Rankin chewed his cheek. 'Well, Prime Minister, let me start by saying it's not all bad news. The attack was clearly aimed at you personally and it's done wonders for your own ratings. Nothing like it for getting the troops to rally round.'
Bendall raised an eyebrow and a wry smile, the first of the day. 'I shall begin to think you might have organized it yourself.'
'If I'd thought of it, I might have done. But there may be trouble ahead. The lads want to know why it was so easy to mess with the water supply of the most sensitive piece of real estate in the country. There are worries they may be targets, too. They're refusing to water their whisky. There's a danger of our majority getting swept away on a flood of neat alcohol.'
Rankin was an indispensable tool for the Prime Minister. He was calm, cool, with a gentle sense of humour that helped to defuse many difficult situations, but this was a no-win meeting, there were bound to be casualties along the way. Bendall was not to be deterred.
'Before we all find ourselves drinking in the Last Chance Saloon, perhaps we can catch the bastards concerned. What about it, Home Secretary?'
– =OO=OOO=OO-= Noel Hope, the Home Secretary, had carried two great burdens throughout his political life. The first was the middle name bestowed upon him by his dull-witted parents.
His middle name was Osmond.
N.O. Hope.
An unfortunate label to be stuck with. One of God's little gifts to political rivals and graffiti artists. His majority was regularly three thousand less than it ought to be, simply because throughout every campaign the opposition were utterly merciless. They simply took the piss out of him.
Thanks, Dad.
The second burden was less apparent but struck still deeper. At Oxford, he and Jonathan Bendall had been contemporaries. The best and the brightest. And it was Hope who initially had shown the greater intellectual and sporting prowess. It was Hope who would gain both the better degree, and the football blue. But they also vied for something far more intimate, the presidency of the Union, and over the three years of head-to-head encounters in the debating chamber it was Bendall who, through rhetorical flair and a compelling meanness of wit, won every encounter. Every damned one.
Something was missing in Hope, those sinews of steel that drag a man through hardship and out the other side. It left him as Bendall's silent whipping boy, both of them knowing that he hadn't that necessary quality ever to take Bendall's place, other than by the most happy of accidents. So Hope's career in Cabinet had on the one hand been spent in dread of once more being turned on by Bendall, and on the other in silent prayer that the bus with the Prime Minister's name on it might be waiting just around the next corner.
– =OO=OOO=OO-= 'First, Prime Minister, let me start by offering a measure of reassurance,' Hope began, sounding considerably more confident than he felt. His briefing on this was absurdly thin. 'Forensics at Aldermaston have already established that the substance used in the attack was nothing worse than food dye. Not in the least harmful. I'm sure your wife will make a complete and rapid recovery. Prime Minister.'
So much he knew. It wasn't the food dye that had sent her off to hospital under sedation, although the shock had been unpleasant enough. No, what had pushed his wife to the very edge was the fact that, as she stood in the middle of their bedroom, wobbling, screaming and completely vulnerable, the door had burst open and in had charged McGivens, a personal protection officer, brandishing a Glock 9mm and pointing it in her direction. This had sent her into hysterics.
This was to prove unwise, for as her screaming redoubled a second and yet a third protection officer burst upon the scene, at which point Mrs Bendall had taken the only sensible course of action available to her and fainted. It was rumoured that McGivens, too, had required treatment for shock.
'Food dye? That reassures you? Then how easily you are comforted, Home Secretary. They could have put any damned thing into the system. Why, even a truth serum. Think of it. The consequences could have been devastating.'
Bendall smiled, performing, fighting woes with wit, and around the table they all responded dutifully, very British, until he sliced through the humour.
'It could have been anything! The most monstrous substance known to man. Typhus. Anthrax. You talk of reassurance and God knows I've tried, Home Secretary. I've looked at it every way I can, but I'm damned if I can find a single shred of reassurance in any of this. My wife could be dead. I could be dead. The whole of our system of government paralysed.'
