Former solicitor Roger Butters is a native of Stafford, where he still lives.

Apart from writing, he is interested in philosophy, history, chess, Shotokan karate, and Shakespeare. His published works include several novels historical, epic fantasy, crime, and humour. !ogether with local historian "ick !homas he has recently completed a detailed history of Stafford.

Roger Butters

THE DAY OF APOLLYON

#opyright Roger Butters !he right of Roger Butters to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section $$ and $% of the #opyright, &esigns and 'atents Act ()%%. All rights reserved. "o part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Any person who commits any unauthori*ed act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. A #+' catalogue record for this title is available from the British ,ibrary. +SB" )$% (%-)./ 01- 2 www.austinmacauley.com First 'ublished 321(-4 Austin 5acauley 'ublishers ,td. 20 #anada S6uare #anary 7harf ,ondon 8(- 0,B

'rinted and bound in 9reat Britain

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Richard 3:Slim;4 !yrrell, former SAS officer, now keeper of a wildlife centre <ana Russell, his assistant The Armed Forces: Hugh &alrymple, 9eneral #harles Forster, Rear=Admiral >ames +verson, Brigadier #olin 5c#abe, #olonel, ? ,uther Smith, ,ieutenant=#olonel ? &uggan, ,ieutenant=#olonel ? 5ac&onald Seville, 5a@or ? Redfern, #aptain ? Forrest, RS5 ? 'rivate FoA, a man who said "o ?

'arachute Regiment &uke of 7ellington;s Regiment

Other cons !r"tors: 9uy Belyan, former @unior minister, now a Telegraph @ournalist Abraham 5arkham, industrialist Arthur Hughes, former leader of the ,abour 'arty Sir Ralston Billiers, entrepreneur >ohn Aldridge, senior civil servant, the !reasury The #ed!": 5oira Cyle, @ournalist, Belyan;s eA=wife !eddy #hivers, game show personality #ynthia 7ilkins, contestant on his show Frank !anner, BB# sports commentator Brian Staley, ditto, athletics ,angham, Belyan;s photographer

Ath$etes "nd O%%!c!"$s: 5it*i Hand, 8nglish Dlympic long=distance runner 'amela Sara*en, her coach Arnold 9regg, #hair of the BAF Dlympic committee 9eoff #ollins, coach Sergei &avidov, Russian team manager AleAandrina "e@medinova, Russian long=distance runner FranEoise 'arat, French middle=distance runner #liff >ohnson, American shot=putter Po$!t!c!"ns "nd D! $om"ts: Stephen ++, Cing of 9reat Britain #hris ,eamington, 'rime 5inister Hubert Briggs=>enkinson, Speaker of the House of #ommons &udley Simmonds, shadow Foreign Secretary 5ichael D;Hara, 'resident of the Fnited States "oel 5ortimer, Bice='resident 9erald 5cAughtry, Secretary of State, and special envoy to "orthern +reland Ronald &ietrich, Secretary of State SaAon 7eissmuller, #hief of Staff and Five=Star 9eneral The Re"$ IRA: !he #ommandant ? 5onaghan ? 7alsh ? 5ick Regan ? Guinn ? &anaher ? members of the Army #ouncil South &erry Brigade A$so: 5arcus !yrrell, !yrrell;s son, Australian botanist #arlos &elgado, Argentinian @ournalist

Pro$ogue:
!he 5onument

H8 R+&8R was a slim, youngish man, clad in denims and a windcheater a si*e too large. His mount was grey, the saddlebags, insect trap and frame 6uadrates bouncing at its haunches giving him something of the air of the 7hite Cnight. High to the south, the sun bla*ed without warmth from a pale cloudless sky. A grove of sapling birch beside the lake still bore the withered leaves of last autumn. He reined in and consulted his watch as the shadow=man beside him did the same. !hree minutes to noon. 8arly for lunch, but he had not eaten since seven. He watered his mare in the shallows, dismounted and unpacked. 7ith the mercury at a cool ) #elsius he chose a place in the sun, a flat=topped glacial boulder serving as seat and table combined. Dccasionally he rubbed his hands together, wide= brimmed Australian hat tipped over his eyes. Sunglasses and gloves were no use in this @ob. He sat facing the 9reat 5onument. !he first time he had been so close, though he had seen it from a distance often enough, and pictures were common. A hundred=foot cross in rough=hewn granite, it towered above the saplings around, the shadow from its base pointing north like the hand of a monstrous sundial. So this was it. :Shrine of the mighty. #an it be, that this is all remains of theeH; ... He loved this northern land, with its cold, clear air I the land of forest, lake and glacier, so different from the stifling heat back home. "ot that he had anything against the land of his birth, but his real home was here, where his heart was. 7ith luck his settler;s permit should come through shortly. +t had been a successful morning. A few metres inside the

