Omega Place Read online

  The plan was to arrive in Bristol in the early morning, rest up in some car park until midday or so and then do a proper recce of the city. Once they’d worked out the best sites to target, each team would take their pick and prepare their gear. They’d split up around midnight, meeting back at the van no later than two o’clock. To use Rob’s favourite word, simple.

  Paul sat, leaning against a cushion. Sky was, as usual, spliffed up, plugged into his iPod and listening to some old-school rock he’d got Rob to download for him, and from the front came Rob’s choice of music via the CD player he’d jacked into the van’s cassette player. Paul took a brown paper bag out of his backpack and fished out the Jamaican spicy lamb pie he’d bought himself before they’d left. It was cold, but tasted hot; the curry flavour fired up his mouth as he ate it, using the bag to catch the crumbs.

  On his own, kind of, with nothing else to do, Paul found himself thinking about what Orlando had said, about people believing what they were told. Who were you supposed to believe? If you believed Orlando then everyone in charge was a liar, but then he also thought it was stupid not to vote… if you didn’t, then you had no right to complain, he said. But, living sort of outside the law, how could anyone in Omega Place vote? He’d wanted to find out what Orlando’s answer to that was, but not only would it have probably pissed the man off if he’d asked, but Izzy would no doubt have wanted to rip his tongue out for daring to question him.

  Izzy and Orlando. Now there was a surprise, something he would surely have picked up on if he wasn’t such a naive bastard. Paul turned and looked over into the cab, Terri and Rob’s silhouettes up-lit by the dashboard and the headlights of the traffic coming towards them on the other side of the median strip of the motorway. Was Terri connected to one of the guys and he hadn’t noticed that either? Did she have a thing going with Rob? Hardly seemed likely as she treated him like a kid. Tommy? Could be, he supposed, but then he’d actually thought Tommy and Izzy were a pair because they worked together, and how off had that been? What about Sky?

  Paul screwed up the empty paper bag and tucked it away behind him, between the mattress and the side of the van. He looked at Sky, a man old enough to be his father, sat, eyes closed and mildly stoned, in the back of this van on its way to Bristol. What was he about, still living this weird life, like he’d been in it for ever? What was he doing with someone like Orlando, letting the younger man tell him what to do? Would Terri fancy someone like him?

  Sky opened his eyes, suddenly white in the gloom, and stared straight back at Paul, who reddened and felt as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t, like he was some peeping Tom.

  ‘Gotcha…’ Sky smiled.

  ‘I wasn’t…’

  ‘We’ve all got this third eye, a real eye right in the middle of our brain, man. Everyone.’ Sky sat up, switched off the music and pulled the tiny white phones out of his ears. ‘The pineal gland, right? The seat of the soul, some guy called it. It’s a psychic thing, like it’s how we know when we’re being watched?’

  Paul smiled. ‘Really?’

  ‘This isn’t some old hippy shit, man.’ Sky tapped his head. ‘This is ancient knowledge. The real deal.’

  ‘Were you a hippy, then, before you bunked off?’

  Sky’s turn to smile. ‘My old man would’ve shaved my head closer than Izzy if I’d tried to grow my hair. No, I wasn’t a hippy, I just didn’t want to die in some shitty jungle, be the first on my block to come home in a damn box and end up a name on a wall in Washington, commemorating a bad war I didn’t believe in. Not my way.’

  ‘But why this?’ Paul jerked a thumb at the van.

  ‘Omega Place?’

  Paul nodded.

  ‘Because it’s what I’m good at… being on the outside and messing with the system. I was doing road protests before I met Lando, and this way I’ve more chance to actually change things, and I get to live in houses most of the time, not up some goddam tree or down a tunnel. I was getting too old for all that shit anyway.’

  ‘You believe in what Orlando wants to do, then?’

  ‘I believe in direct action, not sitting on your ass and being spoon-fed crap by politicians. And, astonishingly, you guys over here are actually further ahead than almost anyone else in making Orwell’s nightmare a reality, so it’s a good place to be. If you want to make a difference.’

