Heaven's Light
Authors: Graham Hurley
Heaven’s Light
Graham Hurley
© Graham Hurley 2012
For Dorothy and Reg Rowden
Heavenly Lights
With Love
‘Heaven’s Light Our Guide’
civic motto, City of Portsmouth
‘Those who persistently try and subjugate distant provinces will have to pay for it in the end …’
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Fantasies like this only thrive with the help of fellow conspirators. In this respect, I’m immensely indebted to John Saulet, Howard Barrington-Clark, and Robin Townsend, lawyers all three. Mike Kendall, Paul Spooner, and Roger Ching, of Portsmouth City Council, warned me of the constitutional and economic pitfalls, while Labour councillors Sarah Fry and Alan Burnett shared their hard-won political experience. Pat Forsyth, of the Portsmouth Hospital Trust, opened the doors of the Q. A. Hospital, and Anne Braisher plugged me into the mysteries of cable TV. Peter Milne, hotelier of genius, shaped The Imperial of Raymond Zhu’s dreams, and his wife, Sarah, put her extensive knowledge of epilepsy at my disposal. Michael Dobbs unlocked some of the secrets of Conservative Central Office while my wife, Lin, monitored the phone taps and kept our powder dry. To her, as ever, my love. To everyone else, including a longish list of anonymous contributors, my sincere thanks.
April 1949
Everyone wanted to leave. Across the city, amongst the teeming slums of Yangpu and Jingan, word was spreading. The Communist army was two days’ march away. Out of the mountains, and across the river, they’d settle their debts in blood.
At dusk, he returned to the room where they lived. He picked his way along the alley then through the communal kitchen they shared with all the other families. The staircase wound upwards, into the darkness, and he counted the greasy treads from the bottom. Number ten was missing. Still small for his age he paused, his left foot reaching for the step beyond. His brother was waiting for him upstairs. He was still crouched on the bed, still guarding his father’s body. The old man was beginning to stiffen now, his flesh cold to the touch, his slashed throat gaping blackly.
Next morning, at first light, they made their way down to the Yangtse, running through the warren of tiny streets, past the smelly bars and shuttered brothels, past the shops still bursting with silks, jades and embroideries, past the bent old men hauling carts piled high with a lifetime’s possessions.
On the waterfront, under the looming granite fronts of the buildings along the Bund, they darted through the
crowds pushing urgently towards the docks. Their father had talked of a fishing boat with a green funnel. The man was called Yao. They were to give him the gold bracelet. They were to tell him their names. He’d take care of them. He’d make sure they got away.
The crowd closed around them, a living thing, the people pressed tightly together, surging towards the stretch of slimy cobblestones where the tramlines ended and the fishermen laid out their daily catch. Ahead, an old woman was bent double under a bamboo yoke strung with headless chickens. The smell of the dead birds came and went, adding to the stale breath of the river. He frowned, eyeing the chickens. Every day he felt hungrier. Every day there was less and less to eat.
The crowd was at a standstill, desperate to get away. Of Mr Yao’s fishing boat there was no sign but he could see tugs out in the river. They lay beyond a line of barges secured to bollards on the quayside. Tarpaulins on board had been rolled back and the holds gaped open, long black oblongs, big as a house. Getting onto the barges meant jumping off the quayside. On the falling tide the drop was ten feet at least, but there was no other way.
Beside them, a man began to shout, louder than the rest. By the look of his uniform, he came from one of the big waterfront hotels. He carried his possessions in a knotted pillowcase and the sleeve of his waiter’s jacket was ripped. Somewhere he’d laid hands on a leather riding crop and in his impatience he began to use it, lashing out wildly, left and right. The old woman with the chickens, trapped by the bamboo yoke, shivered under the blows. She began to howl, and the crowd stirred, pressing forward again, responding like some clumsy animal. At the front of the crowd, men and women began to jump down to the barges,
and he heard the hollow thump as their bodies disappeared into the holds. He squeezed his brother’s hand, telling him not to be frightened, trying to mask his own fear. We’re helpless, he thought. There are too many people. The crowd is too big, too strong.
Instinctively, carried forward by the surge of bodies, he fought for balance but he was too small and too frail to resist the pressure. His feet were off the ground now, his brother’s tiny hand torn away, and he hung suspended for a moment as wave after wave of bodies toppled off the quayside. The waiter had given up with the riding crop, and he was looking down, his head bent, his face contorted, his fingers knotted tightly round the pillowcase. He reached up for the waiter, pleading for help, but the man seemed not to see him.
