Christian Dowd - A Vacuum of Reason - Part One-1

1 A Vacuum of Reason Christian Dowd
A VACUUM OF REASON
THIS SCEPTRED CITY: BOOK 1
A Thriller
Christian Dowd
94,000 words
christiandowd@yahoo.co.uk
07947 358 133
22 Stafford Mansions
138 Ferndale Road
London, SW4 7SA

PROLOGUE
TWENTY YEARS AGO

In a far off land, where the empty desert meets the bristling waves of the ocean, the last
explosion settled and a meteor streaked a path across the moonlit sky. It burned out, dissolved
into the shape of a spiralling parachute and slowly fell to earth.
The small figure at the base of the parachute landed neatly on what was left of the roof of a
two-storey villa. Private Deirdre Ogden gathered up the sheets, folded them neatly inside her
backpack and picked up a piece of the tiling next to the missile-shaped hole in the roof. She
activated the microphone taped to her cheek and reported in.
'Ogden on-site. Requesting...' Ogden assessed the tile with size of the hole in the roof, '...two
hundred and sixty corrugated roofing plates of category 43 size 7A.' Peering into the crevice,
she hopped through onto the broken staircase landing below.
'Thirty planks of hard pine timber plus carpentry.' Ogden looked around at the shattered walls
of the first floor. 'Twenty-five square metres of plasterboard and five quarts each of magnolia
white, Oxford blue, both matte finish and...' she winced at the colour scheme on the
splintered banisters, '...pixie green.'
She hurdled the banister, bypassing the gape left by the destroyed stairs, and landed in a
perfect crouch waiting for any sound to emerge. Satisfied she was alone she crept towards the
main living area of the ground floor and nudged the door open. And her heart sank.
'Need polythene transportation for eight, nine...' Ogden had to revolve to count all the limbs,
'...make it ten human masses and full sanitation. Repeat full sanitation.' She switched off the
comms while she caught her breath.

Across the large room was a devastation of furniture and bodies. Ogden's stomach turned
with the services' insistence on detonating first and then asking questions later. Taking out an
experimental touch tablet device she accessed a home furnishings catalogue and started to
make a list.
Suddenly Ogden heard a noise outside and instantly dropped to the floor, her hand slowly
reaching behind her to a sponge loofah tucked into her belt. On the far side of the room a
broken set of patio doors swung onto the beach front. Ogden started to crawl towards them.
When she got to the open doors she poked her head toward the soft sound, and it was only in
the clear air she realised it was that of sincere sobbing.
A man was kneeled over a prone body, cradling it to his chest. As she got closer, she
recognised the military insignia on his tunic and put the loofah away.
The man turned around, still holding the mangled body of his comrade, unperturbed to see
Ogden three feet away. Ogden had been trained that in these moments empathy was
something best saved for later.
'You should go. There are people to take of this.'
The man stood up to his full height and it was only then Ogden realised how tall he was, his
midriff about level with her shoulder.'
'This was my first mission.'
'What a coincidence.' Ogden was surprised to find she had said it out loud.
'Really?'
'Yeah. Somehow I hope it doesn't get any better.'
'Not for me. I'm done.'
With that, the man lay down his rifle and ammunition and walked away in the direction of the
desert.
Ogden watched him go until his black clothing disappeared into the night. She switched her
comms back on and turned back to face the villa.
'Requesting...' Ogden angled her head to get a better view, '…a set of laminate patio doors,
eight foot by twelve, pattern 37, subcategory C.'

PART ONE
PRESENT DAY
MONDAY
The eagle, flying high above London, had to swoop a bit lower in order to get a decent view
through the cloud cover that November morning. Clouds not being the purest in this part of
the country, a sensible eagle also held its breath as it did so.
Once through the dewy smog, the eagle narrowed its profile, causing her to fall precipitously,
only re-opening wings a few seconds before land neared. Always on the lookout for a pointy
structure in a quiet area with which to test her innate sense of balance, she floated perfectly
onto the jutting eave at the end of a nondescript and very clean terraced street and set about
casting a supreme silhouette against the rising sun.
The orange and blue shadows of dawn escorted a government-suited figure towards trouble.
She worked as an aide to one of those internal bureaucratic entities forever morphing its
name so as to maintain its anonymity; a job for life if perhaps only a job title for the week.
Her entrusted role that morning was to hand-deliver the document within a plastic binder
under her arm to the powers that be. Entry to the deserted terraced street was through a large
iron gate marshalled by policemen and -women on either side. Pausing at the gate, she
retrieved a security pass from amongst a selection in her handbag and held it out for
inspection.
Once approved, her presence was ushered through the stern gate whereupon she skipped her
formal shoes across the cobbled road and onto the opposite pavement.
A glimpse of movement from up above caught her attention and caused her to stop dead in
her tracks. Keen urban ornithologist that she was, she knew exactly what she had seen and
could scarcely believe it. A golden eagle in the heart of London no less, perched handsome
and carefree. Her social media instincts came alive and she dropped the binder on the tarmac
as she scrambled for her mobile phone, excited to activate the camera app and hold it aloft.
Yellow and black eyes seared through the glass at the government aide, but only for an
instant as the eagle pushed talons, lifted wings and was gone.
Resigned that such rare moments would always be fleeting, the aide picked up the binder,
wiped down the plastic dust jacket using the sleeve of her coat, and completed the journey
along the very clean and shiny pavement and up to the very clean and shiny front door.
Number Ten, Downing Street, perhaps the most famous front door in the world. The
residence of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it was the gateway to
the nation’s most important inhabitants and their secrets and, like the many rooms in the
building itself had never, ever been locked.
There are simply too many important things at Number Ten, and too much absent-
mindedness when it came to keyrings, to risk things been accidentally locked away. As such
it contains no working locks and instead, the building was scattered with uniformed police
officers whose only duty was to stand outside doors checking credentials. A particularly burly
example of these currently stood outside the front door of Number Ten. The government aide
displayed her pass, now slung around her neck, and was allowed inside.
The porch of Number Ten was not dissimilar to that of any family-sized rustic household,
with a rudimentary patterned rug at the entrance and carriage clock mounted on a side-stand.
It was also very dissimilar with the large imposing x-ray device blocking the visitor’s path.
The aide checked her handbag and digital devices with another security officer, walked
through the scanning machine and waited for the green light to confirm she was carrying
nothing malevolent. With now two hands to clutch the precious binder to her chest, she
progressed further into the building.
Levels of security within Number Ten were measured in terms of yardage from the front
door. General messengers and deliverymen were assigned one yard of access, but which
increased in line with importance. The most prized security class, usually issued only to
senior civil servants and ministers, was the “thirty-yard” designation, sufficient radius to
access any part of the huge house.
Twenty-five yards into the building there stood two oaken police officers who had already
allowed in everyone who was ever going to enter the room they guarded that morning. The
government aide appeared from an adjoining corridor, drawing their attention. Her pass
examined once more, she handed the binder to one of the policemen. Wordlessly, it was
taken, and the aide swivelled and turned away.
After checking that the file contained nothing more explosive than paper and binding string,
the policeman nodded to his colleague who knocked on the door. A few seconds passed
before it was opened into a crack no greater than the width of a face, a face which turned out
to be that of the Cabinet Secretary.
‘Hmm?’ Exchanges between bureaucrats and those that protected them were mostly
monosyllabic and often did not contain actual words. The policeman squeezed the binder
through the gap.

‘Ah.’ The Cabinet Secretary lowered his gaze along with the octave of his ‘Ah’ when he saw
the file was marked for the Prime Minister's eyes only. He ‘Uh-huh’-ed a thank you and
closed the door.
The room he spun back into consisted of an inexplicably green carpet and sixteen suited men
and women seated around simply one of the most oval tables that had ever been built. Sitting
at the centre of one side of the table was the Prime Minister and he was in a sparkling mood,
for he was doing what Prime Ministers enjoy the most. He was spending money.
‘Five. Billion. Pounds. A billion pounds for every year in office, which I think is suitably
poetic. So, a show of hands, please?’ The Prime Minister smiled heartily as all hands at the
table rose instantly.
‘Excellent. The ayes have it. Five billion pounds to spend on anything we want, because we
are so great.’
The Home Secretary was first to realise the pause was pregnant.
‘Well it’s really you that have shown greatness, sir. We have simply skidded along on the
coattails of your sumptuous leadership.’
Pathetic, thought the Prime Minister, but in the best possible way. ‘Now, any ideas on how
we spend this?’
‘I was thinking perhaps an enormous public library at your alma mater.’ It was the Minister
for Education chipping in, with extra treacle.

The Prime Minister sat back, chest broadened with pomp and circumstance. ‘A library! Oh
yes, I do like the sound of that.’
Unnoticed for the past few minutes, the Cabinet Secretary had gradually crept his way from
the door to the shoulder of the Prime Minister. Head down in deference to his unelected
status, he bent forward and whispered the consummate civil service whisper into his ear. He
set the binder down and gave it an ominous tap of his forefinger.
‘What? What does that mean?’ The Prime Minister positioned the binder in front of him,
opened it and started to read from the title page, mumbling the odd keyword aloud.
‘Mmm. Economic. Mmm. Reassessment. Mmm. Treasury.’
‘I say, is this one of yours Chancellor, old chap?’
The Prime Minister plotted a gaze which ended directly in front of him, at the face of the
Chancellor of Exchequer, a face which was fast beginning to drain of all blood.
LAST WEEK
An odd question to be overheard at a dinner party might be. ‘What is your favourite
spreadsheet application?’ Odder still might be the follow-up question, ‘And what might be
your favourite spreadsheet file?’
The Chancellor of Exchequer, overseer of the purse strings of the United Kingdom, had
detailed answers to both these questions. Despite, or perhaps because of, his economics
education he was not that comfortable with numbers. As a result, his first year in the job had
been tough, with a mangled spreadsheet culminating in a disastrous first budget speech.
Mulling this with a colleague over a large whiskey in a Mayfair club bar, it had been
suggested he share his spreadsheet-phobia with the civil service IT department. Sure enough,
a few months later someone had dropped by his desk to install the spreadsheet application he
had in front of him now, and it hadn’t taken long for the Chancellor to fall head over heels in
love with it. All the fiendish formulas had gone, and the buttons and short-cut keys he was
petrified of accidentally pressing were removed from his view.
There was only one file he ever opened inside his new personalised spreadsheet application,
the self-explanatory titled “Snapshot of the UK Economy”. Because of its size, it always took
a couple of moments to load. For the Chancellor this was time well worth waiting, for the
contents always gave him joy.
On a typical nothing-to-do kind of day, the Chancellor liked to sit back in the luxurious
leather chair of his magnificent corner office at the UK Treasury and simply stare at the
numbers.
It truly was a thing of beauty. Data representing expenditures and receipts for every
government entity across the country populated countless tabs the Chancellor could flick
through at will. Alongside every table, once frightening numbers were deciphered into
colourful charts in every format imaginable for his visual gratification. Bar charts, pie charts,
scatter graphs, the Chancellor loved them all.

Six-digit borough-level numbers were collated into eight-digit regional numbers. The
regional numbers were in turn summed into ten-digit divisional numbers and then finally, in
the front tab, emboldened in a bordered table, was a set of twelve-digit figures that told the
up-to-the-minute tale of the UK economy. And the tale was good. The black numbers were
comfortably bigger than the red ones and all the charts were upwardly sloping.
His was disturbed by a soft ping as a small speech bubble popped up in the bottom right hand
corner of his computer screen. It contained one of those delightful messages that always gave
the Chancellor a tingle somewhere a distance too close his loins than it really ought to.
‘A new version of your spreadsheet software is ready to be installed. Please click here to
begin.’
The Chancellor could not have clicked here any quicker. A status bar popped up in the centre
of his screen and quickly filled up with a lovely green line confirming that one hundred
percent of the download had completed. A sequence of further speech bubbles followed.
‘Would you like to restart your application to reflect the changes?’
‘Do you know, I think I rather might.’ Click. Quite often the Chancellor liked to talk to his
favourite things.
‘Would you care to save your current spreadsheet and reload it upon restart?’
‘What a considerate thought. Thank you.’ Click.

The application closed. A small window appeared and flashed up meaningless file locations
at what must have been a rate of hundreds per second. In turn this window closed and a flash
screen signalled the restart.
After the flash screen came a blank spreadsheet. The cursor transformed to a spinning circle
for a few more seconds before the “Snapshot Of The UK Economy” spreadsheet reloaded.
FIVE YEARS AGO
Jai Choudhry finished removing the last vestige of spreadsheet software from his desktop
computer and started to unpack the abacus.
The abacus had been delivered from the most reputable manufacturer he could afford. It had
been late to arrive as his name had been misspelt on the package, but he was used to that by
now.
Once this was done, he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a chunky scientific calculator
and, using the abacus, began to test its long division. Choudhry was a mathematical and
computational genius but he had vowed that very afternoon never to trust a spreadsheet again.
He was sitting in the newly fitted out basement of the building which housed the IT
department of the civil service. He didn't know why IT departments were always fitted out in
basements.
The initial request had been innocuous enough. To design and build a spreadsheet application
that an infant could understand. It had originated from Her Majesty’s Treasury which was a
little disconcerting as their HR department should really know better than to employ infants.
He guessed the intended user was one who had been voted rather than interviewed into their
position, perhaps hindered by an economics qualification of some sort.
He had pleasantly coded away for a few weeks but, just as he was finishing up and ready to
release, he received a further request to introduce an optional “enhancement” into the
application. Choudhry did not know the requester but they played fast and loose with the
definition of the word “enhancement”. He had been asked to change how the binary
arithmetic would be evaluated. One plus one would now be equal to something a bit more
than two, and one minus one would now be a little less than zero. The differences were small
enough as to go unnoticed except for the processing of very large numbers.
When at last he had thoroughly tested that the software worked as intended, which was to say
it didn’t work as intended, Choudhry delivered to his client at the Treasury. He had included
precise, unambiguous instructions as to how the “enhancement” might be de-activated and all
calculations returned to their correct state. Choudhry had decided this would be via run-of-
the-mill software update.
LAST WEEK
‘Hello? Hello!! Is that IT support? There is something very wrong with the latest update of
my spreadsheet application.’
MONDAY
The Prime Minister was leafing through the Treasury report, giving each page a couple of
seconds skim-read.
‘This looks a lot like those lovely economic reports that you are always quoting in the
Commons and on television, Chancellor.’
The oval-ness of the table was drawing the eyes of the entire cabinet to the Chancellor’s ever
more pallid face.
‘It’s not quite the same, though. The numbers are all red, and these charts, there is something
odd about them too. Are they upside-down or something?’
With not enough blood left in his head to power the muscles in his mouth, the Chancellor
could only sit in silence.
‘Are you alright, Chancellor? Chancellor??’
With an extreme effort, the Chancellor squeezed his chest and forced just as many blood
vessels into his brain that were required to squeak a single admission.
‘I rather think I have confession to make.’
Life was typically very dull for security staff within Downing Street. An iron rule of thumb
was the deeper one was within the building and the higher the standing of the person they
were tasked to protect, the duller the day would be.
The two police officers outside the cabinet office door looked at each other when shouts,
screams and a thud came from the room within.

‘What do we do, Sarge?’ The younger officer was looking to his senior colleague, who was
trying to remember protocol for disturbances coming from the people they were paid to
protect.
‘Close your eyes, son. And cover your ears.’
‘One. Hundred. Billion. Pounds. Where. Has. It. Gone?’
The Prime Minister was not receiving a coherent answer from his Chancellor so had taken to
repeating the question in staccato. At last the Chancellor’s cold sweat broke the vegetative
state he had slipped into.
‘Well, you see Prime Minister.’
‘Yes...?’
‘It was never really there in the first place.’
Perhaps it was the Chancellor’s way of dealing with the huge stress. Perhaps it was the onset
of insanity. Whatever it was the Chancellor inexplicably started to giggle. Both figuratively
and literally, the nicest way to describe what happened next was that the chancellor took the
consequences of his incompetence on the chin.
The government aide was glad to be out of the building. She could not deny being permitted
so deep inside Number Ten hadn’t been a rush, but it had been an intimidating rush, one that
should only be experienced in short intervals. She would be glad to be back to the normality
of the day job. Remembering official trips allowed her to expense a taxi and though the
distance to her office was short, she felt the morning's work was worth a treat. She looked left
and saw a black Hackney cab with its yellow light on. She hardy needed to raise her hand
before it pulled up for her to step inside.
Slumping in her seat the aide reached for the seat belt and her handbag slipped from her arm.
‘Where to then, miss?’ The aide looked up, met the eyes of the taxi driver and felt a
mesmerising sense of tranquillity.
‘So how, exactly...’ The Prime Minister rose sharply from his seat as he bellowed, placing
bloodied fists on the desk in front him of in that classic presidential gorilla pose.
‘…do we cover this up?’
He looked over the supplicants he had groomed during his political career and despaired at
the courage he had expressly recruited them for not possessing.
‘You mean the financial back hole, or you punching the Chancellor?’ It was a fair question
from the Home Secretary, who was uncomfortably sitting next to the overturned chair no one
had bothered to correct after the Chancellor had been stretchered out.
‘I-mean-the-financial-bloody-black-hole!!’
‘We’re… we’re going to cover it up?’
‘And what would you suggest we do?’ The question was directed to all members of the
cabinet who ruminated on this for a moment. A cover-up was the default action in these
events. If the cover-up succeeded, then great; if it failed, they were simply back to where they
sat now.
To the Cabinet Secretary, unbearably uncomfortable meetings came and went over the years,
often along with a Prime Minister or two. To him, prolonged periods of silence only ever
meant one thing.
‘Right then. Onto the next item on the agenda…’
‘The agenda is closed.’
Upon the Prime Minister’s declaration, the Cabinet Secretary limbs whirred into life. He rose,
made his way to the entrance and tapped lightly against the polished, unlocked wooden door.
When it was opened the ministers trickled out one-by-one, leaving the Prime Minister alone,
head spinning with a hundred billion thoughts.
He leant elbows forward onto the vast reach of now empty oval-ness of the table with his
bruised hands massaging his neck, pondering what had just occurred. After a deep sigh he
picked up the offending binder and threw it into the bin next to his chair. Finally, he buzzed
the intercom which connected him to his private secretary, seated in the ante-office outside.
‘Yes sir?’ The voice was as clipped and as eager as always.
‘Make printouts of every departmental budget and ensure each minister gets their respective
copy.’
‘Right away, sir.’
‘And those pens I like for crossing things out?’

‘The fat red ones, sir.’
‘Yes, that’s correct. Make sure everyone gets one of those too, would you.’
‘Of course, sir.’ Another moment passed.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes, of course, sir.’
‘It’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Move it to next week, would you?’
The last person to leave the meeting was also only one not to have uttered a word during it.
The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, otherwise known as the Foreign Secretary, kept
his head down when the unlocked door of Number Ten was opened for him to exit the
building.
He looked next door toward Number Eleven, the residence of the Chancellor, to see a nurse
enter carrying what looked to be a bag of frozen peas. Ahead of him he noticed the Ministers
for Health and Defence had stopped before the ever-present press to see if they could add
something to their public personas. He held a staving hand to the two reporters that followed
him over the road fishing for sound-bites on some frivolous drama, and slid smoothly through
door of the black Jaguar being held open for him.

After closing the door, the chauffeur settled behind the wheel and pulled away toward the
police barriers, before asking the question he always asked after these sessions.
‘Good cabinet meeting, sir?’
‘Excellent cabinet meeting, thank you, Swain. Unequivocally excellent.’
THREE HOURS AGO
Perfectly black shoes stepped one in front of the other along the sub-basement corridor of a
nameless civil service building. Perfectly black did not mean shiny, in fact that would be
quite the opposite. Perfectly black meant light did not reflect in any way, so if you looked
directly at these shoes, nothing would reach your retina and would have same effect on your
eyes as being blind. Above the shoes were trousers that had only ever had one crease, and
above the trousers were a shirt, waistcoat and jacket that had never been creased at all. On top
of it all was the face of the Foreign Secretary, where creases did not dare to tread.
The windowless corridor finished with a guard alongside the circular steel door to a vault.
The guard took a card from the Foreign Secretary and held a barcode scanner above it. After
a confirmatory beep from the scanner the guard handed the card back and took a large key
from a chain on his belt. The Foreign Secretary took a similar key from his waistcoat and
both men took up position either side of the large circular barrier. They inserted their
respective keys into symmetrical holes in the wall and, after the guard had counted down
from three, turned them clockwise in concert.

There was a grisly grind of metal from somewhere behind the wall before the door swung
open. Inside was a spotless chamber, empty save for a large device, about the size of two
washing machines, at its centre. This was the most important device ever installed within the
civil service, and also the most dangerous.
The Foreign Secretary opened the folder slotted under his arm and took out a sheaf of papers.
He stepped into the chamber and up to the photocopier where he muttered to himself.
‘Now, how the bloody hell does this thing work again…’
There was once a clever economics advisor and a not so clever economics minister who
engaged in a jocular discussion one day about how to revitalise a recessionary United
Kingdom. A passing suggestion about enrolling a group of public workers to dig holes and
then paying a similar set to fill them back in again was taken rather too seriously by the
minister, and a test policy was immediately put into place inside an unlucky borough of
London.
By way of questionable data and very annoying coincidence it was noted that most economic
indicators in this borough picked up in the year after the programme was instigated, and so a
temporary policy based upon a light-hearted hypothesis became permanent and city-wide.
For a few hours a day, for a few days a week, an army of workers took ungainful employment
from drilling up tarmac and concrete from an arbitrary section of road before transporting the
residue into a similar crater nearby. It was a hideous destruction of time and a waste of talent,
but a wonderful example of state-run satire.

Unsurpassed in the art of opening and closing subterranean spaces was Perry Simpson who,
resplendent in workman’s overalls which gathered the morning gloom and reflected it back in
fluorescent orange and yellow, climbed down from the truck he had just parked on
Kennington Road and opened its rear doors.
The first task of the morning was to replace the red and white traffic cones that had
disappeared since the previous evening. It would be a later, vital, task being to retrieve most
of them from their precarious positions in the grounds of the nearby university halls. It was
autumn and the nearby university was in the throes of welcoming and wooing freshmen, so
traffic cone depletion had been high. This was real nuisance for Perry, considering the
extreme cost of such sophisticated equipment.
With a stack of twelve cones on a trolley, he placed a Project Nightingale issued visor over
his eyes and switched it on. Seconds passed as the GPS tracker inside the visor grabbed an
overhead satellite and the virtual display booted up. Within a minute his vision was presented
with a three-dimensional overlay of the section of road around him including precise
directions as to where to place the day’s cones.
The margin of error for these placements, downloaded from servers beneath the Office of
National Statistics, was only millimetres and so it took Perry nearly an hour to satisfy the
electronic schematics. Once complete, flashes of green ticks inside the visor indicated that the
array of cones were positioned correctly and ready to start collecting data.
#
Across the waking city, similar agents of Project Nightingale were laying out their designated
sections of traffic cones, one-by-one signalling back their readiness to a supercomputer in the
basement of the ONS in Millbank. The supercomputer sent another trillion electrons across
its silicon skeleton, each sub-atomic charge adding infinitesimally to a cumulative,
smouldering din.
Around mid-morning, confirmation that the vast intricate network of traffic cones was in
place was received at Millbank and a secure message was broadcast at the speed of light,
commanding each one to begin collating that day’s statistics.
Sensors inside a million traffic cones covering every high street, side-street and alleyway in
London came alive simultaneously. For the next fifteen hours if a car, bus or van moved
within the metropolis, its position and velocity was detected, recorded, encrypted, and
eventually sent back to base by one or more innocent looking red and white conical cases of
grubby plastic.
The National Office for Statistics conducts surveys and gathers data ranging from the weight
of a healthy new-born baby to the number of lilies used at the typical church funeral.
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, a steady torrent of measurements, percentages
and ticked boxes floods into the office’s main building in Whitehall for dissemination by
clerks unbeknownst of their higher purpose. Across four floors of stipends, computer keys tap
out a stark requiem as they process their way through hours of endless ennui.
Once baked to hard-drives and magnetic tape, the data is steamed below the ground floor to
the basement beneath. This is where the job of coddling sense from the raw ingredients of the
surveys takes place. It is here that the numbers aren’t so much crunched as blended and
creamed into shape until they boiled into something that could be consumed by a government
decision-maker. It is because of the continual culinary terms used in conjunction with the
basement, and because it is often where the government’s books are cooked, that the level is
referred to as “The Kitchen” and the analysts that work within as chefs.
The government official under whose jurisdiction the Kitchen falls was Christopher Oakley.
He did not himself have any gift for numbers or logical thought, but he sported a minted old
school tie, which in the antiquated circles he preferred to move, was more than enough.
Trips down to the Kitchen from Oakley’s office on the fourth floor, were a bit of a bother.
His doctor had recently instructed him to take the stairs whenever possible if he wished to
continue bombarding his heart with blood laced with brandy and crème-brulé, and so down a
lonely staircase he trudged.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Oakley deftly mopped his brow with a pristine
handkerchief from his breast pocket and pushed open the heavy fire-door that granted entry to
the main room of the basement.
Oakley always felt a little nervous walking through the Kitchen.
The first thing that the visitor to the Kitchen notices is the wind. The air-conditioning fought
a belligerent battle against the heat thrown out by the huge computer banks that defined the
aisles of the front part of the room.