lip of the 9reat #rater he had discovered a clump of the pasture grass Cynosurus cristatus, further evidence that the tundra was in retreat. +t might be a new sub=speciesJ being an alpine it had flowered and seeded early. Removing specimens without permission was illegal, but he;d taken photographs and a few seeds. As a native species, it was listed for propagation without licence. 7hen the permit arrived, he;d buy a few acres in #astle= town 5arsh, where land was dirt cheap. !hen he;d build a cottage of stone and timber, and have a garden with all the old wild=flowers in it, and a lawn of ryegrass, fescue and clover. He wouldn;t weed it too often, because that meant killing things. !he stream at the bottom would be stocked with fish perch, gudgeon, bream and minnow. And he;d find a girl to share it all with ... He drifted into pleasing reverie. A red and black butterfly landed on a thorn=bush nearby. Vanessa atalanta, at the eAtreme edge of its rangeJ they were rare this far north, especially in spring. !hrough the leafless trees around the monument he could @ust distinguish some of the words on the plinth :... +" !H8 9R88C !D"9F8 HA!H H+S "A58 ...; !he mare shifted her feet nervously and whinnied. +t;d be a long walk if she bolted. :Steady, girly,; said the man, in closed Antipodean vowels. !he cause of her unease proved to be a medium=si*ed dog, fawn and white, lowering its head cautiously but moving its tail from side to side. :Hello, dingo.; !he man opened his last sandwich and threw the animal a piece of cheese, which it sniffed at and devoured. :!hat;s all, sport. All gone.; !he dog remained wagging its tail a while longer, then gave up and trotted away. From the reeds a skein of geese took off with whirring wings and cries of alarm. &isturbed by another dingo, perhaps. !he increase in human coloni*ation since the milder weather meant that wolves were uncommon south of the lake. His guess was wrong, for seconds later the bushes rustled and parted to reveal another horseman, dressed in furs like a mid=western trapper of olden times. !he Australian stood and

raised an arm in greeting. :9ood=day.; :9ood morning.; !he rider was a powerful young man, five years his @unior, and swarthier than any Australian. He dismounted and shook hands vigorously. :#arlos &elgado. From the Argentine archaeological eApedition across the lake.; 8Acept when pronouncing his name, his voice bore no trace of Spanish infleAion. 8ven more unusually for a South American, the accent of his adopted language was that of Britain, not the Fnited States. :'leased to meet you. #offeeH #an;t offer you anything to eat. >ust given my last piece of cheese to a dingo.; :!hanks.; !he newcomer s6uatted beside him as he unplugged the flask and poured. :Kou like dogsH; :All animals really, but especially dogs. Dne or two come round our camp every night for scraps, poor bastards. !hey;re friendly enough.; :Racial memory, perhaps.; :5aybe. !hey;re all mongrels by now, of course. Found anything interestingH; :&on;t ask me, +;m only a @ournalist. !he eAperts seem 6uite pleased so far. But of course all the best stuff;s under water.; !he Australian nodded. :Since the ice went the lake;s said to be rising half a metre a year. At that rate it should drain by the twenty=third century.; :+ don;t think my editor can wait that long. + came for a few photographs of the monument to keep him happy. Kou a geologistH; :Botanist. Attached to the Australian "orthern Research #entre at "ew &arwin.; He sipped his coffee. :Kou speak good 8nglish for a South American.; :+;m from the 5alvinas. 8veryone;s bilingual there.; :5alvinas, ehH &o you know 5c#abeH; &elgado smiled. :5y grandfather.; !he Australian raised his eyebrows. :#oincidence. 5y name;s !yrrell. 5ark !yrrell.; :!yrrell,; repeated the other after a long pause. :So Slim

!yrrell was ...; :5y father.; :Hell of a man. +;ve read his biography. &o you mind if + include you in the photographH A !yrrell on the steps of the 9reat 5onument.; !yrrell shrugged. :+f you like. But +;d feel a bit of a fraud. +t all happened the year before + was born.; !he Argentinian brushed his ob@ection aside. :Better still. #onceived at the moment of destiny. !he caption,; he continued with an eAtravagant gesture, :will read L Si monumentum requiris ...M ;

