He halted and glanced around. The flash of his eyes was too quick to take anything in – certainly not her, thirty yards back on the other side of the road. He opened a door and entered.
Pizza Express. Somehow she had expected a darkened room in a dingy pub. She walked on past the restaurant on the other side of the road, flicking a quick look across, seeing only that he was sitting with a woman near the back. The place was almost empty. If she were to maintain her watch, she would have to circulate on the street. Maybe there was a wall to sit on offering a line of sight.
How long to eat a pizza? Her stint on a watcher team had showed her that boredom, leading to lack of concentration, was always the enemy. It was nearly two years since she had joined the anti-money-laundering desk; there the work was carried out behind digital firewalls, not on the street. Her boss had agreed she could be the field agent on this assignment because of its delicacy and the confidentiality of her source. She hoped she hadn’t lost her edge. She checked her watch. Ninety minutes.
He and the woman were leaving. Talking to each other. She removed her smart phone with its adapted and enhanced camera. Holding it in her left hand down by her side, she walked towards them, still keeping to the opposite pavement. As they neared she tapped a button, initiating a flurry of photographs. She was close enough to have a good chance of a recognizable image. The woman had fair to blonde hair. After passing them, she walked a further twenty yards and turned to retrace her steps. She speeded up to draw nearer. They stopped and turned into a small alley. She held back. A couple of minutes later he reappeared without the woman and walked in the direction of the Treasury.
Twenty yards up the road, Fowkes abruptly halted. She froze, thinking he was about to turn. Instead, he took his phone from an inside jacket, hit a number and bent his head away from the traffic. She would have needed to be on top of him to hear anything, but she could at least deduce that his meeting with the woman had triggered the call. She watched him enter the Treasury. To follow suit herself would invite suspicion. She returned to the alley where Fowkes had parted from the woman and inspected the few office nameplates. The likeliest one to house someone known to Jed Fowkes read ‘Freedom Research and Policy’. She photographed it.
Back at the Treasury Fowkes entered the empty Spads’ office; Thomasina’s desk light was still on, her handbag by the side of her chair. He returned to the corridor and knocked on the Chancellor’s door. No response. He was probably at an evening function. Thomasina must have nipped to the toilet or coffee bar. He thought he heard a rustling; he stood stock-still, holding his breath. The open-area sections both of Treasury civil servants and HMRC staff were deserted. He crept to the end of the corridor, switched off all the lights and returned to the Chancellor’s door. A shaft of light was just visible. He knelt down, his eye to the floor. A lamp was alight in a corner. It might mean nothing, just no one bothering to switch it off. He shuffled and put his ear to the ground. Could he hear breathing? A short gasp? There was someone, more than one person inside. He stood and tried the door. Locked.
‘M-C?’ he said softly. ‘Are you there?’
No answer.
He asked again, much louder. Still no answer. He weighed up the possibilities; there was no need to rush. He retreated and concealed himself behind a desk in the open-plan area, some fifteen yards from the Chancellor’s office door with a direct line of sight. The corridor remained dark, the lights still switched off.
He waited, buzzing with an unfamiliar excitement.
It did not take long. The door edged slowly open, a head peered round, glancing from side to side. A female figure slipped out in the shadows and padded into the Spads’ office. A second figure, male, emerged and, with a quick glance, strode off down the corridor.
Fowkes gave it a couple of minutes, switched the corridor lights on and breezed into the Spads’ office. She was applying make-up, her hair still ruffled. She looked up, terror in her eyes.
‘Oh, hi, Thomasina,’ he said with untypical good humour, ‘working late?’
Sophie and Isla had jointly persuaded Quine to stay on in the flat, both enjoying his company and Isla realizing he could be of use. While Sophie withdrew to wash her hair, the other two exchanged updates.
Isla refused to jump to conclusions from her evening’s observation.
‘There’s no evidence Fowkes was engaged in anything irregular. He’s allowed to have female friends and to have pizzas with them.’
‘Sure,’ said Quine. ‘Though apparently he was a bit of a failure in that department.’
‘Maybe he’s gay,’ said Isla.
The ease with which she said it jolted Quine into remembering when his daughter first told him about Isla. Even though she was in her late twenties, Sophie had never said she was gay and he’d had no reason to suspect it. He had assumed she wanted to keep her boyfriends to herself and had never felt any entitlement to pry into her love life. When she did tell him, her eyes bright with happiness, not just about her sexuality but that she was in love, his heart had skipped a beat. There was an element of surprise but none at all of shock.
‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘More likely he’s just married to the cause. Mind you, if he was gay, he’d have felt out of place in that flat thirty years ago.’ She fell quiet. ‘You’re thinking something, Isla.’
‘Yes. I got this feeling he knows how to look after himself on the street.’
Quine’s eyes narrowed. ‘Really.’
‘Yes. Only a feeling. The way he stopped once or twice and glanced round. Changes in pace. Probably nothing. Maybe he’s a bit paranoid.’
‘Or he knew he was doing something underhand.’
