Heaven's Light

by Hurley, Graham

  By the door, Louise paused. The memory of Mimi’s voice still lingered in her mind and she wondered, for the first time, whether Ellis was ever lonely.

  The principal drug prescribed for Billy Goodman was called Epanutin. It mixed badly with alcohol but most evenings, around ten, he slumped in the armchair by the window and emptied the best part of a quarter bottle of malt whisky. Invariably he’d wake hours later with a foul mouth and a blinding headache but since both were already listed amongst the drug’s side effects, he’d decided the Scotch made no difference. If booze was invented for anything, it was for precisely this. An hour or two watching the world soften beyond the big picture windows was all that remained between himself and oblivion.

  Kate sat at his feet, her back against the armchair, her knees drawn up. She’d spent the last ten minutes musing about Charlie Epple’s latest wheeze.

  ‘Tell me again,’ Billy mumbled.

  ‘There’s not much to tell. He’s thinking of starting a brand new party. He wants to call it Pompey First. That’s about it.’

  ‘What’s the party for?’

  ‘Us. The city. Portsmouth.’

  ‘And who’d be in charge?’

  ‘I don’t know. It hasn’t got that far. Charlie’s from advertising. He never thinks things through. Not if he can help it.’

  ‘So why’s he bothering?’

  It was a question that had been niggling Kate most of the day, ever since the phone call had summoned her to watch the video he’d put together. Her friendship with Charlie Epple had deepened over the summer, a welcome counterpoint to the gloom that had begun to envelop her. She needed a court jester in her life and he’d played the role to perfection. With Barnaby preoccupied with business, and her political career at a standstill, he’d been a welcome, if erratic, source of company. They’d had half a dozen meals together, been to the movies, shared a wild day out on the Isle of Wight. He was good fun and, underneath the manic one-liners, she’d sensed a real outrage about the direction the country was taking, but until she’d seen the video she’d never suspected that his disgust extended as far as political commitment.

  Billy struggled out of the armchair and pulled the curtains. Despite months of physiotherapy on his damaged knee, he was still walking with a limp. He turned round, staring down at Kate. He’d put on a lot of weight, and it was beginning to show in the folds of grey flesh beneath his chin.

  ‘Has he written a constitution? Got himself something to believe in? Or is it à la carte? Open house? Anyone’s party?’

  ‘I’ve told you, I don’t know.’ Kate extended a hand, feeling him flinch as her fingers brushed his thigh. ‘I can’t imagine he’s got that far. He’s great with the headlines but legal stuff just isn’t his thing.’

  ‘What about your lawyer friend, then? Can’t he help?’

  Kate turned her face away, refusing to be goaded. She’d talked to a lot of neurologists in the last eight months and all of them had told her the same thing. Brain injuries as severe as Billy’s had lifelong consequences: feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, of being pushed aside from the mainstream of events. Prior to the riot, Billy had been philosophical about Hayden Barnaby. Afterwards he’d come to hate him.

  ‘Well?’ He wanted an answer.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Haven’t you asked him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? I thought he was involved? Keen?’

  ‘He is, or was.’ She looked directly up at him. ‘But what do you think? Do you think it’s a good idea? Breaking away? Giving people the choice?’

  ‘Choice? Choosing between two kinds of capitalism? Two kinds of greed? Two ways of stuffing your neighbour? What kind of choice is that?’

  ‘Who said anything about capitalism?’

  ‘No one. But you don’t have to. It goes with the territory.’ Billy was reaching for the bottle of whisky. Uncapped, it stood on the carpet beside the armchair. Kate’s hand closed around it. He stared down at her, red-eyed, belligerent. ‘Give me that bottle.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I said give it to me.’

  ‘No. Not until you tell me what you think.’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘I mean what you really think. Charlie’s come up with an idea. It might be very good. It might be hopeless. But the way things are, at least it’s some kind of alternative. Don’t you have a view on that? Without slagging us all off?’

  Billy began to sway. He reached down for the arm of his chair, supporting himself. He looked about ninety.

  ‘Socialism’s the alternative,’ he whispered thickly. ‘Always was. Always will be. Not that it fucking matters to you.’