Oakley took a stopwatch from his trouser pocket and pressed a button to start it. Oakley had
secretly commissioned a study of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the equipment in
the Kitchen. Oakley’s doctor had also advised him to never spend more than ten minutes at a
time in the Kitchen, and to surreptitiously obtain legal waivers from all the chefs that did.
Once through walls of data monoliths, the room opened into arrays of desks stacked with
computer monitors and shelves of obscure books as thick as the shelves were high. Amongst
the desks drifted the analysts – or chefs as they had become to be known. Greying remains of
bygone hairstyles floated above the rolled-up sleeves and crusty armpits of shirts that were
finished off with furry ties.
Oakley went unnoticed as he worked his way through the Kitchen. He noticed a chef
violently scouring a sheet of paper with his pen. A swearword, a scrunch, and a ball of
crumpled paper arced over a waste-paper basket to rest in a field of others next to Oakley,
like the residue of a very bad snowball fight.
As Oakley paused to make way for the projectile, he noticed an overloaded electrical outlet
next to the collection of paper balls. A series of sparks were issuing intermittently, partially
igniting one of them, before it was being extinguished by a cold draught of air.
The room really was a dearth of hand-eye coordination. It was as if the brains present were
simply too busy to work out individual limb movements and just guessed instead.
Oakley reached the desk of the chief statistician. The nameplate above the computer monitor
on his desk said ‘Cheif Statistician’, in accordance with the Kitchen wit. The desk itself was
devoid of its owner, but there was a Post-It note on the computer screen that informed, “Gone
for a quick simmer, back in 5 minutes.”
Oakley checked his stopwatch to see he had plenty of time. He decided he could afford to
burn a few minutes so he sat at the Chef Statistician’s desk and played with the abacus that
took a prominent place.
‘Mr. Oakley! What brings you down here?’ Jai Choudhry was surprised to have visitors from
above ground. When it was clear that Oakley wasn’t going to give his seat back, Choudhry
wheeled a chair from a nearby empty desk.
‘Listen, Choudhry old boy. I’m afraid I’m going to have to push you on the Nightingale
project. Circumstances have changed – are changing – and we need the results yesterday.
When do you think you could wrap it all up?’
Choudhry frowned.
‘Wrap it all up?' He checked some figures on his computer screen 'We’re only ninety-nine-
point-two percent of the way through. Making a wrap is simply not on the menu.’
‘Ninety-nine-point-two percent? Well that sounds perfectly adequate to me.’
Choudhry shook his head, frustrated with the layperson’s propensity for linear-thinking.
‘It’s not entirely that simple, Mr. Oakley. The significance of each data component increases
geometrically as we accumulate them. Information that has yet to come in could drastically
alter the final conclusion. Think of taking a soufflé out of the oven a minute too early. The
whole thing could collapse into a useless flan.’
Oakley wasn't itching to get into a discussion over this. For a start he was absolutely
incapable of replying to what Choudhry had just said. Secondly, and moreover, the situation
was inelastic. Project Nightingale had to be called in by the end of the day. That decree had
come from a place where communication was strictly unilateral and uncontested.
‘Look, this has come from the very top and there is absolutely no room for manoeuvre. If we
stick the lid on Nightingale now, can you deliver a working model?’
‘Well of course. All we have to do is push the button to curry the batch in situ and the
numbers should be digested within a day or two. It’s just that they may not be altogether…
accurate.’
Oakley made a decision that, in the scheme of things, wasn’t his to make.
‘Okay, fine. Where’s the button? I want it pushed now!’ Oakley glowered at Choudhry. He
flicked a look at his stopwatch. Nine minutes gone.
‘Just get things moving or we’re all toast.’
With little regard for the tumult of relentless traffic, Perry Simpson stepped out into the
centre of Kennington Road and surveyed the morning’s un-productivity with reasonable
satisfaction. The flatness of the tarmac would not have fooled even the most inebriated of
spirit levels, and a major ridge remained around the perimeter of the work but it would
suffice. In all pointless likelihood Perry guessed it would be needlessly dug up again by the
end of the month anyway.
He slung the pneumatic drill over his shoulder and began to traverse the remaining half of the
road to his truck, cursing the tool’s weight. He recalled with nostalgia the pickaxe he wielded
when he first undertook Project Nightingale all those years ago. The means to dig holes had
changed over time, mostly for the better, but they had always got heavier.
It was just gone noon and so an appropriate time for Perry to retrieve his lunchbox and tea
flask from the cabin of the truck before folding his aching bones beneath him on the side of
the road for a midday break.
Of course, not all the workmen tasked with mutilating the roads were associated with Project
Nightingale. Most on Kennington Road were simply tools of the original aberration of
economic theory and considered Perry a cordial but curious colleague, particularly the
manner in which he preferred to sit alone on the kerb with his lunch and stare out into the
street in a munching daydream.
To Perry, the roads and the carriages they supported were a cosmos, interconnected at the
tiniest and grandest scale. Whatever reason a vehicle deemed necessary to stop or start would
be passed onto the next, undulating into a wave that may dissipate instantly or resonate with
other staccato movement and propagate into something far-reaching.
Such a confluence had caught his eye at the traffic lights not twenty yards to his left. A boy
and a girl that may have been labelled street urchins in a Dickensian day were plying
windscreen washing services upon unsolicited drivers. Buckets hitched to belts, they had
mounted the stem of the traffic light and were casing the lines of cars like vultures waiting for
carrion, perched on a leafless tree.
When the lights turned red they lithely swooped and in the same movement drew sponge and
wiper upon the nearest grimy windshield. Perry was bemused with the skill, if that was the
word, with which they could apply soap-sudded sponge followed by dry squeegee and have
everything festering back in the bucket in less than fifteen seconds, leaving only milky
streaks to dry and give cause for another wash at some later hour. Handfuls of change would
be demanded via vigorous tapping on the car window, usually relinquished by most drivers
with the resignation that it is just another toll for being alive.
Perry’s thoughts were disturbed by a vibration in the trousers of his overalls that caused his
slightly deadened leg to spasm. Swearing a workman’s swear he struggled to extract the
buzzing mobile phone and, noting the name on the caller ID, answered with urgency.
‘Agent Triple-Zero-One, here.’
‘Confirm secure line, please.’ The voice on the other end of the line was familiar but its
awkward tone was not. Simpson continued according to protocol.
‘Secure channel delta five confirmed. Please go ahead.’
‘I need today’s results in now, please.’ Pause. ‘Immediately, in fact.’ Pause.
Something, and a large thing at that, was indescribably odd to Perry. It was at least ten hours
before the day’s collated data was due, and in the decades since the inception of Project
Nightingale, it had never once been delivered early. Indeed from what Perry knew, pre-
compiled data would be at best useless and at worst malignant.

‘But sir…’
‘Just do it please, Triple-Zero-One.’ Pause. ‘And without delay.’ The tone had turned from
awkward to imperative and Perry knew better than to contest it further.
‘Yes, of course, sir. Right away. Will there be anything else?’
‘Well, actually.’ Pause. ‘Now you mention it, there is one more thing, please.’
All of a sudden Perry realised it wasn’t the frequent pauses in his superior’s speech that were
bothering him as much as his uncharacteristic use of the word ‘please’.
‘Once today’s results are in, the Project will officially be at a close. We will not therefore be
requiring the services of you or any of your fellow agents any longer. If you could pass this
directive on to all agents in the south-east quadrant by this evening, I would be most grateful.
We thank you for your long-standing assistance. Channel out.’ With that, the phone went
dead.
And so, after Perry Simpson, aka Agent Triple-Zero-One and the last remaining founding
member of Project Nightingale, had briefly contemplated what he might do for the rest of his
working life, he embarked on one more repetitive task to contact his fellow agents and break
the news that their thirty-three year old project had at last come to an end.
Back in the the Kitchen beneath Millbank, the penultimate chef wished Jai Choudhry well for
the evening as he picked up coat and departed.

Choudhry inserted and turned a key in a panel which revealed a large red button the size of a
saucer. Above the button was a stencilled sign which read, “WARNING: EXTREMELY
HOT”.
‘So here goes nothing then.’ Choudhry’s hand betrayed his reluctance when it slapped the
button.
In a huge Faraday Cage about twenty yards away, one thousand and sixty-four overclocked
processors working in parallel rubbed quantum particles together and began to ionise the air
around them.
Undeterred by the descending dusk that once again illuminated Perry Simpson’s orange and
yellow overalls, the cars, buses and vans inched along in their stuttered waltz, oblivious that
for the first time their movements were not being electronically tracked and then analysed for
a higher purpose.
Perry Simpson deactivated the last of the surveilling traffic cones and slotted it with the
others in the back of the truck. Removing his overalls one final time he threw them
unceremoniously on top of the stack and wondered what to do with it all.
He noticed the two young windscreen cleaners around the traffic light, now rather
beleaguered from a day of graft, and made his way towards them.
‘Hello there.’ The boy and girl froze and regarded him with suspicion. ‘How’s business?’
‘S’alright s’pose. Who wants to know, grandad?’ It was the girl, clearly the bolder of the two,
who had spoken.
Perry chuckled at the gibe. ‘Do you guys ever clean anything else apart from cars?’ The boy
and girl looked at each other as if the thought had never occurred.
‘What about at all these buildings? Look how filthy they are.’ The youngsters’ gaze followed
this arm as he waved it over their surroundings, triggering a nascent moment of wonder
between them.
‘Don’t be silly grandad. We’d need a load of equipment to do one of those. And like, a truck
to carry it all in!’
‘Well here you go, try this for starters.’ He tossed the keys to his truck into the air and the girl
reached out and caught them with an instinctive flash of a hand. She showed them to her
taciturn friend alongside a mouth agape.
Perry Simpson smiled and turned to go. When he reached the pavement a thought occurred
and he stopped, faced them again and called over the traffic.
‘Just whatever you do, don’t switch on the traffic cones.’
The two kids, newly replete with a fledgling cleaning enterprise, watched silently as their
unknown benefactor walked away along the pavement, getting smaller and more obscure,
until the gloom took him from their sight forever.
The boy finally broke his silence with a very pertinent question for his business partner.
‘How the bugger do you turn on a traffic cone?’

TUESDAY
It hadn’t taken long for the great eagle to assume her fellow Londoners’ distaste for the
political class. Amongst many other intangibles, her sharp senses detected insincerity and
betrayal everywhere. Finding such things repellent, this morning's flight passed the area of
government buildings by. The eagle flapped powerful wings and pulled towards the east,
away from the delusions of Downing Street and beyond the budding skyscrapers of the
Square Mile, an area to which she also turned her noble beak up.
Soaring onwards, honed eagle ears felt more comfortable upon detecting the warm
cacophony of cultures just beginning to break their slumber in the heart of East London, and
so magnificent wings swivelled slightly to break their glide path and looked for a place to
perch.
Breakfast this morning, mused this discerning eagle, would be pigeon. The lovely thing about
pigeons, obvious deliciousness aside, was that they signposted their presence rather clearly,
insisting on making their morning toilet above the large building where curious moveable
beasts of gleaming coloured metal and glass gathered.
With an elegance only available to avian kind, the eagle stopped in mid-air and dropped to
land perfectly onto the edge of the roof of Stratford Bus Depot where its talons took hold.
Folding its wings and giving shoulders a bit of a loosening after all their work, the eagle
poked its head forward and made itself comfortable for a good, long look below.
#
Benji Campbell nodded back at the eagle, perched in its usual weekday place, when it
appeared to nod at him. He always felt the morning cold shed a few layers when he entered
the bus depot. Though it wasn’t heated directly, the constant turning over of dozens of diesel
engines bridled the air of the open building with thermal currents. But moreover, Benji took
great warmth from simply sharing the same space as the buses he adored so much.
He passed through the warehouse, as ever taking more notice of the vehicles than the men
and women that worked among them, until he arrived at his own bus. Of course, it wasn’t his
bus in terms of a possession, but with seven years of sharing the same route with this double-
deckered beast of burden, Benji foresaw many more together and perhaps even in some sort
of peculiar retirement as well.
Benji toured the outside of the bus, patting it gently every few paces, and then dutifully
checked fuel gauges, tyre pressure and radiator. Stepping inside he took a portable vacuum
cleaner from beneath the driver’s seat and scoured the passenger seating, zapping any dust
that had deigned to soil his beloved overnight.
Finally, satisfied that the grooming of his charge would see them both fit for the onset of
another day’s duty, he flicked a switch in the driver cabin which changed the outer sign
between the ground and upper floors from “Not in Service” to “547 Knightsbridge”, and
tenderly engaged the ignition.
Benji would not have been surprised to find his colleagues took great amusement from the
compassion he showed for what was, after all, a transitory piece of work equipment. He
would, however, have been extremely startled to find that his bus – and it very much regarded
itself as being Benji’s – elicited the same adoring compassion back.

The day had begun unlike any other in that the date on the alarm clock that woke her showed
a different day. To Jayne Mendis everything else, from the voice of the early morning
newsreader to the junk mail she kicked away from the front door on her way out, remained
the same.
She checked her watch as she padded the trainers she wore to and from work along the
pavement. Forty minutes filled with bustle and haste had passed since the alarm woke her and
yet she couldn’t vividly recall a single one, such was the mundane nature of her morning
routine. She only had the prickle of spearmint in her mouth to convince her that had brushed
her teeth, and a flowery smell from her blouse the only evidence she had deodorised. The
slight itch of a high street label in the small of her back told her that, probably, she didn't
have her underwear on inside-out.
As she paced she felt herself become more awake, her stomach still warm from a few
mouthfuls of toast and her head light from just as many sips of coffee. She arrived at her bus
stop two minutes before her bus was timetabled and popped over the road to buy something
to read while she waited the seven minutes for it to actually arrive.
City buses may seem to the casual observer odd recipients of the world’s first example of
mass-manufactured artificial intelligence but needs must when public vehicles are a devil to
drive, as they say at the Department of Transport.

Any mechanical engineer will testify to the miracle of double-decker buses staying upright,
let alone finding safe passage, whilst negotiating the roads of London, routes described by
angles acute to obtuse but rarely right.
When the Department of Transport was granted an unlimited budget for a limited time to
rescue the failing London bus routes, the mechanical engineers hid behind a Newtonian sofa,
and so hard science passed to softer disciplines. The problem was scattered amongst a
thousand universities, each engaging a thousand computer programmers with a thousand
misinterpreted specifications.
As the digital towel was about to be thrown in, a drink-numbed nerd crunched a farewell line
of code and was surprised to get coherent response from a computer-come-aware.
In the remaining hours that its budget still held the rights to the project, the Department of
Transport threw ill caution to an ill-er wind. The decision was made to install the untested
software onto every bus with a dangling copper wire and let fuzzy logic coupled with
intelligent design, learning difficulties and all, take the strain.
Conventional power-steering was a woefully inadequate aid to multi-tonne wheeled
monoliths taking the deft turns required of the winding streets of London, turns that also
demanded reactions of a mongoose.
Somewhere in Hackney, 547 Knightsbridge strolled along as much as wheels can stroll,
Benji’s hands guiding the wheel to be corrected forgivingly by the entity truly in control.
#
The collection of glum winter-ish clothes waiting at the bus stop was arranged in more of an
irregular oblong than an orderly queue, people two or three abreast.
Jayne took her place at the back behind a man in a suit and an elderly woman with her head
trussed in a light scarf. The man was checking his watch regularly.
‘Come on, come on. Where are you?’ He looked searchingly through three-sixty degrees as if
for some reason the bus might appear from anywhere.
Jayne wasn’t much of a talker at this time of morning so just tutted a shared annoyance. The
woman in the scarf took up an opportunity to pass the time by showing concern for a
stranger.
‘How long have you been waiting?’
‘Well around fifteen minutes, I reckon. They should be coming past here every six minutes at
least.’ The man seemed cheered his frustration was being appreciated.
‘Oh dear. I do hope you won’t be too late’
‘You know what,’ laughed the man, gallows-like, ‘I bet, right now, three of them all turn up
at once.’
An enduring cliché of commuter-dom is the expression that goes something like, “You wait
ages for one bus, and then three of them turn up at the same time.” It was an observation that
was easily proven but attempts to explain were just as easily debunked. The true explanation,
as with so many things in life, was down to sex.

When the old buses with their newly equipped electronic brains were dispatched, as luck
would have it before long a harmony befell the public roads and crucially, safety records
became largely unblemished. In fact, ever since, no one had ever disembarked from a city bus
journey damaged with anything more than a bruise.
The occasional side-effect manifest once in a while, maybe a tantrum might lead a bus to
refuse to start in the morning without apparent reason. The only behaviour which was
consistently troublesome, at least to timetable schedulers, was that the newly conscious buses
began to develop something resembling a libido.
Whilst ever dedicated to the needs of her master, 547 Knightsbridge could not get the
intoxicating exhaust fumes of the bus ahead out of her engine intake.
The double-decker behind, for her part, had taken every opportunity to front run a green light
or bypass a stop so as to get nearer to 547’s tailpipe for a good whiff.
So, the 547 Knightsbridge was caught in a heavenly dilemma, of edging ever closer to the bus
in front, with her teasing noxious yet beguiling scent, or making every effort to hang back,
aware of the heated suitor behind.
The three 547s, in a misfire of artificial stupidity, gradually congregated into an articulated
ménage-a-trois that none of them, heartbreakingly, were equipped to deal with.
#
The first bus came to the stop and opened its doors. Being mostly full already, few of the
queueing oblong boarded, deciding instead to wait the few seconds for the next one to shuffle
in. Jayne, with the hope of finding something more than standing room only, joined them.
Benji approached the bus stop ahead as he had innumerable times before and applied a
pressure to the brake that would have pulverised the cyclist riding the slipstream behind him
had 547 Knightsbridge not intercepted the hydraulics. The cyclist swerved and passed safely
in between bus and bus-stop without a thought.
‘Whoa there. That might have been close.’ Benji said knowingly to himself and unknowingly
to 547 Knightsbridge, who gladly took the encouragement and faithfully ensured they rested
neatly at the stop.
'Oh, look. Three buses! Aren't you clever?'
The fortune-telling man acknowledged the lady in the scarf as he went to board the bus which
caused him to mount the step too early. He tripped and caught his thumb in the jamb of the
unfolding door.
‘Ouch. Are you okay? I think that’s likely to bruise.’
Jayne flashed her season pass over the electronic reader and climbed to the top deck where
she found a seat where she could lean her head against the window. She jostled for comfort
and let out half a yawn as the bus moved off. With the journey at last begun, she took out the
newspaper she had bought earlier and flicked through news stories of a city that often made
her wonder if it was the same one in which she lived.
The Knightsbridge 547 mounted Westminster Bridge for its passage across the river Thames.
Once the river had been crossed, the upper deck of the bus began to bristle with passengers
securing valuables for disembarkation, which was Jayne’s cue to do the same. She rose and
braced herself for a melee.
Contents of the bus now half-standing, a hundred passengers murmured automatic apologies
to each other before pushing their way, using anything but hands, towards the doors, a
hundred bruises forming as they went. Buffeted by the throng, Jayne re-joined the crisp
outside air free of any harm.
It was still a few hundred metres walk from the bus stop to the offices where Jayne worked.
The familiarity of it allowed her feet to slip into autopilot and she emptied her thoughts to
make way for the seriousness of the day ahead.
It was not often the Prime Minister was the first into a cabinet meeting. He was typically one
to make people wait and then enter with a flourish, but nothing else had occupied his mind
that morning so he had a full view of his staff as they ambled in. Last of all was the
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The problem with sacking the Chancellor was that it was a position second only to the Prime
Minister himself, and would need replacing. To appoint anyone to the role would technically
be a promotion and the Prime Minister was currently in no mind to promote anyone. And so
here the Chancellor was, sat like someone on death row. With a black eye.
‘Now, shall we begin? Cabinet Secretary, if you would.’ The Cabinet Secretary slipped into
gear.
‘We have just a single agendum today. Proposals to reduce the national budget to the tune of
one hundred billion pounds.’
The Prime Minister clapped his attention to focus his cabinet's attention. ‘Right. Who wants
to go first?’
A cowardly silence fell as the cabinet's desire to lick the boots of the Prime Minister was
tempered by an absence of anything to say that he would approve of hearing. It was finally
broken by the Health Secretary.
‘Prime Minister, the annual budget of the National Health Service is one of the major
contributors to the budget, and so might at first glance be a primary location with which to
look for savings.’ The Health Secretary paused for breath, and then panicked when he
thought it might appear he was pausing for effect.
‘But the spiralling costs of drugs due to advances in medical science prohibit any obvious
reductions. I’m sure I don’t need to remind the cabinet of the importance of the NHS in the
mind of the voter. Moreover, an ageing voter, whose reliance on the service is unlikely to
recede.’
The Minister for Work and Pensions saw an opportunity and pounced. ‘Ah yes, the ageing
voter. Surely, I don’t need to remind cabinet of the overbearing strain of people retiring
earlier and living for longer on the future finances of my department? To make significant
cutbacks at this time could prove to be disastrous at a later date.’
The Minister for Education felt he needed to focus attention at the other end of the age
spectrum. ‘But to speak of the future, one cannot ignore the education of our very progeny. I
must argue that the learning we equip our children cannot be subject to parsimony. After all,
these are the same children who will mature into voters, certain to repay or to punish the
government for any lack of employment skills.’
The meeting went on. Each secretary of state unable to commit to any meaningful budgetary
cull in their respective departments. The Home Secretary warned of increasing demands on
the security services coupled with existing cuts to police and prison systems, and the
Transport Secretary pleaded that the roads and railways were already at breaking point. The
ministers for the provinces of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland simply claimed the
absence of any money to be redacted in the first place. Common to all arguments was that
potential budget cuts in any department would be followed by swift retribution on the part of
millions of voters.
The Prime Minister slumped in his chair. His anger was suppressed only by the fore-
knowledge that his ministers would prove to be useless in executing their task.
‘So that’s it then. If we cannot make cutbacks then we have no cover-up which means we’re
finished.’ He threw the pen that he had been using to stab his temple onto the table. ‘Oh well,
five years was a good run.’