P"rt I The Pro&$em

I
+
! 7AS a bright cold day in 5arch, and the clock above the #ivic Dffices showed eleven=fifteen. +n the main street below a 6uarter of the shop=fronts were boarded up. Apart from its usual load of plastic rubbish the river oo*ing beneath the Southgate Bridge contained a couple of vandali*ed shopping trolleys and a traffic cone from the interminable road works nearby. "either did work on the half=completed new civic centre show any sign of being resumed in the near future. Dn a 5onday, #astletown was less busy than usual, but shopping still involved picking one;s way through a sterile forest of street furniture and bollards, and running the gauntlet of youngsters riding mountain bikes along the pavements. Dthers shambled, oblivious to their surroundings, all attention on their mobiles. Dn the crossing outside the supermarket a motorist playing rap music on his car radio failed to give way to a teenage mother pushing a buggy. :Fuckin; dick;eadN; she yelled, with an obscene gesture. !yrrell ignored the incident and walked on. :'acket of fags, chiefH Dnly a tenner.; !he speaker was a grubby young man with an earring through his nose, wearing a baseball cap back to front. !yrrell shook his head. :&on;t use ;em, thanks.; !he man shrugged and offered them to the neAt passer=by, a girl of about fifteen. She stopped and fumbled in her bag. He would have no difficulty selling at that price. !he 6uasi=criminal status of smoking meant that to buy cigarettes over the counter involved registering as a #lass # drug addict, purchasing a licence at an annual cost of O)11 3halved for senior citi*ens, free for students and those on benefits4, and attending an annual weekend seminar at which a succession of sanctimonious lecturers attempted to make smokers see the

error of their ways. !he latter constituted an eAperience of such eAcruciating boredom that many opted to pay the O(,011 fine for non=attendance. !hese re6uirements, and an avalanche of claims by lung cancer victims, had resulted in a black market in cigarettes, mostly run by the same people who dealt in ecstasy and crack. !his youth was offering them at a big discount on the legitimate price, but they were probably adulterated somehow. At the supermarket !yrrell was delayed ten minutes while random searches were carried out on customers ahead of him. +n a singularly pointless eAercise, another two or three were searched upon leaving. Apart from catching the occasional unlucky shoplifter, such searches never yielded positive results, but the public had to be convinced that something was being done about terrorism. 8very week the media carried stories of more plots being foiled through the ceaseless vigilance of the police. How many people swallowed this was difficult to say. Few alleged terrorists ever appeared in court, and most of those who did seemed to be loudmouthed nonentities or internet fantasists. 5any so=called plots appeared to have been instigated by government agents provocateurs. +f convicted, defendants were invariably sentenced to colossal terms of imprisonment. 5ore often suspects were not even charged, but eAtradited to the Fnited States, where they received even more draconian punishment. By the time !yrrell left two beggars had taken their pitch nearby, sitting on the pavement with caps in front of them and notices round their necks. Both claimed to be homeless and hungry. !his was a common sight nowadays, though his father, born in ().(, had told him he had never seen a beggar on the streets of #astletown until he was nearly thirty. Dne was a bearded middle=aged man, accompanied by a dog somewhat cleaner than himself, the other a pasty=faced girl of about twenty with a defeated eApression. Female beggars were comparatively uncommonJ prostitution was more lucrative, it being estimated that about (1 per cent of teenage girls and nearly a 6uarter of young single mothers supplemented their income in this way.

5ost of the beggars; fellow=citi*ens hurried by affecting not to notice. !yrrell gave them each a fiver. He had no idea whether they were genuine or not. Bery likely they wereJ it didn;t do to be too cynical. "ot about individuals down on their luck, anyway. And if he was being conned, for the amount involved it didn;t matter. A couple of minutes walk brought him to the litter=strewn waste of the car park. Repeated bomb scares meant that bins were now a rarity. Dne thing he always noticed when returning to this country from continental 8urope the streets and car parks were filthy. Better parking here than in the road, anyway. An army of traffic wardens enforced the law rigorously, whilst considering it no part of their duties to prevent malicious damage. !yrrell was proud of his car, a ().) 8=type >aguar, appeasing his guilt about the environment by keeping his milage as low as possible. Fnfortunately its rakish lines and scarlet paintwork tended to attract vandals, and on this occasion it looked as if he had only @ust arrived in time. Sprawled across the bonnet was a lad with a mohawk hairdo dyed orange. ,ike an estimated twenty=five per cent of youth nowadays he was clinically obese, or in plain 8nglish, grossly fat. !hree others hung about nearby, kicking a dented coke=tin back and forth in desultory and unskilful fashion. All had ponytails, designer stubble and wore earstuds. !heir leader was leaning against the driver;s door a muscular if overweight youth, face crudely daubed with cosmetic, wearing a !=shirt marked :A#=&#.; !he Androgynous ,ook, they called it, popular for the last five years or so even among the hetero= seAual. !he 'olitically #orrect approved, because it avoided stereotyping and enabled young men to eApress the feminine side of their nature. :9oal,; said one of the footballers, giving a lifeless salute. :Fuckin; great goal.; :5agic,; agreed one of his companions vacantly. Solvent abuse, thought !yrrell. Cids; stuff an estimated $ per cent of modern youngsters had graduated to crack. !he youth on the bonnet sniggered and said something of which

