Heaven's Light (43 page)

The mobile was still in the kitchen. Barnaby picked it up. There was something familiar about the voice at the other end. Seconds later, he placed it. The young reporter from
Newsnight.
Barnaby glanced at his watch. The programme started in ten minutes. What had gone wrong?

The reporter was apologetic. He’d been meaning to phone earlier but he’d been tied up in post-production. They’d commissioned a poll in Portsmouth, asking people
about their voting intentions. He’d meant to mention it this morning but it had slipped his mind.

Barnaby bent to the phone. He’d resigned himself to bad news. Maybe he’d been premature. ‘Well?’ he said.

The reporter chuckled. There were two figures, he said. One was a big surprise. The other was truly amazing. So amazing, that the programme editor had ordered a recut on the programme’s opening titles sequence.

‘Well?’ Barnaby said again.

‘Sixty-eight per cent.’

‘Sixty-eight per cent what?’

‘Sixty-eight per cent turnout. That’s sixty-eight per cent intending to vote.’

Barnaby felt the warmth flooding through him: 68 per cent was unheard-of, more than double the usual vote.

‘And?’ he said.

There was a pause. Barnaby could hear a second conversation in the background. Then the reporter returned to the phone.

‘Seventy-three per cent committed to Pompey First,’ he said. ‘Just thought I’d pass it on. ’Bye now. And well done.’

The phone went dead. Barnaby gazed through the open door that led to the living room. Beyond the big picture window, and the blackness of the Common, was the frieze of coloured lights along the seafront. During the evening the wind had got up and the bulbs were swaying on the cables strung between the lamp-posts. Barnaby looked at them for a long time then he yelled and punched the air, returning to the kitchen for the mobile, wondering who to phone.

To his surprise, Kate was still at home. He could hear the noise of a bath being filled. He told her the news. At
first she didn’t believe it, then he heard her telling someone else. ‘Seventy-three per cent,’ she whispered, ‘down to us.’

There was a cackle of laughter in the background, abruptly muffled by a hand on the receiver.

Charlie Epple, Barnaby thought uneasily, glancing at his watch.

Jessie took a taxi out to the Glory Hole. She’d spent the entire evening quarrelling with Lolly. A tiny spat about a TV programme had flared into a major row, and Lolly had capped it all by calling her a slag. She knew about Haagen. She knew what Jessie was getting up to. She knew she came back with big eyes and wet knickers. She was a whore, a shag-bag. She’d fuck anyone. Even a dosser like Haagen.

Jessie sat in the back of the taxi, surprised by the coldness inside her. She felt nothing for Lolly, absolutely nothing. She’d tried to please her, tried to look after her, tried to meet her every need, and all the thanks she’d ever got was major hassle and major grief. Lolly’s life revolved around Lolly. Nothing she could say or do would ever alter that fact.

She asked the cabbie to drop her at the end of the road that skirted the Glory Hole. Haagen, she knew, would be tucked up with his music and a big fat doobie. The last thing he’d appreciate would be a taxi at his door. She began to walk, letting her eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. Gradually, she made out the shapes of houseboats to her left. Most, she knew, were unoccupied, rotting hulks that Haagen occasionally raided for wood for his stove. She thought of him today, how well he’d taken the news about Oz. She’d been expecting something awful, one of his tantrums, but the news seemed to have come as no surprise.
Oz, he’d said, always pushed life to the limits. She smiled, remembering her own relief. Maybe he had been less fond of the dog than he’d always pretended. Maybe that was why he’d agreed so readily that Jess should carry on looking after him.

She was close to the houseboat now. She could see the distinctive hump of the extension at the front where Haagen had built his bunk. She stepped off the road, feeling the wet grass through her plimsolls. Walking the plank in the dark was tricky. She took it slowly, inching sideways. The deck felt slippery underfoot. To her surprise, the door to the cabin hung open. She hesitated, then peered in. Had something happened? Had Lolly finally flipped? Called the police? Grassed Haagen up?

‘Haagen?’ she whispered.

Nothing happened. She looked round. The tide was low. She could hear ducks chattering softly in the darkness.

‘Haagen,’ louder this time, ‘Haagen.’