  Paul fell silent, idly twisting the silver ring back and forth, thinking about making a difference and whether, when it got to that time when he should think about going back home and back to college, would he opt to stay, or choose to leave Omega Place? How would either decision affect his future, or anyone else’s?

  ‘Sky?’

  ‘Yeah, man?’

  ‘Why’s it called Omega Place?’ The question had just popped into his head, even though the answer wouldn’t help him make up his mind about anything. Maybe now was as good a time as any to ask, because it had been niggling him for ages.

  Sky grinned. ‘Good question,’ he said. But that was all he said.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s nothing mysterious, just the name of a place Orlando saw somewhere once, this small street off a big main road, he said.’

  ‘So why pick that name?’

  ‘Orlando said the street was kind of forgotten and probably always would be…’ Sky stretched. ‘The last place that would ever have a camera pointed at it. You know, like a sanctuary. Where they couldn’t get you.’

  ‘OK… thanks,’ Paul nodded as the engine whined and the van began to slow, Terri indicating as she dropped the engine speed down through the gears and crossed the lanes.

  ‘Junction twenty, all change for the M5, people!’ Terri glanced over her shoulder as she brought the van out of the turn and started to accelerate again. ‘Portishead here we come, guys.’

  ‘Terri?’ Sky reached up and tapped the back of her seat. ‘I thought we were going to Bristol?’

  ‘We are. Portishead’s just outside.’

  ‘So why go there?’

  ‘They’re one of my favourite bands.’

  ‘Yeah? Who are?’

  ‘Geezer!’ Terri snorted, shaking her head.

  Sky looked at Paul and shrugged. ‘Old fart alert?’

  ‘I’ve not heard of them either,’ Paul said.

  ‘That’s what they’re called,’ Terri said over her shoulder. ‘Portishead…’

  Paul and Sky had their camera sites all worked out so their last one would leave them with just a short walk back to where Rob had left the van earlier in the evening. It was good to be back out and doing something; nervous excitement made Paul feel twitchy and eager to get started, like he was an impulsive puppy and should be kept on a tight leash. After the almost screw-up at the tube station and nearly being caught trying to start the Transit the night before, he wanted to prove to himself that he could cut it. Show Sky that he was OK.

  Each of them was carrying lightweight catapults with sights and fold-down wrist braces, plus a pocketful of 10mm diameter ball bearings. In the right conditions they should be able to take out a camera from at least 200 metres away. Sky had recently ordered the cats over the Internet from some company in America who sold them as ‘ideal for campers, hunters and backpackers’. And radical street activists, thought Paul as they got to their first target.

  It was a twin-camera installation and he and Sky had taken up positions in the shadows, one opposite each unit. Paul watched for Sky’s signal – the flick of a lighter – and started counting down from ten as he drew back the thick elastic, feeling the brace pressing down on his arm. He took a deep breath, brought the sights down to centre on his target and let go on the ‘one’ count. The small silver ball disappeared from between his fingers and almost immediately Paul saw, then heard, the result: the sound of a sharp crack! followed by a small cascade of shattering glass. Job done.

  Folding the catapult down and tucking it into his jacket pocket, he moved quickly away from the scene of the crime and walked off
towards the next place on the list, meeting up, as planned, with Sky at some point on the route.

  They knew, as they walked, there was the chance they’d be picked up somewhere by a street camera – there was no way they could take them all down. But, with his new haircut, and hood up, in the highly unlikely event someone was actually looking for him in Bristol, Paul reckoned he was hardly recognisable. Even so, the two of them tried, as far as was possible, to keep from being captured for posterity on film as they made their way from target to target. It was just after 1.15 a.m. when they got to the last place on their list, a mobile unit inside a plexiglass hemisphere, the kind of set-up they normally paintballed. They’d never done one of these before with the slingshots and Sky said they should treat it as an experiment – no worries if it didn’t work, they’d learn from the experience.

  ‘I want you to shoot as much stuff at the same spot as it takes to bust it open,’ Sky checked his pocket to see how many steel balls he had left. ‘You got enough ammo?’