Hope now knew he was on trial. 'I believe we are all very conscious of the potential seriousness of what has happened, Prime Minister. I think I speak for all your friends around this table in expressing our relief and joy that it did not turn out to be more serious.'
His friends around this table? Bendall had few true friends, and none in this room. His leadership qualities had been based not on intimacy but in no small part on his campaigning abilities, constructed around a richly decorated voice that expressed things, even nothing, with exceptional eloquence. His phrases were well seasoned, capable of turning the dullest of statements into a worthwhile sound bite. But the words were merely tools, and while they were being employed the eyes remained expressionless. It was said that the closer you got to Bendall, the less you understood him, although, it had to be admitted, such things were never said very loudly, and not while you still had ambition.
Hope cleared his throat. 'Sadly, there is little the food dye can tell us about the perpetrators since it is readily obtainable and won't be easy to trace. What we do know is that the action was carried out in little more than twenty minutes last evening by four men using a stolen water contractor's van. It seems they temporarily interrupted the water supply and introduced the dye into the system.'
'Slowly,' Bendall instructed, holding his hand up like a traffic policeman. 'Pass that by me once more. A van was parked right outside Downing Street? Poisoning the water? And no one checked?'
'Indeed they did, Prime Minister,' Hope responded forcefully, making the best of his meagre defences. 'A vehicle identification check was carried out by a member of the Diplomatic Protection Group.' Then, somewhat less positively: 'However, although the van was stolen, it was apparently using false plates. The computer in Swansea gave it a clean bill of health.'
'Ah, so it was the computer's fault. Now I understand.' His expression was so stiff it might have been chiselled. The eyes were arctic.
Hope retreated to his second line of defence. 'A telephone call was made to the Parks Police to say that there was a pressure problem, the water mains would have to be checked. Confirmation was faxed through. While the work was being undertaken, a Parks Police constable engaged one of the men in conversation
'Conversation, good. Never let it be said that the British bobby lacks courtesy. Didn't anyone think to offer them a cup of tea or a guided tour?'
Hope cleared his throat once more. This was just like Oxford. He could feel the heat rising beneath his collar, his head dropped and his eyes danced around his briefing paper like a condemned man invited to inspect the noose. He needed an escape route. He didn't like what he was going to do next, but the ditches along the road to survival are filled with one's friends.
'Sadly, the Royal Parks Constabulary is not the responsibility of the Home Office.' A brief shuffle of papers. 'It falls under the auspices of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.'
It was as though Hercule Poirot had turned round in the sitting room and pointed an accusing finger at his own maiden aunt. All eyes swivelled upon the hapless Secretary of State for Culture, a sensitive individual whose idea of mayhem amounted to nothing more than raising entrance fees for museums and attending an occasional meeting of the Arts Council. He was way out of his depth, and looked as if he might drown beneath the ripples on the brown baize tablecloth. The Home Secretary sat back in his seat, the mark of Judas on his moist brow.
'Ah, this is a cultural matter. I should have guessed.' Bendall's tone suggested for all the wor
ld that he might be chiding himself for being so pedestrian. 'And what light can you shine upon us?'
'Very little, I'm afraid,' the Culture Secretary stuttered. 'I… I was at the theatre last night.' His office hadn't even realized he was in the frame until two hours ago.
'But your policemen, at least, were on duty. Even chatted to them while they were playing games with my plumbing. So what did they look like?'
'It was dark. They all wore hats,' the Culture Secretary offered, barely above a whisper.
'It was dark. They all – wore hats,' Bendall repeated doggedly, in case the gods had missed this admission while they were drawing up the Bill of Execution, but he didn't bother to pursue either the point or the man. It would be like burning the wings off a beetle, enjoyable only if you were an extreme sadist or exceptionally bored. Instead, he turned once more to Hope. 'Let's try the surveillance cameras. I assume you're willing to take responsibility for those, Home Secretary. Some of them, at least?'
