CHAPTER 3

The UK

‘Clock the tits on the tom.’

There was little else to relieve the dismal street scene, a foreground of rat-gnawed garbage sacks, McSqualor burger wraps and discarded shopping trolleys, a backdrop of vandalized tenements fronting crack and gambling dens, shebeens and property-fencing operations. Location, location, location. This was as good as any, as no-go as it was going to get. Situation vacant, situation desolate, a grey existence that put the low into life and offspring into local authority care. The police rarely came here, cabs never. It took twenty seconds to purchase your drug of choice, perhaps twenty minutes for your firearm. Inner city that had no inner soul; working class without work or class; Babel languages that spoke resentment, wrote graffiti, on every landing, in every corner.

The two men sat in the front of the dirt-brown, urban discoloured Honda, one sipping sweet tea from a disposable cup, the other resting his head on a hand and watching the hooker as she jelly-rolled into the wasteland distance. Local villains appreciating local brass. She was not one of theirs, made a living blowing punters for a fiver, spent a life blowing fivers to unpick scabs and find a vein. Across the road, a young mother with an old mottle-chapped face, legs cake-mix crammed into spandex leggings, floored her toddler with a cuff that had the subtlety of a rabbit-punch. It sat, shocked for a moment, then opened its mouth for a mucous bawl. She pre-empted, screaming obscenities, and yanked it to its feet.

‘Dig the parenting skills,’ the driver observed behind the rim of his cup.

A sigh cut with cynicism from his colleague. ‘Heart-warming, one generation passing knowledge to the next like that.’

More street theatre. A mongrel canine defecated beneath a rusting child’s swing, an empty rum bottle balloon-exploded on an improvised tip piling next to outsize drum bins. Truants kicked a football to each other, would get round to kicking the dog. Needle match in needle alley. Even the ball was deflating. An argument, a blast of ragga, a slammed door. The dog trotted over, ears and body low, to sniff submissively at a pit bull. Bad mistake. It came off worst and dodged away yelping.

‘Know how he feels,’ the tea drinker said. ‘S’how my missus treats me in the mornings.’

‘Bet she doesn’t do that, though.’ The driver nodded in the direction of a woman wandering across a patch of concrete, clutching a carrier bag. She squatted briefly on her haunches, a puddle streaming between her feet.

‘Jesus. Don’t they teach them the basics? Straight off the fucking African plain.’

‘Straight off the fucking plane from Africa.’

‘Have ovaries, a few quid, TB, a couple of English words, practice at doing a signature, and they’re over here having kids, free housing, and laughing.’

‘Laughing in our bloody faces. Wanna nick her?’

‘Nah. Wait ’til she does solids.’ The man had flicked out a handset, was making a call.

An average day. On a hundred gas cookers, pans would be boiling off water to leave a cocaine-baking powder residue; in a hundred rooms, wraps containing magenta-coloured rocks of crack would be swapped for cash; in a hundred vignettes of piss-soaked pleasure and paranoia, emaciated humans crouched in corners to follow a ritual, pursue a euphoric nightmare, feed an addiction. Cut shavings of pure potency from the small lump, push into metal gauze at the base of a glass pipe or knocked-through miniature liquor bottle, heat with a lighter flame, and draw a lungful of captured mist, captured enrapture. Let it in, let it out. Instant locomotive-rush, mind-fuck, the great brain robbery. Cookery for beginners. Advanced practitioners added a squeeze of lemon, a dash of warm water, for solubility and injection. Few graduated with their faculties intact.

The telephone conversation ended. ‘Cascade lines are going crazy. These guys are hooked, won’t stop ringing.’ They were also cautious, double-checking the contact details given on the faked business cards.

‘The dreads are wising up.’

‘So are we, so are we.’ The cup drained. ‘Just hope the Brussels are right.’ Brussels equalled brussel sprouts, which in turn rhymed with snouts. Office slang for informants.

