Norm tries to make a delivery but finds he needs to wait around.
Read on with the next chapter of the Three R’s or start at the begining of the tale here.
Chapter 18: 267 Vauxhall Bridge Road
The road from the river up towards Victoria Station was, like so many major London streets, set up for women-only pedestrians on one side and mixed sex pedestrian traffic on the other. They were all right. It was the ones that didn’t allow men at all that caused problems. It seemed to Norm as though there were many more “women only” streets than since the last time he’d been into town and he’d had to take some longer than planned diversions to get to his destination. Number 267 was a tattoo parlour. The shop front painted in bright red and black appeared, from the various promotional photographs in the window to cater purely for women. In the window, dramatic Maori designs tempted the adventurous, delicate floral ones appealed to those a little less extrovert. On the door, signs showed both men and women were welcomed. Inky Skin, the shop called itself. Norm went inside.
“Can I help you?” a middle-aged woman with a face that looked like she had a fondness for sucking lemons asked from behind the counter. Her expression made Norm think she hoped vehemently that the answer to her question was ‘no’. “I’ve got no men’s appointments today.”
“That’s OK, I’m due to make a delivery.”
“Can you hang on a moment.” She turned to a girl with short, dark, shaggy hair who was sitting in the reception area. “Jinx is ready for you now in Room 3.”
Norm found himself speculating about what sort of design the girl might be looking for. She didn’t look like the hearts and flowers type. He looked down at the table where she had been sitting. She had been browsing through a pattern book. It was open to show various versions of the New Order logo. That seemed to indicate any aspirations he had were likely to be a waste of time, Norm told himself.
“Thanks,” the girl said. She threw an old canvas knapsack over her shoulder and followed the receptionist’s pointing finger into a corridor that led towards the back of the shop.
With the girl gone, Norm tried again. “I’m looking for Gerry.”
“Uhuh,” the woman seemed unwilling to help unless it was absolutely unavoidable.
“I need to give him something. Personally. Is he here?”
“Maybe. Who are you?”
“Danny sent me.”
“Curious name, Danny Sentme.”
“Yeah, that’s what all the girls say. Is he here or not?”
“I’ll have a look. Oh, and by the way, we don’t use ‘girls’ these days. Don’t they give you an approved vocabulary book with your airline ticket these days?”
“No ma’am.” Norm didn’t bother to disguise his sarcasm.
The woman buzzed through on an intercom. There was a short exchange. “Seems like Jinx wants to see you in room 3 as well. He’s a busy boy today.”
Norm followed the same routes as the girl with the knapsack. When he got into room three he found a well equipped tattoo parlour. The girl with the knapsack was on a couch while a white coated ginger-haired man was working with ink and needles on her right shoulder.
Two other men were in the room. “I’ve got something for Gerry,” Norm said. “From Danny.”
“That’ll be me. You don’t need to worry about these,” he nodded at the others in the room, “they’re on-side. Jack here is a new boy but trying hard, Jinx works here and helps out when he can. And the young lady is…”
“Daisy,” Jack interjected. “She’s with me.”
“His and hers tattoos?” Norm was surprised by something that sounded so traditional. “An old fashioned relationship?”
“Don’t be too sure,” called the girl on the couch, with a smile.
Gerry was keen to pull things back to the business in hand. “Let’s have a look at what you’ve got.”
Norm put his bag up on a desk and opened it. Five thick bundles of plastic cards sat inside. Gerry peeled one off from the bundle and looked at it closely. He got another similar card out of his wallet and compared the two.
“Not bad. I think we can cause quite a bit of mischief with these.”
“They’re electrically good too. They’ll return a valid but unrecognisable ident when it’s read. Should just look like there’s an error on the database or something. You can prise the film cover off and put in a photo or actually just print on the face. Most times no one looks closely at them by all accounts.”
“I don’t think you’d say that if you lived here,” Gerry responded. “But I think they’ll be all right.”
Jinx seemed to have finished his work on Daisy’s shoulder. She was now sporting three intertwined letter R’s in green, red, and purple. Jinx covered up the results with cling film to stop any risk of infection.
“Thanks,” the girl said. “I’ll let you get back to your meeting.” She took herself off to a couch and sat down, curling her legs up under her, and started rummaging in her bag.
“Are you sure you’ll find a home for all these?” Norm looked at the pile of cards.
