Jed, the one person who never fully joined the party, never had a girl in his bed, never seemed out of control. Always watching.
Suzy Lancaster, having first made him seek treatment for the panic attacks, was the one who took him aside again.
‘My dearest Robbie,’ he would never forget her saying, those deep blue eyes bearing in on him, ‘you need to get away for a while.’
‘I can’t. I’ve got a job,’ he’d replied. ‘A really good one.’
‘You’ll lose it if you don’t take a break and sort yourself out. It’s not your fault. You’ve been through a trauma.’
‘If I duck out now, I’ll never catch up.’
She narrowed those big eyes. ‘That’s rubbish. Escape the Westminster bubble. See the real world. Trust me, it might actually help you. Most politicians have lived far too narrow lives and eventually it finds them out.’
He had the sense to know she was right and applied to VSO. He discovered how useless his skills were in the work – the real work – they did for people who truly needed help. He pleaded with them to take him on. He protested that he was fit, strong, healthy, could dig ditches, plant crops, whatever they wanted. Eventually they relented and he went to Malawi. Nine months later, he returned from this gentle, poor land to London, vowing that never again would alcohol and drugs interfere with his life and ambitions.
The first time he and Suzy met up after those months away, he decided he was in love with her. She could not be persuaded.
‘I love you too, Robbie—’
‘No, I’m in love with you.’
‘It wouldn’t work. It’s not us. We’re best friends, soul mates. Let’s not do anything to ruin it.’
When he bumped into Carol a decade later, the mutual coup de foudre made him understand how right Suzy had been. He pictured her now, the hair blonder and more shining than ever, the eyes more sparkling. She had reached the summit, a lead presenter on the Today programme and big, political interviews on television. He looked at his watch – 8.20 a.m. – and turned on the radio. Not one of her mornings. Their contact was more fleeting now, both leading crammed lives. It momentarily saddened him. Two columnists were assessing prospects for the State Opening of Parliament and the Royal Speech.
He must not allow Jed to distract him from that speech. It was the defining moment, the route map of the next four years, his moment to see off the worst of the radicals in his party. Like Jed Fowkes and the Chancellor, who seemed to have become putty in his hands.
He needed to wrest control of Jed’s story, to find out what lay behind it. He must find a strategy fast. He rang down and asked for the private office meeting to be pushed back till 8.45. That gave him twenty minutes. There were two traps to avoid. He could not allow Jed’s story to become his own paranoia. And the story could not be allowed to fester unchallenged. Whatever risks the truth held, he had to know what really happened that night.
He could be the tactician not the investigator. He required an ally. An operative. A story digger. A confidant. There was certainly no political colleague he could confide in; they did not recognize words like ‘trust’, ‘loyalty’, ‘confidentiality’.
Friends? Posing the question deflated him. There had seemed no time for friends, even his closest and oldest. Maybe it was his error – he had failed to insist on making that time. How many conversations must he have had with Carol when she pleaded with him to take it easy, to catch up with old friends? Almost imperceptibly a distance had grown. Perhaps he had too blithely assumed it would be easy enough to retrieve those friendships.
Carol herself? Out of the question. She must never know, never catch a single hint of it. Ever. The temptation to confide or confess to the person you wanted to share everything with could easily become overwhelming.
He understood one overarching rule. Only one other person could be allowed to know everything Jed had told him. It was the law of secrets – once they went beyond a single individual, the secret went too. If that individual needed others to help, they could not be given the full picture.
‘Trust’. ‘Loyalty’. ‘Confidentiality’. The words jumped at him again. Who might any previous Prime Minister immediately think of? His most senior civil servant – the Cabinet Secretary? The ultimate crutch to lean on, an unbreakable mix of discretion and trouble-shooting, the Prime Minister’s link to the intelligence services. He pictured the rotund shape and beaming face of the present incumbent, Sir Kevin Long, whom he would be seeing in a few minutes. He could not begin to imagine discussing this with him. Forget it.