Out of the unsettling still that had caught everyone’s tongues, a question fell out of the
western edge of the table.
‘If I may be permitted to make a suggestion?’
Everyone froze. Even the Prime Minister was not immune to the cold chill of the voice of the
Foreign Secretary. It was the first words that anyone had heard him say all week. The polite
structure of the sentence only added to its evil menace.
‘I was perusing our fiscal dilemma during my evensong and couldn’t help but notice a pattern
amongst the more onerous items of expenditure.’
‘Intriguing start,’ thought the Home Secretary.
‘Pretentious narcissist,’ mused the Chancellor.
‘Evensong?’ wondered the Prime Minister.
‘Allow me to elucidate by providing some examples.’ The Foreign Secretary took a folded
sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and spread it out in front of him.
‘Over the duration of this government we have incurred two billion pounds to build a national
football stadium. A billion pounds went on some sort of dome in Greenwich. There was no
less than nine billion pounds spent to stage the recent Olympic Games.’
The Minister for Culture and Sport felt she needed to speak out.
‘Yes, but most of that went on infrastructure. Everyone appreciates public transport.’
‘Interesting you should mention transport, my honourable colleague.’ The Cultural Minister
had never felt so insulted by a description of honourable. The Foreign Secretary continued
without missing a beat.
‘Five and a half billion for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from to the south coast, three and a
half billion – including overruns – for an extension to the Underground Line, ten billion for
the high-speed link to Gatwick. And thirty billion pounds to build a new runway at Heathrow
airport.’
‘The sum total of all this expenditure is approximately…’ The Foreign Secretary always
knew when he was pausing for effect.
‘One hundred billion pounds.’ It was the Chancellor who had finished the sentence.
‘Actually, it is one hundred and twenty billion, but you get the point.’ The Foreign Secretary
folded up the piece of paper and placed it back into his suit pocket. No one could remember
him actually reading from it.
‘Actually, I’m not sure I do.’ It was the Prime Minister with the query. ‘As you mentioned,
all the things you have mentioned are items of past expenditure. The money is already gone.’
Finally, the penny dropped and it dropped first for the Home Secretary.
‘The pattern is London.’
‘The Secretary for Home Affairs is correct.’ The Secretary for Foreign Affairs also had a
talent for insulting his colleagues with compliments.

‘It is impossible not to conclude that there is a vast disequilibrium of money being lavished
on the county of Greater London with respect to the relative penury enforced upon the rest of
the United Kingdom.’
The Prime Minister could not help but think they were drifting off course.
‘Yes fine, but this doesn’t help us save money today does it?’
‘The solution to our predicament of impending invoice, it would seem, would to be to more
equitably divide the tab?’
All the cabinet members’ eyes narrowed as their jaws widened. Was he talking about the
collapse of the nation’s finances or the bar bill at the cabinet mess?
‘Go on.’ The Prime Minister had to admit he was prepared to listen to anything.
The Foreign Secretary outlined his idea and as he did so, there were no interruptions, only the
occasional cough when someone remembered to breathe.
Jayne Mendis, hands full with a handbag and coffee latte, stepped up to the automatic glass
doors which opened on cue. She walked to the elevator bank and waited for a lift to take her
to the fourth floor of the building, and the firm for which she worked.
“PR The Champions” was a press and public relations business situated on Victoria
Embankment, a useful proximity to the officialdom of parliament and the news outlets of
Fleet Street, the firm’s mission being to maintain a cordial yet profitable détente between
them both. Politicians had public images to propagate and journalists a public to satisfy, and
the eternal distrust that between them allowed for Jayne’s industry to flourish.
Jayne Mendis’ job title Head of UK Government Channels, which meant it was her role to
keep as much communication between the government and the outside world through the two
differently coloured telephones on her desk.
The extension numbers to these telephones corresponded with the two sets of business cards
she kept about her person. One, referring to the blue telephone, she would hand out to
members of the media while the other, with the number of the red telephone, was given to
government workers, be they political officers or civil servants. It was Jayne’s task to reside
between the two, marshalling and moderating their traffic.
She sat at her desk and placed her latte to her left and handbag to her right. The second her
desktop PC was unlocked, the calendar on her mail client immediately pinged to inform her
she had seven minutes to prepare for her daily morning meeting. She spent six of them
deleting emails and the seventh changing from her trainers into the one-inch heels she would
wear for the rest of the working day.
Jayne entered the conference room, acknowledging but not contributing to the sleepy small-
talk inside. She made up the sixth member of staff to take their seat around the large
rectangular table with the CEO of “PR The Champions” holding court at its head.
‘I won’t keep you all for long this morning. If we could just go around the table and get some
updates, please.’
Solomon Braid had made this declaration at the beginning of every meeting Jayne had
attended. Solomon had been given the position of CEO from his father, the proprietor of “PR
The Champions”, for his 40th birthday but had always given Jayne the impression he would
have been much happier with a card and some balloons. He showed neither energy nor
empathy for the job, and ran it with the aid of an illustrated management handbook kept in his
desk drawer.
Each member of the management team in turn gave a couple of sentences describing what
they hadn’t achieved yesterday but would oh so definitely try and get done today.
‘…she wasn’t answering her emails yesterday, so will hopefully get her on the phone today.’
‘…the report is complete save for a glossary at the end. Shouldn’t take more than an
afternoon to finish.’
It had been a slow news week and neither of Jayne’s phones had rung with any interest so far.
She closed her update with something suitably generic.
‘…waiting for their department liaison to get back to me, then will arrange a catch-up later
this week.’
After half an hour that served no purpose other than to keep them from their work, the
directors drifted out of the conference room. Jayne thought that if she was ever to write a
illustrated guide to business management, she would suggest to going easy on the morning
meetings.
Arriving back at her desk Jayne drank a final bit of tepid latte before plonking it in the bin. It
was then that the blue phone rang, somehow louder and angrier than she could ever
remember.
The Foreign Secretary had completed detailing his idea to the Prime Minister and the cabinet.
The only sound was the scribbling of the Private Secretary as he wrote it into the minutes.
'Preposterous!' declared the Home Secretary.
'Ludicrous!' averred the Defence Minister. The Prime Minister stood and seethed.
'You're insane, Foreign Secretary. I would have you committed to an asylum if I wasn't afraid
for you'd be running it by the end of the week.'
The Foreign Secretary sat unperturbed. Inside, he had to concede the barbs from such
unworthy sources grated a little.
'Well given the current state of affairs, by the end of the week you'll be lucky to have the
means to commit adultery.'
The jaws of the cabinet ministers unhinged, as they sought a path to the floor. This was a
statement of bile from which there was no going back. They all looked at the Prime Minister
to see how he would react. The Home Secretary thought he detected a vein in his temple
bulge. To the Health Secretary it was the Prime Minister’s carotid artery in his neck that
swelled with the blood of ire. The Defence Secretary swore he saw was one more wrinkle
form around the eyes, as the Prime Minister’s life-force ebbed a little.
The Cabinet Secretary's sense for breaking uncomfortable silences had been perfected over
decades.
'Shall we say, meeting adjourned then?'
The phone call had been terse, comprising not much more than cordialities and a suggestion
to lunch. This was not unusual for someone calling through on the blue phone, suspicious of
unsecured telephone lines and partial to a late-morning drink as they were. Giving herself an
easy thirty minutes to walk to her rendezvous, Jayne Mendis switched on an automated email
response saying when she was likely to be back, and gathered her things to leave.
The walk toward Whitehall brought her along the Embankment, which was not the path the
crow flies but did allow her to maximise the time she could lose her gaze on the Thames. The
river was different shade of murk that morning, as if the grumbling waves knew of a dark day
ahead.
Pubs in government-land did brisk trade morning through night and “The King of Wishful
Drinking” was no different. Her contact’s name was Becky Hughes, and judging by the male
dominance of the patrons inside she had yet to arrive. Opening a tab, which always seemed to
meet the approval of clients, she ordered a blackcurrant-and-soda and noticed a table paired
with a couple of bar stools toward the rear of the pub.
She sat down and was about to clear the empty glasses from the table when a woman wearing
a staff polo-shirt materialised from over her shoulder. With one movement she picked up the
glasses in the fingers of her left hand and swept a damp cloth over the table with her right. It
was such a smooth action that the glasses did not even chink, while the cloth moved in ever
decreasing circles into the centre with total efficiency, so no part of the veneer was covered
twice. The woman nodded politely to Jayne, wiped the underside of the table for good
measure, then disappeared back over her other shoulder, leaving her to place her drink on a
gleaming and beautifully scented surface.
Jayne had been told during the earlier call that her contact would know her by sight. Sure
enough, a woman about five years younger than her, wearing a grey suit and brown hair in a
business-like bun, walked in exactly on time and made a bee-line for Jayne.
‘Jayne Mendis? Becky Hughes. How do you do?’ Jayne accepted the lithe handshake.
‘Very well thank you, Becky. Can I get you a…?’
‘Large gin and tonic please.’
‘Sure. I’ll be right back.’ Jayne could tell those for whom heavy drinking at this hour was the
norm and Becky wasn't one of them, which extended her curiosity. When she returned with
the drink it immediately received a large slurp.
‘Seeing as its nearly lunchtime, I’ve ordered some nibbles in case you’re feeling peckish.’
Becky nodded a thank you as she was fiddling with her phone. Jayne noticed the screensaver
contained a picture of an eagle.
‘Nice photo.’
‘Thanks. I took it yesterday.’ Jayne’s eyes narrowed with intrigue. There was definitely a
story in there somewhere but she had other avenues to pursue.

‘So Becky, can I ask why you wanted to see me? Is everything okay?’
‘Well not really. There is something really strange going on at work.’
‘You work as a civil servant?’ Becky nodded. ‘For which department?’
Becky shrugged at the question, as if it wasn’t too important. ‘This week. I’m not so sure.’
She moved in closer to Jayne. ‘I’m fairly certain it’s not for the Treasury though.’
‘Why do you say that? Is there something going on at The Treasury?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know, I don’t work there.’ Jayne got the feeling this was going to be a
difficult conversation.
‘Okay, let’s just talk about what you do know.’
‘I was asked to deliver a Treasury document to the cabinet meeting yesterday morning. It was
marked eyes only.’ Becky began to talk more freely with each mouthful of gin.
‘The thing is, I’m only a level three sub-manager, second class.’ Jayne frowned. ‘Eyes only
material are to be handled by minimum level five, third class.’
‘Of course, Silly me. Do go on.’ Jayne was aware of the intractable civil service hierarchy but
had given up mastering it long ago.
‘Maybe they were short-staffed, maybe they weren’t. But I was given two copies.’
Now this was indeed a bombshell. Within the civil service, copies of important documents
were rare. Copies of eyes-only documents were virtually unheard of and exorbitant measures
were in place to ensure they could only be made by the most senior of senior under-
secretaries and ministers.

‘Two copies.’ Jayne repeated the words to herself. The next question was an obvious one.
‘You delivered one of them to Downing Street, and the other?’
Becky looked left and right as if checking for eavesdroppers in the most indiscrete manner
possible. She really could not have advertised a clandestine activity any better. Convinced the
coast was clear, she lifted her handbag onto the table and took out a brown manilla envelope.
‘You want me to take it?’
‘Well I don’t know what to do with it. If I get caught with it then I could be prosecuted. And I
can’t destroy it because I…’
‘…because you could be prosecuted.’ Jayne saw the predicament. She also saw that the same
fates were applicable to her if she took it into her own hands.
They both looked at the envelope between them.
‘Have you read it?’ Jayne asked, to break the pause. Becky didn’t reply, but locked eyes with
Jayne as she returned to her drink.
They looked silently at the envelope between them again. Eventually Becky nudged it, not so
much towards Jayne as much as away from herself. The prompt did not go unnoticed. Jayne’s
next question was another one that needed to be addressed.
‘How do I know it’s genuine?’
Becky shrugged. ‘Try to copy it.’
‘What?’
‘Go on, open it up and take to take a photo of a page or something.’
All of a sudden a genuine buzz crept over Jayne. She looked left and right as shiftily as
Becky had done earlier as she took the stapled document out of the envelope. The front cover
indeed had extreme officialdom marked all over it. She took her phone from her handbag and
activated the camera. Turning to a random page packed with numbers and bullet points, she
snapped and examined the photograph.
‘See?’ Becky said with a playful smugness.
Jayne looked at the blank page in the photograph for far longer than she needed. So, the
rumours were true. She stared goggle-eyed at Becky.
'This is photo-invisible paper?'
It had started as flight of fancy amongst juniors in after-hour bars but like the best rumours, it
had gained ground without ever being proven or otherwise. The government had invented a
paper-like substance that could not be copied by any camera or photo device. The ultimate
solution to imitation for anyone without a pencil.
There were further rumours, which Jayne assumed must now also be true, of a photocopier
locked away in a subterranean level of Whitehall. This securely guarded machine was the
only device capable of making copies of photo-invisible paper, should the unlikely need ever
arise.
‘Something to do with multi-polarisation of super-spectral photons.’ Becky nodded as if that
was the last word on the subject.

Jayne tried a few more pages, snapping each one multiple times with her phone and every
time being faced with a picture of a blank white page. ‘This is incredible.’
Becky nudged the envelope again toward Jayne, a little more confidently this time. Jayne
began to accept the envelope's fate.
‘So, this mine now?’
Becky preferred a slurpy last gulp of gin and tonic over giving a reply. She smiled. It was the
most relaxed she had been since she walked in. She looked at her watch without actually
focussing on it, just a precursor to an announcement to leave.
‘Well, I suppose I should be going.’
And with that, Becky Hughes grabbed her things and left the pub, leaving Jayne with a hot
potato to go with a newly arrived cold platter.
Jai Choudhry clocked the compilation progress of Nightingale at ninety percent. With
completion imminent it was worthwhile checking the status of the server farm. Choudhry
called up a diagnostic tool from his Linux workstation and saw CPU usages fall to zero one-
by-one as the total workload remaining tailed off. Ninety-five percent complete.
He was in the midst of solving a hexagonal Rubik’s cube he had designed. He executed a
sequence of twists and rotations which cajoled a few more coloured chunks to fit into place.
A loud beep from his workstation matched a congratulatory pop-up window declaring the
compilation batch a success. Choudhry took a telephone headset off its charger and wrapped
it around his ears before trying to pick out a specific piece of grubby paper from the many on
his desk. He found it and dialled its scribbled telephone number. Waiting for the call to be
answered, he took up the hexagonal puzzle once more.
When the line was finally picked up there was no verbal answer the other end. All Choudhry
could hear was a soft breathing, curious in that it seemed to be taking in a lot more oxygen
than it was breathing out.
‘Hello? this is Jai Choudhry, Nightingale support.’
He got a sonorous reply.
‘Hmm?’
‘I was told to contact this number the instant Project Nightingale was ready to receive
commands.’
The Foreign Secretary sat bolt upright in his office, gripping the telephone tightly.
‘Ah, yes. And?’
Well, Project Nightingale is now ready to receive commands.’
‘Yes, yes, but how are these commands supposed to be issued?’
‘Oh right, just a moment.’ Choudhry tapped furiously at his keyboard for a few seconds.
‘There was a strange email address I was given along with this telephone number? I’ve sent a
mail to this address containing a link to the Nightingale gateway with a username and
password that should grant access.’

The Foreign Secretary flipped the phone onto speaker and replaced the handset. Turning to
the desktop computer, he accessed an odd-looking email account and found a single entry in
its inbox. He hit the enclosed link, and entered the credentials into the terminal window it had
spawned. There was nothing but a white flashing cursor on a black background.
‘And what, pray tell, does one do with this?’
‘Well, you type a question and Nightingale will give you a reply, provided the question is
within the context of the subject matter of the model, of course.’
‘Of course.’ The Foreign Secretary started to type eagerly as Choudhry continued.
‘The user interface is only semi-literate so try and keep the sentence structure of your query
fairly simple.’ The Foreign Secretary deleted and started again.
‘WHERE AND WHEN IN LONDON…’ He finished his question, hit the enter key and drew
a breath in anticipation. He was met with something considerably less than he was expecting.
‘Nothing.’ He seethed into the microphone. ‘It does nothing!’
‘What?’ Choudhry put down his half-finished puzzle in puzzlement.
‘I have posed my question to this impotent contraption and it has underwhelmed.’
Choudhry got the impression that underwhelming this particular government mandarin was
perceived to be a heinous act.
‘Oh yes, well you can’t expect the answer to come back immediately.’ If Jai could see the
darkening of his client’s mood, his tone would not have been so light.
‘Oh. Can’t. I?’

‘Well it could be anything between a few minutes and a few hours. It’s a basic travelling
salesman algorithm using neural nets so if a linear solution is there, we’ll find out quite
quickly but otherwise its brute force I’m afraid.’
‘Brute force, you termite of technological assistance, is what I’ll be using on your…’
Choudhry felt he should probably explain further, ‘You have requested a four-dimensional
solution and each dimensional variable isn’t necessarily orthogonal.’
The Principal furrowed his brow in restrained frustration. ‘Just tell me when and where…’
‘Well that’s what I am trying to explain, the when and where may be calculated at different
times.’
‘So, I have no idea of when the solution will be arrived at, but I do know that it will arrive in
pieces, the order of which I do not know.
By Jove, thought, Choudhry, I think he’s got it. He was about to say something a little less
condescending but the line was already dead. Oh well, not a lot he could do any more.
He whipped off his headset and placed the completed puzzle onto the first slot of a
presentation shelf, and stopped the timer on his phone. He took his trusty abacus in hand and
made a few calculations. Prime numbers were for wimps.
After settling the bar tab Jayne stepped back into the street, her satchel somehow feeling far
heavier for the few extra sheets of paper it carried. The thinking that she needed to was best
served without the distractions of a riverside stroll, so she signalled an arm to a passing black
Hackney cab.
‘Right then. Where to, miss?’
Jayne gave her destination and fell into the back seat. She caught the smiling eyes of the
driver in the rear-view mirror and returned a quick display of dimples. The cab pulled out
into the street as Jayne began ruminate on the meeting just gone, idly watching the gently
ascending fare on the meter as she did.
Back in “The King of Wishful Drinking” the polo-shirted woman with the scented cloth
soundlessly lifted the plates and glasses from the table Becky and Jayne had vacated. After
removing every last crumb and spilt droplet with a single deft sweep, her hand felt
underneath the table and unpeeled the listening device she had placed when Jayne had first
sat down. Returning the crockery and glassware to the service area, she draped the cloth over
one arm and left the pub, unnoticed by anyone else there, neither patron nor staff.
It had been three hours now and counting. The Foreign Secretary knew that staring at the
blinking but otherwise stationary cursor was not going to make what computations were
taking place behind any quicker, but he was hooked nonetheless. When the cursor did finally
print out a single date and time and return to a static position, he nearly fell off his chair in
excitement.
The Foreign Secretary violently swung the door of his office open and looked around for his
chauffeur, who was seated in a chair in the corridor reading a comic book.
‘Come on then, Swain.’
‘Has it finished already, sir?’
‘Nope, but we know it happening in less than forty-eight hours. We need to find a catalyst.
Pronto. And of course, when I say we, I mean you.’
‘Of course, sir.’

WEDNESDAY
Harry Lett was a criminal but he wasn’t very good at it. That wasn’t to say that he kept
getting arrested – that would qualify him as being a terrible criminal – he simply didn’t make
much of a living from breaking the law. Harry put it down to the fact he was breaking the
wrong kind of laws.
It wasn't true that all criminals were evil, though the successful ones will say that it helped.
Evil criminals held outright contempt for the law, whereas ne'er-do-wells like Harry regarded
it with what they felt was justified apathy. Harry had gotten used to the law being absent in
his youth when perhaps he could have used it. He figured that in his older years the law owed
him a favour and could do its bit by staying away for good.
He was walking through a quiet street in the east end of London, where you might be if you
could see Tower Bridge over your right shoulder. In the local parlance, the street fell within
Harry’s manor, the area in which he sought to ply his shadowy trade.
Staying in the local parlance, Harry was an odd-job man. He didn’t originate crimes himself,
but took a fixed fee for helping to get them over and the beyond the view of, the thin blue
line. This seemed a fair trade-off to Harry. He didn't show the initiative and so didn't exactly
reap the rewards, but he didn't face the same risks should he be caught. While aware that
crime often paid, Harry knew from experience that it could tax rather heavily too.
Life was nothing but trade-offs as far as Harry Lett was concerned, to the extent that life
actually used him as currency. When life wanted to be bestow fortune and success upon
someone else, Harry usually got the other side of the trade.
The pub that he approached at on the Wednesday afternoon that would change his life looked
like it was shut, but then it always did. The chipboard panels that had been roughly nailed
across all the windows did not bother the landlord as they were welcomed by, and often a
result of, the nefarious element he catered for within.
As Harry walked into the “Beers Dry On Their Own” pub several heads in the saloon turned
cautiously to see who it was. In the case of an unknown and therefore unwelcome visitor the
jukebox needed to be paused, the game of pool being played in the corner stopped, and the
atmosphere in general made as hostile as possible.
Not exactly well-known, Harry was at least recognised as a non-threatening, non-
constabulary member of the public, which was just as good. There is very little comradeship
among criminals, even the one's who drink together. There was always a danger you might
find out your latest comrade is a psychopath, or your latest comrade might find out that you
are not. Either way you weren’t safe.
Harry went to the bar and asked for a pint of bitter and and tried not to look directly at the
landlord as he pumped it from the barrel. There were three inches of slurpy grey froth on the
pint that the landlord dumped in front of Harry before demanding an amount of cash. Harry
paid, picked it up his drink and went to an empty table where he waited for it to settle into
something he could drink.
The first sip was always the worst. Harry shuddered as the potion of sweet, salt and sour
attacked his central nervous system but at least he knew that some form of alcohol was at
least winging its way on a hot ticket to his spinal cord and would suppress any further
spasms.
Harry wiped residue from his top lip and tried not to look at anyone for a while. He really did
hate this pub. It was smelly, dark, the beer was horrible, the landlord was unbelievably rude
and always short-changed him, and at the end of night when people had to be carried out and
dumped in the gutter, it wasn’t necessarily because they were drunk. But the kind of work
that Harry did was not advertised widely and here was the closest thing to a job centre.
Most evenings were spent sitting sipping bad beer in “Beers Dry On Their Own” when Harry
was short of few bob. Eventually a felon of greater standing would come in looking for
someone destitute of morals, money and self-respect, and would be pointed in the direction of
Harry. Sometimes it might take a couple of days of lurking around before someone offered
him a job. Today it took exactly ten minutes.
Jayne closed the report after having read through it for the umpteenth time. She had sat on it
for nearly twenty-four hours. Clearly no other media outlet had knowledge, else they surely
would have published by now.
The details within the report were dynamite. If true, and the camera-immune paper it was
written would suggest as much, then the success of the current government was a charade.
Reality placed the United Kingdom in dire financial straits. Once exposed, Jayne guessed the
usual things like the pound and the stock market would plummet, and the highly prized
reputations of public figures would tatter.
The obvious choice would be simply to leak. What bothered her was that this was clearly
what she was supposed to do. Someone possessing immense governmental influence and
access had arranged for the report to be copied, for the copy to end up with Becky, and in all
likelihood wind up on the desk of someone like Jayne.
An intermediary like her was clearly being manipulated, though it was self-preservation over
pride that made Jayne so wary about this. Newspaper editors had the shield of free speech to
protect themselves but this would not apply to Jayne should one of them become show
carelessness or indiscretion. If the news was of sufficient poison, messengers like her were
almost always shot at dawn.
She had friends who, when confronted with indecision at the workplace, would sit down with
their boss, weigh up pros, cons, and assess them with mutual experience and find a solution.
'Sooo. Jayne.'
Solomon Braid was standing in the open doorway of Jayne's office. He had difficulty in
finding interesting words to start a conversation so simply used a creepily elongated 'So' and
hoped whoever he was So-ing would step in and make up for it.
'Yesss, Solomon?' What was good for the goose, thought Jayne.
'Anything interesting going on?'
'Well, I'm just debating whether or not to leak a story that could bring down the government.
It involves a document layered in such official secrecy and import that it could put myself
and anyone who signs off on it in prison for quite some time. What do you think?'
'Did I mention I have arranged a soiree this evening? Just a drinks get-together nearby for my
valued staff. Nothing too ostentatious.'

