A Very British Coup

by Chris Mullin

  “One final question,” Sir Peregrine was saying. “Have you told anyone about this apart from Sir Peter Kennedy?”

  “No sir.”

  “No one at all? Not even at the time.”

  “No.”

  “Good.” Sir Peregrine smiled benignly. “Then I’d be obliged if you would continue to keep the whole thing under your hat.”

  The DI5 chief rose and Booth rose with him. They walked towards the door. “I am sure you appreciate,” said Sir Peregrine confidentially, “that if any of this got out, there would be the most awful stink.”

  *

  Inspector Page nearly fell over backwards when he received the summons to Curzon Street. Of course in his job he often dealt with DI5, but only with the liaison man in Downing Street or other government departments. Usually these dealings only involved routine checks on people scheduled to meet the Prime Minister. Occasionally he drew the odd threatening letter to DI5’s attention. But a meeting with the chief himself, that was another matter.

  Page arrived at Curzon Street House in the early evening. Fiennes had stressed that he was not to tell anyone and so he waited until he went off duty before setting out. Fiennes met him in the lobby and took him by lift to the second floor. He offered no clue as to what it was all about. The truth was that Fiennes did not know. When he had handed over the list of names and addresses of the British Insulated Industries people that had arrived that afternoon, Sir Peregrine had received it without comment.

  When Fiennes entered with Inspector Page he noticed that the list was lying on Sir Peregrine’s desk and that one of the names had been circled in red. He was not close enough to see which one.

  Sir Peregrine waited until Fiennes had left the room before he spoke. “Inspector,” he said, “does the name Molly Spence mean anything to you?”

  The inspector’s forehead creased to a frown. After a moment’s thought he said, “No, sir.”

  “Mrs Jarvis, perhaps?”

  “No sir.”

  Sir Peregrine was sitting sideways on to the window, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair and his fingers joined at the tips. To look at the inspector he had to turn his head sharply to the right. “Am I correct in thinking that you have been looking after the Prime Minister since the day he took office?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And as far as you know, no one of that name has visited him during that time.”

  “That’s right sir.”

  Sir Peregrine stared straight ahead, his chin touching the tip of his joined fingers. “Is it conceivable that a lady of that name could visit him without your knowing?”

  The inspector smiled. The idea of Harry Perkins receiving secret visits from a young lady was one that appealed to his sense of humour. “Possible, but not likely, sir.”

  “When he visits his constituency in Sheffield perhaps?”

  “If he goes to Sheffield either I or the sergeant go with him. Normally he returns to London the same night.”

  “Or to his flat in Kennington.”

  “Nowadays he only stays at Kennington one or two nights a week,” said the inspector. “In which case there would be a uniformed man on duty in the lobby downstairs, day and night. I would expect to be told of any visitors.”

  Sir Peregrine turned back towards the inspector. Reaching his arm forward, he pressed the switch on a desk lamp. It illuminated the space between them, giving the inspector his first clear view of the DI5 chief’s face.

  “Do you have access to the Prime Minister’s flat, Inspector?”

  “Yes sir, I have a key.”

  “Good.” Sir Peregrine smiled. “I want you to do something for me.”

  The inspector stiffened a little. “Sir, I normally get my instructions from the Branch.”

  “I’ll clear this with your superiors,” said Sir Peregrine brusquely. He went on to explain that he wanted the inspector to search the Prime Minister’s flat for any trace of the woman called either Molly Spence or Mrs Jarvis. He was to look for photographs, letters, dedications on the inside of books and to search desks, cupboards, drawers and filing cabinets. He was to leave everything exactly as he found it. He was to take no one with him and, above all, to breathe not a word to anyone.

  Sir Peregrine scribbled a number on a scrap of paper which he passed to the inspector. “This is my direct line. You are to report to me personally and to bring with you whatever you find.”