‘Office sorted out the cash?’

‘Enough for eight kilos of charlie, ten of speed, and a bit for the teen club confectionary assortment.’

A low whistle. ‘They could redecorate the whole of the seventh floor for that.’

‘I’ll put it to them. NDR VIU could do with a lick of paint.’ The anti-Jamaican gang squad at New Scotland Yard could do with a bit of luck. The Yardies, with their swagger and effortless savagery, their fondness for small arms, were moving up from the estates, closing on the cosseted, pampered market of Soho and the West End, the bistros, the wine-bars, the watering-holes of gays, PR babes and bankers. The new white man’s burden, where fuckwit chic met bored professionals to create a ready market, and the Yardies piled high the rocks and counted the currency. Thirty thousand sterling per kilo of cocaine, eighteen thousand for a kilo of heroin. Rich pickings.

‘Shit, I’ll be pleased when I hear the Enforcer rams hitting those doors.’

‘They’ll use Remingtons and Hatton rounds on this one.’

‘The bigger the bang, the bigger my smile.’

‘Relax. SO19 are putting in a full-strength firearms squad, SO11 have got their best surveillance specialists on the job, and an army of wooden-tops from Territorial Support are on hand. We do our bit, get a pat on the back. Sweet.’

‘And the usual bollocking from our guvnors for being away for so long.’

‘Saving the world’s like that sometimes.’

‘I’d still prefer to be wired.’

‘There’s no such thing as covert comms when the bad guys feel your collar, look in your arse and ears with a pen-torch. How d’you hide the spare battery?’

‘That’s between me and my gynaecologist.’ Subdued nervous mirth between the pair. ‘At least there’s a tracker on us. What’s the sitrep from the nondy sweeps?’

‘All quiet. They’ve got two plain vans satelliting the area, picking up local gen. Nothing unusual. Well, not for a shit-hole, anyway. I’ve sneaked us some decent wheels, a top-of-the-range Merc from the pool.’

‘How long ’til we change into our gear?’

‘Give it a bit. Say an hour. I’m going for Paul Smith. Bit of colour, bit of gold. You?’

‘Got to be Armani.’

‘Poof.’

The pair of undercover cops made themselves comfortable. This was method-acting, a textbook bust, an operation that had taken months to set up, and would take seconds to close down. They – their aliases – were Essex–East End hybrids, middle-rankers going big-time, dealers from Romford wheeling themselves to the next level, to the Tudorbethan mansion belt and manicured invincibility of the estuary upper-criminal class. Their cover was solid, credentials secure. Well placed to act as interface between white wannabe-junkies and the grim bredren from the Caribbean.

Well placed for the taking. SO10 – Crime Operations Group – the Metropolitan Police elite, without a doubt. Sitting pretty, sitting ducks. Soft and flaccid amateurs processed through the Peel Centre, Hendon, sent to penetrate gangs with the same dreary lack of intelligence, the same predictable scale of incompetence. Neither side understood true mission, real dedication. The Tiger was not concerned. He assessed them from his vantage point, had encountered their type too often. So, they once attended a fortnight specialist course, prided themselves, enjoyed their status. All those stories in the bar, all the envy of other officers. Must be fun. He checked his weapon. Two weeks of theory, a few assignments, against his lifetime training in the drug slums of the city, in the festering cockpit settlements, in cutting off fingers, ears, noses, tongues, genitals, in terminating with efficiency and ease – with enjoyment. An unequal contest.

Drunken bums could relieve monotony or pose a threat. It would go either way. He had materialized without warning, was leering at them, approaching with the unpredictable off-balance gait of defiant intoxication. They could always give him a fright, or a slap, divert him. He halted, swayed, came on in an erratic infant-stagger.

‘Why us?’ the detective groaned.

‘Let’s just see what he does.’

‘We don’t need this shit.’

‘He’s not going to be a dicker for the local gangs in that state.’

