The Campmates
It was easy enough for Trent to identify the exact moment he hit rock bottom. It happened while he was vomiting his guts out beneath Geneva’s Pont Butin bridge, his sleeping bag clinging to his legs like a drowsy lover. He had never been able to hold down his beer, but the Coop’s Prix Garantie Lager Bier was the cheapest alcohol he could find in Switzerland’s overpriced supermarkets.
Trent was on his hands and knees, looking down at the vomit. As it soaked into the soil, he regarded it as a fortune-teller might divine tea leaves. The former contents of his stomach swirled, heralding a scathing message from beyond: ‘How the mighty have fallen!’
How did the great Trent Argent, celebrated entrepreneur and self-styled Community Troubleshooter, come to this?
‘You need a permit to camp here, mate.’
Trent glanced behind him. ‘Je ne comprends pas le français,’ he said by rote before realising that the stranger had spoken in English. The words had been drenched with a heavy Australian accent, but by most people’s interpretation, they were still English.
‘Just playing with you, mate. Welcome.’ The fair-headed young man standing above him thrust out a hand. ‘I’m Hobbs.’
Trent turned over and wriggled out of his sleeping bag, knocking aside discarded beer cans. He was a pale, skeletal thing, a consequence not just of the life he’d led during the previous five years but also of a general lack of interest in health and exercise. In another world, where he had a different personality, he might have been considered handsome, especially in that business suit he used to wear. But in jogging bottoms and a frayed T-shirt, every one of his forty-two years was evident, plus an advanced instalment of others he had yet to live.
Trent wiped away the vomit from the corner of his mouth and proceeded to shake Hobbs’ hand. Then, he paused to contemplate whether he had used the same hand both times.
Hobbs didn’t blink. No disgust. No judgement.
‘Need a boost?’ Hobbs pulled Trent to his feet. ‘We noticed you pitch up yesterday. Came to say hello, but you were out. Important business?’ He glanced at the cans.
‘I was meeting my employment adviser,’ Trent mumbled.
Hobbs grinned. ‘Ah, you’re one of us, then? The great unwashed unemployed! Care to join us for breakfast?’
Trent was wary of company, but he needed a drink badly. To be more precise, he needed a non-alcoholic drink badly. He followed Hobbs to a collection of tents surrounding the embers of a campfire. He had seen figures crowded around it when sneaking back the previous night, but he hadn’t approached.
Above them towered Geneva’s Pont Butin, which spanned the gulley the Rhône had carved through the crumbling land. This river valley was a world away from the rest of the city, a haven of nature sandwiched between apartment buildings, tightly packed villas and endless construction sites. A footpath accompanied the river out of the city, squeezing between the water and the near-vertical slopes. In certain places, such as under the bridge, the gap was large enough for a small campsite. The relative privacy it afforded, and the shelter from the elements, meant this was precisely what had sprung up there.
The bridge was an impressive sight, connecting the two clifftops so traffic could travel seamlessly across one of Geneva’s few river crossings. Further into town, closer to the lake, there were more opportunities to get from one bank to the other, but the circulation there was clogged with spiteful traffic lights and incomprehensible one-way systems. The next crossing further out of town was the frequently gridlocked autoroute. The Pont Butin appeared quite aware of its importance. It was two bridges in one, a grand arch spanning the river, with a layer of smaller ones on top of it, supporting the road.
About fifty metres above Trent, traffic zipped by. Cars, trucks, bicycles and the dreaded e-bike, with which he had already suffered one near-death experience. There was even a decent amount of foot traffic, thanks in part to the view the bridge afforded of the city centre. The cathedral, old town and the lake were visible from there, as though someone had assembled them for a postcard photo. This wasn’t a prime tourist spot, though: it was far too busy with traffic, and to get an unimpeded view, you had to press your nose between closely spaced three-metre-high bars erected to stop people jumping. When the sun was low at the beginning or end of the day, it flickered between the bars like an old-style picture box. The suicide rate had plummeted since the fencing had been put in place, but Geneva was now a contender for the coveted title of “European capital of epileptic seizures”.