!yrrell caught only the word :rupert.; Driginally an Army eApression applied to prattish young officers, it had become eAtended to include anyone lacking in moral fibre, especially the conventional middle=aged. Ruperts wore pin=striped suits, had cushy @obs, believed in the monarchy, voted #onservative, thought the country was going to the dogs, and were totally lacking in physical courage. A portly specimen was @ust entering the car parkJ catching sight of the Andros he stopped, patted his pockets as if having forgotten something, and beat a retreat. A traffic warden, fresh from pasting a ticket on a 5icrocar across the road, decided suddenly that the vehicle merited more detailed inspection, and likewise retraced his steps. !yrrell unlocked the tailgate and heaved his shopping in. !he !=shirted youth stepped forward. He seemed the most formidable, being not only comparatively lucid, but three inches taller than !yrrell, and outweighing him by a good forty pounds. !he rest were giggling amongst themselves and not paying much attention. !yrrell caught a whiff of something that reminded him of paint remover. Some sort of butane compound, perhaps. :Been minding your car, sunshine.; Above all things !yrrell disliked being called :sunshine,; but managed to reply :!hanks,; fairly cordially as he turned the key in the driver;s door. !he youth held the door shut. :!hat;ll be fifty 6uid.; Small=time. Fifty bought less than half a tankful of petrolJ the going rate was twice that. Anyway there was no point in arguing. !yrrell dropped his ga*e and began to fumble for his wallet. !he youth relaAed. 7ithout warning !yrrell drove his right fist deep into the lad;s solar pleAus. He grunted and @ack=knifed as !yrrell;s knee came up to splinter his nose before he fell. !he engine fired first time, and the 8=type was away with a surge of power, the fat youth on the bonnet scrabbling desperately for a handhold, screaming foul=mouthed abuse. !yrrell swung the wheel from side to side, yet still the lad clung on, in tears of mingled rage and terror, sobbing :Kou fuckin; bastard, +;ll fuckin; kill you.; !he wipers came away in his hands. At the

eAit !yrrell stabbed on the brake, then locked the wheel hard over as the tachometer *oomed back into the red. !he youth spun off into the road, and the screaming stopped.

! was @ust possible he had killed the first ladJ his head had hit the tarmac with a dreadful crunch. Dn balance he didn;t think so, but it could well mean a fractured skull. And with a 6uarter of all hospital casualty deaths nowadays thought to be avoidable, you couldn;t be certain he;d make it. !he other one should be all right unless he;d struck his head on the kerb. +t was the fourth time in as many years that !yrrell been involved in a street fight. !wice he had had to deal with motorists who had gone berserk for no apparent reason, once with a couple of would=be rapists trying to bundle a struggling girl into a car in broad daylight while a do*en respectable citi*ens walked by. He was shocked to reali*e how ruthless he had become, but tried telling himself that nowadays you couldn;t afford to be otherwise. +t had to be all or nothing, even against a gang of *onked=out slobs. !he worst thing you could do was half=defend yourself. A lot of kids carried knives, and it was no use having the law on your side when they carted you off to the morgue. He might be traced and prosecuted, but on balance he didn;t think so. !hey;d probably been too high, too thick and too scared to think of taking his number, or even observe the make of vehicle, obvious though it was. And whilst it was now estimated that the average citi*en was caught on ##!B four hundred times a day 3up from three hundred at the turn of the century4, the cameras seemed remarkably impotent when it came to detecting crime. !here were siA supposedly covering the car park. Allowing for those vandali*ed, out of action for technical reasons, or pointing in the wrong direction, he would be unlucky if even a couple had recorded the incident, and their resolution would have been too poor to identify him or his number plate. !he wipers might be a danger, though they didn;t match the carJ 8=type spares had been unavailable for years. He;d buy another set this afternoon, and fiA them himself. After that he

