NIGHT WATCHMAN Read online

  NIGHT

  WATCHMAN

  By

  Rolf Richardson

  Copyright © Rolf Richardson 2017

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  The moral right of Rolf Richardson has been asserted.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

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  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

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  1

  MARCH 9th.

  Captain McGregor felt he was somehow responsible for the Leaning Tower. This was nonsense, but his was perhaps the butterfly effect that triggered it off. Chaos theory suggests that the future is beyond predicting, because the flapping of a butterfly in the Caribbean may eventually lead to a typhoon in China. Tiny initial cause, massive final effect.

  McGregor’s trip to San Francisco was routine, no suggestion of any flapping butterfly. Routine peck on the cheek for wife Jane, before setting off in his BMW. Routine drive from his home in Maidenhead to Heathrow, on this occasion rather better than normal, because the M4 was not the usual parking lot.

  The first hint that ‘routine’ might not be the appropriate word came at flight briefing. It seemed innocent enough at the time, just a note from Captain Melville, the airline’s head of training, that co-pilot Alan Hardaker had only recently converted onto the 747: his landings still tended to be ‘arrivals’, and needed some polishing up.

  As an old hand on the Jumbo, McGregor was familiar with the problem. Ever since Wilbur and Orville invented the flying machine, pilots had relied on the Mark One Human Eyeball to get themselves safely back onto terra firma.

  Until the 747 came along. The first clue that something different might be needed came early on, when a Boeing test pilot undershot the runway, badly damaging his company’s new toy. This monster was not only twice the size of anything that had gone before, but the cockpit was located on the upper deck and the landing attitude was nose up; this meant the main wheels of a 747 were so far behind and below the pilots they hit the ground when the Human Eyeball thought there was still a long way to go.

  Years of visual experience had to be discarded. You were not about to land in that field beyond the end of the runway, it just looked that way. The drill became to trust your instruments, or the special visual approach slope indicators Boeing had been forced to install at every major airport, and just fly the slope until the radio altimeter registered fifty feet. Then you started to think about putting her down. At the thirty feet call you got serious. For new boys this last bit might be something of a controlled crash, but it was safe. And once your Mark One Eyeball got the hang of the new conditions, you’d be touching down without upsetting the customers. First Officer Hardaker only needed a bit more experience and he’d be greasing in the Jumbo with the best of them.

  McGregor mentally filed the training captain’s note and studied the pre-flight information. A time of ten hours forty one minutes, on the great circle route across Greenland and Arctic Canada, approaching San Francisco from the north. On a Mercator map it looked an odd way of getting there, but it was actually the shortest and avoided some nasty headwinds further south.

  The Met forecast warned of moderate Clear Air Turbulence (CAT) north of Scotland. After that, a nice smooth ride. In spite of many years and umpteen millions spent trying to crack the problem, CAT forecasting remained little more than guesswork. These bumpy bits were usually just irritating, very occasionally scary. In either case there was little you could do except strap them in and take your punishment.

  Their destination was going in for a light westerly wind, with the chance of sea fog. You hardly needed to be an expert to make such a forecast. Every picture of the Golden Gate Bridge has downtown ‘Frisco swathed in a white mist, murky and cool, while across the bay in Oakland it’s sizzling.

  Although the airport lies on the lee side facing the bay, fog is unpredictable stuff. McGregor remembered watching one display, the fog rolling in over the hill, threatening to blanket the airport, but the air warming just enough in its downward path to melt the fog just before it reached ground level.

  Yes, fog was unpredictable, which meant the trip’s script wrote itself. The usual formula was for pilots to share the flying, so McGregor, as captain and the more experienced, would take the more challenging first sector into San Francisco. Alan Hardaker, new to the 747, would fly the return into Heathrow. Good old familiar Heathrow. Home territory. Just the place for a tyro first officer to polish up his landings.

  No one realised it at the time, but a butterfly had flapped its wings.

  2

  Rather to his surprise, Damian White MP had come to enjoy his surgeries. Like many a budding politician he had started off with grandiose notions of changing the world. The Mother of Parliaments beckoned in all its glory. He would help make Britain a place fit for heroes. Etcetera.

  He soon discovered that the Mother of Parliaments was a decrepit rabbit warren that would have been condemned as unfit for human habitation by most local councils. Worse still, the rabbits - members of parliament - that scurried around its corridors, were a fractious lot, agreement on any subject as rare as virgins in a brothel.

  We’re not talking here about ideological differences between parties. Winston Churchill put it in a nutshell, when showing the Commons chamber to a new colleague, who commented: ‘So we sit here, facing the enemy?’ ‘No, no,’ replied Winston. ‘Facing us is His Majesty’s Opposition. You’ll find the enemies on our side’.

