The Mission Song (38 page)

To catch a sinner, Brother Michael used to say, you must find the sinner in yourself, and in the space of a few moments, that’s what I had done. I walked to the wardrobe where my leather jacket was hanging. I fished out my own cellphone, the one I had forbidden myself to use except for messages, and I switched it on. And yes, as expected, I had one new message. But it wasn’t from Penelope this time, or Barney, or Hannah. It was from Philip. And Philip was speaking not in his nice beguiling voice but in the iceberg version I was counting on:

I have a number for you to call, Salvo. It’s night or day. I also have a deal to propose to you. The sooner you ring, the more comfortable everyone will be.

I rang the number and got Sam. She called me Brian, just like old times.
Got a pencil, Brian dear? And a notepad? Of course you have, bless you. Here’s the address.

19

I will confess at once that my actions over the next ten minutes were not fully rational, veering as they did between the manic and the administrative. I do not recall violent feelings of rage or anger, although there is later evidence that these and related emotions were simmering below the waterline. My first thought—one of many first thoughts—was for my host and hostess the Hakims, with whom Hannah and I had struck up a warm personal relationship which extended to their two children, a tearaway lad called Rashid who was the apple of Hannah’s eye, and the more reticent Diana who spent much time hiding behind the kitchen door on the off-chance that I might pass. I therefore put together a sizeable wad of my ill-gotten wealth and handed it to the bemused Mrs Hakim.

My next first thought, based upon the assumption that I would not be setting foot in the house again for some while, if ever, was to make sure we had left everything as shipshape as possible in the circumstances. Being of an obsessively tidy disposition—Penelope under Paula’s guidance had termed it
anal
—I stripped the bed of its sheets, removed the pillowcases, puffed up the bare pillows, added the towels from the bathroom and made a neat bundle of laundry in a corner of the room.

Of particular concern to me was what to wear. In this regard I had at the forefront of my mind the fate recently meted out to Maxie and his men, who were self-evidently obliged to make do with a single outfit for many years to come. I settled therefore on a pair of stout corduroy jeans, my faithful leather jacket which had a good few miles left in it, sneakers, my bobble hat, and as many spare shirts, socks and underpants as I could cram into my rucksack. To these I added my most treasured personal items, including the framed photograph of Noah.

As a final act I removed the fateful shoulder-bag from its hiding place behind the wardrobe and, having once more checked the contents and reconfirmed the absence of the two tapes—because sometimes in the passage of the last forty-eight hours fantasy and reality had developed a way of changing places behind my back—I closed the door on our short-lived corner of Paradise, mumbled my last farewells to the mystified Hakims and stepped into the minicab that was waiting to convey me to the address in Regent’s Park whither I had been bidden by Sam.

My reconstruction of what follows is as faithful as memory permits, given the disadvantages under which my vision and other faculties were labouring at the time. Drawing up at an elegant house in Albany Crescent, NW1—a couple of million pounds would not have secured it—I was greeted by the sight of two young men in tracksuits tossing a medicine ball back and forth in the front garden. Upon my arrival, they stopped playing and turned to eye me. Undeterred by their interest, I paid off my driver—careful also to add a handsome tip and advanced on the front gate, at which point the nearer of the two boys enquired jauntily whether he could be of assistance.

‘Well, perhaps you can,’ I replied, equally jauntily. ‘It so happens I have come to see Philip on a private matter.’

‘Then you’ve come to the right place, mate,’ he replied, and with elaborate courtesy took possession of my rucksack while the second boy helped himself to my shoulder-bag, thereby leaving me unencumbered. The first boy then proceeded down the gravel path to the front door and pushed it open to facilitate my passage, while the second boy, whistling a tune, fell in behind us. The levity of our exchanges is quickly explained. These were the same two blond boys who, attired in tightly buttoned blazers, had stood behind the reception desk of the house in Berkeley Square. Accordingly, they knew me as submissive. I was the meek man who had been delivered to them by Bridget. I had checked in my night-bag with them as ordered. I had sat up on the balcony where I was told to sit, I had been led away by Maxie. In the psychology of their trade, they had me down as a toothless underdog. This gave me, as I now believe, the element of surprise that I required.

The leading boy was a good four feet ahead of me as we entered the living room, and he was hampered by my rucksack. As a naturally cocky fellow, he was light on his feet, not braced. One thump was enough to send him flying. The boy behind me was at that moment engaged in closing the front door. In Berkeley Square I had observed a surly reluctance in his attitude. It was evident now. Perhaps he knew that, in gulling my shoulder-bag from me, he had landed first prize. A well-aimed kick to the groin put an end to his complacency.

