The Hidden Assassins

For Jane and my mother and Bindy, Simon and Abigail

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

‘The Second Coming’ W.B. YEATS

And now, what will become of us without the barbarians?

Those people were a kind of solution.

‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ CONSTANTINE CAVAFY

The West End, London—Thursday, 9th March 2006

‘So, how’s your new job going?’ asked Najib.

‘I work for this woman,’ said Mouna. ‘She’s called Amanda Turner. She’s not even thirty and she’s already an account director. You know what I do for her? I book her holidays. That’s what I’ve been doing all week.’

‘Is she going somewhere nice?’

Mouna laughed. She loved Najib. He was so quiet and not of this world. Meeting him was like coming across a palmerie in the desert.

‘Can you believe this?’ she said. ‘She’s going on a pilgrimage.’

‘I didn’t know English people went on pilgrimages.’

Mouna was, in fact, very impressed by Amanda Turner, but she was much keener to receive Najib’s approbation.

‘Well, it’s not exactly religious. I mean, the reason she’s going isn’t.’

‘Where is this pilgrimage?’

‘It’s in Spain near Seville. It’s called La Romería del Rocío,’ said Mouna. ‘Every year people from all over Andalucía gather together in this little village called El Rocío. On something called the Pentecost Monday, they bring out the Virgin from the church and everybody goes wild, dancing and feasting, as far as I can tell.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Najib.

‘Nor do I. But I can tell you the reason Amanda’s going is not for the parading of the Virgin,’ said Mouna. ‘She’s going because it’s one big party for four days—drinking, dancing, singing—you know what English people are like.’

Najib nodded. He knew what they were like.

‘So why has it taken you all week?’ he asked.

‘Because the whole of Seville is completely booked up and Amanda has loads, I mean loads, of requirements. The four rooms have all got to be together…’

‘Four rooms?’

‘She’s going with her boyfriend, Jim “Fat Cat” Maitland,’ said Mouna. ‘Then there’s her sister and her boyfriend and two other couples. The guys all work in the same company as Jim—Kraus, Maitland, Powers.’

‘What does Jim do in his company?’

‘It’s a hedge fund. Don’t ask me what that means,’ said Mouna. ‘All I know is that it’s in the building they call the Gherkin and…guess how much money he made last year?’

Najib shook his head. He made very little money. So little it wasn’t important to him.

‘Eight million pounds?’ said Mouna, dangling it as a question.

‘How much did you say?’

‘I know. You can’t believe it, can you? The lowest paid guy in Jim’s company made five million last year.’

‘I can see why they would have a lot of requirements,’ said Najib, sipping his black tea.

‘The rooms have all got to be together. They want to stay a night before the pilgrimage, and then three nights after, and then a night in Granada, and then come back to Seville for another two nights. And there’s got to be a garage, because Jim won’t park his Porsche Cayenne in the street,’ said Mouna. ‘Do you know what a Porsche Cayenne is, Najib?’

‘A car?’ said Najib, scratching himself through his beard.

‘I’ll tell you what Amanda calls it: Jim’s Big Fuck Off to Global Warming.’

Najib winced at her language and she wished she hadn’t been so eager to impress.

‘It’s a four-wheel drive,’ said Mouna, quickly, ‘which goes a hundred and fifty-six miles an hour. Amanda says you can watch the fuel gauge going down when Jim hits a hundred. And you know, they’re taking four cars. They could easily fit in two, but they have to take four. I mean, these people, Najib, you cannot believe it.’

‘Oh, I think I can, Mouna,’ said Najib. ‘I think I can.’

The City of London—Thursday, 23rd March 2006

He stood across the street from the entrance to the underground car park. His face was indiscernible beyond the greasy, fake fur-lined rim of the green parka’s hood. He walked backwards and forwards, hands shoved deep down into his pockets. One of his trainers was coming apart and the lace of the other dragged and flapped about the sodden frayed bottom of his faded jeans, which seemed to suck on the wet pavement. He was muttering.

He could have been any one of the hundreds of unseen people drawn to the city to live at ankle height in underground passages, to scuff around on cardboard sheets in shop doorways, to drift like lost souls in the limbo of purgatory amongst the living and the visible, with their real lives and jobs and credit on their cards and futures in every conceivable commodity, including time.

Except that he was being seen, as we are all being seen, as we have all become walkers-on with bit parts in the endlessly tedious movie of everyday life. Often in the early mornings he was the star of this grainy black-and-white documentary, with barely an extra in sight and only the sporty traffic of the early traders and Far East fund managers providing any action. Later, as the sandwich shops opened and the streets filled with bankers, brokers and analysts, his role reverted to ‘local colour’ and he would often be lost in the date or the flickering numbers of time running past.