“Thought you’d cracked it there,” his colleague said.
“Some of them just can’t resist the uniform.”
Girl about town went back to Victoria Street, walked its length, pausing only outside the building which was 1-19 Victoria Street, headquarters of the Department of Trade and Industry. She had a momentary feeling of claustrophobia. She was within a five-minute walk of the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, New Scotland Yard, the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. Not much further to Whitehall, Downing Street, Buckingham Palace even... So many targets to choose from, all so convenient. One really huge device and you could wreak mayhem.
It was an idle thought, an idle moment, the stuff of crank anarchists’ dreams, anarchists like John Wrightson. She let it pass and checked her watch. Quarter to six. Friday evening at quarter to six. The offices had started their weekend evacuation at four-thirty. Pubs and wine bars would be filling. Train carriages would be squeezing in just one last body. The discharge of the city. It was hard to tell, but she thought she probably had another ten minutes. She didn’t like the thought of loitering, not in her girl-about-town disguise. But of course, if anyone should ask, she was waiting for a boyfriend who worked for the DTI. She was respectable. She wasn’t suspicious. She rose onto her tiptoes, then rocked back onto her heels. Waiting for her boyfriend. A few drinks after work, then a meal, maybe a film... no, not a film: she didn’t know what films were on where. A meal, one of the little Chinese restaurants off Leicester Square. Then back to his place... The perfect start to the weekend.
Another five or ten minutes. She hoped to God she hadn’t missed her quarry. It was unlikely. The first day Witch had spotted her, she’d worked till six-thirty, the next day six-fifteen. She would knock off early on a Friday, of course she would. But not that early. She had an important position. Let the others in the office leave her behind, she’d be the last out, feeling virtuous, another hard professional week over. Maybe a last-minute task would keep her. Maybe she’d been taken ill and had gone home early...
Witch had spent some time choosing. She was a fussy shopper. There had been false starts: one woman was perfect in build and face but too junior. Witch needed someone with a modicum of clout, the sort of person the security guards would look up to. Another woman had seemed senior enough for the purpose, but she was also too striking, the sort of person people would notice, so that they’d notice, too, if she went missing for a few days or if someone else brandished her security pass.
Security. She’d wandered into one of the DTI buildings at lunchtime one day. There were seats in the reception area, tedious-looking literature to pass the time. A businessman sat leafing through the contents of his briefcase. A young man stepped from an elevator and called to him. The businessman shook hands with the young man, the young man signed him in at the desk, a chit was given to the businessman, and both headed for the elevator again.
“Yes, miss?” the security man called from behind his large desk.
There were two of them seated behind the desk. The one who had called to Witch, and another who was talking with another colleague, a black woman. Witch approached the desk and smiled.
“I’m meeting my boyfriend for lunch.” She looked at her watch. “I’m a bit early. Is it all right if I wait?”
“Of course, miss. If you’ll just take a seat. You can call up to him if you like, maybe he can knock off early.”
She smiled gratefully. “No, he’s always complaining I’m too early for things.”
“You’re not like my wife, then,” said the security man, laughing, turning to share the joke with his colleagues.
“I’ll just wait for him,” said Witch.
So she sat in the reception area, watching the civil servants come and go. Most were going — it was lunchtime — but a few were already returning with sandwiches and cans of soft drinks. As they passed the security desk, heading for the elevators, some merely smiled and nodded in the direction of the guards, some showed passes, and some just glided by without acknowledging the guards’ existence — which was also the guards’ response to the flow: they barely looked up from their desk. The legitimate workers had a breeziness about them. Yes, breeziness was the word. It was the feeling that came with a certain power — the power to move past an official barrier which kept others out, the power of belonging.
If she moved breezily, holding her pass out like every other day, would the guards look up? And if they did, would they go any farther? Would they frown, ask her to step over to the desk, scrutinize her pass? She doubted it. They’d blink. She’d smiled at them so she must know them. They’d return to their telephone call or their tabloid newspaper or the conversation they were having.
What alerted them to strangers were the movements of the strangers themselves. Someone pushed open the glass door slowly, uncertainly. They hesitated once inside, looking around, getting their bearings. And they walked almost reluctantly towards the desk, where the guard, who had caught these signs, was already asking if he could help. Yes, visitors gave themselves away. If they knew the layout, if they breezed towards the elevators rather than staring dumbly at the desk... anyone could walk into the building. Anyone could take the elevator to any floor they liked, floors where ministers and senior civil servants might be meeting.
Oh, how Witch loved a democracy. They took their freedoms too easily, treated them too casually. This wasn’t security; it was the opposite of security. It was a soft job, and the guards were happy to acknowledge this. She got up from her seat and walked one circuit of the reception area, then stood by the glass door. When the guards were busy, she pushed the door open and walked back out onto the street, sure that they would have forgotten her existence by the time the next tea break came.
How long had she been waiting now? Maybe her fears of an illness were well founded... Ah, but no... here came the woman now. Calling back over her shoulder to the security guard. Then pushing open the heavy glass door. Outside, she stopped and took a deep invigorating breath. Her weekend started here, started now. She held two briefcases, one a plain brown attaché case — her own — the other looking like an expensive school satchel, made from black leather and bearing a small crown insignia above the nameplate. This was government property, and a sign that she wasn’t just some clerical worker. She had achieved a good grade, not quite senior but certainly on her way there. She was vivacious, full of life and hope. She made friends quite easily. The security guard would know her name. Yet she didn’t seem to go out much. She shared a house with two other young professional women in Stoke Newington. Perhaps the house was rented, or perhaps they’d clubbed together and bought it between them before the government had changed the law on mortgage tax relief. Some things even Witch couldn’t be sure of.
She traveled to work by overland railway and tube. She traveled home the same way. It was a fairly hellish journey, and the later she worked or stayed on in town, the less teeming the crowds were on the trip home. So, one night, she’d hung around for an hour in a nearby wine bar, having a drink with some of the other office staff. They were celebrating someone’s birthday. But she hadn’t stuck around for the Indian vegetarian meal. She’d kept looking surreptitiously at her watch. She’d made her apologies at half-past seven.
No boyfriend to meet, despite the nods and winks and oohs of her colleagues, just the tube and train and the short walk home. To stay in all the rest of the evening, as all her other evenings, watching TV.