Control had heard mention of Strontian on the televised morning bulletin and bought a Daily News at the news stand beside his office building. He reached his desk, laid down a briefcase, and began to read. It was easy to raise one hand in an abstracted wave to “welcome back!” greetings as he turned pages where yesterday’s story was given bloody flesh. He scanned the account with detachment, rehabilitated and absolved from guilt.
He enjoyed that first morning back at work. His manager had begun with a conspiratorial “not a word, not a word” and been extremely solicitous. An unasked for review of salary was immediately to be undertaken. “We will do what we can, but please don’t expect too much,” had been the gist of it. Control wondered what on earth his Company had been told, for he had been adjured, “when you get back to work, velcro it completely. Not a word about where you’ve been, nothing at all. Everything is taken care of. Be the strong, silent type. Don’t overcook it. Go easy on the mystery.”
“Don’t go pressing him about where he’s been,” the line manager had instructed all colleagues. A clinching “he’s had a difficult time of it, I believe, a very difficult time,” stymied the curiosity of all co-workers.
Control had been re-invented as a hidden depth, a complexity; the sort who cast more than one shadow.
When the two imported interrogators had finished with him and returned whence they came, Comb-over had re-entered his life. Initially they had a number of sessions designed to rehabilitate and excise ‘John’ the activist from memory. “You must regard John as a non-person,” was how Comb-over had repeatedly put it.
Comb-over, whom Control remembered with great affection, had latterly touched upon the trickiest situation – the involvement of Silas. “The boy broke the golden rule,” Comb-over had informed him. “Silas went rogue and caused the death of a Commission official.” Control had been deeply shocked, then fearful. Happily, his protestations of innocence had been believed, although he had endured some searching questioning before being dropped from the investigation of Munro’s accident.
“Forget Silas,” Comb-over had instructed, “put him out of your mind. The law will deal with him. He started a fire, well what of it? We have him on a murder charge. He will be supping porridge for a decade at least.”
The matter of Control’s cell, three frightened idealists, was readily dealt with. “They will be useless but keep them going for a bit. Reassure them. We are a kindly lot. People make mistakes and experience contrition. We understand that. However, not a word to them about all this. We do not want it known that you have spent time with us, it’s insecure.”
Control felt spiritually elevated on his return to the outside world. He had been recruited as a watcher of green activism and instructed to become a card carrying member of the Green Party (‘everyone starts in this way’, Comb-over had assured him) with an honorarium and expense account which he was to use tellingly, but sparingly (‘taxpayers foot your bills’). A ‘consideration’ makes a contract legal, Comb-over smiled. They had parted on almost intimate terms not long after Control’s lunch with the expensive suit and Eton accent.
On his return from work that evening, Control strolled buoyantly up to the park entrance and used the chalk mark code for a crash meeting at nine o’clock. He made the rendezvous on time and waited until eleven, but nobody showed.