My line of access to Philip now stood wide open. I was across the room in one bound and my hands were instantly round his throat, wrestling with the baby-fat of his chins. What larger intention I had in mind I don’t know, and didn’t then. I recall the oatmeal-coloured brickwork of the fireplace behind him and thinking I might smash his handsome white head against it. He was wearing a grey suit, white cotton shirt and an expensive necktie of watered red silk which I attempted, unsuccessfully, to use as a garrotte.

Could I have strangled him? I certainly had the madness on me, as my dear late father would have said, plus the power to match, until one of the boys switched it off with whatever he carried: a blackjack or similar, I never saw it. Three months on, I’ve still got, amid other abrasions, the pullet’s-egg on the rear left side of my head. When I came round, Philip was standing safe and sound in front of the same brickwork fireplace, next to a venerable grey-haired lady in tweeds and sensible shoes who even before she had said, ‘Brian dear,’ could never have been anyone but Sam. She was all the lady tennis umpires you ever saw sitting on the top of their ladders at Wimbledon, advising players six feet beneath them to watch their manners.

Such were my first impressions on waking. I was puzzled by the absence of the two blond boys at first, until by turning my head as far as it would go I located them through the open doorway, seated across the passage from us, watching television without the sound on. It was Test Match time and the Australians were losing. Turning it in the other direction, I was surprised to register the presence of a recording angel in the room, for as such I construed him, male. He was ensconced at a desk in the bay window, which I briefly confused with the bay window in our bedroom at Mr Hakim’s. Sunlight was streaming over him, making him divine, despite his bald patch and spectacles. His desk was Uncle Henry’s campaign table, with crossed legs you could fold up before hurrying to your next battle. Like Philip he wore a suit, but a shiny one like a chauffeur’s, and he was crouching over his table in the manner of a Dickensian clerk afraid of being caught slacking.

‘And that’s Arthur from the Home Office, Brian dear,’ Sam explained, observing my interest. ‘Arthur’s kindly agreed to sort things out for us at the official level, haven’t you, Arthur?’

Arthur didn’t presume to answer.

‘Arthur has
executive powers
,’ Philip elaborated. ‘Sam and I haven’t. We’re purely advisory.’

‘And Hannah is in excellent hands, in case you feared otherwise,’ Sam went on, in her genial tone. ‘She’ll be in touch with you just as soon as she gets home.’

Home?
What home? Mr Hakim’s? The nurses’ hostel? Norfolk Mansions? Home as a concept understandably confused me.

‘We’re very afraid Hannah overstepped the terms of her visa,’ Sam explained. ‘That’s why Arthur’s here. To confirm everything, aren’t you, Arthur? Hannah came to England to
nurse
, and pass her exams, bless her. And be useful to her country when she gets back. She didn’t come here to take part in political agitation. That was never in the job description, was it, Arthur?’

‘No way,’ Arthur confirmed, speaking in a nasal twang from his eyrie in the window bay. ‘It was “nurse only”. If she wants to agitate, do it at home.’

‘Hannah
marched
, Salvo,’ Sam explained, in a commiserating tone. ‘More than once, I’m afraid.’

‘Marched where?’ I asked, through the fog swirling in my head.

‘Against Iraq, which wasn’t her business at all.’

‘Straight infringement,’ Arthur observed. ‘
And
Darfur, which wasn’t her business either.’

‘That’s in addition to her trip to Birmingham, which was
totally
political,’ said Sam. ‘And now
this
, I’m afraid.’

‘This?’ I asked, aloud or silently, I’m not sure which.

‘Restricted materials,’ Arthur pronounced with satisfaction. ‘Acquiring, possessing and passing to a foreign power. She’s in as deep as she can get. Added to which, the recipient of said material was involved with non-governmental militias, which makes it straight terrorism.’

I was slowly recovering my faculties. ‘She was trying to stop an illegal war,’ I shouted, to my surprise. ‘We both were!’

Philip, ever the diplomat, stepped in to defuse the situation.

‘The point is neither here nor there, surely,’ he gently remonstrated. ‘London can’t be a haven for foreign activists. Least of all when they’re over here on a nursing visa. Hannah fully accepted that, irrespective of the legal niceties, didn’t she, Sam?’

