Safe from Harm Read online

  ‘Which is why,’ Martyn said, ‘we have Secret Service protection for that afternoon. With pistols and earpieces and everything.’ His eyes sparkled as he said it. He was teasing me. What good is a bodyguard without a gun? was one of the first taunts he had made when we met. I’m not a bodyguard, I had explained, nor a bullet-stopper. My job was to make sure things never got to the ‘taking one for the team’ stage.

  Instead of being annoyed by Martyn, I had pulled his personnel file, just to see if there was anything in there that might explain his waspishness. There were spaces between the lines you could bathe a hippo in. One of the jobs of a PPO is to know the nature of the people who surround the Principal. Any weakness could be used as leverage by a hostile party. Full disclosure was the guiding rule.

  It turned out that Martyn lived something of a double life. At weekends he was known by various names – Martha, Lauren, Chantelle – as if he was trying them on for size. What he was definitely trying on were women’s clothes and shoes. He was also spending a fortune on electrolysis for his beard. Most of this transitioning took place at weekends in Brighton, but a quick search of his desk had thrown up receipts from Maxine’s, a club in King’s Cross catering to the gender-flexible.

  Of course, all this was no concern of mine. Until it was. Over a brew one evening I told him what I knew, which I suspected was barely scratching the surface of his favourite foundation. The ultimatum was simple: tell Gemma or I will. He chose to break the good news to her himself and now they swapped make-up tips. Meanwhile, I knew he couldn’t be blackmailed. Well, not about that at least.

  My next conundrum was whether that disclosure rule applied to Emily. She was having an affair with a married man. Not only married, but someone in the Opposition, tipped for a shadow cabinet post in the near future. He is in his thirties, a former RAF Tornado pilot, who lost his first wife to a drunk-driver and remarried one of his interns. He wouldn’t be close to the seat of power in this parliament, too inexperienced, but maybe two cycles’ time. Nevertheless, despite the young bride, he was a notorious womaniser. I had to admit it was unlikely he was taking Emily to the Premier Inn – he didn’t even stump up for the Marriott, the cheapskate – to try to pump her for information about Gemma’s proposed budget increase in overseas aid. That wasn’t the sort of pumping that was going on. So I’d let that run for a while. My instinct was it would sort itself out when he got bored and moved on.

  Still, that was in the future. I had to stay in the here-and-now. ‘The Secret Service will have their own way of doing things,’ I warned them. I didn’t mention that they sneered down from very lofty heights on all private contractors.

  ‘I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be just like The West Wing.’ Martyn put a finger in his ear and drawled, ‘POTUS has left the building.’

  Emily, clearly less excited by the thought of the Secret Service, leaned over to me. ‘Have you seen who’s in the corner? Behind you?’

  I nodded. ‘Six drunks. All about twelve years old. I’m thinking of calling their parents.’

  She shook her head at my ignorance and named a band that I had heard Jess mention. Emily’s eyes were bright as she listed the various members. There were only four of them. The other two must be management and protection. I turned and identified the PPO. He wasn’t much older than them. And he shouldn’t be letting them drink that much, so quickly, so early. And he certainly shouldn’t have joined in. But it wasn’t my gig and I turned back.

  ‘Cute, huh?’ Emily asked, and shrugged when she didn’t get an answer.

  The band was probably in the V-VIP lounge for its own protection. If a grown woman – more or less, anyway – like Emily could exude such lust when just saying their names, I couldn’t bear to think what a group of hormonal teenagers might inflict on its members. The airport authorities would have decided it was safer for all concerned to sequester the band away from their adoring public.

  The lounge manager, an elegant Eurasian woman dressed in a midnight-blue uniform that she managed to make look like a million Hong Kong dollars, approached us, casting a surreptitious glance at the pop stars. ‘Excuse me, your flight is now ready for boarding. If you’ll just follow me.’

  When I thought about it later, I wondered whether, if I had not got on that flight, if I had pleaded family problems, then maybe things would have turned out differently. But PPOs don’t have family problems. Except when they do.