Then, suddenly, they found themselves on the big worn stones at the very edge of the quayside. Below, between the pilings and the barges, was a foot or two of glistening black mud. The crowd seemed to hesitate long enough for him to make out the body of a dog sprawled in the ooze. Then came the shuffle of feet again, and a push in the back. He looked round for his brother, glimpsing his tiny, frightened face, shiny with tears, and then he felt himself falling, head first, his hands reaching out, trying to shield his eyes from the onrushing darkness.
‘A town like Portsmouth should look after its own affairs, free from the toll of shires.’
Book of Fees,
1195
The little executive Learjet danced down the last hundred feet of the glidepath into London’s Heathrow airport, a tiny black silhouette against the fierce blaze of the rising sun. It slipped over the perimeter fence, settling gently on the tarmac as the pilot throttled back the engines. Watching the aircraft flash past the queue of waiting jumbos, Ellis glanced at his watch. Last night’s DTI brief had estimated touchdown at five minutes past six. Departmental timekeeping was notoriously optimistic, especially at Trade and Industry, but on this occasion someone had excelled themselves. As the Learjet slowed to turn off the runway, it was precisely 06.07.
Ellis stooped for his briefcase. He’d already talked to the overnight security supervisor at the General Aviation Terminal, and he was cleared to meet the new arrival at the aircraft steps. In the case of VCIPs, virtually any rule could be bent. Commercially Important People of this stature deserved a decent welcome.
Outside, on the tarmac, the dawn air was heavy with the bitter-sweet tang of aviation fuel. The aircraft was fifty metres away, nosing alongside the neat line of charter jets parked on the apron. The pilot shut down the engines and Ellis watched the aircraft’s door hinge upwards and the
folding steps descend. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, inside the aircraft, he saw movement. A face ducked to a window. A hand fluttered briefly in salute. Quite suddenly he was standing in the open doorway, a thin, upright figure, taller than the rare press photos had suggested. His shoulders were narrow, magnifying the size of his head, and the high, receding forehead was topped with a shock of iron-grey hair. He was wearing creased tan slacks, his feet were bare in open sandals, and the sleeveless cotton shirt looked at least one size too big.
He manoeuvred sideways down the steps, the way an old man might, pausing at the bottom to watch a big Swissair 747 thunder past. Then he turned to greet Ellis. His handshake was light, the merest touch of flesh on flesh, and a smile ghosted across his face at the sound of his name.
‘Zhu,’ he repeated, offering the correct pronunciation, his lips budding in a perfect ‘O’, ‘Raymond Zhu.’
Ellis was already peering over his shoulder, up into the plane. He didn’t know how much luggage to expect, but Mr Zhu was scheduled for an early breakfast meeting at the Savoy and time was already tight.
‘You have some bags, Mr Zhu? It’s just a formality, of course, but Customs are ready for you now.’
He gestured over his shoulder. An official in a white shirt was standing inside the terminal building, watching.
Zhu called in Chinese to someone inside the aircraft. A younger man appeared and handed him a passport. Ellis recognized the lion and tiger of the Republic of Singapore on the cover.
They set off for the terminal building, Ellis beside his guest. Zhu walked quickly, taking tiny steps, gliding across the tarmac. When they got inside, Zhu’s sandals went slap-slap
on the newly polished floor. Millions of dollars in the bank, thought Ellis, and the man still wears sandals.
The Customs supervisor had disappeared. While Ellis went to find him, Zhu stood motionless by the window, watching a porter offload his bags from the aircraft and disappear round the side of the building.
At length, Ellis returned. The bags had been cleared. He extended a hand for Zhu’s passport, shepherding him towards the immigration checkpoint. The woman behind the desk flipped open the passport and stamped it without a second glance. Her smile was warm. She hoped Zhu would have a lovely stay.
Outside the terminal, the DTI Rover was waiting at the kerb. The ministry driver swallowed the remains of his coffee and got out, opening the back door for Zhu. Zhu didn’t move. He was watching a sleek black Daimler emerge from a nearby parking lot. At his side, Ellis was already running through a checklist of the rest of the day’s appointments. After breakfast at the Savoy, Zhu was to meet a small delegation of CBI people. Sunday lunch, at the invitation of the Institute of Directors, would be in Pall Mall. A private cruise downriver was fixed for mid-afternoon, then Zhu would be flown by helicopter to cocktails with a discreet gathering of merchant bankers in a Buckinghamshire country house. With luck, the Singaporean should be back in his room at the Savoy by ten.
