A Time to Lie

by Simon Berthon

  ‘Sure. Whatever you say, she’s lying, whoever she is.’

  ‘Thank you. Ms Patterson has made an allegation of sexual assault by you against her, which occurred around one thirty a.m. on Tuesday the twenty-third of October, 2007, in your room at the Randolph Hotel, Oxford. In addition she says that you used cocaine in her presence.’

  ‘That,’ growled Morland-Cross, ‘is a total, fucking lie. As for the former, she’d have been gagging for it. Like all the many others who’ve never made any complaints.’

  ‘If you would like to make that rebuttal, Suzy Lancaster is available right now to film an interview.’

  ‘You can tell that dirty, glory-seeking, low-life cunt that I hope she fries in hell.’

  ‘Chancellor, do I take it then that you are declining that offer? Alternatively we’d be willing to allow you to watch the programme live in the studio and respond immediately following it.’

  ‘How about you have the decency to show me the programme right now? I’ll cancel engagements and be at New BH in half an hour.’

  ‘M-C, you know we wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We have the interviewee’s interests to respect too.’

  ‘But not mine.’

  ‘I assure you the allegation is sufficiently described in the letter.’

  ‘You really are shits,’ said Morland-Cross. ‘Roger, would you mind just fucking off? I’ll watch it, see what lies this woman’s inventing and take it from there.’

  ‘You don’t wish to include a statement?’

  ‘You know what, I wouldn’t give you the pleasure. And when I expose this person’s lies, it won’t be in an interview with the BBC. I’ll tell you something else. Whether I’m here or not to see to it, your licence fee’s fucked. And that means your pensions will all be fucked too. Goodbye.’

  Morland-Cross cut the phone. The same number rang again twice. He did not answer. October 2007. He tried to remember what that particular Oxford girl was like. He had visited that Association several times – on each occasion, as far as he could remember, there was at least one young lady up for it. Like every other university he had visited. Trouble was there were far too many for any one individual to stand out.

  Surely Jed must have had a whisper. Had he come up to Oxford with him that evening? Someone was playing games, and he was the loser.

  He looked at his watch: 3.20 p.m. Sod it. He fetched a bottle of whisky and poured himself a tumbler. God, a snort would help now. That really was a lie, he’d been clean since 2005. Meaning never in the presence of another. Well, maybe once or twice with willing partners. Which that girl would have been of course…

  What to do? He had better read the letter. He asked a secretary to collect it from reception. Whatever it contained, he couldn’t watch the programme with Patricia.

  He read it. It was the woman’s word against his. He wouldn’t dispute the timings, dates and places – the BBC would have checked those out. There was no suggestion that she had ever reported the incident or any evidence of physical injury. The worst thing he could do was phone his lawyers and go for an emergency injunction. All he’d achieve was more media hype and sensation.

  He needed a friend. Someone to confide in at least. He checked his watch. Five and a half hours to go until his public humiliation. He was normally the joker. Now, how the world would laugh. How his enemies – his friends too, probably – would wallow in it. He wondered if Thomasina was back from Birmingham. If so, she would probably look in to the Spads’ office. He made an instinctive decision and rang the number.

  ‘Hello.’ Her voice.

  ‘Hi. Good trip?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, I just got back to see if anything needed doing.’

  ‘Actually, have you got a minute?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She entered his office. Unusually for when he was expecting her, he was seated at his desk. He gestured to her to sit down opposite.

  ‘Thomasina,’ he began hesitantly, ‘something unpleasant is going on. I want you to be the first to know. Probably the only person to know. Until the whole world does.’ She said nothing. ‘This BBC programme tonight is about me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. He filled her in on the details of the allegations. ‘What she says about the use of force and cocaine are both utter lies,’ he concluded. ‘But it’s her word against mine.’

  ‘Can you try to stop it?’

  ‘It would only make it worse.’ He hesitated. ‘I just want to say this. I’ll understand if after the programme you won’t want to be with me any more.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ll watch it and take it from there.’