Still nothing. She ventured into the cabin. The light switch was taped to the bulkhead. She closed the door and found the switch. The cabin was empty. Haagen’s sleeping bag lay unzipped on the bunk. Beside the pillow, turned inside out, was a black balaclava helmet she’d never seen before. She picked it up, curious. It smelled sour, a smell she couldn’t place. She stepped outside onto the deck again, her body throwing a long shadow on the glistening mud. She stood perfectly still, listening to the sigh of the wind. Then, for the first time, she heard a moaning noise. It sounded sub-human. It signalled pain or exhaustion. It came from nearby.

Frightened now, Jessie returned to the cabin. Haagen normally kept his torch beside the little transistor radio she’d given him. She found it, switched it on and retraced
her steps along the gangplank. The grassy bank fell away to the mud-flats below. She walked slowly along the top of the bank, the beam of the torch pooling below. The moaning was louder. She swung the torch to the right, up onto the neighbouring houseboat. At first she could make no sense of what she saw. Two arms outstretched. A body stripped to the waist, the narrow back crisscrossed with scarlet weals. The head moved in the torchlight, then flopped forward again, and she heard the dull thud of bone against the houseboat’s wooden hull. Her hand began to shake. Then she was plunging down the bank, her feet sinking ankle deep in the mud at the bottom. She struggled towards the body. It was Haagen. She knew it was. Someone had come for him. Someone had taken a lash to him, flaying him half to death.

Beside the houseboat, she bent double, gasping for breath. The torch up again, she found Haagen’s head. A length of dirty cloth gagged his mouth. She fought with the knot. His back was wet with blood, glistening in the light from the torch. Finally, the gag came free. She used it to wipe his face. He was barely conscious, his eyes closed, his breath coming in tiny gasps.

She kissed him, telling him not worry, telling him she loved him, wondering whether or not to release his wrists. They were lashed to a primitive wooden frame, a simple cross, propped against the houseboat’s hull. Her fingers found the first knot and she began to loosen it, then she stopped. Unsupported, she’d never cope with his weight. He wasn’t big but the bank was steep and slippery and he was in no state to help her. God knew what lay beneath the raw, exposed flesh on his back. He might have broken bones, or internal injuries. It might be even worse than that.

She put her mouth to his ear. ‘I’m going for help,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be back.’

Haagen stirred. One eye opened. In the light from the torch, he looked terrified.

‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Don’t.’

Jessie stared at him a moment longer then fought her way up the bank. There was a telephone box at the end of the road. She ran all the way, oblivious to everything but the need to summon help. When she got to it she dialled 999.

‘Ambulance,’ she gasped, when the operator answered. ‘I think he’s dying.’

Chapter Fifteen

Next morning, Jephson had the use of the Director’s Rover to cover the mile and a half from Thames House to Downing Street. Louise sat beside him in the back of the big saloon, and it was three minutes to midday by Big Ben when they rounded Parliament Square and swept up Whitehall.

In the front hall at Number Ten Biscoe was waiting for them. The Portsmouth West MP was carrying a battered orange file and a folded copy of a tabloid newspaper. In the big front-page photo, under the
Sentinel
’s masthead, Louise recognized Clive Samuels’s distinctive smile, part mirth, part menace.

Jephson did the introductions. Louise shook Biscoe’s outstretched hand. All three followed the messenger up a long, straight, rather narrow corridor until it widened into a lobby at the end. Here, they waited while the messenger knocked on a door and disappeared inside. Seconds later, he was out again, shepherding them into a nearby waiting room. The Prime Minister was busy on a phone call. His political secretary would be out to collect them as soon as he’d finished.

In the waiting room, Jephson stood aside, allowing Louise the choice of seats. She settled herself in a high-backed
leather-covered armchair that was, in truth, a little too small for comfort. On the table in the middle of the room was a pile of magazines, old copies of
The Economist
and
Country Life.

Jephson and Biscoe remained standing. Biscoe was ruefully describing the morning’s media invasion of Portsmouth. The
Newsnight
poll of Pompey First’s electoral chances had triggered a stampede of journalists and video crews and he’d awoken to the sight of a BBC radio car parked outside his front door. Normally, of course, he’d have been delighted to debate the issues with Radio Four’s
Today
programme but throughout this morning’s live interview he’d never quite got off the back foot. The evidence that Pompey First would do well was by now overwhelming, and all he could do to stem the flood of further defections was to issue the usual warning against a menu without prices. A vote for Pompey First, he’d kept saying, was like putting your signature to a blank cheque. Not once, as far as he was aware, had any of these new-wave politicians indicated where the money might be coming from. This, he insisted to Jephson, was true, and he was still shaking his head at the fraudulence of it all when a young man in a burgundy jacket put his head round the door and invited them into the Cabinet Room.