Hope undertook an instant diversionary tactic. 'Colleagues may remember, Prime Minister, that security expenditure has been cut in three successive Budgets. Maintenance and upgrading of these systems are woefully behind what I would have desired and, indeed, recommended in my Budget submissions.' It wasn't a particularly adept attempt to shuffle off the blame elsewhere, but dancing on coals is never elegant. Across the table, the Chancellor bristled in indignation.
'We are having the images computer-enhanced,' Hope continued, 'but…' – he drew himself in – 'as the Culture Secretary said, it was getting dark. The police are not optimistic'
'Somebody – I think it was George Bernard Shaw – once wrote that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world. Yet your security forces appear to have achieved it, Home Secretary. I congratulate you.'
'Actually, it was Oscar Wilde
Silence. The silence that prevails in the moments before the trapdoor falls. Faces turned in sorrow towards Hope, the man who had chosen to contradict Bendall in his present mood. A small slip, perhaps, but when you are standing above a trapdoor… Then suddenly Bendall laughed. 'You're probably right. Bloody Wilde. You're probably right. And I don't mind being told I'm wrong. Why, as Prime Minister I shall fight to your death for your right to say so.'
And everyone around the table joined in the humour, even those more practised observers who had noticed Bendall's deliberate twisting of the aphorism, and with it, Hope's neck.
Hope. His lifelong colleague and rival. A man so desperately removed from reality that he had chosen this of all moments to try and score a debating point. Just like Oxford. Like a dog eating its own vomit. But soon the feast would be over. The time had come to elevate Hope to that great Cabinet table in the sky. Another Banquo. Another eternal enemy. Another risk. Bendall felt the collar of Macbeth weigh heavily on him and getting tighter all the time. There would come a point, there always came a point, where his Administration could no longer be presented as a vine in need of pruning but would be seen as a gangrenous carcass with no prospect of revival. It happened to them all, Thatcher, Major, Blair. In the long run they were all victims, it was only a matter of time. But how much time? Oh, if only he had a little oracle to guide him, yet all he had was focus groups. So he would go on cutting and slashing in order to save himself, because in the end that's what all Prime Ministers did. Sacrifice others in order to save themselves. He had no alternative – and, as he would explain patiently to the political editors, in this case no choice. The public demanded a Home Secretary who was constructed of altogether sterner stuff, one who was more capable of kicking hell out of the European Court, and even a few illegal immigrants, if he could get away with it. Someone skilled in the black arts of propaganda and punishment.
Someone just like young Earwig.
SIX
Goodfellowe is doodling at his desk. He can't concentrate. Every moment of his day, from the time he leaves his front door in the heart of Chinatown until he cycles wearily back, is filled with problems. Other people's problems, which crowd in upon him. There never seems time enough for his own.
Yet at the end of the day, when the door of his tiny apartment thumps shut behind him, his life suddenly seems full of empty spaces. The private loneliness behind the public smile.
It's why the presence of Elizabeth in his life has become so important. She fills so many of those empty spaces within him. She is a class act, it rubs off on him, and gives him the sort of sexual self-esteem that is important in a man approaching fifty and who still has ambition. Sexual self-esteem is vital in the chaotic world of Westminster. The lust that enables a man to seduce and satisfy a woman often walks hand in hand with the desire to seduce an entire nation, and so it is with Goodfellowe. Elizabeth gives him the strength to climb Ministerial mountains, although the daily mountain of constituency correspondence is another matter entirely.
Goodfellowe's heart sinks as an elegantly crafted pair of legs enters his House of Commons office supporting a pile of letters that look as though they could fill a dozen waste bins, and eventually almost certainly will. Somewhere behind it all lurks Mickey Ross, his secretary. It has been said that those elegant legs have got her off more speeding tickets than possession of a Chief Constable's warrant card, although when she wants, which is frequently, they prove even more effective at getting her into a little trouble.
