“Exactly. It’s taken governments a long time to realize that you don’t need to manipulate unwelcome news. Just don’t show it.”
“And what aren’t you showing?”
“Small incidents, unimportant in themselves, but possibly evidence of a conspiracy. The last two Quietus were interrupted. The ramps were blown up on the morning of the ceremony, just half an hour before the sacrificial victims—or perhaps ‘victims’ is hardly the appropriate word, let’s say the sacrificial martyrs—were due to arrive.”
He paused, then added: “But ‘martyrs’ is perhaps redundant. Let’s say before the potential suicides were due to arrive. It caused them considerable distress. The terrorist, he or she, was cutting it rather fine. Thirty minutes later and the old people would have died rather more spectacularly than was planned. There was a telephone warning—a young male voice—but it came too late to do more than keep the crowds away from the scene.”
I said: “An irritating inconvenience. I went to see a Quietus about a month ago. The ramp from which the boat embarked could, I should have thought, have been constructed fairly quickly. I don’t suppose that particular act of criminal damage held up the Quietus for more than a day.”
“As you implied, Dr. Faron, a minor inconvenience, but not, perhaps, without significance. There have been too many minor inconveniences recently. And then there are the pamphlets. Some of them are directed to the treatment of the Sojourners. The last batch of Sojourners, the sixty-year-olds and some who had fallen sick, had to be forcibly repatriated. There were unfortunate scenes at the quay. I don’t say there’s a connection between that d6bacle and the dissemination of the pamphlets but it could be more than a coincidence. The distribution of political material among Sojourners is illegal but we know that the subversive pamphlets have been circulated in the camps. Other leaflets have been delivered house to house, complaining about the treatment of Sojourners generally, conditions on the Isle of Man, compulsory semen testing and what the dissidents apparently see as a defect in the democratic process. A recent one incorporated all these dissatisfactions in a list of demands. You may perhaps have seen it?”
He reached down to the black leather attache case, lifted it on to his lap and clicked it open. He was playing the part of an avuncular casual caller, not very confident about the purpose of this visit, and I half-expected him to pretend to rummage ineffectively among his papers before finding the one he wanted. However, he surprised me by laying his hand on it immediately.
He passed it to me and said: “Have you seen one of these before, sir?”
I glanced at it and said: “Yes, I’ve seen it. One was pushed through my door a few weeks ago.” There was little point in a denial. Almost certainly the SSP know that the leaflets have been distributed in St. John Street and why should my house have been neglected? After rereading it I handed it back.
“Has anyone else you know received one?”
“Not to my knowledge. But I imagine they must have been fairly widely disseminated. I wasn’t interested enough to inquire.”
Rawlings studied it as if it were new to him. He said: “The Five Fishes. Ingenious but not very clever. I suppose we look for a little group of five. Five friends, five family members, five fellow-workers, five fellow-conspirators. Perhaps they got the idea from the Council of England. It’s a useful number, wouldn’t you say, sir? In any discussion it ensures that there can always be a majority.” I didn’t reply. He went on: “The Five Fishes. I imagine they each have a code name probably based on forenames; that way it’s easy for everyone to remember. A would be difficult, though. I can’t offhand think of a fish with a name beginning with A. Perhaps none of them has A as an initial. They could have bream for B, I suppose, and C wouldn’t be difficult: cod, codling. Dogfish would do for D. E might present a difficulty. Although I may, of course, be wrong, I reckon they wouldn’t have chosen to call themselves the Five Fishes if they couldn’t find an appropriate fish for each member of the gang. What do you think of that, sir? As a process of reasoning, I mean.”
I said: “Ingenious. It’s interesting to see the thought processes of the SSP in action. Few citizens can have had that opportunity, at least few citizens actually at liberty.”
I might just as well not have spoken. He continued to study the pamphlet. Then he said: “A fish. Quite nicely drawn. Not, I think, by a professional artist, but by someone with a feeling for design. The fish is a Christian symbol. Could this be a Christian group, I wonder?” He looked up at me. “You admit that you had one of these pamphlets in your possession, sir, but you did nothing about it? You didn’t feel that it was your duty to report?”
“I treated it as I treat all unimportant, unsolicited mail.” Then, deciding it was time I went on the offensive, I said: “Forgive me, Chief Inspector, but I don’t see what precisely is worrying the Council. There are malcontents in any society. This particular group have apparently done little harm apart from blowing up a couple of flimsy, temporary ramps and distributing some ill-thought-out criticisms of the government.”
“Some might describe the pamphlets as seditious literature, sir.”
“You can use what words you like, but you can hardly elevate this into a great conspiracy. You’re surely not mobilizing the battalions of state security because a few bored malcontents prefer to amuse themselves by playing a more dangerous game than golf. What precisely is worrying the Council? If there is a group of dissidents they will be fairly young, or at least middle-aged. But time will pass for them, time is passing for all of us. Have you forgotten the figures? The Council of England reminds us of them often enough. A population of fifty-eight million in 1996, fallen to thirty-six million this year, 20 per cent of them over seventy. We’re a doomed race, Chief Inspector. With maturity, with old age, all enthusiasm fades, even for the seductive thrill of conspiracy. There’s no real opposition to the Warden of England. There never has been since he took power.”
“It is our business, sir, to see that there isn’t.”
“You will, of course, do what you think is necessary. But I would only take this seriously if I thought that it was, in fact, serious: opposition, perhaps within the Council itself, to the authority of the Warden.”
The words had been a calculated risk, perhaps even a dangerous one, and I saw that I had worried him. I had intended to.
After a moment’s pause, which was involuntary, not calculated, he said: “If there were any question of that, the matter wouldn’t be in my hands, sir. It would be dealt with at an altogether higher level.”
I got to my feet. I said: “The Warden of England is my cousin and my friend. He was kind to me in childhood, when kindness is particularly important. I am no longer his adviser on the Council but that doesn’t mean that I am no longer his cousin and his friend. If I have evidence of a conspiracy against him, I shall tell him. I shan’t tell you, Chief Inspector, nor shall I get in touch with the SSP. I shall tell the person most concerned, the Warden of England.”
This was play-acting, of course, and we knew it. We didn’t shake hands or speak as I showed them out but this wasn’t because I had made an enemy. Rawlings didn’t permit himself the indulgence of personal antipathy any more than he would have allowed himself to feel sympathy, liking or the stirrings of pity for the victims he visited and interrogated. I thought I understood his kind: the petty bureaucrats of tyranny, men who relish the carefully measured meed of power permitted to them, who need to walk in the aura of manufactured fear, to know that the fear precedes them as they enter a room and will linger like a smell after they have left, but who have neither the sadism nor the courage for the ultimate cruelty. But they need their part of the action. It isn’t sufficient for them, as it is for most of us, to stand a little way off to watch the crosses on the hill.
Theo closed the diary and put it in the top drawer of his desk, turning the key and slipping it into his pocket. The desk was well made, the drawers strong, but it would hardly resist an expert or determined assault. But then, one was hardly likely to be made and, if it were, he had taken care that his account of Rawlings’s visit should be innocuous. That he felt this need to self-censor was, he knew, evidence of unease. He was irritated that the precaution was necessary. He had begun the diary less as a record of his life (for
