met a Russian, let alone engaged one in a deadly game of bluff and counterbluff. Spent my whole life listening in on students doing their year pretending to be socialists, damn dull. What I need is an edge, something to drum up a bit of interest. So I was just wondering if you could put it about that the PM thinks I might be the eighth man.'

'The eighth man?' enquired Ingmar.

'You know,' said Bogus, 'in the Burgess/ Maclean, their trade is the treachery business. Nothing substantial, just a rumour, wouldn't half bump up my measly book advance.'

'Bogus,' said Ingmar, 'I require the assistance of Her Majesty's Secret Service on a very sensitive issue of grave national importance. I do not wish to discuss publishing.'

'But the Secret Service
is
publishing these days, Ingmar,' insisted Bogus. 'Nobody does anything any more without thinking about how it's going to look in their book and to be quite frank, old boy, roads won't sell, Russians do. Listen, be a sport, I can't even get a Sunday serialization, and with the Soviets going and collapsing on us, like the bastards we always knew them to be, the Burgess business will probably finally die in a year or two. I really need to get my claim in now. The Chief's bagged pretending to be the sixth man, so that's out, he's bought a couple of homosexual screen prints and a little bust of Lenin to leave lying round his flat. Damn clever, wish I'd thought of it. Then there's a chap over at MI6 who's written a book called
The Seven Dwarfs,
claiming there were seven of them, I'm certain the bastard started with the title. Even says Moscow Control was known as Snow White, and of course Penguin love that. Anyway, he's backing the Chief's claim to be the sixth man, I'm convinced money changed hands there incidentally, and he's proposing that the Queen Mum was the seventh. Not bad that, she always was a bit of a fag hag, friend of Noel Coward's etc. Anyway, I'm going for the eighth, and a hint from the PM, or even the Foreign Office would be wonderful, could put twenty-five thou' on my advance. Go on, Ingmar, you could swing it.'

Ingmar Bresslaw made his excuses and left. If he wanted dirty tricks performing he would have to go elsewhere . . .

. . . Which was why he was to be found the next evening dining at the House of Lords with 'Angry' Alf Higgens, who had, some years before, become Lord Higgens of Hackney. Angry Alf was a trade union man born and bred, and, despite the fact that his politics had been drifting steadily rightwards all of his life, his worker credentials were something of which Alf was inordinately proud. He was the type of man who considers that the fact that his unfortunate mother was forced to bring up him and six siblings without the benefit of an indoor lavatory imbued him in later life with an omniscient insight into the minds of working people.

'Don't tell me how to run a union,' he would instruct colleagues, 'I never had a pair of shoes until I was eight.'

Angry Alf's trade unionism was the politics of power and posture. Throughout his years of influence, he loudly boasted that his job was simply that of 'doing deals for his boys'. He gave short shrift to anyone who dared raise in his presence the broader principles of trade unionism.

'Don't give me any of that bollocks about solidarity,' he would brusquely instruct them, adding that, as a child, he had to rise at five o'clock in order to help out on a coal round before school. It was Angry Alf's narrow perspective and singleness of purpose that had made him, in his years of power such a respected figure in the road lobby. Roads meant more work for Alf's workers and so roads had no greater champion.

Alf had long since retired, but he had kept up his connections with some senior road lobby figures and he still had influence within his old union. It was for this reason that Ingmar Bresslaw had sought him out. Ingmar's huge plan required skilful, well-motivated operatives. If MI5 could not supply them, perhaps Angry Alf could.

'The planning has already been done, Your Lordship,' Ingmar assured Alf. 'All I require is the services of about twenty men. They must be of the best type of course. Utterly reliable, you understand, courageous and resourceful. Will you do it?'

Angry Alf was doubtful, life was very pleasant in the House of Lords. He had no great desire to immerse himself in Ingmar's schemes.

'I don't know, Bresslaw,' he mused. 'If we were rumbled I'd probably lose my ermine. This is social engineering you're talking about.'

T am talking about bringing the public to their senses, Alf,' said Ingmar. 'Britain needs more roads, you know how important that is, but since Parkhurst's speech, the anti-road movement has held the moral high ground. We have to do something now. If we're not damn careful, there won't be a square foot of tar laid in Britain for half a decade.'