‘Don’t care what he is. How ’bout moving the car?’

‘Nah.’ The driver’s hands stayed on his lap. ‘If he causes trouble, we’ll make sure he takes his booze intravenously for the next year.’

‘No fucking w …’ The exclamation trailed as the cop lowered his window to shout at the vagrant unbuttoning himself for a leak against a rear tyre. ‘Oi, piss off.’

‘Hey?’

‘I said sod off. Fuck … off. Okay?’

The man looked confused, then gave a high-proof content grin. ‘Or what, mon?’

‘You piss on this car, we’ll piss on you. Understood?’

‘That don’ scare me.’

‘It should. Step away, you black bastard.’

He ignored the demand, chose to stay, opted to draw a silenced H&K automatic and move to the open window. The Reverend had given his blessing, should be here for this. In Kingston, Jamaica, one in every 150 inhabitants was murdered each year. People could be killed for politics, drugs, lack of respect, spilling a drink, for being in the wrong place, on a whim or according to a mood swing. Or they could die for being two undercover cops whose legends were blown and brains about to follow. It was of no consequence. So they might have families, might lead blameless, conventional, law-abiding, law-upholding existences. They only had micro-seconds to appreciate what was left, to think of loved ones, to hope it was quick, to make ridiculous bug faces. His eyes quelled resistance, always did. He could hypnotize with their stillness, pacify with a stare that drained energy. There, there… the look said. Give up, the look said. It’s over. To Tottenham, London, with love.

The Tiger fired, incapacitating the nearest with a chest shot, before aiming across and putting three rounds into his companion. Back to the closer target, point-blank gunfire into the bucking torso and a coup de grace through the left ear. He followed by emptying the magazine into the body of the slumped driver. Quick, effortless. He sniffed. A smell of scorched flesh, cauterized skin and smoked clothing diffused into his senses. Nothing quite like it. The car had stopped jumping; the corpses continued to twitch in the aftershock. Honda to tenderized-meat locker in under ten seconds. It was done. He ambled away.

* * *

The USA

Some sixteen hours later, it was early evening on the same day in Los Angeles. Choir-practice, MacArthur Park. A handful of LAPD officers had gathered after work to drink beer, bond and loose off at the duck flights coming in to land on the pond. It was camaraderie in the midst of murder territory, the Mexican Barrio, where blacks and Hispanics lived – jostled – precariously on the bottom and meanest rung. To fall or be pushed off was to disappear, to become an indefinite absentee from the austere-white Welfare Office on 6th Street, to progress to indelible statistic. Policing was a euphemism, an irrelevance to an area that had its own code, its own gangs, its own rhythm. In the world around Albarado Street, an existence bounded by medical centres and lavanderias, trade was brisk, racketeering endemic, prices quoted for guns and Green cards, passports and prostitutes. Frontier lands. No one took any notice of the tattered roach coaches drawing up with their poster-painted sides of putrescent burgers and enteritis hotdogs, nor would locals recall the men who spilled out to gather at the memorial to the Hungarian Uprising. Wise not to speak, to get involved. Nine Los Angeles police officers were massacred in the cull, overwhelmed and ripped apart by automatic fire. Not a single witness came forward. Yet a rumour was soon to circulate that the killers had been black.

* * *

The UK

‘They’re burning your books.’

‘And they accuse me of being the fascist.’ Soapwater eyes gazed calmly at Kemp as he stood in the lecture-room doorway.

‘You’ve offended a lot of people.’

There was a stillness in Duncan Pitt, a dry acceptance. ‘Controversy is marketability. I thought giving offence was a cornerstone of democracy.’

‘As is sensitivity.’

‘The best way to stamp out thought is to make it impossible to write or say things. George Orwell, circa 1949.’

‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it. The Kemp family nanny, circa 1960.’

‘Eventually people leave the nursery for the real world.’

‘A shame, in my opinion. May I come in?’

