by Janet Neel
‘Extraordinary, this street,’ McLeish observed, as they walked towards the car. ‘Middle of a slum, really, but every other house has got a skip outside, or scaffolding all over it, or both. It’s coming up, as the agents say. I ought really to try and get a flat up here; Ealing’s too far out. Cost a bomb though, I expect.’ He and Davidson paused to look at the brightly coloured front doors and window-boxes that had appeared on three or four of the little Victorian houses.
‘See the lassie over there?’
McLeish glanced over following Davidson’s gaze, and was just in time to see long elegant legs stamping up the steps of a little house with a new dark-green front door.
‘She’s been up and down those steps three times,’ Davidson observed, amused. ‘Getting gey irritated, too.’
The girl burst out of the house again, stopped on the doorstep and stood, visibly reciting a list of things she needed, ticking them off on her fingers, concentrating hard. She banged the door shut, and started down the steps, then stopped half-way down, looking horror-stricken and scrabbling in her handbag.
‘Forgotten the keys. And left the radio on,’ Davidson said, grinning. ‘Not her day.’ The girl across the street raised her head and looked at them both despairingly.
‘Lost your keys?’ called Davidson.
‘I can hardly believe it, but I’ve locked them inside.’
McLeish followed Davidson across the road, reflecting with amusement that his sergeant would probably find good-looking women in the Sahara. He arrived to find that Davidson, drawing on his vast experience, was gently urging her to turn her handbag out and see if the keys were not, after all, with her.
‘Oh. They are here. You are clever — how kind to come and help.’
Davidson moved to one side to let McLeish come up beside him, and the girl smiled at him too, radiant with relief. McLeish stopped in his tracks, and just stared at her.
‘All part of the service. We are police by the way — plain clothes branch. I’m Sergeant Davidson and this is Detective Inspector McLeish.’ Davidson had no objection to doing a bit of neighbourhood public relations work.
McLeish was still stuck looking at the girl. Not really pretty, he thought, except for the dazzling dark-blue eyes, that short helmet haircut a bit severe combined with the straight nose and well marked eyebrows. She was no longer smiling at him, he realized, but was considering him as seriously as he was considering her.
‘I’m Francesca Wilson. Sweet of you both to stop,’ she said, turning to Davidson. ‘I can at least now go to work. I too am a civil servant.’
‘You’ve left the radio on too, lass,’ Davidson pointed out.
‘Not the radio, it’s a tape and it’ll stop; but thank you.’
‘“The Lost Chord”,’ Davidson observed, listening with interest. ‘Don’t hear that much now, but my dad used to sing it.’
‘It’s my brother singing.’ She listened for a minute, then sang softly and unselfconsciously along with the tape: ‘It may be that Death’s bright angel, Will speak in that chord again. It may be that only in Heaven, I shall hear that grand amen …’ She smiled at Davidson. ‘That’s it, finished. Oh God! Is that the time? Thank you again.’
‘Which department do you work for?’ John McLeish finally found his voice.
‘Trade and Industry. In Victoria Street.’ She smiled at him, and he pulled himself together with a mighty effort and wished her a good day. She slid into a Mini, carelessly parked outside the house, and shot off, with a little wave to both of them.
‘Left it unlocked,’ Davidson observed, disapprovingly, studiously not looking at his chief.
‘Do you think she lives there, or was she visiting?’ McLeish was watching the car disappear round the corner.
‘Lives there, surely?’ Davidson, fascinated, observed him out of the corner of an eye.
‘I expect she’s married, mind you. I’ve reached the age where all the pretty ones are.’ They had walked across the road and got into the car, with Davidson not daring to speak. He sat in the passenger seat and slid his eyes sideways to observe his chief who was gazing moodily through the windscreen. He was an impressive sight, all six foot four of him folded behind the wheel, the huge shoulders making the car look dangerously small. And a good-looking bloke with it — dark, almost black hair, brown eyes, and surely not short of women in his life.
