A Cursed Place Read online

  Contents

  About the Author

  Advance Praise for A Cursed Place

  Praise for A Dying Breed

  Praise for A Single Source

  Also by Peter Hanington

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  How to use this eBook

  Part One

  1 In the Shadow of the Dam

  2 Revolution 2.0

  3 The Golden Rules

  4 A Cursed Place

  5 Grand Luxe

  6 Do No Harm

  7 Inside the Square

  8 The Lennon Wall

  9 Well and Good

  10 Open Day

  11 Naz

  12 Department Eight

  13 Heads & Tails

  14 Pelmanism

  15 Crossed Lines

  16 Maslih

  17 Soledad

  18 The Watching Man

  19 Chinese Rules

  20 The Devil’s Work

  Part Two

  21 Sammy

  22 Content Provider

  23 Partners

  24 Wishful Thinkers

  25 Favours for Friends

  26 Playing the Slots

  27 The Pushback

  28 God mode

  29 Date Night

  30 The Influencers

  Part Three

  31 Oaths

  32 No Hay Problema

  33 The Collection

  34 Red Flags

  35 Being Careful

  36 Secrets

  37 A Refresher Course

  38 A New Tradition

  39 Short Legs

  40 Small Fires

  41 The Play

  42 Promises

  43 Harm

  44 Search History

  45 Crows

  Part Four

  46 Persuasion

  47 Memory Sticks

  48 All Souls

  49 Questions

  50 Good Fortune

  51 We & They

  52 The Hunt

  53 Fair Weather

  54 Ultimate Glory

  55 The Unburying

  56 An Invitation

  57 The Moonlit Flit

  58 The Fourth Floor

  59 Departures

  60 Video Nasties

  61 Slow Journalism

  62 The Common Denominator

  63 Ringing True

  64 Negative Treatment

  65 Letters

  66 The Good News

  67 Priorities

  68 Hackathon

  69 Reassignment

  70 Duck Shit

  71 Keeping it Simple

  72 Old Knights

  73 Table Stakes

  74 The Cookbook

  75 Cover

  76 The Fireman

  77 Reading Matter

  78 Chemistry

  79 The Octopus

  80 Leave

  81 Muddy Waters

  82 A New Song

  83 The Rabbit Hole

  84 Access All Areas

  85 The Erasing

  86 The Main Man

  87 Closed Circuits

  88 Sacrifice

  89 Hubris

  90 The Invisible Man

  91 Queasy

  92 Deep Fake

  93 Redemption

  94 Remembrance

  95 The Full English

  96 Sick Days

  97 Repairs

  98 Lessons

  99 The Lift

  100 Foundations

  101 The Right Thing

  Two weeks later

  102 Visiting Hours

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Peter Hanington is the author of A Dying Breed and A Single Source. He has worked as a journalist for over twenty-five years, including fourteen years at the Today Programme and more recently The World Tonight and Newshour on the BBC World Service. He lives in London with his wife and has two grown-up children.

  Advance Praise for A Cursed Place

  ‘Whether in rioting Hong Kong, or a doomed Chilean mining town, or a sinister data-mining outfit in Silicon Valley, or the shabbiness of London’s Elephant and Castle, Peter Hanington sustains a narrative drive that catapults you from first word to last. Just make sure you don’t miss the scenery on the way – seeing from the inside how the BBC works and how news is made leaves you feeling that W1A may not be entirely caricature. A good, pacy, sinister and timely read’

  Alan Judd

  ‘A terrific thriller – vivid, quick-witted and dynamic, crackling with energy, dread and rage as it crosses continents and digs down into the human heart’

  Nicci Gerrard

  Praise for A Dying Breed

  Sunday Times Thriller of the Month

  ‘Thoughtful, atmospheric and grippingly plotted’

  Guardian

  ‘The multi-layered plot moves excitingly and entertainingly but also raises serious current issues … Hanington has true talent’

  The Times

  ‘A deeply insightful, humane, funny and furious novel. This is both a timely reflection on how Britain does business and a belting good read’

  A.L. Kennedy

  ‘A tremendously good debut with characters who leap to life … I have not read anything that has taken me anywhere near as close to Afghanistan as a place – amazingly gripping’

  Melvyn Bragg

  ‘Shot-through with great authenticity and insider knowledge – wholly compelling and shrewdly wise’

  William Boyd

  Praise for A Single Source

  ‘Topical, authoritative and gripping’

  Charles Cumming

  ‘Tight, pacy and strong on atmosphere’

  Michael Palin

  ‘Peter Hanington has a gift for fast-paced narrative, atmospheric location and authentic, often hilarious dialogue … [he] draws you in from the first line and keeps you guessing until, literally, the very last’

  Allan Little

  ‘A fascinating, atmospheric read … Will keep you up till the early hours’

  Kate Hamer

  ‘If you love le Carré, were gripped by Homeland and couldn’t get your nose out of A Dying Breed, here’s another thrilling read for you’

  Dame Ann Leslie

  Also by Peter Hanington

  A Dying Breed

  A Single Source

  A CURSED PLACE

  Peter Hanington

  www.tworoadsbooks.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Two Roads

  An imprint of John Murray Press

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Peter Hanington 2021

  The right of Peter Hanington to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  eBook ISBN 978 1 529 30523 4

  Hardback ISBN 978 1 529 30521 0

  Trade Paperback ISBN 978 1 529 30522 7

  Two Roads

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.tworoadsbooks.com
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  It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.