  ‘That’s unfair.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Pompey First. New Labour. Lib-Dems. You’re pissing in the wind, all of you. It’s words, just words. You come here telling me about the new Jerusalem and it turns out to be some adman’s wet dream. Words are cheap. It’s action that counts.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Work it out for yourself. You’ve got eyes, haven’t you?’

  Kate got to her feet, angry now. She still had the bottle and when Billy tried to wrestle it out of her grasp she took a step backwards, nearly tripping over. Billy blundered after her, cursing. The open door behind her led to his bedroom. As she backed into the semi-darkness, she smelt bleach and urine. She reached for the light switch beside the door, wanting this scene over. She’d been wrong to talk about politics. The notion that it might help, that it might tempt him out of his misery and his isolation, had been hopelessly wide of the mark. Instead, it had done the reverse, adding insult to injury, swamping him with half-remembered griefs.

  His head was turned away, his hand shielding his eyes from the overhead light. He was mumbling to himself, the same word over and over again, the needle stuck in the groove. She leaned forward, trying to understand him. The word was choice. He said it again and again, choice, choice, choice, then quicker and quicker until the sound became primitive and inhuman, a steam train at full throttle. Abruptly, he stopped, and his head began to shake, little flurries of movement, as if he was trying to rid himself of some demon.

  Kate put her arms around him, only too certain of what was to follow, but he reared away from her with a tiny involuntary cry, his eyes rolling upwards into his head. Unconscious, he collapsed sideways, his skull cracking against the corner of the chest of drawers as his legs buckled beneath him. Kate knelt on the carpet, cradling his head as blood began to trickle from the gash above his ear. His eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated. She hauled him onto his back, gasping with the effort, and then bent to his mouth, trying to force air between his clenched teeth. When nothing happened, she straddled his chest, both hands flattened on his breastbone, pressing down hard, regular thrusts, both arms straight, the way the instructor at the health club had taught her. Billy’s face was tinged with blue and she pressed harder, increasing the frequency, measuring the distance to the bedside telephone, wondering whether she dared leave him long enough to call for an ambulance. Then she felt his limbs begin to jerk beneath her, powerful spasms of movement, seismic aftershocks. Fitfully, his breathing returned and a froth of tiny white bubbles appeared around the corner of his mouth.

  She began to relax, easing backwards, the sweat cooling on her face. Very gently, she turned his head sideways, letting the saliva trickle onto the carpet. Billy was breathing regularly, his jaw relaxed, his eyes closed, his limbs still. Once he gave a little sigh, the way a child might, regret perhaps, or disappointment.

  In the bedside cabinet, Kate found some tissues and a tube of antiseptic cream. She dabbed at the wound on his temple, cleaning up the trickle of blood that was already beginning to crust. By the time full consciousness returned, she had an Elastoplast ready, the backing torn off, and she held it where he could see it while his eyes battled to focus. From the expression on his face, part curiosity, part bewilderment, she knew he had no memory of what had happen
ed. She covered the wound with the plaster and sealed it with a kiss. Billy could smell the urine now, and Kate watched his hand explore the spreading pool of wetness around the crotch of his jeans. Then she bent to him again, kissing him on the lips.

  ‘Little mishap,’ she whispered, ‘nothing serious.’

  Louise Carlton sat in the back of the minicab as it sped south towards Carshalton. It was raining hard and Streatham High Road was a blur of empty, over-lit shop fronts as the tyres hissed on the wet tarmac. Ellis sat beside her, a bulky hunched figure in the shapeless blue raincoat. In a carrier bag between them, still warm, were the containers of chop suey and egg foo yung they’d been unable to eat at the restaurant. As ever, Louise had over-ordered, and as ever the attentive young waiters had parcelled up the left-overs, smiled at her jokes about doggy-bags and wished her a polite good night.