Before he saw Sir Kevin, he would exchange words with one calming figure of indisputable loyalty. The principal private secretary to the Prime Minister was the person he spent more Downing Street time with than any other. Mark Burden was not just trustworthy, he was also likeable, fun even. Occasionally they had joked about his name – the ‘burden’ of office, the ‘mark’ of Cain – and mused about who they would both like to be rid of. But if he approached Mark with his dilemma, he would be placing him in an impossible position. He might feel obligated to pass on this secret, if only to his ultimate boss, the Cabinet Secretary. There was a further practical obstacle. If Mark was bound by confidence, what was there he could actually do from the confines of the private office? No. Wherever this might lead, none of it could – yet – be allowed within Downing Street or Whitehall beyond.
There must be someone. Someone at one remove. He retrieved the morning papers from the flat’s front door. He turned to Adam Billing’s column in The Post – an analysis of the motivation behind his initiative on arms sales and mercenaries. ‘IS THIS THE REAL ROBBIE SANDFORD?’ read the headline. Billing was fine, he reflected – and that particular question a reasonable one for a commentator to raise. But he did not begin to compare with his predecessor – a man for whom the word ‘confidential’ meant precisely that. How sad that someone he had so liked and admired was now out of the picture.
The thought lingered. ‘Trust’. Yes. ‘Confidentiality’. Yes. ‘Loyalty’. Irrelevant, not the way he would think, outweighed by the other two.
Was it possible? Were there any other ideas even remotely worth considering at this point?
He opened the fridge, grabbed two oranges, went to the bathroom to check his hair and teeth, then down to the private office.
Mark Burden was waiting. ‘Good morning, Prime Minister.’
‘Morning, Mark.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Right, I have a task for you. As and when you can fit it in. If you need any assistance, no one must know the request has come from me.’
‘What should I say?’
‘Oh, you’ll find a way round it.’ He paused, lowering his voice. ‘Do you happen to know where Quine is these days?’
The PPS appeared puzzled, then smiled. ‘Hiding from his creditors, I dare say.’
‘Yes, that was an injustice. I want you to find him. I want to meet him. Privately. You can know. No one else. Give him a codename if you want. Me too.’
‘I’m not really suited to subterfuge—’
‘Make yourself suited, Mark.’
‘Yes, Prime Minister. But you do realize he is seen by most people as damaged goods.’
‘You know something? I really couldn’t give a damn.’
11
Quine gazed at the spectacle that had captivated him the moment he first caught sight of it.
He had gone west in Beatrice, his vintage VW camper van, one of the few treasured possessions he had managed to hang onto after the disaster, aiming for the seaside village he remembered loving as a boy. The broad beach was the same but now its smattering of shops and shacks were boarded up or closed. The bungalows rising above were gloomy and empty-looking as winter clouds rolled in across the sky. But then, looking out at low tide over the great stretch of sand, greying in the autumnal light, his eye was drawn to the cliff edge on its northern side, extending and rising to a headland in the far distance.
A mile along the cliff face was a cluster of dw
ellings, standing sentinel over the waves beating onto rocks below. He hurried back to Beatrice, turned round and retraced his route, chugging up the steep hill and onto a track. The camper van struggled through its dips, kerbs and potholes, until it joined a tarmacked lane. Half a mile later he descended through a group of houses that stretched all the way to the edge of the cliff. He walked over a band of mossy grass to a marble bench, inscribed with two names. ‘At peace with the waves they loved’. The inscription showed they had drowned ten years before.
The air was cold, the chill coming from an east wind. The sandy beach Quine had seen from sea level had given way to rolling foam. On its other side, was a further long spur of cliff, tipped by a lighthouse. He moved his eyes to the water below him. Two black-suited figures lying on surfboards were paddling out, breasting the swell. Finally they stopped, turned, lay motionless, waiting for the perfect wave.
He sat on the bench, a tear in his eye, and watched. The troubles of his life, here and now in this moment, were as nothing. This was the place he would resolve them.