The moment they appeared the Prime Minister got to his feet. He’d been sitting at the middle of the long, coffin-shaped table. The room was infinitely lighter and more pleasant than the lobby outside, and through the french windows at the end, Louise could see a terrace and an expanse of walled garden. The Prime Minister shook hands, introduced his PPS and asked whether they’d had coffee. The table in front of him was littered with paperwork and when the political secretary enquired about their preference
in sandwiches, he rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation. He’d got up far too early. Breakfast had been rushed. The sandwiches weren’t entirely reliable but today they might just strike lucky.

Louise took the seat across the table, flanked by Jephson and Biscoe. The Prime Minister had evidently met Jephson before and they were sharing a joke about some scandal amongst the cricket Test selectors. There was laughter from Jephson, then the PPS pulled a briefing note towards him, quickly running through events on the south coast.

Louise sat back, listening. Earlier this morning, once she and Jephson had agreed the line they were taking, she’d managed to confirm exactly why the Downing Street deadlines were so tight. The probability of an electoral drubbing at the hands of Pompey First, coupled with the publicity Clive Samuels had attracted over the sale of the naval dockyard, had put Portsmouth firmly on the parliamentary agenda and Jephson knew for certain that Tory Central Office had been ordered to pull together a comprehensive strategy for damage limitation. Hence Biscoe’s summons to attend his masters, and hence their own invitation to Downing Street. It was, Jephson had concluded with a smile, a wonderful opportunity to put Downing Street in MI5’s debt, and with luck the next half-hour would achieve just that. Not by battling against opposition gibes, but by turning damage limitation into a pre-emptive strike.

The PPS had finished his précis. The polls, he said, told their own story. Pompey First were way, way ahead. They were well organized and highly innovative. They were riding an enormous wave of local support and they’d spent a great deal of money turning an unfocused resentment into solid votes. Biscoe, to his credit, had been right. These people
were a real threat. Not just to Pompey Tories, but to local politicians everywhere.

The Prime Minister nodded. Behind the smile and the easy small-talk, Louise sensed a deep exhaustion. He tapped the briefing summary the PPS had passed to him. He was looking at Biscoe. ‘The dockyard business is unfortunate. We’ll come to that in a minute. What are the issues here? What’s really hurting us?’

Louise felt Biscoe stiffen beside her. Instinctively, she liked this man. He had the air of someone whose patience had finally run out. If the PM wanted the truth, he could have it.

‘It’s difficult to know where to start, Prime Minister.’ He opened his file, then closed it again. ‘Number one, we’re simply not popular. The trust has gone, the willingness to put up with the tough times because there’s something better round the corner.’

‘But there
is
something better round the corner.’ The Prime Minister was looking concerned, a kindly GP offering reassurance, and Biscoe nodded at once.

‘I agree,’ he said, ‘I’m sure you’re right. But for whom? Take employment. Getting a job’s really tricky, and even if you find something the money’s often pathetic. I see these people week in, week out. They’ve got kids, bills, a couple of thousand owing on the mortgage. It’s bloody hard just making ends meet and, whatever we say, it’s not getting any better. Except for other people. Often in London.’

‘I take your point.’ The Prime Minister was frowning. ‘But what about specifics? Education, say, or the health service?’

‘Disaster areas. The schools are falling apart and the people up at the university seem close to packing it in. These people are angry, Prime Minister, and they’ve found
a home to go to. That’s what’s so alarming about Pompey First. It’s not just our lot. It’s the opposition, too. These people are fed up with all of us. They’ve lost faith. If someone offers them an alternative, no matter how radical, they’re going to take it. Not simply in Portsmouth, but very possibly elsewhere.’

The Prime Minister looked glum. Then grave. He’d managed to snatch the last general election by playing the union card, by wrapping himself in the flag, and the anthem, and all those precious memories of what it really meant to be British. Yet here he was, suddenly facing a situation that could, conceivably, unpick it all.