Ellis looked up. Zhu was standing beside the Daimler. A small squat Chinese was loading his bags into the car’s boot.
‘Mr Zhu?’ Ellis still had the schedule in his hand. ‘Is there a problem?’
Zhu was climbing into the back of the Daimler. The
window purred down. He beamed up at Ellis, then gestured at the Chinese behind the wheel.
‘This is Mr Hua,’ he said gravely. ‘He drives me everywhere.’
Sixty miles south of Heathrow, Hayden Barnaby was waist-deep in tepid water, adjusting the straps on his goggles. Comfortable at last, he submerged, his long body following the gentle slope as the pool deepened beneath him. He counted the tiles on the bottom, watching them slow then quicken as he pulled hard for the deep end. Compared to his regular morning work-outs at the municipal baths, this place was a joke, fifteen metres end to end, but the doctor had dismissed his protests and his impatience, explaining just how serious the injury to his Achilles tendon had been. Go back to serious exercise too soon and you risk permanent damage. Take things a little easier, be sensible for once, and the tear would heal completely. Your leg. Your choice. Your funeral.
Barnaby saw the wall at the deep end looming closer and he jackknifed into a perfect racing turn before surfacing again, rolling onto his back and kicking lazily at the start of another length. The little pool was part of a health club attached to the Venture Hotel. He’d known the manager for years, and he’d managed to negotiate a generous temporary membership deal for the three months he’d need to repair the tendon. At fifteen quid a quarter, the discount was nearly 100 per cent and on top of that there’d come the promise of a little business from a couple of members of the hotel staff. A young lad in the kitchen wanting a conveyance on his first flat. The bar manageress needing advice before she took divorce proceedings. It was nothing
sensational but welcome nonetheless. Acquiring new clients, even for a practice as successful as his own, had never been more difficult. For a country on the edge of an economic miracle, times were still bloody hard.
Barnaby reached backwards for the bar at the shallow end, letting himself float in the warm water. This was his first visit to the health club and, to his surprise, it had been as empty as the rest of the hotel. Next door, through the tall plate-glass windows, there was a small gymnasium. Before stripping to his swimming trunks, he’d done a brief circuit on the machines, a couple of repetitions on each, but for once he’d heeded the doctor’s advice, resisting the temptation to test himself against the weights. Getting back to the squash court was his real priority. His iron-pumping days were well and truly over.
He closed his eyes a moment, willing himself to relax, trying hard not to brood about the empty hotel foyer, and the abandoned bars, and the crowds outside in the blustery sunshine, streaming towards the seafront. Today, fifty years ago, the Allied invasion fleet had been poised to set sail for Normandy. As Britain’s premier naval port, the city had been in the front line. Now, exactly half a century later, Portsmouth was hosting the official celebrations. The event had attracted enormous publicity. The US President was in town, and the Queen, and the Prime Minister, and more or less everyone else in the world who seemed to matter.
Only last night, in the city’s Guildhall, fourteen heads of state had sat down to a commemorative banquet, and this morning, barely half a mile away, they were convening again to attend the memorial service, taking place on Southsea Common. The service was to be transmitted live to countless nations across the globe. There were dozens of cameras, hundreds of technicians, miles of cable. There’d
be marching bands, fly-pasts, a naval review. For a couple of hours, maybe longer, the eyes of the world would be on Portsmouth.
So where, in all this, was Hayden Barnaby?
He rolled over and began to swim again, a purposeful breast-stroke, the water sluicing past his body. For months he’d tried to fix himself and his wife an invitation to last night’s banquet, pulling in old favours, working every connection he knew. But the more calls he made, and the more hints he dropped, the clearer the real situation became. The D-Day weekend had ballooned out of all proportion. It had acquired the status of a national event, the property of quietly spoken men in London who got together behind closed doors and determined exactly the way it would be. In theory, of course, the city was in charge of the celebrations but the real decisions, as ever, had been taken elsewhere. That, at least, was the way Barnaby saw it, and the TV pictures he’d watched had amply confirmed the real pecking order. Guests for the banquet had arrived by limousine. At the foot of the Guildhall steps, the county’s Lord Lieutenant had been waiting to greet them. At the top of the steps, ideally positioned for the cameras, the Prime Minister extended another formal welcome. Whilst tucked away inside, wholly invisible, lurked Portsmouth’s own Lord Mayor.
