Rules of Engagement Read online

  Across the room stood Oliver Davidson, deep in conversation with the harbour master. The harbour master, a gruff, pink-faced man on the edge of retirement, was making a series of forceful points, chopping the air with his hands, while Davidson’s eyes roamed across the room, ever watchful, ever alert. Nearer were the city’s Police Chief, Nigel Quinn, and the local manager of Network South East, Alan Prosser. Quinn and Prosser’s kids played football together in a tyro league side, and the two men shared the odd game of golf.

  By the window, deep in conversation, were Tony Belling, the Flag Officer’s ADC from Naval Home Command, Dave Jenkins, the city’s Fire Chief, and Henry Bishop, the senior Education Officer. It would be the latter’s job to decide if and when to close the schools, item fourteen on the agenda that Davidson had already slipped from his briefcase and left on Goodman’s desk.

  The Brigadier touched Goodman lightly on the arm. Goodman smiled his automatic smile.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The Reading Conference,’ the Brigadier said for the second time. ‘I don’t recall your face.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Goodman said, ‘I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘No. Eric went.’ He paused and smiled again. ‘I’m standing in. He’s off sick just now.’

  Fiona, Goodman’s secretary, appeared in the open doorway at the end of the ante-room. Goodman caught her eye at once. She semaphored an urgent phone call. He acknowledged the signal with a nod, made his excuses to the Brigadier, and slipped quietly out of the room. Davidson, still listening to the harbour master, watched him go.

  Down the corridor, Goodman stepped into his office and hurried across to the big desk by the window. He picked up the telephone and bent to the mouthpiece. He was slightly out of breath.

  ‘Hello?’

  For a moment, there was no reply. He could hear voices in the background, shouts. Then the sound of a tannoy. Something about Malaga and Rhodes. Finally, a voice, urgent, in his ear. He tensed at once. Suzy.

  ‘Martin,’ she began, ‘I’m at the airport.’ She sounded breathless and upset, either fear or anger. He closed his eyes, and tried to sound as calm as he could.

  ‘Darling …’ he murmured.

  ‘Listen. Tell me, for Chrissakes, what’s going on?’ He frowned. The tannoy had started again, louder, in the background. All flights to Corfu had been cancelled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he began, ‘I …’

  ‘Listen. I’ve only got a minute or two, but I need to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Martin, don’t treat me like an idiot. Our planes have been requisitioned. All of them. They say they’re flying troops out. Bringing families back.’ She hesitated for a second. ‘Why should they do that?’

  Goodman passed a hand over his eyes, suddenly very tired.

  ‘Manoeuvres,’ he said, ‘exercises. It happens all the time.’

  ‘That’s what they say.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘The people in Handling. I don’t believe them. And neither does anyone else.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And you’ll know what’s really going on. I know you’ll know.’ She paused. ‘Martin …?’ Goodman opened his eyes. In a minute or so he’d have to walk back along the corridor, and call for attention, and start to usher people through to the Conference Room. There’d be options to explore, plans to draw up, decisions to make, limits to put on this action or that. And over it all they’d have to draw a cloak of secrecy, a blanket of denials, of white propaganda, of calm civic assurances that business was trickling along as usual, that nothing had really changed. It would all be lies, his lies, and sitting here, on a still-warm morning in late September, he realized that he’d started already, with the one person to whom he’d given himself entirely.

  ‘Suzy …’ he began.

  There was a movement in the open doorway. He glanced across. Davidson stood there, the sunlight glinting on his rimless glasses. He smiled a thin smile and looked pointedly at his watch. Suzy began to talk again, the urgency edged with panic. She’d just come down from upstairs. The VIP suite was packed. Anyone who was anyone was going to Canada. Why? Why? Why? Goodman leaned slowly forward in his chair, emptying his voice of affection.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘we’ll talk about it tonight. Usual time. Usual place. OK?’