‘Company’s not something I expect while touring. Please do.’ Kemp entered, pulled up an institutional plastic chair and placed himself a few feet away. The professor kept his hands folded, body at ease in its uncompromising rigidity. A state of mind, of attitude. Little would shake him. ‘I was briefed you’d be coming. Security Service?’

‘Home Office.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Knowingness that came without the self-indulgence of a sigh. ‘The disingenuous catch-all. Home …Office. So much more acceptable than Interior Ministry or Thought Police.’ A pause. ‘Should I be flattered you’re here or should you be disappointed at such a bum assignment?’

‘Whichever one appeals.’

‘So, Mr Josh Kemp, whoever you are, from wherever you come, messenger or minder, bag-carrier or senior officer. You’re the embodiment of Whitehall’s nervousness.’

‘Their caution.’

‘Uncomfortable truths terrify power-brokers. It breaks their little conspiracies of silence, their complacency, their lazy consensus, forces them to take a position, to give answers.’

‘Is that what you’re giving?’

‘I simply pose the questions.’

‘The easier option.’

‘Have you ever listened to my lectures?’

‘I’ve read transcripts, heard tapes.’

‘Of course you have.’ Professorial politesse to the point of aloof disdain, soft Bostonian tones and recent Californian inflection that might have overlaid Alabama menace.

‘To the untrained ear, they sound more like political rallies.’

‘And to the untrained mind. Mr Kemp, I have a duty to be honest.’

‘You have a responsibility to those who are carved up, mutilated in your name.’

‘The corpse in the Thames? I was wondering how long it would take for the British authorities to search for a scapegoat.’

‘I thought that was your speciality.’

‘Flippant and cheap, Mr Kemp. Lunatics will be lunatics, serial murderers will murder, however they legitimize their actions.’

‘You’re quite a neat hook.’

‘Racially motivated violence exists not because of my comments, but because no one is allowed to comment. Patriotism is frowned upon by the ruling elite, so it turns ugly, becomes nationalistic; nationhood is pooh-poohed, so disgruntled alienation replaces it. Look around, see the rise of the far right in Austria, Italy, France, Germany. When core culture is undermined, decent folk feel threatened.’

‘Decent folk with shaved heads and swastika tattoos? Decent folk who firebomb migrant worker hostels?’

‘Thugs hijack an agenda when the mainstream won’t discuss it.’

‘Is that your prognosis for Britain?’

‘The symptoms are there. You’re told to be embarrassed of your history, to apologize for your past, for being white and Christian. You can’t wave the Cross of St George, so it’s adopted and debased by soccer hooligans; you can’t fly the Union Jack – it’s offensive, you’re told, to racial minorities – so it’s stolen by extremists. Debate is quashed, and vocabulary and tolerance vanish with it.’

‘Point made.’

‘And taken?’ Pitt raised an eyebrow. ‘Legitimate concerns, basic tribalism, human instincts, go sour – then rotten – if they’re forced underground. They need an outlet.’

‘You?’

‘I’m merely an academic.’

‘Albert Speer was merely an architect, Heinrich Himmler started out as a poultry farmer.’

‘I have fought fanaticism all my life, Mr Kemp. It’s why I put up with the venomous protest, the demonstrations, the ignorance, the howls of abuse. Label me a Nazi and you misunderstand everything I’m about.’

‘Why is it then, that every time your name is mentioned, commentators equate you first with Deutsche Leitcultur, and then with the Ahnenerbe, the SS ancestral heritage unit?’

‘That merely reflects on the commentators themselves, the impoverishment of their vocabulary, the subjective hysteria surrounding the issue.’ Irritation disguised with a thin smile. ‘Ahnenerbe sought to link an Aryan future to a golden mythic past. I do no such thing. I have no Hitlerite fantasies, no political agenda.’