  FOUR

  I don’t normally like First Class. Controversial, I know, but these days First Class on a decent airline means cocoons – not so much seats as mini-cabins, complete with doors. Some even have double beds. The occupant is cut off from other passengers. They don’t even have to look at their fellow travellers. Which means, if my client is in that little upmarket shack, I can’t see them either. That makes me uncomfortable. EOP – Eyes on the Principal – is the watchword. Which is why I prefer Business. So I was perfectly happy to stow my Ready To Go bag above Seat 16a in the lesser cabin and watch Gemma settle into a nearby seat.

  That day, someone else also preferred Business – the band, who took up position at the rear of the cabin and began a sustained bout of braying about all the extras they were getting. A pair of socks from the amenity kit came spinning down the aisle. I could sense Gemma, who was sitting parallel with me, bristling, even though she was apparently reading a briefing document.

  Then the singing began. Even I recognised their hit, with its irritatingly anthemic chorus and greeting card lyrics. I stole a glance at Emily. She was smiling at this personal little performance. I gave her my best scowl. Don’t even think about joining in.

  I found the purser – a no-nonsense woman in her forties who exuded a quiet air of competence – and showed her my House of Commons pass. It was the closest I had to official documentation, apart from my Security Industry Association accreditation, but that looked a little like an IKEA loyalty card. The portcullis on the HoC laminate was much more impressive.

  I explained who Gemma was and that she was on important government business and, against my normal instincts, the purser agreed to move her up to First Class, which had only two other passengers, and me to the front of Business where I could at least watch her door. That kept me in control. I also suggested, as politely as I could, that they didn’t serve the four musketeers and their two chums any more drinks for a while. She gave a tight smile and said that such an action had already been noted. They’d be allowed one more with their meal and that was it.

  Gemma made a half-hearted protest about shifting up a grade then did as she was told. I moved my RTG bag up the cabin with me. I settled in. Now I was between Gemma and most of the passengers and she only had the pilots, the two moneybags who could shell out First-Class cash (or, more likely, their shareholders could) and some of the crew in front of her. It was what Ben, my former boss, called a KISS situation. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

  Still, I consciously stepped up a gear as the engines powered into a whine. Colour? Yellow, shading into Orange. No in-flight movie for me. But then, that was what Gemma paid me a 70k-a-year retainer plus expenses out of her own pocket for – so I didn’t complain about not catching up on The Avengers franchise or the latest instalment of Frozen. It’s why I always pre-ordered a vegetarian meal – less chance of food poisoning – and why I carried two passports – one for the stamps and visas of places such as Israel that might cause trouble down the line, the other relatively pristine with little evidence of where I might have been. Civilians aren’t meant to have such things, but there are so many ex-spooks from MI5 and MI6 on The Circuit, it wasn’t difficult to call on their expertise to organise duplicate passports. All it takes is money.

  I waited until the last moment to fasten my seatbelt and took out the in-flight magazine as the 777 pushed back. I’d be flicking without reading, but it gave my hands something to do. Gemma leaned out of her doorway and held up the eyeshade from her amenity kit, which, at the front of the bus, probably included a whole branch’s
-worth of Jo Malone or Kiehl’s. It was a signal that she was going to sleep. Fine by me. At least I’d know where she’d be for the next ten hours or so.

  I’d met Gemma two years previously. She had been a keynote speaker at a conference at the Hilton, Manchester, on the particular problems facing female migrants. It was that summer when the news was filled with tales of drowning refugees, trying to cross the Med in leaky boats. But then every summer since then has been like that. The survivors all had extraordinary stories and those of the women were often particularly harrowing, from the FGM they had suffered as young women, the sexual price some of the smugglers extorted from them when the money ran out, to the makeshift brothels in some of the camps across the Channel.

