[b]Whitehall, London[/b]

Fraser Campbell slept soundly in his Downing Street bed with his wife beside him. Joyce had crept home a little past midnight. The thoughts had gnawed at the Prime Minister the whole evening and he’d afforded himself an early night to keep them at bay. It was three o’clock in the morning and for the second time in as many weeks the shrill ring of a phone interrupted the Prime Minister’s sleep. A groan left Fraser’s throat and his eyes opened slowly as he lifted himself from his bed and reached for the phone. It was Hobbs. At this time of night it was only ever going to be Hobbs. If the Director of Communications was calling in the dead of the night it meant one thing and one thing only: bad news. The last thing Fraser Campbell needed was [i]more[/i] bad news.  

Campbell’s gruff voice slunk down the receiver. “What do you want? It’s late.”

The response from the other side of the phone elicited a heavy sigh and one of Fraser’s chubby hands reached for the bridge of his nose.

“How many are dead?”

It was South Africa. That mess that the Palace had [i]insisted[/i] upon dragging Britain into had caused Fraser headache after headache. Tonight’s headache sounded particularly gruesome. A platoon had stumbled upon some murdered British ex-pats in Cape Town. They’d been trussed up like animals, hung from the ceiling of a shack, with some warning smeared beside them. On the end of the line Hobbs hesitated to recount the dead and Fraser’s temper wore thin.

“How many, Hobbs?”

Nineteen. Six in the first shack, four more in the next, and then nine crammed into the last one. It was too many to ignore and [i]definitely[/i] too many to sweep under the carpet. It would need a response. Beside him Joyce stirred from her sleep by her husband’s conversation.

“What’s wrong?”

She was beautiful, even in the dead of the night, though Fraser could barely look at her knowing where he’d been earlier in the night. He placed a comforting hand on her side and smiled at his wife curtly as he directed his mouth away from the receiver of the phone.

“Go back to sleep, Joyce.”

Hobbs continued to regale Fraser with the details and the Prime Minister lifted the phone from the bedside table. He pulled on a robe and sat in an armchair on the opposite side of the room with the phone resting on his lap. 

“This is the last thing we fucking need,” Fraser sighed. “Fine, call round the cabinet and tell them I’ll be holding an emergency meeting in the Cabinet Office in the morning. I expect all of them there and I expect them all there on time. Now that whole business with Oldfield is behind us this week is to be about the passage of the Repatriation Bill and nothing else. So we need to nip this mess in Cape Town in the bud before it’s even started.”

The Prime Minister’s Director of Communications mumbled in agreement on the other side of the phone. Without his glasses Fraser couldn’t make out the hands on the clock face on the wall beside him and squinted hard at them. Slowly the blurred clock face came into focus and Fraser realised it was half three. He stood up from the armchair and took one last glance at his wife before he muttered down the phone.

“Meet me in an hour in my office.”

It had been one thing after another this past month. Oldfield, Clarke, that mess with Hewitt and the Police Commissioner, and now he had this situation in South Africa to contend with. Fraser’s grip on power was tenuous enough, it would be even more so if he couldn’t pass the Voluntary Repatriations Bill tomorrow afternoon, and Moore would no doubt make the most of British ex-pats being murdered on Fraser’s watch. As much as he was ashamed to admit it facing Moore this morning worried him the most of all. Moore had cuckolded him his entire life in every way but one and now Fraser’s humiliation was complete. Moore had taken that which Campbell loved the most. It would take all the Prime Minister had to look him in his smug face tomorrow morning.

But he would. He would look them [i]all[/i] in the face, all those that had doubted him to this point, and continue to prove them wrong. He’d lead the country to a better future or die trying.

Or it would have all been for nothing.

[center][b]*****[/b][/center]
[b]Guildford, Surrey[/b]

Fraser Campbell’s voice sounded in the living room of Dominic Hewitt’s childhood home. Hewitt had come back to Guildford for a few days to visit his parents now that he had some time on his hands. He didn’t come home often, in large part because of his father, but his mother had been asking after him for so long it felt rude to put his visit off for much longer. With Hewitt losing his job at Downing Street his mother was [i]particularly[/i] concerned about him. Everyone seemed concerned about him. He’d studied his entire life to make it to Downing Street and now all of that was gone. He couldn’t blame them for being concerned. Though having been at the heart of government and see it for the viper’s nest that it was the former Press Officer felt relieved at having made it out. Hobbs would have eaten him alive eventually – better that it happened when he was young and could still make something of himself than when he was past it. That’s what he’d been telling himself since Campbell had let him go. He’d told himself it so much he’d almost started to believe it.