Jayne thought of those friends, whose bosses were at this very minute pushing buttons and
pulling strings to help them through their dilemmas.
'Actually, Solomon, there is something.'
'Yes Jayne?'
'Could you sign this, please?'
Here, Solomon Braid was in his element. Withdrawing a gold-plated fountain pen from his
inside pocket, he pulled off the lid with a soft pop. Keeping it upright he twisted it in fingers,
presumably so the platinum nib might catch the light and somehow impress whomever else
was in the room.
'You can use mine if there's something wrong with yours?' Jayne held up a biro she had taken
from the box on her desk.
Solomon stepped forward to take the paper Jayne had pushed across the desk and spent three
seconds pretending to read it.
'Very well, Jayne.' He made his signature preamble that Jayne had seen a million times
before; waving his pen six inches above the paper like he was looking for the right place to
make the final semi-clef on an operatic score. He put nib to paper.
'No smudges please, Solomon.'
Solomon had to take another moment to compose himself before finally scratching his name
at the bottom of the paper.
'All done.' Solomon popped the lid back on his pen and turned to go, but not without a...
'Sooo...'
'Yes Solomon, I'll be there for the drinks tonight.'
'Excellent, Jayne. What an excellent day's work we are having.'
Solomon turned to go. Jayne picked up the legal document her boss had just signed in a fair
and decent mind and blew on the ink. If she was going to manipulated into something, she
had a few tricks of her own.
She picked up the red telephone on her desk, and speed-dialled a number.
‘Hello Jules. Fancy a coffee?’
The first unknown visitor to “Beers Dry on Their Own” that afternoon did not look all that
unwelcome, with the deep tan and deeper suit offsetting bright jewellery on every finger.
He wore a thick fur-lined trench-coat draped across his shoulders, and knew that here was
one of the very few public places where no one complained if you were smoking a fat cigar.
This statement got the respect it merited from the pool players and the man with his hand on
the jukebox switch, and the newcomer’s presence was accepted.
Harry watched the man approach the bar, to be cagily met by the landlord. The two men
leaned toward each other in an exchange of business-like whispers. The landlord paused,
rubbed his chin, and then looked straight at Harry, reducing his existence to a nod and a
grunt. The trench-coated man turned from the bar to face him and grinned broadly. The man
called over his shoulder to the landlord.

‘Large scotch, please chief, and whatever this geezer’s having.’ The cockney accent was so
pronounced his whole face twitched as he spoke.
Harry got up to meet the trench-coated man, who threw him a handshake of leather skin and
24-carat knuckles.
‘Alright, mate? Name’s Evans.’
‘Harry Lett. Cheers.’ Harry shook the hand.
The landlord exchanged the two drinks for the twenty pound note Evans was waving at him.
‘And ‘ave one for yourself, chief!’ The landlord shrugged. As if he needed telling.
‘Shall we sit down for a tick, Harry old son?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ He turned to go back to his table while Evan's picked up his change from the
bar. Evans did a double-take, raised his finger as if to say something, but then thought better
of it. He followed Harry, pulled up a stool and sat down with a great waft of his coat.
‘This is the easiest money you’ll ever make, Harry, me old geezer. Five hundred quid for a
minute’s work. All you’ve got to do is be at a certain place in London at an exact time
tomorrow morning. You interested?’
Harry was more than interested. Five hundred pounds would keep his damp head above water
for a couple of weeks. ‘Yeah, definitely.’
‘Smashing, mate. Here’s when you've got to be tomorrow.’ Evans took a folded piece of
paper from his breast pocket and pushed it across the table to Harry, who picked it up.
'When? What about where?'

'We don't know yet. Here, give us your phone number and I'll text you when I know.'
This was a little unusual, but Harry gave Evans his phone number anyway.
‘A minute’s work, mate. Here, take these.’ Evans dipped into the pocket of his trench-coat
and pulled out a fist-sized brown paper bag that looked like it might have been full of sweets.
He passed them to Harry who peeked inside with more than a little curiosity.
‘And the five hundred quid? When do I get that?’
‘What say I meet you in ‘ere after the job's done and give it to you then?’
Harry, still inspecting the contents of the bag, lifted his eyes to Evans. A blatant attempt to
avoid paying up front was part of the local etiquette, as was the sarcastic reply.
‘Yeah. Right.’
It has been proven that the optimum number of substances a Londoner should be addicted to
in order to excise them of their money was two. Across the country it varied from city to city
but in London it was two.
The Cartel of London Retailers had invested much into this research and more into
implementing its conclusions. It was the Cartel’s foremost interest to ensure Londoners were
constantly exposed to only two addictions.
The already established Gin Joint Syndicate had long held royal approval and so its position
as purveyor of the first of these was considered unassailable. When the Tobacco Merchants
Union eventually fell with the longevity of their customers, there came a vacancy, which was
taken with aplomb by the newly formed Council of Coffee Shops.
James Bakewell, a barista of the “Bean there, Doughnut That” coffee shop on Fleet Street,
picked out the appropriate-sized cup and saucer and assembled them with one hand.
Measuring out a sleek scoop of Bolivian coffee he attached it to the coffee machine before
too much of the aroma had a chance to escape into the undeserving air. Hissing preceded a
trickle of rich black treacle into the cup. A small jug was dashed with milk before being
exposed to whoosh of super-heated steam from a pipe on the machine’s side.
Without wasting a drop, Bakewell dribbled the foamed milk over the coffee leaving the
unmistakeable pattern of an immature Bolivian coffee-plant leaf. He raised a dredger of the
finest ground cocoa questioningly in front of his customer. His customer nodded eagerly and
the cocoa was sprinkled deftly over the still-separated coffee and milk mixture.
Jules Turner took the cappuccino from the agent of the Coffee Shop Council without a word
and placed it next to the first. His silence was not impoliteness, but rather due to him never
having the words to describe the skill he had just witnessed.
He took the two cappuccinos to a table with two chairs, adjusted his brand new bow-tie and
threw a section of his side-parting back over his fringe just as Jane Mendis entered. He stood
and greeted her with a handshake after a brief pause to see if a cheek-to-cheek greeting was
on offer instead, then gestured toward the vacant chair and coffee.
‘Jayne, might I say you look lovely?’
Jayne sat down, ‘Jules Turner, have I ever told you are a terrible liar? New bow-tie?’
Jules was the political editor for a national tabloid called “Eight Dailies a Week”, a
newspaper that paid a retainer to “PR the Champions” in return for Jayne’s ability to provide
a scoop once in a while. Jayne had never seen him without one of a selection of bright bow-
ties around his neck.
'What, this old thing? Just something I threw together.'
'And how's business?' Enough chit-chat, thought Jayne.
'Very slow, I'm afraid. This morning had to lead on a story about a golden eagle spotted near
various landmarks of London.'
'A golden eagle terrorising London doesn't seem too boring?'
'Yes, except its not terrorising anyone. It sits on buildings and looks at people before flying
off.'
Jayne thought on this for a moment. 'Sounds like what you need, Jules, is a proper good old-
fashioned political scandal.'
Perfect cappuccino spilt from Jules lips and onto his new bow-tie.
The man we have been introduced as Evans stepped out of “Beers Dry On Their Own” and
climbed into the back of the black Jaguar parked over the road. He spoke to the driver in front
with no sign of the accent he had used when talking to Harry.
'That is definitely the most insalubrious public house I have ever been in.' He started pulling
chunky gold rings from his fingers. ‘Where did you get these things from?’
The driver turned to face him but ignored the question.
‘Did you get someone?’
‘Of course. Some stool-pigeon type. Totally gormless I was reliably told.’
‘Good. Now get in front and get me out of this godforsaken suburb.’
As the Foreign Secretary hurriedly got out through the driver’s door and into the back, Swain
took his place. Swain reached into the glove compartment for a cloth which he use to wipe
streaks of fake orange tan from his face, then reversed the car expertly into the main road and
sped away toward Westminster.
The last place in which Harry was going to get drunk was “Beers Dry On Their Own”. The
best paid job he’d had in ages, and the easiest from the sound of things, deserved a solid
pasting at a decent venue. He lifted the last of his sickly pint to his lips, stopped, thought the
better of it, and put it back down. With five hundred pounds of ammunition in his pocket, he
could do better.
Harry stepped out onto the now darkened street and saw two buses carrying declarations of
intent towards West London, which seemed an excellent spot to continue his personal
celebration. He looked around for a bus stop, spotted one, and lightly cursed when both buses
passed it by.
He turned to his left and was not hugely surprised to see an third bus approach and stop right
in front of him. Harry happily clambered aboard the 547 to Knightsbridge and bought a ticket
from the jocular driver, who seemed to be singing a lullaby to someone Harry could not see.
Jayne was on the phone to a happily animated Jules Turner. The leak she had passed on was
expanding nicely to fill the vacuum the week’s dearth of news had left. All the titles beneath
the “Eight Dailies A Week” banner were carrying the story in their next morning’s editions.
‘Yes, well… Thank you, it was no problem… It was my pleasure…’ Jayne was struggling to
return more than half-responses to the salivations of gratitude coming down the red telephone
line.
‘And a good evening to you too.’ Finally she felt she had earned the permission to hang up.
Jayne looked around the empty office and sighed. Everyone had left already for Solomon's
drinks. Jayne had nothing against drinking heavily with colleagues, particularly when the
office was picking up the tab, but she didn’t understand why everyone should be so excited
about it.
She heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner firing up not far away and turned with minor
irritation. The cleaners weren’t strictly supposed to start until everyone had left or 6pm,
whichever came earlier, so this made her feel a little insignificant. The woman driving the
hoover wore a bright smile which she beamed to Jayne along with a little wave. Maybe out
familiarity, Jayne waved back before returning to her email inbox.

She counted five emails that really should be responded to before she left the office, the rest
being either temporarily delay-able or permanently delete-able. She mentally prioritised the
five emails and opened up the first as the sound of the hoover drew closer. She looked again
at the cleaner and wondered at this hour, in an empty office, if it was Jayne that was in fact
the interloper. She swapped shoes for trainers and grabbed her things to go. Halfway to the
door she stopped, thought for a moment, and deliberately kicked herself with the heel of a
trainer before snatching the post-IT note that bore the name of the drinks venue off the wall.
‘Not now!’
The Foreign Secretary continued to stare at the cursor on the screen, locked as it was in a
blinking infinity. He had been unable to do anything all day except glare at the Operation
Nightingale terminal, awaiting a response.
He was getting a little worried. He had the time of the point of First Contact, but was waiting
for its location. What if the time elapsed before Nightingale had come up with an answer?
What little the Foreign Secretary knew of computers led him to believe the screen might blow
up in his face. The knock at the door was repeated.
‘NOT! NOW!’
The Foreign Secretary was unaccustomed to being trapped by anyone or anything. Either
Nightingale delivered in the next few hours and his plan could be put into effect, or the
meticulous planning of the last five years would be for nought. He wondered whether this
was what it was like waiting for a bus.

There was yet another knock at the door. This one was different and The Foreign Secretary
immediately recognised it. He thought for a moment.
‘Go away.’
At that precise instant the carriage clock on the mantelpiece chimed six o’clock.
‘WAIT!’ There followed only a few seconds of silence though the Foreign Secretary was
confident the person was still behind the door.
‘Enter.’ The panelled door opened and in walked Montague Swain, the Foreign Secretary’s
chauffeur. Careful that his eyes didn’t leave the screen, the Foreign Secretary rose from his
chair and moved slowly away from the desk. He jabbed one hand at where he guessed his
chauffeur was standing and the other at the chair he had just vacated.
‘Good evening, Swain. Now, sit here and watch this.’
Alcohol's claim as the foremost of the two permitted addictions of London had never been in
any danger. Whether it was this that had bred lethargy amongst The Gin Joint Syndicate, or
whether it was too much of the gin itself, their influence had nonetheless declined steadily
over the last century.
Aware of this, many Syndicate members became concerned with the fickle sophistication of a
youthful generation when it came to selecting their fix. A group of mixologists broke away
from the Syndicate to form their own union, predicated on supreme levels of service and
dexterity matched only their fierce rivals at the Coffee Shop Council.
Harry clambered off 547 Knightsbridge bus at an arbitrary stop and was confronted with a
bewitching chalkboard outside a bar pronouncing that happy hour cocktails were in full flow.
Harry needed no more invitation.
Entering “Drinking Out Loud”, Harry climbed onto a stool by the bar, picked up the the 2-4-1
menu and couldn't decide. Debbie Lamont, a senior operative of the London Cocktail
Consortium, knew inexperience in a customer when she saw it.
'Perhaps I could recommend something for you, sir?'
Harry looked up and knew he was at home for the next few hours.
Six o’clock was an important juncture of the day for The Foreign Secretary, for it was the
time at which he allowed business to become business and pleasure.
‘I don’t suppose you would care,’ drizzled the Foreign Secretary, ‘for a drink?’
Swain checked his watch. Ah, yes, that time of day, then. He knew better than to deny his
boss’s infrequent gestures of cordiality.
‘Maybe just the one then. Not too dry.’ The last sentence was said with little hope and zero
expectation. He swivelled the chair slightly so as to both take in both the computer screen and
the ritual he knew was about to take place.
The Foreign Secretary removed a shiny brass key from his waistcoat pocket and walked to a
large bureau at the back of the room and unlocked its face. Inside was a heavy metal
container not unlike a safe, but without the lock. When the Foreign Secretary swung open the
door to this container a chilled fog fell out covering the base of the cabinet before
disappearing on condensation. Using a set of tongs that hung next to the ice box, the Foreign
Secretary plucked two glasses, opaque with frost, and a bottle of London gin from the back of
the freezer compartment.
Swain’s attention drifted precariously from its blinking duty on the screen to take in this next,
always fascinating stage.
The Foreign Secretary returned to the cabinet and opened a drawer beneath the main
chamber. He whipped out a icon-sized painting and propped it up against the ice-box, before
taking a step back to face the picture, to which he raised his glass and gave a earnest salute.
A standard martini is generally accepted to be equal parts gin and vermouth. ‘Dryness’ is
increased with amount of gin relative to vermouth, with an ‘extra-dry’ martini being one
containing only trace elements of the vermouth. Levels of dryness beyond this can only avoid
being referred to as pure gin using the most creative, and some say absurd, fashions.
Gin-stewed members of some Mayfair clubs felt that enough exposure to vermouth could be
gleaned from allowing sunlight to shine through the bottle and onto a glass of neat gin.
Winston Churchill achieved his dryness by filling a pitcher with icy gin, and merely giving a
cursory glance, and knowing him a quick oath, to a never opened bottle of vermouth across
the room.
What Swain would never know was the faded portrait that the Foreign Secretary had used to
lace their martinis was of an Italian gentleman by the name of Antonio Carpano. It was
painted in 1791, five years after Signor Carpano first blended a total of thirteen different
flavours to make a drink that soon gained world-renown, if not always worldwide use, as
vermouth.
Harry could not believe he was only paying for the drinks.
'How about two of these, this time?' He pointed at the next item down on the cocktail menu.
Debbie Lamont of the London Cocktail Consortium, glanced at Harry's finger. 'Of course,
sir.' Harry sat back and prepared for the show.
Lamont grabbed a cocktail shaker with her left hand and, still looking straight at Harry,
scooped it three-quarters full with cracked ice from a drawer. With her right hand she lifted a
bottle of tequila, twirling it in her hand like a gunslinger before throwing it high above above
her head. It was only now her eyes left Harry, but not before they tossed him a wink. As the
tequila bottle span over her head she squeezed juice from a lime into the shaker before
grabbing a bottle of Cointreau and launching it after the tequila. Lamont looked back at Harry
and raised an eyebrow when the two bottles touched each other as they passed in the air,
letting out a delicate chink.
The left hand caught the tequila without looking and dashed a few shots into the shaker,
whilst the right added two tablespoons of agave with such speed there was enough time to
catch the falling Cointreau and decant a measure of that in as well.

Lamont slammed a lid onto the shaker and shook it with such vigour the whole assembly
disappeared into a blur. Removing the lid she dipped a tasting straw and deposited a few
drops onto her tongue.
'Perfetto,' She declared.
With the ballet drawing to a close, Lamont took the rest of the lime and wiped it across two
glasses before touching the wet rims into a bowl of kosher salt. The contents of the shaker
were drained evenly into the glasses, which were then presented in front of Harry on a paper
napkin.
Harry wanted to clap, he wanted to cheer, but no actions could do justice to the skill he had
just witnessed. He could not believe he was only paying for the drinks.
The setting sun leaves the Central London in the grip of many vices, most induced by alcohol
of some form or other. Bars and nightclubs where people discuss their day, restaurants where
stomachs can be filled and expense accounts emptied, casinos for the happy-go-lucky and
lap-dancing clubs for the sad-at-home.
For Jayne Mendis the excitement of living in this cauldron was beginning to wear a little thin.
Jayne had been sowing plausible excuses for leaving the drinks party ever since she had
entered an hour ago and had decided that now was the time to cash them in. She inched
toward the nearest exit waving her wine glass at snippets of regimented conversation that
carried a backing track of mock laughter.

Hardly a week seemed to go by without an invitation to at least one office-related drinks
party. Whether to celebrate a new contract, commiserate a lost contract; welcome an
incoming employee, or see one onto pastures new, Solomon Braid could always manufacture
an excuse.
Swain half-acknowledged the glass of iced gin that his boss placed on an ornamental coaster
next to the keyboard, pretending his attention was undividedly on the still flashing
Nightingale cursor. The Foreign Secretary took his own glass to a large leather armchair in
the centre of the office and took a large gulp cross-legged.
‘You know what goes through my mind at times such as this…?’
With later hindsight the chauffeur would have preferred to wait and see what nugget was
about to come next, but…
‘Sir! Something’s happened!’
It was comical the way the Foreign Secretary scrambled to get out of this seat without spilling
his drink, failing at both tasks. Eventually putting his martini aside, he levered his way out of
the armchair and hurried over to lodge himself alongside Swain.
‘What, what, what?’
‘Erm, not sure yet.’ The screen was filling with output which then scrolled out of sight before
the human eye could read. Finally, it stopped, cursor hovering unhelpfully, maybe preparing
for another long wait, a cruel baiting of both watchers’ breaths.

The screen went blank before the dreaded cursor appeared once more. But this time it trailed
across the screen leaving in its wake the question the Foreign Secretary had originally asked
the previous day. It then printed a set of precise set of GPS coordinates. This was then
enriched by a map of a section of London overlaid with a large red arrow. The Foreign
Secretary allowed the excitement to roll off and leave his usual unimpeachable demeanour.
‘Inform the Catalyst immediately, would you Swain?’
Jayne stood at the bus-stop nearest to where her colleagues were still extending Solomon
Braid's bar tab and waited. A man who might have been drunk, or perhaps was just blighted
with an ungainly walk, stood alongside her for moment, before checking his phone and
wandering off.
THURSDAY MORNING
‘I am absolutely, positively fuming!’
The others around the table were absolutely, positively terrified. The Prime Minister had yet
to sit down and was instead stomping ellipses around the oval table of the cabinet office
irresponsibly flinging “hell” strewn questions into the air.
‘Where in hell’s name is he?’
‘Who the hell does he think he is?’
‘What the hell are we going to do?’
The Prime Minister burned a look into each of his senior ministers in turn, shook his head and
made another circuit of the table, trying to crease his brow as much as he was pursing his lips.
‘Where the bloody hell is he?’
As the cursing went up another notch, so did the discomfort of the ministers who were
regretting their punctuality. Strewn across the table in front of them were the newspapers that
constituted that morning's press. On top sat the headline, “Holy Broke!” from “Eight Dailies
A Week”, with “Money’s Too Tight For Comprehension” in “The Daily Thompson” winning
that day’s prize for worst 80s pop song pun.
That there had been a leak from one of the cabinet ministers was clear, the only question left
to be answered was, from whom? Blame had quickly settled on one person, by rote that he
was the only one among them who possibly had something to gain. In the twenty minutes the
meeting had been in session and in absentia, the prime suspect had been tried and sentenced.
All that remained was for him to be hung, drawn and quartered.
The atmosphere was cut by a sharp knock from outside the room. Everyone turned to see the
head of the Prime Minister’s private secretary poke around the opening door.
‘The Foreign Secretary for you, sir.’
One of the perks of being a criminal, of which there were few, was being able to keep one’s
own hours. Harry Lett's latest employer had promised this was to be the easiest day’s work he
had ever done, but had obviously not heard of this contractual benefit of the job.
The alarm on Harry's phone buzzed and blared him awake. He tried to remember why would
set it for the morning after he had gotten utterly and unceremoniously trashed. When the
memory surfaced he shot up in bed and scrambled for the phone and its unread text message.
Harry knew he had to be somewhere within central London at an exact time today, but had
only just discovered where. He checked the text and the time, and the time and the text. And
swore profusely. No time to shower today then.
In walked the beautifully pin-striped Foreign Secretary, attaché case occupying one hand,
trouser pocket nonchalantly occupying the other. Unlike his contemporaries he looked like he
was having a very pleasant morning.
‘Ah, hello and good morning everyone! Terribly sorry I’m late, Prime Minister.’
The four seated wimps were elated at the entry of the Foreign Secretary. With luck the Prime
Minister would tear into the Foreign Secretary, demand some sort of acutely embarrassing
penance, and then allow everyone to scurry off back to their respective fiefdoms. The Prime
Minister’s gambit surprised them all.
‘Not at all, not at all! Do take a seat. Honestly, I get lost in this building all the time, and I’ve
lived here for five years.’ The Prime Minister’s tone was pure crystal, the chuckle he let out
total charm. The Foreign Secretary returned fire with petals on.
‘Good heavens above, well, I never. I say, has anyone noticed there’s been bit of a to-do this
morning?’ The Foreign Secretary found his seat and, under the gaze of all present, took an
age to shuffle his way into it.
‘A to-do, all of things. What a terrible nuisance for you.’ The Prime Minister was not going
to be out-blaséd.
Like most sociopathic managers, the Prime Minister had a preferred means of firing someone
he detested. It involved setting a scene of overt affability and then shattering it with a strike
of defrocking thunder, the only flaw being if his target was nimble enough to steal it.
'Prime Minister, I would like to tender my resignation.'
'What?!!'
It is best not to ask too many questions of the labyrinthine structure of the London
Underground system, as none can be more searching than the questions the structure itself
asks of the integrity of the Earth’s crust. The obliviousness of the London commuter to the
precariousness of his or her safety as tectonic plates narrowly miss each other overhead is the
real miracle here.
Leicester Square houses beneath it a fine example of one of the tube system’s many
manifestations of hell on, or rather just under, Earth. On one of its many platforms, hundreds
of agitated human beings are pacified by giant hoardings across them tempting images for
seven goldfish seconds at a time.
At each end are the chilling orifices of blackness through which, suddenly, a cylinder of
sooty grey metal bursts through and slows to a juddering halt. Doors open and there is a
violent exchange of bodies, each desperate to leave its own respective frying pan for the
other’s fire.
Amongst this teeming mass, caught like a tenpin that wants to fall over but keeps getting hit
on all sides by bowling balls, the still throbbing head of Harry Lett stepped out.
'You can't resign, I've fired you!'
'You cant fire me, I've resigned.'
It was known as a Downing Street stand-off, and could only be resolved by means of a
minute's dead-eyed stare followed by some sort of compromise. Fifty-nine seconds later the
Foreign Secretary spoke.
'A commons vote on my proposal of Tuesday.'

