New Order : New Opportunity

Chapter 5 : City Streets

James found himself outside the police, station faster than he would have thought possible. They hadn’t quite thrown him down the front steps but they hadn’t been too polite about showing him out either.

He had no more idea of why they had freed him than of why they had picked on him in the first place. That was one of the problems with being a solitary – you were easy pickings as far as the police, the benefit squads, the tax enforcers were concerned.

Maybe they were planning to follow him, imagining that he’d lead them to some dissident group or other. Well, they’d be disappointed, he thought.

It was dark; nearly 10 o’clock. At least he’d be home before the bars started closing. After his encounter with the police the last thing he wanted was to fall foul of a bunch of women on the rampage after an evening fuelling up on vodka. Even so he went the long way around. There was always the risk he’d attract the attention of one of the bouncers outside the Paradiso. He’d seen them picking on a guy once. Two of them, 210 pounds each of pure muscle packed into sharp suits. Somehow the man had ended up in a heap beside the Paradiso’s garbage skip while the two women had strolled back to the door of the club, still immaculate in their black tux’s, barely a hair out of place.

He clutched the curfew permit that they’d given him at the police station tightly. He still had half an hour before, like all males, he had to be off the streets without special permission but it wouldn’t be the first time that an over-zealous police officer had taken the chance to catch up on her quota by pulling in someone just a bit before the actual curfew time.

He managed to get as far as his street without difficulty. The town was quiet. Then he remembered; there was a big match on tonight. He could imagine the scenes in the Paradiso. Women would be standing in groups around the big TV screen, cheering every time one of the players had his shirt pulled. The stadium would be filled with women baying for one team or the other. And in the Paradiso, there would be more vodka being drunk than usual.

He got back to his flat. The doorway was criss-crossed with black and yellow police tape. “Crime Scene : Do Not Enter” it said. A forensics officer in a white boiler suit was packing up her bag. She looked up as James came into the corridor. “Huh,” she said. “Seems like you've got away with it this time.”

“What?” said James. “I've not done anything. They let me go.”

“Yes,” she said picking up the bag. “And they told me to stop looking. Doesn't mean there wasn't anything to find though, does it?” As she went to leave, James started to pull the tape from his door and the voice of his landlady could be heard calling along the corridor.

“We don't want no police around here, Leonard,” she called. “You're going to have to get yourself a sponsor. If there's going to be trouble, I want you out.”

“There's not going to be any more trouble, Mrs Bryant,” James responded. “It was all some sort of mistake.”

“Police don't make mistakes with the likes of you,” she said. “Any more and you're out.”

James shrugged his shoulders, unable to think of anything to say. He just had to hope that this was some isolated bit of harassment and not the start of the sort of campaign he'd heard of that some solitaries had to face. Maybe he'd find some way to get a sponsor after all. He pulled the last of the tape from his door and made his way inside. The forensic team had been as careful as a herd of buffalo. The place was even more of a tip than it usually was.

Disheartened, James pushed his way through the piles of his clothes, books and papers strewn across the floor of the flat towards his bedroom. The mattress had been pushed off his bed; sheets and blankets dumped in one corner. He couldn't face sorting it out. He just threw his jacket onto the pile of things that had been pulled from his wardrobe, stepped out of his trousers, pulled a blanket around himself and lay down on the mattress.  

Sleep came slowly.

***    ***    ***    ***    ***

Florence Daniels pushed her spectacles up from the bridge of her nose, squeezing it between her thumb and forefinger as she tried to give the briefing the attention it demanded. There was Cabinet tomorrow first thing, then Ministerial questions in the House tomorrow afternoon. And that was without the Parliamentary Committee the day after. She needed to be in command of the facts. 

The Commissioner for Detention and Reorientation Facilities was trying to make things as clear as she could but it was hard to pretend that her report was much more than a string of numbers. 38,000 suspected dissidents detained during the first six months of the year of which 35,500 cases were sufficiently evidenced to enable summary sentencing and a further 2,000 went to trial with a conviction rate of 96%. The figures were up. Florence supposed that was good but how much more was better enough? You never knew in politics. It only needed some bright young spark to turn up claiming that it shouldn’t be 38,000 but 76,000; that summary sentencing rates should be higher; that conviction rates below 99% showed incompetent policing or prosecution or both.