  Latin inscription in the reception of BBC Broadcasting House

  For Euan, Zoe, Mark and Nick

  How to use this eBook

  Look out for linked text (which is in blue) throughout the ebook that you can select to help you navigate between notes and main text.

  PART ONE

  Evil comes at leisure like the disease; good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

  G.K. Chesterton

  1 In the Shadow of the Dam

  BROCHU, CHILE, SOUTH AMERICA, 2014

  The town was sleeping. No sign of dawn except for the occasional squawk of a hopeful cockerel from a far-off farm. Jags slowed and brought the Chevy to a stop in the gravel lay-by next to a pockmarked green metal sign announcing your imminent arrival in Brochu. He switched off the engine and stared down at the town. The moon was bright and just a sliver short of full. Brochu looked all right in this light, he thought. Like any other Chilean shithole town, anyhow. Maybe even a little prettier than most – picturesque – seeing as how you had the foothills of the Andes mountains there in the background and the river running through. He lit a cigarette and cracked the window open, letting the smoke out and a blast of cold early morning air in. He took a long drag on his Marlboro. This must’ve been what Brochu looked like back in the old days. Rolling hills, a river running through the valley, sleepy little town with a handful of stores, surrounded by farms. He glanced at his watch – in an hour from now you’d see things differently. You’d see the deep scars cut into the mountain, you’d notice that the river wasn’t running right. Most of all, you’d figure out that that dark shadow in the middle distance wasn’t another hill, but rather the steep side of a one hundred and eighty metre-high dam, containing one thousand, seven hundred tons of toxic shit. If the dam broke – earthquake, structural failure, whatever – then the people of Brochu had ten minutes to run like hell before all that shit landed smack on their heads. That’s why, on his regular visits, Jags took a room at a guesthouse outside of town. The drive back was a pain, especially when he had to start early, like today, but it was worth it – for peace of mind. Nothing was more important than peace of mind. He took a couple more drags then flicked the half-smoked cigarette out of the window. He pulled a notepad and pencil from inside his bomber jacket and wrote.

  Through a car window

  A moonlit mining town, hills

  No one awake but me

  He counted the syllables off on his thick fingers.

  ‘Bullshit.’ He looked again at his scribbled poem, flipped the pencil and erased the last line. Tried again.

  Through a car window

  A moonlit mining town, hills

  One man awake, me

  He read it through again, out loud. ‘Nah.’ Jags shut the notebook and stuffed it back inside his jacket. Stupid to try and write something decent when he was on a job, working to a deadline and with his mind whirring. One thing at a time. He clicked the glove compartment open and pulled out a white plastic carrier bag. A handful of blurry-looking photographs tumbled out of an envelope and fell to the floor; Jags picked them up and put them back in the glove. Inside the plastic bag were half a dozen mobile phones, a variety of makes, shapes and sizes. He tipped them out onto the passenger seat and shuffled through them. Each phone had a sticker on the reverse with dates and three-letter codes written on them, all in upper case: LAX, LHR, PEK, JRS, SCL … He found the phone he was looking for and switched it on; its blue screen reflected off the windscreen and lit the car. Jags turned the brightness down, selected his contacts and scrolled down until he found the name he was looking for. He scratched at his stubbled cheek, constructing as short a sentence as possible in one language before translating it into another, then he typed. Hora de trabajar. He checked the time once more and pressed send. The message left his phone with a satisfying swishing sound and made its digital way a mile and a half down the road into Brochu.