'A what?
'I will accept your action of dismissal in exchange for a simple vote in the House of
Commons. Yes or no.'
The Prime Minister's laugh was just a level lower than maniacal.
'Done. In fact you can have it tomorrow, I'll push it through myself. Not a single member of
Parliament will be with you on such an insane notion. You're career will drown in a
quicksand of humiliation and indignity.'
The Foreign Secretary had no idea it was going to be this easy.
Jayne could tell today would be happy one at PR The Champions if not for the rest of
country, which had woken to find out the mice had been at one hundred billion pounds worth
of cheese.
It wasn’t difficult to envisage the pandemonium breaking out in and around Downing Street
as a result of the leak she had engineered. Jayne had an inkling today would be a busy one for
the blue phone on her desk, and almost thought she could hear it ringing the minute she
entered the foyer.
When Jayne walked through the door with her latte and handbag, her fellow workers nudged
each other until they all turned to face her. Claps and cheers broke out. Jayne found herself
the centre of a crescent of her peers blocking her way to her office with applause. She put
down her belongings and motioned for it to die down.

'It's okay, it's okay. The kissing of my feet will begin at ten o'clock, but know that I have a
penchant for rose petals to be strewn before them first.' The laughs that broke out were
slightly more than half-real. 'But this is a big day for “PR The Champions” and might well be
the busiest we've ever had. So not a time to be be standing around. Thank you.'
All news is good news when you rely on its monthly retainers to pay the bills. Solomon Braid
was certainly master of his domain this morning. Jayne caught up with him, standing outside
her office.
'A magnificent job, Jayne. I will be dispersing plenty of kudos today my young acolyte, with
not a little to be sprinkled in your direction.'
'Thank you Solomon, I'll look forward to that,' Jayne thought it sounded vile, 'but I'm sure
you'll agree, we have little time for that now.'
‘No, no, of course not. But on the other hand, I think a day like this is as good as any for me
to take the afternoon off.’
Jayne pushed past Solomon to answer the screaming blue phone.
As the Foreign Secretary marched up the corridor towards his office, his chauffeur stood to
attention with his hands behind his back.
‘How did that meeting go, sir?’

‘An irrelevant question Swain, given the seismic proportions of what we are about to
instigate. A far more pertinent inquiry would be as to the whereabouts of the Catalyst. I trust
he is en route?’
‘He err, had a slow start but I understand he is fully back on schedule now.’
Swain didn’t often hold his hands behind his back, but then he wasn’t always trying to hide
the fact that he was crossing his fingers.
Mid-morning on a brisk autumn day is about the best time to chance progress through
Leicester Square. Harry slipped down a side-road and balanced along the narrow pavement,
the sounds of the West End suddenly baffled before opening up again as the road reached its
junction. Harry checked the name of the road on the wall against the text message on his
phone. A quick glance to check street numbers of nearby buildings, and Harry withdrew from
his coat the bag of objects he had been given to accomplish his task.
Harry had seen this kind of object before. In spy movies they were often discharged from the
rear license plate of a secret agent's car so as to immobilise the black Mercedes of a pursuing
evil henchmen. Each inch-high piece of metal was constructed of four little spikes arranged
like a three-dimensional star-jumper – the idea being that whichever way you lay it on a flat
surface, at least one spike would always be pointing skywards.
Harry’s mission was simple. He was to wait until a precise time of the day, and then simply
toss the twenty or so little geometric nails into the one-way street in front of him. He was
approximately thirty yards from where the lane opened into the busy Haymarket.
Seeing nothing that concerned him, Harry emptied the contents of the bag into his hands,
skidded them across the surface of the road, and squealed as the last one scraped his
forefinger before resting at his feet. He sucked blood and pain from his thumb and kicked the
guilty spike into the middle of the road. Harry sauntered off, back the way he had come.
Two seconds after Harry turned out of sight, the first motorised vehicle approached the trap
that he had laid. It was a fifty-foot articulated lorry travelling to meet the rear loading bay of
a local supermarket, rolling toward tarmac now littered with tiny metal hazards.
The driver of the lorry felt very protected within the elevated cabin of the twenty-tonne
vehicle. This led him not to panic when he heard the loud pops from the tyres of his lorry.
Keeping his steering straight he hit the brakes as the tyres were shredded into a vulcanised
mess.
On the course to its conclusion, Operation Nightingale had processed over a trillion snippets
of seemingly innocuous information and given each one an integral part of the unfathomable
jigsaw puzzle it then attempted to solve. The first pieces of the puzzle involved the facts that
a laden lorry of this size, at this speed, with its front tyres blown out, has a stopping distance
of exactly forty-two feet.
Forty-two feet from where the lorry hit First Contact, it ground to a metallic halt slap-bang
across the middle of Haymarket, deeply entrenched within the West End of London, on the
Thursday morning of a busy week in one of the world’s most traffic-unfriendly cities. A
witness to the ensuing scene, in a remark which won him an award at an internet-run contest
for understatement, said it was to the chagrin of the other motorists.

There was a buzz from the phone in his chauffeur’s pocket which drew a sharp look from the
Foreign Secretary, who disapproved of his staff interacting with anything while in his
presence.
‘It’s from the Catalyst, sir.’ The Foreign Secretary sat immediately to attention as Swain
relayed the text message.
‘We have First Contact, sir. The Frog has mounted the Scorpion.’
‘Very good, Swain.’
It was unmistakeably there. Swain would swear on his life he saw it, if only for an instant. A
childish excitement in the Foreign Secretary’s usually unflappable face.
Swain felt it was a good point to make a suggestion. ‘We have the advantage of being the
only people to know what is about to happen. Perhaps some sort of evacuation is in order?’
‘Not just now, Swain. I need you to drive me to my luncheon appointment.’
Swain would normally respond with something subservient but he was too busy swearing
under his breath.
Harry stepped out into the empty street behind Haymarket and congratulated himself on a job
perfectly executed. His back pocket still brimming with banknotes of a middling
denomination, he couldn’t think of a better place to celebrate a restful day than in a nice
traditional London pub.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON
There is a cartoon sketch that will have been seen and laughed at by every child with access
to a television. The gag itself is so old and hackneyed that its copyright has been lost in time,
allowing it to be recycled by every humourist suffering a spell of joker’s droop. It goes
something like this.
A talented sculptor, perhaps in the guise of blue-and-white cat or a lisping rabbit-hunter, has
just finished his ten-foot tall masterpiece in marble and is about to lay down hammer and
artisan’s chisel for a well-deserved port and cigar.
From the corner of the sculptor’s eye a tiny, barely imperceptible imperfection at the base of
the statue is seen. Closing one eye for better focus, and tongue hanging from the corner of his
mouth with concentration, he attempts to tap out the offending shard of stone with a feather-
like touch of his tools.
The offending granule of marble falls to the floor to the sculptor’s extreme satisfaction. But
just as he turns to go, a miniscule crack appears at the point of contact and grows. The crack
slowly branches out across the entire structure causing it to shatter into a million worthless
pieces, to the devastation of the sculptor and utter hilarity of his nemesis.
This breeding of destruction from a minor origin is a lot like what happened to the London
traffic system for the rest of that fateful Thursday. Without, needless to say, the hilarity.
Jackie Arch had the remedy of turning up the music on her car radio every time the traffic
looked like closing in on her. She worked as an estate agent, and the market for selling ever-
decreasing spaces at ever-increasing prices had never been busier. She loved the job but it did
entail constant driving around Central London at peak hours to meet clients for viewings.
Jackie suffered from nervous condition whenever the walls of traffic converged; her skin
would begin to itch and her breathing to stutter. The closest thing to an antidote her
environment could provide was the volume control on her car radio, which she adjusted like a
morphine drip.
At the point of First Contact she was on her way to meet a client, driving the Old Brompton
Road in a semi-daydream, with the radio volume at less than a third of its maximum output.
She wasn’t late, and she wasn’t lost.
She stopped ahead of the junction to Sloane square, about seven or eight vehicles behind the
red light and waited patiently, handbrake on, for it to change. The light changed to amber and
the tone of a dozen engines lifted as they prepared to move on. Green came, Jackie raised her
handbrake, and put the car into gear. She waited as the cramp in her clutch-foot began to
build. After no movement from any vehicle, the traffic light returned to red.
Jackie started to tap the steering wheel in the slightest indication of stress. She reached for the
dial on the radio and turned it a few degrees to the right, extra decibels easily
counterbalancing the pin-pricks of angst stirring within her. When the the traffic lights went
through another cycle without any movement, Jackie craned her head slightly to see what the
obstruction was.
#
The fifty-foot obstruction with the ripped-out tyres straddling Haymarket wasn’t going
anywhere soon. Vehicles had begun to pile up either side to the degree that it was going to be
very difficult for them to reverse out. Eventually people got out to remonstrate with the lorry
driver but on seeing the predicament he was in, could only join him in scratching their heads.
The lorry had become an immoveable object and it was now the challenge of the road-users
of London to see what an irresistible force they could become. After about twenty minutes
someone suggested whether ignoring the one-way system might provide some relief. There
was no one present to explain how this was akin to relieving a blood clot to the brain by
drilling a hole in one’s head.
Jackie was now officially late for the property viewing. She texted an apologetic message to
her client. She was afraid to make a phone call because it would mean muting the car volume
on her radio, which instead she prodded a little higher.
More minutes passed which were followed by quivering touches to the volume dial. She now
had less concern for missing her appointment than she had for her speakers exhausting their
ability to make more noise. It was then that the first car horns could be heard.
Many drivers can go through the entire motoring lives without using their car horn once.
Some use it as Moses did his staff, believing that by invoking its power any waves of traffic
will part magically.

The Highway Code stipulates that is illegal to use one’s car horn when your vehicle is
stationary. Legally then, in the case of a stream of cars queued at traffic lights with engines
either off or gently idling, a gentle peace should descend upon the city.
The first car horn started hooting some distance in front of Jackie. It proved to be an
irresistible mating call to others for immediately klaxons sprang out to fill the air in a
desperate wail of frustration. The sudden ventilation of irritable noise poured more acid onto
the fraying strands of Jackie's nervous system. She yanked the volume what little remained to
the right it would go, squeezing the last bit of output from her already screeching speakers.
The frame of her little car began to reverberate.
Suddenly, a development. Although Jackie could see the traffic light was resolutely red,
someone must have seen a gap because he or she was attempting to fill it. Other drivers at the
junction had the same impulse, leading to a grinding of metal on metal that Jackie imagined
more than heard.
Collision or not, there was now space at the front of the queue, and the law of the asphalt
took over. Vehicles jerked forward and Jackie followed, but no sooner had she done so than
the cars lurched again. Jackie was horrified as she gave the bumper in front a resounding
spank.
Through the windscreen in front she could make out a head of fury spin round to get look at
her. To her left, another car horn began a cowardly siege against her passenger window.
Her hand shot to the volume dial in a Pavlovian movement that nearly tore it clean off.
Back at the scene of the comatose lorry, the lanes to the one-way system had accumulated
with vehicles from all directions. They were reversing out of blockages, mounting kerbs and
chancing unknown alleyways in a desperate scramble for an escape route. All of their engines
eventually died in a sealed, claustrophobic hopelessness.
When she realised the blaring music would not go any louder, Jackie Arch spiked it by
singing along. Her voice was wildly out of key with the song that was playing, but that hardly
mattered. Now trapped in on all sides, Jackie could not look in any direction where shaking
fists and lips that mimed vehemence were not directed at her. Her trembling hands wiped
sweat from her brow and then found purchase on her shivering kneecaps. She closed her eyes
and began to pound the back of her head against the seat’s head rest. A new song started
playing on the radio but she no longer noticed. Her psychological defences had already taken
control and she drifted to a different place, singing her mindless chant ever louder.
Swain was driving east towards the City of London, trying to take the roads where the sounds
of beeping horns were farthest away. He checked the rear-view mirror again to see the
Foreign Secretary simply stare from the passenger window as he always did, oblivious to the
creeping rage he had launched.
Whilst movement through the peak-hour streets was far from quick, patience and sanity
allowed journeys to be completed within the time provided and with the minimum of fuss.
Patience like he showed to allow the car to pull out the space next to the plush restaurant, and
sanity shown by the pedestrian who waited while Swain took its place.
He turned off the engine and walked around to open the rear passenger door. The Foreign
Secretary stepped out in a trilby and silk scarf, but with no words of acknowledgement for his
chauffeur.
‘I wondered, sir…’
‘Yes, Swain?’
‘Given the situation, I wondered how long you were expecting to be at your luncheon? We
should probably prepare for…’
‘Swain, my young ferryman, if your ability to reach whatever debased nest you return to each
evening is taxing you so, I hereby bless you with the afternoon off.’
Swain smiled and phew-ed at the same time, and did all but jog back around to the front seat
and drive off. The Foreign Secretary surveyed the frontage of the restaurant with a baffled
frown.
‘He still hasn’t changed the name of the place?’
FIVE YEARS AGO
The exclusive restaurant “Live and Let Pi” had been founded by a Cambridge mathematician
who had discovered a global search algorithm, a taste for cuisine, and a sense of humour in
precisely that order. When the mathematician had exhausted menu puns and finally accepted
her genius did not extend to making a London restaurant’s balance sheet balance, it fell into
the hands of Michael McNamara.
McNamara descended the stairs from his private office with haste reserved only for those
customers he wished to be rid of as quickly as possible.
‘Foreign Secretary, congratulations on your new position. This is such an honour.’
‘Honours, I have a plethora of already.’
McNamara turned to lead the Foreign Secretary into the dining area, and also to roll his eyes
without him noticing. Lap-dogging to the rich and famous had endless recurring benefits for
the establishments he ran. Politicians, on the other hand, wielded influence that a restaurateur
could only use to defend himself, not to make money from.
‘I have a table we keep only for special guests as yourselves at short notice.’
‘I won’t be requiring a table at your official dining area this evening.’ The Foreign Secretary
held out business card for McNamara, who took it tentatively.
“Hereditary Member of the Restaurant Guild of London”
Michael McNamara read it with a mixture of respect and disbelief. He turned it over to check
the motto that had been spoken by restaurateurs ever since cards had been handed over at
restaurants. As was the protocol for formal introductions within the Guild, he read it out loud.
‘That sir, will do nicely’

THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Elsewhere around the city, similar hotspots to the one near Sloane Square were simmering
nicely to a froth of fury and mental fracture. Most were at junctions or heavily contested
roundabouts that sucked in the brash and overconfident. Others were where a larger vehicle
had been entrenched by smaller ones whilst trying to turn in a gradually congealing flow.
Hatred and vitriol accumulated and spilled over into its many forms, usually adhering to the
sequence of car-horn, verbal abuse, followed by physical violence. This was not always the
case however, indicated by the more direct individuals who would prefer to forego the
foreplay of beeping and bleeping, and get straight down to the beatings.
Witness the driver, who has just seen the doomed attempt of a cabriolet manoeuvre result in
the crunching of her passenger door. Knowing that names will never actually hurt anyone but
with good authority that sticks and stones would do the trick, she gets out of her car and turns
up the collar of her shirt. Still showing an everyday calm, she opens the trunk for a brief
rummage.
The driver of the cabriolet saw the attractive woman serenely glide towards his car and
wondered in twisted sublimity that it might actually be his lucky day, before the woman
unleashed the open face of her fairway wood onto and through the sunroof of his car.
Harry Lett sat down at his little table with his carefully drawn pint of real ale. After waiting
for the swirls in the brown liquid below the soft white froth to settle, he closed his eyes and
took an unhealthily large swig. After the gorgeous syrup had slipped down his throat, he set
the glass down and declared to himself that all was right with the world.
The wheels of the Nightingale algorithm had spun an unimaginably large number of times
before finding an answer, looking for factors obscure as well as obvious to optimise its goal.
One of the more obvious factors was to maximise the number of white vans on the road at the
point of First Contact, those lumbering deliverers of everyday goods and services across the
city. Not, however, for the unwieldiness of the vehicles which was easily negated by the skill
of their drivers. Their contribution to discord was to be the drivers themselves, the notorious
White Van Man (WVM), and specifically their primal aggression, ever latent, coiled like a
nuclear-tipped cobra.
The man in the open-necked shirt who had unwittingly cut across a plumber’s white transit
van was on his way to pick up his daughter from school. He was known among his friends as
an unassuming, gentle-natured fellow. He jumped from his car in dismay to find an example
of WVM facing him.
‘What the @?£# do you think you’re playing at you @?£#-ing $&%#-er?'
‘I’m terribly sorry. The roads are a bit crazy at the moment.’ The open-necked shirt gestured
to the surrounding opprobrium.
‘Crazy? You wanna see @?£#-ing crazy, you piece of %$&*?’
‘I’m not sure we need that kind of language. Maybe if I give you my insurance details?’
‘You think @?£#-ing insurance is going to fix this £?%* you £?%*?’ The WVM was
gesticulating to his dented wing.
‘Well, actually yes. I mean, isn’t that the whole point of it?’ The man’s temperate nature was
so far holding steady.
The WVM’s rage suddenly froze into a deathly still at this volley of common sense. Not
quashed however, simply coiling for another explosive vault. He stepped forward,
encroaching well into his challenger’s personal space, and unfurled a pointed fore-finger
which he began to prod into the man’s shoulder.
’You. Smart. Arse. Little. £?%*.’
With every prod, the finger seemed to sharpen and bury itself a little more into the bruising
nerve, and with every prod, the man thought a little less of his loving daughter waiting
patiently for him at the school gate. The WVM took the man's silence as further
encouragement.
’What’s wrong, *$&*-face? Cat. Got. Your. @?£#-ing. Tongue?’
Thoughts of those friends who would later testify that the open-shirted man had never hurt so
much as a fly dissipated. This final insult snapped his restraint as the accompanying prod
finally shattered that tender demeanour. He reached out, caught the finger smartly in his
hand, and twisted. The WVM fell to his knees in a high-pitched yelp. The man in the open-
necked shirt leaned over him, eyes aflame and language forever poisoned.
‘What you need, you @?£#-ing, %$&*-spewing $&%#-er, is to learn some @?£#-ing
manners!’
The open-shirted man cackled as he began to teach his lesson in manners, and though the
WVM squealed cowardly as he was being taught, for the purposes of Operation Nightingale
he had done his work valiantly; infecting his fellow man with rage, ire and eye-watering
invective.
FIVE YEARS AGO
The Foreign Secretary had followed McNamara to a private room containing a round table
big enough for four but furnished with only two chairs. An open bottle of red wine divided
two generously bowled glasses.
‘Chateau Lafite 1972?’ Michael McNamara, head of the Restaurant Guild of London, poured
whilst the Foreign Secretary took his seat.
‘I’m curious you haven’t revealed your membership before, Foreign Secretary?’
‘This is the first time your coterie has interested me.’
This was not music to McNamara ears. ‘I would like say that I am flattered, but then that
would depend on the form of interest, wouldn’t it?’ He might as well get straight to the point,
which was also what the Foreign Secretary was about to do.
‘I think I would like to invest.’
McNamara spat 1972 Lafite through his nose.
‘Specifically, in the Milton Initiative.’
Lafite started to dribble from McNamara's ears.

One should not be put out to discover that the most profitable restaurant in London is the one
that charges the highest prices. The highest prices are gladly paid by the happiest customers,
and so those attempting to sell their fare in the city’s most expensive restaurants will do
anything to keep their customers content until the bill has been settled.
The Restaurant Guild of London was formed largely to promote research into happiness
inducers for its customers, to reduce the risk that they may never challenge bills of such
exorbitance. Traditional inducers include exquisite ambience, decor and impeccable service,
although McNamara had found tremendous success via the use of mind-altering narcotics.
‘Thank you.’ McNamara handed the now wine-stained cloth back to the waiter and regained
his composure.
‘The Milton Initiative. Whatever could you mean?’ But McNamara knew a denial would be
hopeless.
‘The Milton Initiative, founded by your grandfather to research some ludicrous notion that
food was source of the Seven Deadly Sins.’
Suddenly McNamara’s tone changed. He leant forward, his voice becoming a hiss.
‘My grandfather was a genius, a man whose intellect went far beyond his own era. Beyond
even, the era in which you practise your power, Foreign Secretary.’ He sat back and took on a
more dismissive pose. ‘Ludicrous you say, but that description is contradicted by his
success.’
Now the Foreign Secretary’s tone changed, to one of intrigue. ‘So, the whisperings have
merit. He succeeded?’
McNamara made a slightly resigned face. ‘Alas, he was cut short in his quest to distil
foodstuffs that would influence all seven of the deadly sins.
‘Cut how short exactly?’
‘He got as far as gluttony and then died in his pursuit of the others.’
‘And the duration of this epic pursuit?’
‘Forty-two years on the master’s deathbed.’ McNamara had told this story before and knew
when to inject the pathos.
The Foreign Secretary dropped his head in tired disappointment.
‘Cut short, you say? After forty-two years.’
‘Indeed sir.’ McNamara lifted his glass as if to toast the spirit of his late grandfather.
‘After half a century, your fabled forebear was hardly cut short then, was he? And of all the
scholars of his time he, alone, was the first to suspect that there just may be a relationship
between gluttony and delicious food?’ The Foreign Secretary stood, letting his napkin fall to
the floor.
‘My intelligence on the matter has proved woefully inaccurate and over-stated. It seems I
have been wasting my time here, McNamara.’
‘I said he died in pursuit of the other deadly sins. I didn’t say that the pursuit did not
continue.’
McNamara poured from a fresh bottle of Lafite. He did not know it, but it was not often that
anyone had the full attention of the Foreign Secretary.
‘It has to be said my grandfather was more a man of the cloth than chemistry. After we
mourned his passing, it was decided to, err… concentrate more in the fields of science than
scripture. The Milton Initiative began to make genuine breakthroughs.’
‘Breakthroughs such as…?’
‘McNamara nodded to a waiter who had been waiting by the door. The waiter came to the
table bringing a platter containing six bowls, each of a different coloured powder.
‘I present to you the sin of gluttony in its deconstructed edible form. For example, mix any
four of these into a table condiment and you have the foundations of a fast-food chain.’
The Foreign Secretary nodded as he understood.
‘And as regards the remaining six of the Sins?’
‘We have partial completion on three, of which lust is the one we are focussing on for
nothing more than the reasons that are obvious.’
‘And full completion?’
‘As yet, full culinary deconstruction and elemental mapping on only one of the sins other
than gluttony. Sadly, it’s the one sin that the restaurant trade has little use of.’
The Foreign Secretary licked his lips, which oddly was something he rarely did in restaurants.
His intelligence had turned out to be entirely correct after all.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON
In order to predict the day of greatest mayhem, the Nightingale program assessed the
potential for obstruction of all the objects traversing the streets. This potential was weighted
by size, speed, propensity for occupants to erupt in violence and, last not but not least, any
cargo that may provide unique opportunities for disturbance.
Jim Nelson had delivered freight of many forms in his career as a heavy goods haulier, but a
live African bull elephant was surely going to be one to tell the grandchildren.
Jim would normally baulk at the idea of receiving money from a zoo to ferry an endangered
species, but had made an exception in this case. His was to be the first part of a journey that
would end at an elephants’ sanctuary in Western Africa, and hopefully a happy ending for the
magnificent beast.
To meet the stringent animal welfare regulations for the trip, Jim’s lorry had been fitted with
a number of mechanisms to make conditions for his ward palatable. He heard a large
elephantine bellow from behind him and immediately pressed the first of three new buttons
on his dashboard.
There was the sound of a shunting metal drawer from inside the container and the thud of
fifty kilograms of fresh fruit, vegetables and cereal dropping in a trough at the elephant’s feet.
With his passenger’s hunger sated for a few minutes at least, Jim’s attention returned to the
radio where reports of traffic were becoming ever more alarming. He checked his watch. He
had to admit his progress had been slow but it had yet to give up on getting out of the city
within the hour. Speaking of which, he reminded himself, each hour he had been instructed to
hit the second button on the dash.
Back in the elephant’s purpose-built travelling quarters, pipes attached with nozzles fired jets
of cooling water all over it’s thick drying skin. The elephant let out a soothing moan of
appreciation. Jim felt he could live with a few road delays as long as he had the means to
keep his majestic passenger happy. Time passed.
He had been on the Marylebone Road for a little more than an hour before Jim started to feel
a little concern, which was distracted when the smell of dung wafted into the cabin causing
him to gag. It was so thick Jim felt he could bottle it and sell it as fertiliser. He had been
warned about this, and was the reason for the third makeshift button on the dashboard, which
Jim wasted no time in pushing.
A shelf beneath the elephant’s tail fell away and with it the cow-sized pile of poo into a
compartment laced with chemicals that set work on neutralising the fumes. The same nozzles
that had comforted the elephant with refreshing water opened and set out a stream of scented
gas in the hope of accomplishing the same with the air. The foulness in Jim’s cabin passed,
and with it more time.
Jim’s concern for the elephant grew as the resources he dispatched for its comfort were
depleted. On the road, a traffic light changed and a junction towards the outskirts opened, but
Jim knew the combined weight of the lorry had no chance of getting to it before the nimbler
sedans whose engines were already engaged.