‘I’ve seen you with a few pretty ones. Are they all married then?’ Curiosity finally overwhelmed Davidson.
McLeish did not reply but continued to look out through the windscreen, lips pressed tightly together. Without looking at his sergeant he reached a huge hand for the car radio.
‘Karen. Would you get a name and address on KYU 123X please.’ He put the microphone down, and sternly avoiding looking at Davidson, put the car into gear and drove off. Davidson sat silently beside him, deeply amused and somewhat awestruck. All policemen know the rule that the address of the registered keeper of a particular car may only be sought from the computer if some criminal act is suspected. So ingrained is this knowledge that a policeman asking for a trace always adds the words ‘suspected violation’ as automatically as ‘amen’ at the end of the Lord’s Prayer. McLeish was widely recognized as a punctiliously straight copper, having survived five years in the Flying Squad without cutting corners. It was like the man, thought the more flexible Davidson, not to add the words ‘suspected violation’ nor to ask for Davidson’s discretion. That formidable Puritan conscience would probably make McLeish feel, if he got caught out, that justice had been done. What had that girl done to him?
The microphone crackled. ‘Detective Inspector? The registered keeper is a Miss Francesca Wilson, 19 Wellcome Street, W.10.’
‘Thank you.’
McLeish drove steadily for the police station with Davidson silent beside him. They stopped at a light and McLeish glanced sideways. ‘Say something Bruce, even if it’s only good-bye.’
‘We could go and have breakfast in that caff every morning. She’s bound to lose her keys again,’ he offered, and McLeish’s face relaxed into a sheepish smile.
‘You did but see her passing by?’ Davidson, who had a good Scots education, asked seriously.
‘That’s right. I may be off my head, but at least she isn’t married. Back to the grindstone.’
2
Four hours later and three miles away, the November sun shone on a scene of simple but expensive comfort. Three men in their fifties were gathered in comfortable chairs at one end of a huge room, otherwise furnished only with a huge desk, a table to seat twelve, and six large paintings of ships all in full sail bursting indefatigably across uniformly stormy seas. The Civil Service does not provide its employees with grand offices but the Permanent Secretary to the Department of Trade and Industry had maintained, successfully, that he needed an impressive office in which to receive the captains of industry who constituted the Department’s clientèle. His contention that these gentlemen, seeing the average accommodation accorded to a Perm. Sec., would simply not take him seriously had finally and reluctantly been accepted by the Treasury.
‘Most satisfactory. All the Assistant Secretary postings fixed,’ observed Sir James Campbell, KCB, Permanent Secretary to the Department of Trade and Industry, leaning back. His audience agreed fervently. The Assistant Secretary grade is where the main weight of responsibility falls in the service and mistakes in this area are expensive and difficult to sort out, since no established civil servant can be sacked for less than gross misconduct or incompetence of truly appalling proportions.
‘After this hard morning, I hesitate even to mention a Principal posting.’ William Westland, CB, DSO, Principal Establishment Officer for the Department, sounding not at all hesitant, leaned his full fifteen stone on the back of his chair and smiled on his two colleagues.
‘What have you done, Bill?’ Campbell, a small, dapper, dominant fifty-year-old who had known Westland since they were at university together, raised both eyebrows. However
dedicated to staff relationships a Permanent Secretary may be, given that the Department boasted on that day, in descending order of grandeur, six Deputy Secretaries, forty Under Secretaries, 110 Assistant Secretaries and 260 Principals, he does not normally expect to concern himself with a Principal posting, unless it is to a Minister’s private office.
‘The Principal in question is Francesca Wilson.’
‘Ah. Oh dear. Remind me, Bill.’
‘Our Ambassador to the United States asked that she be withdrawn from the Embassy where we had sent her for her final year as an HEO(A). We posted her there because, apart from the fact that she is ferociously bright and very quick, she had suffered an extremely painful divorce and we — I — thought a change of scene would be valuable.’
