The Invisible Assassin(2)

‘Don’t you patronise me, young man!’ shouted the woman. ‘No good will come of this! He who disturbs this land is cursed!’

The other four protestors nodded in agreement, and the dog, held on a rather loose leash by one of them, growled at Jake. Jake, who was never fond of dogs at the best of times, especially small snappy ones, forced a smile. This wasn’t going well.

‘I’m sorry you feel like that,’ he said. ‘And the department is doing its best to minimise the disturbance to the site . . .’

‘Minimise!’ echoed the woman, incredulously. ‘Minimise!!’ She pointed her placard towards the building site, and Jake and the young journalist turned to see a huge JCB dig its bucket deep into the soil and rip it up. ‘Do you seriously call that minimal disturbance?!’

‘Well,’ began Jake, forcing himself to keep his smile in place, ‘I do agree that it looks as if there is a lot of damage being done, but a building can’t just be put up overnight . . .’

Whack! The woman swung her placard and hit Jake over the head with it.

‘Ow!’ said Jake. ‘Now look . . . !’

Whack! The placard swung once more, and again he felt the impact, but this time he managed to get his arm up to protect his head.

‘There’s no need for violence!’ he protested.

‘Oh yes there is!’ said the elderly woman. ‘This sacred piece of land is being violated by you and your lot!’

Jake realised that she was drawing the placard back for another bash at him, and that the leash holding the growling dog seemed to have loosened further.

‘I’ll go and have a word with the diggers,’ he offered hastily.

With that he moved nimbly away and headed for the fence and the diggers. He was aware that the reporter, Penny Johnson, was by his side.

‘I suppose being attacked is an occupational hazard for you,’ she said. ‘After all, you are part of a very unpopular government.’

‘I’m not part of the government,’ said Jake. ‘I just work for them as a press officer.’

‘You defend them,’ said Johnson.

‘I would never defend them if I thought they were wrong,’ insisted Jake. Inwardly, he reflected that he was glad this wasn’t Pinocchio, or his nose would be growing longer.

Most of his job so far seemed to consist of defending the government’s taking yet another wrong decision.

They had reached the fence now, and the wooden security hut by the entrance gate. Jake took out his ID card and held it open for the security guard on duty to examine. He gestured at Johnson and said, ‘She’s with me.’

‘Where are your hard hats?’ asked the security guard.

Damn! thought Jake. I knew there was something I’d forgotten. ‘I didn’t realise we needed them at this stage of construction,’ he said. ‘After all, they’re just digging for the foundations.’

‘No hard hats, no entry,’ said the security guard. ‘Those are my orders.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Jake spotted a couple of hard hats lying just inside the hut.

‘We’ll borrow those two,’ he said, pointing.

The security guard frowned, then shook his head.

‘Those belong to the company,’ he said. ‘Company use only.’

Johnson began scribbling something in her notebook. Jake could guess what it was, something along the lines of ‘Red faces at protest. A top government official was refused entry to the site where the controversial new university science block is under construction . . . blah blah blah’. Not that he was a ‘top government official’, but it sounded better than ‘trainee press officer’. Jake realised if he wasn’t to come out of this looking like a complete idiot, he had to do something, exert what little authority he had on this situation before he lost control of it completely. It was time for a bluff. Once again, Jake took out his ID card and held it out to the security guard.

‘If you read this card properly, you will see that I am representing the government minister responsible for this particular project,’ he said firmly. ‘My orders are to make an inspection today and report back. Now, if you refuse to loan us the use of those two hard hats and let us into this site, I shall telephone my department head and have this whole site closed down immediately, until such time as authority is given to supply us with the necessary hard hats. That will cost the company many hundreds of thousands of pounds and will also prejudice other contracts they have on tender with my department.’

Before the security guard could respond, Jake took out his mobile phone, poised his finger over the dial button, and continued smoothly but firmly: ‘Or perhaps you’d prefer to talk to the minister yourself, and explain to him why the site is being closed down, and he can then explain that to your boss.’ Jake nearly added, ‘So what’s it to be? Come on, punk, make my day,’ but refrained. As it was he was trembling inside, terrified that the security guard would call his bluff and make him look even more of an idiot.