  She stood, forced a quick smile, and turned. As she was closing the door, he thought he saw her raising a hand to an eye.

  Isla McDonald, Sophie Becker and Joe Quine watched together. At the moment Christine Patterson’s face was revealed, Isla said, ‘Fucking hell’ under her breath. Quine turned sharply to her. She put a finger to her lips, nodding almost imperceptibly in Sophie’s direction.

  At the end of the programme, Sophie disappeared to make coffee. Quine was impressed by his daughter’s tact, though it must come with the relationship. Isla took her smart phone from her bag. She retrieved a slightly blurred photograph of a blonde-haired woman. A second photograph showed a man conversing with her. Jed Fowkes.

  ‘It’s the same woman.’

  Quine peered at both photographs. ‘You can’t be sure from those.’

  She swiped to a third photograph. ‘That’s the woman turning into the alleyway he dropped her off at.’ She swiped again. ‘That’s the “Freedom Policy and Research” nameplate. Put them all together and there’s no doubt.’

  He frowned. ‘You didn’t tell me you’d actually photographed them.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what you need to know when you need to know it. What you then pass back to your “informant” is up to you.’

  ‘Did you catch anything they said?’

  ‘No. I’d have exposed myself if I’d tried to get closer. As I mentioned before, he tends to keep an eye on what’s going on behind him.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because he’s stabbed so many in the back himself,’ said Quine.

  Isla returned a short smile. ‘There’s no evidence yet that he’s actually done anything wrong. But yes, he and the woman we now know to be Christine Patterson had a ninety-minute meeting. We still don’t know who was saying what.’

  ‘Not too tricky to work that one out.’

  ‘You’re a journalist, Joe. I’m an intelligence officer. I don’t jump to conclusions.’

  Quine’s final act of a momentous day was to email Paul Reynolds with a report on what Isla had just told him.

  JONATHAN MOORE

  To: paulabcdreynolds@gmail.com

  Re: update

  Hi Paul

  Just thought you might be interested to know there is photographic confirmation that the young woman from “Freedom Research and Policy” party and our friend were the couple meeting at the pizza place earlier this week.

  Cheers

  Jonathan

  It was Sandford’s final act of the day to read the email. He couldn’t help feeling a reluctant admiration for Fowkes’s cunning. It had been his plan to unsettle him with a divide-and-rule manoeuvre between him and Morland-Cross. It appeared Jed had now raised the stakes dramatically.

  Surely Morland-Cross had explained to him that all he needed to do was sit and wait three years for all his policy desires to be fulfilled. Why was he so impatient?

  And what, if any, was the connection between this scheming against Morland-Cross and his story of the girl in the flat? It remained possible there was none. Sometimes the simple explanation was the best.

  And yet, this did not feel simple at all.

  26

  Immediately after the broadcast, Thomasina Bellingham rang Henry Morland-Cross offering help with his rebuttal. Within half an
hour she issued a personal statement by him to all UK and major international news outlets.

  I have been unable to respond until now to the allegations made in this evening’s Panorama owing to the BBC’s wholly unreasonable refusal to allow me to view these allegations in advance of transmission. The allegations are one hundred per cent untrue. I have never – not once – in my life used any form of force or violence against any woman. I have previously admitted to using cocaine in the past. However, as previously stated, I have not used it since entering the House of Commons. While I shall be taking legal advice about suing the BBC, I will certainly not be suing or in any way seeking recompense from this most unfortunate woman who, for whatever reason, has ended up telling these terrible lies.

  The night hours that followed saw a Twitter storm and over three million hits on the YouTube highlight clip showing Christine Patterson’s account of the sex act and coke snorting.

  ‘The coke was sheer invention,’ said Morland-Cross. ‘I’ve not lied. I’m clean since I entered the Commons.’

  ‘And the other?’ asked Sandford, showing no sign of his scepticism.

  This conversation first thing the next morning was, unlike their previous one, taking place in the PM’s study in 10 Downing Street. It had an edge of formality.