‘Surely she is too young to be divorced?’ Geoffrey Catto, the third man in the room, a senior and desiccated official, enquired in horror.
‘We have all led a sheltered life by comparison with this generation, Geoffrey. Francesca was married at twenty-two — I went to the wedding, and I must say it didn’t look like being a success even then — and they were divorced by the time she was twenty-six. She’s just twentyeight now. Anyway, the Ambassador wanted to send her home because she was having a security-threatening and embarrassing affair with the Junior Senator for West Virginia.’
‘Michael O’Brien?’ There was a general pause for reflection on the reputation of the Senator. ‘Was she indeed? So what did we do? Or rather, Bill, what did you do? Is she not a godchild of yours?’
‘Indeed yes. I am a man of peace, but I was going to Washington anyway, and with very real heroism I tackled Francesca, taking the line, you know, that there were other chaps in the world with whom she could have a walk-out without getting right up the nose of Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States of America, and couldn’t she find someone else? Maybe even someone not currently married?’
‘I long to know what she said.’
‘I think in deference to my grey hairs she did not explain why she was having an affair with this one rather than another, but she was wholly unrepentant. She took the line that it was HM Ambassador who was being unreasonable, and suggested that the real problem was that, like all his family, he simply couldn’t bear people being invited to smarter parties than he was. In which, of course, she has a point, but, as I told her, my sympathies are entirely with the Ambassador. Not exactly conducive to the dignified conduct of affairs of State to have a junior member of your staff in the Washington Post every other day, and the security chaps reporting to you in those tiresome Tennessee accents. And then her brother didn’t help.’
Sir James concentrated, and recalled with some triumph that there were four Wilson brothers. Westland nodded.
‘This is Peregrine, aged about twenty-four, number three in the clan. You may well not have noticed, but he has had some success as a pop star under the name of Perry Wilson. In the middle of trying to convey official displeasure to Francesca I had to break off to solicit Peregrine’s autograph for my daughters. It would not have been worth my returning home without it. He was doing a series of concerts there, and according to the Head of Chancery — a sensible man and not given to exaggeration — used to paralyse operations at the Embassy by appearing with his associates in one form of fancy-dress or other. Surrounded, moreover, by nearly as many bodyguards as Francesca’s admirer.’
Sir James sighed. Like most of the Department of Trade and Industry, he shared the view that the Foreign Office was so called because the bulk of its personnel was working for the other side. He could nonetheless see that the Department had been poorly placed to resist a demand that this particular stormy petrel should be recalled to base.
‘So we had to bring her home.’ Bill Westland agreed with his thought. ‘But I made them keep her for a full year, and we brought her home on promotion just to show the FCO they can’t push our people about. In fact, the Commercial Attaché says she did an excellent job, handicapped or assisted by her various adherents. Her father, of course, was an industrial star even by the time he died at thirty-seven.’
‘Where have you put her? Or are you seeking guidance?’
‘No, no, I thought we’d give her the liaison job with the Industrial Development Unit, looking after all those accountants and businessmen seconded in to help us form industrial judgements. She’ll stop them irritating Ministers, will introduce the odd note of political realism, tell them the facts of life and so on.’
‘Being used to doing the same for four younger brothers,’ Sir James observed drily. ‘I suppose you’ve got that right, Bill? To put her in with all those City people, mostly her contemporaries and all men, seems to me to be asking for trouble. These aren’t respectable career civil servants, you know, used to working with women, broken in to it as we all are. They’ve probably never seen a girl who isn’t a typist.’
‘Oh, I think things are changing, James, even in the City.’ Both men spoke of the City of London, not more than a mile away geographically, as if discussing the waters of the moon.
‘You’ve actually decided, have you?’ Geoffrey Catto enquired. ‘Might it not be worth consulting with Mr Blackshaw, our tame industrialist? He is to be head of the IDU after all. He has now met the Secretary of State and even so seems to be willing to come to us for two years.’