Ingmar was talking a language Alf found difficult to resist.

'All right,' he said, 'I'll make a few calls, see how the land lies. But it's a dodgy game we're playing here. If we lose, or worse, get found out, they'll lynch us.'

It was Monday morning and Chief Superintendent Barry Ross was completing a letter to Corker McCorkadale, the Minister for Transport. It was a very sad letter, a letter from a proud and disillusioned man. Barry Ross had controlled London's traffic for fifteen years, but he had grown old and tired in the job. This was the day he was to take premature retirement and he felt the need to explain why.

Minister, (he wrote) I have to tell you that my reason for seeking early retirement is because I am absolutely convinced that it cannot now be many months before the job I have loved will become, quite literally, impossible to perform. I am a proud police officer and will not be the man who presides over the moment when London quite simply ceases to function. Please let me assure you that this is now an inevitability. The long-feared gridlock, which has been my constant nightmare, will become my successor's reality since I see absolutely no political will to face up to the cataclysmic scale of the problem.

The problem is, of course, pure and simple. It is the private car. I have devoted my life to the rights of the private motorist and still believe in them 100 per cent. But such rights become rather theoretical, don't you think, when traffic moves at a snail's pace and it is impossible to park? Minister, in order to protect the private motorist of the future, action must be taken now. The pollution, the road carnage and the insane inefficiency have to be dealt with. There is one answer, Minister – the rigorous promotion of public transport. Nobody has to park a bus.

Barry would be sorely missed, he was the best traffic planner in the country and had just about kept London moving, against virtually impossible odds, for years. Now he had had enough. Despite being a Monday, this was to be his last day.

On that same Monday morning, Deborah and Toss left their home together and headed for the Swiss Cottage area of London, where the UK headquarters of Global Motors were located. Deborah was as sure as she could be that this was where Sam Turk was to be found. Discreet telephone enquiries during the previous week had shown Turk to be a diligent man who arrived at his office early and left late.

Deborah parked her converted car with its disabled sticker bang outside the mighty Global building. It was on a double yellow line with prominent signs about the place saying that parking was prohibited at all times. Deborah felt that she would be OK though, because riding with her was her own tame traffic warden. Toss was in uniform, and it was his job to wait by the car, ensuring it remained there, unclamped, for that ill-defined time when Deborah would be making a getaway.

'You might be hours,' complained Toss. 'I'm going to look a bit of a dickhead spending all day putting a ticket on a car, girl. I am a flash! I am lightning! Nobody books them like El Toss.'

'Listen, buster,' replied Deborah, 'you ain't the one walking into the lion's den. Just wait by the car because I got a feeling that if, and when, I get out of this place, I'm going to be in a hurry.'

And with that, Deborah wheeled herself up the ramp which Global Motors had thoughtfully provided outside their building. Unfortunately, at the top of the ramp were swing doors, and the conventional ones to either side were too stiff to open. They had dropped very slightly on their hinges and hence dragged on the metal bases as they swung. This, of course, meant that Deborah had to sit outside the building (it was now raining), trying to attract the attention of someone inside, whilst hoping someone might come along. Eventually someone did.

'I hope you ain't on the judging panel for this job,' Deborah said to the person. 'Because if you are, I just lost it.'

Once inside, Deborah found the Global building pretty well-equipped, and, having reported to reception, Deborah was escorted in a spacious lift to the appropriate floor.

'Jeez, eighth floor,' said Deborah, casually. 'I would have thought only the big boss guys got to ride this high.'

Her companion merely grinned, as if humouring an idiot. Deborah tried again. 'Maybe the great Sam Turk himself will get in. I could ask him for a job direct.'

'I don't think so,' said the girl with a patronizing smile, 'there's a private executive lift to the penthouse offices.'

Deborah had feared as much. Still, at least she knew where his office was, and hence where he was most likely to be. However, she could not strike out for it just yet. Deborah had decided that she would have to go through with the mock interview for fear that she would be missed and a sympathetic search party sent out for 'the poor stupid girl in the wheelchair'. Fortunately for Deborah, she was called first.

'Getting me out of the way early,' thought Deborah, cynically, as she was ushered solicitously into a room containing three earnest-looking people, their faces a picture of heartfelt solidarity and support.

