‘So?’
‘Professor Duncan Pitt.’
‘Sounds familiar.’
‘Should do. He’s featured in the press every day since his lecture tour started …’
‘And in the file I opened on him. I know.’
‘Ah, progress, and even in your delicate state. Yes, dear Duncan is becoming – dare I say it in view of the sensitivity – a bit of a bête noire.’
‘Very droll, St Clair. Now fuck off.’
‘He’s causing us problems.’
‘Then I love him.’
‘We don’t. He’s stirring up things that are best left unstirred, tapping into the worst kind of sentiments.’
‘It’s called freedom.’
‘It’s called trouble; it’s called inner cities dominated by ethnic majorities; it’s called politicians who don’t appreciate having to fight fires.’
‘You’ve ruined my morning to tell me this?’
St Clair cocked his head to one side. ‘The Home Secretary’s reluctant to impose a banning order. Might seem heavy-handed, one-sided, given Pitt’s a respected intellectual, given that any number of black radicals and supremacists are allowed through the net. Besides, we’re a mature democracy.’
‘I admire your sense of humour.’
‘I’d prefer it if you responded to my request.’
‘You want the frighteners put on?’
‘In a nutshell. You’ve studied him, heard the tapes, understand his arguments, his agenda, traced his links to the lunatic fringe.’
‘It’s the rational centre who admire him.’
‘Hence our worry. He’s not in the Hitler-was-a-misunderstood-artist camp, doesn’t belong to the school of fatalities-at-Auschwitz-were-merely-poor-man-management. Harder to counter. We’ve stoked the university protests, placed well-sourced black propaganda with the media – again, forgive the connotations – but Professor Pitt remains. Stubborn fellow.’
‘It’ll blow over, blow out.’
‘Not according to our research.’
‘Anyone could have a quiet word with him – a junior, an office generalist, one of the second-rate civil servants you insist on recruiting, even a cerebrally challenged policeman. It’s not exactly Regnum Defende, is it?’
‘Threats to the realm take all manner of forms, all manner of direction.’
‘As does vomit. I’m not well, Aubyn.’
‘The money has been paid into your bank account.’
‘You’re low.’
‘But I’m loyal. You owe me, Josh.’ Silence from the recumbent figure. ‘I’ll take that as assent.’
‘Take it as interview over, leave me alone, I want to go to sleep.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘It’ll do.’
‘Who suffered fools for twenty years at the Box because you wouldn’t?’
‘Not my fault the upper reaches are infested with them.’
For St Clair, Box was PO Box, trade slang for MI5; to Kemp, it represented the truth – an institution he had pigeon-holed in his past, nothing more than an address to be shredded. PO Box 500, PO Box whatever. They would not receive a Christmas card.
‘Who guarded your back, protected you, each time you pissed in the coffee mug of every Director? Who curried favours as you couldn’t be arsed? Who gave you a free rein? Who …’
‘Okay. Okay.’
‘Okay’s as good as a yes.’
‘I’ll think on it.’
‘You have until this evening, 1800 hours. Give up on the Flying Dutchman act. You can reach me anywhere.’
The apparition receded, the aroma of damp overcoat and Floris aftershave lingering. Of all the people in all the world. St Clair. Kemp stared at the ceiling. He could do with the cash. The boat needed upkeep, prettification, London was an expense, entertainment a financial abyss. No responsibilities other than himself, but St Clair was right – there were debts to pay, personal and professional. And there was Krista, his former wife, an alien from a previous dimension, a stranger on another continent. A twelve-year flash-in-the-pan, and everyone got burnt. His marriage had ended at near enough the same moment as his career; each paralleled the other in decline. All good things … One afternoon, he had boarded a return flight from the family’s winter holiday in Santa Barbara and found himself unaccompanied; one morning, he entered the office monolith on the Embankment and discovered himself volunteered for redundancy. Sure, reasons were given: rationalization, downsizing, interpersonal communication failures, a new broom. MI5, too, had offered explanations. Wife, work, over. The motives were unimportant, lost anyway in the bitter desire to move on, to sit, drink, read, work out, screw and play guitar badly in the comfortable surrounds of his houseboat Maria Johanna. He coped, had no choice. Life was a sexually transmitted disease, irritating and terminal. This was the only protection he had. He folded his arms behind his head and breathed out. There was no explanation for the death of Emmy, his daughter. She was gone, erased. The wake of two police rigid inflatables lapped against the port side. Hours to kill.