Bill Westland observed that this confirmed a previous view that Henry Blackshaw’s Chairman had offered him the choice between two years’ secondment to the Department of Trade and Industry in a prestigious job, or a walk to the nearest Labour Exchange. Assuming, he added, that labour exchanges still existed, following recent cuts in public expenditure.
‘So you thought you would give him Francesca Wilson as a surprise?’ Sir James was far too experienced not to stick to his original question. ‘These industrialists, you know, they’re not like us. They don’t just get issued with whatever staff the company has in stock. Out in the world they choose their own staff and fire people — revolutionary stuff like that.’
‘No. I did raise this particular post with him, James. He took the line that the whole place seemed to be full of earnest young men and that a pretty girl would cheer the place up.’
Geoffrey Catto put his glass down sharply, and pointed out that the good Mr Blackshaw probably envisaged something blonde and cuddly; while recruitment to the fast stream of HM Government service as presently constituted was not bringing blonde cuddly ones into the Department in any great numbers, some nearer equivalent than Francesca Wilson could surely have been found?
‘When I last saw her she was looking like a hawk in a bad temper.’ Sir James was laughing. ‘Impressive, but not exactly cuddly. Oh well, Bill, provided he has had warning … Given the public reputation of the civil service, he probably expects a hard-bitten intellectual in a brown cardigan at best. No, leave it, Bill, we’ll all watch with interest. She’ll probably seduce him. I must go to lunch.’
‘I have something else to raise, Secretary.’ The formality caused Sir James to stop looking for papers and to give Geoffrey Catto his full attention.
‘Britex Fabrics. Frank Jamieson had a word with me last night at the Cordwainers’ dinner. The Managing Director himself warned him that they are not far off real trouble. Jamieson is in a twitch because it is 1400 jobs which they cannot afford to lose.’
Bill Westland observed that surely Britex Fabrics was Darlington and as such not Jamieson’s constituency.
‘No, but a lot of his constituents work there. Most, indeed, of those who do work are employed there. The constituency MP is Williamson — F. not C.E. — who has a huge majority. Jamieson’s is marginal, he won by 1500 votes last time, which is not comfortable. Some of those votes come from Britex employees.’
‘We had better warn Ministers.’ The Civil Service attempts at all times to be professionally omniscient, and Ministers in the Department of Trade and Industry would, very reasonably, be displeased to hear of a major industrial failure from the Press rather
than from their own civil servants.
‘Oh, quite. I am only mentioning it now because I believe you will see Mr Blackshaw at this lunch, as well as other textile people. It would be very useful to get him here a week or so early, to get his mind round this. Someone will be doing a note for Ministers for tonight and we will put it through you in case your meeting at lunch adds anything.’
Sir James nodded at this piece of automatic professional competence and joined the hovering private secretary who was waiting to take him down to his car. The young man gave him a short brief as they reached the car and he skimmed it. It was depressingly familiar material. The textile industry, in all its manifestations from thread manufacturer to little factories making up clothes, was being squeezed by cheap imports from the Far East and from the Comecon countries desperate for hard currency. In an attempt to contain costs, labour was being shed at all levels but turnover was continuing to drop faster than costs could be cut. Britex’s troubles would be repeated in many other firms over the next year; the pattern was already there to see. However clearly this had been explained to Ministers as a consequence both of policy and the economic facts of life, they were never keen to accept it when the consequences were job-losses in their heartland. Not an easy lunch today.
3
It was also a bright day in Yorkshire and the sun shone on the roofs of the four giant buildings that housed Britex Fabrics. Peter Hampton slid his big Rover into the parking space labelled ‘Managing Director’, and the small group gossiping outside the big weaving shop dissolved swiftly.
‘Morning Mr Hampton.’ The security man at the office desk beamed at him as he pushed through the swing door.