  Ellis was talking about the Singapore people again. He’d been in touch with their Department of Commercial Affairs, trying to gauge the exact strength of the deal on offer. The Singaporeans had been badly burned by the Nick Leeson scandal. The young broker had been working for Barings, the City of London’s oldest merchant bank, and the sheer scale of the losses he’d incurred had driven the bank into liquidation. The resulting headlines had shadowed the reputation of the Singapore financial exchanges and the local regulators were keen to place the blame where they felt it rightly belonged. Leeson himself had recently returned to Singapore, successfully extradited from a German prison, but there were other names on the investigator’s list, way above Leeson in the Barings hierarchy, and some were still sitting behind desks in the City of London’s Square Mile. So far, the English authorities had refused to co-operate in any investigation but Ellis’s insistent enquiries about Raymond Zhu had evidently given the Singaporeans a little extra leverage. Whatever they knew about Zhu was only available in return for help on the Leeson case, preferably in the shape of access to certain named Barings executives.

  The minicab had stopped at traffic lights. Louise was still thinking about the bankers.

  ‘You mean they want us to arrest the Barings people? Fly them out in chains?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘And will it happen?’

  ‘Of course not. Why should we hand them all our dirty washing?’

  ‘Quite.’

  Louise watched a couple necking in a bus shelter. At last, the lights went green and the car lurched forward.

  ‘So where does that leave you?’ she pondered. ‘And our Singaporean friends?’

  ‘Nowhere. They’re absolutely intransigent. No deal on the Barings thing. No leads on Zhu.’

  ‘You think they’ve got anything?’

  ‘I’m sure they have. Whether or not it’s useful…’ Ellis left the sentence unfinished.

  Louise glanced across at him, her eyes opaque behind the huge glasses. Back in the summer, she’d opened one or two doors for Ellis, offering him the promise of certain Thames House assets in his private hunt for background information on Zhu. The potential benefits to herself were obvious, stealing a big juicy plum from a tree that properly belonged in MI6’s orchard, but the timing of her offer had been woeful, coinciding as it had with an abrupt change of gear in the negotiations over Portsmouth dockyard. With Zhu in the driving seat, and the Treasury ever more determined to get the dockyard off its books, Ellis had been officially tasked to prepare a DTI background file on Zhu: his origins, assets, liabilities, and that complex web of debts and allegiances that might, one day, prove embarrassing. Preparing the file, all too sadly, had meant the use of official channels. And official channels, of course, had led straight to MI6’s South-east Asia desk. Six, though, had so far proved worse than useless, providing nothing more solid than a sheet or two of business connections and a rehash of old newspaper cuttings that Ellis had long ago committed to memory.

  Louise patted him fondly on the thigh. Ellis had vented his impatience with Six in regular phone calls to Louise. He’d called them incompetent, a bunch of patronizing old tarts. From experience, Louise knew exactly what he meant but was convinced that Six were playing games. So far, they’d had nearly four months to shake Zhu down. In that time, given their reach and their connections, they couldn’t have failed to rattle the odd skeleton. So why not share the intelligence? Why leave the DTI in the dark?

  She could only assume that the Matrix-Churchill fiasco had inflicted deeper wounds than anyone had suspected. With morale at rock bottom, Six were in desperate need of a coup de théâtre, something really spectacular, and with half of Whitehall as an audience, an abrupt exposé of Raymond Zhu might do very nicely indeed. Politically, the timing would be crucial. Let the dockyard negotiations run and run. Let the public controversy build and build. Let the pens be poised over the final contract. Then send the killer fax, the one that revealed the truth about Zhu, the one that cut the ground from beneath the politicians’ feet, the one that kept the Union Jack flying over the nation’s favourite dockyard.

  Louise’s hand dropped into the carrier bag beside her, her square-trimmed nails finding the little crimped edges of the foil containers. The MI6 ploy she understood only too well. She’d done exactly the same with the boy Schreck, back in the spring. Find something newsworthy, something guaranteed to get the tabloids foaming at the mouth. Seed the situation, nurture it with care. And when the politicians were suddenly beset by headlines, make the most of your inside track.

  With the National Front, it had been simplicity itself. The Southsea riot had made the front page of every paper in the country. The television pictures had been shown world-wide. And next morning, when the Home Secretary had been desperate for instant solutions, David Jephson had quietly pointed out the wisdom of confirming MI5 as the lead agency with respect to political extremism.