In the calm of the campsite, Trent could almost forget all that was above him.
Another young man was hunched over a gas stove. He had broad shoulders and wore an oversized puffer jacket, traffic-cone orange. All around him lay a collection of broken matchsticks, scattered as though he had dived into a vat of them. The air shimmered with whispered expletives. As Hobbs and Trent approached, he looked up. His face was covered in clumps of stubble, like a sun-parched lawn, but that wasn’t the first thing Trent noticed. No, it was the desperation in his eyes. Perhaps this was someone with whom he could find common ground.
‘Every morning!’ Hobbs cried. ‘Why do you put yourself through it, man?’
‘Why do you put me through it?’ the stubbled man replied. ‘That lighter only cost three francs. I still don’t get why you wouldn’t let me buy it.’
‘It would have meant three francs less for food.’
Another voice came from a nearby tent. ‘For heaven’s sake!’ The zipper unzipped aggressively, and a woman with wild hair in striped pastel pyjamas crawled out. ‘Why do you both put me through it?’
In one seamless motion, she snatched the box, grabbed one of the remaining matches and lit the flame on the gas stove. Then she disappeared into her tent, uttering, ‘Mine’s a coffee. And it had better be strong this time!’
The three men waited a few seconds until they were sure the storm had passed. Trent regarded Hobbs, trying to work him out. He had an honest-looking face, but Trent was well aware that this could not be relied upon in character assessment. His skin was tanned dark, not just from the Geneva summer, but with a depth that suggested a great many more spent outdoors.
‘This is Bong,’ Hobbs said, gesturing to his friend, who was now busy balancing a kettle on the stove.
‘Nice to meet you, Bong,’ Trent said.
Hobbs and Bong immediately keeled over in hysterics. Hobbs’ laugh was hearty; Bong’s was more of a snigger, but they both went on longer than Trent judged necessary. He waited patiently until they had settled down.
‘Your name’s not Bong, is it?’ he said.
Bong winked at Hobbs. ‘Absolutely, it’s Bong. That’s the truth.’
Trent had too much of a headache for such nonsense, but that cup of tea was tantalisingly close, so he bit his tongue.
‘And the other member of our group is Amara,’ Hobbs continued. ‘But we just call her A.’
‘No, we bloody don’t!’ Amara shouted from her tent.
‘You’ll have to excuse her,’ Hobbs said. ‘Wrong side of the bed, and all that.’
‘If I had a bed, I’d be a different woman!’
Hobbs sat down on an upturned crate and gestured towards a moss-ridden log. ‘Pull up a stump.’
Trent did as invited. They waited quietly for a few minutes while Bong made the drinks. There was such a look of concentration on his face that no one dared distract him. Besides, Trent wasn’t about to complain about a bit of peace and calm.
At the same moment that the drinks were ready, Amara emerged from the tent, a woman transformed. Whatever equipment she had in there had tamed that wild hair into a pristine plait. Trent guessed that she was of Indian heritage, and she carried it proudly, with ornate chandelier earrings and a long burgundy dress patterned with gold. She grabbed her coffee and perched on a tree stump on the other side of the small clearing from Trent without acknowledging him.
Trent regarded his tea with dispassionate interest. To call it “tea” was a bit of a stretch. The lukewarm water appeared supremely disinterested in being infused, and it didn’t help that they had shared one teabag between three cups. He didn’t bother asking for milk. One thing he’d learned since leaving the UK was that having milk in one’s tea was not just unusual on the continent, it was positively frowned upon – in the same vein as baked beans and Cadbury chocolate. Not that he would have been hugely confident about drinking milk left out on that campsite overnight anyway, not in July.
Slightly-brown-tinted water it was, then.
‘So,’ Hobbs said to Trent. ‘Are you interning here, too?’
Trent wasn’t sure whether to find that flattering. Even on his best day, he looked at least a decade over internship age – and his “best day” was years behind him. But this was an opportunity. He had travelled to Geneva seeking new beginnings, with the nonprofit organisations clustered around the UN headquarters like limpets to a ship’s hull. Time to start building his new identity.