Re-offending rates were very low. But that was because release rates were very low too. She didn’t know whether to be pleased that the Commissioner was managing the camps in such a way that detainees weren’t released before they were ready or disappointed that she wasn’t doing a better job of reorienting them so that they could become useful, sponsored, household members again.

That was the trouble with politics, too many relativities. She looked at the other briefing papers. Sponsorship take up rates seemed to have stalled. The last few months had shown no real increase. But there weren’t that many “solitaries” now; their tendency to fall fowl of the anti-dissident legislation tended to mean that most of them were in the Commissioner’s camps. Presumably that was good? But what had that back bencher said last week? “The continued inability of the Ministry of Home Affairs to reduce the hard core unsponsored threatens our ability to deliver on the New Order manifesto.”

The Prime Minister had rebuffed the suggestion saying that she was confident that the Minister for Home Affairs should enjoy her continued confidence. Florence hadn’t been entirely convinced that it was quite the ringing endorsement she thought she was entitled too. She would have preferred it if the PM hadn’t said “should”.    

She looked at her notes. The tax changes that she had pushed through with the Chancellor should really be having an effect by now. The new sponsorship placement interview programme had been introduced. Social attitudes were firmly against the solitaries – in fact that was probably making her life more difficult. She wasn’t sure what else she could do, short of making not having a sponsor a detainable offence. A consultation programme? That might allow some time for the effects of the tax and the earlier legislation to feed through.

Her Permanent Secretary looked up from her own dossier. “If I might suggest, Minister,” she began.

Florence looked hopefully across at Maggie Forbush with the eager anticipation of a spaniel tempted with a piece of raw liver. “Of course, Maggie,” she said. “You know the views of the Civil Service are always welcomed.”

Maggie Forbush had done well out of the election of the New Order government. She’d been a junior secretary in the department when they’d been voted in. At the time she hadn’t been sure if they could deliver on their manifesto but they’d earned her vote like that of most women. Of course it hadn’t helped that the traditional parties ignored New Order and then tried to ridicule them. You couldn’t really blame the men for having lost interest in party politics. But with women united for New Order and the opposition parties fragmenting their vote if had meant a New Order landslide. When New Order had started they had been careful not to alienate those that hadn’t voted for them. In the end, though, they had become completely focused on their vision of a state run by women, ostensibly for the benefit of all but with determined action against any opposition. The few dissident groups had provoked a strong response but most men had thought the whole thing would blow over. given time Maggie, like all women and even many men, approved of the Government’s actions – after all, society needs stability. Maggie was sure that there some injustices and, she supposed some women probably exploited the situation. It was hard to know, the tabloid press carried some lurid stories but Maggie thought most of it was down to women having to hold down responsible jpobs these days and needing support – after all wasn’t that the way that men had had it for a long time? Still, by and large, the country was a better place and New Order had been re-elected three years ago with an increased majority, in spite of the fact that opposition seemed to have been better organised. 

Maggie turned towards the Minister. In her short time as a senior civil servant she had been quick to learn the ways of the Whitehall Mandarins - “What is  the female form of that?” she thought for a moment – and it was always best to wait until the Minister felt she was in a hole before throwing her a life-line. This seemed to be the right moment to help out.

  

“Well, Minister, the problem is not so much that there are so many unsponsored. It’s more that the sponsorship interview process has not been completed for a significant proportion of those involved and that presents a misleading picture. If we provide a new category in our analysis highlighting the effort of the sponsorship placement teams we can show how much effort is being put in there and show how large, or rather how small, the really obstinate cases of non-sponsored individuals are.”        

Florence always admired the ability of Maggie to come up with solutions to even the most intractable of problems. “So what proportion falls into the category of awaiting interview’?”