  It was true, of course, that Thames House had always kept files on the lunatic fringe but intelligence had traditionally been separated from operations. Schreck, though, had put the police blockade to shame, driving through every checkpoint on the road south, and after the very public débâcle outside the Imperial Hotel, the battle in this particular corner of the turf war had been well and truly over. Henceforth, when it came to planning operations, Five would be guaranteed a key seat at the table.

  Louise eased the lid from the container, slid her fingers inside, then licked them one by one. The oyster sauce was truly delicious. Beside her, Ellis was staring out of the window. She motioned towards the carrier bag, inviting him to help himself. Then she was struck by another thought. ‘There’s a chap down in Portsmouth called Tully,’ she mused. ‘I think you ought to meet him.’

  Kate was still in bed when Barnaby called round next morning. He let himself into the house, stopping off in the kitchen to test the kettle. Finding it cold, he prepared a tray of tea, making room beside the sugar bowl for the brand new foolscap pad he’d picked up at the office. Minutes later, he was perched on the end of Kate’s bed, the pad on his lap, explaining again why they had to get the small print right.

  ‘We’re setting ourselves up,’ he said. ‘We’ll be a threat, a target. One chink in the armour, and we’ll blow it.’

  ‘You’re talking like a lawyer.’

  ‘That’s because I am a lawyer.’

  ‘Sure.’ Kate scowled sleepily. ‘And don’t I know it.’ Barnaby abandoned the pad long enough to kiss her. She tasted, very faintly, of Scotch.

  ‘Tell me about this threat.’ She pulled him down beside her. ‘Who’s going to be bothered?’

  ‘Labour for one.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Losing you.’

  ‘Who says I’m joining?’

  Barnaby looked at her. When his hand found her breast beneath the T-shirt, she told him to behave.

  ‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘This is boys’ talk, a new toy, you and Charlie having a little fantasy. Politics is too important to be left to you lot. Bloody men, you’re all the same.’

  ‘Not fair,’ Barnaby remonstrated. ‘Absolutely
not fair.’

  ‘You really care enough to do it? Go along with it? All those envelopes to be stuffed? All those doors to be knocked on?’

  ‘Charlie thinks there might be alternatives.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say but you know what he’s like with hi-tech.’

  ‘Too right. If you can plug it in or screw it, wonderful. Otherwise, forget it. So where does that leave boring old local elections? And that’s another thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where does all the money come from?’

  Barnaby uncapped the fountain pen he liked to use for legal drafting. For the time being, money was the least of his problems. Zhu’s acquisitions in the city had resulted in a flood of detailed contract work and the accountant who kept an eye on the practice’s books was anticipating a 270 per cent increase in gross revenues.

  ‘The money’s fine,’ he said lightly. ‘It’s the rest I worry about. We’ve got a clean sheet of paper. Literally.’ He gestured at the pad. ‘Isn’t that every politician’s dream?’

  Kate countered the question with a shrug. The cat had sprawled across her chest, begging for attention.

  ‘It’s not as easy as that. Politics is subtler than you think. You can’t just write a shopping list.’

  ‘I don’t intend to. We need a constitution, a legal shell. I thought you might have some ideas. I’m just trying to be democratic. Anything wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing – nothing at all. I’m just wondering how seriously you’re taking all this.’ She fondled the cat. ‘It’s a nice idea. In fact it’s brilliant. I can think of a dozen politicians in this city who’d die for the chance of a fresh start, and two of them are Tory MPs. But…’ her eyes were still fixed thoughtfully on the cat ‘… it’s you really, your motives.’ She looked up. ‘Why get involved? Why bother? When everything’s so sweet for you?’

  Barnaby was vaguely aware of his pen doodling triangles across the top of the page. He’d been half anticipating this scene for weeks. The past half year had been truly hectic. With his time strictly rationed, the relationship had been forced into odd corners of his schedule, and Kate was far too competitive to put up with second best. Her jealousy of Liz had developed into a resentment of anything that stood between them and it was harder and harder to make her believe that he still wanted her, that he still cared. He looked up, seeing the unvoiced accusation in her eyes. Instead of flowers, or a bottle of wine, he’d brought her something rather special. Was that why he was here? An early Christmas present? A brand new party of her very own?