Perhaps because elephants have powers of perception transcending a simple inability to
forget, but it was at that instant the great bull chose to give out a bellow of such grandeur that
it bridged the audible spectrum and drenched it with raw power. The cars looking to chase the
opening before them stopped in wonder, and a few of them reversed a little in their awe. Jim
shook his head in disbelief and smiled as he rolled the lorry into the vacant space and swung
his steering wheel in the direction of the city limits.
Ann-Katharine Haase had always been warned about wearing headphones when driving.
Aware of the dangers of having a vital sense dulled, loud rock music was the only thing that
nullified the fury always threatening to surface whenever she drove the white van for work.
Seeing the cars in all directions brace in combat for the empty space, she took a deep breath
and waited for the light to go green.
‘Argh!’ She could not believe she had stalled her engine. She dropped her head to her
scrambling feet, twisting the ignition as the German rock band in her ears seemed to taunt her
failure. Engine resurrected, she looked up in amazement at the wide-open space in the
junction that somehow still remained. What fear had beholden the cars to relent? The
Teutonic chorus in her headphones made a key-change which spurred her on. She slammed
the accelerator and the car lurched.
Ann-Katharine had gotten so used to living in the United Kingdom that she even thought to
herself in English now. Except in moments of extreme astonishment.

‘Scheiße! Woher Kam das?‘ Ann-Katharine hit brakes and yanked the steering wheel. The
van’s tyres lost purchase and it span through one-eighty, its rear clashing with the huge lorry
she had tried hopelessly to compete with.
When the van and her senses had settled, she removed the headphones and opened the door,
her alter-ego of White Van Woman taking control.
Panicked, Jim Nelson hit the brakes and leapt out of his cab. A glance at the white van facing
him revealed that the driver was unhurt and about to get out. His panic now was wholly
reserved for his cargo, particularly when the warning light on his dashboard had indicated
that the container doors had been sprung open by the collision.
Tearing around to the lorry’s rear he saw the swinging doors of the container and feared the
worst. A stampeding bull elephant in London was a tale he was less looking forward to
telling the grandchildren.
With utmost relief, he saw the steel cage that had been built into the container had not been
breached. The huge elephant had not even been caught off balance, braced by legs thicker
than oak trees. It munched a little more from its trough and lifted its tail to release a semi-
solid river of pungent effluence. Jim Nelson said a short prayer of thanks, pulled the doors to,
and turned to face unadulterated filth of a different kind.
‘Who the @?£# do you think you are then? I’ll tell you! You’re a %$&*-for-brains $&%#-er
who I wouldn’t trust to mop up my £?%*-juice. Mein Gott, what is that smell?’
Ann-Katharine held her nose instinctively which reminded her with a deathly urgency of the
contents of her own van.
‘Oh Scheiße!’
Jim Nelson decided to follow the woman with the decorative tongue to the rear of her own
vehicle. There, she fell to her knees and howled in Germanic despair at the broken doors and
empty cages, each about the size of a large cat, that had tumbled beyond. At the risk of
turning the air bluer, he really needed to ask.
‘Was there something valuable in these cages?’
‘Nein.’
‘Oh my god, something dangerous then?’
‘Nein. Something far worse.’ Without turning to him, Ann-Katharine pulled a folded piece of
paper from her pocket and held it out for Jim to take.
Jim took the paper an unfolded it. It was simple letter of transit, like the thousands he had
seen before. The description was something new, though.
‘Why on earth,’ and Jim cleared his throat for he knew he would never say these words again,
‘would you be delivering twenty skunks to an address in Central London?’
Ann-Katharine was going to ask a question about an African bull elephant, but instead turned
and shrugged.
‘They’re actually really sweet. We’ll be fine as long as they don’t get stressed out.'
The wheels of Operation Nightingale revolved in mysterious ways.
'I must say McNamara, five years has treated this Lafite extremely well.'
'Has it really been that long Foreign Secretary?' The waiter came forward to impart a worried
whisper into Michael McNamara's ear.
'Everything okay, McNamara?' The Foreign Secretary noticed the concern while knowing full
well the root of it's cause.
'Oh, just a few of the evening staff have called to say there are unable to come into work. An
constant irritation in the restaurant trade, sadly.' McNamara felt the pleasantries were
becoming tedious.
'Foreign Secretary, as overjoyed as I always am that you spare attention on such a lowly
subject as myself...'
The Foreign Secretary looked at his fingernails as if they held grime he would rather give his
attention to.
'...the Guild has been starved of such attention for five years now, and one cannot help but
wonder...'
'I require further access to the fruits of the Milton Initiative.'
McNamara put down his glass, thinking it was a waste of such a fine grape on a rapidly
plummeting mood.
'Ah yes. The Milton Initiative. I've often wondered whether you had forgotten about that.'
There were some local radio stations that economised greatly when it came to their mandate
for hourly traffic reports. There were some who simply cribbed details from other, better
funded broadcasters and read it against a background tape of helicopter rotors to give the
effect it was being made in real time from the air. Gareth Foote was very proud of the fact
that he worked for the real deal.
Reporting traffic incidents from the air wasn’t, Gareth had to admit, that challenging, but it
was enormous fun. The traffic reports for Radio Pearly Queen FM were broadcast after the
hourly news, and usually lasting for no more than a minute. Today’s traffic reports were now
ten minutes away of merging into each other. Today the traffic was the news.
When the news anchor-man had been introduced on the hour he passed straight to the eye in
the sky and once Gareth got the air time, the anchor-man had not got in another word.
Gareth had tried his utmost to elaborate, overstate and sensationalise each citation of social
wreckage that was unfolding below, but he was finding it impossible. If he said that the
streets were blanketed with chrome eggs hatching psychotic wrath it’s because, well, they
were. He enquired of the pilot how much longer they could afford to stay in the air.
‘We’ve got fuel for about another thirty minutes, so we’ll head back in fifteen.’
Gareth rubbed his hands together and smiled. Raising his binoculars, he looked around for
one more scene of devastation to report on. With limited time remaining and so much in the
panorama to choose from, the bar was set high.

He saw a long thin line of technicolour about a mile to the north, near Camden but heading
south. The line was snaking gradually but surely, and comfortably at a greater pace than
anything directly below him.
Could it be? Surely not. He trained the binoculars a little more. But it was.
He leant forward to his pilot, shouting directions in his ear whilst pointing fervently
northwards. The pilot nodded in acknowledgement and adjusted his joystick. The helicopter
dipped down and headed in the direction of Gareth’s finger. Fifteen minutes, he thought, was
plenty of time to see some more fun.
The cycling lanes of London are a gift, reducing the risk of cycling accidents every day.
Well, maybe not every day.
Carrie Anderson yelled again for the blue-and-white checked jersey to get out of the way.
There was always at least one who thought they could overstay their time at the front of the
narrow peloton. In her opinion, blue-and-white had begun to tire long before his designated
five minutes were up, but now his speed was markedly beginning to fall, slowing down the
entire group.
She heard him shout a signal that he was about to relinquish his place at the vanguard, and
prepared herself for the slipstream shroud to disappear. When at last he did concede his
position, Carrie stepped up the power in her legs, counteracting the increased air-resistance
and maintaining the pace of her group.

Carrie was a founding member of the urban cycling club “Pedal to the Heavy Metal” and
currently wore the yellow jersey given to its most competitive member, the title itself being a
hard-fought competition. The minute she had heard that, with the completion of one more
cycle path, it was going to be possible to pick a path through Central London using only
exclusive bicycle lanes, planning for this day had begun. For urban cyclists and their
adrenaline-fuelled lack of self-preservation, the opportunity to be the first to traverse it could
not have been dressed more like a thrown down gauntlet.
The last few metres of the cycle lane that would connect the area of London north of Charing
Cross to the south had been painted blue that morning and was only due to be made publicly
available the next day. For the members of “Pedal to the Heavy Metal”, however, the
competitive quest to be first knew few bounds and the council workmen responsible for
painting the lane were soon identified.
As a founding member of the club, Carrie accepted that the duty of performing actions of a
moral, not to mention physical, distaste would often befall her. Deciding that the crown of
being first to traverse this new cross-country route weighed heavy enough, she mercilessly
seduced one of the workmen to open the lane one day early.
Carrie turned her head her and shouted some warnings to the peloton behind about an
upcoming junction. They were flying toward Tottenham Court Road now. She checked the
timer attached to her handlebars and was lifted even more by the realisation they were ahead
of schedule. Not only was this race going to result in a “first”, it was going to hold the title of
“fastest” for some time.

There was a junction up ahead on the Tottenham Court Road where the “Pedal to the Heavy
Metal”’s cartographers had scheduled a probable stop for traffic. Indeed, there was a
patchwork of stationary vehicles up ahead and the way through looked unnavigable. Carrie
was about to pass back an instruction to slow down.
She looked again at the timer on her handlebars and thought of all the tours when she had
raced for her life only to come second because of a split-decision to value that life over glory,
allowing a more audacious cyclist to pass her by and claim victory.
Her focus returned to the road ahead and all of a sudden saw a car move forward and another
reverse, revealing daylight between them. She quashed the instruction to check speed and
pushed harder through her toes and into the pedals instead. She was going to do this.
‘The anaconda of pastelled pedallers continues to swim relentlessly towards whatever
purpose they might have with a sleek poise.’ Gareth Foote was relaying progress of “Pedal to
the Heavy Metal” to his radio listeners using his own words.
‘As they swing into Tottenham Court Road surely the rider at the front, dazzling as she is in
her jersey of saffron Lycra, can see the blockage. Why doesn’t she slow? Why does she
endure this breathless pace and lead her procession into certain peril?’
Gareth could imagine a captured audience on the end of his broadcast. The thrill of the
carnage combined with the vanity of celebrity led to his tone reaching more hysterical levels.
‘The peloton reaches the junction at breakneck speed and…’

Carrie took a last look at her fellow cyclists here behind her. She was pulling away from
them. Were they slowing down? She wanted to yell back that it was too late, that they were
going too fast already and the gap ahead was beginning to close, but there wasn’t enough
time. Carrie put her head down and summoned every ounce of power into her spinning legs.
She hit the gap dead centre, and in a flash...
‘…She’s through! Oh, my word, she’s through!’
For a second Carrie felt she was cycling in a vacuum, with nothing below her tyres and the
wind pummelling her cheeks suddenly gone. She forgot to breathe, but who needs air when
there are sensations such as these? She cleared the junction and saw nothing in front of her
but an empty one-metre wide passage of blue with white cycles painted on it. She looked
over her shoulder to check on her teammates.
‘They can’t slow down in time! They’ll never make it!’ Gareth’s broadcasting voice could
not suppress the sadistic elation he was feeling at the prospect of the imminent impact.
‘This once sleek serpent of derring-do is wobbling in its attempt to break pace, but it won’t be
enough. It’s about to meet its Waterloo, at Waterloo!!’ Gareth’s defining and, though he was
yet to know it, final broadcast was complete.

The peloton crashed into the stagnant vehicles in an unholy conflict of carbon-fibre, metal
and bone. Cyclists tumbled from their bikes, bouncing and rolling until they hit something
solid in a stomach-turning squelch. The bikes themselves were far better designed for crashes
than the bodies that rode them, and they dissembled on impact. Wheels, brakes, frames and
handlebars were sent in all directions in a flurry of kinetic energy.
Gareth Foote gazed down in horror, speechless at the devastation below him, as karma gazed
up and aimed a salvo of aerodynamic bicycle wheels at his head. He and his traffic reports
blacked out for the day.
The terrible sight disappearing behind her sent an icy chill through Carrie’s veins. The rules
of the road dictate that she stop immediately and come to her companions’ aid. But the
damage was done, and the end was in sight. She wondered what the other members of “Pedal
to the Heavy Metal” would do in her position and decided that they would all argue that if the
quest was not completed, it would all be for nothing. She put her head forward, clicked up a
gear and, with a far grimmer resolve than ever before, pressed onwards.
It wasn’t really in Solomon’s Braid’s nature to get stressed. Life had always been so
comfortable that it never seemed to matter where he was, what he was doing or indeed being
subjected to, his surroundings were always more than amenable and so it was this afternoon.
People without a trust fund and having to make do with a fraction of Solomon’s salary valued
the Swedish nation for their catchy pop music and quality pre-assembled furniture. Solomon
appreciated the Swedes for their ability to manufacture obscenely fast and luxurious sports
cars. Caught in the same quagmire of traffic as everyone around him, notes from a Puccini
aria filled the cockpit of the car as the engine idled with Solomon.
There did seem to be a bit of a raucous happening to the rest of the world outside his window,
but he could only tell via the occasional frantic gesticulation of a passer-by. The honking and
the howling were removed from him completely, buffeted to nothingness by the soundproof
frame of his fabulously expensive Swedish sports car.
Solomon thought his eyes were deceiving him when a small black and white animal appeared
on his bonnet and looked straight at him.
Carrie Anderson’s limbs were beginning to ache, her legs from the perpetual motion of
driving the pedal, and her arms from gripping the handlebars so tightly, sinew and muscle
prominent through her perspiring skin.
Her lone quest for glory was entering its final stage, with the section of cycling path a wheel
had yet to touch not far ahead. The timer on the handlebars gave Carrie a marvellous report of
progress. She would not last at this pace, however, and reluctantly eased off a little.
Carrie could see her obliging workman in the distance looking out for her. Her bright yellow
jersey would be stark against the blue cycling lane and he waved when he saw her. He must
have been surprised when he gauged the speed of her approach as he suddenly sprang into
activity.
The workman turned to reveal dirty trousers hanging from a hairy half-bum which would
have made Carrie gag from a suppressed memory had she not been so dehydrated already.
Hurrying, he unhitched and pushed aside orange-and-white fences to make way for her.
The huge bushy tail meant it definitely wasn’t a cat, and it was far too small to be a badger.
Solomon decided it was a black and white squirrel. Either way it had no place on the gloss
finish of his car bonnet. It jumped onto the roof of the car, where he could feel it scurrying
around.
If only the car was moving, the fiendish beast would soon retreat to its lair. But how to do it?
It suddenly occurred to Solomon that the blue lane running along the road next to him was
not only empty but, while too narrow for most cars, was probably just the right size for his.
He kicked himself for not thinking of it before, but at least it had come to him just in time.
That very moment, another black and white squirrel had pounced onto his bonnet.
He tickled the fingerprinted ignition button and the over-engineered carburettor came alive. It
was child’s play to power-steer the four-wheel drive out of the tight space and onto the blue
tarmac. He gave a casual wave aside to the plight of stranded road-peasants who he was
about to leave behind. As once again, life was about to prove they all lived in his wake, he
floored the gas.
Carrie's thoughts embraced a destiny of celebrity, with various cycle parts of the future being
named after her, as her cycle embraced the sports car. Two beautiful machines built for speed
and style merged in a painful, expensive and, as the first-responders would find, inseparable
union.
The only saving grace of Solomon Braid passing away was that at least it was instant, and he
did not live to experience the indignation of a surfeit of skunks climb through the split roof
and deposit some unholy and very unremovable pheromones on his moose-hide passenger
seat.
'That's not a lot of notice, Foreign Secretary. And we have limited experience of preparing
our specialised cuisine at the House of Commons.'
Michael McNamara's appetite for pandering to the presence of the Foreign Secretary was
being exhausted, and was not helped by additional reports of his depleted evening staff.
'Yes, I do appreciate that, McNamara. But it can be it done in time..?'
McNamara appreciated that it was a directive and not a question. It was as good a time as any
to discuss compensation.
'Perhaps, perhaps.' McNamara picked up his glass again, deciding the rich swirl of the half-
century-old wine was looking palatable again. 'I recall a time five years ago when I heard the
words “lascivious gratitude”.'
The Foreign Secretary smiled.
'That, McNamara, will do very nicely.'

THURSDAY EVENING
By the time dusk fell most drivers had made the decision to abandon their cars.
Harry Lett sweated amongst the amalgam of human activity and vehicular inactivity, moving
along at a foot-shuffling rate of about twenty feet an hour. Ahead of him he could see the rise
in gradient of the road that signalled he was just coming onto Waterloo Bridge.
Half an hour went and Harry had moved on just five paving stones onto the bridge, squashed
by pedestrians an all sides. He was beginning to feel a little faint from being exhaled upon by
so many sets of lungs. He raised his head and tried to suck in a spare cubic foot of cool
oxygenated air from above him but it didn’t help.
At least the violence was being kept away from the pavement and onto the road itself, as
drivers desperately protected the bodywork of their executive cars with the tenacity of a
maternal ostrich. The younger, bolder of the pedestrians still tried to gain a few extra yards on
the pavement-bound pack by clambering over car bonnets and roofs, but the many were now
being hacked down at shin-level by outraged swings of car-jacks, tyre-spanners and steering-
wheel clamps.
Harry decided to spend his next half hour edging his way towards the edge of the bridge,
where the air blowing off the River Thames might dilute the carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere
in which he was beginning to suffocate. Shuffle by shuffle, using his belly as a nudging ram,
he finally found the left-hand wall of the bridge and leaned over the side to mop his sweating
brow in the refreshing river breeze. With each gulp he found renewed strength and after a
couple of minutes felt good enough to continue the trek towards the southern bank of the
Thames.
Suddenly there was a surge of bodyweight against his back pinning him to the wall. From the
yelps of pain behind him Harry could tell a real crush was developing. The pressure on his
kidneys turned to pain and Harry desperately tried to lever himself on to the wall as it quickly
became unbearable.
Without thinking he suddenly found himself standing on the ledge of Waterloo Bridge, with a
seething mass of screaming flesh on one side, and a fifty-foot drop to black water on the
other. The ledge was surprisingly wide, about three feet, and to his amazement Harry found
himself balancing an uninhibited path along it toward the other end of the bridge. This was
miraculous, he thought. Already, he had skipped further in seconds than he had stumbled in
the previous hour. He became more sure-footed with each step, and with arms stretched out
for balance, he tip-toed along in delight.
Harry became aware of people noticing him steal a march, and in an instant the magical
moment was over as dozens of bodies scrambled to join him on the ledge. Front and back he
became stranded once more as arms and legs found purchase on the ledge and became
obstacles in his path.
He looked behind him and saw a black and white cat with a bushy tail sitting quietly on the
ledge about twenty feet away. That is another thing you don’t see every day, Harry had to
admit. He was sure it was looking straight at him, in the knowing way that cats do, apparently
oblivious to the mass of people accumulating on the ledge around it.