'Morning, bwana.' Her usual tone, as if she doesn't give a stuff about anything. She does, of course, but hates to admit it. Tough East End upbringing. Rules of survival not decreed by the Marquess of Queensberry.
'And what has my favourite native wench brought me today?'
The pile of correspondence wobbles. 'The good news or the bad news?'
'Get on with it.'
'OK, so here's one from the Typing and Terrorism Brigade. Local section.' A letter flutters like a flag of surrender.
'The officer workers' union? What do they want this time?'
'Your undying support in a case of industrial injury. It appears that one of their merry widows yawned so hard at work that she dislocated her jaw. Now they want compensation on the grounds that the job was so jaw-twistingly boring it amounted to a health hazard.'
'You are kidding, of course.'
An ornate eyebrow arches in rebuke. Goodfellowe groans.
'So what's the good news?'
'The really good news – this will really nibble your nuts – is that the employer in this appalling case of industrial abuse is none other than the Marshwood branch of the National Farmers' Union.'
Goodfellowe's groans reach a higher pitch of intensity. His local brotherhoods, Mafia and Masons, knocking six bells out of each other, with him in the middle like a carcass stretched between two stampeding horses.
The mountain of letters approaches. An avalanche is about to bury him.
'Anything else?' It's a plea. Go easy on me. Go away, even. But, as usual, it's Have-A-Go-At-Goodfellowe Day.
'The usual birthday letters to eighteen-year-olds. Declaring your undying interest in their lifestyles and personal futures now they have the vote.' The tone leaves no doubt as to her comprehensive disbelief.
'I was young once,' he protests in his own defence.
'Listening to Barry Manilow does not make you young.'
More correspondence appears.
'Then there are begging letters to be signed to your Patrons Club, a letter to your bank manager inviting him to lunch
'Overdrawn again?' he mumbles.
It has become their habit, at times of more than usual financial embarrassment, to invite the bank manager to lunch in the House where he can be subjected to their combined persuasive abilities. In Goodfellowe's case, this means producing a Minister who will join them for a drink. In Mickey's case, it means wearing a blouse several degrees beyond modesty. However, the bank manager is now used to this treatment, forcing Goodfellowe to employ the firepower of ever more senior statesmen, and Mickey to discover ever more intricate ways of revealing her qualities. Soon o
ne of them is going to run out of cover.
'And Trevor called.' The sigh on her lips implies more than the average weight of problems.
Trevor Fairbanks is the treasurer of Goodfellowe's constituency party. In that position he is the rock on which many of Goodfellowe's political fortunes are built. His is perhaps the least popular job in the executive, without the glamour of the chair or the rhetoric of the political committee, which explains why he has held on to the position for almost a decade. No one else wants it.
Yet it is a position of hidden strength, for whatever goes on within the constituency party, from planning election campaigns to replacing a typewriter ribbon or a jar of coffee, requires money. So Trevor knows everything that's going on. Usually before it happens.
Local politics can be far more predatory and personalized than at Westminster. In the constant game of one-upmanship that infects Marshwood, Trevor Fairbanks is a steadfast friend of Tom Goodfellowe, a one-man watchtower at the heart of the constituency from where he can spot forest fires even as they are lit, while Goodfellowe has his back turned in Parliament. He is Goodfellowe's Praetorian Guard.
He also has a bad heart.
– =OO=OOO=OO-= 'He's been to see the doctor.' At last Mickey places the pile of letters in front of him, where they peer over the edge of his desk, threatening to jump.
'What's he want? Another holiday?' Goodfellowe growls distractedly, scrabbling amidst the paper.
'You're not going to like this, Tom, but his doctor insists. Immediate retirement.'
'What, not even a little gentle politics?'
'Especially no politics.'
He is suddenly alert. He seems to have aged five years in a moment. 'Oh, damn the gods. You know what that means?'
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