‘Not exactly,’ Trent said. ‘I’m looking for work. I’ve got a few interviews lined up. I was a big deal back in the UK. I’ve come here to give something back.’
“A big deal”. Listen to yourself, man!
Trent battled the urge to tell them he used to be a millionaire. Back in the day, he hid this for professional and personal reasons, avoiding the scrutiny it brought with it. But now, he was ready to wave it around because it offered him... he wasn’t sure... a certain level of legitimacy, perhaps? In reality, it wouldn’t have offered him even that. If he’d have told these people about it, they would just have laughed at him, this drunk, sleeping rough under a bridge. Even if they’d believed him, what would it have proven? That he was stupid enough to lose a fortune. What legitimacy did that give anyone?
‘Too old, I guess,’ Hobbs said.
Trent failed to hide his flash of disappointment. He had a good two decades on these kids, although not everything that had happened in that period had been “good”. He had begun to warm to the idea of pretending they hadn’t happened.
‘We’re here interning,’ Hobbs continued. ‘Various gigs. At the moment, we’re doing a stint with the IRA.’
Trent coughed out his murky water.
‘International Refugee Agency,’ Hobbs said slowly. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of them. They do good work.’
Trent reflected that some acronyms apparently didn’t have as much international meaning as he might have thought.
‘I’ll add them to my list to look up,’ he said. ‘And you?’
He addressed Amara, not out of any particular interest in where she was interning but because she was glaring at him. In his experience, it was essential to involve the silent people in any group. It was the best way to influence what they might say after he’d gone, when they would start speaking their minds.
‘Reporters Everywhere,’ Amara said.
Trent almost spit out his tea again. Reporters Everywhere, that sounded like a fever dream. His experiences over the years with journalists had been – what was the word? – complicated. He certainly didn’t want to relive them right then, even for a fraction of a second.
‘She’s on the other side,’ Bong said. ‘Just reporting on things. She doesn’t get involved.’
Amara scoffed at that. ‘I’ll have you know that journalists have more impact on the world than any of your international organisations. We change minds. We mobilise people. All your people do is bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy.’
These were Trent’s new neighbours, the first he’d had since childhood – unless you counted the fellow residents of the motorway hotels he used to frequent. Trent had rarely stayed in one place long enough to make roots. Anyone he had met had always been related to the job, and it had been critical to avoid getting too close to any of them. It was much harder to screw people over if you liked them, not if you wanted to keep any part of your soul. So, Trent had connected with no one.
Apart from the reporter.
Trent shook himself. He couldn’t let himself go there, not in front of others. Besides, he had just remembered about his job interview later that morning. He was still only halfway back to full consciousness. Just one thing would take him the rest of the way.
‘Thanks for the…’ Trent forced himself to say the next word, ‘tea. Where’s the best place for a shower around here?’
Bong pointed towards the river. ‘Shower, tap, toilet – all our needs in one!’
Trent sighed inwardly but feigned a smile. He thanked them again and made his excuses, backing away with a bow of his head.
He fished a shirt and trousers from his tent and descended to the river, stopping behind a bush to strip down to his underpants. The water glowed fluorescent turquoise, where the clear water from Lac Leman met the sediment from the Arve. Back in the UK, he would have assumed nuclear contamination; here, he accepted nature at work. Still, his body was ill-prepared for the cold.
As Trent tiptoed into the water, his calf muscles tensed. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to paddle deeper. He couldn’t turn up at a job interview smelling of beer, sweat and vomit. It was one of many trials he would endure on his path to redemption.
*****
Anton Fredevich watched, and he waited. And he drank Aperol Spritz.
The cafés of Geneva did not fully uphold the legend of European café culture. These were not the boulevards of Paris, with their chic names, fascinating history and general haughtiness. This terrace was little more than a collection of tables blocking half of the pavement, with a fine view of traffic waiting impatiently at one of Geneva’s perpetually red traffic lights. But this would do. He could go unnoticed out there, sipping cocktails with the international workers taking an early lunch break, and trying to ignore their self-involved conversation.
