The Touch of Innocents

by Michael Dobbs

  He began to laugh, then stopped. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘Deadly. We need to open doors. No one is going to invite us in if we tramp around London dressed like Orphan Annie.’

  ‘Orphan Annie found a millionaire.’

  ‘It needn’t cost that much. What we need is the right image. You know, on assignment my most precious piece of luggage is a twenty-dollar waterproof holdall that stays zipped up until five minutes before air time. It’s got nothing in it but a silk blouse, flash earrings, cosmetic wipes and a brush. I can be dressed in rancid jeans, standing up to my crotch in swamp and reeking after a week without a bath, but as long as I look good from the waist up, no one cares. Image is everything. Truth to so many people is only skin deep.’

  ‘To Americans, perhaps.’

  ‘No, Daniel, the English are the worst! Everything with these guys is external – the suit, the old school tie, the way they speak, the long aristocratic noses which keep their mouths as far away as possible from their brains. The English are all first impressions. We can’t handle them looking like refugees from an Oxfam bring-and-buy.’

  ‘My mother and me, we lived in an old tumbledown manor house overlooking the Bay. Lots of rooms, running water when it rained, no money. So when she wanted to create a fresh impression she’d move the furniture around from room to room.’

  ‘So what are you suggesting?’

  ‘Maybe we could swap earrings?’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, Danny Blackheart, but you’d look weird in my blouse.’ Slowly she ran an experienced eye over his ill-clad torso, jeans, sneakers, faded ski jacket. ‘I wonder what you’d look like in a well-cut suit.’

  ‘Pretty good, actually. There used to be a time … But that was in a different life.’

  ‘I mean this life. Today.’

  ‘Izzy, be real.’

  ‘Daniel, the whole bloody English Establishment is out there trying to squash me. We have to fight them on their own terms, we can’t do it from the gutter. They’ll find out I haven’t gone back, sooner or later. Then they’ll start looking for me. And you. But they won’t start looking for Mr and Mrs Daniel Franklyn living at one of London’s most exclusive addresses. Not for a while, at least.’

  ‘But how …?’

  ‘Daniel, just drive.’

  So he did, and as they entered the heart of the capital she felt her energies returning, her batteries recharged by the electricity of urban life. She no longer felt isolated and exposed. Here the traffic confronted every intersection like a bull attacking a cape, while pedestrians risked life and limb by mimicking matadors and swerving between the angry vehicles, each audacious pass accompanied by an ovation of horns. This was the city, impatient, angry, anonymous. At last she was fighting on her ground again.

  They drove until she directed him to stop in a side street off Piccadilly in the heart of the fashionable West End, drawing up outside the main London branch of Thomas Cook, the country’s biggest travel agency, into which she disappeared. Less than ten minutes had passed before she returned.

  ‘And now?’ he enquired.

  ‘First things first. Underwear, I think. Marks & Spencer.’

  ‘Come on, Izzy, what game are you playing?’

  ‘Same game, Daniel, only now we’re making some new rules.’

  She pulled up the flap on her coat pocket. It was stuffed with fifty-pound notes.

  ‘Fifteen thousand pounds. Enough to be getting on with, you think?’

  For a moment his lips offered a remarkable impression of a feeding perch. He started to frame the next question but the words failed him. ‘How …?’ he croaked, then subsided.

  ‘The brave and bold folk we call the corps of foreign correspondents are constantly racing off round the world at a moment’s notice armed with nothing more than overnight bags and our editors’ unreasonable demands. And in the sort of places we go credit cards are often useless. You can’t bribe or barter with plastic, sometimes can’t even get a hotel bed. Many of the places we stay aren’t likely to be around in thirty days’ time to collect on Amex. So WCN has this little arrangement with Cook’s to provide a cash float to anyone who’s on their list of accredited employees. Up to fifteen thousand pounds. And I’m accredited.’

  ‘But you said they were just about to fire you.’

  ‘That’s right. I imagine there’ll be one mother of a row.’

  ‘It’s, it’s … theft.’