should be in the clear, because hospital administrators, social workers and police between them could usually be relied upon to cock things up. +f convicted he could get five years, or life if the kid died, though the chances were he;d be ac6uitted. >udges hated vigilantesJ @uries loved them. ,iberal opinion would clamour for conviction and a heavy sentence, while the tabloid press would hail him as a hero, a fate he regarded with almost e6ual lack of enthusiasm. !he facts of the case would not concern anyone. 8Acept himself. !he @ourney home took no more than a 6uarter of an hour, by which time he had replayed the incident a do*en times. 5aybe he should have tried arguing first. Kobbos; behaviour was unpredictableJ if you were lucky you could sometimes defuse an ugly situation with a @oke, though usually not if they were on drugs. But they hadn;t seemed as high as all that. Kes, he should have @udged the position better, and tried to reason with them. Anyway he hoped they;d be all right. 5odern kids hadn;t had a chance. !hey represented a third generation of ill= educated youth, dating back to the .1s and $1s of the last century. Df course the unpredictability of human nature meant that however well or badly youngsters were brought up, some would turn into useful citi*ens, and others would go wrong. All that modern culture had done was ensure that with each generation the proportion of socially disruptive increased. !he young were taught all about their human rights but nothing of their duties, or any sense of personal responsibility for their actions. Bad behaviour was attributed to autism, allergies or Attention &eficit Syndrome, illiteracy to dysleAia. 5eanwhile the mass media continued to convey the message that the most important thing in life was fame, the second most important money, seA third, and nothing else mattered much at all. #hildhood had virtually been abolished. #ompulsory seA education from the age of five ensured that children knew more about A+&S and condoms than about the 8nglish language or simple addition. Cids as young as siA attended discos and wore !=shirts with seAually eAplicit

slogans. As with most social problems, television made matters worse, so=called children;s programmes being more suited to retarded teenagers. Hosted by manically cheerful presenters, they conveyed the message that life was some sort of cretinous @oke. By contrast, teenage soaps encouraged youngsters to behave as sulky, inarticulate rebels, for whom petty feuding with their elders and one another was the norm. !he continuing obsession with +! meant that few of them had ever read a book all the way through. !hey were taught little of 8nglish history, and that in such a manner as to promote contempt for the past, particularly their own ancestors. !he very eAperts who had insisted that lessons should be stimulating had been responsible for the one thing guaranteed to produce boredom abolition of any form of effective discipline. "either teacher nor parent dared lay a finger on a child for fear of legal proceedings, and punishment as severe as that meted out to a real child molester. 7ith no effective sanctions, bullying had become an insuperable problem, accounting for nearly fifty teenage suicides a year, mostly girls. "othing was ever done with the culprits eAcept shuttle them between schools and encourage them to talk about their problems. +t was generally agreed that corporal punish= ment was morally wrong, and didn;t work. +n fact it hadn;t been tried for over fifty years, and nothing else seemed to do much good. ,eft to their own devices, children didn;t know what to do with their time. Health and safety regulations ensured that they were protected from any perceived risk, however remote. 8Aaggerated fear of paedophiles meant that many parents taught them that the world was a perilous place infested with murderous perverts. As a result they grew up neurotic and cowardly. !echnological forms of amusement had almost completely replaced outdoor activity. ,ike their parents before them, they were the fattest, worst behaved, and though slaves to the latest fashion, the scruffiest people in 8urope. !heir weight problems stemmed not so much from unhealthy food as dieticians claimed, but simply from eating too much. Dver the last five years the average age at death in the FC had fallen for the first

time, from %-.( years to %2.$. !he obese generations born in the late twentieth century were starting to enter the statistics. !he standard of education in 8ngland remained the worst in the western world, well below that offered in most developing countries, though no British government, teacher or parent would admit such a thing. 'rivate employers alone acknowledged the truth, that at least a third of school leavers were unemployable by anyone with any sense. +lliteracy was estimated at 21 per cent 3over 20 per cent among boys4, and had any reasonable standard been eApected the figure would have been higher still. !he youth unemployment rate was impossible to ascertain, disguised as it was by university attendance for all and sundry, useless governmental schemes, and a plethora of unnecessary @obs in the public sector. 5edia=obsessed youngsters ac6uired either meaningless 6ualifications or none at all, while nursing ambitions to become film directors, models, footballers or pop stars. 5any lived their lives by proAy, through the antics of celebrities or characters in soaps. Dthers drifted into a life=style of mindless music, sub=literate teAting, computer games, drugs and boo*e, casual seA, and half=baked crime. !heir language, that reliable indeA of self=control, was unrelievedly foul. !yrrell wouldn;t have changed places with any of them, for all that he was a 6uarter of a century nearer the grave. Dnly ruperts resented and envied the young.