How he hated them. Their institution was their world. They spoke about going into “the field” like it was some game. It was his reality. He had fought his way to the top, clambering out of the mud. It had taken determination, strength and blood. More of other people’s blood, perhaps, than he cared to admit. But it certainly hadn’t taken paperwork.
That was the difference between him and them, not the label they had given him, which pursued him from country to country. Achievement, in his world, was something tangible, not just words on a screen.
Fredevich gulped his drink. He was used to stronger, so it did little to mute the interminable chatter from the next table.
He stared at the building across the street, as though that alone would liberate the object from its prison. He needed to find a weak point.
*****
Trent checked himself in the pizzeria window. Not bad, he thought, given the state he had been in an hour earlier. It hadn’t been the best of ideas to get inebriated the night before an interview, but it had felt necessary at the time. It was almost as though the old Trent, who thought this whole venture was a complete waste of time and money, was repeatedly pressing the self-destruct button. There was no point in trying to redeem himself; it wasn’t worth the effort.
Not that going back to the UK was really an option, either. He was a pariah there now, with his questionable business dealings exposed. This had been as big a reason for him leaving the country as the lure of Geneva’s nonprofits.
The man at the nearest table scowled at him. It was an intense stare from little eyes, which appeared to have sunken back into the face, recoiling from the things they had seen. He looked like a brawler, this one, with a square head, close-cropped hair and sturdy elbows. Trent didn’t wait around to find out what currency was funding that glare.
This part of town was known as Nations. It was dominated by the villa where the League of Nations had met between the First and Second World Wars. These days, this housed the European headquarters of the United Nations. The site was known for the array of flags out front, the three-legged chair sculpture outside (a victim of landmines or a carpentry mishap, no one was certain), the peacocks that roamed free on the grounds and the extensive queues for security. At the front lay a concrete square where fountains of water spurted up periodically from the ground, providing a diverting water feature / a nice game for the kids / a deterrent for crowds gathering to protest.
Trent’s interview was not with such a prestigious organisation. He was there to meet one of the NGOs scattered about town, above carpet stores, bakeries and homeware outlets. This one had the good sense or good fortune to be positioned at the heart of the action, opposite a pizzeria that served as an additional cafeteria for the UN workers. What better way to ensure you’re on the agenda of the international organisations that fund you than to be there during lunch? Accordingly, their front windows were covered with posters advertising their cause.
Sheltering from the glare of the man at the pizzeria, Trent crossed the road towards the Geneva headquarters of Halitosis International.
*****
Trent didn’t wear his best suit to the interview; he kept it in a vacuum-packed bag at one end of his tent. It had been a pain to bus across France carrying it, but he wouldn’t leave it behind. Back in his heyday, it had been his armour. Crisp, finely cut and expensive, it had a scuff on the knee from the last time he wore it. He’d tripped while making a hasty exit from a village that had turned against him – his final scheme turned bad. He hadn’t had it repaired, hadn’t considered replacing the trousers. Sometimes, armour can protect you subtly, by reminding you of your mistakes.
Its replacement was a cheap department store suit, which he would never have been caught dead wearing back in the UK. Then again, he would never have been caught doing most of the things he now spent his time doing: busking his way to Geneva on a tourist visa; sleeping rough under a bridge with a bunch of interns; trying to do something positive for the world…
He wasn’t the only one pursuing lofty goals. The reception of Halitosis International was decorated with photographs of their various projects, but at its centrepiece was a photo of an African community. All the village had come out to hold up letters that together spelt “Thank you, Halitosis Int.” A plaque to one side boasted that the organisation had donated to Mapeto Village as part of its “Giving Back” programme. Trent looked at their happy faces and wondered what these people’s lives were like thousands of miles away – the village elder with the tangled beard, the girl with the bright pink T-shirt, the men in their Adidas trainers.
‘Mr Argent?’
Trent turned to see a man in a tracksuit beaming at him. The man thrust his hand towards Trent with the precision of someone moving in for the kill. Trent did his best to intercept it and ended up grabbing him by the wrist, like some gangland handshake. Still, his would-be assassin looked satisfied.
‘I’m François. We spoke on the phone.’
