Chapter Two
The waiter brought the girl’s brandy and McBride scribbled his signature on the chit.
“Now tell me the what is troubling you.”
McBride settled back and studied her. She was really a beautiful woman. About thirty years old he thought, fair hair, cut long and slightly waved, framing her face. Slim. Looking troubled, though. As though something inside was eating her up.
“Well my name is Jenny. I have a brother, Ben Stockton. He works as a freelance journalist. Digs out feature stories, sometimes gets commissions, but usually writes the story and hawks it round. He writes for four newspapers mostly, so he knows his markets. I think he does quite well.
“He was actually on a commission about unemployment, and do the foreigners get most of the jobs, that kind of thing. He interviewed young people, and job-centre managers. You can imagine the routine. He told me that the last time I saw him. But he also told me that he was working on something else.”
“What was it?”
“He thought that some large organization was running the fracking protests.”
“Of course, one of them is the Green Party.”
“They don’t have a lot of money. Ben had visited a job-centre to talk to the manager, and then some of the applicants. Just as he was coming out there was a guy standing on the pavement stopping applicants and talking to them. Ben was interested to know what was going on, so he hung around. He found out this guy was offering big bucks for young men to go and protest at the local test drill site.”
McBride pondered. “That fits, I always wondered how they got youths who looked like long-term unemployed. People who you think would prefer to be couch potatoes watching daytime television, rather than living in a tent in the countryside in the cold and rain.”
“That’s what Ben thought. I never saw him again. He said he was going to follow the fracking story up. He was quite excited. I thought nothing of it until he hadn’t been in touch for a fortnight, maybe more. I tried to get him on his mobile, since I couldn’t get him at his flat. The mobile is dead. Wrong number, please try again, is all you get. I went over to his flat, worried that he might be ill. I’ve got a spare key he gave me. There was no-one there. You know the stillness, and the smell of dust, when you go in a home that has been empty for a while? It was all tidy, no pots on the draining board, bed made, no clothes left out. He’d left the house intentially, meant to be away for a while. But surely he didn’t mean to be out of touch with me. Both our parents are dead, each other is all we’ve got.” McBride saw the tears forming, her eyes brimming, glistening.
“Why did you think he would be here, Jenny?”
“This is the nearest fracking site. There’s nowhere else for me to try.”
“And have you spotted him? Why don’t you walk to the camp and ask if he’s there?”
“I’ve tried that. The Green Party people are nice, and try to help, and then some burly guys come along, and the Greens just clam up. They’re frightened, I’m sure.”
“Why not go to the police? You can say he’s a missing person.”
Jenny drained her glass, put it down on the table, clumsily, the glass rolled over. She caught it as it fell, tried again. “I did that, too. They took the details of him down, and I signed a statement as well. But if you report an adult as a missing person they think he probably cleared off on purpose. It’s not until they’ve got an unidentified body that they look at the missing persons’ file.” The tears escaped her eyes. She pulled out a handkerchief from her sleeve, dabbed ineffectually. McBride pulled out a clean handkerchief from his top pocket and offered it to her.
She mopped her face, and smiled at him through her tears. “I’m sorry, it’s just getting to me.”
McBride stared into the distance for a while. Jenny fussed about repairing her make-up.
He said “I might be tempted to nose about down there, offer to join them. Painting is a quiet life, and I do like excitement occasionally. Give me your contact details, and your brother’s details as well, before you leave tomorrow. I can’t promise to solve the case, but I will report back to you.”
“Are you sure you want to do this? It could be dangerous, must be for something to have happened to Ben.”
“I might be an artist, but I still look after myself, and I used to be in the SAS Regiment. That was good training. Come on, have another drink.”
Next morning at breakfast Jenny walked up to McBride and put two sheets of writing paper, folded once, down on the table. “That’s the information you wanted. I’m leaving now, but there’s my phone number among the information. Take care. Don’t be stupid, taking risks.”