There had been a slew of murders in Cape Town. The Prime Minister had announced that he’d be sending more ground troops to South Africa. It was a good call, one Hewitt would have argued for in Downing Street, and it would put the matter to bed for a time. Only for a time though. South Africa was a ticking time bomb. Britain needed to win and win decisively or people were going to turn against the campaign.

“What’s wrong, Dominic?”

From behind him Hewitt noticed his mother stood at the kitchen counter looking at him with a sympathetic smile. Diane Hewitt was a curvaceous woman in her late fifties with blonde hair that was rapidly greying over the past few years. She was Dominic’s rock in hard times. She’d notice the frown on her son’s face before he’d even realised it was there.

“Nothing’s wrong, mother, I guess it just hasn’t really sunk in yet that… that I’m on the outside looking in. You know? This time last week I would have been in the room drafting the PM’s statement and now I’m watching it on the television like everyone else. I’m a nobody all over again.”

Diane shook her head at her son’s pessimism. “You are not a nobody, Dominic.”

The grating laugh of Nigel Hewitt sounded from beside Dominic. Nigel was a heavy man with a full head of blonde-grey hair and a craggy face. There was an uncanny resemblance between Dominic in his father that people often remarked upon. Had his father not let himself go in his twilight years they would have been hard to tell apart if not for the wrinkles. Like Dominic he was always [i]incredibly[/i] well turned out. He was wearing a light blue jumper with a white shirt underneath, some chinos, and a pair of light brown brogues. In his hand was a glass of brandy that he sipped at from time to time. Nigel was a very different kind of rock to his son. In fact, he was his son’s rock [i]and[/i] his hard place at times. The past few days had proved to be one of those times.

“Stop molly-coddling the child. He very much is a bloody nobody, Diane. Hundreds of thousands of pounds pissed down the drain all because [i]someone[/i] decided to play the big shot whilst his boss was out.”

Diane sighed at her husband’s unpleasantness. “Please, Nigel, there’s no need for that.”

The whole family had endured Nigel Hewitt’s complete lack of regard for their feelings for decades. Four decades working for British Petroleum had made the once soft-spoken and gentle Nigel into an unforgiving man. Hewitt wasn’t sure he’d ever seen his father smile. He’d long since become used to his father’s antics.

“It’s fine, mother.”

“See?” Nigel said as he took a sip of brandy. “You heard the child.”

Diane Hewitt shook her head once more and disappeared into the kitchen. Once Nigel was certain she was out of earshot he leant in closer to his son. Dominic could smell the brandy on his father’s breath as his lips parted.

“At least you’re not thin-skinned, boy, I’ll give you that. You’re going to need a tough hide on you if you’re going to make it after that cock-up of yours, I’ll tell you that much for free. I’ll be damned if the Hewitt name is going to be pissed down the river because of you. You know, generations ago the Hewitts were revered. The Troubles damn near ruined us, ruined [i]everything[/i] the Hewitts worked at for generations, and through sweat and blood I managed to claw back every inch of respect we were owed. Your father did that, boy, your father made this family great again. Never forget that.”

There was some truth to his father’s tale. Once upon a time the Hewitts had been as close to royalty as one could be without actually being royalty in Britain. If his late grandfather was to be believed they had been royalty once. The Troubles hadn’t “ruined” the family though. The family fortune had reduced from the hundreds of millions to the tens of millions. That’s what passed for ruin in Nigel Hewitt’s book. British Petroleum had gone from strength to strength over the past few decades. North Sea oil and expansion into Africa and the Middle East had saw to that. Yet still Nigel Hewitt took every opportunity to remind his son he single-handedly saved the Hewitt name.

This one time Dominic refused to humour his father and instead smiled wryly at him. “How could I? You tell the same story every time I see you.”

His father’s face turned purple with rage.

“You don’t take that tone with me, you ungrateful little sh-”

Before the words had left his mouth Diane Hewitt appeared from within the kitchen. She snatched the remote from the arm of Nigel Hewitt’s armchair and took the glass of brandy from between his fingers. On her soft round face sat a deep frown.

“It’s been one day and [i]already[/i] the pair of you are arguing. I will not have it, not from either of you, especially not after the year this family has had. You’re going to have to learn to peacefully coexist. Do you hear me?”

Dominic nodded in his mother’s direction. Nigel sat deadly still and stared at his wife in silence. After several seconds he extended his hand towards his wife and spoke in a voice that was as menacing as it was gentle.

“The remote, Diane.”

Diane Hewitt handed the remote over to her husband without a word and disappeared off into the house without another word. Nigel pointed the remote at the television and turned the volume up a few bars. Once he was satisfied he set the remote back down on the side of the armchair and sat back into his seat.

After several seconds he looked to his son with a smirk. “Look on the bright side, boy, you won’t have to see that quisling bastard’s face every morning anymore.”