That was an age ago, when Trent was back in the UK, pretending to be in Geneva, grasping for any lead.
‘Nice to meet you,’ Trent replied.
François led him to the interview room, making small talk, which inevitably strayed to the state of the weather. Trent suspected he did this due to the prevalent view that this was the only thing the English knew how to talk about, but he humoured him anyway, hoping his reward would be tea with fresh milk in it.
It was a nice enough room, well-lit, and sliced in half by a long wooden table. On the other side of the table sat his three-person jury. They introduced themselves and shook his hand before directing him to his designated seat. Trent forgot who they were as soon as they said their names. One was Victoria, Ella or Vanessa, Head of Fundraising; then there was Stefanos or Steven from HR; and finally, an older man with grey, bushy eyebrows, whose role was unclear. A volunteer, perhaps.
A few years earlier, he would have remembered every detail about them. Names have power, and titles have meaning; all those things are threads at which one can tug. What had happened to him? Had he lost those powers around the time he hit the bottle? Or was it earlier than that, when he had started to grow a conscience?
‘Mr Argent,’ said the Head of Fundraising. ‘Thank you for applying for the role of Fundraising Assistant. I want to start by giving you an opportunity to outline your experience and why you think you are a good match for the role.’
That’s when it hit Trent. Fundraising Assistant. Assistant. It would be his job to beg people for money. And he wouldn’t even be head of the department: he’d be taking instruction, running around like a dog. Was that honestly something he could lower himself to? It hadn’t bothered him when he’d sent in his application – he had been scrambling about looking for anything back then – but reality struck home.
Then he remembered his sales training, from his unenviable first job flogging life insurance to the clueless. Working in sales wasn’t about getting people to buy stuff, but giving them opportunities. If they wanted something but weren’t sure how to get it, you were there to explain to them the options. Perhaps they didn’t even know they wanted something, in which case you were there to coax out that hidden need. And if they weren’t sure they could afford it, you were there to reassure them that it was a worthy investment. Fundraising couldn’t be too far removed from all that, could it? There were people out there who wanted to make a difference in the world; they had the money but didn’t know how to use it. His role would be to facilitate that.
And so, Trent dug deep, and he played the game, for the love of the sport, if not the end result. He talked about his skills and the fantastic ways he had applied them. He told them about his career and his long list of successes. As he spoke, he realised he had been dancing the same dance, in one form or another, his whole life; he just hadn’t necessarily been aware of it. Life was a sales pitch.
He also recognised that he had given an almost identical speech when meeting with his employment adviser a day before. It had probably been more convincing that time around because he hadn’t anticipated the response. Both times, he talked at length about his experience with communities across the UK and how he had helped people get a better quality of life. Both times, he left off the more sordid details of the business empire he’d built off the back of it. His resumé was impressive: rejuvenation of the Dogshon area in Liverpool; an increase in life expectancy in a community in East Sussex; reduction of STDs in Brighton, even.
The Head of Fundraising listened to all of this attentively before summarising it, just as Trent’s employment advisor had done the previous day, with four words: ‘So, no international experience?’ It was this that had driven Trent to his alcohol-related lapse. But he was prepared this time around:
‘The UK is a highly diverse country. I’ve been working with communities the width and breadth of the country in partnership with some of the country’s most prestigious and innovative actors.’
As he spoke, he could read his interviewer’s thoughts as though they were tattooed across her forehead. One word: “provincial”.
‘You used the word “country” three times, there,’ she said.
She regarded him stone-faced for a few seconds. Then, a smile cracked, and Trent thought he detected pity in her eyes. He was wrong.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ she said. ‘When I was a kid, I thought I was the nimblest of them all. I’d duck, dive, and run as fast as my little legs carried me. When we were in a crowded place – a supermarket or an event or whatever – and needed to get somewhere, I’d run ahead of my parents, weaving between trolleys or pensioners. I’d squeeze through the smallest gap, and as soon as I was there, I was gone. I thought I was the fastest. These days, when I see little kids doing that, I just see them getting in the way. People trip over them or spill their drinks and curse under their breath. I didn’t realise that then, but now it’s clear as day.’
