Time: twenty minutes later
Context: [previously classified - original classification level withheld]
She changes lines to ride the Jubilee to West Hampstead. Exiting there, pedestrian traffic is thickening so she takes advantage of an unhurried couple of hundred yards while transferring to the overland train.
One reason for departing Notting Hill early is to make it across the inner city before rush-hour secures a full neck-lock. Naturally, the preference would’ve been to have held on to her vehicle in case it does end up being a late one. However, her current legend can’t risk being seen with car keys therefore, somewhat reluctantly, she has made the signal as to where these can be retrieved. On the upside, at least getting back from Hackney Central tonight will now be straightforward; deposited within a mile or so of home, this in turn will allow her to get rid of anyone tempted to try and accompany her.
With the long rail journey east permitting a leisurely view of the comings and goings of her fellow passengers, her thoughts drift to how she found herself doing this work. Knowing nobody who could advise how she might utilise a degree like hers, the milk round for hiring new graduates had seemed bizarre from start to finish. Reading glossy but distinctly uninformative brochures for random airline, oil and other companies, one leaflet had stood out. Not solely for the dull manner in which it discussed the benefits of becoming a public servant, but for the fact it didn’t specify any course requirements. And it was during the selection board for the Civil Service that she’d experienced a bewildering interaction with a man, his role explained vaguely at best, after he’d eased her aside and asked if she intended to “play away from home.”
|Without even the pretence of foreplay can you believe?|
When she’d responded with but the faintest of smiles, he’d executed a double tap of his nostril and proposed that she leave everything with him. Watching his retreating form, still without having contributed a single word, she’d simply shrugged and resolved to comply wholeheartedly with his parting suggestion that she do nothing. It was only when she received a letter on Home Office stationery that she had appreciated she might even be under consideration by that department, never mind the specialist area within it where she’d ended up. Fleetingly, she had paused to wonder whether all the terms alluded to in the contract which she’d been sent were reasonable, though hadn’t been willing to risk consulting an acquaintance studying Law lest she fall foul of some confidentiality clause she wasn’t even aware of. As a consequence, without even alerting her family to the move it would require, she’d gone ahead and accepted what appeared to be the most interesting of her offers.
Also during her final year had been the King’s Cross fire, in the bowels of the station she most regularly passed through, and the ‘Death on the Rock’ documentary which strongly questioned the recent shooting of Provisional I.R.A. members in Gibraltar.
|Allegedly assassinated by the very government shortly to become my employer|
She had therefore already been weighing her suitability for the upcoming job when certain rumours concerning the fire began circulating. To that point, the official explanation had been that someone had carelessly dropped a cigarette butt down the wooden escalator, smoking remaining common on buses and trains despite attempts at a ban. However now it was being suggested that it wasn’t an accident |remember, back then you couldn’t easily check conspiracy theories| but, rather, had been sparked as an act of terrorism by the I.R.A. The premeditated slaughter of thirty-one people merely for using public transport would be unforgivable, but what of the Gibraltar killings? A straight-line argument could justify a pre-emptive strike in the event someone was about to take another’s life. Yet what if the Irish active service unit was not on the verge of detonating a bomb, but was instead only at the preliminary stage of reconnoitring locations? There again, if armed S.A.S. had been ordered in as spiralling retribution for an earlier terrorist attack by the Provos, what then should be the verdict?
The more she had contemplated the moral quandaries thrown up by these tragedies, the more she felt her brain being centrifuged at high velocity precisely when she ought to have been revising for her final exams. Since actually commencing work though she’d come to appreciate how unlikely it was The Service would agree to support summary executions. Put simply, obtaining priceless intelligence always seemed paramount over dispatching potential sources.
The thought serves to remind her of this evening’s areas of focus.
҉
Stepping off at Dalston, she diverts into the Kingsland Centre to buy some minor necessities. Leaving the stuffiness indoors for the bustling high street, London’s cooling breath serves to sharpen her senses further. Her vista takes in toddlers crab-walking past pre-teens, frenziedly waving smoke off into the gloom. These groups are in turn ignored by the fifth formers, recognisable for the dagger tie pointing at shirt-lengths left casually untucked. But as hard as they practise their menacing postures still they can’t resist sideways glances at their peers parading mechanics’ overalls. Meantime, enthroned on each nearby bench as if presiding over court, older youths again desperately hope their box-fresh Adidas, newly bought with the giro, will project irresistible authority to the girls hurrying by.
Checking her dial, she decides she can start making tracks for Shacklewell.
Comments (0)
See all