He smiled up at her. “Don’t you lecture me, young lady.”
She smiled back. “Goodbye.” She walked out of the restaurant, suitcase in her hand.
Whilst he finished his toast he looked at the notes. Comprehensive. Addresses, not just hers, but her brother’s too. Dates, as well, she had written down.
He decided he would have today finishing another couple of paintings, and tomorrow he would visit the protest site. He had to keep his agent off his back. The only way to do that was to give him paintings to sell.
On Tuesday morning McBride checked out of the Wellington. He asked if he could leave the car for a week or so, and offered to pay rent for the space. The manager said five pounds a week and McBride thought that was very generous of him and agreed. He said he was meeting a friend, and they didn’t want the hassle of two cars. Next he took his case to the car, and stowed it in the boot. He pulled out an old rucksack, and transferred some clean underwear and a small sketchbook 6 inches by 4 inches. He included a few casual shirts. He put the rucksack over his shoulder, then remembered to add a heavy sweater, and a waterproof anorak.
He locked the car, and strode off down the road. As he approached the fracking site, he saw a heavy truck parked on the roadside. Two police cars were behind it, blue lights flashing, engines running, he could see the exhaust smoke. It was noisy with shouts and boos coming from a rabble of people around the site entrance. Placards waved, and police were attempting to move the crowd to allow the truck access to the site. Now was not the time for McBride to introduce himself so he stayed well away, and sat on a milestone a hundred yards from the fracas.
It appeared that there were six policemen at the site, and eventually they drew truncheons. Two men were arrested and brought back to the police cars.
At this stage the one police car with four men inside forced their way through the crowd and on to the field. The truck followed, inches away from the police car’s bumper and picked up speed along the track. The police car did a U-turn in the field, and joined the other car to speed away with the two prisoners. The protesters remained agitated and milled around in the mud near the gate for a few minutes before drifting in ones and twos to the tents near the hedge. A man stood in the caravan doorway watching them.
Most of the protesters were sitting round a campfire when McBride walked across the field towards them. When they spotted him, a grey bearded thin man stood up, and then started to walk to meet him.
“Can I help you, Sir?” he said. He was wearing a large badge on his lapel with Green Party written across it. His beard was thin and wispy, rather like his hair, with bald patches showing through. His corduroys were splattered with mud. Perhaps some of the marks were from his dinner.
McBride smiled at him. “I hope so. I’m on a walking holiday. I was coming down the road just as the police started attacking you. I thought that was a bad show.” Letting some indignation appear. McBride thought he might well have got work as an actor.
“We’re only trying to protect our planet,” said the bearded man. He had a very educated voice. Public school. “Fracking will pollute our water supply, and result in climate change. It’s happening already.”
McBride had his own opinions on that, but he was not about to air them now. “I have a lot of my holiday left; I would love to join you in your fight,
if you would have me?”
“Personally, I would say welcome, but it is not up to me to decide. I have to consult with the coordinator. Come and meet him.”
He turned to walk back to the campsite. McBride walked alongside. “It is a good job it’s summer. Bit chilly here in winter, I would have thought.”
“We protest all year round, we can’t let the planet be destroyed.”
It was his mantra; he can’t let it go, otherwise he would just ask himself why he was here.
McBride could see a large man rising from his seat, standing now, and watching them. He wore a beard, too, but black, the kind that McBride called a pirate beard, but trimmed neatly. He was tall and muscular but not fat. Maybe late forties.
‘This young man has offered to join our fight,” said the Green Party man.
McBride, who stood over six feet, had to look up at the black bearded face.
The big man said “What’s your name?”
“John McManus.” McBride knew, as he had whilst crossing the field that he had blown it. It wasn’t going to work.
“We don’t need people we don’t know. I’m sorry.” And he turned away to sit down in his chair. Interview over.
McBride started back to the entrance gate. When there, he turned and looked at them The big guy was giving the Green Party man a dressing down, shaking his finger in the old man’s face.