Trent wasn’t sure what he had done to offend this woman. He was supposed to be selling himself, wasn’t he? Dancing the dance, making a convincing case, just as he’d do on behalf of the organisation when he got the job. This was what they expected, wasn’t it? Still, it was clear he had put her back up somehow. Maybe she was tired of watching people perform for her; more likely, she objected to him being him. She had only just met him, but she already believed she had the measure of him. And she didn’t even know how deep the depths went.
‘This is a little direct for an interview, isn’t it?’ Trent said.
‘At Halitosis International, we believe in the gift of feedback. Direct, unfettered feedback.’
‘Thank you for your gift. I will treasure it forever.’
The old Trent would have reprimanded himself for such a mistake. Humour was the last respite of the powerless.
‘At Halitosis International,’ the HR guy chipped in, ‘we believe sarcasm is a blight on society.’
Trent kept quiet.
‘So, you tell us,’ the third panellist – the older one – said, in a softer tone, ‘that you have relevant experience from, where is it, Eastbottom?’
‘Eastshire.’
‘Why did you move to Geneva?’
‘I want to do something for the greater good. I want to make a difference. There’s so much going on here, what with the UN and all the nonprofits. It’s the place to be.’
The interviewer grunted and marked something on his paper that looked suspiciously like a cross.
The next question came from the HR guy. Trent’s hopes that this might signal the turn of a new page were quickly crushed.
‘You advertise yourself as a Community Troubleshooter,’ he said. ‘What exactly does that mean? When there’s trouble in a community, you go in and... shoot it?’
‘Yes,’ Trent replied wearily.
‘How quaint.’
Once upon a time, Trent had been proud of that title. He would dive in and sort out an area’s problems, connecting things to make them work like he was rewiring a circuit board. Yes, he had amassed a fortune off the back of it, but that didn’t make his impact any less valid. If only people could see beyond their juvenile accusations that he had taken advantage of others’ misfortune.
Trent might have tried to represent his old job better if he thought it might get him anywhere, but it wasn’t worth the energy.
The interrogation continued in a similar vein for another twenty minutes, with each panellist going through the motions, even though they’d all known the outcome from two minutes in. They had to follow a fixed set of questions. That way, it was fair to all the candidates. It didn’t feel at all fair to Trent, though. It felt like a horrendous waste of everybody’s time.
The interview ended with a question from the volunteer about Trent’s interest in halitosis. Trent presumed this was supposed to be the crowning glory of a candidate’s interview time, an opportunity for them to shine with examples of how much the cause meant to them. It completely blindsided him. He had spent all his time preparing different ways to convince them of how great he was and sell them the value of his experience. He hadn’t even considered such an obvious question.
He knew what was expected of him, though: he had to manufacture on the spot a deep-rooted desire to work for an organisation he had never heard of a few weeks before. He was vaguely aware that bad breath could signal more significant health problems, but that was about the extent of his knowledge.
They watched with detached curiosity as he writhed.
‘Halitosis is very important to me,’ he mumbled. ‘Some of my best friends have it... it can be debilitating.’
With a bit more time, he’d probably have come up with a better response – but not much.
The ordeal was over not long after that. The volunteer escorted him from the building. Trent wasn’t worth investing more of the paid staff’s time. He had a kind smile that one; wise, a little patronising, perhaps, but that seemed to be par for the course.
‘Let me give you a little piece of free advice,’ he said to Trent as they passed through the open-plan office. ‘You need to work on your motivation. Think about it: organisations like ours can look all across the world for someone who’s passionate about what we do. You can’t fake that. If you don’t have a special reason to work somewhere, don’t bother applying. Look at Simon over there. He lost his mother to halitosis.’
Trent suppressed a smirk. The old Trent started hammering at the “abort” button with no effect.
‘Really?’ he said.
The volunteer stared him down. ‘Really.’
‘Hers or someone else’s?’