  Gemma was in opposition back then, but was making a name for herself in the media as an advocate for the policy of every country in Europe, including Britain, taking their fair share of the dispossessed. It was not a universally popular view, especially in the wake of the mass sexual assaults by asylum seekers in Cologne. But she had put her money where her mouth was and she and her husband had funded medical centres and refuges for women on the Italian island of Lampedusa, and Kos and Lesbos in Greece, three very over-stretched arrival points for the diaspora. That was the theme of her speech that afternoon. That women, as victims many times over, needed particular care and attention.

  I wasn’t there with Gemma. I’d been hired by the organisers as a GS – General Security – because of the high percentage of female attendees. If they needed someone frisked or quizzed, they had to have a woman on hand, and the RST, the Resident Security Team, was – as usual – predominantly male. This lot were pretty good, but it only needs a woman to say she is going into the Ladies and a gap in the protection opens up. I have had whole jobs where I was employed solely to chaperone visits to the toilet by the Principal. Plus that day in Manchester they required additional SIA-qualified hands because there was talk of some anti-immigration groups causing trouble, although so far none had materialised.

  I was at the side of the stage, listening to a proud, beautiful woman with an eye-patch tell the story of her trek from Eritrea to Libya. She had lost the eye to bandits who preyed on the migrants heading north, the result of the beating they meted out when they refused to believe the few measly dollars she gave them was her entire stash. It was very hard not to feel anger, and there were tears in the eyes of the people in the auditorium at some points, but I couldn’t afford to lose focus. Shields were up. I stayed at Orange.

  I was aware of a disturbance and raised voices that were coming from beyond the curtain behind me. Some of the front row glanced my way, as if I were responsible for the distraction. I stepped backstage to see if I could defuse the situation.

  I recognised Julia, one of the organisers, who looked as if she had been trying to pull her own hair out. She tugged at the short, dark crop once again and when she spoke I realised she was close to crossing from strident to hysterical. She was speaking in a vitriolic whisper to an equally harassed young man, who was blushing deeply.

  ‘Look, Craig, you go up there and tell Mrs Kerr she is due on stage in an hour.’

  ‘I’m sorry, she says she can’t,’ he said, loosening his tie and pulling it away from his reddening neck.

  ‘And I am expected to rearrange the whole afternoon’s running order, am I?’

  ‘Till she feels better.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ I interrupted.

  They both turned to look at me. Craig blushed deeper.

  ‘What’s wrong with Mrs Kerr?’ I repeated.

  ‘Women’s trouble, apparently,’ said Julia, in a voice that sounded as though she was chewing nettles.

  I tried to picture Mrs Kerr. In her late fifties. Probably not a bad period, then. ‘What room is she in?’

  ‘Five-ten,’ said Craig. ‘But she doesn’t want to see anyone.’

  ‘Tell her I’ll be along in five minutes.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Craig asked, looking down at the laminate swinging around my neck.

  ‘A woman,’ I said slowly, as if he were a particularly dumb ten-year-old. ‘Five minutes.’

  I went up to my room and grabbed the first-aid kit from my RTG, hoping I had something in there that might help.

  Gemma Kerr was lying on the bed, shoes off, trousers loosened at the waist and pulled down to show the top of her knickers, which were lacy and a surprisingly racy scarlet colour.

  ‘Look, I just need to bloody well rest!’ she shouted as I walked in the door. ‘Will you all just fuck off and die.’

  ‘Wait outside,’ I ordered Craig, who had got there ahead of me.

  He happily did as he was told and I crossed over to the bed. ‘Mrs Kerr, I’m a security operative here for the conference. I’m not a doctor, but I do have medical training.’ I put the case on the chair and unzipped it. ‘Tell me your symptoms.’

  She did so.

  I let my shields slide down somewhat. This wasn’t a job for a PPO. ‘And you’ve never had this before?’

  ‘No.’

  I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Not even on honeymoon?’

  ‘I spent my honeymoon in Hong Kong, sightseeing between my husband’s meetings with Chinese telecomms companies.’

  ‘You’ve been through the menopause?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ she snapped irritably.

  ‘It’s a danger time for this sort of thing,’ I said calmly.

