‘Take electricity,’ he said. ‘Epple’s been talking to Southern Electric. He calls it exploratory conversations. What he’s really doing is research. He’s trying to sort something out for afterwards.’
‘After what?’
‘Independence. UDI.’
Ellis stared at him. Then his eyes returned to the binder.
‘Here?’ he said. ‘In Portsmouth? They want to go it alone? Set up outside the UK?’
‘That’s right. When they tell you it’s Pompey First, they mean it. At least they’re honest. That’s quite unusual, isn’t it? In politicians?’
‘But they’re admitting this? You’re telling me it’s in their…’ he shrugged ‘… manifesto?’
‘Christ, no. That’s the point. That’s why I tried to phone you yesterday. I’ve been worrying about it for months. At first I thought it was a piss-take.’ He poked at the pad. ‘It’s not. And after yesterday’s Sentinel, I don’t really have much choice. Zhu won’t stop with the dockyard. He wants to buy the lot.’
‘Zhu?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s behind all this?’
‘He’s supplying the cash.’
‘And he wants everything?’
‘Yeah.’ Tully nodded, glum now. ‘The whole bloody city.’
He told Ellis to read the intercepts on electricity. Ellis did so. The fragments of conversations, so carefully excerpted, told their own story. Over a period of months, Charlie Epple had established that the private electricity companies were flogging power in a totally unregulated market. They could contract with as many customers as they could satisfy. Nothing in law, no Act of Parliament, prevented them from concluding a deal with Charlie Epple’s infant city-state. On the contrary, given the buying power of 180,000 people, Charlie could probably negotiate a fat discount.
Ellis reread the conversations, putting on his DTI hat, trying to spot the problems. Tully was watching him, a thin smile on his face.
‘What about the plant? The power lines? The delivery systems? All the stuff the electricity people own? Here in Portsmouth.’
Tully nodded at the binder. ‘Next page.’
Ellis turned over. Charlie Epple, answering exactly the same question from Hayden Barnaby, had come up with a series of options. They began with sequestration. On a formal declaration of independence, the sovereign state of Portsmouth could simply seize everything within the city limits.
‘That’s theft,’ Ellis looked up, ‘in my book.’
‘They’d call it nationalization, but you’re right.’ Tully was still looking at the binder. ‘Read on.’
Ellis finished Tully’s analysis. Power-supply options included negotiations with other regional companies or even the purchase of French electricity through the seabed interconnector, but the perfect solution had only occurred to Charlie ten days ago. Ellis read this conversational exchange twice, making sure he had it right. Then he looked up again. Tully was in the kitchen, rummaging for biscuits. Ellis joined him, still holding the binder.
‘Zhu would buy Southern Electric?’
Tully was ripping the cellophane from a packet of custard creams. ‘Sure.’
‘How much would it cost him?’
‘There’s a bid from National Power already on the table. Two point eight billion. He’d have to top that.’
Ellis did the sums in his head: £2.8 billion was a fortune, even to someone as wealthy as Zhu, but after privatization the regional electricity companies had become a licence to print money, one of the reasons why American companies were queuing up with bids of their own. In terms of simple investment Zhu couldn’t go wrong, and if National Power beat him to the draw then there was no obvious reason why he shouldn’t buy them instead. That way, he’d end up selling electricity to most of the UK. At a profit, of course.
Ellis returned to the file, putting Zhu to one side, trying to absorb the scale of the task these novice politicians had set themselves. He had yet to hear Charlie Epple’s voice but the way he used the language, the stop-start pattern of his sentences, spoke of someone prepared to shimmy their way around any problem.
The conversations bubbled with ideas and through all of them ran a thread of pure mischief. Here was someone who simply didn’t believe that prospects for the city and its people couldn’t be bettered. Under the Tories, he said, life had become a simple two-way bet. A few won. Most lost. In his view, that meant the guys in London had been running the casino for far too long. It was time, at last, for the punters to have a shout. At least, that way, something might be done about the odds.
Ellis found himself nodding. Might this not work? Didn’t Charlie Epple have a point?