  Paul held out a cupped palm with ten or so ball bearings in it. ‘Should do, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, OK, that’s fine. As soon as the dome breaks I’ll go for the camera and then we’ll hightail it, right?’

  Paul nodded, sighting his first shot midway up the side of the outer shell, breathing calmly and letting go on his own internal count of ten. The steel ball whacked the plastic like a bullet, ricocheting off and hitting an illuminated shop sign fifteen, twenty metres away. A couple of seconds later Paul had fired off another ball, and then another followed that. A large shard of plastic flew away as the third shot hit.

  ‘I got it, Paul…’

  Paul lowered his catapult, the muscles in his arms now beginning to ache, and watched Sky aim and fire. He saw the effect the ball had as it ploughed into the side of the lens housing, smiling as the whole thing sheared off.

  ‘Nice one,’ he said, patting Sky’s back.

  ‘Time to go home, man.’

  Five minutes later, walking back to where the van was parked, Paul spotted Terri and Rob up ahead. He nudged Sky and quietly began to walk faster up behind them.

  ‘Scuse me,’ he said, tapping Rob on the shoulder and making his voice as gruff as he could. ‘This is a stop and search…’

  Terri wheeled around as Rob legged it up the street, almost fifty metres away by the time he heard Paul and Sky’s laughter.

  ‘You sods! I could’ve had a bloody heart attack!’ Terri looked up the street at Rob as he walked back. ‘And a fat lot of good you were.’

  ‘No good both of us getting nicked, was there? Orlando’s rules, right?’

  ‘Coward’s law, more like.’ Terri turned back to Paul. ‘And never, ever do that again.’

  ‘Just a joke, Terri.’ Paul put his hands up and made a ‘what’s with her?’ face at Sky.

  ‘Like he said, Terri.’ Sky offered her his tobacco pouch.

  ‘Smoke?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks…’

  ‘Shift yer arses, man!’ Rob snapped his fingers. ‘We should get a move on.’

  As the group moved on up the street none of them noticed the small, high-res radio-linked camera, positioned unobtrusively on a nearby building, as it zoomed in on them, following them until they went out of sight.

  22

  Friday 18th August, Thames House

  ‘Ray?’

  ‘Boss? It’s…’ Ray Salter peered at the clock on his bedside table as he sat up, disoriented, phone pressed to his ear. ‘It’s three in the morning, boss, what’s up?’

  ‘The Duty Officer just belled me. Intel from Bristol… they think they’ve got footage of four of them, plus a number plate. Stuff’s coming down the line now.’

  Salter got out of bed. ‘I’ll be there in, I don’t know… this time of night, half an hour?’

  ‘See you there, Ray.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘I’m calling them now.’

  Salter put the phone back in its cradle and looked at the girlfriend, dead to the world and, lucky sod, destined to stay that way until her alarm went off in four hours’ time. He’d leave her a note.

  ‘This operator was really on the case, is all I can say, boss.’ Ray Salter was doing what he called shaving by Braille with his electric razor as he walked to the video suite with Mercer. ‘He recognised the older guy from the pictures we’d sent out and was keeping tabs on him and the younger bloke – same one as last Friday, just had a serious haircut, far as I can make out.’

  ‘You missed a bit on the left.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your chin. You missed a bit on the left.’

  ‘Oh… right.’

  ‘What’s happening with the plates? Any news on the van?’ Mercer held the door to the suite open so Salter could carry on shaving.

  ‘Everyone’s looking for it, no sign of it so far.’ Salter switched off the razor and blew on the head. ‘I’ve got Perry chasing, and we’ll be the first to know, though.’

  Tony Castleton, hunched over the desk in the suite doing something technical, waved at them without turning round. ‘Two secs and I’ll run everything we’ve been sent… they’ve got some of the new gear down there and a lot of the footage isn’t half bad…’ He punched a button and sat back. ‘Take a look…’

  On the screen a couple of grainy clips ran, one after the other, which featured the straggly haired, older subject the team had last seen outside High Street Ken tube station. Castleton paused the film.