‘Oh, look at the badger! How did that get there?’ The woman on the ledge closest to the cat-
or-badger lacked a sense of priority when it came to peril versus cuteness.
‘Aren’t badgers dangerous?’ Her partner did not have a problem with priorities.
‘Aww. Not this one. Look at his bushy tail.’
‘I don’t care about his bushy tail, he’s in our way.’ The man cocked his right foot back for a
kick.
‘No room for you, Mr Badger!’
He swung his foot intending to smite the mammalian nuisance into the river, but swiped only
air as it lithely jumped back into a stressed crouch. What the man thought was a badger raised
its tail in fear and squeezed its pores until they brought forth the breath of hell itself.
‘Oh, my good God. What is that smell…’
The skunk’s pheromone was lifted by the river breeze and hung just below the noses of the
men and women along the ledge. Nostril by nostril, it was taken in and the they all fell like
dominoes.
Harry felt a familiar sense of hopelessness tap him on the shoulder and call last orders. He
looked right at the crowd of packed pedestrians. A brief vision of toppling star-shaped into
them like a rock-star crowd-diving at a concert, and being passed harmlessly by devoted
hands to safety flashed before his eyes. He looked again at the panic on their faces and
decided they were more likely to tear him to pieces. So, he simply stood there waiting for the
inevitable, and the inevitable came along and pushed him over the ledge and into the cold
blackness that only ships and seagulls are supposed to pass head-first.
Jayne tried to ignore the chaos, unlike the line of dumbstruck workers in her office, each
cupping their forehead to the plate glass window with half-moon hands.
Initially there had been the commonplace reports through internet news and word-of-mouth
that getting home that evening might be a struggle. On the face of it, there shouldn’t be
anything out of the ordinary about this. London was forever subject to roadworks and tube or
bus strikes were becoming a monthly occurrence. Once it had become apparent that
something more unusual was festering on the streets outside, one by one, starting with those
closest to the windows, the offices of PR the Champions migrated from their workstations to
get a first-hand view.
‘Come on, Jayne! You won't believe what’s going on here.’
It was Alison, the closest thing Jayne could call a protégé, pleading for her to come to the
window.
‘Alison, I’m trying to finish this report. Hasn’t anyone else got work they need to be doing?’
As it was one of those questions in which the answer could only be “yes” or an
uncomfortable silence, there followed an uncomfortable silence before the gasps and frenzied
pointing resumed. Jayne rested her elbows in front of her computer monitor and put her hands
on her ears. There was a time for spectating a developing apocalypse, and there was a time
for getting things done now so everyone can leave early on Friday.
‘Oh, look at the bridge!’ cried Alison in delight, ‘There are people jumping into the river!’
‘Bloody hell, this is cold!’ is what Harry would have said if his mouth hadn't been full of
water. Luckily the shock of the freezing impact after such a peaceful plummet forced him to
exhale through his mouth instead of swallowing, and so he had a further minute or so to work
out which way was up before he drowned. Eventually his head broke the surface of the river
and he got his chance to comment viciously and with many, many “F”s on the temperature of
the waters.
To add further peril to his plight he realised others were falling indiscriminately around him
from above. The splashes were preceded by blood-curdling screams followed by seconds of
submerged silence. Harry’s arms and legs flailed madly for shore. Again, the cold of the
water rushed through him as he pulled his way through the tide. He tried to recall the sweaty,
intolerable heat he had felt whilst on the bridge only seconds ago but it seemed too distant
now. If he ever got out of this, his body would be one big chilblain.
More than once the thought of curling up and letting the icy waters flush him to his grave
occurred to him, but even Harry’s will to live was strong and so on he paddled, counting
every yard closer to shore. With only a short distance remaining he was beset with more pain,
sharper this time and from his knees.
Harry wiped his eyes and saw to his relief that his knees were scraping across the sloping
wall of the bank and he no longer needed to swim. His numb fingers joined his feet in
scrabbling for purchase on the pebbles until at last he was free of the life-sapping water. He
stood on the bank, bent over double, exhausted from his efforts. His stomach, awash with a
mixture of silage and water accumulated during the swim, had been waiting patiently for
attention throughout all this and now was free to take centre stage. With a preliminary throaty
retch to loosen things up, Harry’s stomach spilled its murky contents all over the shore.
Jayne had had enough and decided to leave. Grabbing her things, she passed through an
empty reception and stopped at the bank of elevators. The whirring of cables and the digitised
floor numbers that flickered above each shaft indicated heavy traffic there too. She was
already beginning to think that this might be becoming ‘one of those days’, and on ‘one of
those days’, those who had always been a little nervous about elevators took the stairs.
At the bottom of stairs Jayne had the option of exiting through the lobby or going through the
emergency exit in front her. There was no window on the emergency exit and she paused to
wonder if it would be safe to go beyond. The only people involved in the violence seemed to
be those not doing everything they could to avoid it. Flipping a mental coin, she made a
decision, pushed the bar that released the door and slipped outside.
Jayne clung to the shadows, which drew her closer to the embankment wall. She paused to
take stock of her situation, as fruitless as it seemed to be. Irrespective of any direction she
chose to take bedlam seemed inevitably to be the first port of call.
She crouched against the wall and considered retreating to her happy place, before stamping
squarely on face of the idea. She hadn’t reverted to her happy place since she was ten and
soon remembered it had been downright miserable anyway. Picking herself up, she took a
deep super-heroine breath, and then squealed uncontrollably as an icy wet hand grasped her
buttocks.
Harry now had empty insides to pair with his shivering exterior, and water weighing down
his clothes and any valuables the damp would surely have destroyed. His shoes and socks
burst with water with each step so he took a moment to remove them both before wringing
the socks and replacing the shoes on his naked feet.
There was six feet of pebbly shore between the placid river and the high embankment wall.
Darkness was everywhere but common sense suggested there must be a way up to the road at
some point. With one hand on the wall for guidance he trudged in the audible direction of
least mayhem and sure enough his hand soon met with the rusty steel of a ladder. Steadying
himself for a little exertion against gravity, he began to climb.
With eyelids fighting a losing battle against the sandy solution still dripping from his hair, the
last few rungs he navigated blind. Confirmation he had scaled the face arrived when his right
hand met horizontal stone rather than peeled painted metal. With a clawing left hand, he
heaved to find purchase on something to take the remainder of his bodyweight and was
startled to meet warm cloth. Pulling his head level and his eyes open they were both met with
an impact that sapped the last of his strength, hope and belief he had ever been wanted on this
earth. Fingers and toes relaxing their grip, he fell.
#
Jayne Mendis wasn't a violent person but knew about the Scales of Justice. On the left side
was a lifetime of gropes and on the right, sometimes, there was a great big smack in the
mouth.
The satisfaction of a battle won with a single blow gave way to horror as an unknown human
was about to fall to his death by her hand. Repealing self-preservation for saintliness she
lurched forward and grabbed the arm before it disappeared.
Her hips gripped the wall in cantilevered friction when the weight behind the arm matched
her own and then some more.
‘Urgghhh.’
So, this was it, thought Harry as he fell to a doom no one would note. A broken skeleton amid
flesh that had begun to rot since he was eighteen would be picked to the marrow by Thames-
ian organisms and reintroduced into the guts and colons of all those who had ridiculed him by
way of a long-heralded Victorian sewage cycle.
Free-fall ceased all of a sudden and blood bounced from his neck back up into his brain,
stunning him into half-coherence. A hand had grasped his own and with it, postponed death.
Had a guardian angel picked him out for redemption? Unlikely, as his saviour’s hand began
to give way. With renewed strength he regained his grip on the ladder and eased himself up,
at last exchanging glances with the face of his rescuer.
#
Jayne pushed herself upright and waited for the mashed collection of clothed stench to pull
itself over the wall to join her. Good grief, maybe he would have been better off if I’d let him
go.
Harry, contrary to the typical young boy’s dreams, had always dreamt of being a distressed
knight rescued by a shining damsel.
‘I suppose you should say thank you?’ Jayne said ignoring that it was her punch that had sent
Harry flying.
‘Thank you. Wait a minute, you nearly killed me!’
‘Well, you grabbed my arse!’ Harry paused, looked and saw no sarcasm in Jayne’s face. For
all he knew people had died for less.
‘Okay, whatever.’ He took in the state of the rioting for the first time since he had fallen from
the bridge. ‘Hey, it looks like things are bit calmer now.’
‘You think?’ Looking around, Jayne didn’t agree, but then she wasn’t going to argue with
someone whose evening had already contrived to bring him in and out of the River Thames.
‘Oh definitely.’ Harry felt pride at being a veteran of the evening in comparison to Jayne.
Pride as everyone knows comes both before and after a fall. ‘I’d say things will definitely
improve from now on.’
Jayne looked deeply into Harry's grey eyes and saw a good probability of sincerity in his
face.
‘I’m Jayne by the way.’
‘Harry.’ He held out his hand to be shaken in a surreal moment before Jayne’s gaze of
realism caused him to retract it quickly. ‘Which way are you going?’
‘Well I was going to try over the bridge but…’
‘I wouldn’t recommend it. Come on, let’s try a bit further south.’ Harry surprised himself in
the manner he was taking control. He held out his hand to be taken but retracted it again, even
quicker.
They looked at each other in a makeshift trust that mutual peril can imbue, as Big Ben
chimed the onset of the latest hour with a more of a sheepish thud than a dong.
As sound can shatter sound, yelps and screams of brawling commuters only hours earlier
were abruptly silenced by the iconic bell. Punches brought back in tension paused and a truce
beset the throng. An armistice broke out with the same suddenness the war had begun. The
eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
As the great bell of Big Ben signalled the beginning of a single inconsequential hour, lesser
bells rang out in the pub and bars of London proclaiming the end of twelve alcoholic ones. It
was closing time on a London Thursday.
Takings at the Waterloo bar “Sweet Child O’ Wine” had reached record levels for what the
calendar had declared that morning to be an ordinary Thursday.

For Heather Wright, the bar manager, the evening had been something of a tightrope-walk. A
straw poll taken amongst the staff had been firmly favour of staying open, perhaps influenced
by Thursday tips more than personal safety, so the doors stayed open and the first floods of
drinkers lurched in after 5pm.
Throughout the evening, televisions had been gradually tuned from sports to news channels
as the carnage developed. Patrons of “Sweet Child O’ Wine” were cocooned in their squiffy
haze, showing no regard to the proximity of what they saw on the screen.
Heather rang the bell twice to signal last orders, and braced for the tsunami that would soon
follow. Twenty minutes was the ultimatum for finishing up and leaving, and it counted down
like a doomsday clock.
‘Well Harry, I think you were right, things have really calmed down during the last twenty
minutes. What’s up with you?’
Whenever Harry was told he was right about something he instinctively struck a defensive
pose. Typically, the world would prove not to be what it seemed. ‘Let’s just keep our eyes
and ears open for now.’
‘Well, actually, I think I can make it home on my own from here.’ Jayne started to dust
herself off and prepare for farewell.
‘Erm. Okay, then. If you’re sure. It was nice to meet you, Jayne.’
Harry half extended his hand but managed to retract it to avoid further embarrassment. He
was surprised to receive a fully-fledged hug from Jayne.
‘Nice to meet you too, Harry. Sorry about the death-defying-experience stuff.’
‘Think nothing of it. I suppose this is goodbye then?’
'I think we've already kind of said goodbye?'
'Oh yes. Right then. Goodbye, Jayne.' Harry could have kicked himself. Jayne laughed which,
given the circumstances, Harry was pleased to accept.
'Goodbye, Harry.' Jayne turned.
Harry watched her cross the road, trying to keep track through the people through the
thinning crowd until the last possible moment before she disappeared forever.
Project Nightingale was nearly exhausted. In pursuit of its singular goal of pandemonium, the
factors at its disposal had been all but spent. There was now just one last throw of the dice,
one last hot dish of human anger to feed the chaos, one final iteration of the programs
destructive loop.
At the “Sweet Child O’ Wine” bar, Heather Wright rolled up her sleeves and started to
physically eject the punters.
A hundred yards away, Harry saw Jayne consumed by the surge of slavering bodies that spilt
out from the bar and into the street, and couldn't stop himself from running into the lions' den.
As he ran, he clenched and unclenched his fists, as if his hands had no idea what was
expected of them. He entered the fray at the point he last saw Jayne, and tried to lever his
way into the throng.
Drunkenness denied further alcohol is a volatile cocktail which coursed through the veins of
the human torrent that hit Jayne and threw her from her feet. She raised her arms to protect
her head, exposing her stomach to a procession of feet that left her winded. Sensing she was
caught only in the path of the raging barrage and not it's target, she clenched her body into a
protective ball.
A few more kicks followed but the waves of impact quickly subsided with the rabid singing
as it soared in the direction of the prospect of late-night booze elsewhere. With the mixture of
pain and helplessness gone, Jayne found a resolve to get to her feet. And woe betide anyone
who got in her way.
Lungs burning, Harry finally saw the curled up form of Jayne through the thinning crowd,
seemingly unhurt. He bent to grab an arm to help her up, and was immediately belted in the
side of the head by the other. Off-balance he staggered back. Many times had Harry been
punched by a greater force than this and survived, so as he reeled away his distress was not
that marked. Until he heard the screeching of a horn and the low rumble of what could well
have been a bus engine.
#
Jayne made a mental note that punching someone was an excellent means of stress relief. She
picked herself and looked in the direction of her assailant.
'Oh bugger.'
Not even the the augmented fly-by-wire controls of 547 Knightsbridge could stop it in time
from giving Harry a fairly hefty shove in the shoulder that, whilst being far from bone-
crunching, was enough to send him to the pavement with a bump.
Wondering when this stupid night was going to end, Jayne ran over to Harry and knelt down
in front of his motionless body, thinking what she could do. She grabbed his wrist to check
for a pulse and felt the low but fast drumbeat of hypertension. Putting her hand on his chest to
check it was still heaving, she couldn't feel any movement. So his heart was pumping but he
wasn't breathing. Was that half good, half bad? Becoming more worried she cupped her hand
around his nose hoping to feel the tickle of breath, but again nothing. The skin on Harry’s
face began to turn a pale, cold blue.
Harry was in nothingness, with no senses or memories. Oddly, the blackness didn’t scare
him, the dark being another of those fears he had learned to suffer. The void was broken by
stream of images, so fast they made him dizzy until his eyes adjusted to keep pace. Put
together, the images began to make sense. They formed tales of far off childhood, of broken
toys and shattered teen school days. Quickly the images moved on to familiar stories of a
youthful misbegotten manhood.

Harry decided the remainder of the life flashing before his eyes was not something worth
watching and so looked away, avoiding his final years. When at last the movie ended there
was dark again. And then a white light began to grow in the distance.
Jayne’s worry was turning to panic. She had never had anyone die in front of her. She didn’t
want this to become a memory to be imprinted into one of those permanent slots in her brain
she was hoping to save for a wedding, a new-born child or a night with an Argentinian polo
player.
She took a deep breath, which suddenly seemed a little heartless given her patient’s state and
started pushing down on Harry’s chest, counting one, two three.
She really had no idea what she was doing only why she was doing it, hoping that what
always seemed to worked in fiction would work in real life. She knew about the kiss of life
but recalled it had been debunked, or had the debunking since been debunked? She squeezed
Harry’ cheeks together so his mouth opened in a deathly pucker, and sucked up a lungful of
air.
Harry had only one thing left to concentrate upon and that was the white light. Whiter than
the light itself was a gown at its centre, dressing a haloed head and body with wings. It didn’t
seem a taxing choice to move towards it, but there was something untrustworthy about him
being welcomed by such a saintly being. Surely purgatory was the best he realistically could
hope for? He stepped back from the light and started coughing.
Jayne began to thump Harry on the back when he suddenly lurched into life in a coughing fit,
as if somehow it would help him collect more air.
'Will you please stop hitting me?!'
Jayne stopped and knelt by his side, waiting for him to recover.
'Are we keeping count of how many times I’ve saved your life?’
‘I’m keeping count of how many times you’ve nearly killed me.’
Jayne helped Harry get to his feet and looked around. There were still men and women
issuing forth from bars and pubs in a dangerous blend of inebriated disorientation.
‘You know, I think I could use a drink, too.’
‘Just give me a moment’ Harry turned and, as quietly as possible, vomited what was left of
his stomach onto the road.
‘Right. Let’s go.’
By the end of the evening 547 Knightsbridge stood alone on the yellow lines of the
Horseferry Road. Her tyres were slashed, bodywork mutilated, and her aisles empty save for
discarded trash and Benji Campbell unconscious on the top deck, drying blood streaked
across a broken nose and cuts on his forehead.

Her engine remained alive but only in a decaying lull that swayed the bus gently as if she was
cradling, though never being able to touch, a loved one.
The lights inside the bus began to flicker with the fading battery. Though it hadn’t rained all
evening, outside the headlamps strained to stay alive through drops of water that trickled
painfully down the misted glass.

FRIDAY
The dawn hours brought gradual respite to the anarchy that had ravaged London’s streets
during the last day and night. A city-sized pressure valve had been opened and much of the
steamy passion had been released. With the pace of the extraordinary events ground to a halt,
it allowed an opportunity for those, involved or otherwise, to take stock.
The effort to clean up London and return the city to what it claims is normality began as soon
as the sun came up. Ironically but also heart-warmingly, the process was instigated by many
of the same residents and workers who had contributed to the mess in the first place, as if the
morning sunshine had salved the city's wounds with guilt.
People emerged from wherever they had spent the night and returned to claim their cars.
Drivers of trucks and vans sheepishly appeared and continued their journeys to deliver or
collect whatever it was and simply recorded it a day late. Insurance firms everywhere
checked small print around their definitions of “Act of God”.
While emergency services would never report a more demanding twenty-four hours,
miraculously there were few serious casualties reported as a result of the anarchy. Although
there were lots of broken bones, and cuts and bruises aplenty, no one sustained injuries that
would become permanent, which made everyone happy except the lawyers.
Bizarrely, the only fatality of the entire affair involved a bicycle wheel when it was
determined that the CEO of a public relations firm had been cleanly decapitated by one. For
reasons unexplained, it required a biohazard team to get close enough to the body to take it
away.
A happier story was told of an African bull elephant that had been escorted safely from
London Zoo and onto a ship bound for a new home in Western Africa.
As far as non-physical suffering was concerned, most post-traumatic stress arose not from
those who were attacked – most of whom conceded they had it coming – but from the
assailants themselves who were struggling to come to terms with their newly revealed
capacity for violence. Perhaps the worst case of human psychological damage involved the
solemn story of an estate agent who, as well as a severe case of tinnitus, experienced a
seizure in her car which left her under twenty-hour supervision in a mental ward.
By far the greatest victims of mental abuse had been the the AI-augmented London buses
who, long after the sun had risen, were still cowering in whatever refuge they had found to
spend the night, unable to respond to their drivers’ efforts to start their engines.
One such bus had been on a return journey from West London toward its depot in Stratford
when it had been beset by a mob. The gallant driver had first tried to separate the paying and
non-paying passengers from each other, and then to separate the wrenchings and spillages of
them all from the bus itself.
What limited statements were later taken on the incident told of the unusual and reckless
manner in which the driver had laid body before bus in the line of duty.
One oddity was not noticed by any observer because none were looking. Amongst all the
footage, still and video, that had been taken throughout the night, not a single one of those
stubby black motorised shapes recognisable as a London Hackney cab could be found.
#
Former friends, the Prime Minister sat across the cabinet meeting table from the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. They had yet to speak a word directly to each other since the revelations
that Monday.
The sound and fury exhibited by the capital of the United Kingdom hage been mirrored,
albeit to a lesser degree, by the remainder of her population the next morning. Mammoth
costs had been incurred by the citizens of London in the space of one day, to be once more
imposed on the rest of the nation. Exuberant numbers preceded by pound signs were
prominent in media of every variation and, for one group of popular tabloids, an outlandish
idea had been put out and was gaining traction.
The ovalness of the cabinet table beautifully framed a copy of “Eight Dailies a Week” with
the headline, “Talkin' about the Devolution.” The Daily Thompson had led with “50 Ways To
Leave Your London.”
Due to the city effectively being in lockdown, no one who did not live in Downing Street had
been able to attend. The Cabinet Secretary walked in.
‘Sometimes I think you actually live here. Perhaps in some forgotten broom cupboard
somewhere.’
‘I beg your pardon, Prime Minister?’
‘Nothing. I was just about to call the meeting to a close. We have no one of any consequence
here after all.’ The Prime Minister looked fixedly at the Chancellor on the word
“consequence”.
‘No doubt I have another day of excuses to give for deeds beyond my control.’ The Prime
Minister's gaze was still firmly on the Chancellor, who still could not bring himself to meet it.
The Cabinet Secretary looked through the meeting agenda he had prepared.
‘Well I suppose there is nothing here that could not be postponed. Hmm.’ His eyes scanned
some more. ‘Oh, apart from the commons vote tonight.’
‘What? Which commons vote?’ The Prime Minister’s head sprang towards his Cabinet
Secretary.
‘The one raised by yourself and the Foreign Secretary, sir? The one about the devolution of
London?’
The Chancellor saw a rare opportunity to put his boss on the back foot.
‘Oh yes. The one you said would never have a chance in hell of being passed.’
The Prime Minister and the Chancellor were not the only two people who would struggle for
conversation that morning. Across town, a will-they-or-wont-they couple were about to have
a did-we-or-didn't-we morning.
Harry Lett’s pickled dream unravelled and he realised he must be all but awake. He lifted his
cheek out of the pool of drool in the pillow but strength lost against gravity and it slumped
back with a splat. His eyes still closed, he could tell from the soft touch and flowery smell of
the sheets in which he was wrapped that he wasn’t lying in his own bed. He waited for the
alcoholic mist to clear and leave him with a clue as to where he was.
A selection of memories crashed into his stupor. A mixture of horror, pain, followed by a
surreal meeting with a… Jayne. He had met and been attacked or saved – or maybe both – by
a girl called Jayne. They had negotiated the craziest night of their lives together and gone
back to her… Oh wow. He opened his eyes and yes, sure enough, there was a female body
lying in front of him. Harry would admit it was stretching the term to credulity, but you could
even describe them as spooning. This all left him with that disappointing feeling that he had
been presented the impromptu chance of sex and not taken it.
In moment of panic he realised Jayne was waking up. In the one-night stand equivalent of an
ostrich sticking its head in the sand, Harry sank his head into the pillow, shifted his hand
nonchalantly onto the duvet above Jayne’s waist, and concentrated all efforts into
maintaining placid and unhurried breaths.
Though innocence was the first casualty of sex, dignity came a cropper fairly soon
afterwards. When Jayne woke up, it took a moment for the fog of late-night booze to clear.
She knew exactly who she was lying next to, whose hand had just climbed onto the duvet just
above her waist, apart from actually any details about him. His name was Harry and they had
met under extreme circumstances. At various points she unsuccessfully tried to kill him and
successfully saved him at least twice. They had gotten drunk, for some reason gone back to
her flat and that, my dear Jayne, was all that was left of the memory cells. This left her with
that guilty feeling that she had been offered the chance of random sex and taken it.
She also knew from their short time together that he was a heavy snorer so whilst she sensed
him motionless behind her, he was clearly only pretending to be asleep. Oh well, it had been
a crazy day and even though she had surprised herself to wake up next to Harry, oddly she
felt safe enough in his presence. Her eyes were still leaden and were appealing to her brain
that they would perform better if given a little more time with nothing to do. She wriggled
until the hand fell from above her waist and went back to sleep.
Harry had once read that the trick to remembering events is to start from the current time and
replay them back in the mind. In reverse order the sequence went: woke up; blackness;
offered to go drink with woman he had never met before; experienced the scariest day of his
life. No memories were offering to step into the blackness, which was a shame as Harry was
pretty sure they would have included the best bits.
Harry figured he had got to that age when he was attracted to any woman he found himself in
bed with. Who was he kidding? He had always been at the age when any women he was
sharing a bed with was attractive. Either way it was worth being careful not to do anything
that might put Jayne off his presence in her flat.
It had been some time since Jayne’s last wriggle. Convinced she was asleep, he thought it
would be a good time to go for a wee.
Jayne woke again to the splattering sound of a man having a wee standing up. Bloody hell,
he’s only using the loo. If he spills one drop of…

It suddenly occurred to Jayne that this was a good time to officially get out of bed herself.
Summoning the same conviction she would use to pull off a plaster, she threw herself out of
bed, grabbed the thick towelled dressing gown off the wall, and headed to the kitchen.
Jayne grabbed a couple of mugs off the tree on the worktop and flicked the switch on the
kettle to bright orange without checking it for water. She opened the cupboard above and
looked at the jar of coffee, the box of tea bags, and then back to the jar of coffee. She
wondered whether Harry was a tea or a coffee man.
Oh, who cares, she fumed to herself. Whatever his preference was it was more than likely he
took it with so much milk and sugar he probably wouldn’t notice. In with a teabag went the
rest of the carton of milk and a handful of sugar.
The fridge still open, she wondered about making a fishfinger sandwich. Her hangover
hugged the thought of crunchy brown toast on squidgy hot fishfinger, but loosened as she
knew it would have to wait until Harry had gone.
From what she recalled he was a nice, genuine guy whom she had felt comfortable to be with
as they had negotiated the most unnerving night of their lives. It didn’t need mentioning that
this had already given them more hair-raising excitement than most couples might see in their
lifetimes. There was a time to build something upon that if possible, whether friendship or
something beyond, but the morning after simply wasn’t it.
Harry was very proud of himself to have remembered to put the toilet seat back down. He
really was doing everything right this morning. He went back to the bedroom to find the
bedclothes flung back and devoid of Jayne. A few clinks from the direction of the kitchen
explained where she was.
‘You okay, Jayne? Need a hand back there?’ Always offer to lend a hand in the kitchen. It
was like he had written the book on how a man-about-town should handle the morning after a
one-night stand.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Jayne’s voice half-croaked back to him.
Harry smiled to himself and sat on the bed, bouncing a little. He thought about making up the
bed, but would that suggest he intended closing the door on a possible mid-morning
seduction? The prospect of more carnal deeds was so exciting he didn’t want to take any
chances. In the book he would write on handling mornings after, “there was always a chance
for more action while she has yet to go for a shower.”
Harry heard the footsteps of Jayne padding back to the bedroom. She came in to gave Harry’s
odd grin a suspicious frown as she held out a mug of tea for him.
‘I’m off for a shower. Could you do me a favour and make the bed?’
With the announcement that his latest maybe-lover was going to scrub her body of every last
bit of his DNA, Harry stood and fiddled with some sheets. Men and women make strange
bedfellows, he thought as the door was to the bathroom was shut and then resolutely bolted.
#
While the suit was the same, the Foreign Secretary sported a fresh shirt and new tie when he
entered the lobby of the exclusive Mayfair club where he had spent the night. He was met by
the same nervous host who had greeted him the previous evening.
‘Can I arrange a car for you to get to the office, sir?’
Though the Foreign Secretary walked straight past him without a glance, he did at least afford
him an explanation. ‘I think today might be an interesting day to walk thank you, Wilcox.’
The Foreign Secretary stepped out into a street deathly quiet, save for a black cab which
rolled up to the kerb in front of him and illuminated its yellow light enticingly. The Foreign
Secretary barely afforded a glance as he walked on past.
Jayne checked her watch. Harry had politely made an excuse and left as soon as she had
come out of the shower, which gave her a tiny guilt trip which she knew wouldn’t last. That
had been half an hour ago which she had spent watching the television news channels.
Obviously, she was late for work, but given the circumstances the quandary was whether
there was any point in going into work at all. Because the twin phones that were integral to
her job lay on her desk in the office, she didn’t really have the capacity to work from home.
A cocktail of caffeine and household painkillers had displaced her hangover and so the
prospect of doing something constructive wasn’t too daunting.
She pulled herself up to her full height of five foot and three and half inches and went to the
wardrobe to find some ironed clothes. Unlike Jayne, most of colleagues at “PR The
Champions” often took the opportunity to work from home, productively or not. The office
today was likely to be like a morgue.
The Foreign Secretary could not recall when he had last walked the streets of London alone.
Security protocol dictated that when he wasn’t being driven by Swain in the official bullet-
proof Jaguar car his office of state provided, he should at least have an armed detail of police
officers close by. The morning air was crisp and vibrant, even though the surroundings were
not. Setting his sights on Big Ben in the distance, he decided he had ample time to take the
scenic route.
There was no security guard to greet her, and the lifts were no longer going to the fourth
floor. Jayne felt like she was going to have to get used to unusual things after such an unusual
day and so slotting her pass back into her bag she looked for the emergency stairs.
Expecting a dearth of personnel at “PR The Champions”, Jayne was stunned to find it a hive
of activity, although not a hive populated by anyone she knew. Men and women she had
never seen before moved in and out of offices freely, most of them carrying something in a
cardboard box.
Jayne went to her office to find a smartly dressed woman sitting at her desk. She looked like
she wanted to make a telephone call but couldn’t decide which phone to use.
‘Can I help you?’

