Phone sex is less fun, Lyla
decides, when neither of the participants happens to be you – not to mention a
nightmare to transcribe.
Party 1: You like that, baby?
Party 2: *Unintelligible grunt*
Even more of a faff is
trying to preserve the narrative of sexts when they consist entirely of emojis.
Lyla knows she’s on perv duty as part of her punishment, even if the official
story is that she’s just ‘filling in’ while Raj has his appendix removed.
She should have just
kept her mouth shut and her head down; always easy enough to see in retrospect.
But she didn’t, so now her working day consists of trawling through the
telephonic filth of some depraved ambassador while Perry completely screws up
what should be her caseload.
They’re a fairly small
team compared to some; just herself, Perry, Raj and George, dedicated to monitoring
prominent families and a handful of celebrities with political aspirations. The
door to their office simply reads ‘Specialist Division’.
It had given Lyla butterflies
on her first day. Here she was, an analyst fresh out of Cambridge, in the heart
of the watchtower. The job lost some of its lustre, however, the moment she
stepped through the door and met Perry.
“You that tart from
downstairs?” He asked, looking her up and down in a way that made her desperate
for hand sanitiser.
“Lyla,” she replied,
cooling to him instantly. “You the head snoop?”
“We prefer angels,” he
said. “You know, as in guardian angels.”
“I bet you do.”
“And no, I’m not in
charge.” He jerked his head towards another closed door at the far end of the
office. “George is.”
It was all a bit Charlie’s Angels in the Specialist
office, Lyla soon found. They received emails from George with requests for
updates or reports, but there was nothing in the way of personal contact. She
never actually met the man until she was six months into the job.
Lyla was intercepting
the calls of a young parliamentary candidate, Rory Snow. She knew the sort, had
been surrounded by them at Cambridge. Tall, blonde, with a plum in his mouth and
a twinkle in his eye. These were the men who got what they wanted, who didn’t
even need to ask for it. Snow bucked the trend in one respect only; he was a
democrat, and a squeaky clean one, if you were to believe the press.
But the first lesson Lyla
learned as an angel was that nobody was ever truly clean. Rory Snow kept his
vice well hidden, but after just a few weeks of listening in on his life, Lyla
stumbled upon it.
“Pretty girls,” she
told Perry, dropping a pile of transcripts onto his desk.
“They’ll be the
downfall of this great nation,” Perry sighed, ignoring the folder.
“That’s not all of it,”
Lyla said. “Some of these girls are a little on the young side.” That was
putting it mildly. Snow’s unsavoury preferences made her new ambassador friend’s
exploits seem as harmless as a stack of Playboys under a teenager’s mattress.
Perry took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Just log it,” he said.
“We need to call the
police.”
“And say what?” Perry
asked. “How do you propose we explain how we came by this information? We do
nothing.”
“I thought we were
meant to be guardian angels,” Lyla said. Perry rolled his eyes.
“Fine,” she picked up
the papers. “I’m going to George with this.”
“I wouldn’t if I were
you,” Perry called after her, as she marched across the office. He didn’t stop
her, though; just reached for a Danish.
Lyla gave the door
three sharp raps, and when no sound came from within, knocked again. Still
receiving nothing in the way of a reply, she reluctantly returned to her desk.
At the end of her shift, she logged the day’s transcripts, shrugged into her
jacket and left, just like she always did – only this time with a sheaf of
printouts stuffed into her handbag. If Perry and George weren’t going to do anything
to stop Rory Snow, she thought, she would have to do it herself.
Except, of course, she
didn’t even make it out of the building. Vic, the avuncular clerk at the front
desk who commented on the weather as she signed in each morning, called over to
her before she could reach the revolving doors.
“I’ve been requested to
escort you upstairs,” he told her, clearly uncomfortable with the situation.
For one brief, wild moment, Lyla considered darting for the doors, but thought
better of it.
“Fine,” she assented.
She was taken to an
empty conference room and left to wait, alone. For what felt like hours (but
probably only amounted to five minutes), various scenarios played out in Lyla’s
mind. Would she be fired? Prosecuted, even? The foolishness of what she had
just attempted hit her. Leaving the watchtower with an open case file – how
could she have been so stupid?
And then George walked
in. He was nothing like Lyla had imagined. Tall, rake-thin, Savile Row from
head to toe. He sat down in the chair next to hers, so any onlooker would think
they were both for the gallows, folded
his hands on the tabletop, and said simply;
“I believe you have
accidentally left something upon your person.”
And that was it. Lyla
gave up the papers, and he left. The next day she came into work, and was given
Raj’s workload. Perry could barely contain his delight.
“I’m
going to make you scream,” the ambassador whispers in Lyla’s
ear. “I won’t stop until you’re begging
for mercy.”
She still has work to
do, she tells herself. Important work. The safety of an entire country is in
their hands; they have to think of
the bigger picture.
The ambassador releases
a wordless, animalistic cry. Lyla includes this in her notes, and suppresses a
scream of her own.
~