  Pablo Mistral ate no breakfast. Better to throw up a mug of sour coffee than a plateful of egg and bread and onions, and he almost always threw up. The nature of the work he did for the American, combined with a weak stomach, made it all but inevitable. He filled a saucepan with water from the plastic jerrycan, lit the gas hob and walked back down the short hall to his bedroom to get dressed while the water boiled. He edged round the double bed in the direction of the metal roll-along clothes rail that held his and his wife’s clothes. Francesca had been full of praise when Pablo first bought the rail and brought it home, but in recent months its limitations had become obvious. The only place to put it was alongside the bed, hard against the wall, and the wall was damp. Francesca had sewn a cover for it out of recycled fertiliser sacks, scrubbed clean, but the damp somehow worked its way through this as well. He pulled a musty-smelling sweatshirt and shirt from their hangers, together with his best pair of jeans. The clothes he wore when working for the American were different from the clothes he wore at the mine, smarter, although Mr Jags had never shown any sign of noticing or caring what Pablo wore. He sat down heavily on the end of the bed and pulled his jeans on over his grey long johns. Francesca turned in her sleep and he heard her soft snore. He thought about waking his wife and saying a brief goodbye; also this would allow her to see how early he was up, how hard he had to work. He decided to let her be; he didn’t want to have a pointless conversation or have to explain himself – better just to go.

  He finished dressing then reached for his wife’s hand mirror. His moustache was growing in slowly; a thick black hairy caterpillar covered his top lip, while the attempted handlebars – although a little wispy – were coming along. Pablo had overheard his daughter commenting that the moustache just drew attention to his bulbous nose, rather than distracting from it, which she guessed was the intention. He wet his thumb and finger with his tongue and curled the wisps of handlebar hair upwards. She could go to hell; he was growing the moustache for himself, not to please her. He’d given up trying to please Soledad long ago. Pablo left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

  Louder snores drifted from behind the next door down the hall. His two teenage boys and their big sister, plus his favourite – ten-year-old Claudio – all still sharing the one room, still in bunk beds. This knowledge pricked at his pride. Three or four more jobs like this morning’s and perhaps they could think about moving to a bigger place. Still in Brochu – everyone who worked at the mine lived in the town – but maybe they could move to the other side. The houses were better there and they’d be a mile or two further from the dam instead of right in the shadow of the devilish thing. He would keep the next envelope of money Mr Jags gave him in his pocket, or give it to Francesca instead of taking it to the bar and spending it all in one go on himself and his fair-weather friends. Or even worse, his mistress. She could spend in a weekend what Francesca would make last a month. Pablo nodded his head vigorously. He was in complete agreement with this new plan of his. From now on he would save his money and focus on his family: his three boys, the girl and Francesca. He would forget about the other plan – the one that involved airline tickets and passports and the other woman. It wasn’t really a plan anyway. It was a foolish dream.

  He made the coffee, pouring the oily film on the top of the boiled water down the plughole before adding the cleaner-looking water to a chipped mug with two spoons of coffee granules and three spoons of white sugar. His boots, black beanie hat and puffer jacket were by the front door, but even with all these on and a mug of hot coffee inside him, it felt bitterly cold out on the street. He stuck his hands in his pockets and trudged through the dark, past one breeze block and tin-roofed house after another, each almost identical to his own.

  Ten minutes of walking and he was on the outskirt
s of Brochu. Up on the hill, just about visible, thanks to the brightness of the moon, Pablo saw the familiar outline of a Chevrolet and, standing next to it, a hunched form. A man. His master and fellow murderer.

  2 Revolution 2.0

  CENTRAL DISTRICT, HONG KONG

  If you loved cities then Hong Kong was heaven, if you didn’t it was a hellish place. Most of the time, Patrick belonged to the former group. But not today. He needed a cup of tea and another dose of painkillers. His blue eyes were bloodshot and his feet throbbed. His feet and his head; a hangover from last night’s session in the bar at the Headland Hotel. He’d started drinking during happy hour but continued long after with his reporter, John Brandon, egging him on. Several pints of beer, then dragon cocktails, then something else that he couldn’t even remember. Sambuca? He remembered it had an aniseed taste to it. Whatever it was, it had been a bad idea. Patrick winced at the memory before consoling himself with the thought that at least he hadn’t let this thumping hangover get in the way of his work. He’d spent the day with a thousand-strong crowd of pro-democracy demonstrators, who had gathered in a park on the edge of the city before marching here, to the Central business district. As they’d walked, their numbers had grown until eventually they had enough people to successfully block an eight-lane highway. In between swallowing paracetamol and getting rained on, Patrick had interviewed dozens of the protestors. One more interview and he’d be done. Just then an earnest-looking young man, a boy really, wearing a dark T-shirt and thick black-rimmed spectacles, shouted in Patrick’s direction.

  ‘Man from the BBC? Mr Reid? I have some time now if you are ready?’ The boy’s hair was plastered to his head by the rain. The humidity had steamed his glasses and he was squinting to see if Patrick had heard him and was coming.

  ‘Yes, thanks. Just call me Patrick, Eric. I’ll be right with you.’

  In the course of just a few days, Eric Fung had emerged as the de facto leader of a student-led protest group calling itself Scholastic. Patrick gathered up his stuff and walked over to where Eric and his young comrades were gathered. ‘I can stay here and speak to you, is that correct?’