On Friday morning he stayed home, ostensibly working on his article about Nash, but in fact procrastinating, reading around the topic in an effort to avoid writing himself. He was going the next day to R-A’s in Wiltshire, which he looked forward to, as spring was in full bloom and each day mild and progressively warmer. He went to work at lunchtime, and sent Tara out for an hour, while he minded the virtually visitor-less gallery – the day was too fine for browsers to want to be inside.
The Professore came in, and Billings greeted him warmly, but the old man seemed preoccupied. He made a show of looking at the new hangings but soon walked over to Billings at the Cedar of Lebanon, though he refused an invitation to sit down. ‘I would like to ask a favour of you, if I may.’
‘Of course. What can I do?’
The Professore was holding a sealed jiffy bag, the kind used to post books. ‘I would like to leave this for someone, who would collect it later today.’
‘Leave it here with me. I’ll give it to them.’
But the Professore did not hand over the bag. ‘I must tell you there is a sum of money inside. A large sum of money.’
Multiple thoughts raced through Billings’s mind, but he didn’t sense danger – if something dodgy were at work here, surely the Professore would not have told him what the bag contained. And he could not conceive of the Professore as dodgy. So he left his questions unasked.
‘It would be a young man who came to collect it,’ said the Professore. ‘I certainly understand if you would not wish to be involved.’
Again, Billings could not bring himself to ask if the transfer was on the up-and-up. ‘I am happy to do you the favour,’ he said and reached for the package. ‘What is the name of the young man who will collect it?’
He was looking at the package, waiting for the Professore to release it into his own hand. But he didn’t, and when Billings looked up at him, he found a wistful expression on the older man’s face, almost regretful. ‘The man’s name is Bristow. Kevin Bristow. He is the brother of Holly Lester.’
No one had come by four o’clock, and he sent Tara home early, wanting her out of the way. Since it was not an unprecedented concession, she didn’t seem to find it strange at all, but it was sufficiently rare that she accepted with alacrity.
Still no-one came, and when it was almost half past five he went down to put the package in the vault for the weekend. He had just closed the vault door when he heard the gallery door buzz, and he cursed himself for his premature precautions. He shouted hello and left the vault room, only to find a man coming down the stairs. He must have moved quickly, thought Billings, feeling a little alarmed.
The man wore a black leather jacket and black jeans. As he came off the stairs Billings saw that he was a little shorter than himself, but much broader, though he moved lightly and cat-like for his bulk. He had blonde hair, cut very short except for a stub on top that stuck out. His face was conventionally good-looking, though the nose was bordering on bulbous, and it was not a friendly face.
‘No Nicky then?’ the man asked softly, walking towards Billings.
‘I’m James,’ said Billings, going to meet him, and put out his hand. The man looked at it briefly, then slowly shook it, very lightly. Billings asked, ‘who’s Nicky anyway?’
The man looked surprised. ‘Alan’s boy. He’s the one I always see. Unless you’ve replaced him,’ he said slyly.
Not you too, thought Billings, shaking his head. ‘No. And what’s your name?’
The man looked coolly at him. ‘William Bloody Shakespeare,’ he said calmly, then added menacingly, ‘what do you think it is?’
Billings shrugged. He felt agitated but was determined not to show it. ‘Bristow is what I think it is. Kevin Bloody Bristow. Am I right?’
Bristow’s eyes widened momentarily, then he smiled and nodded. Billings said, ‘I’ll just get your package for you.’ He left the vault room door wide open so he could keep an eye on Bristow, who must have had the same idea since he stood there watching him. He opened the safe, took out the package, firmly relocked the safe door, then came out and handed the bag to Bristow, who looked around quickly. ‘What if someone came in?’
Billings shook his head. ‘I’d hear the door upstairs – there’s a buzzer. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’ve got to be going.’
But Bristow wasn’t ready to leave. He walked over to a side table and opened the bag, then extracted three thick wads of notes, each wrapped by a rubber band. He began counting the bills – which were £20 notes – in a loud monotone. When his count hit four thousand pounds Billings grew impressed; by eight he was bored; at eleven he wondered when the exercise would be over. ‘Eleven nine eighty,’ said Bristow as he put the last bill down. For the first time since he’d opened the bag he looked at Billings, glaring.