‘I suspect we’re clutching at straws. Time for a nightcap.’ She rose and headed for the kitchen.
Quine opened his laptop.
JONATHAN MOORE
To: [email protected]
Re: update
Hi Paul
1. Artefact. No sign of other supporting material. A mystery but on its own an unimportant one that leads nowhere. Our friend exploiting emergence of artefact for own purposes seems best working hypothesis.
2. In the evening friend left unusually early for meeting with female maybe from organization called ‘Freedom Policy and Research’. No evidence yet anything more than social.
Cheers
Jonathan
Quine had the sense he was observing a duel being fought at one remove between two opponents with matching skills. Sandford and Fowkes were chess players planning moves far ahead – but he suspected the endgame would play out with loaded weapons and one king lying on his back, bleeding to death.
His job had a certain simplicity – to dig out information. What was Sandford planning?
23
Good morning, this is Today on a gloomy autumnal morning…
The recorded bongs of Big Ben (the clock itself, still under repair, was silent) sounded 7 a.m. The newsreader read the headlines.
And finally, we’ve just heard that a Panorama special will replace the scheduled programme at nine o’clock on BBC1 tonight with what it describes as an extraordinary revelation. Here’s our political editor, Suzy Lancaster.
Carol glanced at Sandford who, unusually, was still lying beside her in bed. He shrugged his shoulders. She turned up the volume. A familiar voice came on air.
Good morning, thank you. There’s a limit to what I can tell you right now as the full story must wait for the transmission of tonight’s programme. Two days ago I was rung by a highly trusted contact. He introduced me to someone he had come to know well over the past sixteen years. This person gave me an account of a particular evening which amounts to a sensational revelation – I don’t use those words lightly – about a major national figure. Her story remains strictly embargoed until nine o’clock this evening on BBC1. It is of major national interest and I urge you to watch. Now, back to Nick in the studio.
Right, doesn’t sound like we’ll get more on that for the moment…
>
Carol turned it down. As the presenter’s voice faded, she put an arm round her husband. ‘It must be huge. Even the BBC couldn’t hype like that otherwise.’ She hesitated, showing unaccustomed nervousness. ‘Is it connected with what’s been worrying you?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But not about you, at least.’ She grinned.
He grinned back. ‘If it is, no one’s bothered to tell me.’
If she had studied him more deeply, she would have seen that, beneath the apparent levity, he was shaking. He composed a curt message on his personal mobile, simply WTF??!!, and sent it to Suzy Lancaster.
What if it was Jed? And Suzy and her BBC bosses – the Director-General himself would have to be in on this – had found his story so plausible and convincing that they were prepared to run it. Should he text the D-G? He told himself there was still no hard evidence for anything.
The drive from Salisbury Square to Downing Street was nightmarish. A childhood memory of a butcher stripping a pig’s carcass gave way to a handsaw grinding through a human arm. He had visions of a lean girl with long red hair he had once made love to lying beneath him. Then a judge pronouncing his sentence. He was sweating and his heart racing – signs of a panic attack. He closed his eyes and made himself take long, deep breaths. He began to calm, the pulse slowing, the heart beating more normally. He wiped the sweat off his forehead. The car entered the back security gate of Number 10. He checked his mobile. Nothing from Suzy Lancaster.
It was a close, muggy day in Central London, reflecting the oppressive atmosphere in the rooms and corridors of Westminster and Whitehall. Whispered conversations buzzed around like wasps in search of marmalade. Aides skulked in corners. Taps were turned on in toilets to cover the sounds of voices.
The BBC was playing a tight game. Its press office, which itself had been given not a hint of the story’s contents, could only tell inquirers to wait for the broadcast. The London Standard’s front-page headline attempted speculation – as did television, radio and online news websites. All suffered from the same drawback. They could not start tossing names in the air of which ‘major national figure’ was involved for fear of inviting libel suits. One site daringly asked, ‘Is it royalty or politics, sport or showbiz?’ failing to observe that one glaring clue was Suzy Lancaster’s long career as a political journalist.
Downing Street knew no more than anywhere else.
‘Any straws in the wind?’ Sandford asked Mark Burden, affecting a carefree tone.
‘There aren’t even rumours,’ replied his principal private secretary. ‘It’s curious. Normally they’d be promoting it with clips from the interview, whoever it is. Don’t even know if it’s male or female.’ He paused. ‘Maybe the “interviewee” isn’t sure of that either.’
The dryness of his PPS’s barb was unexpected. Sandford wished he could be so sanguine. He had been texting Suzy Lancaster every hour on the hour. Still no reply. Surely if it was anything to do with him, they would have offered a right of reply. Unless it really was Jed and the story was so sensational that they feared he would attempt – and succeed in – a court injunction. Not once since he had entered Parliament – let alone become Prime Minister – had she not replied within minutes to a text from his private phone.
He cancelled his evening engagement to watch the programme live. There was no avoiding it. He could not decide whether to stay alone in Downing Street or return to Notting Hill and watch it with Carol.