  She gave a curt nod. ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, let’s see what we can do.’ I went back to the corridor and sent Craig off for some bicarbonate of soda and cranberry juice. I ran a deep, hot bath and told Mrs Kerr to get in it. Before she went into the bathroom, I placed all four bottles of water from the mini-bar at one end of the tub. ‘Drink all that and pee. A lot. And take some of these.’

  She had managed to slide off the bed and was walking stiffly, as if over broken glass. I handed her two strips of tablets.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Trimethoprim. Antibiotics. But once you start make sure you take the full course. Three days.’ I pulled out another blister pack from the first-aid kit and broke out two codeine. ‘For the pain. Once Craig is back I’ll mix some bicarb. Then I’ll get some sodium citrate sachets from the chemist.’

  She dragged herself into the bathroom and half-closed the door. I heard her undress and test the water temperature in the bath.

  ‘Don’t put any bubbles or salts in,’ I warned her.

  There came tentative splashes of entry. After a few moments she admitted a sigh of what sounded like relief. How could a woman her age not have suffered cystitis before? I used to get it about every six months. And I certainly did on my honeymoon with Paul, which we spent in Jamaica. Although admittedly we didn’t talk telecomms much.

  ‘Drink. Piss,’ I reminded her. ‘That’s two separate instructions, by the way, with a full stop between them.’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘What’s your name?’

  I have a lot of names to choose from. I gave her the one I was born with.

  ‘And you do what again?’

  ‘Today, general security. But also PPO, although mostly the soft kind.’

  ‘PPO?’

  ‘Personal Protection Officer.’

  ‘A bodyguard?’ she asked.

  ‘Technically. But you’d be surprised how often you end up giving advice on how to stop a cystitis attack or ameliorate a hangover or helping buy underwear for the wife. Or the mistress. Or sometimes both.’

  Craig came back and I asked Gemma’s permission to come into the bathroom and mix up a bicarb drink for her. ‘It will alleviate the symptoms, but it’s not a cure,’ I warned her. ‘You still need to take the antibiotics.’

  I handed over the glass of alkaline solution and also one of the cranberry juices. She had placed a flannel over her breasts to cover them, although it wasn’t quite up to the job. But I’d seen clients in every state of undress and distress and I’d learned not t
o stare.

  ‘Who do you work for?’ she asked after she’d taken a slug of bicarb and pulled a face. ‘The hotel?’

  ‘No, an outfit called Creative Security Resolutions. Based in London.’

  ‘Full time?’

  ‘Contract by contract.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘One. Girl. Jessica. Jess.’ It was good to say her name after spending the day with a metaphorical stick up my arse. I relaxed a little and regretted it. I suddenly felt like a drink and my day wasn’t done yet. I made the effort to refocus.

  ‘Which is why you do contract by contract?’

  I nodded. She wasn’t my Principal, so the rule about over-sharing did not apply. ‘Up to now. She’s getting big enough not to need her mum all the time.’

  ‘Who looks after her when you are doing something like this?’

  ‘We manage.’ I didn’t want to go into the pros and cons of au pairs.

  She switched to drinking the cranberry. ‘On my bed there is a letter. It was pushed under the door. Could you read it for me?’

  I went back out into the bedroom, where Craig was busy staring at his watch as if he could will time to stop. ‘How is she?’

  ‘We’ll see. How long till she’s on?’ I asked him.

  Another look at his wrist. ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Tell Julia she’ll be down in thirty. And tell her to fill if she has to. Maybe she knows some jokes.’

  His face squashed like a rubber ball. ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘Well, maybe she can juggle. But Mrs Kerr will be there in half an hour,’ I repeated, just in case there was any doubt.

  After he had left I extracted a pair of latex-free gloves from my first-aid kit, pulled them on and picked up the single sheet of paper. It wasn’t written in green ink, but it might as well have been for all the bile in there. The guy didn’t like Mrs Kerr or her black – although that wasn’t the word he used – friends or the Muslim terrorists she encouraged to come to this country and destroy our way of . . . blah de blah. It finished with a warning not to walk down any dark alleys while in Manchester.