  *

  Inspector Page waited until Friday when the Prime Minister left for his weekly visit to Sheffield under the watchful eye of Sergeant Block. Then he drove to Kennington. He felt distinctly uneasy. It was not every day he was ordered to commit burglary, let alone in the home of the Prime Minister. He might have felt happier had he been told the reason for the interest in this woman Spence or Jarvis or whatever her name was. In any case, why couldn’t DI5 do its own dirty work? And so what if Perkins was having it off on the quiet? Good luck to him.

  Page had been looking after Perkins for over a year now. Politically they were miles apart. Page was a bit of a law and order man himself, but he did not mind admitting that Perkins was a decent enough bloke. Over the last few months Page had often found himself alone with the Prime Minister. Sharing compartments on trains, sitting together in the back of an official car on the way to a speaking engagement, even sharing a seat on the top deck of those damn buses that Perkins still insisted on riding now and again. Perkins had listened patiently to Inspector Page’s views on what should be done with strikers, rioters and Northern Ireland and sometimes they had engaged in good-natured argument. Perkins was forever asking about the inspector’s family. On one occasion he had even invited Page to bring his wife and two small sons to Downing Street and had shown them round in person. The inspector would not exactly have described himself as a close friend, but he was as close as a bodyguard is ever likely to get to a Prime Minister.

  And now he was being asked to sneak into Perkins’ flat and sift through his personal effects. Page would do it because he was under orders, but he did not like doing it. Not one little bit.

  To avoid prying neighbours he parked his car in the Clapham Road and walked back round the corner about fifty yards to Perkins’ flat. He glanced quickly up at the window of neighbouring flats and, when he was sure no one was looking, let himself into the front entrance hall with a Yale key. He glided up the three flights of stairs, taking the steps two at a time, turned the two Chubb locks on Perkins’ front door and let himself in, closing the door quietly behind him.

  It was, thought Page, a very modest home for a Prime Minister, being rather smaller than the inspector’s own semi in Willesden. There were two bedrooms and a medium-sized living room. The smaller of the two bedrooms was a storeroom. There were boxes of papers and magazines, piles of bound volumes of Hansard, and two metal filing cabinets. This is going to take all bloody night, thought Page, as he surveyed the flat.

  He started by looking at the photographs. The one on the desk in the living room of an elderly lady with grey hair was, he guessed, Perkins’ mother. On the mantelpiece there was a picture of Perkins with some orientals. On the wall in the bedroom a large photograph, taken in the bar of a Sheffield Labour club, showed Perkins surrounded by party members. In the wardrobe Page found an old shoebox full of black and white prints, some of them dating back to Perkins’ childhood. There was one girl in her early twenties, but it seemed to have been taken years ago and the name Anne was scribbled on the back.

  Next he went through the letters on the desk. They were in wire baskets labelled ‘Constituency’, ‘Personal’ and ‘Party’. Page flipped through the basket marked ‘Personal’. It consisted mainly of unpaid bills, some bank statements and two or three letters from people who appeared to be relatives. There were drawers in the desk and he went through them one by one. Postage stamps, typewriter ribbons, paper clips, a pile of old election addresses and several books of old Co-Op coupons. Jesus, thought Page, it must be ten years since the Co-Op stopp
ed giving stamps.

  He had been there about an hour when he started on the small bedroom. He tugged at the top drawer of one of the filing cabinets. It was open. Inside it was crammed with green folders, all neatly labelled. He ran his eye quickly along the labels which were in little plastic mounts clipped on to the metal ridge of the files. Every so often he came to a folder that was not labelled and drew it out for inspection. They mostly contained newspaper cuttings, many of them about Perkins, some dated years back. There were copies of letters sent on behalf of constituents to various government departments and to the housing department of Sheffield City Council.

