‘Is it satisfying, Mr Q?’ she asked one morning. Almost without noticing, they had found themselves addressing each other this way. ‘I mean, is the treatment working?’
It was an extraordinarily perceptive question. ‘Yes, I think it is, Mrs T,’ he replied.
‘Good. And you look so well too.’ She hesitated, wondering whether to go further. ‘It must have been such an interesting life. Knowing all those politicians.’
‘I was lucky. But I’m not sure I ever really got to know them. It was a professional relationship.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it was more than that.’
Quine smiled. ‘You’d have to ask them.’
‘Perhaps one day, you’ll introduce me.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Now, don’t you overdo it. He’s a bad, bad man. But you don’t need to carry the sins of the world.’
She was right. It was just a story among millions of stories. One about a particularly dangerous creature in the strange ocean of politics Quine had swum in. About how he had allowed himself to become obsessed – at a huge cost, not just materially, but mentally too. And how this year by the sea became a time of atonement. The book became a human story of events leading to a defeat which had nothing to do with truth.
His work was done. The time might one day come when it would see the light of day. Winter was long gone, spring had evolved into summer, Mrs Trelight allowed him to stay on in the high season and complete the yearly cycle. Fair-weather residents and holiday-makers arrived, the green of cliff tops burned to brown, the sand bleached and sea warmed, pleasure boats cluttered the estuary. Now, with autumn’s arrival, it was empty again, just as Quine had first found it. He allowed himself a few days to enjoy the peace but knew it was time to move on.
‘Where next?’ he repeated to himself.
The immediate answer was the Cross Keys. He walked up the lane and climbed into Beatrice, turning the key several times in the ignition. After showing a certain regret at her slumber being disturbed, the camper van stirred herself into action and trundled inland.
When he had been briefly lured into conversation by the Cross Keys landlord on his first Saturday evening visit, he had answered the inevitable inquiry by saying, ‘I’m working on a book.’ On each succeeding Saturday he had been greeted with the predictable cry of ‘Here’s Tolstoy’. Arriving now on a weekday evening, the landlord frowned. ‘What are you doing here, Tolstoy?’ he said.
To which he replied, ‘I finished my work last week. I’ve come to say goodbye.’
‘Oh. Where are you going?’
‘If only I knew.’ And then his phone rang.
He picked it out of his jacket pocket and examined it as if it were an alien object. It was not the first call from this number; it had been trying him once an hour throughout the day. He assumed it was a cold call and hesitated to answer. The landlord glared at him. ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’
He did. ‘Hello?’
‘Is that Joseph Quine?’
‘Who’s calling?’
‘Can I take it this is Mr Quine?’
‘You can take it any way you want. I asked who’s calling.’
‘Mr Quine, I realize this may be unexpected. My name is Mark Burden. I am principal private secretary to the Prime Minister and I am ringing you from Whitehall on his behalf.’
‘You’re not phoning from a Downing Street number.’
‘I am using what I believe is called a burner phone.’
‘How do I know this isn’t a hoax? What did you say your name was?’
‘Mark Burden. B U R D E N.’
‘You’re going to have to do better than spell your name.’
‘I understand that.’ The voice seemed to be readying itself for a prepared statement. ‘The Prime Minister has asked me to remind you of a one-to-one lunch he had with you in the snug of the Royal Oak, Clifton, on Friday February the nineteenth, 2016. This was a lunch neither of you revealed to anyone. At it, he told you the then Prime Minister would announce the next day, Saturday the twentieth of February, a referendum on whether to stay in or leave the European Union. The story you wrote following that lunch enabled you to steal a march on your newspaper rivals.’
‘All right, carry on.’
‘The Prime Minister urgently wishes to meet you to discuss a confidential matter. He hasn’t told me what this is. He’d like to meet you tomorrow, Friday, for lunch at that same venue in Bristol.’
‘Tomorrow!’
‘Yes, my apologies for the short notice.’