'Hi, I'm Rod. Step right in and take a seat.'

Aaaahhh! Rod wanted the floor to open and swallow him. What was he saying? What was he doing to this poor girl? Just rubbing in her terrible, horrible disability.

'Sorry, stupid thing to say.'

'Pardon?' said Deborah, positioning herself next to the empty chair that had been placed in the middle of the room to accommodate interviewees.

'Uhm . . . about stepping right in . . . Uhm, stupid, silly . . . Obviously I meant wheel right in . . .'

Rod looked around for a razorblade with which to slit his wrists.

'Wheel right in!' Rod was a soggy crouton in a
faux pas
soup, a crouton going under for the third time. He was a nice, caring man, a liberal. Whilst a student he had even been a communist for a week and a half. He just wanted to show this poor pathetic girl that he was massively aware of her catastrophic inadequacies in the leg department but, within the bounds of practicality, he would not judge her too harshly on them.

'Look, what I'm trying to say is just forget about it, all right? God knows, we certainly have.'

'Forget about what?' asked Deborah.

'Your . . . your . . .' Rod could not bring himself to use the word wheelchair. It seemed so brutal, just drawing attention to the poor girl's appalling predicament. As if she didn't have enough to put up with without insensitive oafs like him idly dropping the word 'wheelchair' about willy nilly . . .

'Your non-walking status,' he said, in a flash of particularly uninspired inspiration.

'Oh,' said Deborah. 'OK, Rod, I'll forget about it.'

'Will you?' said Rod, his face a picture of concern and admiration. 'Will you really?'

'Sure,' said Deborah.

'That's
super,'
said Rod, delighted at having put her at her ease.

The interview began. Deborah explained that she had just taken her examinations in graphics and design and went on to expand on how she felt that this training would provide a good grounding for work in promotions.

But Deborah knew that, as she spoke, her chair was growing. Its arms were expanding upwards to envelop her, the wheels creeping outwards across the floor. She almost seemed to be shrinking into it as the handles behind her head touched the ceiling and the foot rests crept towards the panel, and began to push against the table, behind which her three interrogators sat.

Before long the chair was as big as the room, it was forcing Rod and his two colleagues against the wall. Such was its size and dominance that it took a great deal of concentration for them to make out Deborah at all, perched far back, as she was, in the giant seat.

Every time the interviewers attempted to shrink the chair it got bigger, backing them further and further into the corner . . . As Deborah improvised a pretty good argument as to why she would make a good promotions woman, the panel's minds raced along the myriad problems which they saw ahead, regarding the employment of that chair. Would it fit between the desks? How would it travel to showrooms and displays? Could it get in when it got there? How many demands would it make on other workers? How would a car buyer feel confronted by a piece of transport for the lame? Would it depress people?

The answers to all these questions were depressingly negative. How else could they be, considering that the chair now filled the entire room, the foot rests sticking out of the windows and the handles cracking the plaster on the ceiling? Eventually, after what seemed like a lifetime, an acceptable twenty-three of the allotted thirty minutes had passed and Rod drew the proceedings to a close.

'Thanks, Deborah,' he gushed. 'That was marvellous, really fantastic. I mean really fantastic,' and Rod meant it. He found the fact that Deborah could talk at all most impressive, and also very brave. 'We still have quite a few people to see but really, I mean
really,
you were terrific.'

Rod leapt up gallantly to open the door for Deborah, attempting to imply with his body language that holding the door open for a cripple was not something he expected any gratitude for, it was just something he was happy to do as one person to another, because obviously Deborah was a person.

After Deborah had gone, the three panel members, out of a mutual sense of guilt, went through the motions of discussing
her
rather than the chair. She was a charming and intelligent girl, they assured each other, each attempting to outdo the others in demonstrating how much they had attempted to look at Deborah's candidature in a positive light.

Having done this for a moment or two, with anguished reluctance, the panel moved onto the
practicalities
of employing Deborah, addressing themselves, as they felt they must do, to whether it was fair to the company, to other employees. Rod even wondered whether it would be fair to Deborah herself, but he was never called upon to expand further on this curious worry because the intelligent nods that he received belied any further explanation.