“Around 73.6%”

Florence thought the ‘around’ was unnecessary. Even she didn’t believe that the statistics were that accurate. “So, the ‘hard core’ that the Member for Henley was referring to is only a quarter as big as she feared. I think the PM will be quite happy with that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Minister,” Maggie said with a smile. 

Florence relaxed. The thought of an evening’s amusement with the ‘demonstrator’ that Tanya Charles had provided suddenly seemed like something she could enjoy without worrying about the impending arrival of parliamentary daggers in her ministerial back.

It was only much later that she suddenly thought that Maggie would be back in a few days with a very well argued case for increasing in the staffing levels of the sponsorship interview service. Still she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. That and how she was going to reduce the 26.4% figure as well. 

*****   *****   *****   *****   *****

It had been a pig of a day for Angie. The air con had failed on the seventh floor and that stupid bunch of men hadn’t been able to fix if for three hours, by which time she’d had dozens of complaining phone calls.. She hadn’t been able to get out of the building for a smoke all afternoon and that always made her scratchy.

Norm hadn’t been very enthusiastic when she’d told him that he’d be coming over this evening and he’d been even less keen when she sent him out into the kitchen to deal with the last couple of day’s washing up.

Angie sat back and flicked on her video screen. It was the usual political stuff on the news. Some New Order party hack was wittering on about the latest agenda of reforms. She didn’t take much notice. There were reports of subversive groups active in the North. It sounded like they’d given up in London now and were looking for somewhere that might prove a bit easier. The Chief of Police for the northern district was being reassuring. Angie didn’t trust her but if things were getting better in London, she wasn’t worried anyway.

A resounding crash from the kitchen brought her attention back to the flat. She got to the kitchen to find an embarrassed Norm standing with shattered pottery around his feet. “It slipped, I’m sorry,” he said.

“You bloody well will be,” Angie snapped back looking at the remains of the broken bowl. With one hand she gripped him by the collar of his shirt and pushed him forward, bending him over the sink. She started to fumble for his trouser belt, Norm started to struggle. “Keep fucking still,” Angie snapped, pushing Norm forward so that he was half drowning with his face in the washing up. She wrested the belt from his trousers, pulled the trousers and underpants down and started to lay into Norm’s buttocks with the belt.

After half a down strokes his backside was already red and his gasped cries of pain were spluttering through the soapy water as he bucked down and then up with each stroke. By the time Angie had delivered twelve strokes, Norm was yelping with each one; his arse red raw and bruised.

Angie let go of his collar and Norm slid to the floor amongst the shards of pottery. Angie stood back from the sobbing Norm, her hands on her hips, the belt hanging loosely by her side.. “Well,” she thought I mightn’t be able to afford any of these fancy punishment instruments they show off in the Sunday supplements, but at least I can keep him in order.”

*****   *****   *****   *****  *****

“Barry!!” Barry Haste knew he was in trouble as soon as he heard Margery’s voice. He should have been waiting for her by the door but she was a few minutes later than usual, he’d taken the opportunity for a quiet few minutes with the video screen and he hadn’t heard her car pull up. He scurried out of the living room to where Margery was taking off her uniform overcoat.

“Lazing about again?” Margery asked with raised eyebrows. She looked towards the door of the living room, hearing the sound from the video system. “You’d better not have been watching anything you shouldn’t have been. I’ll check you know.”

Barry knew all right. He had only made the mistake of using the video to watch one of the women’s programmes once when Valerie had left her ident card in the slot. The bruises on his backside form the beating she’d given him had taken weeks to heal.

Margery didn’t bother to wait for an answer but tossed her overcoat and uniform cap at Barry. “I need a drink,” she said, meaning that Barry had better bring her one and quickly, “and make it a large one.” She pushed passed him into the living room.

By the time Barry had hung up her coat, put away her cap and poured the large whiskey that he knew she wanted, Margery was sprawled back on the couch, flicking through channels on the video screen. Barry passed her the whiskey and was about to leave when she stopped him. “Don’t go,” she said, “I’ve got something for you to do. Get these shoes off, I’ve been on my feet all day.”