  He put the phone down without waiting for a reply, and stood up. Davidson was still in the doorway. Goodman looked at him a moment, then nodded at the phone and pulled a face, a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘Mother-in-law,’ he said. ‘Bit of a state.’

  By the time Gillespie arrived at the boat, Sean was already aboard, stowing his rods aft and unlocking the folding covers over the inboard diesel. Gillespie had shut himself in the kitchen, as soon as the film crew had started to dismantle their equipment, and phoned the boy at Sandra’s. Sandra had answered the phone, ever patient, passing on Gillespie’s brusque message. Gillespie had recognized Shaun’s grunt of acknowledgement in the background. Eleven o’clock. Top of the tide. Back in time for tea.

  With Sean organized, Gillespie had waited for the last of the crew to clear the front room. The young assistant had offered to restore the furniture the way they’d found it, but Gillespie had shown him the door with a jerk of his head, and the assistant hadn’t stopped to argue. Only Annie stayed behind.

  At first, he assumed she’d gone. He’d changed quickly into wellies, and a thick old sweater, and jeans. He’d retrieved a block of peeler crabs from the freezer, and a bowl of rag worms from the fridge. He had his rods, and his gutting knife, and he’d fetched the big conger gaff from the shed out back. Not because he expected to catch anything bigger than a plaice, or sea bass, but because he’d recognized instinctively the need to organize himself, to take several deep breaths and try and wash away the anger inside him, diluting it to manageable proportions, making himself safe to be with. Only then was he ready to leave.

  Annie was waiting for him by the front door. He half expected something meaningless, like a token apology, but she looked as cheerful as ever, even amused.

  ‘Off to sea again?’ she enquired. ‘Getting away from it all?’

  Gillespie didn’t bother to answer. Now, with the house his own again, it didn’t seem to matter so much. If he felt anything, he felt betrayed, but that was a long conversation, and he didn’t propose to offer her the satisfaction of beginning it. They looked at each other for a moment, the obvious question unvoiced. Then she smiled.

  ‘Don’t you want to know how I found out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  He looked at her for along time, then shook his head. Not a denial but an expression of disbelief.

  ‘Don’t you ever give up?’ he said.

  Her smile widened. ‘No.’

  There was a pause. She came very close. The old technique. The old temptation. She reached out and adjusted the neck of his sweater. She was wearing thin leather gloves that smelled faintly of Gitanes cigarettes. In spite of everything, he still loved her eyes. Huge, brown, moist. If he had any talent with a knife and a palette full of oil paints, that’s where he’d begin.

  ‘Was it you, Dave?’ She waited a moment or two for an answer, but Gillespie said nothing. ‘Not going to tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will you ever tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mind if I keep trying?’ She kissed him softly on the cheek. ‘Off the record?’

  Gillespie gazed at her. There were a million ways of resolving the situation. He could throw her out. He could sit her down and list all the occasions when he’d been foolish enough to mistake her curiosity for friendship, her endless list of questions for simple, innocent conversation. He could lecture her on cheap advantage, and breach of faith. He could even phone her boss and make some kind of official complaint. Breaking and entering. Intent to rob. Instead he shrugged, and reached for the door latch.

 
‘No,’ he said, ‘if it turns you on.’

  Down on the foreshore, Gillespie parked the Marina and transferred his tackle and bait to the boat. Sean had by now primed the engine, and was untying the forrard strop. With Gillespie at the helm, it was his job to walk the boat carefully backwards until there was no danger of the prop fouling on the tangles of weed on the bottom. Only then would Gillespie slide aside the cover on the ignition button, thumb the diesel into life, and ease the boat towards the open water.

  Sean joined him at the wheel. Pushing the boat out had raised the colour on his cheeks. He grinned at Gillespie but said nothing. Most weeks they met at least twice – once at weekends for serious fishing, and again during the week when Sean would drop by his father’s house in the evening and share a take-away. The arrangement was totally informal, whim rather than habit, and pleased them both.