Finally, and with the utmost reluctance, it was agreed that there was no place for Deborah at Global Motors, if for no other reason than that she was a fire hazard.

Actually, Deborah's position at Global was about to rise with remarkable speed. Her interview having concluded early, Deborah emerged from under Rod's protective arm to discover that her minder had not yet returned to escort her out of the building.

'Could you tell the lady that I made my own way out?' she enquired of the two other candidates who were sitting waiting. They promised to do this through sympathetic smiles, which hid the fact that they were thinking, 'Bet she gets it because she's disabled.'

Once on the loose, Deborah set about finding the executive lift. She guessed that it would be somewhere in the same area of those lifts provided for the common herd. After all, it would be an exclusive lift indeed that had its own separate shaft. Sure enough, on returning to the lift area, Deborah spotted the discreet, unmarked sliding door beyond the stand-up ashtray and knew that there lay her only route to the penthouse offices. As Deborah had suspected, a key was required to summon the lift. Ostensibly, this was a security measure but, of course, the real reason was to avoid the pristine executive environment being polluted by the foul, rank and stinking air of non-executives.

This little example of corporate elitism is one of the numerous ways by which the pecking orders and promotion structures are defined in commercial life. It is rather difficult to properly gauge rank and status when everyone wears much the same suit, so little signs and symbols have been devised. You can't tell a colleague how much you earn, but you can make a point of visiting the loo at the same time as he does, and then grandly disappearing into the senior management lav. This confirms your relative status. There are just as many drips on the floor of the executive bog as in the ordinary one, but the point is, they are
executive
drips.

The most meaningful badge of rank in any large company is, of course, what car they give you. The motor that you park in the company car park tells everybody what you earn and who you can boss about. One day business people will probably dispense with confusing terms of rank such as 'under manager' and 'junior executive', and will simply define people's status by their cars.

'Well, son, you'll start off as a Ford Escort, like every young lad, but if you work hard and keep your nose clean, who knows, in ten years you could be a Granada, perhaps one day even a Jaguar like me.'

This snobbery is, of course, wonderful news for the car makers who delight in endlessly producing minor variations of the same car so that the fleet managers of large companies can go mad trying to assess the career implications of awarding someone an electronic radio aerial or alloy wheels whilst his furious colleagues only get a lockable glove compartment. This method of promotion is also a good way of saving money, because it is possible to honour an employee much more cheaply than by giving him or her a pay rise. One can simply replace his Ford Sierra with a Ford Sierra TP (Toss Pot), thus allowing him to rush home shouting 'Darling, they've given me the tinted sunroof!', this small reward being much magnified by the fact that Roger and Bill's new cars do not even have electric windows.

Anyway, the immediate upshot of this corporate snobbery was that Deborah would require the assistance of an executive with a key to the lift in order to reach Sam Turk.

Deborah's first problem, of course, was to avoid running into her minder, who would no doubt shortly be coming to pick her up. To this end, Deborah summoned a non-executive lift in order to begin her mission on a different floor. The list on the wall went 'ping' to show that a lift was coming and Deborah prayed, as the doors opened, that the minder would not actually be in it. Her prayers were answered, and, struggling to conquer the fear rising in her stomach, Deborah disappeared upwards into the building. She decided to alight at the floor marked 'Accountancy and Contracts'. Deborah was seeking a floor teeming with executives anxious to use their executive lift and she felt that 'Accountancy and Contracts' sounded like the sort of activity where seniority might be required. Whilst in the lift, Deborah had donned the costume which she and Toss had prepared on the previous evening. It was hidden in the bag she kept hung behind, between the handles of her chair, and consisted of a peaked cap marked 'Comet Telecommunications', a small tool bag and Deborah's laminated student union card which she clipped to her breast pocket. Close inspection of this card would, of course, beg the question of why a third year design student, who was entitled to access to all bars and leisure facilities, should necessarily be qualified to mend phones at Global Motors. However, as close inspection would require someone leaning over her and peering down her front, Deborah reckoned she would get away with it. Again Deborah was relying on her apparent helplessness to allay any suspicion. She only hoped that she would not be collared by some flustered employee saying, 'Just the person I need. Every time I try to phone in for the cricket score I get a recorded tape about Mandy, who says she's a naughty girl and would I like to hear about her melons?'