  ‘Our man had just arrived on shift, apparently, so he was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when he saw these. They had the pics we’d sent out right near his desk, and he followed instructions just to stick with the subject for as long as possible.’ Castleton let the film roll again. ‘So then we get the bloke meeting up with his hooded buddy, who I’m pretty sure is the boy he was with last Friday. I got a profile shot off this Bristol stuff and compared it to something similar from the tube station, and I’d say there’s not much doubt who it is.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Mercer asked.

  ‘Yeah, we got lucky…’ Castleton fast-forwarded the film for a couple of seconds and then let it play. ‘New camera, just installed, state-of-the-art.’

  The picture wasn’t broadcast quality, but it was sharp and it was detailed, the faces of all four people in the frame clearly visible in the close-up shot the operator had got when he zoomed in. A female, blonde hair in a ponytail and wearing a pale-coloured baseball cap with what looked like Japanese characters on the front, and another hooded male, with the original two.

  The camera followed them up an empty street as far as the corner where they turned left; the operator, who obviously knew the city’s camera layout, managing a fairly seamless segue into a high-quality shot of the group walking off down another street.

  ‘And then…’ Castleton pointed at the screen. ‘Watch this.’

  The picture remained unchanged for what seemed like ages, although the digital counter said it was only about a minute and a half. Mercer yawned.

  ‘Watch what, Tony?’

  Castleton clicked his fingers and a van appeared out of the side road, stopped to check the traffic, then turned right, away from the camera, and drove off.

  ‘So?’

  Castleton rewound the picture and stopped it as the van appeared out of the side road. ‘Our boy was just sitting organising his thoughts, working out what to do next, when he saw the van and thought he saw something else as well.’ He tapped a couple of buttons and zoomed in, stopping as a fairly degraded image of a face filled the screen. The girl with the baseball cap, sitting in the passenger seat of the van, looking down the road towards the camera. Castleton knocked back the rest of his coffee and dropped the paper cup into a nearby bin. ‘And that’s how we got the number plate. Lucky, or what?’

  Mercer sat down behind her desk. She and Salter had left the other two to run the new faces through the system and chase up on the whereabouts of the van.

  ‘Any joy on
the leak, Ray?’

  ‘Not a huge amount.’ Salter leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. ‘I told you that Home Office lot wouldn’t give anything up easily.’

  ‘I know you did, but do you have anything?’

  ‘Maybe…’ Salter nodded and sat forward, elbows on his desk. ‘Who would you say knows everything that happens in an office, boss?’

  Mercer thought for a second or two. ‘Those ex-service types in reception?’

  ‘Correct! You can’t hide anything from those types, there’s nothing they don’t see, right?’ Salter rubbed his eyes. ‘So I did a bit of digging, pulled in some favours and got someone I know to have a quiet chat with the blokes who are in charge over where Garden works… decided my best option was to come at this thing from a tangent, see whether there was any gossip, rumour, hearsay or dirt to be picked up.’

  ‘Was there?’

  ‘All of the above, boss.’

  ‘So what did your contact have to say?’

  ‘Not a huge amount about anything we’re interested in, but the long and the short is that I’m pretty sure their internal security is on fairly high alert. Something is up, boss.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’ Mercer doodled an ornate picture frame on the pad in front of her.

  ‘Nothing specific, just the whisper that whatever it was was inside the building. But my man did tell me that his man had said that if he was checking up on anyone, it’d be that bloke mentioned in one of the reports in the file you were given by Markham… Garden, Henry Garden.’

  ‘Why him?’

  ‘Change of habits, he said.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ Mercer shrugged. ‘It’s a bit vague, isn’t it?’

  ‘These guys people-watch all day long, boss. It’s what they’re supposed to do, and noting habits is second nature, part of the game. When someone does something out of character, they notice. And when a person attempts to cover it up by answering questions they’ve not been asked – like making some crap excuse for going out of the office at an unusual time for them – the uniforms at the front desk wonder why.’