Dragging himself away, he drove slowly back up the lane, in search of a sign displaying ‘Vacancy’ among windows of pebble-dashed cottages. He neither wanted nor could afford luxury or even comfort. He needed only space.
It was late afternoon but the place was asleep. Perhaps no one came here outside the summer months. Then he saw not just a sign, but a porch light illuminated. A nameplate on the entrance gate said, ‘7, The Waves’. He drew up outside and knocked on the door. A tall, grey-haired woman, cigarette in hand – in her seventies, he guessed – answered.
‘Yes?’
‘I wondered if you have a room?’ He paused. ‘For the next year or so.’
‘Good heavens,’ she rasped, looking down on him. ‘Why didn’t you phone, dear? There’s a thing called the internet too.’
‘There was no point,’ he said. ‘I could only know the place I wanted when I saw it. I’ve found it here. On this cliff.’
‘What a strange-sounding man you are. All right, come in.’ She inspected him. ‘I’m Barbara Trelight.’ She pronounced it as ‘relict’. ‘Spelt like delight.’
He offered a hand. ‘Then I’m delighted to meet you, Mrs Trelight.’
She wheezed with a certain pleasure. ‘As it happens, Mrs is correct. But he’s dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need. I’m better off without him.’ She flicked ash on the gravel drive. ‘A cup of tea, Mr…’
‘Thank you. Quine. Joseph Quine. People tend to call me Joe—’
‘Best stick to the formalities for the moment. I’ll need to know a great deal more about you, Mr Quine. For example, will you pay weekly on time? Do you have antisocial habits? Or a criminal record?’ She paused, leaning to stub the cigarette on the sole of her shoe, then rose to pat her hair down. ‘I have to be careful, you know, a woman living on her own.’
Quine repressed a smile. ‘Of course. I’ve an up-to-date passport, a clean driving licence and a recent bank statement.’
‘I take little notice of such things, Mr Quine. I look at the person instead.’
This time Quine did smile. ‘I intend to lose weight over these months.’ He knew he did not cut an enticing figure. His round face and chubby cheeks, the blue eyes which once glinted, the mind which once devoured everything – from the tiniest item of gossip to the highest matter of state – were all dulled. Even his good head of hair felt lank. Judging that respectability might count in his favour as he sought his new accommodation, he was wearing the grey suit, white shirt, salmon tie and black shoes that had once been the uniform of his profession. The first was more crumpled than it should have been and the last less shiny.
The silent inspection lasted several seconds, then she lit another cigarette and waved it around. ‘Will you mind the house smelling of this?’
‘No. I might feel envy though,’ he replied with relief. It seemed he had passed. ‘Much of my life has been spent in smoke-filled rooms and bars.’
‘Bars?’
‘Yes. I used to conduct business in them.’
‘And what is your business?’
Quine hesitated. ‘I write.’
‘A writer! Have I read your books? I enjoy a good detective story.’
His smile faltered. ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Trelight. I am… was… a journalist,’ he said.
‘Oh…’ Her tone contained a hint of revulsion.
‘What did I tell you?’
‘Oh no, I don’t mean to—’
‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘most people dislike us. But that’s not why I’m here. I have a project. A history to write. I expect it to take me the best part of a year. I need space and seclusion.’
‘How much space?’
‘A room large enough for a bed, my desk and four filing cabinets. I have brought those last two with me.’
‘I might have to clear one or two things out…’
‘And most importantly,’ he continued, ‘a bare wall on which I can attach a large cork board.’
‘What do you want a cork board for?’
‘Not for throwing darts.’ His reply brought a twinkle to her pale green eyes.
‘In that case, I’ll show you what I have.’
She led him to the back of the bungalow; stairs rose to a spacious loft conversion with two windows overlooking a short garden and fields beyond.
‘I have my own bathroom,’ she said, ‘you have access to the ground-floor toilet and shower. As you see,’ she continued, looking out of the loft windows, ‘no view of the sea or headland. Makes it cheaper.’