  ‘It was one hundred per cent consensual. Every word in my press statement is true, I assure you of that. That girl was hot for it, Robbie. I’ve been thinking back. She’s hardly changed. Hot, hot. They were all gagging for it.’ Though he could never tell him why, Sandford knew he was telling the truth.

  ‘“All”. How many?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s the honest truth.’

  ‘Single figures?’ Morland-Cross shrugged. ‘Double figures?’ Sandford asked gently. Again, silence.

  Morland-Cross looked up with a wan smile. ‘The thing is – it was easy. And fun. They all wanted it, enjoyed it. They probably chalked it up on a ledger. Who could score the most and the best. Otherwise some of them would have spoken out.’

  ‘Now one has,’ said Sandford.

  ‘And she’s lying.’

  ‘Her word against yours.’

  ‘I realize that. Look, I’m no angel. I’m twice married and divorced. I’m a bachelor now. I committed no crime. None was ever under age. Never went younger than twenty as a matter of fact.’

  ‘No crime committed didn’t help Bill Clinton.’

  ‘That was because he lied to Congress. Not the sex itself. I’m not lying to anyone.’

  ‘Times are different.’

  ‘Fine. Find something wrong I’m doing now. Don’t crucify me for something all right that I did then.’

  ‘Was it all right?’ mused Sandford, thinking of himself too. Morland-Cross sighed, energy spent. ‘It’s Friday today,’ Sandford continued, looking at his watch. ‘Constituency day. I’ve got to go. You’ve done your statement. See how it plays over the weekend. Then meet me for breakfast, Monday. OK?’

  ‘Thanks, Robbie, that’s decent of you. I know we’ve never been friends—’

  ‘“Friends”? In politics? Don’t kid ourselves.’ Both men stood. ‘One thing,’ continued Sandford. ‘Jed Fowkes was seen having an animated conversation with Christine Patterson at Pizza Express on Victoria Street three evenings ago.’

  ‘What!’ Morland-Cross flushed with anger. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘A friend spotted him. He phoned me after the programme.’

  ‘I don’t know where Fowkes would have got it from,’ said Morland-Cross, ‘but I wouldn’t mind betting that bastard was paying her money. Plenty of it.’

  Jed Fowkes delayed his arrival at the Treasury, listening to the early morning fallout on radio and television and scanning the papers. He varied his usual journey from his flat in Stockwell, staying on the tube till Green Park and enjoying a walk through the cool air and diagonal sun shafting through the plane trees of Green Park itself and St James’s Park beyond. This approach gave him an early view of the reporters, photographers and television crews milling outside the Treasury’s Horse Guards Parade entrance. He felt a moment of sympathy for Morland-Cross. It quickly passed. M-C’s dirty compromise with Sandford – whatever it was – had disrupted carefully laid plans; something had had to be done. The years of collaboration, even friendship, could not stand in the way.

  He brushed through the media throng. Some of them, mainly the financial and economics correspondents, tossed him questions. ‘What next, Jed?’ ‘How’s M-C this morning?’ ‘Will he resign?’ A voice from an unknown sweaty-looking face topped by crinkly black hair yelled out from the back of the pack, ‘Is the Chancellor a rapist?’ ‘Is he still snorting?’ shouted another. The tabloids, never known to take a serious interest in the nation’s finances, finally had a story from the Treasury.

  Fowkes swiped his pass to enter the building and walked up to the first floor. Heads looked up from screens and quickly returned to them. There was that intangible air of trying to preserve normality in a micro-world that had been turned upside down. The Chancellor’s door was open, his office empty. Thomasina looked up silently as Jed entered, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’ she asked.

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘I spoke to him after the programme.’ She sniffed and blew her nose. ‘Did you know anything about it?’

  ‘You mean the allegation? Well, allegations plural now.’

  ‘What else…’

  ‘Henry has always been a serial shagger. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, you do now,’ he said. She sniffed again. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out like that.’

  He sat down and fired up his computer, the silence hanging heavily. Finally she broke it. ‘What happens to us? If he has to go, I mean.’

