Shades of Darkness

by Richard Cowper

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

An elegiac ghost story from the acclaimed and visionary author of the Corlay sequence.

Release date: August 29, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 135

Sample

At two o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday January 5th a message was brought to me in the Akari Hotel, Kampala that Colonel Makuba wished to see me at Security Headquarters. A car was waiting. I guessed what was coming and blessed my foresight in having sent out my tapes and notes with Pierre at Christmas. The Head of Security was his usual suave self and it soon became obvious that he’d had a tail on me for at least the past three weeks. The outcome of our interview—conveyed with a sort of aggrieved sigh—was that henceforth I was persona non grata in Uganda and would be escorted aboard a plane at Entebbe at 8.30 a.m. the following day when my passport and press card would be returned to me. In the meantime I was to be confined to the hotel.

It was raining when we landed at Heathrow. While I was waiting for my bags to be unloaded I phoned Bob Cowans and was told that he was tied up in conference. I left a message that I’d be in to see him at 10.30 the following morning, then collected my gear, went through Customs, and took a taxi to Earl’s Court.

It must have been around seven o’clock when I let myself into the flat. The place looked a mess. It was obvious that Peter had hosted some sort of orgy the night before. The sink was full of unwashed glasses and there was a cardboard box with a dozen empty litre bottles of Italian white lurking behind the kitchen door. My bed had obviously been strenuously occupied. Whoever had used it hadn’t even bothered to straighten up the duvet.

I had a shower, changed my clothes and then started in on the charring. When Peter turned up at about half past nine with a girl I’d never seen before, the place was presentable. ‘Jesus, Jimbo!’ he greeted me. ‘When I saw the lights on I thought we’d been turned over. Why the hell didn’t you let me know you were coming? I’d have done something about the chaos.’

I explained briefly what had happened and was formally introduced to Veronica. She was a colleague of Peter’s at the Beeb and had apparently been cajoled into helping him tidy up the battlefield after the previous night’s skirmish. She seemed relieved to find I’d done it.

Peter located a bottle of wine which had got itself overlooked and while he was dealing with it I tried to get hold of Karen on the phone. She was out so I left a message for her to call me if she got back before midnight. I was luckier with Pierre. He had all my material safe and sound in Brussels. Even better, a friend of his was coming to London at the weekend and would bring it over. He added that he’d include a selection of his pictures which I might find useful. I arranged a rendezvous with his friend for Saturday mid-day and thanked him for his trouble.

I was brushing my teeth, all ready for bed, when the phone rang. It was Karen. We exchanged the usual homecoming pleasantries, and I told her what had happened. ‘Have you seen Bob yet?’ she asked.

‘I haven’t had a chance. I only got into Heathrow late this afternoon, and when I rang through he was in a conference. I’ll be seeing him in the morning. I’ve got all my notes and tapes though. Pierre brought them out for me. I got through to him in Brussels this evening.’

‘Who did you talk to at Kyle House?’

‘No one. Well, just the receptionist.’

‘So you haven’t heard then?’

‘Heard what?’

There was a moment’s pause before she said: ‘Oh, it’s just rumours, I expect, Jim.’

‘What sort of rumours?’

‘About Citizen Kyle.’

‘What about him?’

‘Well, according to Ralph Binney, Kyle’s been throwing his weight around again. Rationalizing he calls it. You know his style.’

‘Who doesn’t? But why should that concern me?’

‘I just thought you might like to know, that’s all.’

I laughed. ‘Well, thanks for the thought, Karo. But it’s too late for shop talk. Do I see you tomorrow?’

‘I’m tied up in the evening. I could manage lunch though.’

‘O.K.’ I said. ‘The Pradello at one o’clock. I’ve missed you a lot.’

‘Liar.’

‘It’s God’s truth. Did you have a good Christmas?’

‘I’ll tell you about it tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Ciao, Jim.’

At half past ten the next morning I pushed through the swing doors of Kyle House and told Reception to let Mr. Cowans know that Mr. Fuller had arrived. Two minutes later I was being lifted up to the fourth floor. As I stepped out of the cage and was making my way down the corridor to Bob’s office a door opened and Barbara Tulley came out. She caught sight of me and did a sort of pantomime surprise act. ‘Jim! I thought you were in Bongo-Bongo land.’