Next door at 11 Downing Street, the tension was more overt. Henry Morland-Cross, unprompted, stalked into the Spads’ office.
‘Where’s Thomasina?’ he asked Jed Fowkes, glaring at her empty desk.
‘Didn’t you tell her to go to that economic forum in Birmingham?’
The Chancellor stopped in his tracks. ‘So I did. Means we can chat here.’
‘Chat?’
‘Come on, Jed, what the fuck’s going on? You always know everything.’
‘Not this time.’
‘All right then, guess.’
Fowkes stared up at the ceiling. ‘Well, the great Ms Lancaster referred to her most trusted contact. We could start by asking who that might be.’
Morland-Cross frowned. ‘Sandford?’
‘You said it. The man himself.’
‘Good God…’
Fowkes looked at his watch. ‘Just a few hours till we find out.’
Morland-Cross sighed. ‘What’s that duplicitous bastard up to?’ He walked over to Fowkes and looked him in the eye. ‘You and I are OK, aren’t we?’
‘Course we’re OK.’
‘It was a bit of a barney we had.’
‘I’ve already forgotten it.’
Quine, Sophie and Isla were all back in good time to watch the programme. The BBC as an organization hyped like crazy, but he knew Suzy Lancaster was one of the few still inside who refused to go along with it. She would not use the word ‘sensational’ if it were not true. He pleaded with the gods of journalism that she had not somehow got one step ahead of him on the Sandford story.
‘Fowkes headed off around seven,’ said Isla. ‘No indication he wasn’t going home to watch the show. You heard anything?’
‘No,’ said Quine. ‘I’m out of it now.’ Was that something to feel pleased about or not?
Sandford arrived home at Salisbury Square at 8.45 p.m. The thought of watching alone had become unbearable. He checked the email link to Quine. No further news. No text from Suzy.
At 8.55 p.m. Carol joined him in the study. She carried a tray with the TV supper she had promised him. He hoped the programme would not make him throw it up.
As second hands ticked round to 9 p.m., pairs of eyes, some alone, some alongside the eyes of partners or collaborators, others in restaurants, bank trading floors and heaving Northern pubs, focused on televisions and screens across the nation. A single BBC press officer, seconded for the day to this one project, prepared to email, page by page and in concert with its real-time unfolding on air, a full transcript to every national newspaper.
At 9.01 p.m., sixty seconds after the broadcasting watershed, Panorama’s opening titles rolled. Robbie and Carol Sandford sat side by side, plates of smoked salmon and salad on their laps.
‘Quite like old times,’ she said, sipping a large glass of Macon with one hand and squeezing Robbie’s arm with the other.
The picture cut from the titles to Suzy Lancaster, sitting alone at a studio desk. The camera slowly closed in on her.
SL: Good evening, I’m Suzy Lancaster. Tonight’s Panorama reveals a story which concerns an extremely senior and powerful figure. It is a story of significant public interest and has taken great courage to tell.
The screen now showed a wider shot of what looked like a hotel room. A figure with blonde hair was seated in a chair in the foreground. Suzy Lancaster, beyond, faced the figure. As her introduction continued, the camera crept around to reveal more of the face opposite.
SL: Yesterday morning I was introduced by a trusted contact to a woman in her mid-thirties. She told me a story which included a serious allegation against a major national figure. Throughout yesterday, I verified the date, place and time of the encounter. I was able to confirm through witnesses present that her recollection of these core facts is correct. The incident itself took place without others present. I believed her account credible and yesterday evening recorded an interview with her. This, unedited, is what she told me.
By now the face was fully revealed.
‘Rather attractive woman,’ said Carol, taking a glug, enjoying herself.
Sandford was staring at the screen, his cheeks whitening. ‘Yes, not bad,’ he said, trying not to show the shock. He recognized the face. Where from? Carol was glued to the screen, too rapt to notice his reaction. Please, God, let this not be me.
24
SL: First, could you tell me a little about yourself?
CP: My name is Christine Patterson.
‘Nice
ly spoken,’ said Carol, continuing her commentary and pouring herself another glass. ‘Doesn’t seem a victim type.’
SL: And your background?
CP: Middle-class, I suppose. My father was an accountant, my mother trained as a physiotherapist. SL: And now?
CP: I’m a research consultant and planner for Freedom Policy and Research.
SL: And they are?
CP: A think-tank, encouraging new and radical ideas to further democratic capitalism in today’s world.
SL: Where did this interest in politics begin?
CP: It was always there. But it came together at Oxford.
SL: Oxford University?
CP: Yes, Somerville. My degree was chemistry.
SL: In the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher.
CP: If only.
SL: What years are we talking about?
CP: 2005 to 2008. When David Cameron became our leader. I joined up and in my second year became secretary of the Oxford University Conservative Association.
SL: Did you think of becoming president of the Association?
CP: Ha! Of course. But it was a very male world. Still is, I’m afraid. Plenty of women have been secretary. Doing the real work.
‘Nice one!’ exclaimed Carol. She flicked a look at her silent husband.
A Time to Lie Page 13