‘And Leitcultur?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the concept of a primary culture, Mr Kemp. It’s what gives societies their cohesion, their soul, nations their stability.’

‘It’s often a short step from a belief in primary culture to a belief in superior culture, from identifying second-class citizens to creating Untermenschen.’

‘And from placing them in ghettos to sending them on cattle-waggons to the gas chambers and crematoria. I’ve heard the arguments.’

’You don’t accept them.’

‘My research conclusions may be disturbing to some, but I’m no crank or Blackshirt, nor am I of a totalitarian bent. I hate to disabuse you, but eugenics never went away.’

‘Its proponents simply got madder.’

‘Far from it. You’ll find that in the field of psychology my views are considered sound and fairly orthodox.’

‘So, multiculturalism stinks?’

‘Multiculturalism is mongrelism, multiculturalism is for countries that lack vision or confidence, that have chosen to cut their own throats.’

‘You’re surprised people call you a racist?’

‘I prefer the term empiricist. Name me one ethnic melting-pot which thrives in the long term, in which tensions and imbalances do not eventually bring it down.’

‘You might be surprised.’

‘By your country? I doubt it. Within the next fifty years, whites in America will become a minority. In England, it will take until the end of the century. It’s already happened in your cities of Birmingham and Leicester; in London, white schoolchildren are outnumbered. That’s the two greatest powers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries voluntarily committing suicide, the first time in history major indigenous populations have opted to become minorities rather than having it imposed by war, famine or disease. It would be foolish to ignore the impact.’

‘Or to talk it up.’

‘I’m not attempting to rabble-rouse. It’s a serious point, an explosive mix. Historians will ask – why did it happen, how did white Western European civilization allow itself to be eradicated, its values, traditions, identity, nationhood, the past that gave it Mozart, Goethe and Shakespeare, the Kings and Queens of England, displaced? Without a shot being fired, a vote being cast. Surrender.’

‘To inferior races?’

‘To different races, to modern imports.’

‘And to blacks. It always comes down to them, doesn’t it, professor? Your real bugbear. What happened – you had an Afro-American babysitter you didn’t like?’

‘Quite the opposite.’ A hand smoothed down hair rusting-grey at the temples. ‘My views formed after extensive study and analysis as an adult. Have you ever been to Africa, Mr Kemp?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘I lived there. For ten years, on and off. And I’d like to rub the nose of every activist, every bleeding-heart proselytizer who bleats about cultural roots and historical wrongdoing, in the ripening flesh of every corpse I’ve ever stepped over on that continent.’

‘Perhaps you’d better stick to the lecture circuit.’

‘You know, there’s a joke that circulates quietly among white minorities in Africa. It goes – what’s the difference between a tourist and a racist?’

‘What is the difference?’

‘About a week.’ There was little jocularity to the delivery.

‘Your time there plainly coloured your perspective.’

‘Put black Africans on an island rich in natural resources and raw materials, educate them and give them the rule of law. Go back in a thousand years and see. There will be civil war, disease and starvation, dictatorship and corruption, appalling cruelty, and not a single building over one storey high will have been constructed.’

‘Or you might find a Mandela.’

A controlled snort of derision. ‘For every Mandela, there are ten Mobutus, a thousand Mugabes; for every Mandela, there are the thieves and bandits who succeeded him.’

‘I’m more of an optimist.’

‘But are you colour-blind, Mr Kemp?’

‘I try to be.’

‘How successfully?’

‘You’re not exactly the master-race yourself, professor.’

‘Touché.’ Pitt was unfazed.

‘Lucky I don’t mind redheads.’

‘A black minicab driver rams your car. Do you think, you damn fool? Or do you think, you frigging black bastard, you ape? And what do you reckon he’s thinking? You see, Mr Kemp, we’re all tribalist at heart. All prejudiced – wherever you think you might stand on the matter of redheads or ethnicity. Even blacks have a hierarchy based on skin-colouring. Why else the market for lighteners and hair-straightening agents? What’s group politics if not racism by another name?’