Tully abandoned the biscuits and retrieved the file from Ellis, flicking quickly through. An obvious problem was the welfare state. How would Pompey First go about funding hospitals, schools, pensions, income support? Wouldn’t that cost a fortune? Charlie Epple, once again, had anticipated the challenge. Conversations in February recounted his progress with a number of leading insurance companies. He’d asked each to prepare private schemes to enable a young married couple to see themselves and their kids through bad health, education, unemployment and retirement. In each of these areas, the companies had prepared insurance plans. Together, these proposals would replace the welfare state. Ellis blinked, tallying the various quotes. The lowest came to £874.56. A month.
Ellis put his finger on the figure, pointing it out to Tully.
‘It wouldn’t work,’ he said. ‘No one’s got that sort of money.’
‘You’re right,’ Tully grunted. ‘But that’s where Zhu comes in.’
They returned to the lounge with the custard creams. According to one of Charlie’s conversations with Hayden Barnaby, only last week Zhu had outlined a scheme whereby the city could pay its own way. Given real independence, and a benign tax regime, international investment would flood in. There were companies in Hong Kong desperate to find a new home for their capital. This was serious money, billions and billions of dollars. With that kind of funding, and the jobs that came with it, Pompey could afford something infinitely superior to the threadbare welfare state the Tories were in the process of dismantling.
This prospect had triggered a longer conversation than usual, and Charlie had spent the best part of an hour rhapsodizing about new schools, decent money for teachers, first-class equipment, the chance for every child in the city to excel. The same vision awaited the city’s hospitals, the city’s old. Pensions would be doubled. Unemployment benefit, for the handful without jobs, would be turned into a decent living wage. The list went on and on, promissory notes scribbled on Zhu’s account, and at the end of it Ellis found himself battling to put these glittering prizes in some sort of perspective. He was looking at a blueprint for a new society. But where would it lead?
‘It’s a new Singapore,’ he said slowly, ‘without the sunshine.’
Tully was munching a custard cream. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Think that through, add Hong Kong to the equation, and you’ll realize why I made the call.’
When the phone rang, Barnaby was settling down to watch Newsnight. Earlier, he’d asked Jessie to come over but for some reason she’d said no. Kate, too, had been tied up with a prior engagement, and of Charlie there’d been no trace.
The mobile was still in the kitchen. Barnaby picked it up. There was something familiar about the voice at the other end. Seconds later, he placed it. The young reporter from Newsnight. Barnaby glanced at his watch. The programme started in ten minutes. What had gone wrong?
The reporter was apologetic. He’d been meaning to phone earlier but he’d been tied up in post-production. They’d commissioned a poll in Portsmouth, asking people about their voting intentions. He’d meant to mention it this morning but it had slipped his mind.
Barnaby bent to the phone. He’d resigned himself to bad news. Maybe he’d been premature. ‘Well?’ he said.
The reporter chuckled. There were two figures, he said. One was a big
surprise. The other was truly amazing. So amazing, that the programme editor had ordered a recut on the programme’s opening titles sequence.
‘Well?’ Barnaby said again.
‘Sixty-eight per cent.’
‘Sixty-eight per cent what?’
‘Sixty-eight per cent turnout. That’s sixty-eight per cent intending to vote.’
Barnaby felt the warmth flooding through him: 68 per cent was unheard-of, more than double the usual vote.
‘And?’ he said.
There was a pause. Barnaby could hear a second conversation in the background. Then the reporter returned to the phone.
‘Seventy-three per cent committed to Pompey First,’ he said. ‘Just thought I’d pass it on. ’Bye now. And well done.’
The phone went dead. Barnaby gazed through the open door that led to the living room. Beyond the big picture window, and the blackness of the Common, was the frieze of coloured lights along the seafront. During the evening the wind had got up and the bulbs were swaying on the cables strung between the lamp-posts. Barnaby looked at them for a long time then he yelled and punched the air, returning to the kitchen for the mobile, wondering who to phone.