Barry knelt down by Margery’s feet. He was sure that Margery’s choice of footwear wasn’t entirely regulation police uniform, but she seemed to get away with it. Her shoes were black and laced up, pretty much like the standard issue, but the three inch spike heels that helped compensate for her short height, certainly weren’t. Barry unlaced each of the shoes in turn, easing them from her feet and standing them neatly beside the couch.

The telephone rang and Margery picked it up. She clicked the fingers of her other hand impatiently at Barry waving towards her feet. He knew what she wanted and bent his head to her feet as she began her conversation.

“Hi, it’s Margie.”….. “Oh, hi. Mmm, sure.. Yes.”   Margery gestured impatiently at Barry. He began stroking her feet, knowing that, after a day’s work, a foot massage would be the very least that she would want. His fingers ran across the silky feeling nylon of her black stockings. These didn’t look like regulation issue either to Barry, they were far too sheer but, again, Margery seemed to get away with it and what did it matter to him. He pressed with his thumbs on the underside of her left foot, hoping to relieve some of the tension that he could feel. “Oh, you know not so bad. Mind you a couple of days ago we had a strange one. Val and I had one of those dissident suspects set up for a nice chat. Val was just getting started on him. Should have got something out of him for sure. Then the word comes down to... Hang on.” Margery put her hand over the receiver and turned towards Barry. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you ham fisted dickhead” she snapped, pulling her foot away. “Get your mouth on it, perhaps that will be a bit gentler.”

She didn’t wait for Barry’s response but went back to her phone call. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Where was I? …. Oh yes, it was really odd We’d just got started on softening him up and it looked like we’d get a least a few names out of him but then the word comes down from upstairs to lay off and let him go. Just like that. No explanations. Nothing.”

Barry hated having to take Margery’s feet in his mouth, especially after she’d done a hard day’s work. As he lowered his face towards her foot he smelled the pungent whiff of her sweat but he knew that he had better not hesitate. He started, as she had told him to, by running his tongue across her toes, the slippery, luxurious feeling of the nylon contrasting with the heavy smell of sweat, being careful not to drool on her feet by making sure that he swallowed back his saliva as soon as he felt it forming.

Margery finished her phone call but paid Barry no more attention, letting him continue with his work. Barry took that as a good sign, if she had been unhappy with what he was doing she’d have pushed him over backwards with her foot.

She lifted her other leg up and tapped her foot against Barry’s head indicating that he should give that one some attention. He did as she indicated just as he heard the front door open and Valerie calling, “Hi, Margie, I’m back.”

“In here,” Margie called and Barry saw Valerie’s stocking clad legs as she walked past him.

“Mmm.” Valerie reacted with pleasure at her lovers deep kiss. “That is a good welcome home.” Barry felt Margery’s position change as Valerie leant forward against her and heard her giggling response as she pulled her foot away from Barry’s mouth. Valerie fell forward against her, knocking Barry to one side as she did so. As Barry sat back on his heels and looked up Valerie had her hands on Margery’s shirt, pulling it open without much regard for the buttons. She buried her face in Margery’s cleavage as her lover pulled her closer to her and pushed her thigh up between Margery’s legs bringing a grunt of pleasure from her lips.

Barry looked on at the tangle of flesh; remembering when as his wife Valerie had let him do much as she was doing to Margery now. Margery’s skirt was pushed up around her waist with Valerie’s thigh wedged between her stockings. The two women were giggling and grunting in equal part. At a pause in the proceedings, Valerie toppled over onto the couch beside Margery. The two women looked across at Barry and burst out laughing at his wistful look. “You sorry shit!” Valerie laughed. “You’re thinking that one day you might be allowed to do this. Well don’t get your hopes up. In fact, go and find the dildoes and the other toys. I think Margie and I are having a quiet evening in.”

*****   *****  *****   *****   *****

The Paradiso was packed as it usually was on Friday nights. Janice French was enjoying the evening. It had been a dull week at work. There weren’t many challenges in the Personnel office at the moment. Laying off the solitaries had been the only thing she’d really had to worry about, and that had hardly been much effort. They’d all almost expected it, except that last one, Leonard – he’d seemed almost dazed. Still that was better than the abuse she’d had from a couple of them. She’d had to call security to throw them out in the end. Why had they shouted at her? It wasn’t as though it was her fault that the Government had changed the regulations.