‘I was,’ I said. ‘I got chucked out, all of a sudden like.’

She wide-eyed me over the top of the file she was clutching, seemed on the point of saying something, then grinned and winked: ‘Well, good luck, Ace. See you.’

‘Cheers, Barbara,’ I responded, and knocked on the door marked Foreign Editor.

I walked the last stretch of the route to the Pradello through St. James’s Park. I needed to think clearly, and that was the one thing I couldn’t seem to do. My mind just wouldn’t stay fixed on anything. It was as if I had been involved in a road accident. I paused by the lakeside, thoughts spinning through my head. And they were all just words, not even as real as the ducks swimming around in front of me, and they hardly seemed real either.

I reached the Pradello a few minutes before one o’clock, made my way across to the bar and ordered a double gin and tonic for myself and a Campari soda for Karen. She appeared just as I was paying for them. I kissed her on the cheek, picked up the two glasses and indicated an empty table. She unzipped her quilted anorak and draped it over the back of her chair. She was wearing one of those harlequin jumpers—all multicoloured diamonds—and she looked about ten years younger than her twenty-eight years. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. ‘Here’s to us,’ she said, touching her glass against mine. ‘So how did it go?’

‘I’ve just been given the sack,’ I said.

She stared at me. ‘Oh, Jim,’ she whispered.

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. ‘Technically I’ve just been informed that my employers deem me supernumerary to staff requirements. I’m redundant.’

‘I don’t know what to say, Jim. Didn’t Bob …?’

‘Bob said that Kyle’s been tightening up on anything that might offend his friends in Africa. No whistle blowing. No making waves. No exposés. All he’s interested in is his balance sheets. What does it matter to him where the profit comes from?’ I looked across at Karen, her eyes had lost their moistness, and were beginning to blaze. ‘All that research,’ I said. ‘Pierre’s pictures.… A heap of bloody ashes.’

‘The bastard,’ she said. ‘The dirty, rotten, Fascist pig bastard. Binney must have guessed this was coming, but I never thought …’

‘I’m not the only one, Karo. Anyone who’s any good is out. According to Bob I was wired home last Saturday only the cable never reached me. I suppose Makuba was sitting on it. You know, I still can’t believe this is really happening.’

A waiter came and handed us menus. I had no appetite at all. Karen ordered fish soup and an egg salad. ‘I’ll have the same,’ I said. ‘And a carafe of the house white.’

‘So what are you going to do, Jim?’

‘I haven’t a clue,’ I said. ‘My first idea was to get the story together and offer it to Dixon at The Observer, but Bob says Kyle would be sure to slap an injunction on it. Legally, he’s within his rights apparently. It would have been different if I’d gone out to Africa freelance, but I could never have afforded it. And, besides, I needed the firm’s cachet to open doors. The weird thing is I’m better off financially at this moment than I’ve ever been in my life, thanks to the Big Pig’s conscience money. At least it means I won’t have to grab the first hack job which comes along.’

‘What does Bob suggest?’

‘Bob? He seems to think I should lie low for six months and write it up as a book.’

Karen put her head on one side. Her blonde hair curled in under her chin. ‘Why don’t you?’ she said. ‘You could, couldn’t you?’

‘I’m only good for working to deadlines.’

‘No, seriously,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you? Go and have a talk to Maggie about it. Perhaps she’ll be able to get you a commission or something. She does a lot of that.’

Up to that moment I hadn’t given Bob’s placebo suggestion more than a cursory acknowledgement but now, as Karen breathed upon it, the spark began to glow in the darkness. ‘Yes, I suppose I could do that,’ I said. ‘She’d want to see a synopsis or something, wouldn’t she?’

The waiter arrived with our soup. Suddenly I discovered that my appetite had revived miraculously. I downed the rest of my aperitif, poured out two glasses of wine and reached for my spoon. ‘So tell me what you’ve been up to while I’ve been away,’ I said. ‘How was Christmas?’

