Chapter 64

Derek had felt like an outsider in the fight against the OWG. Dan was inventing with Sebastien. Ryan was getting the pictures and bagging a general. Serena had got intelligence from Howard Cavendish's nanny. Eric was in the thick of it. Phyllis made the tea. He had to find some way to get more involved.

He was in his fifties and was not too fit if he was honest. He could not see himself partaking in any derring-do. If it came down to it though, he would take up arms or do whatever else was asked of him. He had felt like a spare part and then he had an idea. He could carry out his own investigation.

The OWG had many problems, but record keeping was not one of them. There was a form for everything and there had to be an army of people somewhere inputting details onto the ESD. Derek worked in the largest hospital in the area. The hospital which was closest to the seat of the government. All of the medical records for the cabinet ministers were available to him.

He knew all the identities of the members of the inner cabinet. He had heard them referenced a hundred times when he met with Dan and the rest of their group. He arranged the names into alphabetical order and began his search. The first on his list was Alastair Barton. He began to read about him.

Derek read through the notes. He skipped the minister's formative years. Childhood chicken pox was not relevant. Barton was a healthy man. He had complained of a bad back in recent years and had a mild case of asthma, but there was not much to be gleaned from the screen. He noticed a reference to Barton's wife, Annabelle and that was when it got interesting.

Mrs Annabelle Barton had been admitted to hospital several times in the last ten years. The injuries that she had suffered told their own story. Her wrist had been broken. Black eyes and contusions were common. Ligaments had been sprained and more recently she had been treated for a stomach ulcer.

Beside each entry was a brief explanation of how the damage was caused. Derek read through the list of trips and accidents and knew that nobody could be that clumsy or unlucky. Alastair Barton was definitely beating his wife. Anyone could see what was happening, but nothing had been done to stop it.

Little was done within the medical profession to report cases of domestic abuse. Unless the injuries were very severe or there was a chance that someone's life was in danger then nothing would be said. The police weren't particularly interested in cases where the damage was minor. Wives rarely made a complaint.

If a doctor made a point of raising these cases on a regular basis with the authorities, it would cause trouble. Not for the perpetrators of the crimes, but for the doctor. Anything that upset the status quo was frowned upon. The doctor would be seen as an agitator and would likely be removed from their post.

The best that the profession could do was patch up the injured females and send them on their way. Occasionally they would have a quiet word in the ear of the spouse, but this was risky. It was frustrating to be so impotent in the face of persistent abuse. The ignoring of domestic abuse was just another thing that needed to be added to the list of reforms that the OWG should undertake.

The fact that Alastair Barton was a member of the inner cabinet made him almost untouchable. If he had murdered his wife he would probably have got away with it. Why would the OWG clamp down on this type of crime when they were guilty of it themselves. He started a search on the next name and wondered what other horrors he might find.

He did not find much on the others apart from a case of a sexually transmitted disease. That indicated that the minister had been having an affair or had been using prostitutes. The sex trade was illegal, but not for the OWG it seemed. In light of the details about the party the government seemed to be financing the oldest profession.

Nicholas Salter had been married, but his wife had died over twenty years ago. He had never married again and Derek now knew the reason for that. He was not interested in women. He had one child from the marriage, a son, and his wife's death had occurred shortly after she had given birth.

With what he now knew Derek couldn't help but be suspicious about the death of Salter's wife. It could be that nothing untoward happened, but he doubted it. This was a man that blackmailed and murdered to remove those who disagreed with him. It was not a stretch of the imagination to think that he had got rid of an inconvenient wife. He would try to find a coroner's report, but he guessed that if there had been foul play it had been covered up.

Salter himself was annoyingly fit and healthy. There was no sign of him being sent to an early grave by a serious ailment. Derek couldn't believe that he was wishing ill on a human being. He had taken the Hippocratic oath. He rationalised that someone who did the things that Salter had done was not really human.

The hubris of Nicholas Salter and the inner cabinet would be their downfall. They thought that they were above the law. The thought that their medical records might be used against them would never have occurred. Derek would be armed with the evidence when he attended the next meeting with Dan and the others.

~~~

The manager at the distribution depot was happy with the work of Bertram O'Neill. His appearance was neat and tidy and he had no problems with the job. If you told him how to do something once, he got it. He wished all his clerks were as efficient as him. The scar on his face had made him wary but the manager found Bert to be relaxed and benign.

Bert couldn't say he liked his job, a lot of the time he was bored. It was not much of a strain on his intellect to fill out forms and then send them to the right people. He was paid reasonably well and had been able to afford a comfortable life as a result. His small flat was cosy and sufficient for his needs.

He was in a depot full of goods being moved from one place to another. He could not shake off his previous pilfering and he had acquired some luxuries out of the crates awaiting transport. He was not stealing a huge amount, like the operation on the docks in America. Just the odd thing to make his life a little better.

The block of apartments where he lived had a communal area for socialising and a shared laundry room. After his initial reluctance to mix with the other men living there, he had found that they were quite good company. He had no trouble putting on a suit and setting off to work each day like a proper member of the leadership class.

Bert looked in the mirror. He saw a man with neatly trimmed hair. A man who appeared a bit softer due to the weight he had gained. The food he had access to was richer and possibly less healthy than what he had been used to. In the labour zone they consumed a lot of fruit and vegetables. Here he ate pies, chipped potatoes, slabs of beef and pork and cakes and desserts.

He was changing physically. Bert wasn't lifting and running like he had been doing constantly in America. He thought of the last two months there when he had been in an administrative role and realised that the decline in his condition had started then. He ought to find some way to take some exercise.

There was a mental change as well. He still thought about his aims of getting Serena back and killing Dan, but not quite so often. He rather liked being one of the leadership class and enjoying all the privileges which went with that. He had been introduced to a girl by one of his colleagues and he liked her. She was not from the labour zone so he would have to treat her better than he had treated Phoebe.

Of an evening Bert would sometimes join his house mates to watch television. They might drink a couple of bottles of beer. There would be discussions occasionally about what they had seen on the box. Other pastimes included playing chess and cards. If he wanted he could simply stay in his flat.

He excused himself some evenings if the guys were getting involved in political debates. Bert did not want to reveal his true thoughts about the OWG. It was interesting, however, listening to the thoughts of others. The arguments for and against the government were well made and he could acknowledge that in some ways the OWG had done the best that they could.

Bert looked back on his days working on farms and carrying boxes on the docks with distaste. He was a clever man and should never have been reduced to manual labour. The office job was more suitable. He was capable of much more of course. If he pushed for promotion would his true identity ultimately be revealed. He wasn't sure that he wanted to put his head above the parapet.

Was it so bad to settle for what he had right now? His childhood home had been basic, maybe even inadequate. He had shared a small room with his older brother whilst his sister slept in what was little more than a cupboard. They had stringy meat, weak tea and a plateful of potatoes most days.

His appreciation of the finer things in life had been stimulated when he went off to school. The food there was better than anything he had eaten before. It was there that he had developed his loathing for the OWG. The them and us culture and the knowledge of how little the labour class had were brought home to him as he saw how the other half lived.

He was becoming complacent. Bert would rekindle his desire to do something about Serena and Dan. He was planning a little trip to District 31 soon to do some surveillance. Up until now he had avoided anywhere where he might be recognised. His Bertram O'Neill persona was working very well and he didn't want to risk discovery.

He had made some discreet enquiries and the general consensus was that Bertie Crawford was dead. No one would be expecting to see him and he did look different now. Bert was not going to push his luck. The area around his old school was off limits and, so far, he had avoided District 31. That would soon change.