‘Look, I’m out of it all now, he knows that. And it’s two years since we last met.’
‘The Prime Minister asked me, if necessary, to plead with you to come without delay. He said you would have his undying gratitude.’
‘Then I must say yes, mustn’t I,’ said Quine. Without waiting for a ‘thank you’ or ‘goodbye’, he cut the call, looked up at the landlord and said, ‘I think I’ll have the other half.’
‘Old flame, was it?’ asked the landlord.
His phone pinged. It was from the same number. For the purposes of this exercise, you are Jonathan Moore, he is Paul Reynolds.
Quine hit reply. OK, suggest you now get new phone.
Second half-pint quickly downed, Quine rose to leave the Cross Keys.
‘Will we be seeing you again, Tolstoy?’
Quine stopped in his stride. He thought for a few seconds. ‘I promise I’ll come back here to die.’
Mrs Trelight was in the kitchen when he arrived at the bungalow. ‘I have to make a day trip tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back to clear my stuff after that.’
‘I’ll miss you, Mr Q.’
‘And me you, Mrs T.’
‘Times pass.’ She was inspecting him just as on that first encounter a year before. ‘Who are you off to see?’
‘Oh, the Prime Minister.’
She smiled, tapping ash into the kitchen sink. ‘Give him my regards.’
16
Entering the crowded lounge bar of the Royal Oak, Quine was intercepted by a man in his early forties with the unmistakeable manner of a private office civil servant.
‘Jonathan Moore?’ he asked, stretching out a hand.
‘Yes,’ said Quine, accepting it.
‘Your host is here. Perhaps you can remember the room?’
Quine climbed a set of stairs leading to a landing. On a chaise-longue a dark-suited figure, reading a newspaper, glanced at him. Close security but as discreet as possible. The figure nodded him towards the end of the corridor.
A door was half open, Quine entered. Sandford was sitting alone at a rectangular mahogany table for eight. Two places were laid for lunch. He rose.
‘Hello, Joe, good to see you.’
‘You too, Prime—’
‘I’m still Robbie to you. Been a while. Too much water under the bridge. For both of us.’ Rather than offer a hand, he gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder and sat back down. ‘Pint? Glass of wine?’
‘I’ve been cutting down.’
‘You have, haven’t you? You must have shed stones.’
‘Yes, two.’
‘Good man.’ Sandford grinned. Quine remembered his enviable knack of making every individual he talked to feel like they were the centre of the universe. ‘Have a half. They do St Austell’s on tap.’
‘Thanks. What about you?’
‘Trying not to. Even if my party would turn sane men to drink.’ He picked up the menu. ‘Let’s order. I’m having kidneys. High-cholesterol treat when the cat’s away.’
‘How is Carol?’ asked Quine, peering over his own menu.
‘A marvel as always.’
Quine repressed his impatience to know the reason for their meeting. During the journey, images of Sandford’s upward progress had flashed before him like scratchy old home movies – initially as the parliamentary candidate he had first come to know when he was political editor for the group of local and regional newspapers ow
ned by MetroWestern plc. They had got on immediately. Politically, the MetroWestern group, focusing on local issues, had no ideological axe to grind. Quine had seen Sandford as a decent man with a more visible heart than the usual Tory candidate; he had written fairly about him. Trust had grown. Off the record meant just that. A secret was a secret, background meant background.
Shortly after Sandford’s election to Parliament in 2005, Quine was offered the job of chief political correspondent, based in Westminster, for the Daily Post, a national paper. Then came a seminal moment in their relationship. The Post’s editor was approached by a freelance investigative journalist with a shocking story. He said that two young men who had recently left a residential care home in Bristol had been the victims of long-term abuse by Alan Griffiths, the Defence Secretary in the then Labour government. Quine, with both his Bristol and parliamentary connections, was asked to check it out. Griffiths was married with two children and there had never been a hint of scandal. If the story stacked up, it would destroy his career and perhaps his life too.