To his surprise, Kate was still at home. He could hear the noise of a bath being filled. He told her the news. At first she didn’t believe it, then he heard her telling someone else. ‘Seventy-three per cent,’ she whispered, ‘down to us.’
There was a cackle of laughter in the background, abruptly muffled by a hand on the receiver.
Charlie Epple, Barnaby thought uneasily, glancing at his watch.
Jessie took a taxi out to the Glory Hole. She’d spent the entire evening quarrelling with Lolly. A tiny spat about a TV programme had flared into a major row, and Lolly had capped it all by calling her a slag. She knew about Haagen. She knew what Jessie was getting up to. She knew she came back with big eyes and wet knickers. She was a whore, a shag-bag. She’d fuck anyone. Even a dosser like Haagen.
Jessie sat in the back of the taxi, surprised by the coldness inside her. She felt nothing for Lolly, absolutely nothing. She’d tried to please her, tried to look after her, tried to meet her every need, and all the thanks she’d ever got was major hassle and major grief. Lolly’s life revolved around Lolly. Nothing she could say or do would ever alter that fact.
She asked the cabbie to drop her at the end of the road that skirted the Glory Hole. Haagen, she knew, would be tucked up with his music and a big fat doobie. The last thing he’d appreciate would be a taxi at his door. She began to walk, letting her eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. Gradually, she made out the shapes of houseboats to her left. Most, she knew, were unoccupied, rotting hulks that Haagen occasionally raided for wood for his stove. She thought of him today, how well he’d taken the news about Oz. She’d been expecting something awful, one of his tantrums, but the news seemed to have come as no surprise. Oz, he’d said, always pushed life to the limits. She smiled, remembering her own relief. Maybe he had been less fond of the dog than he’d always pretended. Maybe that was why he’d agreed so readily that Jess should carry on looking after him.
She was close to the houseboat now. She could see the distinctive hump of the extension at the front where Haagen had built his bunk. She stepped off the road, feeling the wet grass through her plimsolls. Walking the plank in the dark was tricky. She took it slowly, inching sideways. The deck felt slippery underfoot. To her surprise, the door to the cabin hung open. She hesitated, then peered in. Had something happened? Had Lolly finally flipped? Called the police? Grassed Haagen up?
‘Haagen?’ she whispered.
Nothing happened. She looked round. The tide was low. She could hear ducks chattering softly in the darkness.
‘Haagen,’ louder this time, ‘Haagen.’
Still nothing. She ventured into the cabin. The light switch was taped to the bulkhead. She closed the door and found the switch. The cabin was empty. Haagen’s sleeping bag lay unzipped on the bunk. Beside the pillow, turned inside out, was a black balaclava helmet she’d never seen before. She picked it up, curious. It smelled sour, a smell she couldn’t place. She stepped outside onto the deck again, her body throwing a long shadow on the glistening mud. She stood perfectly still, listening to the sigh of the wind. Then, for the first time, she heard a moaning noise. It sounded sub-human. It signalled pain or exhaustion. It came from nearby.
Frightened now, Jessie returned to the cabin. Haagen normally kept his torch beside the little transistor radio she’d given him. She found it, switched it on and retraced her steps along the gangplank. The grassy bank fell away to the mud-flats below. She walked slowly along the top of the bank, the beam of the torch pooling below. The moaning was louder. She swung the torch to the right, up onto the neighbouring houseboat. At first she could make no sense of what she saw. Two arms outstretched. A body stripped to the waist, the narrow back crisscrossed with scarlet weals. The head moved in the torchlight, then flopped forward again, and she heard the dull thud of bone against the houseboat’s wooden hull. Her hand began to shake. Then she was plunging down the bank, her feet sinking ankle deep in the mud at the bottom. She struggled towards the body. It was Haagen. She knew it was. Someone had come for him. Someone had taken a lash to him, flaying him half to death.
Beside the houseboat, she bent double, gasping for breath. The torch up again, she found Haagen’s head. A length of dirty cloth gagged his mouth. She fought with the knot. His back was wet with blood, glistening in the light from the torch. Finally, the gag came free. She used it to wipe his face. He was barely conscious, his eyes closed, his breath coming in tiny gasps.
