Elizabeth George - In the Presence of the Enemy

For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone.

J OHN M ILTON , Paradise Lost

Part one

HARLOTTE BOWEN THOUGHT she was dead. She opened her eyes into cold and darkness. The cold was beneath her, feeling just like the ground in her mothers garden planter, where the never-stop drips from the outdoor tap made a patch of damp that was green and smelly. The darkness was everywhere. Black pushed against her like a heavy blanket, and she strained her eyes against it, trying to force out of the endless nothing a shape that might tell her she wasnt in a grave. She didnt move at first. She didnt reach out either fin gers or toes because she didnt want to feel the sides of the coffin because she didnt want to know that death was like this when shed thought thered be saints and sunlight and angels, with the angels sitting on swings playing harps.

Charlotte listened hard, but there was nothing to hear. She sniffed, but there was nothing to smell except the mustiness all round her, the way old stones smell after moulds grown on them. She swallowed and tasted the vague memory of apple juice. And the fla vour was enough to make her recall.

Hed given her apple juice, hadnt he? Hed handed over a bottle with a cap that hed loosened and shiny beads of moisture speckling its sides. Hed smiled and squeezed her shoulder once. Hed said, Not to worry, Lottie. Your mum doesnt want that.

Mummy. That was what this was all about. Where was Mummy? What had happened to her? And to Lottie? What had happened to Lottie?

Theres been an accident, hed said. Im to take you to your mum.

Where? shed said. Wheres Mummy? And then louder, because her stomach felt liquidy all of a sudden and she didnt like the way he was looking at her, Tell me wheres my mum! Tell me! Right now!

Its all right, hed said quickly with a glance about. Just like Mummy, he was embarrassed because of her noise. Quiet down, Lottie. Shes in a Government safe house. Do you know what that means?

Charlotte had shaken her head. She was, after all, only ten years old and most of the workings of the Government were a mystery to her. All she knew for sure was that being in the Government meant that Mummy left home before seven in the morning and usually didnt come back till after she was asleep. Mummy went to her office in Parliament Square. She went to her meetings in the Home Office. She went to the House of Commons. On Friday afternoons she held surgery for her constituents in Marylebone, while Lottie did her school prep, tucked out of sight in a yell ow-walled room where the constituencys executive committee met.

Behave yourself, her mother would say when Charlotte arrived after school each Friday afternoon. Shed give a meaningful tilt of her head in the direction of that yellow-walled room. I dont want to hear a peep out of you till we leave. Is that clear?

Yes, Mummy.

And then Mummy would smile. So give us a kiss, she would say. And a hug. I want a hug as well. And she would stop her discussion with the parish priest or the Pakistani grocer from the Edgware Road or the local schoolteacher or whoever else wanted ten precious minutes of their MPs time. And shed catch Lottie up in a stiff-armed hug that hurt. Then shed swat her bottom and say, Off with you now, and turn back to her visitor, saying, Kids, with a chuckle.

Fridays were best. After Mummys surgery, she and Lottie would ride home together and Lottie would tell her all about her week. Her mother would listen. She would nod, and sometimes pat Lotties knee, but all the time she kept her eyes fixed to the road, just beyond their drivers head.

Mummy, Lottie would say with a martyred sigh in a useless attempt to wrest her mothers attention from Marylebone High Street to herself. Mummy didnt have to look at the high street after all. Its not as if she was driving the car. Im talking to you. Whatre you looking for?

Trouble, Charlotte. Im looking for trouble. Youd be wise to do the same.

Trouble had come, it seemed. But a Government safe house? What was that exactly? Was it a place to hide if someone dropped a bomb?

Are we going to the safe house? Lottie had gulped down the apple juice in a rush. It was a little peculiarnot nearly sweet enoughbut she drank it down properly because she knew it was naughty to seem ungrateful to an adult.

That we are, hed said. Were going to the safe house. Your mums waiting there.

Which was all that she could remember distinctly. Things had got quite blurry after that. Her eyelids had grown heavy as they drove through London , and within minutes it seemed that she hadnt been able to hold up her head. At the back of her mind, she seemed to recall a kind voice saying, Thats the girl, Lottie. Have a nice kip, wont you, and a hand gently removing her specs.

At this final thought, Lottie inched her hands up to her face in the darkness, keeping them as near as possible to her body so that she wouldnt have to feel the sides of the cof fin she was lying in. Her fingers touched her chin. They climbed slowly up her cheeks in a spider walk. They felt their way across the bridge of her nose. Her specs were gone.

That made no difference in the darkness, of course. But if the lights went onOnly how were lights to go on in a cof fin ?

Lottie took a shallow breath. Then another. And another. How much air? she wondered. How much time beforeAnd why? Why?

She felt her throat getting tight and her chest getting hot. She felt her eyes burn. She thought, Mustnt cry, mustnt ever ever cry. Mustnt ever let anyone see Except there was nothing to see, was there? There was nothing but endless black upon black. Which made her throat tight, which made her chest hot, which made her eyes burn all over again. Mustnt , Lottie thought. Mustnt cry. No, no.

Rodney Aronson leaned his kettle-drum bum against the windowsill in the editors office and felt the ancient venetian blinds scrape against the back of his safari jacket. He fished in one of the jackets pockets for the rest of his Cadbury whole nut bar, and he unwrapped its foil with the dedication of a paleontologist scrupulously removing soil from the buried remains of prehistoric man.

Across the room at the conference table, Dennis Luxford looked completely relaxed in what Rodney called the Chair of Authority. With a triangular grin on his elfin face, the editor was listening to the days final report on what Fleet Street had the previous week dubbed the Rent Boy Rumba. The report was being given, with considerable animation, by the best investigative reporter on staff at The Source . Mitchell Corsico was twenty-three years olda young man rather idiotically given to cowboy attirewith the instincts of a blood-hound and the tremulous sensitivity of a barracuda. He was just what they needed in the current rich climate of parliamentary peccadilloes, public outrage, and sexual shenanigans.

According to this afternoons statement, Corsico was saying, our esteemed MP from East Norfolk declared that his constituency is solidly behind him. Hes innocent until proven and all the et ceteras. The loyal party chairman asserts the entire brouhaha is the fault of the gutter press, who, he claims, are attempting yet again to undermine the Government.

Corsico flipped through his notes in an apparent search for the appropriate quote. Finding it, he shoved his treasured Stetson back on his head, struck a heroic pose, and recited, Its no secret that the media are set on a path to bring down the Government. This rent boy business is merely another attempt by Fleet Street to determine the direction of parliamentary debate. But if the media wish to destroy the Government, the media shall fin d more than one worthy opponent waiting to do battle from Downing Street to Whitehall to the Palace of Westminster. Corsico fli pped the notebook closed and shoved it into the back pocket of his well-worn jeans. Lofty sentiment, that, wouldnt you say?