Kevin Parker had checked out of his one-star Gloucester Road Hotel and was taking lunch.
Sipping at a plastic mug of Coke with a half-eaten McDonald’s burger draped over its plastic box, Kevin was on his phone trying to contact Tunji Fayinka. He’d been trying all morning and had already left text and voice messages. Tunji, he concluded, was either at work at Barnet College or, much more likely, still asleep at home.
While he waited, with mobile in hand, he was re-reading his unused notes from the night before. The notes were now a little greasy, but the words of Thomas Malthus were as inspiring as ever.
He turned a page to Malthus’s words he’d intended to quote if Mr El Badry had, during the evening, served drinks to the large gathering of Malthus Society members.
“The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving, they seldom exercise it. Instead, all that is beyond their present necessity goes, generally speaking, to the ale house.”
As it was the six glasses of neat whisky, he’d drunk the night before still hadn’t been enough to make him sleep. However, the quote itself always amused Kevin.
He looked up from his burger. Malthus was a prophetic genius who wrote English perfectly fitted to the twenty first century. He would, though, have hated McDonalds with its brash red-and-yellow logo and its cheap mass catering for millions of overfed but unhealthy children. Their early deaths from diabetes, heart attacks and lack of exercise would soon prove Malthus’s point.
“To remedy the frequent distresses of the common people, the poor laws of England have been instituted; but it is to be feared that though they may have alleviated a little the intensity of individual misfortune, they have spread the general evil over a much larger surface.
The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not, at present, enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the consequence?”
“Too right,” said Kevin to his burger. “Bloody social security, family tax credits, and child benefits - the Chinese will find a way to take it all for themselves if things get any tougher. What would fucking McDonalds do then?”
“Every endeavour should be used to weaken and destroy all those institutions relating to corporations, apprenticeships, etc., which cause the labours of agriculture to be worse paid than the labours of trade and manufactures”.
“Fucking McDonalds,” muttered Kevin as he pushed his half-eaten burger to one side.
“To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man. The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.”
“Stop the fucking suffering now,” said Kevin half standing.
“Though I may not be able in the present instance to mark the limit at which further improvement will stop, I can very easily mention a point at which it will not arrive.
“Fucking genius,” muttered Kevin.
“I know of no well-directed attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening the skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages, particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk-maid, by which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were corrected.
“Steady on, Thomas,” Kevin said whilst reminding himself that Ausser Kontrolle had always liked that quote. Then his mobile phone suddenly rang.
“Hey, man, what you want calling me at this hour?”
“It’s midday, Tunji,” said Kevin. “I thought you might have been lecturing the good students of Barnet and Southgate College on population control.”
“Yeh, well, tomorrow, Kev. What’s up?”
“I met a mate of yours last night. Mr El Badry…”
“Shhhh, Kev. Not so loud.”
“I hear you’re helping him with a few ideas.”
“Nope, not me, mate.”
“Tunji, my friend. Stop fucking me about. What’s going?”
“If you want to know, meet me. Don’t use any fucking technology, man, OK? Know what I mean?”
“But is it true what he said, Tunji? Is he testing something on your patch?”
“Sure. But it’s nothing to do with me, my man. He just wants my future support.”
Kevin took a deep breath. “Tunji, let’s meet. I can’t get my head around him. He sort of scares me. Know what I mean? The man’s a rich, bloody Arab. What does he want with us?”