  All political parties are uneasy alliances of big egos, with little in common bar a thirst for power. Warfare is constantly simmering below the surface, often to erupt into open conflict.

  But party members have to agree for parliament to function. The alternative is anarchy. You can think what you like, but party bullies - the Whips - are on hand to make sure you toe the line for the serious stuff: the voting. Then you do as you’re told.

  On this basic principle Damian all too often found himself at loggerheads with the party he represented. The Tory member for Mid Oxon not only thought for himself - that wa
s bad enough - he also voted according to his beliefs. The French have a word for such behaviour: ‘insupportable’.

  Damian White was ‘insupportable’. Every party has a sprinkling of such characters, who are usually tolerated as examples of what a broad church that party is. The press loves to snipe at the usual voting by party edict, so anything that softens this image is seen as good PR. However, if the government has a slender majority, just a few mavericks may bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. Then they become truly insupportable.

  Damian, like the others of his ilk, soon realised that taking the maverick path was to abandon all hope of political preferment. No front bench for him. So he joined the ranks of parliamentary plodders, many sitting there unrecognised by the world at large for thirty, even forty years. They were the essential cannon fodder for when the division bell rang. Their lack of ambition was tacitly appreciated by the party bosses, who always had more than enough predators fighting for the top jobs.

  Backbenchers did little harm. Except when the government had a slender majority and they became mavericks.

  With no ministerial career in prospect, Damian White MP, was in his constituency office plying the other political trade open to him, his ‘surgery’; a combination of agony aunt and general listening dogsbody. It was a mystery why the country’s legislators - the people who ran the whole shebang - also had to concern themselves with what amounted to minor domestic matters. But Damian had come to accept and then rather enjoy these meetings.

  The man sitting opposite him, a Mr. Morgan, was thickset, almost bald, early fifties, and had a dustbin problem.

  “Never bloody empty ‘em properly,” he complained, adding: “Well, they empty ‘em sure enough, but not all of it in the lorry. Rest of it goes all over the road. Bloody mess. And do they bother to clear it up? Do they hell!”

  A common complaint. Damian poised his pen over a sheet of paper and asked: “May I ask where you live, sir?”

  The man winked. “Your old stomping ground. Know what I mean?”

  Damian could guess. “Blackbird Leys?”

  “Got it in one.”

  It was well known - in fact, it helped get him the job - that Damian White was a local lad, born and raised in Blackbird Leys, a dormitory estate on the eastern edge of Oxford. Its reputation was.... let’s just say that if a felony had been committed in the city, the blue flashing lights of Thames Valley police could often be seen heading towards Blackbird Leys.

  Damian wrote down Mr. Morgan’s address and promised to do what he could about his bin problem. Without much conviction. It was a County Council matter and the best he could hope for was to rattle a few cages. As the local MP, his words might carry a bit more weight than the fellow sitting in front of him, but that wasn’t saying much.

  Business done, Mr. Morgan should have got up and left. Instead, Damian heard him say: “Saw you play for West Ham. Never forget that goal you scored against Chelsea: edge of the box, two defenders left for dead. Bang! Into the right hand corner of the net. Fantastic!”

  Damian smiled. “Yea, those were the days.” He suspected that some people came to his surgeries not to discuss rubbish collection, but to chat about old times. To chat with a celeb. Because, that’s what he’d been: a star of the back pages. The striker England had been looking for. Another factor that had helped him to his present job.

  “A shame they was cut short,” continued Morgan. “Your playing days.”

  Damian shrugged. “Water under the bridge.” He always tried to make light of it. Pointless having regrets. But he’d never forgive that brutal defender from Ivory Coast, who’d hit him with a two-footed tackle. The only punishment had been a red card and one week suspension, while Damian ended up with a broken leg. Mended okay, but he was never quite the same again. In his prime, Damian White had been light and lean, with an explosive acceleration off the blocks. Some said he’d been faster over twenty yards than the legendary king of speed, Usain Bolt. A nightmare for defenders. But a promise never fulfilled, thanks to that bastard from Ivory Coast.

  “Followed you later on Strictly,” continued Morgan, who seemed disinclined to leave.

  Damian didn’t mind. As a subject for discussion, his career was better than dustbins.

  “Yea, lot of fun, that. My leg might have had it for scoring goals, but it was no problem for dancing. Mind you, I had a good partner.”

  Another wink from Morgan. “But not popular with the missus.”

  This was scarcely news. It had filled the gossip columns for weeks. How ex footballer Damian White had partnered the lovely Lucille in Strictly Come Dancing, won the event, but lost his wife.

  “No gain without pain,” he said. “Wouldn’t be sitting here now, if it hadn’t been for Strictly.”

  “Running the country, eh?”