The woman looked up and put the phones down.
‘Excuse me, but what are you doing here?'
‘Err. This is my office?’
'Oh. So you are,’ she checked a name on a clipboard, ‘Jayne Mendis?’
‘I am.’
‘And you are, sorry you were, director for government communications?’
‘That’s right, and you are…?’
The woman stood up and moved around the desk toward Jayne. For a second, Jayne thought
she was going to offer a handshake, but instead she sat back on the front of desk and folded
her arms. It was the kind of position Jayne would take when she wanted to make a point that
this was her office.
‘Gemma Clark, executive director at the firm of receivers appointed to dissolve “PR The
Champions”.’ She held out a business card for Jayne to take which, sure enough, read:
“Gemma Clarke, Exceutive Director. Daydream Receiver Ltd”
‘Receivers? Where’s Solomon? Did he come in today? And what do you mean I was director
of communications?’
‘You are referring to Solomon Braid? So, you don’t know.’
‘Don’t know what?’ Oddity had turned to intrigue and was now morphing into alarm.
‘Mr Braid passed away yesterday. Which is actually entirely coincidental to the fact that “PR
The Champions” has been declared insolvent. Its creditors have instructed us to liquidate the
assets which, I am legally obliged to unemotionally inform you,’ Clark unclipped a brown
envelope from the board and held it out for Jayne, ’includes you.’
Either of the two bombshells that Clark had just dropped upon Jayne would have left her
speechless. Clark clearly knew this and so carried on.
‘Legally, I can allow you thirty minutes to collect whatever belongings you may have before
I have the authority to have you escorted from the building.’ Clark stood up and unfolded her
arms. Legally, sometimes her job obliged her to be a proper cow.
‘Let’s say a couple of hour from now, shall we, Miss Mendis?’
Harry stumbled along the empty East End street as he always did when he was short of a few
quid, but today the reason was more that he needed a distraction.
Looking back over the last twenty-four hours he should really consider himself lucky to be
alive. Complaining that the gods had dealt him another bad card was probably being a little
ungrateful to the gods. But then the gods had placed him in the midst of harm’s way in the
first place. Harry wondered what the appropriate proverb might be.
He reached the corner and leaned on the door of “Beers Dry on their Own” until it gave in to
his weight.
#
Jayne leaned as coolly as she could against the open door-frame of the deceased Solomon
Braid’s office.
‘I’ve just been speaking to Gemma over there.’ The man rummaging through the large desk
looked up at Jayne, who was jabbing her thumb in no particular direction behind her. ‘She
mentioned financial irregularities?’
The rummaging man assumed his most official voice. ‘I’m not sure I’m at liberty to discuss
an ongoing investigation to former employees.’
‘Oh naturally. Totally understand. I just thought I might be of some help. Maybe to help
cracking his passwords? Any areas where someone who really knew him might be useful,
you think?’
The man brought himself up from his knees to face Jayne fully. ‘I appreciate the offer, but
regarding his passwords, we found all of them written down on the inside page of this.’ He
held up a book pertaining to be an idiot’s guide to running a modern company, with
illustrations.
‘Oh. That’s handy, I suppose. What about the financial statements themselves? I remember
Solomon used some quite complicated spreadsheets to track the accounts.’
The investigator frowned. ‘I’m afraid we’ve had to fully sanitise all files relating to the
financial statements. There are some unusual spreadsheets containing some very questionable
arithmetic. Tell me err… I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name. Exactly how well did you
know the late Mr Braid?’
‘Oh, not all that well after all.’ Jayne turned and went to get the rest of her things.
The landlord of “Beers Dry on Their Own” would have taken great umbrage if he hadn't, so
Harry bought a pint even though he didn't feel like drinking it.
As he sat watching it fester, he couldn’t help but mope a little about Jayne. As far as he could
tell, he had done everything in the manual of advice for dealing with such a situation.
He had put himself in Jayne’s shoes and decided that he wouldn’t have wanted himself
hanging around that morning. So he had done the decent thing by her and left, but what had
he gained from it? He definitely scolded himself for not getting her phone number in his haste
to leave.
Jayne needed to speak to someone about anything. Of course, she could call her mother. She
was going to have to call her at some point as the reassuring text she had sent would never
resolve a mother’s concern for her daughter after the previous day and night.
But a conversation with a stressed-out parent was not what she needed right now. She thought
of other options which, given the circumstances, were inevitably reduced to one.
Harry continued to stare at the untouched pint of God-knows-what. The pub was particularly
quiet that afternoon. He wondered whether yesterday’s collapse of law and order provided a
convenient means for criminals to come up with their own enterprises. Harry sighed at the
notion his peers had profited more from his actions than he had. Damn the gods indeed.
The nice thing about “Beers Dry on their Own” was that when he couldn’t get work, he
needed to feel sorry for himself, and it was an excellent place to do that.
He tried not to breathe through his nose too much as he took the first pull of his pint.
Jayne didn’t consider herself as particularly picky when it came to the physical aspects of
men. Sure, she could be accused of being shallow for refusing point blank to go out men she
could tell without evidence were creeps.
Even given this, not being bothered about baldness, stature, accent, skin colour, hair colour,
size of nose, size of ears, roundness of shoulders, flat-ness of butt-cheeks, hairy knuckles,
hairy back, hairy lip and the ocular defects of mono-eyebrow and excessive eye-separation
was, she thought, pretty tolerant.
Which brought her uncomfortably to Harry. He was just so average. Not someone she would
definitively turn away, but then not the kind of man who… If she never made the effort to
meet him again, would he appear in her thoughts in a few lonely months’ time? With that
hangdog expression and inability to walk straight? She had been fairly brusque with him this
morning, and would be surprised if he was the one to instigate any more contact.
She flicked through the contacts in her phone, wondering whether she had gotten around to
adding Harry’s number overnight. She found a few Harry’s she didn’t recognise in there.
Maybe it was a good omen that his number was buried amongst others of his kind, lost in a
graveyard of chance meetings.
‘Damn. Oh well.’ Jayne called up the text option next to phone number of “Harry (Wet)”
‘Hello, are you Harry?’
Harry looked up and saw large man with tattoos that crept up through the neck of his t-shirt
before stopping, as if in fear, at the scars on his face.
'I might be.'
‘Hear you’re in need of some work?’
Whatever, thought, Harry, as a text buzzed through on his phone. He checked the message
before answering.
‘Well?’ The tattoos were clearly surprised at the indecision on the part of Harry. The man
turned around to get the attention of the landlord, who was nodding back at Harry. Yes, that
is the man who performs illegal tasks at great risk for minimal payment. The nodding didn’t
explain why Harry was spending so much time looking at his text.
“Fancy a drink later? J”
It was an unknown number so as far as Harry was concerned it could be from any number of
J’s.
‘What’s the job?’ The tattooed man immediately lightened up and sat down across from
Harry, the breadth of his arms taking up most of the table space, and the orange in his teeth
absorbing most of the light.
‘Easiest money you’ve ever made mate.’
Harry’s phone buzzed again.

“We could catch up about yesterday?” Now this was narrowing it down. Harry tried to
convince himself there must have been plenty of J’s he needed to catch up on about
yesterday.
“…and this morning? ;-)” Harry didn’t need the smiley face. He rose from the table along
with his hopes, his self esteem and, sadly for Harry, a little too much courage.
Similar to his own home and for the same reasons, very few doors in the House of Commons
were fitted with locks which, coupled with his position, allowed the Prime Minister to enter
wherever and whenever he saw fit. He burst without warning into his Chief Whip's office to
see the Whip slam down his laptop.
'Prime Minister. How good of you to err.. come.' The Chief Whip wiped a few drops of sweat
from his brow as the Prime Minister took a seat opposite and got straight to the point.
'What is the state of tonight's vote? The London devolution thing proposed by the Foreign
Secretary.'
'Well, its a non-starter, sir. Obviously. No one on any side has even suggested voting in the
ayes.'
'So there's nothing to worry about?'
'Not in the slightest, Prime Minister.'
'And the Foreign Secretary himself?'

'Nowhere to be found, sir. I'd wager he's already turned tail and fled in lieu of disintegration
of his career.'
'Well then, that's all very well and good.' The Prime Minister heaved a genuine sigh of relief,
which was sensed by his Chief Whip.
'Excellent. Perhaps this is a good reason to adjourn for the drinks and canapés.'
'Drinks and canapés?'
'Yes. Nice way to wind down for the evening don't you think? Particularly as we have to stay
late anyway for this meaningless vote. I assumed that was why you were here?'
'And who is organising this incidental festivity?'
'Why the err.. the err.. I do believe it's the err... the Foreign...'
'The Foreign Secretary?' The Prime Minister dropped the sigh of relief he had heaved seconds
earlier and crushed it underfoot.
Checking his pocket watch for any other reason than to tell the time, a pristinely suited man
stood amongst the pigeons and tourists of Trafalgar Square wondering who was feeding who.
Certainly there was one species taking less notice of the other.
A pigeon wandered towards him, pecking at the prospect of some crumbs around his shoe.
The pigeon stopped when its eyes met the black toe of the unpolished shoe. It gazed into the
pigeon-abyss as the pigeon-abyss stared back and in an instant flew away, never to return.
The shoe walked on.

'Roll up! Roll up! Find the lady amongst the knaves.'
The attention of the Foreign Secretary was caught by this.
'Only a fiver to play, or perhaps a gentleman of your standing could chance a little more?' A
wink accompanied the challenge which added to its irresistibility.
The Foreign Secretary kept currency about his person but only of a minimum denomination.
Debbie Lamont of the London Cocktail Consortium had worked at countless formal functions
but had never seen so much attention given to the canapés.
‘The smoked salmon mousse Twist on Madeleine is gluten-free but does contain dairy.’
‘The baguetine with parfait menu de canard and orange confit is dairy-free but does contains
nuts.’
‘The aubergine caviar with tomato tartar does count as vegetarian as the caviar is in fact
unfertilized fish roe’
Being over-educated about the menu was enough to put you off eating it sometimes, Debbie
often thought. But in these safety and litigious-conscious times it was a standard run-through
and so wasn’t what Debbie found odd. What Debbie found odd was that every conceivable
peccadillo appeared to have been accounted for.
‘The choux raspberry craquand has extra-low acidity and is suitable for those with stomach
ulcers.’
‘The brochette beef sirloin terryaki has been recommended as ideal for anyone with an iron
deficiency, or an insulin surplus.’
‘The Tail of King Prawn in Filo Pastries with Sweet and Sour Sauce has been known to
alleviate tertiary lymphoma of the thyroid, but only in pregnant albinos.’
With instructions clear as crystal, but meaningful as mud, Lamont went to change into her
uniform for the evening.
Apart from along corridors of power, the only walking Foreign Secretary ever did was on
country paths, cradling a shotgun and with an obedient spaniel at his side. A pedestrian
subway, in which case, was something of a departure.
The white tiles that uncased the subway suggested that they were designed to be cleaned by
high pressure hoses, which reminded him of the interrogation dungeons his intelligence
services occasionally used.
‘Got anything for a cup of tea?’
The Foreign Secretary stood over the man swathed from the cold in dark blankets of grimy
colours. He suddenly felt the asymmetric weight caused by the roll of banknotes in his jacket
pocket.
‘Young fellow, if you’d care to join me, a cup of tea sounds like a marvellous idea.'
#
The Prime Minister held his orange juice and surveyed the party congregation. 'Not a bad
turnout, all told.'
The Chief Whip had also accepted an orange juice, but was counting on the Prime Minister
not hanging around. 'Yes sir. You have to hand it to the chap, he knows how to throw a bash.'
Taking in the throng, the Prime Minister revolved to find Debbie Lamont standing in front of
him with a tray full of food. He held out his hand in defence.
'Not for me thank you. Bit of an iron deficiency at the moment. Strict diet.'
'Why don't you try the beef sirloin terryaki, sir?'
'Oh well, if you're sure it's alright.' The Prime Minister lifted a brochette from the tray. 'Oh
my word, that is good. Tell me, Chief Whip, is there anything strikes you as odd about all
this?'
The Chief Whip was caught with a mouthful of exquisite salmon mousse, made all the more
delicious in that it would not agitate his gluten intolerance. 'Odd, Prime Minister?'
'Well yes, I mean I'm not concerned or anything. As you say, what is there to be concerned
about? But its odd that the Foreign Secretary should go such an unusual extravagance. Why
would he do that? Oh, thank you.' The Prime Minister took some more sirloin terryaki off a
passing tray.
'He throws a party just minutes before his own vote. Why would he do that? Gosh this beef is
heaven.'
'A hopeless vote on a motion to devolve London that he only raised two days ago. Right
before the riots of London. Why. Would he. Do that? I wonder...’
The Prime Minister's thoughts were beginning to mist as his pituitary gland was prodded an
all sides.
'And after all that, he hasn’t even turned up! Why would he do that..?’ The Prime Minister
turned to put the question to his Chief Whip, only to find him in the direction of the spirits
bar.
Forgetting all other things for the time being, the Prime Minister went to look for that tray of
wonderful food. As he did, he made way for a white-haired, pink-eyed young woman in a
maternity dress, who was then met by a tray-carrying Debbie Lamont.
‘Tertiary lymphoma madam?
‘I’m sorry, young lady?’
‘I mean, would you care for some king prawns in sweet and sour sauce?’
Michael McNamara sat at the computer in his office and stared at the updated statistics on the
screen. Every known dietary restriction had been accounted for and reports were continually
coming in of more product being consumed by more subjects. This phase of the Milton
Initiative would be deemed a success by the Guild, there was no doubt. Emotions associated
to three of the Seven Deadly Sins were now coursing through at least four hundred subjects in
the test area.

But the perfectionist within him wasn't satisfied. In his opinion, a reliance on word-of-mouth
reports from staff was an unacceptable means of assessing project progress.
The requirement remained for a foolproof means of tracking exactly what a subject had
ingested and their ongoing reactions to it. He picked up the phone on his desk.
'Current status on Project Creosote?' McNamara listened intently for a report that left him
cold. 'Double the resources and bring the timetable up to a year from now.' He listened to
some polite protests. 'Just do it immediately, would you?' He put the phone down.
The official address of the Houses of Parliament was the Palace of Westminster and it was
not an exaggerated title.
The Right Honourable Maria Dodd, MP, knew that one day she would be able to stride
through these majestic halls with their impossibly high ceilings and life-size paintings of
robed unknowns from aeons past adorning either side as if she owned the place, but she
would need a at least one general election first.
As an opposition member of parliament she possessed no executive power, only a tiny
spanner to throw into the works that might hopefully upset the plans that do.
It was with this mindset she approached every debate in the House put forward by the ruling
government, or the puppy-drowning, slave-driving, peasant-shaggers as she frequently
described them to her constituents.

The procedure for a parliamentary debate was as mind-numbing as it sounds, which may
have been the point. Maria took her seat and applied salts to her nose to fend off the
inevitable flatulence from those around her.
The Parliamentary debate on the devolution of London from the United Kingdom began, and
it was standing room only. Members of Parliament from all sides had given up their Friday
evening to exercise their flavour of democracy, encouraged perhaps, by the wonderful
flavours on offer at the soiree beforehand. Expectations were high. Unusually, so too were
the emotions.
High above the chamber, in the visitor's gallery, a man entitled but not intending to vote
watched the delirium. He was aching from an elongated stroll throughout a city whose
course through history he had unalterably affected in the space of five days.
The Foreign Secretary pulled a golden pocket-watch from his waistcoat and flipped its lid.
Not long now before the vote was due to start. Something fluttered in the base of his stomach.
Had he ever felt them before, he would have known them to be butterflies.
‘So, I think we did, and you think we didn’t?’ Jayne’s genuine question was softened with a
honest laugh.
She sat with Harry by the fireplace of the “We Do The Bitter-bug” pub in Fulham, both of
them one drink deep. Harry was enjoying the relaxed way they had been recapping that
morning.
‘That’s the story so far. So, was I any good?’
‘You were so good I can’t remember any of it.’ Jayne’s sarcasm doubled as truth. She was
quite concerned that they had done something, but Harry had been so inept at it there was
nothing to recall.
This was exactly the same Jayne that Harry had met last night. When she wasn’t trying to kill
him with blunt fists, she slashed him to the bone with a cutting put-down. Obviously, he kept
coming back for more. Harry swirled the last few ounces of beer in his glass before knocking
it back with a grimace. Jayne noticed.
‘What is that stuff you are drinking?’
‘Some sort of craft ale. The first pint is often a bit rich.’
Jayne picked up the empty pint glass, gave it a sniff and immediately made a face.
‘Well don’t expect me to give you mouth-to-mouth if there is any chance of you bringing that
back up.’
It suddenly hit Jayne why she felt so comfortable around Harry. He kept offering her up these
easy targets to make fun of. Was this his method of seduction? If so, it was fairly tempting. Is
this how he got her into bed last night? Jayne made a mental note to crack fewer jokes at
Harry’s expense. Harry was pointing at Jayne’s empty wine glass.
‘Same again?’
‘Yes, but it’s my round.’

‘I'm not sure I could live with myself if I let someone without gainful employment buy me a
drink.’
‘Hey, I’ve got a termination letter in my bag that proves I have at least had gainful
employment.’
Harry stood, picked up the empty glasses, and turned to go to the bar.
‘Hey Harry,’ Harry turned to face Jayne with quizzical eyebrows. ‘Let’s try and not get too
drunk this time?’
Jayne sat back facing the fireplace and waited with curiosity for which emotion would
surface first. A quick glance back at Harry showed him chatting to the barman about
something that ended in both of them laughing.
Looking back at the fireplace she decided it had been an outrageous and on the whole,
altogether disastrous week from her perspective, but there could be far worse ways of closing
it.
The motion was so ridiculous. It would be a sin to vote for it.
Maria Dodd MP was handed the ballot paper with the two available options. A box next to a
“yes” and a box next to a “no”. She took it into the voting chamber.
What was the question on the ballot again? Maria Dodd read the paper but could not stop
thinking about the that gorgeous choux raspberry craquand at the party, and how lucky she
was that its low acidity wouldn't affect her stomach ulcer. Now it would be a sin to vote
against that.
What was the question on the ballot paper again?

Christian Dowd - A Vacuum of Reason - Part One-1

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1 A Vacuum of Reason Christian Dowd

THIS SCEPTRED CITY: BOOK 1

07947 358 133

138 Ferndale Road

London, SW4 7SA

TWENTY YEARS AGO

into the shape of a spiralling parachute and slowly fell to earth.

activated the microphone taped to her cheek and reported in.

she hopped through onto the broken staircase landing below.

splintered banisters, '...pixie green.'

comms while she caught her breath.

the clear air she realised it was that of sincere sobbing.

something best saved for later.

'You should go. There are people to take of this.'

midriff about level with her shoulder.'

'This was my first mission.'

'Yeah. Somehow I hope it doesn't get any better.'

'Not for me. I'm done.'

comms back on and turned back to face the villa.

eight foot by twelve, pattern 37, subcategory C.'

casting a supreme silhouette against the rising sun.

building itself had never, ever been locked.

progressed further into the building.

access any part of the huge house.

taken, and the aide swivelled and turned away.

to be that of the Cabinet Secretary.

through the gap.

closed the door.

table rose instantly.

coattails of your sumptuous leadership.’

for Education chipping in, with extra treacle.

yes, I do like the sound of that.’

‘Mmm. Economic. Mmm. Reassessment. Mmm. Treasury.’

‘I say, is this one of yours Chancellor, old chap?’

your favourite spreadsheet file?’

petrified of accidentally pressing were removed from his view.

contents always gave him joy.

scatter graphs, the Chancellor loved them all.

‘Would you like to restart your application to reflect the changes?’

‘What a considerate thought. Thank you.’ Click.

screen signalled the restart.

FIVE YEARS AGO

computer and started to unpack the abacus.

position, perhaps hindered by an economics qualification of some sort.

release, he received a further request to introduce an optional “enhancement” into the

enough as to go unnoticed except for the processing of very large numbers.

the-mill software update.

Commons and on television, Chancellor.’

more pallid face.

odd about them too. Are they upside-down or something?’

could only sit in silence.

‘Are you alright, Chancellor? Chancellor??’

‘I rather think I have confession to make.’

were tasked to protect, the duller the day would be.

screams and a thud came from the room within.

‘Close your eyes, son. And cover your ears.’

‘One. Hundred. Billion. Pounds. Where. Has. It. Gone?’

state he had slipped into.

‘Well, you see Prime Minister.’

‘It was never really there in the first place.’

consequences of his incompetence on the chin.

before it pulled up for her to step inside.

mesmerising sense of tranquillity.