After lunch I walked with Karen as far as Bedford Street. She worked for a theatrical agency which had its offices in Covent Garden. We arranged that she’d come over to the flat on Saturday evening. In the meantime I’d try to draft some sort of outline that I could show to her literary agent friend. But no sooner had she vanished round the corner than I felt unreal all over again. It was as though I needed her within touching distance to supply me with validity. It reminded me, painfully, of what I had gone through when Sheila and I had split up four years before. But it was too much to hope that some other Bob Cowans would come floating down through the London haze to rescue me a second time.

I spent the rest of the afternoon back at the flat trying to knock out something I could show to Maggie. When Peter got back from the Beeb at half-past five all I had to show for my efforts was a wastepaper basket overflowing with screwed-up rejects. ‘Is there anything quite so impressive as the creative mind in full spate?’ he mused. ‘What are you up to, Jimbo?’

I told him what had happened. He said all the commiserating things I’d expected him to say and then, at his suggestion, we opened up one of my duty-free bottles and drank to Monroe Kyle’s everlasting perdition. ‘So what now?’ he asked.

I explained what I was attempting to do. ‘The trouble is,’ I concluded, ‘all along I’ve been aiming at a ten to fifteen thousand word exposé. I could maybe stretch it out to twenty-five thousand but that’s the absolute limit. No way is that going to make a saleable book.’

‘It has to be fact, does it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, couldn’t you make a novel out of it? You know the sort of thing. Peter Thingummy’s done it—that Guardian bloke. Don’t they call it “faction”?’

‘You mean Peter Nieswand’, I said. ‘But that’s dif—’. And then, all of a sudden, I saw it. ‘Christ,’ I murmured. ‘You’re absolutely right, Pete. It’s all there. Even that C.I.A. stuff I know but can’t prove.’

‘Even Kyle,’ he said with a grin.

‘Even Kyle,’ I echoed.

‘Exotic setting; international intrigue; gratuitous violence; loads of kinky sex and the gross Fascist Monster Monroe Kyle snarling in the background. You’ve got it made, Jimbo! Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, will be absolutely intentional. All we need to do now is to find you a good working title. How does “Up the Makuba with Princess Di” grab you? You’re bound to sell the serial rights to Woman’s Own. Sight unseen, for a hundred thousand at least.’

By the time Karen turned up on the Saturday evening I had hammered out the rough draft of a serviceable plot. I also had my precious tapes and notes together with a selection of Pierre’s pictures. Looking through these had brought home to me the near impossibility of making acceptable fiction out of some of the things I had seen with my own eyes. I found myself recalling a poem of Auden’s about the Novelist, which concluded with the depressing couplet—

And in his own weak person, if he can,

Must suffer dully, all the Wrongs of Man.

and I began to realize something of what I was taking on.

Karen read through what I had written and then started browsing through Pierre’s photographs. She reached the one which he had captioned ‘Soroti Incident’, glanced at it, then dropped them on the floor and bolted for the bathroom. I gathered up the scattered prints, restored them to their envelope, and then thrust it away into a drawer of my desk.

Karen reappeared a couple of minutes later, squatted down in front of the gas fire and rested her head on her bent knees.

‘Sorry about that, Karo,’ I said. ‘But I did warn you, didn’t I?’

‘But who could do that?’ she whispered.

‘We think that particular one was the work of the M.P.A.,’ I said. ‘But it could just as easily have been someone who was out to discredit them. It’s a madhouse out there. Whole villages are being wiped out for nothing—just for the sheer hell of it. And I’m aiming to make a novel out of that. An entertainment, for God’s sake! It doesn’t make sense, does it?’

‘Then why are you doing it?’

‘Why does a mountaineer climb a mountain? I’m doing it because it’s there—because it’s in me. I’ve seen some of those things with my own eyes, Karo—not just pictures of them. I can’t kid myself they didn’t happen just because it suits Kyle’s book to have it kept quiet. And even if it doesn’t do anything else, writing about it should at least help me to stop feeling so bloody sorry for myself.’

And there’s no doubt that I did feel sorry for myself. All that first week following my being kicked out o. . .