‘What’s the problem? Aren’t you done? I do have to be going.’
‘She promised me fucking twelve thousand. That’s not twelve!’ he shouted, pointing at the three stacks of bills on the table.
Billings was bewildered. ‘How much is it?’
‘Eleven nine eighty. She’s a pony short! Unless,’ he said menacingly, and repeated, ‘Unless someone else took it.’
For twenty pounds Billings would not have risked his life, which he was starting to feel was the gamble taken in the presence of this madman. ‘Are you sure it’s short?’ he asked, trying to sound reasonable.
‘Of course I’m bloody sure it’s short.’ He paused. ‘There’s only one way to be sure.’
Ten minutes later the last bill had been recounted. Kevin was a mix of triumphant and enraged. ‘Eleven nine eighty, I told you. She’s fucking welshed on me again. I’m not having that. Ring her now, go on.’
‘Ring who?’ asked Billings, acting dumb.
‘My sister, you twat.’
‘I couldn’t do that,’ said Billings, thinking hard. ‘Anyway, she’s away. The Prime Minister’s in Brussels and she went with him.’
‘The Prime Minister,’ said Bristow in a sneering, mincing voice. He started shaking his head. ‘Then ring Alan. Tell him he’s fucked up. Tell him I’m not having it. Tell him twelve grand’s only half what I’d get tomorrow from the Sun and he can’t even fucking deliver that.’
Billings felt at his wits’ end. How was he going to get rid of this man? One thing was certain, he wasn’t going to ring Alan Trachtenberg. Or ‘Nicky’ for that matter. Then he had a brainstorm. He put his hand to his head in a false show of anguish. ‘I just remembered,’ he said loudly.
‘What?’
‘They didn’t short-change you. I did.’ He reached for his wallet. ‘I ran short in a taxi. I took a twenty out to pay the driver and forgot to pay it back.’ Thank God he had a twenty pound note in his wallet. He held it out to Bristow. ‘Here. My fault. We’re all square now, right?’
Bristow took the note grudgingly, disappointed that he hadn’t been victimized. Somehow Billings got him to go upstairs and towards the front door. There Bristow stopped for a moment. ‘Do you know my sister then?’ he asked.
‘A little,’ Billings conceded.
Bristow appraised him. The madness of his performance downstairs was gone, and the air of cool, controlled menace had returned. ‘A little, eh? You’re not one of Alan’s, are you? Despite all this,’ and he pointed around the gallery, ‘froufrou.’
‘I’m married,’ said Billings firmly, worrying not so much about Bristow’s view of his sexual preferences as the involvement in it of Holly.
But Bristow ignored this. ‘Next time you see my sister, tell her...’ He looked out at the street, suddenly thoughtful. ‘Tell her I looked all right, will you? She always cared about that. And tell her she hasn’t got to worry because I’ve gone back to the States, which in two days’ time will be the God’s truth.’ Then the edge returned to his voice. ‘And tell her,’ he said in what Billings saw at once was a passable imitation of his own RP voice, ‘that she’s doing a marvellous job for the country. Simply marvellous.’ H
e opened the door. ‘Cheers mate,’ he said lightly, and disappeared down the street.
Chapter 16
He decided to enter government cautiously, wearing his best suit, keeping a check on his opinions, make his way a step at a time down the garden path his affair with Holly had brought him to. He left the gallery on Tuesday morning and took a cab down to Whitehall, emerging by the gates at the end of Downing Street. He paid his fare, and told himself to keep a level head in this new world of his.
Fat chance: he felt thoroughly sucked into a new world within five minutes of leaving his taxi. He showed his passport to the porter, who was dressed like a superintendent of firemen, then was shown upstairs by a young woman into a room with a long table covered by green baize – like a professional poker table, in other words, or a government meeting room. Others were already present, and while introductions were made more people arrived. He met, among others and in quick succession, a nameless civil servant wearing a Marlborough tie, the Arts Minister Eleanor Eeley, the press secretary Hamish Ferguson, a nameless young woman with a stenographer’s pad, Canon Flowing of the white hair and chauffeured Lambeth Palace limousine, a famous conceptual artist named Terence Traub, and Richard Bruce the Deputy Prime Minister. Trachtenberg ostentatiously ignored him; Sally Kimmo was friendly as usual.