*****
Just next door, in the headquarters of a more prestigious international organisation (i.e. one with a bigger office), Hobbs examined a photo of an African community. It seemed like the whole village had turned out, beaming and happy, holding up letters that together spelt, “Thank you, IRA.” A plaque to one side boasted that the organisation had donated to Masepo Village as part of its “Giving Back” programme. Hobbs studied their happy faces and wondered what these people’s lives were like a thousand miles away – the village elder with the tangled beard, the girl with the bright pink T-shirt, the men in their Adidas trainers.
This was a good place to work, helping somewhere like that.
He and Bong were on their way from an “ironic cigarette break”. The term was Bong’s, and he was as pleased about it as the idea itself. Hobbs couldn’t bring himself to tell his friend that he had misused the word “ironic”, but anyway, the fact remained that it was not a bog-standard cigarette break because neither of them smoked. They took it because they performed their regular duties in the heart of the building, which was not nearly as vital as it had sounded when this had first been sold to them. They were confined in a box room without access to natural light for the best part of the day. It hadn’t taken long for claustrophobia to develop from being a slight buzz on the edge of hearing to a full-blown panic attack. Or it would have done had Bong not brandished a packet of Marlboroughs on the third day, just when Hobbs was on the verge of scratching on the walls. Since then, their “ironic cigarette breaks” had taken place every hour, on the hour, with Bong brandishing the packet as though it was a torch protecting them from a smothering mist, until they were outside, around the corner, and able to breathe again, with the cigarettes safely pocketed.
Hobbs didn’t enjoy the guile, but it was necessary. He just wished Bong didn’t take so much satisfaction from the deception.
The building’s security was tight, so the security guards manning the scanners got to know them well. They were good enough not to point out that Hobbs and Bong didn’t stink of smoke when they returned. These were interns. What they were doing couldn’t be important enough that they shouldn’t be allowed a bit of skiving off every so often.
He was a nice guy, today’s security guard. Tracey was his name, which made Bong snigger, even after the internet informed them that Tracey was a man’s name just as much as a woman’s. Not that they would have laughed in Tracey’s presence, anyway. Tracey had a baton and a taser on his belt. Hobbs conjectured that his primary motivation for the choice of profession was that it forced people to treat him respectfully.
He wondered how much of people’s lives were dictated by their names. It was a pertinent question for Hobbs, whose full name was Michael Hobson. But why call him Michael or Mike when they could call him Hobnob or – even better – just Nob? It was Australian humour at its finest, and he’d had more than enough of it. Moving to Geneva had been a chance to reset. He had considered rebranding himself “Hobson”, but he had no desire to present as being anyone’s son, least of all his own father’s.
He was Hobbs. Serious, professional, Hobbs.
He had invested a good part of his inheritance in this. After his mother passed away, his father sent him off to a boot camp to “knock some sense into him”. The fact that Hobbs had never formally come out as gay, even though it was evident to them both, had made it somehow acceptable for his dad to talk about “making a man of him”. They had both known what it was really about.
Hobbs shook away those thoughts. Somehow, they were still preferable to what awaited him in the room where they had been stationed. But he had procrastinated enough. It was time to return to the cube.
Bong had headed back several minutes earlier while Hobbs visited the toilets. Hobbs found him staring fixedly at a computer monitor. He had seen Bong exhibit a similar level of concentration when attempting to light the campfire, but his lips curled with a curious pleasure this time.
‘Look at this,’ Bong said.
Stupidly, Hobbs obeyed. Something about the boot camp had rubbed off on him. Obedience came as second nature to him now. He squeezed around the large table, with its two computer stations, and stood behind Bong, just in time to watch someone get murdered.
‘I never realised that the human body just crumples like that,’ Bong said. ‘In the movies, you always see people fall back with the force of the blow when they’re shot. Maybe yes, for a shotgun blast to the head, but a pistol to the guts makes people fall like a sack of potatoes.’ He rewound the footage and played it again to emphasise his point. ‘That’s the way you do it.’
Hobbs wondered about the origin of the comparison with a sack of potatoes. He didn’t think he had ever been in the presence of one big enough to be considered similar to a human body. Then he realised that he was dissociating and should really have been asking what the hell Bong was doing watching that stuff on replay.
