The Truth Commissioner Read Online Free Page B

That’s all.
    The one thing, however, he knows is that whatever rewards accrue as a result of his acceptance, he will have earned them, not least the fact that he will spend the next two years living in a city that he considers much the same way as he might think of a piece of dirt that he hoped he had shaken off his shoe. It’s true that they’ve given him a rather luxurious apartment overlooking the river and sought to accommodate every possible requirement, and it’s also true that he’s only an hour’s flight away from his London home and Hampstead Heath, but the thought of the actual job precludes any wild surge of pleasure. Still, there is the young team that has been assembled to service the process and of course, and not least, the lovely brown-eyed Laura whose faltering interview required a rather large helping hand before the post was hers. Still, in comparison to the demands of some of his fellow commissioners, it was a small price for them to pay. He thinks with disdain of the Finnish commissioner, the squat little barrel of a woman with truncated legs whose two preposterous poodles have been allowed to sidestep the laws of quarantine; of the obligatory South African judge who seems to have ensconced a veritable tribe of relations in a most desirable residence in the very heart of Hillsborough.
    He wishes it were Laura who stood beside him now and not Beckett who stands his customary ten feet away, the nothing-to-say, red-haired Beckett who has been appointed by the PSNI as his protection officer and driver. Beckett in his grey Marks and Spencer’s suit and shiny shoes, who is silent as a Trappist monk. The early-morning air is cold and edged by a razor wind that cuts at the cheekbones and pinches the eyes into narrow slits. It’s always good to show willing but he wonders why his presence was deemed necessary – something no doubt to do with the constantly reiterated and linchpin word ‘transparency’. It’s impossible to speak to those in authority without hearing it drip from their tongues like honey, usually coupled with some vacuous statement about the ‘integrity of the process’. Transparency and integrity – words no doubt that help the user feel ennobled and elevated to a higher plane than his listeners.
    So what he is now watching is supposed to be the practical implementation of these concepts and as the first security vans and police vehicles begin to wind their way through the harbour estate he pulls up the collar of his overcoat. Elliot, Simon and Matteo stand at the door of the shipyard’s old and long-defunct drawing office ready to receive the first delivery, the identification badges in their lapels and the metal clips on their boards blinking weakly with reflected winter light. Behind them stands a phalanx of clerical assistants and members of the private security firm who have won the public tender for the work. He has already been given an inspection tour of the building’s restoration and refurbishment, observed the high-tech security system – clearly not the one used by the Northern Bank – with the infra-red scans and bar codes, the palm-print identification, the heating and humidity controls, the computer terminals and the internal and external security cameras. He has seen the certificate from the pest-control company stating that the final rodent has been irrevocably exterminated from the environs. So here, where in a former age under the vaulted ceiling the plans of great White Star ocean liners were drawn, stretch rows of metal tables, partitioned and numbered, and above and around them purrs the steady hum of electricity and an expectant readiness.
    On his own he has already toured the area and found it freakishly attractive, a bit like visiting some windswept tundra of history where each year leeches off another little bit of what must have been, leaving only the silted dry docks and the swathes of cracked