“Fraser was always nice to me,” Hewitt muttered as he spotted the pale man passing a Downing Street windows. “Hobbs was the problem.”

[center][b]*****[/b][/center]
[b]Chelmsley Wood, Birmingham[/b]

Opposite from Honor Clarke an elderly man with thinning white hair slurped from a cup of tea. Iain Blaney was the closest thing that Honor had to a father figure since losing contact with her father other a decade ago. Blaney had nurtured Honor will to learn, her desire for change, and moulded her into the firebrand she had become. Blaney had once been the Director of [i]The Putney Society[/i] at which Honor now worked. The Society argued for greater legal and political representation for ordinary people and making the legal system and the trappings of government more transparent. It had over the years transformed into an anti-war pressure group that nibbled at the fringes of republicanism. Never was its support for a republic stated outright or the group would have long since been shut down and those arrested. Yet with Clarke at the forefront of its work it had come closer than ever before. It was something that concerned Blaney but Clarke had assured him she knew what she was doing. Honor always knew what she was doing.

The old man peered up from his tea at the television in the corner of the café. The Prime Minister was on screen and on the ticker at the bottom there were details about the attack in South Africa that Blaney’s old eyes could not make out. Clarke looked over her shoulder at the screen and scowled.

“How many dead this time?”

Honor squinted towards the screen to make out the numbers. “Nineteen.”

Blaney sighed.

“This is what happens. We [i]told[/i] them at the time that they would regret invading South Africa, that there would be trouble, but did they listen? No, they did not. The King wanted his Empire back and Campbell rolled over for him and let him scratch his stomach. Now we’re all less safe as a result.”

Honor glanced around at the café’s other patrons and then towards Iain. “You should be careful with that kind of talk.”

A shocked look appeared on the old man’s face. “Careful? Who are you and what have you done with Honor Clarke? I didn’t realise that mess with your flat had shaken you so much.”

“It’s not that. Conrad and I aren’t on good terms at the moment.”

Conrad Murray had been another of Blaney’s endless protégés. He wasn’t quite the intellect that Clarke was but there was something to him. Blaney had been disappointed when he’d chosen to pursue teaching instead of following in Iain and Honor footsteps. Though Honor was a once in a lifetime orator and as good a polemicist as Blaney had ever met – she was still coloured. That wasn’t an issue for the old man, far from it, but it did make it somewhat harder to change people’s minds. Oftentimes they would harden at the very sight of Clarke. Murray could have been [i]The Putney Society’[/i]s acceptable face. Instead he opted to become an irrelevancy.

To that end Blaney had little nice to say of the boy and shrugged his shoulders casually by way of an answer. “I’m sure he’ll come round.”

“How are the preparations for the march going?”

The march. It was the reason Blaney was here this morning. The Putney Society and what remnants of an anti-war movement remained in Britain had planned a march against British involvement in South Africa next week. 

“Things are coming on very nicely,” Blaney said with a smile. “We’re expecting a thousand people, maybe a little more, and that’s just from Birmingham. If Manchester and Liverpool are good to their word we might manage to break five thousand.”

Clarke stared off into the distance, her thoughts centered on her argument with Conrad, and the accusation he’d leveled at her the other night. Posturing. Was it all posturing? Was she wasting her time? She had been asking herself that ever since. Usually Clarke’s resolve was unshakeable but to hear that from the man she loved had made her question herself for the first time in a long time. What good would some march do? Campbell had no intention of pulling out of South Africa. 

Blaney sensed a doubt in her and stared hard at Clarke. “What’s wrong? You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

She wanted to put word to her doubts but met with the glassy eyes of her mentor she crumpled.

“No, of course not.”

It couldn’t be posturing. If the march they had planned was posturing, if the protest at the police station the other day was posturing, then [i]everything[/i] Honor did had been a waste of time. She would have wasted years of her life. No, the march would go ahead and she would show Conrad that he was wrong. It wasn’t posturing. It was real change. They were going to make their voices heard even if Fraser Campbell and his government didn’t want them to.

[center][b]*****[/b][/center]
[b]Brixton, London[/b]

Simone Gayle watched as the heavy-set man in the Harrington jacket stared down at the flowers gathered on the ground of Angell Town estate. Her father had tried to hide her from what had happened here but Simone had heard all about it at school. A policeman had been shot. She wasn’t sure whether the fat man knew the policeman or was just here to lay flowers like the other people that had passed through this morning. She glanced over towards her father lifting boxes up and down the estate’s stairway and then wandered over to the fat man. Simone stopped beside him and looked down at the flowers before turning towards the man.

“Are you lost?”