Richard Bruce took the chair, sitting at one end of the table without any papers. Everyone else had an agenda before their place. ‘Let’s get started please,’ Bruce declared, in a bluff Northern voice, but then turned immediately to Trachtenberg on his right, who picked up the agenda and immediately took charge. Peering at his own copy Billings read:
1) Objectives
2) Plans
3) Contractors
4) Working party to devise schedule
5) AOB
5) Date of next meeting
‘Our objectives,’ declared Trachtenberg, ‘seem splendidly clear. We have the advantage, too, that a certain amount of work has been done by the previous government. Not,’ he said in a tone of arch irony, ‘that we would wish to let this be known.’ Everyone laughed except the civil servant in the Marlborough tie, though even he permitted himself a small hint of a smile.
‘The Prime Minister is happy with the general outline of the project – specifically, the buildings we will see erected on the site. As I’m sure you know, there was a major competition under the last government, and we have chosen Samuel Selinger’s design.’ He stood up and went to an easel holding flip charts. He rapidly turned the pages, revealing several perspective drawings of the overall design for the site. It was a collection of various-sized buildings, linked by glass-lined passageways in airport fashion, each designed to reflect an epoch in London’s history, though in fact the earliest design was Tudor. There was a Jacobean manor house, a Queen Anne brick country house, a Georgian building that looked like a Greek temple, a Victorian monstrosity that could have been designed by Burges, a Lutyens-like Edwardian house, a Miesian International Style pile of black glass and steel, even a post-modernist porthole or two. They formed overall a pentagonal-shaped circumference, with a vast open amphitheatre in its middle.
Trachtenberg passed round stapled collections of papers. ‘These are précis of the three shortlisted construction bids. I would be grateful if you could each take them away, study them, then communicate your views to me directly, in writing please. We are almost out of time if we are to make our completion date, so please tell me your preferences by the end of the week – my Fax number is on the top sheet. Frankly I think you’ll find there’s really only one realistic contender. Not for minuting,’ he said to the young woman stenographer and watched with satisfaction as she held her pen aloft in the air. ‘You’ll see that the Ovis bid is very expensive, and the Markson proposed schedule would simply take too long. That leaves Farquarson, though I should stress that we must keep our minds open to all three.
‘Now, for the exhibits themselves, I suggest we break into three working groups. They should meet at the same time as this meeting, and I would urge you to meet each week for the time being – there is a lot to do. Every other week we can then meet at noon and report back on the working groups’ progress.’ He passed out a further sheet which listed the working groups and their members. Billings saw that he, Sally Kimmo, and Canon Flowing were to oversee the choices for artistic exhibitions. Oddly, the Arts Minister Eleanor Eeley wasn’t on it. ‘So, as far as our objectives go, they are simple enough: make sure construction starts, and finishes, on given dates, and in time for what we’ve declared the millennium date of London. Make sure the same is true of the exhibits and entertainments we will decide upon for the interiors. But in a larger sense, it will be up to us to maximize the value this project is seen to have to all London’s citizens. Hamish.’
Ferguson took up the lead without pause. ‘Thank you Alan. You’ve rightly pointed out the symbolic importance of this project – it’s the first item of business which you could say the government’s created, rather than reacted to, so it’s all the more important that it be a success.
‘And that means we have to work together – and not work apart. The press will be keen to seize on anything to criticize the government; never mind what they say about a honeymoon. This project is a soft target, as you can well imagine.’ He looked at them as if they were properly seen as soft; there was a corrosive look to his eyes, and his harsh estuary voice was not reassuring. ‘Therefore it’s critical that none of us talks to the press about the project without the express permission of Alan, or me.’ Richard Bruce’s cheeks swelled a little at this point, Billings noticed, but he said nothing. ‘It’s best,’ Ferguson explained with a patronising lilt to his voice, ‘if you don’t talk to the press at all. But if you must, you should clear anything you say with us first. I appreciate some of you may have journalist friends,’ and Billings found both Ferguson and Trachtenberg staring at him, ‘but duty has to come before friendship.’