‘Once we’d explained the problem to her, she was fully cooperative,’ Sam agreed. ‘She was sad, naturally. But she didn’t ask for a lawyer, she wasn’t tiresome or obstreperous, and she signed her waivers without a murmur. That was because she knew what was best for her. And for you. And for her small boy, of course, her pride and joy.
Noah
. They choose such sweet names, don’t they?’

‘I demand to talk to her,’ I said, or perhaps shouted.

‘Yes, well, I’m afraid there are no facilities for talking just now. She’s in a holding centre, and you’re where you are. And in just a few hours from now she’ll be making an entirely voluntary exit to Kampala where she’ll be reunited with Noah. What could be nicer than that?’

It took Philip to point the moral:

‘She went quietly, Salvo,’ he said, looking down at me. ‘We expect you to do the same.’ He had put on his soft-as-butter voice, but with a dash of official seasoning. ‘It has been brought to the attention of the Home Office—by way of Arthur here, who has been extraordinarily helpful in his researches, thank you, Arthur—that the man who calls himself Bruno Salvador is not now and never has been a British subject, loyal or otherwise. In short, he doesn’t exist.’

He allowed a two-second silence in memory of the dead.

‘Your UK citizenship, with all its rights and privileges, was obtained by subterfuge. Your birth certificate was a lie. You were not a foundling, and your father was never a passing seafarer with a spare baby to get rid of—well, was he?’ he went on, appealing to my good sense. ‘We can only assume therefore that the British Consul in Kampala at the time of your birth succumbed to the blandishments of the Holy See. The fact that you were not technically of an age to participate in the deception is not, I am afraid, an excuse in law. Am I right, Arthur?’

‘What law?’ Arthur rejoined in a sprightly tone from the bay. ‘There isn’t one. Not for him.’

‘The hard truth is, Salvo, that as you very well know, or
should
know, you have been an illegal immigrant ever since your ten-year-old feet touched down on Southampton dockside, and in all that time you never once applied for asylum. You simply carried on as if you were one of
us
.’

And here by rights my fury, which was coming and going pretty much of its own accord, should have jerked me out of my armchair for another go at his neck or some other part of his flexible, ultra-reasonable anatomy. But when you are trussed up like a fucking monkey, to use Haj’s term, with your hands and ankles taped together, and the whole of you is strapped into a kitchen chair, opportunities for body language are curtailed, as Philip was the first to appreciate, for why else would he be risking an airy smile, and assuring me there is a silver lining even to the darkest cloud?

‘The long and the short of it is that the Congolese, we are reliably informed, will—in principle, allowing time obviously for administrative necessities’—indulgent smile—‘and a word in the right ear from our Ambassador in Kinshasa, and a birth certificate more representative of the historical realities, shall we say?’—even more indulgent smile—‘be delighted to welcome you as their citizen. Welcome you
back
, I should say, since technically you never left them. Only if that makes sense to you, of course. It’s your life we’re talking about, not ours. But it certainly makes admirable sense to
us
, doesn’t it, Arthur?’

‘Go where he likes, far as we’re concerned,’ Arthur confirms from the bay. ‘Long as it’s not here.’

Sam in her motherly way agrees wholeheartedly with both Philip and Arthur. ‘It makes perfect sense to Hannah too, Salvo. And why should we hog all their best nurses, anyway? They’re desperate. And frankly, Salvo, when you think about it, what has England without Hannah got to offer you? You’re not thinking of going back to Penelope, I trust?’

Taking these matters as settled, Philip helps himself to my shoulder-bag, unzips it, and counts the notepads and tapes onto the table one by one.

‘
Marvellous
,’ he declares, like a conjuror delighted with his trick. ‘And Hannah’s two make the full seven. Unless of course you ran off duplicates. Then there
really
wouldn’t be any saving of you. Did you?’

I’m suddenly so drowsy that he can’t hear my reply, so he makes me repeat it, I suppose for the microphones.

‘Wouldn’t have been secure,’ I say again, and try to go back to sleep.

‘And that was your only copy of
J’Accuse!
I take it? The one you gave to Thorne?’ he goes on, in the tone of somebody wrapping up the final details.

I must have nodded.

‘Good. Then all we have left to do is smash your hard disk,’ he says with relief, and beckons to the blond boys in the doorway, who untie me but leave me on the ground while I get my circulation back.

‘So how’s Maxie doing these days?’ I enquire, hoping to bring a blush to his creaseless cheeks.

‘Yes, well, poor Maxie, alas for him!’ Philip sighs, as if reminded of an old friend. ‘As good as they come in that business, they tell me, but oh so headstrong. And silly of him to have jumped the gun.’