  ‘Not technically. I intend to give it back.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, at the moment my need is considerably greater than WCN’s.’

  ‘Neither WCN nor the police might see it that way.’

  ‘I’ll take the risk.’

  ‘At very least it could ruin your reputation. It’s scarcely ethical.’

  Green is a colour of varying charms that can reflect the warmth and intrigue of an emerald or the enchantments of an ancient forest. It can also petrify the spirit like ice-bound wastes beyond the Arctic Circle. As he gazed into her eyes, eyes which for him held so much charm and grace, he thought he’d never seen the colour so remorselessly glacial.

  ‘Daniel, I’ve had one child taken from me. This morning I gave up my other child. You want to stop and talk ethics?’

  He touched her arm; she flinched as if brushed by a burning iron.

  ‘OK, Izzy. What’s your plan?’

  ‘Simple. Open a few doors. Find Paulette Devereux, find Bella. Any ideas?’

  They were interrupted as a young police constable stared suspiciously at the mobile rust wreck anchored alongside some of London’s most exclusive retail property. Izzy flashed an enormous, on-camera smile. The policeman nodded, impressed less by the insincere gesture than by the fact that terrorists didn’t usually ignite car bombs while still sitting in the front seat. He motioned them on, staring disapprovingly at the plume of oil smoke coughed out by the exhaust.

  ‘Tell me a little more about Paulette,’ Daniel demanded as he nosed his way back into the thick West End traffic. ‘What she looks like. Not from the photographs you’ve seen, but from what you can remember.’

  She closed her eyes to shut out distractions, sucked in her breath to chase after a memory and entered a deep, forbidding cave, a world of darkness and putrefying damp that made her flesh creep and that whispered abhorrent thoughts of decay, and of death.

  ‘She’s tall. Blonde. Shoulder-length hair. Pretty at first glance but then you look more closely and see an old hag trying to climb out of a young woman’s shell. Difficult to tell precisely what age. The hair could be beautiful and has a professional cut but is ragged, unwashed, the flesh on the face seems to have shrunk away, almost anorexic. Pencil thin lips. Don’t know about the teeth, she doesn’t smile, seems almost incapable of expressing emotion. The features are somehow empty, as if she’s drained of feeling inside and been repacked with rags and cotton wool. And up really close she’s … dirty. The skin – oh, the skin is appalling, greasy, clogged pores. A sore on the upper lip. You get the impression that it wasn’t always like that, that once she was beautiful. But the eyes are the worst, the very worst part. So haggard, exhausted. Cursed.’

  She opened her eyes, relieved to let the image fade. ‘But it’s what I felt rather than what I saw which left the strongest impression. Those eyes have no depth, as though made of frosted glass so you can’t see the real person inside. Makes you wonder if there is a real person inside. I start asking myself if she really exists, if this Paulette has any being beyond my mind.’

  ‘She exists, all right. But she’ll be a bitch to find.’

  ‘She must be somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, but not the sort of places you are used to looking in, I’ll be bound.’ The light in front of them turned red. Daniel sighed and put on the hand brake. ‘The description you’ve given me – physically flaking away, ruined beauty, empty – and so unreliable. Remember what the nuns said about her, couldn’t sleep and then could never get up and into the office, often floating off for days at a time? She
’s on something. An addict. Probably smack. Heroin. Heroin addicts hate to wash, hate the feeling of water. That’s why their skin can be so bad. And if I’m right and she’s come to London on a smack binge, she won’t be staying in The Stafford, that’s for sure. You won’t need any pretty clothes where we’ll have to go.’

  ‘Devereux’s daughter? An addict?’

  ‘Why not?’

  It made sense. Izzy had little experience of white drug addiction, most of what she had seen first hand had been black or brown or yellow, and often dead, scattered around the slums and decaying ghettos of the Third World or the American capital. But she recalled the anguished tones of Devereux’s diary. How he’d been so blind. Not seen it. Until it was all too late. And now Paulette had fled to London. Sin City.

  ‘So we’re looking for a needle in a haystack.’