McBride went into the Wellington Inn, and the manager came through behind the bar. “My word, Mr McBride I didn’t expect to see you so soon. Have you forgotten something?”
“No, I’ve just heard from my friend. Something’s cropped up, and he isn’t coming, so I just wanted to tell you, so you won’t be wondering where my car went.”
McBride drove home, mulling the problem over in his head. He had been stupid to think that the fracking people would accept him just like that especially if they were an organization trying to destabilize the government or their dreams of self sufficiency. They would be extra cautious about strangers, reckoning that they might be welcoming a spy, which they would have been.
By the time he was entering the front door of his house, he had planned a strategy that might work. Well, it was worth a try. He unpacked his case and went out to the pub round the corner for a late lunch.
Early the next morning McBride was in his bathroom, not for a shave. He hadn’t had the razor out for a couple of days, and was sporting a trendy stubble. He set to work with a pair of scissors, cutting his hair as short as he could, and then with his electric shaver removing the remainder of his hair. He now had a modern bald head, though it was obscenely white so he nipped down the road for a tube of fake suntan. It worked a treat.
He dressed in shabbier clothes than before, old jeans, a ragged t-shirt, and an old denim jacket he had been meaning to throw away. He went down to the car, pulled out the still-packed rucksack, together with his warm anorak. He put his mobile phone in his pocket. He didn’t take his wallet, but he pushed a hundred pounds in notes into his jeans. His credit card he put in his sock so that it lay under his sole. He memorised the information Jenny had given him, and burnt the notes.
McBride caught a train for the two-hour ride to the town. The job-centre was quite busy. He had the right one, he visuallised Jenny the other night, telling him the story in great detail. But maybe the fracking man didn’t need any more recruits. McBride remembered the two people the police had taken away. Perhaps they did need more troops. The interview desks in the centre were all occupied, so McBride studied the advertisements for jobs on the freestanding panels in the middle of the floor. None were advertising for protesters. He hung around for half an hour. By then some of the clerks were eying him up, and wondering why he didn’t come to an interview desk. Instead, he walked slowly out of the door, as though he had no job. And all the time in the world.
His heart lurched as he came out on to the wide pavement. The man with the black beard was standing watching him. Surely he couldn’t have recognized him. He was hardly going to try any heavy stuff here, in the middle of a market town. Not with all the pedestrians scurrying past, and the road busy with slow-moving vehicles.
The man approached him. “Did you get a job in there?”
“No.” That was true.
“Do you want a job, cash payment, no tax, two hundred quid a week?”
McBride nodded, as though he was slightly simple.
“You know the fracking site in Malvern Road, near the Wellington Inn?”
“Yes,”
“Well, all you have to do is turn up there and look for an old guy with a beard and a Green Party badge. Tell him The Big Man sent you. You’ll need a tent and an oil lamp, you can get them at the Millets shop see, over there,” he said, pointing across the road. He reached into his pocket, pulled out some money, gave him a few twenties.
“I’ll see you there tomorrow. If you don’t turn up, I’ll send somebody to kill you.” He wasn’t smiling when he said that.
McBride bought a cheap two-person tent, the sort that incorporated a groundsheet, and had a spring wire frame, so that you could fold it small to put in a rucksack. When you took it out, it sprang into shape, and there it was ready to crawl into. To stop it blowing away while you weren’t in it, there were four metal tent pegs, to put into small sewn tape loops and knocked into the ground. You could use a piece of rock or your boot as a hammer. The shop assistant told McBride so. The wonders of high technology. Just like the army, only their tents had been bigger. He bought an oil lamp, a small one. He folded the tent and put it in the rucksack. When he came to pay, he found that the Big Man had given him a hundred pounds.
Attached to an outside strap of his rucksack.the oil-lamp rattled about as he tramped along the road. It was about four miles before McBride recognized the area where the drilling rig was located.