  Page did not strike lucky until he reached the third drawer. The folders now seemed to consist of old newspaper cuttings arranged under subject headings … CIA … Indian Ocean … Income Tax … they did not seem to bear much relation to each other … Microchips … Molly … Multinationals … Molly, Molly. That was it. The name of the girl he was looking for. He whisked the folder out and walked with it into the living room. Opening it, he laid the contents out on the desk. There was very little: a postcard from Austria dated March 1977 and half a dozen notes on scraps of blank paper. These were variously signed Molly, Moll and M, but bore no address. Some were dated, some were not. They mainly concerned shopping arrangements. Surely the head of DI5 had more important matters with which to concern himself? Page shrugged. His was not to reason why.

  He scooped the notes and the postcard back into the green folder, closed the filing cabinet and glanced around the flat to make sure everything was as he had found it. Then, with the folder under his arm, he let himself out of the front door.

  At the end of the street he found a phone box and rang the number Sir Peregrine had given him. It was after seven o’clock on a Friday evening, but the DI5 chief was at his desk. Page drove directly to Curzon Street.

  If Sir Peregrine was disappointed at the meagre contents of the Molly folder, he did not show it. Using the photocopier in the outer office he made two copies of each item and then returned the folder to Page. “Put this back where you found it,” he ordered. “And remember, not a word to anyone.”

  Molly Jarvis had just finished loading the dishwasher when she noticed a tall man striding down the gravel drive towards the house. He would have stood out anywhere in Derbyshire, indeed anywhere north of Mayfair. He was dressed in a perfectly cut navy blue suit with a waistcoat. On his lapel she caught the glint of a watch chain. On his head he wore a hat, a homburg she thought it was called. An umbrella was hooked over his left arm and in his right hand he carried a black leather briefcase of the sort that is standard Civil Service issue.

  Drying her hands on a teacloth she went to the front door. She had opened it even before the man reached the house. The man doffed his hat. “Mrs Jarvis?” he said from a distance of about five yards.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Craddock.” He had reached the doorstep now and was standing, hat in hand. Molly guessed he was aged about sixty. A handsome man by any standards. His greying hair still covered the top of his head. His square chin and straight back suggested he might once have been an officer in the Guards. “I’m with the security people in London,” he added in a voice which reflected generations of refined breeding.

  “Oh,” said Molly.

  “One or two questions to ask. Hope I’m not disturbing you.” He took another step forward.

  “Not at all,” said Molly standing aside to let him enter. If the man had said he was the Prince of Wales, she would not have argued.

  They passed into the living room. The man had to stoop slightly to avoid hitting his head on the oak beams in the ceiling. There was a Handel organ concerto playing softly on the stereo.

  “Like Handel, do you?” asked the man.

  “Yes,” said Molly.

  He arranged himself on the sofa and laid down the hat and the briefcase at his side. The umbrella he propped against the arm of the sofa. Molly went to make a cup of tea and while she was out of the room the man got up and inspected the bookshelf. When she returned he was standing by the window leafing through a biography of Harry Perkins. It was not a very good book. Molly had bought it on the spur of the moment at a shop in Sheffield two years ago.

  “You once knew Harry Perkins, I believe.” Molly nearly dropped the teatray.

  “Yes,” she said, “in my old job at British Insulated we had to go and negotiate with him once or twice. About reactors.”

  “No,” said the man turning to face her, “that wasn’t what I meant.”

  Molly was seated by now. The tray was on the floor at her feet. The Handel concerto was still playing softly. “How did you know?” she whispered.

  “Never mind about that.” His voice seemed harder now. He walked to the bookshelf, replaced the volume and returned to the sofa. Molly poured the tea. “Mrs Jarvis,” he said eventually, “I want you to tell me everything you know about Harry Perkins, starting from the day you first met him.”

  She told him of the meetings at the Public Sector Department. About the note Perkins had slipped to her. About that first lunch at his flat in Kennington. About all the other Sundays. About how she used to ring first from the Oval tube station so that he would leave the door open for her.

  The man had taken a notepad from his briefcase and a felt-tipped pen from an inside pocket. Occasionally he scribbled on the pad. Sometimes he asked a question.

  “And all this time you were living with Michael Jarvis?”