  ‘And in a haystack of needles, just to complicate things a little.’

  ‘But there’s one part of the package which is altogether more difficult to hide. Mr Coroner Fauld. He’s a public figure.’

  Daniel cursed as at last they pulled away from the light only to be cut up by a motorcycle messenger displaying suicidal tendencies. ‘But if Fauld’s involved—’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘He’s scarcely likely to volunteer information.’

  ‘True, but we have one advantage. He’s blind. We know who he is, yet he won’t know us. Even if he’s been warned he’ll be expecting the sad and single Miss Izzy Dean. Not this odd couple, Mr and Mrs Franklyn. I think I shall call myself Fiona.’

  ‘Izzy, you seem to have thought this all through in considerable detail. You’re way ahead of me. So one question.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘This odd couple, Mr and Mrs Franklyn, who have the suite in The Stafford.’ He risked taking his eyes off the traffic long enough to look round at her. ‘Their … body space. Are we talking single or double beds?’

  She laughed.

  ‘Don’t mock me, lady, I’m serious. I’m no master with words and I can’t afford roses. And I daren’t tell you how much you frighten me—’

  ‘Frighten you?’

  ‘Course you do. You’re a very powerful woman, Izzy, you don’t operate like most other women. You seem so very much in control.’

  ‘Oh, Daniel, if only you knew …’

  ‘Your age and experience intimidate me, to be honest. But …’ He smiled, an expression completely lacking in guile. ‘But you will always find me honest. And I would very much like it to be the double bed.’

  ‘Daniel, stop the car.’ The laughter had disappeared.

  ‘Izzy, forgive me—’

  ‘Daniel, stop the car. Now.’

  He pulled over, defying the bleating protest of the car behind.

  ‘Daniel, you have offered me friendship, your job, most importantly you’ve given me back hope. How could I refuse you anything? As far as I’m concerned, you can have my bed, my body, and anything else I’m capable of giving, whatever you want. Willingly. If that’s what you want. But … not me, not the woman inside. Not now. Not yet. There’s too much guilt and confusion, too much fresh scar tissue. For the moment I’m an emotional cripple, I’ve got nothing more to give in that department. I can’t share, Daniel, not while I have this job to do. No distractions.’

  ‘Forgive me, I’m a slow, thick Paddy, Mrs Franklyn. Let me get it clear. That was American for “no”, was it?’

  ‘Be patient, Daniel. Please.’

  He jammed the car into gear and pulled out without looking, to be greeted by an orchestrated protest from behind.

  ‘Bugger it,’ he said. ‘I guess timing’s not my strong point.’

  ‘Neither is driving,’ she whispered.

  The day was turning to triumph.

  Devereux had arrived in a crowded Chamber to defend his decision on the Duster before his colleagues, friends and foes in the House of Commons. He permitted no one to mistake the importance of the occasion.

  ‘With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the power blocs that had been frozen in place by what we called the Cold War, we have been launched into a world of great flux, great uncertainties,’ Devereux had intoned, every inch the statesman. ‘The decisions we take today will shape the world of our children and our children’s children. Indeed, it is not too great an exaggeration to say that it might resolve whether they have a world at all.’

  Weighty stuff, but words which would not shift the Opposition Defence Spokesman, a dour Lancastrian called Stubbins, a man of such considerable girth that he had inordinate trouble shifting himself. A man who had ‘terrorized tailors all the way from Blackburn to British Home Stores’, as Devereux had once mocked to great effect.

  But it was not the Opposition whom Devereux had to convince: the Duster’s future – his future – lay in the hands of a small cohort of sceptics within his own ranks who doubted one or other aspect of the deal. Small in number they may be, but it would take only a handful of deserters to swamp the battalions of a Government whose majority numbered less than two dozen.

  So he had reverted to the basic tactic of parliamentary debate: unity through abuse, of either editors or Opposition. Devereux’s moist eye had roamed across the green leather benches before him in distaste; the Opposition comprised a mongrel collection of interests and ideologies, utterly lacking in breeding or distinction, fit only for snapping at the heels of those with greater stature. Those like Devereux. Yet there was danger when they hunted as a pack.