When he finished they sat in silence like chastened schoolchildren. Finally Bruce spoke up. ‘Excellent, Hamish. I know you have to be off for the eleven o’clock follies,’ he added mysteriously, and Ferguson nodded and left. Bruce looked around, uncertain what to do next. Trachtenberg again came to his rescue, and led them through the rest of the agenda. There was some general conversation at the end, which fizzled out rapidly when the Canon began to contribute and turned out to speak more slowly than Billings would have thought humanly possible. He had the interesting habit of speaking through a mouthful of crumbs, for he was moving through the only plate of biscuits while he talked. In desperation, Trachtenberg finally said ‘Any Other Business,’ Bruce repeated for form’s sake ‘Any Other Business,’ both ignored the Canon’s apparent efforts to ask a question, and the meeting was adjourned. The whole thing had lasted less than half an hour, to Billings’s surprise and relief. As it broke up, he heard Trachtenberg whisper to Bruce, ‘Well chaired, Richard,’ and Bruce beamed.
As Billings began to make his way out of the room, the man in the Marlborough tie came over and asked him to wait behind. Obeying, he soon found himself alone at the table. Out of the window he could just catch a glimpse of the Horse Guards parade ground and he stood up to get a better view, just as the man came back into the room, holding a plastic card in his hand. ‘If you’d just follow me,’ he said, and Billings walked downstairs with him, then along a corridor until they came to a large white door. The Marlborough man inserted the card into a swipe mechanism on the wall, then after an audible click swung open the door. They crossed a large hallway and came to another door. He swiped the card again and led Billings into another hallway. ‘You’re now in Number Ten,’ said the man handing him the card. ‘Keep this for future use; it lets you get in from our meeting room. If you go up these stairs,’ he said, pointing to a main staircase, ‘and keep going, I think you’ll find your next appointment waiting for you.’
Pausing before ascending, Billings suddenly found himself stampeded by a crowd of men emerging from a door
way towards the back of the hall. One of them stopped in front of him. ‘What are you doing here Billings?’
It was Fairweather, last seen on Wigmore Street but not encountered face-to-face since their memorable evening in Costello’s. Billings took his time. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘I could ask the same of you.’
‘Eleven o’clock follies,’ said Fairweather, with a jerk of the head towards the door he had emerged from. When Billings looked mystified he explained. ‘Hamish Ferguson gives his daily briefing downstairs. We call it the eleven o’clock follies – in Vietnam the Saigon briefing from the Americans was called the five o’clock follies. Sometimes this is just as bad. You’d never think he’d been a journalist. But what are you doing here?’
He explained his appointment, but not to Fairweather’s satisfaction. ‘I know all that,’ he said, ‘but surely you don’t meet here.’
Billings shrugged. Never apologize goes without saying, Ratner had been fond of saying, but it’s actually the ‘never explain’ that’s most important. So he merely shrugged and said cryptically, ‘Important government business.’
Fairweather laughed. ‘Find me someone on unimportant government business. Anyhow, got to run. See you again,’ and as Billings’s heart rate regained normality, Fairweather went out of the Number Ten front door, shouting at a colleague to wait for him.
Once, almost a decade before, Billings had visited the White House on business, conscripted by a British friend at the National Gallery in Washington to inspect several early nineteenth-century British paintings of America (painted before his countrymen had burned the White House down in the War of 1812). Billings had gone through such a rigmarole of security that it had taken him several hours to shed the self-consciousness and work normally in a national monument. Now was quite different; the ease with which he had gone through into the Prime Minister’s residence made him feel like someone who, partly through privilege, partly through luck, has slipped off from the official tour, briefly enjoyed the status of a ‘proper’ visitor, yet not had any sense of belonging.
Holly Lester Page 17