Hobbs already knew part of the answer: it was their job to watch this footage, not for the kind of forensic detail that Bong seemed interested in, but to see if they could spot details that might help identify people. All the footage stored there was horrific. This was the refugee agency’s war crimes project, which gathered footage of atrocities that refugees had taken with their phones. It had to be tagged and catalogued. Most importantly, they were looking for faces. Their work could help lay the foundations for future war crime prosecutions.
Hobbs retreated quickly. He sat at his own terminal and regarded distastefully the list of files he needed to review that day. His stomach turned at the very thought of it.
Why had the International Refugee Agency entrusted this horrendous task to two interns? Such work could be achieved with AI, surely, but that would require the agency to have the funds and general technical willingness to invest in it. No, it made more sense to set the interns on it. Hobbs wagered that their rationale for selecting him and Bong was that they figured two men in their twenties would be so desensitised to violence by movies and video games that they could handle it. This was definitely the case for Bong, who watched the footage with a morbid interest because he wanted to work in special effects when he got out of there.
Hobbs didn’t get it. He had watched probably as many action movies as Bong, and he really, honestly, couldn’t understand the narrative purpose of getting the blood spatter pattern right when someone got shot in the head. The result was the same: the guy was dead, and the movie moved on.
It was then that Hobbs noticed the mobile phone in a transparent plastic pouch next to his keyboard. It looked well-used, but it was a recent model – although the technology moved so fast that it might as well have been a Betamax tape.
‘What’s this?’ he said.
Bong struggled to tear his eyes away from the screen. ‘They brought it in while you were taking a piss.’
That was unusual. They had only been working there a few weeks, but it was very much Hobbs’ understanding that all the footage they reviewed was stored securely on the local server. While most of it had been recorded on mobile devices, these were returned to the witnesses after the offending files were uploaded.
Still, whatever this was, it was a distraction from the task ahead of him.
He picked up the phone and pressed the power button. Nothing. It was completely dead. He checked the bottom. It had the same port as his own. He always brought his mobile charger in with him. Makeshift campsites under major traffic routes were notoriously bereft of power sockets, so he usually charged his phone using the IRA’s power supply. It was one of the few perks of working there.
He wondered why the phone was in a pouch. Maybe they were trying to preserve DNA or fingerprints or something. Bong was not at all forthcoming about whether their supervisor had provided any instructions to this effect, so Hobbs decided to take the middle path and punch a hole in the bottom to feed the power cord through.
After a few seconds, he tried the power button again. The phone told him to wait while it charged. When it finally illuminated, he was surprised to discover it wasn’t locked with a pin code. He wondered what to do next. This felt like that time he’d picked up a wallet dropped in the street. Even though his intentions had been good, and he’d just been trying to identify the owner, he’d still feel like someone would turn up at any moment and accuse him of theft.
Hobbs decided to navigate straight to the photos. He assumed that this was why the device had been given to him. There were no photos and just one video. Unusual. He went ahead and played it.
He soon wished he hadn’t.
The room was dark. A warehouse, perhaps, or a cellar. In its centre, a man was tied to a chair. Hobbs couldn’t make out his face, but he could hear him whimpering.
‘The only thing we’re wasting here is time,’ came a voice off-camera. The words were English, but the accent was heavy – Eastern European, perhaps, although Hobbs was no expert. ‘No one knows you’re here. No one who cares, anyway.’
Bong must have noticed Hobbs’ forehead furrow because he said, ‘What have you got there?’
When Hobbs didn’t reply, Bong abandoned his workstation to look over his shoulder.
Shortly afterwards, the screaming began.
‘This is really something,’ Bong said.
Hobbs let the phone slip through his fingers and onto the desk. Bong picked it up eagerly.
Hobbs grabbed Bong’s headphones and tossed them towards him. ‘Put them on.’
He paced the room, stretching out his arms as though the motion would make the corruption slide off him. No, no, he was tainted now. He looked at his friend, whose eyes were glued to the phone screen.
‘Hobbs,’ Bong said eventually, ‘you have to listen to this.’
‘No,’ Hobbs said. ‘I really don’t.’
But Bong was right.