Two of her friends, Nadine and Celia, joined her on the couch. James might have recognised them as the two girls heading for the gym that had laughed at him on his last day in the office. A row of shot glasses displayed the main achievements of the girls so far that evening.

“Did you get that new house boy, Janice?” Nadine asked.

“Are we going to get to see him?” Celia chipped in eagerly.

“He’s nothing special,” Janice responded defensively. She knew she was lucky. Her mother, had married twice before New Order came to power and had enjoyed the wealth that had brought her as a result of the confiscation of her husbands’ assets. Then she had died a year ago and left Janice the lot. Sure anyone could have a house boy but you needed accommodation that was big enough and even with the tax breaks it wasn’t a cheap hobby. Janice knew Celia and Nadine would be hard pushed to have live in house boys of their own on what they were earning.

“Still, it must be better than having the cleaning services in, mustn’t it? I mean laundry and all the rest on hand, any time you want.”

“Especially the all the rest!” Nadine smirked. “Or is he just good in the kitchen?”

“Let’s just say,” Janice leaned forward conspiratorially, “that if you two were coming round I’d be sure to have him wear his Hannibal Lecter mask – I’d hate you to find out what he can do with his tongue!” 

Celia and Nadine laughed uproariously and grabbed another Vodka shot each. Janice joined them.

“Oh all right,” she said. “Come and eat tomorrow night. You can see him then.”

*****   ******   *****   *****   *****

The Prime Minister’s ‘fixer’ and confidante was being characteristically blunt. The Scottish burr on her voice took the edge from her words sometimes but most that spoke to her were in no doubt as to what needed to happen, and happen it usually did. She was still thought to have been very much the power behind transforming New Order from no-hope extremists into an electable political party.  “No, of course not,” she said. “I don’t think we need bother the PM with this. She’s happy to leave party political matters to me. She’s got enough to worry about, running the country.”

Her dinner companion, a woman whose girth was a testament to her adherence to Oscar Wilde’s philosophy of resisting anything except temptation, sat back and inhaled from her cigar, unfastening just one of the buttons of her waistcoat in recognition of the quality of the meal. “Of course, I just thought…”

“Look, this little project needs discretion. There are those in the Party that think she isn’t moving fast enough or far enough.”

“Well, even the last government had it’s ‘hang-em & flog-em’ brigade.”

“Yes, but they only wanted to do that to criminals, not half the population.”

The two women laughed but they both knew that was an accurate picture for some of the New Order party members. Making sure that all party members, and especially members of parliament, stayed ‘on side’ was essential if the extremists were to be kept from taking things too far.

“We both know,” the PM’s fixer went on, “that there are a few leaving themselves open to the suggestion that they might not be fully on-board with the New Order programme. That’s what this is about.”

“I know. There are those whose pleasures are probably best not known by the public at large or even the party faithful.”

“Especially the party faithful.”

“All right,” another puff of the cigar was followed by a draft from the balloon of brandy she was holding. She shifted her weight on the chair. It creaked. “And that’s why we’ve set up the Fetter Lane facility. It’s more or less operational.”

“Staffing?”

“Largely done, although you’d be surprised how difficult it is to find people that won’t be missed by both sides.”

“You know I had to intervene for one of your recruits?”

“You can’t blame me for over enthusiastic policing. They’re under pressure to get results.”

“I don’t like having to get involved!”

“I understand.” Another considered sip of brandy punctuated the discussion.

“Still, you have what you need now?”

“What I need? Yes. And we’re getting the first results. I should be able to provide you with some insights into the predilections of one of the judiciary.”

The fixer stared straight at her dinner guest. “I don’t want insights; I want leverage.”

© Freddie Clegg 2009

All rights reserved.  Not to be reproduced or reposted without permission.

All characters fictitious

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