  The last couple of years, after a rather stiff period of more orthodox fatherhood, Gillespie had begun to treat Sean like an adult, a mate, someone to laugh with, and ponder with, and share mutual enthusiasms. It sounded like a big jump from the old relationship, but it had worked at once, especially out at sea, where they divided the work and the rewards between them, each relying on the other, a genuine need and an absolute trust. Much of the contact between them had quickly become monosyllabic, choice rather than laziness, and like any close relationship, it had developed a repertoire of physical gestures: grunts, and grins, and long, slow shakes of the head to indicate a general bewilderment at the state of the world.

  Recently, Gillespie had begun to wonder whether the boy shouldn’t move in. He’d discussed it with Sandra, who had no objection, but when he broached the subject to Sean, late one evening after a brilliant day’s fishing and a particularly fiery Chicken Vindaloo, the boy had shaken his head at once, and said that things were just great the way they were.

  At the time, his reaction had struck Gillespie as surprisingly emphatic, and he’d been tempted to enquire why. But after a day or two’s reflection he’d decided that the boy probably felt a duty to stay with his mother, that she deserved a little respect and affection from at least one male member of the family, and that therefore he had no right to leave home before he had to. Whether or not this interpretation squared with the truth was anybody’s guess, but it suited Gillespie to believe it, and if he was really honest with himself, he realized that he, too, preferred it that way. His suggestion that Sean might move in had, after all, been ill-judged, a product of a glorious day at sea, and too many cans of Guinness. He felt, deep down, safer alone.

  At the harbour entrance, where the shingle spit curled shorewards and the ebbing tide tugged at the lines of mooring buoys, Gillespie throttled back and tucked the boat behind a big motor cruiser, outbound from the anchorage. The cruiser was broad in the beam, about forty foot overall, and lay low in the water. On deck, aft, two men were lashing down a collection of tin trunks. One of them was wearing flannels and a blazer and what looked like lace-up brogues. From the cabin, came the chatter of women’s voices, upmarket and shrill. Evidently there was also a dog aboard.

  Gillespie eyed the cruiser for a while, but it was Sean who put the obvious conclusion into words.

  ‘They’re off,’ he said. ‘Doing a runner.’

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘Yeah. Look at the way that bloke’s dressed. Never been to sea in his life.’

  Gillespie nodded. The man in the blazer was studying a knot with intense concentration. Finally, he unpicked it, threw both ends down on the deck, and disappeared briefly inside. When he stepped back into the sunshine he was carrying a tumbler of something tawny with ice cubes floating in it. He caught sight of Gillespie and Sean, puttering slowly along in the cruiser’s wake. He raised the glass in mock salute, acknowledging Gillespie’s answering wave with a shouted toast. Sean frowned.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’

  Gillespie looked sideways at Sean, expecting a grin, but the boy’s face was quite expressionless. He was still staring at the motor cruiser, and at the man with the now half-empty glass. Gillespie throttled back a notch or two, letting the diesel idle while the first of the ebb tide caught the boat and swung the bow seawards, towards the harbour mouth.

  ‘You up to date with all this? Everything that’s going on?’

  Sean nodded. ‘I watch telly,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Make sense to you at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither.’ He hesitated. The current was stronger now, urging the boat towards the open sea. ‘You worried?’ The boy nodded again.

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘I am.’

  Albie Curtis double parked the BMW in the cul-de-sac outside Mick Rendall’s house, walked across the newly swept cobbles, and rang the front door bell. When no one answered, he rang again. Finally, he heard footsteps inside, and the scrape of the safety chain. The door opened and Mick Rendall appeared. He was wearing a new pair of scarlet track suit bottoms and a Nike singlet. His face was pink with exertion, and his chest was heaving. There were dark blotches of sweat on the singlet. He opened the door wide, and motioned Albie inside, mopping his face with a towel.

  Albie walked through the hall, and stepped into the lounge. The lounge was big, running the full depth of the house. The walls were pale green, hung with full-size Athena prints. Oriental rugs dotted the polished wooden floor. One end of the room was dominated by a rack of hi-fi equipment and two Quad speakers. The other end housed a full-length sofa in buttoned black leather.