  “Yes,” said Molly quietly, her eyes downcast.

  “And all this time Mr Jarvis was negotiating the sale of his company’s reactors with Perkins.”

  Molly’s eyes widened. Suddenly it dawned on her where all this was leading. No, she protested, her affair with Perkins had nothing to do with the reactors. Michael knew nothing about it. Even to this day she had not told him. She had never discussed the reactors with Perkins. No, never. Not once, not ever. It was a love affair, nothing more.

  The more she protested, the more the man probed. Had she ever given Perkins a present? A watch, a pair of cufflinks perhaps? Not even at Christmas?

  No, she said, it wasn’t like that. She was crying now and the man’s voice became more gentle. The chimes of the grandfather clock in the hall reminded her that it was almost time to collect the children from school. The man said he would soon be finished.

  “Mrs Jarvis,” he said, “did Perkins ever give you a present?”

  “No,” she said quickly. And then she remembered The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. He asked if he could see the book and she led him up the wrought iron spiral staircase to the attic room where she kept her souvenirs of Perkins in the blue vanity case.

  She blew the dust from the case. It had been at least two years since she last opened it. The key was in a jamjar on the window sill. She unlocked the case and took out the book. Its paperback cover had faded. The man opened the book and read the dedication on the inside of the cover: To a slightly Tory lady in the hope that she will see the light. Love, Harry, and then the date. Molly looked embarrassed.

  “And these letters,” said the man indicating the half dozen or so envelopes bound together with an elastic band. “From Perkins, were they?”

  Molly nodded.

  The first was the note Perkins had passed her that day in the Public Sector Department: Lunch Sunday? Ring me at midnight. It was undated, but the notepaper was inscribed at the top: ‘From the Secretary of State.’ The man shook his head in amazement. How indiscreet politicians could be.

  Taking each of the other notes from the envelopes, he inspected them and put them back. Molly stood in silence, watching.

  Then he came to the cheque for £5.20 drawn on Perkins’ personal account. “For shopping,” said Molly quickly.

  The man raised an eyebrow.

  “What the hell do you think it was for?” said Molly sharply.

  The man said nothing. He collected the envelopes and the cheque together and bound them again with the elast
ic band. They went downstairs in silence. The man was carrying the letters and the book.

  “Mrs Jarvis,” he said when they were back in the living room, “I am afraid I must borrow these.”

  What was he going to do with them, she demanded? Michael would be furious if he found out about her affair with Perkins. And as for Perkins … Her voice trailed off as the awful panorama of possibilities opened up before her eyes.

  The man’s voice was reassuring again. “My dear, you have nothing to worry about. All this will remain a secret between you and me.” He was putting the book and the letters in his briefcase. “In due course they will be returned to you.” He paused and glanced around the room. “It’s just that, if any of this got into the wrong hands, the Prime Minister would be gravely embarrassed.” He spoke as though embarrassing the Prime Minister was the last thing he wanted to do. “Particularly,” he added, “in the light of the accident at Windermere.”

  The man then collected his hat, umbrella and briefcase and walked to the front door. Molly offered him a lift to the station. He thanked her, but said he would rather walk since he did not get to the country very much these days.

  With that he strode away up the gravel drive. Molly stood on the doorstep and watched him go.

  Sir Peregrine was back at his home in Queen Anne’s Gate by about eight that evening. His maid had prepared a light meal which he ate alone in his study overlooking the park. Before settling down for the evening with a glass of port and a book of John Donne’s poems, he made just one telephone call on the scrambled line. It was to Sir George Fison at his home in Cheyne Walk.

  “George, dear boy.” He toyed with the port glass. “The PM’s been looking a bit off colour this evening, don’t you think?”

  Fison said he thought so too.

  “Strain’s beginning to tell at last,” said Sir Peregrine.

  Fison gave a little snort of laughter and said he would not be in the least surprised.

  “I was wondering,” said Sir Peregrine, “if you could get your chaps to run a little speculation on the PM’s health.”