Still feeling weary from her short trip to America, Susan made her way later than usual down the motorway in her red Vauxhall Astra, which her father had passed down to her a few years earlier. Her mobile rang. Although it was illegal to talk on the phone and drive, Susan thought it best to answer. No one called her on this number unless it was important.
She heard the Minister’s voice on the other end. It was the first contact she had had with her superior since the protest fiasco in Washington.
“Sir, I must apologise…,” she began before he cut her off. “Never mind that, Susan. The PM isn’t bothered. In fact, he rather thinks it’s the sort of thing that will help us in the PR process to come. That’s why I’m calling. Can you meet me for lunch at the Members Dining Room at one o’clock?” The Minister had never invited Susan to Parliament.
“Of course, sir,” she replied.
“Splendid,” he said back almost before she had finished her sentence. “Oh, and Susan, odd thing. I’ll say more this afternoon. It appears that demonstration in Washington had something to do with one of the Americans. Or somebody inside the Embassy compound anyway. American intelligence have questioned a few of the vandals they picked up after that Marine’s macho stunt with the sword. They say the thing may have been organized by one of your young geniuses. Some ingrate millionaire’s brat with an activist streak, no doubt.”
Susan could hardly believe her ears. Almost out of breath, she asked, “Do they know which one, sir?” “No, no. But whoever it was used the alias RuPaul in communication with the people outside. Whatever that means.” He ended abruptly, “Speak to you soon.” The dial tone returned.
Momentarily troubled, Susan’s thoughts quickly turned to the adventure that awaited her that morning. She would check in with Hiba at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, then walk the thirty minutes or so to the coach station on Buckingham Palace Road. There would be nowhere to park there, and the Houses of Parliament were on her way back to her office. She could collect Daniel’s things, check them at the security desk at the Palace of Westminster, dine with the Minister, then load Daniel’s things into the Vauxhall and pay him a surprise visit in Oxford. It wasn’t too far back to Buckinghamshire from there, but she could even sleep at St. Hilda’s if it got too late. There was nothing pressing at the FCO the next day.
Susan pulled the car down into the garage beneath her office building and ascended to the third floor, where Hiba sat at the reception desk just outside the elevator doors. Susan self-consciously explained her task for the morning. “It’s the least I can do you, know. Imagine being in a foreign country without your things. Where would Mr. Perrin even begin trying to solve this problem alone? We’re so close to the station here anyway. Fortuitous, I should think.” Hiba raised an eyebrow. Susan set her own bag down in her office and returned to the elevator.
The weather was noticeably cooler than the day before, with grey skies more typical of the season, which had been unusually sunny until now. Susan loved these truly English days, especially when she could be out on the streets, walking with purpose. She decided to leave Birdcage Walk and skirt the top of St. James’ Park, which was almost deserted at the start of the workday. She then turned right onto Buckingham Gate, where the Palace stood before her. Susan smiled to see the royal standard at full mast, indicating Her Majesty was at home, among her people in the capital.
She then turned left on Buckingham Palace Road, passing fast food restaurants serving the last wave of commuters on their way to government office buildings. On both sides of the pavement there were tourists wandering with their maps open, newly arrived at the station. A loud rumble of thunder overhead got everyone’s attention. At that moment, Susan ducked into the coach station, where the stench of urine immediately hit her nostrils. She made her way to the information kiosk, where a tiny Irish woman named Siobhan walked her to the unclaimed baggage storage area and swiped her keycard to open the door. It was a cavernous space. Although Susan had never been an avid cinema-goer, the room reminded her of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the eponymous religious artefact was finally stashed and forgotten about. What, she wondered, had been lost and never recovered here over the years?
Susan’s hopes were fixed on the red ribbon Daniel had mentioned. She soon spotted a worker throwing bags onto rickety metal shelves, and she asked him where she might begin to look. His name was Alfie, and he asked to see Susan’s government identification, which she pulled out of her wallet. He did not look closely. Just covering his arse. Alfie reported gruffly that there were actually quite a lot of bags with red ribbons on them. “Sumfink the Yanks do now, I reckon. Want to stand out, innit?” Then Alfie broke the bad news. Except for the last few batches of bags to come into the warehouse, all of them had been emptied of their contents, which had been hauled away and destroyed. The empty bags went last, because they were bulky and harder to get rid of. Big rubbish lorries came once a month or so.