Barnaby kicked hard for the deep end, ignoring the pain in his tendon. Bill Clinton had reportedly arrived with an entourage of seven hundred. In the north of the city, White House staff had taken over virtually an entire hotel, installing their own communication links, blanketing the presidential visit with layer after layer of security. You could see the hotel from the motorway. Barnaby had driven past only the previous evening, at once excited and depressed
by the forest of radio aerials sprouting from the roof. Here was his city, his birthplace, the Pompey where he’d nurtured his own dreams of power and influence suddenly awash with the real thing. The entire Royal Family. Fourteen heads of state. Including the man himself. Bill Clinton.
Barnaby slowed, brooding again. Clinton was forty-five, exactly his own age. Like Barnaby, he’d been at Oxford and, like Barnaby, he’d returned to his roots in the Deep South, a career move that Barnaby had always admired. The man had shunned the lure of the metropolis, choosing instead to build a local power-base. By banking favours, amassing a war chest and courting the media, he’d finally put together a raft of support to float him where he really wanted to go. As a result, by the time he finally made it to Washington, it had been on his own terms. Now, as President of the USA, he was the most powerful man on earth.
Barnaby stood in the shallow end, massaging his injured calf. Yesterday, the city’s daily newspaper had carried a photo of Clinton on an early-morning run, jogging cheerfully through the naval dockyard, and Barnaby remembered the image now, wondering whether the man had ever had problems with his Achilles tendon and regretting again that he’d never had the opportunity to ask.
Next door, in the gymnasium, a woman had appeared. She was working on one of the machines, and Barnaby watched her, letting his leg hang in the water, pointing his foot then rotating the ankle the way the physio at the hospital had shown him. The woman had her back to the pool. She was lying full length on a padded bench, her hands behind her head. Her feet were hooked beneath a bar and she was doing a series of stomach curls, sets of ten. She had a long, supple body, and nicely shaped legs, and the
way she performed the exercises – easy, fluent – suggested someone in their physical prime.
Barnaby watched her a little longer, wanting her to turn round. She was wearing a pair of headphones and the little Sony Walkman was clipped to a heavy leather belt around her black leotard. Now and again her hand would drop to adjust the volume, and the way she did it – deft, positive, self-confident – aroused Barnaby’s curiosity. Who was she? Where did she come from? What kind of life did she lead?
He lay back in the water, kicking for the deep end, feeling the muscle tighten in his bad leg. Inventing answers to questions like these was the best relaxation after a hectic week in the law courts, and he closed his eyes, letting his fantasies off the leash. She’d be a stranger in the city, someone down for the weekend, staying in the hotel. She’d be in her late twenties, maybe younger. She’d have a career, something glamorous. She’d be in fashion, or the media, or high finance. She’d have a regular boyfriend, she might even be married, but just now she was down on some kind of liaison.
Barnaby warmed to the story. She’d have a room upstairs, somewhere discreet with a huge bed and a view of the Isle of Wight, and just now she’d be killing time, waiting for her man. This guy might be part of the D-Day jamboree. He might be one of the media people, a cameraman, say, or a producer. God knows, he might even be one of Clinton’s boys, a White House insider, a political heavyweight with a direct line to the President. Barnaby nodded in approval, trying to imagine the man, then – abruptly – his body came to rest in the water, his head cushioned from the tiled wall by something soft. His feet found the bottom and he stood up, pushing back the goggles. A woman was sitting on the edge of the pool. She was wearing a black
Speedo one-piece, modestly cut. She had a strong, open face and her hair, drawn back, was beginning to grey at the temples. Barnaby blinked. Beyond the tall plate-glass windows, the gym was empty. The woman slipped into the pool. Her face and shoulders were pinked with recent exercise.
‘Funny,’ she said, ‘I knew it was you.’
The smaller of the two bars was at the front of the hotel, overlooking the street. They sat at a table beside the window, Barnaby nursing a long glass of orange juice and soda. The last time he’d seen Kate Frankham in the flesh had been the winter of ’92. The photos in the local paper since had done her less than justice.
‘So how does it feel? Being famous?’
‘Famous?’ She laughed. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘Not at all. I’m impressed.’
‘By what?’
‘By what you’ve done. Heritage Chair in less than a year? That’s some going.’
Kate ducked her head, trying to hide the grin, but when she looked at him again it was still there, as irrepressible as ever. She’d never been less than candid with him, an honesty he’d occasionally found difficult to handle.