II

"

8P! 5DR"+"9 !yrrell woke at a 6uarter to seven. "ot until autumn would he have to get up in the dark again. He spent ten minutes lying awake before rising. Dne of the luAuries of civilian life, and self= employment, was that he could please himself about such things. He ate no breakfast beyond cereal and a cup of tea, but found time to browse through the Mercian Star from the previous evening. !onight;s paper would be the important one. +f the lads had sustained serious in@ury it would probably merit half a column, otherwise not. 5ere punch=ups nowadays were not worth reporting. As ever, he took a deep breath as he stepped out of the door, glanced at the sign saying :#astletown 7ildlife #entre,; and told himself how lucky he was. !wo hundred acres, or eighty hectares as they were now supposed to say, of Dld 8ngland, woodland and heath, and apart from the gatehouse and converted stables he occupied, not a building on the place. +t would remain that way so long as he owned it. But how long would that beH According to a recent 8F directive, slavishly adopted by the British government, #astle= town needed (1,111 new houses, and !yrrell;s land was ideal for building. Db@ections to development were invariably overruled. +f local authorities failed to grant permission, national government did so on the grounds of the housing shortage. +n fact with houses and flats throughout the country standing empty, and prices sustained at absurd levels by government intervention, the shortage was of affordable housing rather than housing itself. But compared with the danger of an economic downturn if the building industry lacked work, that didn;t matter.

"either did the loss of green belt land. !here was money to be made, besides which governmental and public concern for the environment was on the wane. !he scare about global warming had fi**led out over a decade earlier, when sceptics like !yrrell had been vindicated by the discovery that temper= atures had not increased since the 5illennium, and the amount of carbon dioAide in the atmosphere seemed to make little difference. +n the ()$1s meteorologists had been wrong in predicting an imminent ice ageJ half a century later it seemed they had been wrong again. However, since politicians and scientists had staked their reputations on it and attempted to stifle any debate on the topic, they had refused to admit their mistake, substituting the eApression :climate change,; which was harder to define or measure. A more immediate problem was the supply of energy. Dil and gas reserves were running low, and what was left was mostly concentrated in countries of political instability and hostility to the 7est. Biofuels had proved even more environ= mentally destructive than fossil fuels, wind and wave power were hopelessly inade6uate, and 9reen opposition to nuclear energy had delayed its introduction until too late. A recent danger sign was the occasional uneAplained power cut. !yrrell prepared for the future by using a wood stove, keeping a supply of candles, and wrapping up when necessary. Ket despite successive British governments continuing to get things wrong, little practical damage had ensued. 7hilst fuel costs continued to soar, now taking up nearly a third of the average family budget, on a wage of siAty thousand a year this made little difference to most people. &espite constant complaints of hardship they still en@oyed a standard of living way beyond that of most of their ancestors, apart from their parents, who had flourished during the pampered 5illennium years. !he success of the growth economy culture depended upon people buying things they didn;t need and couldn;t afford. !he ma@ority lived beyond their means on borrowed money, and periods of galloping inflation ensured that their debts were effectively written off. Anyone who attempted to provide for

the future by saving money was a fool. !yrrell;s upbringing, and the habits of a lifetime, meant that in this as in much else he was a maverick. He had no mortgage, never failed to clear his monthly credit card, and invested most of his savings in gold. !his morning he was out and about by half=past seven. His chief assistant, Bob Cingsley, who occupied the gatehouse, was already at work on a section of hedge damaged by deer the previous day. A cheerful, middle=aged, corpulent man, unattached since his divorce three years ago, and forever vowing to cut down on cigarettes and beer. #ountry born and bred, he had taught !yrrell more about woodcraft than he had learnt in three years in the SAS, plus the forgotten arts of hedging and thatching. He loved all animals eAcept grey s6uirrels and magpies, which he shot, and rats, which he set his dogs on. !yrrell never killed anything. !he two part=timers arrived soon after eight. &arren Radford, 2-, had worked at the centre nearly two years, having overcome !yrrell;s mild pre@udice against earstuds, designer stubble, and the name &arren. Finally there was Sally 5iles, a horse=mad lass whose father kept the nearby stables at Hartwell. She ran the tourist shop and acted as guide in summer, when the centre was open to the public. +t wouldn;t have paid, but for the ecology subsidy from Brussels. 8uropean bureaucracy had its advantages. At a 6uarter to eleven !yrrell and Radford, after planting some sapling oaks near the eastern boundary, made their way back to the cottage for mid=morning coffee, which regardless of modern anti=seAist protocol was always prepared for them by Sally. !his time they found her kneeling on the floor ashen= faced, administering #'R to Bob Cingsley, whose normally florid compleAion was livid yellow. !he ambulance arrived within a 6uarter of an hour, ten minutes later the local hospital confirmed him dead on arrival, and !yrrell was short of his chief assistant. He had lost friends before, especially in the Army, and would lose them again. 5any of them had been closer than Bob Cingsley. So it didn;t bother him that much. Bery little