The journalist arranged for Quine to meet the young men. What they told him was appalling. Griffiths, as the local MP, was a trustee of the home and a frequent visitor. The accusers, now nineteen, said he was initially charming and helpful, offering support and mentoring to them. He first invited them when they were fifteen to the rented flat he kept in the constituency. A friendship grew. After several visits Griffiths wanted to make their friendship physical too. They said they tried to fend this off but he threatened to withdraw all favours. They both clearly remembered him saying, ‘You know, lads, I can break you as well as make you.’ From their family and social care backgrounds, the boys were accustomed to both hetero and homosexual sex. Griffiths said that as the three of them had all become friends, they should enjoy each other together. The young men, who were sixteen when they said the abuse started, described graphically what Griffiths had made them do.
After they left the care home at eighteen, they said Griffiths ceased all contact. He no longer responded to their messages. They rang the bell of his flat a few times but it appeared empty. One of the boys had read an article about the care home’s authoritarian regime and sought out the journalist, who saw the claims as a major story that he could sell to a national newspaper.
Quine believed the story. It was unusual to have two witnesses corroborating each other in this way. Their knowledge of the rented flat and what had taken place inside it was detailed. One of them had begun to keep a contemporaneous diary of their encounters with Griffiths. The dates were all plausible, there was no evidence of retrospective entries after the event. Quine recommended publishing and The Post’s editor and lawyer were on-side.
At the last moment, even as he was rewriting the freelancer’s initial draft, Quine decided, as a final check, to run it by Robin Sandford. Though Sandford and Griffiths were on opposite political sides, he knew they were friendly, or at least on speaking terms. Sandford agreed to find a way of raising the allegation with Griffiths without jeopardizing the story if it were true. Two days later, Sandford invited Quine to his Notting Hill home. When Quine arrived, he was suitably impressed by Sandford’s financial windfall, courtesy of the van Kroon marriage.
‘This is tricky, Joe,’ said Sandford, stirring his cup of tea and munching a biscuit. ‘You believe the two boys, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ replied Quine. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘If you’re a hundred per cent sure, why approach me?’
‘Because nothing is ever a hundred per cent.’
‘The story will destroy Alan. On the other hand, though Alan and I are sort of friends, there’s always political advantage with scandal in the opposition. I’m trying not to allow any of that to influence me. You just want my honest view.’
Quine felt a slight sinking. ‘Yes. Be frank.’
‘I didn’t give Alan names or mention you – but I was very clear about the nature of the allegation.’ He rubbed his forehead and sighed. ‘Joe, you won’t love me for this. I don’t think it’s true. This isn’t Alan. Just isn’t. He guessed the source. He put two and two together and named these two young men. He said they’d turned out to be a disappointment to him. So he’d broken off contact.’
‘Why did he move flat?’
‘I asked him that. He laughed and said it was a shit-hole. He’d been meaning to get something better for ages.’
Quine stayed silent.
‘Look,’ said Sandford, ‘you could run it. It would be their word against his. I can’t be a hundred per cent sure either. But if you run it, another truth could emerge. And that could rebound on you.’
Quine changed his mind and The Post passed on the story. Two months later it appeared in a rival newspaper. One year later, the two young men appeared in court, charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. One of the many diary entries gave a date on which Griffiths could not possibly have been in Bristol. From this single error, their story had unravelled. It turned out they had stolen a small amount of cash and a watch from Griffiths’s flat. Rather than report them, with the ensuing stigma of a criminal conviction damaging their future prospects, Griffiths told them he would never see them again.
Quine gave Sandford his heartfelt thanks and said he owed him. Sandford told him he didn’t think like that. When David Cameron made Sandford Social Security Minister after the 2015 election, Quine was promoted to be The Post’s political editor. Their intertwined ascents would have continued, if it had not been for Deschevaux.
‘You all right, Joe?’ said Sandford.
Quine looked up from the menu. ‘Sorry, just thinking about old times.’