Nonetheless, Alfie waved his arm at the room as if to invite Susan to poke around. Suddenly she remembered the satchel. “Oh! What about a small item? Like a handbag? Would that be mixed in with all these cases?” Alfie was visibly annoyed about the continued distraction from his sorting, but he asked, “I fought you were lookin’ for a case. You looking for a handbag then, miss?” “No,” she replied, “a satchel. You know, a soft briefcase with a strap.” Alfie motioned for Susan to come over to the door of another little room inside the larger space. He reached under the desk and produced half the prize of Susan’s quest. “This it?” She opened it up and found Daniel’s Discman, the Nick Cave cd, a little book called The Icy Fire: Five Studies in European Petrarchism, and, surprisingly to Susan, a new laptop computer still sealed in plastic wrap. The welcome packet that Hiba had been instructed to give him was there too. She closed the bag, slung the shoulder strap across her body, and came back into the main area, determined to complete the rest of her mission.
In the row of shelves to her left, she spotted various ribbons and stickers decorating the bags. She grabbed one with a reddish-pinkish hair bow. She doubted it was the right case, but she laid it down and began to open it up anyway. The zipper was already undone and it flopped open easily. Empty. She grabbed another one with faded red rubber bands wrapped around the handle, and its contents, too, had already been removed. She walked the length of the room scanning up and down, just to get a sense of the scale of the challenge she faced. There were flashes of red on every set of shelves, which were triple-height, and they teetered easily as Susan reached up to take hold of a bag on the second or third rung. She decided to start over again closer to where Alfie was working.
Sure enough, she found bags there with things in them, and she paused for a moment to consider the intimacy of the activity she was engaged in. It would be awkward enough to find Daniel’s underwear; but what did these strangers leave behind for her to discover? Did people ride buses across Britain with illegal drugs or sex toys or stacks of cash? She was generally naïve about other people’s perversions, and she found herself concealing embarrassment when she heard co-workers talking about matters she considered uncouth.
Despite her concern about uncovering contraband, each new case was just as boring as the one before: clothes, toiletries, old lady smells, young man smells. The ordinariness, in fact, began to nauseate her. Finally, she looked up to the third rung of the next set of shelves, and she saw what had come for. It had to be. The ribbon was unmistakably red. The bag, however, was pushed too far into the middle of the shelf for her to pull it down, or rather, knock it down, from where she stood beneath it on the floor. She shook the shelves for a few seconds, and a bag perched on the edge come flying down, nearly crowning her. Alfie was nowhere to be seen. She would have to climb.
With Daniel’s satchel resting under her left armpit, and wearing a lightweight purple woolen coat and the same black shoes with the small heels she had had on her feet at the ambassador’s reception in Washington, Susan cleared some bags from the second rung and slid her body up onto the platform, which suddenly seemed much bigger than it had appeared from the ground. Perhaps ten feet by ten. She then stood up, still unable to reach into the middle, and uncertain how to get up to the top shelf without a ladder or a boost. She jumped and tried to grab the bag three times, each time feeling more acutely aware of the weakness of the structure that supported her. Her shoes were sturdy, but wholly inappropriate for balancing herself on flimsy plywood laid on a metal frame. Finally, she decided to jump a fourth time, but now she would pull herself up and onto the top plank in one quick motion. She could use her bodyweight to fling her up to the next rung, before she eased the suitcase and then herself down to the second tier, and finally to ground level.
This was mad. Was it worth the risk for Daniel? Or was it more about succeeding at the task now than anything else?
Emerging from the staff toilets and spotting Susan perched up high, Alfie shouted “Oi!” But it was too late. Susan had made the great leap, pulling on the top rung as her body failed to fling, instead tipping the balance of the rickety structure’s weight. Her right shoe flew off her foot. Daniel’s satchel slid from under her armpit to behind her back. The whole set of shelves toppled over, and she was thrown to the ground underneath the metal bars and a pile of other people’s possessions.
Alfie shouted for a medic.