‘At least it’s a substitute for fighting.’

‘The warfare simply stays hidden – unless you happen to be caught in the cross-fire of South Central LA or uptown New York.’

‘It’s quite a leap from style and cultural identity to notions of racial supremacy.’

‘Supremacy doesn’t interest me, Mr Kemp.’

‘It interests those who quote you while they butcher a fellow human being.’

‘They misrepresent me.’

‘And all along, you were really just about peace and harmony.’

‘People put constructs on what I say.’

‘It’s what King Henry II pleaded when his knights slaughtered Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. Oldest excuse in history.’

‘I don’t seek excuse, I don’t need excuse. I flag up areas of racial variance, not racial superiority.’

‘Ah, it’s in the breeding. Some dogs have spotted coats, some dogs have pointy ears.’

‘Some are better suited to retrieving, or guarding property, or catching rats, others excel at lying on laps or trotting beside a carriage.’

Kemp shook his head. ‘Has Sesame Street shown an interest yet?’

‘You cannot prevent ideas, Mr Kemp. Not even your Security Service.’

‘Which is why the creator of such ideas must be careful.’

‘Not at the expense of truth.’ Pitt opened a pigskin briefcase and extracted a bar of dark chocolate. He unwrapped the outer paper carefully, deliberately. A party-trick or a party trap. He continued to speak. ‘My job is to point out ethnic distinctions, weaknesses, the problems caused – the disruption and dislocation to come – in creating the myth of equality, the lie that multi-cultures are happy, dynamic and integrated.’

‘White men can’t jump, black men can’t think. Is that it?’

‘An over-simplification. But, on the whole correct.’

‘What about the black lawyers, the black politicians, presidential advisers, defence chiefs, journalists, TV presenters?’

‘Exceptions, shoe-ins, tokenism, appeasement, examples of affirmative action.’

‘They’re still examples.’

‘I deal in averages.’

‘You deal in generalizations, patronizing assumptions.’

‘Everything I teach stands up to academic scrutiny.’

‘What about the black academics who would tend to disagree?’

‘Ah, yes – black academia. Odd that most have circumvented the more demanding, intellectually rigorous aspects of further education – classics, higher mathematics, advanced physics – to concentrate on black consciousness, civil rights studies and African history.’

‘Hardly a crime.’

‘Neither is it wholly laudable. I wouldn’t hold up race relations journeymen, the likes of Reverend Al Azania, as shining scholarly icons.’

‘Somehow I doubt you’d hold up anyone with darker skin-pigmentation as a contributor of any sort.’

Pitt raised a hand. ‘A charge I deny. One only has to watch the Olympiads to appreciate their particular strengths.’

‘Or watch midwives, nurses, teachers, boxing coaches …’

‘Precisely. But, I’m curious.’ His fingers tapped briefly on the desk. ‘Why is it, do you think, that it’s permissible to accept that Kenyan runners excel in long-distance endurance events on account of their uniquely efficient oxygen distribution systems, their different metabolism, small pelvises, the combination of twitch fibres in their thigh muscles, yet discussion concerning race-based differences in mental capacity, cognitive ability, is a no-no? I’d call it double-standards.’

‘I’d call it common sense.’

‘Is it common sense to have an education system in which blacks cannot thrive, which they are ill-equipped to tackle, where standards and thresholds must continually fall across society in order to accommodate them, where they consistently come lowest in all SAT, ACT and NAEP assessments?’

‘They’re not Martians, professor. Over here, they’re third, fourth or fifth generation Britons. They’re here to stay. You forget the level of integration. Some would argue it’s been successful.’

‘And you?’

‘Too early to judge, too late for regrets. I tend not to think about it.’

‘Because it’s painful. The British hate introspection.’

‘While many of them like black culture.’