  He pointed directly at Stubbins, while addressing his own troops. ‘The Honourable Gentleman was once against this project – as a matter of principle. But when he realized that the deal I had negotiated might bring hundreds of new jobs to his constituency, he changed his mind – as a matter of expediency. Then his so-called colleagues got to him, and twisted his arm, so now he says he’s not sure – as a matter of intimidation.’

  Devereux shook his head in a theatrical gesture of disbelief. ‘He doesn’t know what to think, Madam Speaker, but I for one wouldn’t condemn him.’

  Devereux turned to wave a hand of admonishment at the jeers of derision which he had manufactured behind him.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t condemn him for admitting that he doesn’t know what to think. Why, it’s probably the most honest political statement he’s made in his life!’

  The jeers aimed at Stubbins turned to cheers of support for his tormentor, accompanied by the animated flapping of Order Papers. Devereux was providing a lead, staring straight into the eyes of the enemy, and his parliamentary troops were rallying.

  Yet of itself, abuse was not enough. Sceptics from his own side required much more considerate handling. Alternately he gripped and pounded the Dispatch Box in front of him – the same polished buriti and bronze piece on which his father had leaned and eventually sagged – pausing on occasion to rest one elbow upon it in order that he might turn and face those to his rear, those who should be backing him, those who might yet overwhelm him from behind; arguing, disputing, cajoling. To those who had feared an excessive concentration of defence options into one weapons system, he had shown a remarkable grip of technical detail; to those who questioned the financial prudence, he had argued a carefully prepared case emphasizing the greatly improved terms he had wrung from the Americans.

  ‘In our hands lies the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance,’ he had told one doubter. ‘Today we in Britain are the linchpin of the democratic world, the bridge which brings the two halves of freedom together. Yet if we desert our American allies at this late juncture, they will surely turn to others in Europe for friendship and reliability. We would find ourselves alone, a small island drifting somewhere between Europe and the Americas, a part of neither, untrusted, unloved. And largely undefended.’

  The performance was impressive. In a Chamber deprived of the rhetorical skills of the past by the ever-expanding pressures of parliamentary business and sound-bite television, Devereux’s words and confident mannerisms were refreshing, gathering
ever more doubters to his banner.

  But it was not enough, not yet. There was still the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, a Cockney, elevated largely through his own elephantine persistence and the excruciating ineptitude of his rivals, and whom it was so easy to dismiss yet so dangerous to underestimate. And he was still not satisfied. The man sensed the omissions, knew there was more, parts of this deal as yet unexplained and which he wanted laid before the House. Yet how could Devereux reveal that he had badgered and brow-beaten the Americans into offering up the United Nations, stuffing that little Cypriot upstart and fixing a vote-winning propaganda visit to Washington? These were deals done behind closed doors which could not bear the light of public scrutiny, which would embarrass both allies, which could be written into no accord or memorandum of understanding. They were triumphs for a future day. And his diaries.

  They were secret, and the Select Committee Chairman hated secrets. He had longed to be a Minister but had consistently been denied – no one could or would say why. One of those things. No justice, no reason. Politics. Nothing to do with his unfashionable East End background, they assured him, let alone his inability to tell Burgundy from best bitter. But the injustice rankled and, having failed to gain entrance to the club, he had instead established his parliamentary reputation by playing the Jacobin and dragging the club’s members out from behind barred doors for public inquisition. If not a man of power, then he would be a man of the people.

  He rose from his seat three rows behind Devereux and in high-pitched Cockney tones addressed the tight waves of hair on the back of the Minister’s head.

  ‘Well done, yes, very well done. So far, so good. But, Madam Speaker, we so often find on these occasions that we’ve only been given half the picture. Can my Right Honourable Friend give the House his personal assurance that there are no – well, what you might call “knots” – no intertwined strings, no hidden commitments, nothing tucked under the pillow which might influence the judgement of the House on this vital issue?’

  Turd, muttered Devereux, and smiled.