She kissed him, telling him not worry, telling him she loved him, wondering whether or not to release his wrists. They were lashed to a primitive wooden frame, a simple cross, propped against the houseboat’s hull. Her fingers found the first knot and she began to loosen it, then she stopped. Unsupported, she’d never cope with his weight. He wasn’t big but the bank was steep and slippery and he was in no state to help her. God knew what lay beneath the raw, exposed flesh on his back. He might have broken bones, or internal injuries. It might be even worse than that.
She put her mouth to his ear. ‘I’m going for help,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be back.’
Haagen stirred. One eye opened. In the light from the torch, he looked terrified.
‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Don’t.’
Jessie stared at him a moment longer then fought her way up the bank. There was a telephone box at the end of the road. She ran all the way, oblivious to everything but the need to summon help. When she got to it she dialled 999.
‘Ambulance,’ she gasped, when the operator answered. ‘I think he’s dying.’
Chapter Fifteen
Next morning, Jephson had the use of the Director’s Rover to cover the mile and a half from Thames House to Downing Street. Louise sat beside him in the back of the big saloon, and it was three minutes to midday by Big Ben when they rounded Parliament Square and swept up Whitehall.
In the front hall at Number Ten Biscoe was waiting for them. The Portsmouth West MP was carrying a battered orange file and a folded copy of a tabloid newspaper. In the big front-page photo, under the Sentinel’s masthead, Louise recognized Clive Samuels’s distinctive smile, part mirth, part menace.
Jephson did the introductions. Louise shook Biscoe’s outstretched hand. All three followed the messenger up a long, straight, rather narrow corridor until it widened into a lobby at the end. Here, they waited while the messenger knocked on a door and disappeared inside. Seconds later, he was out again, shepherding them into a nearby waiting room. The Prime Minister was busy on a phone call. His political secretary would be out to collect them as soon as he’d finished.
In the waiting room, Jephson stood aside, allowing Louise the choice of seats. She settled herself in a high-backed leather-covered armchair that was, in truth, a little too small for comfort. On the table in the middle of the room was a pile of magazines, old copies of Th
e Economist and Country Life.
Jephson and Biscoe remained standing. Biscoe was ruefully describing the morning’s media invasion of Portsmouth. The Newsnight poll of Pompey First’s electoral chances had triggered a stampede of journalists and video crews and he’d awoken to the sight of a BBC radio car parked outside his front door. Normally, of course, he’d have been delighted to debate the issues with Radio Four’s Today programme but throughout this morning’s live interview he’d never quite got off the back foot. The evidence that Pompey First would do well was by now overwhelming, and all he could do to stem the flood of further defections was to issue the usual warning against a menu without prices. A vote for Pompey First, he’d kept saying, was like putting your signature to a blank cheque. Not once, as far as he was aware, had any of these new-wave politicians indicated where the money might be coming from. This, he insisted to Jephson, was true, and he was still shaking his head at the fraudulence of it all when a young man in a burgundy jacket put his head round the door and invited them into the Cabinet Room.
The moment they appeared the Prime Minister got to his feet. He’d been sitting at the middle of the long, coffin-shaped table. The room was infinitely lighter and more pleasant than the lobby outside, and through the french windows at the end, Louise could see a terrace and an expanse of walled garden. The Prime Minister shook hands, introduced his PPS and asked whether they’d had coffee. The table in front of him was littered with paperwork and when the political secretary enquired about their preference in sandwiches, he rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation. He’d got up far too early. Breakfast had been rushed. The sandwiches weren’t entirely reliable but today they might just strike lucky.
Louise took the seat across the table, flanked by Jephson and Biscoe. The Prime Minister had evidently met Jephson before and they were sharing a joke about some scandal amongst the cricket Test selectors. There was laughter from Jephson, then the PPS pulled a briefing note towards him, quickly running through events on the south coast.
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