  On the floor, in front of the marble fireplace, was a rowing machine. Beside the rowing machine was an open carton of orange juice and a paperback about Commando exercises. Albie glanced at the paperback but made no comment. Mick Rendall stepped into the room behind him. His breathing had slowed, but the sweat marks were spreading over the swell of his small pot belly. Albie nodded at the carton of juice.

  ‘You’re supposed to drink the stuff afterwards, not before.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘You’ll spew otherwise.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Pleasure.’

  Mick picked up the carton and began to gulp down the contents. Albie watched him, remembering his other flirtations with physical exercise. A couple of days’ jogging when marathons became fashionable. Sunday football on the Common when the local team hit the First Division. And now this: two hundred quid’s worth of chrome tubing and fancy suede handles. It was a joke.

  ‘Where’s Angie?’ he said.

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You mean gone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh.’ Albie paused. ‘Why’s that, then?’

  Mick shrugged, affecting indifference.

  ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Some arsehole.’

  Albie scowled, genuine concern.

  ‘You want me to find him …?’ He paused, sliding the shaped plastic seat on the rowing machine backwards and forwards with his foot. ‘Or do you want to do it yourself?’

  Mick shrugged again, towelled the last of the moisture from his face, and walked through to the kitchen, leaving the question unanswered. Albie followed him. The kitchen was German, hitech, and very expensive. Another of Harry’s little loans. He stood in the doorway, hands on hips, no messing.

  ‘Listen, mate …’ he began.

  Mick filled the kettle and shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘leave it. She’s not worth the bother.’

  He put the kettle on the ceramic hob and pressed a button. Then he leaned back against the dishwater. He looked shattered.

  ‘You get the books?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The books, Albie. The stuff for Harry.’

  Albie frowned a moment, then remembered the conversation on the car phone.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t.�
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  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’ve closed the garage. Taken it over.’

  Mick stared at him.

  ‘I’m not with you,’ he said. ‘You mean it’s not open? Eleven o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘No. And by lunchtime it might not be there at all. So they say.’

  Mick blinked. He pulled at a tiny gold ear-ring, his latest affectation. He seemed to be having trouble with the shorter words.

  ‘Who’s they?’ he said.

  Albie gazed at him. For the second time that morning, he was lost for an answer.

  ‘I dunno …’ he said at last. ‘That’s the problem.’

  Martin Goodman opened the Conference at the Civic Centre at six minutes past eleven. He sat at the head of the long table, the blotter neatly squared in front of him, the long rows of faces receding towards the far end of the room.

  He prefaced his remarks by expressing regret that Eric was, in a hopefully inexact phrase, hors de combat. He knew that the ex-Chief Executive had many friends around the table, and he was sure that they all wished him well.

  There was a murmur of agreement. Several of the older heads nodded more emphatically than was strictly necessary. Eric, by and large, had made allies of these men, with his deft political touches, and his earthiness, and his generosity with the decanter of malt whisky that he kept on the filing cabinet in his office. They’d liked him because he was the right age, and the right generation. They inhabited a world of shared assumptions and common goals. They’d spent most of their professional lives determined not to rock the civic boat, and if there was any reservation about Martin, the new face at the head of the table, then it was because he was young, untested, and was rumoured to be rather more ruthless in the pursuit of efficiency than might have been strictly necessary.

  Goodman, who was aware of this, ended his opening remarks by acknowledging the weight of responsibility that had so suddenly descended upon him. For the time being, he said, he’d be known as Controller-Designate. After the passage of the appropriate legislation, his powers, and his obligations, would be immense, but without their patience, and support, he – and the city – would be utterly helpless. There were more nods around the table, more murmurs of approval, but Goodman sensed that the consent, this time, was conditional. His lieutenants were reserving judgement. He had a great deal to prove.