‘The reason is glaring – it’s easy, effortless, indolent, rhythmic, sexy, drug-based, street-wise, requires no thought, is anti-authority, youth-oriented, appeals to the “something-for-nothing” instincts of any uneducated urban boy.’

‘We all follow the path of least resistance.’

‘Lo, they’re not failing the system, the system’s failing them. Victims of a cruel world, we’re told.’

‘Given the opportunity …’

‘They’d still mess it up,’ Pitt interrupted. ‘You think everyone has innate ability, the same cognitive levels? Bullshit. IQ is an inherited trait.’

‘Few of us go up before the Nobel committee, professor. If they get the breaks, people make the most of what they’ve got.’

‘White trash mates with black trash – it’s why 50 per cent of Caribbean males have white female partners in your country.’

‘That’s a lot of mixed-race offspring, a degree of interaction the USA hasn’t achieved. Must irritate you – muddying the purity of your social waters, messing with your colour-coding.’

‘It certainly messes with the health of society in general, adds to the underclass, furthers state dependency and criminality.’

‘Or vibrancy and diversity.’

‘You apply the semantic palliatives of the far left.’

‘You employ the vocabulary of the extreme right.’

Pitt nudged the bar of chocolate across. ‘Please, take some. I insist.’

Kemp paused to break off a square, knowing that he was participating in a set-piece, a set-up. ‘It’ll help me and my blood-sugar cope with your analogies between black Africa and black Britain or America.’

‘Coincidentally, it also aids me. Fact, check with the UN and historical research: widespread slavery existed in Africa, still exists, regardless of whether white or Arab slavers arrived to tap into it. The cocoa for the product you’ve eaten? It comes from the Ivory Coast where the plantations are almost exclusively reliant on slave labour. And I mean slave. Blood on your hands, Mr Kemp.’

Kemp reached for another piece. ‘It’s okay. My sense of guilt isn’t highly developed.’

‘Fact two, check with the FBI: 90 per cent of interracial crime in the United States involves a black perpetrator and a white victim. Only 1 per cent of total homicides is accounted for by a white killing a black in a race crime. To listen to civil rights leaders, you’d think the Klan were riding around on a murder-spree. Those same leaders stay silent when a black supremacist performs a drive-by on a group of innocent whites.’

‘Your point?’

‘Fact three you can check with the American Psychological Association: blacks have, over a century, regardless of class or wealth, and factoring in educational and social variants, scored routinely lower – on average, fifteen centile points lower – than whites in all major IQ and cognitive areas. Their average IQ remains stubbornly at 85, for whites it stands at 100. It is indisputable, though I confess not popular.’

‘Jews? Asians?’

‘Higher than Wasps.’

‘You’re full of information.’

‘In the modern climate, it would be enough to get me charged at Nuremberg.’

‘Perhaps a little humanity or humility might help.’

‘I leave that to the social workers, probation officers and welfare officials who have to deal with the realities of the black problem every day.’

‘My, you don’t avoid argument.’

‘It comes back to honesty.’

‘Full-circle? Then it comes back to a headless corpse dragged from netting in the Thames.’

‘Do you also blame me for the murder of two white undercover detectives as they sat in a car near a London inner-city sink, or the nine officers mown down in my home town Los Angeles?’

‘Full-circle can be a vicious circle.’

‘White is what has kept your nation democratic, Mr Kemp.’

‘And tyranny comes in small steps, in the acceptance of racist taunts, in stereotyping, in categorizing people on the basis of colour or creed.’

A long silence. ‘You’re wrong. Tyranny comes in a rush. It’s time to drop the prefix and pretence of United from our national titles, Mr Kemp. Things will blow, and sooner than you believe.’ The academic leant back in his chair. ‘There’ll be more than one corpse in the Thames, more than three bodies of civil rights workers found in a levee outside Meridian, Mississippi, in 1964.’ Final comment, interview drawing to conclusion.