He marched straight into the field and across to the camp. People looked up to watch him approach. They looked as if they were cooking, which suited McBride. He was peckish, not having eaten since breakfast. He picked out the grey bearded Green Party guy. He must remember to treat him like a stranger. As before, the man rose and came out to meet him.
“The Big Man sent me, I had to tell you,” said McBride, deadpan.
“Good I’ll take you over to meet the others. Have you bought a tent?”
McBride nodded. The old man led him to the group round the fire. A pleasant aroma was coming from the pan sitting over the flames.
“This is Donny here. He’ll show you where to pitch your tent. Sorry, what is your name?”
“John,” said McBride, who thought that he ought to use his correct first name, didn’t want to ignore anybody who shouted for him.
“Come on, I’ll show you where to pitch up,” said Donny, in his thick Yorkshire accent. He was a gangling spotty faced youth. He walked down the line, and indicated a space at the end.
“We was going to start a second line of tents, but here will be better for you, shielded by the hedge. The wind always comes from over there.” He pointed over to the hedge. McBride put his rucksack on the ground, reached into it and pulled out his tent. It sprang out of its own accord, causing Donny to hurriedly step back.
“Bugger me, it’s got a life of its own,” he muttered.
McBride pulled the metal pegs out of his bag.
“Here, I’ll get a stone to bang ’em.” And he was off, searching the hedgerow.
The lad insisted in knocking in the pegs, whilst McBride threw the rucksack inside the tent, took off his heavy anorak and threw that through the opening as well.
“Come and eat,” said Donny. McBride sat down on the grass with the others. Some had canvas chairs, mostly the older people who had badges declaring them members of the Green Party. One elderly lady wore a Friends of the Earth badge. Donny grabbed a couple of aluminum mess tins, and ladled some of the stew into them. It was just like old times for McBride. While they were eating, Donny introduced some of the others.
“This is Fred,” pointi
ng at the old man with a beard, “and this is Tony,” pointing at another youth, but bigger than Donny. At each of them, McBride smiled and said “I’m John.”
Whilst the meal was in progress, a truck rumbled along the road, and two guards who were on the gates, shouted loudly for reinforcements. Within seconds people were running for the gates, placards on poles in their hands. The truck, loaded with pipes, which were probably drill casings, was being prevented from turning into the gates only by the two guards. Shortly there were maybe twenty or thirty protesters in the truck’s path. The shouting was deafening McBride. This was an impasse. The truck was stuck and the line of protesters just stood looking at the huge bonnet of the truck, its diesel engine idling. And so it remained for half an hour, until police sirens could be heard in the distance, and growing louder by the minute as two police cars tore down the road and screeched to a halt. Police clad in black overalls and wearing helmets, piled out and charged at the line, swinging truncheons. There was some wrestling from the younger men, but the Green Party members backed down. The police arrested two of the men at random, and led them away to the police vehicles. The lorry revved up and started to move through the gate. It was obviously not going to stop, so the remnants of the crowd backed off to avoid injury. Accompanied with yells and catcalls, the truck moved across the field.
The next morning, extra reinforcements arrived, this time four exceptionally burly men, accompanied by The Big Man. He entered the caravan, and called over the grey beard Green Party man Fred to join him. There was another ‘coordinator’ Michael, who appeared to live in the caravan, and ran things when The Big Man wasn’t there.
After about half an hour, they all came back out of the caravan, and The Big Man shouted for everyone to gather round. He told the people that they had let two trucks through yesterday, and that just was not good enough. The whole reason they were on the site was to ensure no work was carried out. They must stand up to the police. “Try lying down in the road, then they can’t drive through,” he advised. He was getting quite worked up about it, spittle showing on his beard as white dots glinting in the light. He told them that he was recruiting extra people as fast as he could. If they had any friends that they wanted to invite, now was the time to do it.
The Big Man had arrived in a very old Land Rover, and eventually he got in and drove away in a cloud of diesel smoke. He left the four recruits.