  ‘When ministers resign, Spads get five minutes to clear out their office, hand in their passes and return jobless to whence they came. So we should make preparations.’

  The door flew open without warning. Morland-Cross stalked through it towards Fowkes’s desk, pointing a finger at him.

  ‘You. You did this!’

  ‘What?’ Fowkes replied quietly.

  ‘You lined this girl up. I know you did.’

  ‘Did I now?’

  ‘Yes. You bloody well did.’

  ‘Has it occurred to you that what actually might have happened was that it was the woman who asked to speak to me about what she was planning? And that I tried to talk her out of it.’

  ‘No, that has not occurred to me. Because I’m damn sure it didn’t happen like that.’ He paused, narrowing his eyes. ‘You’re a sly bastard, Jed Fowkes. Too fucking clever for your own good.’ With that, Morland-Cross turned, walked slowly away and closed the door silently, entering the corridor as a sea of faces turned away.

  Fowkes turned to Thomasina. ‘Will you stay with him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m neither blind nor an idiot, Thomasina. Look… he’ll have to go. He knows that, I know that, the PM must know that. It won’t be easy for him. One minute the world’s knocking on your door. Everyone’s your friend. Then suddenly, there’s silence. You’re a non-person. It’s only power – and money – that bring friends. So when you’re stripped of both and falling from the top of the mountain you need someone to catch you in their arms and comfort you. You’ll be out of a job so you’ll have time too. You could do that for him, couldn’t you?’

  ‘You’re forgetting something, Jed,’ said Thomasina with unusual steel.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I not only believe him, I happen to like him. And he happens to like me.’

  27

  Seven a.m. The headlines this Saturday morning. A second woman, a former student at Leeds University, has made a claim of sexual misconduct against the Chancellor, Henry Morland-Cross…

  Quine, sitting in the kitchen, laptop open, paused to listen. As always, he was an early rise
r. The law of unintended consequences. Beneath the amiability, Sandford was often calculating and could sometimes be devious – otherwise he would never have risen to the top. But surely he had never intended the destabilizing of Jed Fowkes to lead to this.

  His phone pinged with a text from Geoff Boyes.

  Sorry so early. Get to Greenwich quick as you can. Tell me when you’ll arrive – I’ll be waiting in car. Geoff

  Damn. He had booked a mid-morning train for a quick weekend trip to Cornwall to retrieve his belongings and boxes of research and drive Beatrice back to London with them. It was unfair to Mrs Trelight to use 7, The Waves as his private depository. Boyes’s text allowed no choice; he must go straightaway. A quick search told him that the journey by tube and overland should take little more than an hour. He replied that he’d be there by 8.30 a.m.

  Boyes was ready, jumping out to hold open the passenger door. ‘Hop in, they’re already digging,’ he said, his eyes gleaming. Before Quine could reply, he was sprinting round the back of the car to the driver’s side.

  ‘Digging what?’ asked Quine as Boyes dropped into his seat.

  ‘I’ll wind back. Yesterday afternoon, there was an anonymous delivery at my house. An A4-size envelope, thicker than a letter, thinner than a parcel. Hang on a minute, this roundabout’s a nightmare.’

  Boyes impatiently muscled his way through a scrum of Greenwich traffic. ‘Right,’ he continued, ‘the trouble with Greenwich, even at this hour on a Saturday, is all the old geezers and girls who shouldn’t be allowed on the road.’ Quine tightened his seatbelt as the needle moved well over the speed limit and they crossed Deptford Creek. Boyes slammed on the brakes. They were following the same route as before.

  ‘You were talking about a delivery,’ Quine said.

  ‘Yes, I opened it up. Inside was a sheet folded into eighths. I unravelled it. Guess what it was.’

  ‘A map of Atlantis.’

  ‘Not bad. It was a map. A large-scale one of the old dockyard. More like a drawing really. Something was stuck to it. A narrow strip of plain paper, cut like the hand of a clock with an arrow at one end, and a message.’