Writing fiction involves a search for data. The constant vigilance, the scanning for information, can lead to a sense of synchronicity. When the universe keeps coming up with new connections, the writer can feel positively prescient.
On a hot morning in the city, the universe began unfolding a narrative. It started with a stream of police cars, sirens wailing, turning into a narrow cul-de-sac. The police helicopter arrived, hovering low overhead.
There was the possibility of violence, of danger. But neither the residents, emerging onto their balconies, nor the writer, who had now altered course and “just happened” to be walking into the cul-de-sac, were prepared for the degree of weaponry involved. A troop of cops had gathered, all wielding military-style assault rifles.
From her balcony, a glamorous woman kept up a commentary. “I can’t believe it,” she said, as a man was brought out, handcuffed and at gunpoint. “We’ve known him forever.” Could he have a secret life? “Surely not,” she said.
The man was marched to a police car. There was a long silence. The police stood alert, weapons at the ready. And then there was a change, the rifles were lowered; they began to lounge, to chat. Soon, a senior cop ambled up the street, all smiles. It was a mistake! Nothing to see here! The man emerged from the police car. A polite cop gave him back his machete. He’d been cutting foliage in his garden and someone had rung 111 to report a man wielding a knife in the park. The residents were amused, and inclined to be positive. Some thanked the police for the work they do. They’d been made to feel safe, they said. But did the trembling gardener feel so sanguine?
The police stored their heavy weapons and droned off in their Skodas. The helicopter clattered away. Walking on, the writer started listening to a podcast. And the pattern continued unfolding. It was a taped interview with a neuroendocrinologist, whose specialty was the behaviour of baboons.
Dr Robert Sapolsky had mingled with baboons for decades. He was fascinating on their interactions, and on the subject of human free will. He described baboon violence. Females look after each other; males spend their lives fighting with other male baboons. Their life’s work is to survive in the brutal monkey hierarchy.
His British interviewer, a toothy enthusiast (who jauntily commented that Sapolsky resembles a baboon) had been, at one time, involved in heavy combat. And he’d experienced it in the company of the man who is now the boss of the gun-toting troop in the cul-de-sac.
After Operation Iraqi Freedom, Rory Stewart served as a deputy governor in Iraq. There, he met our current Police Minister, Mark Mitchell, who was then a private contractor serving on his security detail. Mitchell has described Stewart’s calm under fire as they fought off marauding insurgents. Now, Stewart has a new job as a podcaster.
Stewart probed Sapolsky. Could it be that humans have no free will? Are we all just driven by primate instincts? Male baboon savagery is certainly striking. Fortunately, it doesn’t occur to them to use weapons.
The universe went on laying out its pattern. That evening, Mitchell appeared on the TV news. He was looking intensely sulky. His lower lip protruded. The former police minister, Ginny Andersen, had taunted him with a very rude question: had he kept a kill count in Iraq? No, he did not forgive her. But the gardener in the cul-de-sac might have a question, too. Would Mitchell be toning things down? Would he be leaving those fearsome gun-toting instincts behind him?
