At Risk Read Online Free PDF

world of the Far Right? I take it from the haircut and the utility footwear that you’ve got a social engagement later on?”
    “Yeah. In East Ham. A lecture on the European Pagan Tradition.”
    “Which is?”
    “New Age Hitler-worship, basically.”
    “Excellent!”
    “Isn’t it just? I’m trying to look nasty enough to get alongside our man, but not so bloody horrible that I get my head kicked in by the Anti-Nazi League before I get there.”
    “I’d say you’ve struck pretty much the right note,” said Liz.
    “Thanks a lot.” He grinned conspiratorially. “Can I show you guys something?”
    “You sound like a flasher. Quickly—I’ve got a very full in-box here.”
    Barney reached beneath his desk, bringing out a limp rubber mask and a scrap of red felt. “It’s for the Christmas party. I’ve found this place that makes them. I’ve had fifty done.”
    Liz stared incredulously at the mask. “It’s not!”
    “It is!”
    “But that’s brilliant! It’s so like him.”
    “I know, but don’t say anything. I want it to be a surprise for Wetherby. No one in this department can keep a secret for five minutes, so I’m not going to hand them out until the actual day.”
    Liz laughed out loud, the plight of Sohail Din temporarily but absolutely displaced by the thought of their section leader—customarily a late arrival at staff functions—faced with fifty beaming David Shaylers in Santa hats.

 

    W hen Liz arrived back at her basement flat in Kentish Town, the place had a reproachful air about it. It wasn’t so much untidy as neglected; most of her possessions still lay where she had left them at the beginning of the weekend. The CD dusty in the jutting maw of the player. The remote control in the centre of the carpet. The cafetière half full. The Saturday papers strewn about.
    A faint funereal smell lingered; the armful of winter jasmine that her mother had given her, and that she had meant to put in water before going to bed the night before, was now a sad tangle of stalks on the table. Around it, and thick on the floor below, a constellation of dying five-pointed petals. On the answering machine, a tiny pulsing red light.
    Why was the place so cold? She checked the central heating and found that the timer was two hours behind. Had there been some sort of power cut during the weekend? Possibly, but then as far as Liz was concerned, thermostats and the like had always seemed to wield some strange whimsical power that rendered them unaccountable. Moving the time forward to 19:30, she heard the boiler start up with a satisfactory whoomf.
    For the next half-hour, as warmth permeated the small basement flat, she tidied up. When the place was well enough ordered for her to be able to relax, she took a cook-from-frozen lasagne from the stack in the freezer (had they defrosted and refrosted in the power cut, if indeed there had been a power cut? Was she about to poison herself?), pierced the protective foil with a series of neat incisions, slid the package into the oven, and poured herself a large vodka-tonic.
    There were two messages on the answering machine. The first was from her mother: Liz had left a suede skirt and belt on the back of her bedroom door at Bowerbridge—would they keep until next time?
    The second was from Mark. He had rung at 12:46 that afternoon from Nobu in Park Lane, where he was waiting to give an American actress an expense-account lunch. The actress was late, however, and Mark was hungry, and his thoughts had turned to the basement flat in Inkerman Road NW5, and the possibility of spending the night there with the flat’s owner. Following a drink and a bite to eat, perhaps, at the Eagle in Farringdon Road.
    Liz deleted both messages. The idea of meeting in the Eagle, a favourite hang-out of Guardian journalists, was insane. Had he told people at the paper about her? Was it common knowledge that he had that most chic of journalistic accessories—a pet spook? Even if he had