The man jumped as if unaware of Simone’s presence. “Lost? No, I’m not lost. I’m here to visit a friend.”

“Me too,” Simone said with a point towards Keenan Gayle struggling up the stairs with their possession in hand. “Dad says we’re going to stay with one of his friends until we can find somewhere else to live.”

The fat man smiled uncomfortably and looked towards Simone’s father as if trying to catch the man’s attention. His gestured went unnoticed and instead he tucked his hands into his pockets and decided to humour the girl.

“What happened to your old place?”

“The tall man from the council took it from us,” Simone said with a kick to the ground. “He said that now that Uncle Errol is dead we have to find someplace else.”

There in the man’s eyes was a flicker or something. Simone was too young to recognise it but had she been a few years older she would have. The fat man had heard the name before. 

“Errol [i]Clarke[/i]?”

As the young girl opened her mouth to answer she heard her father’s voice shouting in her direction. “Simone? Simone? What are you doing? You leave that man alone.”

Keenan Gayle handed a box to his friend and cantered towards his daughter and the man. There were flickers of paint along his clothing and his boots were thick with dust. He was strong, taller than the fat man by several inches, but clearly still young. He took his daughter by the arm as he reached her and pulled her behind him with a nervous smile.

“I’m sorry about Simone. She’s too nosy for her own good sometimes,” Gayle said with a chuckle. “Do you live round here?”

The fat man smiled and gestured down towards the flowers beside them. “No, no, I just came to pay my respects.”

A pained expression crossed Keenan’s face as he considered what had happened to James Oldfield. His daughter watched on, curious to see how her father interacted with a white man, and looked to the picture of the murdered policeman at the center of the makeshift mural.

“It’s a damn shame. Don’t get me wrong I’m no friend of the police but what they did to that boy was awful. No one deserves to die like that.”

The fat man nodded in agreement as he too looked down the picture. “You can say that again.”

There was a sadness in the fat man’s eyes. Even at Simone’s tender age she could see it. He looked at the picture as if the slain man were a relative of some sort. Keenan and the man stood in silence for several seconds before eventually Gayle cleared his throat to cut through it.

“What did you say your name was again?”

“It’s Ray,” muttered the fat man as he extended his hand towards Keenan. “Ray Newman.”

Keenan and smiled and shook the Newman’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Ray, my name’s Keenan. You’ve already met Simone. We used to live over on Moorlands Estate but we’re between houses at the moment and a friend offered us a place to stay for a little while. Just until we’re back on our feet again.”

“Yeah, Simone mentioned something about an Uncle Errol.”

This time it was Simone’s father that fell silent.

“She… she did?” Keenan said as he looked down at his daughter with a disapproving frown. “Well, she should have known better than to talk out of turn like that but as I said the girl’s too nosy for her own good sometimes. It’s going to get her in trouble one of these days.”

A sympathetic smile appeared on Newman’s face. “What happened?”

“Same thing that happened to your friend,” Keenan said with a shrug. “God had another purpose for him in mind and called him up to heaven earlier than we expected.”

“It [i]wasn’t[/i] God,” Simone muttered from behind her father’s arm. “They killed him.”

“Simone,” Keenan barked as he commanded his daughter into silence.

It was clear that talk of Clarke’s murder had made Gayle uncomfortable and he gestured towards the boxes that awaited him.

“Listen, Ray, it was nice to meet you but we need to get back to unpacking our things. We’re up at 12D, okay? Stop by sometime for a cup of tea or something.”

Newman’s round face grew red with embarrassment and he removed a hand from his pockets to scratch at his neck. “Ah, well that’s very nice of you but I don’t actually live around here.”

Keenan shrugged his shoulders. His awkwardness seemed to have passed somewhat and he smiled at Newman encouragingly as muttered to his daughter to make her way towards the boxes.

“Yeah, well, you seem to know the area well enough and Simone seems to like you so consider the offer open-ended.”

As Simone wandered over to the boxes she waved towards Ray with a smile. “Goodbye, Mr. Newman.”

Keenan and Ray shook hands again and Gayle followed after his daughter to resume their task. Ray Newman stood alone, staring at the flowers that had been laid in memory of James Oldfield, and considered the advice that Alice Oldfield had given him at Oldfield’s memorial service. He could still help people even when he wasn’t in the uniform. People like Keenan and Simone. Even if they were… coloureds they were still people and they needed help too. James would have helped them in a heartbeat and Ray could still help them. He could go to Paul and tell them to work the case properly or even better he could work it himself for them. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do with himself at the moment. He looked towards the father and daughter struggling with their boxes and made a silent promise. Not to them but to James Oldfield. He was going to help them.

Ray was going to bring Errol Clarke’s murderer to justice.