  Damian grinned. Morgan did a nice line in humour. He replied in similar vein: “Nothing more important than fixing your dustbins.”

  Morgan finally got to his feet. Held out his hand. Said: “Thanks for the natter, Damian - may I call you Damian?”

  “I believe you just have.”

  “Best MP we ever had. Might even vote for you next time.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “The Whisky man, they call you. Black and White. No offence, I hope.”

  “Of course not.” Damian had lost count of the number of times he’d heard this.... well, it had become a term of affection. Endearment. Black and White. Because his name was White, while his skin was Black. Actually, more the colour of milk chocolate than the dark bitter stuff. Even so, unusual for a Conservative member of parliament in the shires.

  3

  As the door closed behind Morgan, Damian sat back and relaxed. No hurry. Nowhere particular to go. Since the Lucille affair, Mandy and their two kids had taken over the family home, leaving Damian with an apartment in Wheatley for constituency work and a flat in Pimlico for when Parliament was sitting.

  The Lucille ‘affair’. Only it wasn’t. That’s what made it so damned annoying! Lucille had been ready and willing, that had been plain. Dancing is a close contact sport and the whole country had seen them at it. Week after week.

  The press had stoked it up. Damian had always been the sports editors’ darling, the cheeky chappy about to transform the miserable record of team England. When that promise had been cruelly cut short by Ivory Coast, their adulation had transferred to the dance floor. Athletic, good looking, charismatic, Damian had been the bookies’ favourite from day one. He had not disappointed.

  Everyone had assumed that his vertical embraces in front of the judges had led on to horizontal ones in the bedroom. Everyone, including his wife, Mandy. In spite of constant denials - that he had done the decent thing, resisted, been a gentleman - no one had believed him. Least of all Mandy. Might as well have indulged Lucille, after all, he thought, bitterly. That would have made his marriage break-up almost worthwhile.

  Life was shit!

  Damian sat up straight. Pull yourself together man! You have a job many people would kill for. ‘Water under the bridge’ was what he’d said to Morgan. Time for positive thinking.

  For the thousandth time he marvelled at how a little ‘whisky’ boy - black skin, white name - had come to represent the people of Mid Oxfordshire in parliament.

  Going back to pre-history, how had he come to acquire the surname White? Caribbean names have nothing in common with those in West Africa, even though that’s where most of them came from. Slaves transported to the Americas lost not only their liberty, but also their identities. Life before transportation didn’t exist. Today a roll call of Caribbean names is almost exclusively European: like cricketers, Richards, Sobers, Lara, Lloyd, Walcott, Weekes and Worrell. Nothing remotely African. Had Damien’s distant ancestor been sold to a Mr. White? Or had the slave master merely had a warped sense of humour? Named a black slave White? He’d never know.

  What Damian did know, because his father never tired of telling him, was that grand
dad had been a ‘Windrush’ man. For a black man in Britain this was an accolade similar to an Aussie being able to trace an ancestor back to the First Fleet of convicts that arrived in New South Wales in 1788.

  The MV ‘Empire Windrush’ had left Jamaica in 1948 with just 492 passengers, among them Joshua White. Most had no idea what they would do when reaching the other end, so they drifted up to the big city, which apparently needed cheap labour. It was the start of what turned out to be a flood of humanity from the dying empire to the mother country.

  Joshua found himself a job on the ‘tube’ - the London Underground - and settled in Brixton. Married a girl newly arrived from Barbados and had three children, the middle one being Errol.

  By the time Errol reached adulthood, the black community in south London was well established and the younger lads were looking for pastures new. So when White junior saw an ad for job vacancies at the Cowley motor works, he was off.

  Unlike areas of south London, which soon became almost all-black ghettoes, Oxford was more racially mixed. So it came as no surprise when Errol fell for a girl from the other end of the old empire, India. Like him, Rosie had been born in England, but her parents came from Bombay.

  When their first born came along, they named him Damian, for no particular reason except it sounded nice. The lad grew up with an interesting mix of genes, Errol being large and solid, although not overly tall, and Rosie barely topping five foot. It was due to Rosie that he stopped growing after reaching a modest five foot eight inches; thanks to Errol that he inherited his superb African physique.

  Damian was the ideal recipe for a West Ham striker: strong, supple, not overburdened with weight, he could turn on a sixpence and be off before the defence could gather its wits. On the dance floor he had the balance of a ballet star.

  Unfortunately, top level sport can be a brutal mistress and fate, in the shape of a lunging tackle from Ivory Coast, had cut him off in his prime. Ball skill and his subsequent battle against injury had made him a minor celebrity. This had led to Strictly Come Dancing and more public acclaim. But being a TV personality wasn’t a career. Damian needed a purpose in life. He found it in a most unlikely quarter: politics.