did bother him nowadays. He didn;t belong to the modern school of thought which encouraged public displays of grief to demonstrate what a feeling person one was, whilst para= doAically treating the funeral as a carnival, and celebration of the deceased;s life. !here were times when it was appropriate to be 6uietly sad, but not to simulate grief one didn;t feel. He;d go to the service and behave respectfully, and commiserate with the dead man;s family, if any, but that was all. !he high unemployment rate ensured plenty of replies to his advertisement for a replacement. A self=imposed eAile from the world of technology, !yrrell used e=mail as little as possible, although surface post, hived off to a number of private firms of varying degrees of incompetence, was eApensive and unreliable. 7hen calling at the offices of the Castletown Chronicle the following 5onday he was therefore agreeably surprised to find that there were already eight letters awaiting him. SiA were from women, which was to be eApectedJ women had more empathy with animals, and many young men seemed to consider hard physical work beneath their dignity. Since the worker he had lost was a middle=aged hetero= seAual white male, he had a comparatively free hand in choosing a replacement. !he men were soon disposed of. Dne was not even semi=literate, and the other, whose name was 5ohammed Chan, referred to himself as black. !his meant either that he was a black 5oslem who had changed his name upon converting, or that he was an Asian or north African who did not not know what race he was. 8ither way, in !yrrell;s book that made him a fool. Dne of the women also failed the literacy test. Df the remainder, one was confined to a wheelchair, and one lesbian. !his meant that on legal grounds he might have difficulty in re@ecting them without interview, but he did. &isability was a misfortune, not a privilege, and the work would have been far beyond any but the able=bodied. Anyone who proclaimed her seAual tastes in a @ob application was also likely to be trouble. !hat left a short=list of three, one of which he had not yet opened.

He had deliberately left it until last. +t was ten years since he had seen the handwriting, so neat as to be almost characterless. Ket even in these untutored days there must be many women with writing like that. Fnlikely, surely, that it was from her. He took a deep breath, slit the envelope and unfolded the contents. He was half amused, half irritated to discover that his hand was not 6uite steady. +t was a single sheet of notepaper, with printed address but no phone number. !elephone pests were so common that no woman with any sense revealed her number eAcept to close friends. Fnlike the envelope, the contents had been printed on a computer.
BoA "o. (/. #astletown #hronicle 5ill Street #astletown #". 28# 0th 5arch, 21/2 &ear Sir, + should like to apply for the @ob of assistant at your wildlife centre, as advertised in yesterday;s Castletown Chronicle. + have no 6ualifications for the post, but the advertisement mentioned that enthusiasm and willingness to learn were more important. + enclose a brief c.v., plus stamped addressed envelope, and am available for interview upon a short appointment. 5y telephone number 3daytime and evenings4 is #astletown 0.202.. Kours truly, <ana Russell 35iss4

!he first thing he had ever said to her was, :&o you pronounce it <ahna or <aynaH; And she had said, :+ prefer <ayna. 5y real name;s Su*annah, but + can;t stand it.; So he had always called her <ayna after that. !he other piece of paper was headed Curriculum Vitae. "one of the other applicants had thought to include such a thing or for that matter the SA8, and it was spelt correctly. +t read

Born #astletown, ..2.12. Status Single. "o children. 8ducated St. 'atrick;s #onvent, #astletown. ,eft >uly 21() with "#FA8 ,evel 2 passes in % sub@ects, vi* 8nglish ,anguage, 8nglish ,iterature, French, 9erman, History, Art, 5athematics and 9eneral Science.