Kemp reached for the chocolate. He was far from finished with Duncan Pitt. ‘Not everything is quite so black-and-white, professor.’ He hoped so, he truly hoped so.

* * *

The bar in Park Street was not crowded, the staff filling afternoon dead-time with gossip, glass-wiping and reading paperbacks. A television played semi-mute on the wall, ignored by the respectable soak with the desiccated face who sat nursing a large sherry and reading a broadsheet at a corner table. Kemp ordered a cafetière and positioned himself across the room from the man. He had no intention of entering into discussion, no wish to be bored. Individuals with beards and tinted spectacles were untrustworthy – one of his prejudices, along with short people, fat people, moaning students, vegans, journalists, actors, hunt saboteurs, screaming queers, the French and the senior management of Her Majesty’s Security Service MI5. That was the trouble: the heart preached acceptance, the head espoused a creed of low-level irritation and petty bigotry. Who was he to try and run Duncan Pitt out of town? Even the American-Jewish tourist in his train carriage, wise-cracking with the relentless aggression and crushing self-confidence of the wholly unaware, alighting at Bath station with a punch line that deserved a punch – ‘Bath? Lucky I brought my soap’ – had chafed through his tolerance ceiling. Hell, everyone had their dislikes.

He poured the coffee and relaxed into the caffeine-jolt. A morning spent – probably wasted – travelling to Bristol to interview and scare an unrepentant academic, to perform a favour for St Clair and his mob. He could not help them, could not help himself, but he had accepted the assignment, however minor, with the indecent haste of the lost and desperate. And he was lost, had never belonged since leaving Thames House and being left by Krista. Excitement and purpose vanished the day both strands unravelled from his life, the day he stopped checking under his car for improvised explosives, stopped searching for tails, reaching for an automatic tucked in the waistband at the small of his back. Then Emmy had died, excised from his life as surely as a pair of scissors had been taken to a family photo album, and he had retreated into emotional neutrality, not shifting up, not shifting down, not moving forward, not moving back. Directionless. It showed in his inability to settle down, in the cheap adrenal thrill gained from debating points with Professor Pitt in a quiet annex of Bristol University. The past was always more poignant. Take this city – built on cotton, tobacco and slavery, the great civic and university buildings thrown up on the proceeds of human misery and human trade. You’re becoming a nation of servile masochists … positive discrimination is a passport to hypocrisy … the African receptionist at BBC Broadcasting House could barely speak English – at the BBC! The professor’s sound bites studded his mind. He drained the cup, couldn’t give a fuck. Not long until his next birthday, when he was closer to fifty than forty, closer to adopting a beard, wearing tinted glasses, nursing an elevenses’ sherry in a provincial watering-hole. Shit.

‘We are getting reports …’ the anchorman announced on the screen. Strange how democracy meant the spectrum of intolerance grew. Direct action was always the domain of idle inadequates with skin disorders, too much time, too few friends and too little education. Weirdos tended to clump together. And in each campaigning fanatic, beneath every balaclava, there was a murderously dysfunctional little Pol Pot mutant struggling to get out. Perhaps Professor Pitt had a point – selective morality was a curse, correctness a form of despotism. Tyranny comes in a rush. It would not be long before hotel managers were doused in petrol for failing to install wheelchair ramps, a driver was hanged by rogue cyclists for refusing to convert his vehicle to fuel-cell technology, a pensioner was coshed here in the city of Bristol for smoking and for daring to live off a street called White Ladies Road. The luxury of hate. It kept the watchers, handlers and analysts of his particular domain employed.

With a flick of his thumb, he ejected a digital cassette from the micro-recorder lodged in a breast-pocket. More material for the computer banks and transcription machines. So much for the moral high-ground. ‘And now we return to our main story …’ The news monologue insinuated itself into his consciousness. ‘A uniformed police constable, married with two children, has been ambushed and brutally hacked to death while answering a distress call on London’s Stonebridge Estate …’