Beneath the Bleeding

‘Actually, we’ve already come up against something that’s a bit odd,’ Carol said. ‘If you’re not too tired?’

His interest quickened in spite of his weariness. ‘I’m OK. What do you have?’

‘It’s kind of weird. We got to the bomb factory ahead of CTC. And that holdall I called you about-it was packed with clean clothes, his passport, driving licence and an e-ticket for this evening’s flight to Toronto. As if he was expecting to come back. Not just to come back to the bedsit, but to get away afterwards without being suspected. Which is absolutely not what suicide bombers do.’

There wasn’t much in the field of human behaviour that made Tony stop in his tracks. But what Carol had to say left him fumbling for a response. ‘No, they don’t,’ he said at last.

‘Sam had this theory that it was some form of talisman,’ Carol said.

‘Doesn’t work,’ Tony muttered, his mind ranging across his experience to try to make sense of what he’d heard. ‘The only thing that I can think of is that he wasn’t a suicide bomber.’ He looked at Carol, her face a dim outline in the near-dark. ‘And if he wasn’t a suicide bomber, then the chances are this wasn’t a terrorist attack.’

Sunday

Carol woke up with the low mutter of TV news in her ears. Her mouth tasted of stale wine and a needle of pain shot down her stiff neck as she tried to move. For a moment she couldn’t think where she was. Then she remembered. Carol coughed and opened her eyes. Tony was watching the TV news footage of the bombing. The newsreader was talking about the dead, their individual photographs appearing on the screen behind him. Happy, smiling faces, oblivious to their mortality. People whose death had punched holes through the lives of the living.

‘Did you get much sleep?’ Tony asked, glancing across at her.

‘Apparently,’ Carol said. They’d talked in circles through the rest of the bottle of wine, most of which she’d drunk. When she’d made a move to leave, he’d pointed out that she’d had too much wine to even think about driving. Both knew that the chances of getting a taxi in the small hours of Sunday morning in central Bradfield were low to vanishing. So he’d given her a blanket and she’d stretched out in the chair. She’d expected to doze restlessly, but to her surprise she’d woken feeling rested and alert. She cleared her throat and looked at her watch. Quarter to seven. Time enough to go home, feed Nelson, shower and change and get back in time for her morning conference.

‘Good. What are your plans for today?’ He turned the volume down on the TV.

‘Briefing with the team at eight, then I’m going to talk to Tom Cross’s widow.’ She pulled a face. ‘That’ll be fun, given how he always blamed me for his fall from grace.’ She stood up, trying to shake the creases from her trousers, not wanting to think about the state of her make-up or her hair.

‘You’ll be fine. There’s got to be a link there somewhere.’

Carol stopped midway through combing her hair with her fingers, struck by the sort of thought thrown up by the subconscious during sleep. ‘What if your crazy idea about this not being terrorism is right and this is all part of a vendetta against Bradfield Victoria?’

Tony smiled. ‘What? Alex Ferguson’s scared of what’ll happen when Manchester United come to Victoria Park next month?’

‘Very funny. Better not make jokes like that around CTC. It’s a well-known fact that you have to have your sense of humour surgically removed when you join them.’

‘I know that. I do watch Spooks.’

Carol was surprised. ‘You do? I don’t.’

‘You should. They do.’

‘I don’t think so.’ She struggled with the thought of David and Johnny doing anything as domestic as watching TV.

Tony nodded vigorously. They do, you know. That’s how they find out how far they can go.’

‘You’re trying to tell me that MI5 and CTC make their operational decisions based on a TV series?’ Carol tapped the side of her head with her forefinger. ‘Too many drugs, Tony.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you,’ he said earnestly. ‘Because they have people working for them who understand the psychology of sanction.’

‘The psychology of sanction?’ Carol’s repetition was laced with disbelief.

‘This is how it works. When they’re watching a show like Spooks, even sophisticated viewers suspend enough disbelief for the drama to work. And once that disbelief has been suspended, even a little, the viewer is conditioned to believe the real world is just like that. So it gives permission to those mad bastards in Five to push just that little bit further at the edges of the envelope.’ Tony spoke quickly, his hands gesturing.

Carol looked dubious. ‘You’re saying that what they see on the TV makes the punters accept more extreme behaviour from law enforcement?’

‘Yes. To greater and lesser degrees, depending on their credulity, obviously.’ He registered Carol’s scepticism. ‘OK, here’s an example. I don’t think there’s ever been an accredited case of an MI5 agent having their face shoved into a deep-fat fryer. But once you’ve shown that on a show with as much credibility as Spooks, even if it’s the bad guys who are doing it, you’ve created a constituency of opinion who will say, when an MI5 agent actually does shove someone’s face into a deep-fat fryer, “Well, he had to do it, didn’t he? Or they’d have done it to him.” The psychology of sanction.’

‘If you’re right, then why does anyone protest against torture? Why don’t we all just go, “Oh well, we’ve seen how well it works in the movies, let’s just go along with it”?’ Carol leaned on her fists on the edge of his bed as she spoke, her tumbled blonde hair falling into her eyes.

‘Carol, you might not have noticed, but there’s a significant number of people out there who do say just that. Look at the opposition in the US when the Senate decided to outlaw torture just the other year. People believe in its