‘Not too bad, I hope.’
‘Not at all.’
Perhaps they had been good for Sandford too. The youthful vigour and charm still evident on TV was, on close inspection, marked by strain. A touch more flesh around the chin and jowls, lines across the forehead, hair retreating a little further. It was hardly surprising – fatigue, anxiety, pressures known and unknown. Quine thought of other Prime Ministers. Blair had lost some of his gloss but only towards the end of his ten years; Brown was always a bag of nerves; Cameron seemed to rise above it all – whatever sense of failure he must feel, the skin was as baby-like as ever. The change in Sandford seemed more rapid, more marked. Was there something more than the daily grind of his office? Was that why he was here?
‘Yes,’ said Quine, ‘kidneys. I’ll spoil myself too.’
Sandford grinned. ‘So… tough times.’
‘Don’t worry about me. A year ago, when I’d lost everything, I went away and wrote the full story. To get it out of the system, I guess. I don’t imagine anyone will publish it.’
‘I don’t know how that man was ever allowed into our party. Let alone selected as a candidate.’
Quine smiled. ‘Isn’t that local democracy?’
‘I guess so.’ He grinned back. ‘What is it about Somerset?’
‘I take it Deschevaux will never be part of your government.’
‘Over my dead body.’
The door opened, two plates of veal kidneys, sides of vegetables and a half of bitter were set in front of them. ‘Let’s enjoy this,’ said Sandford.
They skipped dessert and ordered coffee. After it arrived and they were alone with the door firmly shut, Sandford began. ‘Joe, I have a problem. A weird one.’ He paused, steeling himself. ‘Over the years you and I grew to understand each other. If I tell you this, it will be by far the greatest confidence I’ve ever shared with you. Is that all right?’
‘Of course,’ replied Quine without hesitation. ‘But why me?’
‘Because I need an ally and you have the necessary skills. Because – I know this sounds odd – I’m alone. And powerless. Ultimately it’s because there’s no one in the world, including my wife and daughters, that I trust more than you.’
‘I feel humbled.’
‘It’s true. I’m putting myself in your hands. In your power, if you like
.’
‘Power is not a word I would ever use in our relationship.’
‘No. Nor me.’ Sandford took a sip of coffee, put the cup down, closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. ‘OK. A few days ago, I was visited by Jed Fowkes.’
‘Fowkes? I thought you’d pretty much cut ties with him.’
‘I thought I had too.’
Sandford told, unedited and with a brutal clarity, the story of his encounters with Fowkes, both after his conference speech and in the Number 10 flat. He described the difficult period in his life which had caused occasional black-outs. He repeated Fowkes’s description of the removal of the Hungarian girl from their flat. He related the newspaper stories of the young woman’s hand. He finished by saying, ‘I need to know the truth about what happened, Joe. It’s the only way to get rid of this. And I want you to find it for me.’
Quine tried to hide his rising astonishment. As Sandford fell silent, he told himself not to show alarm. ‘OK, Robbie, first things first. All this, right now, is just a story. It’s very probably one fabricated by Jed Fowkes for reasons we don’t know. There may be no “truth”. The girl was probably fine, caught a late-night bus or cab home. And, however weirdly it’s come about, the severed hand has given Fowkes an opportunity.’
Sandford sighed. ‘Yes. It’s impossible that a girl died in my bed. But let’s take this in stages. Why would he come up with this story? I see two reasons. He’s genuinely scared about something bad he believes might have happened. Or he’s using it to scare me. And soon enough I’ll know why. But just say he ever decided to go public. Or tell the police. It might destroy him, but sure as hell it would destroy me.’
‘No one would believe him.’
‘Think what the police have believed at times. You remember the fantasist who told them about a paedophile murder ring of politicians and generals operating in Central London. Or the millions of pounds they spent investigating one former Prime Minister, Edward Heath, without a thread of proper evidence. Whatever they now say, the culture is still to trust the accuser.’
A Time to Lie Page 9