‘As long as we can get my desk and board up the stairs, it will suit me perfectly,’ said Quine. ‘You said you have wi-fi?’
‘Of course. But the phone signal varies.’
‘I’m not expecting calls.’
‘I can offer you a special rate if you take the full eight months from today till mid-summer when the season starts. Six hundred pounds a month. Breakfast included. No guarantees after that.’
‘Thank you, that sounds most reasonable.’
She gave him a final inspection. ‘Yes, it is. I don’t mind having a young man in the house. But no loud music please.’
‘I’m not that young.’ He offered his hand. ‘Do we have a deal?’
She took it. ‘Yes, Mr Quine, we do.’
He vowed to transform himself and, over the coming months, kept to it. The stationary years of tobacco, whisky and wine, lunches and dinners, were replaced by the daily march to the point of the cliff and, on Saturday evenings, a single half-pint of Cornish bitter in the nearby Cross Keys pub. He bought a pedometer; the distance to the headland and back was 8.7 miles, the total ascent, with the ups and downs, just over 2,000 feet. After three months, the walk turned into a jog and he could do it in under an hour and a half. He found a gym at the nearest town, pumped iron and shadow-boxed. He ate Mrs Trelight’s breakfast and one other meal only. And he spent the other waking hours of every day embarking on the book-length ‘history’ which was to be his revenge.
The exotically named Quentin Deschevaux had arrived in the House of Commons in 2015 as the newly elected MP for East Somerset. He was in his late fifties, a late-comer to Parliament, and conspicuously rich – at times he gave the impression of representing not just his constituency but owning most of it too. He was bombastic and nationalist. When challenged about his own name and origins, he claimed his family came over with the Normans and never regretted leaving the sewer that was Europe for the green land of England. His growing host of admirers loved him and he became a leading performer in the Leave campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Joe Quine, political editor of The Post at Westminster, had instinctively seen Deschevaux as a fraud and then, as his renown grew in the post-Brexit vote cacophany, as a danger. He wrote two brief pieces in his Saturday political diary column in The Post. The first analysed the reasons for Deschevaux’s popularity with the grassroots of his party. The seco
nd commented on the mystery of his origins and wealth. Quine noted that Deschevaux’s declarations of earnings and shareholdings in the House of Commons register were confined largely to his UK residential properties, and homes in France, South Africa and the Caribbean. Quine wrote to him asking for a fuller explanation of his wealth. Deschevaux’s office replied that all his other investments had been placed in trusts managed at arm’s length by independent trustees and that the MP was ‘a free man, beholden to no persons and no interests’.
Two weeks after the second article, an envelope arrived at The Post, marked ‘Private and Confidential’ and ‘for the attention of Joseph Quine’. There was no letter inside, just a single document. It was a copy of the latest annual accounts submitted to Companies House of a private company called IPRM. The headline figures were unremarkable – an operating profit of some fifteen million pounds on a turnover of just under seventy million. Quine ran an online check of IPRM on the Companies House website. It had been incorporated in 1992 as ‘International Personnel and Resource Management’. Its initial share subscribers and directors were named as Lyle Grainger and Dieter Schmidt. Its business activities were described as the ‘recruitment of personnel to assist British and other companies explore business opportunities in new markets opening up as a result of geo-political change’. There were several entries in the 1990s for ‘New director appointed’ and ‘Director resigned’ that were unavailable for online inspection. In 1997 the company name was formally abbreviated to IPRM which it had remained since. Among directors appointed in more recent years, available for inspection online, were two names indicating IPRM’s global expansion – Daniel Vitaly and Michael Ho.
Quine visited Companies House in person to search the undigitized files. In 1998 Grainger and Schmidt resigned as directors. The ‘New Director’ appointed in 1993 was named Quentin Deschevaux. The director who resigned in late 1997, around the time the company name was abbreviated, was also Quentin Deschevaux. It was a tantalizing find.
A Time to Lie Page 5