"#FA8 stood for "ational #ertificate for Academic 8Acellence, the e6uivalent of the old 9#S8, though even less intellectually demanding. 7ith its pass rate of over )$ per cent, cynics had been known to suggest the acronym :"obody #an Fail Anything 8ver.; +ndeed failure suggested to !yrrell such an Qlite blend of sloth and stupidity that curiosity had occasionally tempted him to consider employing one of those unsuccessful, if he could ever have found such a person. +nteresting that her sub@ects were so traditional. And there were several departures from political correctness, which could have earned her an official reprimand had he felt inclined to report her. 3Since such deviant applications were invariably far superior to those from the '#, no private employer ever actually did this.4 !he salutation :&ear Sir,; addressed to an unidentified stranger, should have read :&ear 5adam or Sir.; She should have mentioned her race, to assist with positive discrimination 6uotas, but for various compleA reasons to do with seAual orientation and harassment, not her status. +ndeed the :5iss; at the end was a deliberate flouting of convention if not of law, all women now being officially 5s. Finally she should not have said that she had no children, since this was construed as discriminatory against women who had children and eApected their employers to provide facilities such as creches. She went on to mention her work eAperience. She had kept no @ob for much more than a year, but never been out of work longer than siA months at a time. Second amongst them was the one he knew. :!rainee legal eAecutive at 5essrs #urtis R !yrrell, Solicitors, #astletown, &ecember 2121 to >anuary 2122.;

8mploying her in the absence of his senior partner had led to one of their many rows. :Kou shouldn;t have set her on without speaking to me,; #urtis had grumbled. :But you were away.; #urtis had taken between three and four months off every year, what with holidays, nerves, bottle trouble, and personal crises of one sort or another. :+ got back at the end of the week. And why the hell choose a nut case like herH She used to be a nun, for #hrist;s sake.; :"ovitiate, actually. She never took the vows.; :7ell, whatever. "aSve little thing I doesn;t know anything about life at all.; :She knows how to spell,; !yrrell had said, :which gives her a start on most of the youngsters we;ve employed recently.; He had given her a brief literacy test, a practice which a few years later had become officially designated as discrim= inatory against dysleAics and therefore illegal, not that that stopped many employers doing it. :She;ll have to go, anyway. Dur neAt trainee has to be male, black, lesbian or disabled. 7e;ll have the 86ual Dpportunities #ommission after us again.; :+ think we can get round that. She had a nervous break= down last year, so technically she still counts as disabled.; :+ told you she was a nut case,; announced #urtis with sour satisfaction. :Bad=tempered little tart, too.; He was referring to the fact that when reinterviewing her as he insisted, he;d made a half=baked pass, whereupon she;d thrown a cup of tea all over him. !hat was the real reason he;d wanted to sack her, but !yrrell had refused, and employment protection legislation, with @ustice for once, had supported him. She;d finally left of her own accord a month after he;d left himself. For some reason she had chosen to do so rather than wait for the inevitable dismissal from #urtis, though in the latter case she would probably have been entitled to five=figure compensation. Her last employer, whose name she offered for the purposes of reference, had been a firm of solicitors in

Hampton, who had chosen her for redundancy at the time of their last rationali*ation three months ago. 7hilst she did not say so, she had probably been chosen because she was white, healthy and heteroseAual, and they needed to keep up employ= ment 6uotas of the disadvantaged. #ome to think of it though, she was left=handed, which might help if the '# people started getting at him. 9overnment time was being provided for a private member;s bill called the Sinistrality 3"on= &iscrimination4 Act which was likely to obtain 6uick passage through the #ommons. !yrrell printed out five brief but courteous re@ections on his aged 5ac. !he two possibles he put on one side in reserve. As for <ana Russell, he thought of ringing, but something stopped him. !hen he typed
#astletown 7ildlife #entre, ,ashley Hill, near #astletown. #"% )A, !el 3(($%04=%.())0 %th 5arch, 21/2 &ear 5iss Russell, Dr since we knew one another years ago perhaps + might still call you <anaH How nice to hear from you again. + should be very pleased to see you here for interview on Friday, (2th 5arch, at (( a.m., if that is convenient. +f not, please give me a ring to arrange another time. Best wishes, Kours, Richard !yrrell

He checked the letter through. &ue partly to its brevity, it contained so far as he could tell but two departures from '# :5iss; should have read :5s;, regardless of her own wishes in the matter, and offering to call her by her #hristian name 3or more correctly, forename4 without invitation might have been construed as seAual harassment, although since he had known her previously he might have got away with that. 7ere it not for the fact that even nowadays at least )1 per cent of people

were sane, it would have been virtually impossible to carry on business correspondence at all. He went through it one final time to ensure that it would make the right impression. Friendly, but brief and not over= familiar. 5ore than a faint suggestion that he would be genuinely pleased to see her again, but nothing to which she could take eAception. He nodded thoughtfully, folded it over and sealed the envelope.