“Oh, yes. You can tell Danny they’ll be put to good use. Here, let me show you.” Gerry reached for his own case and took out a thick file of documents. “These guys need to know what’s going on now, as well.”
Jack sat watching as Gerry laid out the documents on the table. Daisy was sitting on the far side of the room, listening to something on her iPhone. She didn’t seem to be taking any interest in proceedings, her earphones blotting out what was going on around her.
“Now this,” Gerry began, “is something that will hit them where it hurts. This,” he pulled out a large sheet of paper and unfolded it, “is the Excel Centre. It used to be an exhibition and conference venue. It’s been re-purposed by these guys.” He handed over a promotional leaflet, headed ‘Your Career in the Detention Service’. “They are holding around 4000 detainees, mainly disorder offenders, sponsorship absconders, repeat curfew breakers, fairly low grade stuff like that.”
Norm sat quietly. As a sponsorship absconder, he didn’t like being thought of as “low grade” although maybe if you include porn smuggling and ident card forgery, perhaps he counted for a bit more these days.
“It’s not a high security set up. You can’t just walk in and out but there’s not much more than a chain link fence between the inmates and the outside world. There’s rumoured to be thirty of these around the country which would mean there’s a hundred and twenty thousand ‘low grade’ inmates and nobody knows about them. They’re run by the MCF but there’s no real accountability. We got this video.” Gerry started a film on the TV screen at the front of the room. “See, you’ll know the green epaulettes of District Patrol officers, the red epaulettes of the Public Order group, the yellow of Identity Inspection. These delightful ladies wear black epaulettes for Detention and Rehabilitation officers.”
Jack watched the video unfold. It looked like it had been shot on a mobile phone that had been propped up in one corner of a canteen.
“They’re better at the detention bit than the rehabilitation. I reckon rehabilitation means kicking the shit out of you until you agree with them, but I’m no expert on offender management so what do I know?”
There were about a dozen detainees in the shot, two MCF officers in uniform white shirts with black ties and epaulettes and black skirts were standing either side of the door. Another was walking around between the tables swinging a riding crop at anyone that seemed to be showing an interest in anything other than the table in front of them. She looked like she was enjoying herself. The detainees didn’t.
“Anyway, the idea is to break out as many as we can. A couple of hundred would be good. Enough so there will be so much fuss about recapturing them that they won’t be able to hush it up. Get it all over the press and TV and the government is going to have to start explaining why they are keeping so many people locked up. We’ll leave ‘ECR’ stuff at the scene just to keep the red flaps on their toes.”
“What makes you think the press will be interested?”
Gerry pulled out another sheet and tossed it onto the table. “Because they’ll be covering this at the same time Docklands will be chock-full of blue lights and sirens hunting our runaways.”
The sheet was headed up “Press Release, Government Announces Major Investment In Financial Services Sector.” It went on to explain how New Order was establishing a ‘Centre for Banking Excellence’ on Canary Wharf, with the remit of providing training for the women that would make up the ever growing proportion of decision-making staff within the financial sector. It looked like it was going to be a big deal, with representatives from the Treasury, Department of Education & Skills, and Department for Work & Enterprise as well as the Cabinet Office. Jack could see how Gerry might think there would be plenty of media on hand to cover it.
“So, there will be a group of four that will cut the perimeter wire and break open the doors to the back of the canteen while they’re at lunch. There’s usually only a couple of guards on during meal times. It’s all run a bit casually if you ask me. We’ll get word inside so they’re ready when the doors are sprung. I reckon half the canteen will be out before the guards wake up to what’s happening. The deal is we’re going to give each of the guys that makes it out a new ID card. That’s where our this bundle of cards comes in. What they do with them will be down to them.” Norm smiled. He wasn’t sure if Danny knew what was being planned for the forged ident cards but he guessed he didn’t care.
“Now,” Gerry said turning to Norm, “I’d like you to hang on to your bag until Thursday. Then you can bring it over to an address in Docklands that I’ll let you have. I’d rather not have these hanging around for a couple of days and you’re much less likely to attract attention at the moment. I assume you don’t have to be back in Ireland right away.”
Norm put his case up on the table. “Suppose I just left these here and pissed off?”
“Then I think you’d make me unhappy, and that will make Danny unhappy and shortly after that I think you’ll be unhappy too. So be a good bloke and oblige me, will you.” The menace in Gerry’s voice was clear. Norm found it easy to back down.
“Fair enough. I wouldn’t want you to be unhappy.”
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