Jephson’s cue could hardly have been more perfect. Biscoe was looking in his file for some figures. Jephson leaned across, restraining him. ‘Prime Minister,’ he began, ‘if I may …’

The Prime Minister looked up, visibly relieved. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘go ahead.’

Jephson began to describe what lay behind Pompey First’s attacks on Westminster and Whitehall, the real agenda they intended to pursue once they were in power. Evidence had come to hand, he said, that they were pushing not simply for a greater say in the city’s affairs but for wholesale independence. They’d developed strategies in great depth and detail. They had forward plans for a local health service, for supplementary school funding, for city-wide pension provision. On the back of the government’s privatization programme, they’d had a number of conversations with the utility companies, assuring supplies of electricity, gas and water. They were even in the process of finalizing plans for a new flag.

‘It’s blue and white with a hint of red,’ he said helpfully. ‘Just like the Pompey football strip.’

The Prime Minister was looking at his PPS. The PPS plainly thought that Jephson had lost touch with reality. ‘You’re joking,’ he said. ‘You have to be.’

‘Not at all.’ Jephson produced an audio-cassette and laid it carefully on the table in front of him. Louise had given it to him in the car – it had come from Mike Tully’s collection. ‘I’ll spare you the chore of listening,’ he said, ‘but I assure you we’re talking hard intelligence.’

The PPS began to ask where the cassette had come from. The Prime Minister waved the question aside. ‘You’re sure about all this?’ he queried.

‘Prime Minister, I’m certain.’

‘And you think they could really do it?’

‘I think they could really try.’

The Prime Minister thought about the proposition. ‘But that has to be illegal, doesn’t it? An act of sedition? An act of rebellion against the lawfully elected government?’

Jephson leaned forward. ‘And a threat to national security, too, the way we’re reading it.’

‘Hence your interest?’ The Prime Minister gestured vaguely at Jephson and Louise.

‘Of course.’

The Prime Minister blinked, aghast yet fascinated. ‘And you think they have the backing? Financially?’

‘I suspect so.’

‘How?’

Jephson didn’t answer. Earlier, he and Louise had agreed that the advantage for MI5 lay in a slow drip-feed of relief, parcelling out the story chunk by chunk. Keep the politicians caged as long as possible, Jephson had told her. Otherwise they’ll so easily forget who’s found the key.

‘How?’ the Prime Minister repeated. ‘How would they ever raise the money to make it all work?’

‘There are ways and means, Prime Minister. We haven’t quite got the whole picture yet but we’re moving as fast as we can. Rest assured.’ He smiled.

The PPS took up the running. ‘What about this afternoon?’ he said. ‘PMQs?’ He waved a hand at the mountain of paperwork, the bullets for the Prime Minister’s parliamentary gun when he faced the leader of the opposition in the Commons.

Jephson frowned, the diligent civil servant keen to help wherever he could. ‘My sense is that the key issue will be the dockyard. Everything else, at this point, is speculation.’

‘I think you’re right,’ the PPS agreed. ‘But we were rather hoping…’ He peered at a line on the typescript. ‘Mr Zhu, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything on him?’

‘Nothing firm. Nothing a hundred per cent.’

‘Soon?’

‘I very much hope so.’ Jephson picked up the audio-cassette. ‘It’s only a suggestion, of course, but, as far as the dockyard’s concerned, might it be possible to announce a suspension of negotiations? Pending the outcome of certain enquiries.’

‘You think that might help?’

‘Absolutely. And it also happens to be true.’

The Prime Minister and his PPS exchanged glances. Jephson was right. It was a little premature for the PM to comment on the dockyard sale and, in any case, these matters were of a commercial nature and therefore subject to the usual strictures on confidentiality. Likewise the issue of Pompey First. At this stage, their success was pure speculation.

He glanced across at Jephson. ‘It’s good to see you so well briefed,’ he said. ‘I’m grateful.’

Jephson smiled, then gestured towards Louise. ‘I’m lucky to have such professional support, Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘Miss Carlton’s played a blinder.’

Mike Tully was typing an affidavit when he heard the approaching loudspeaker in the street below. He pencilled a mark on his notes, then pushed his chair back from the desk. It was a woman’s voice. She was talking about the way the city’s budget had been slashed. This year, the government had snatched away half a million pounds. Pompey’s money. Your money.

Tully looked down from the window. One of the old open-top buses had come into view around the corner. It was plastered with Pompey First posters and amongst the gaggle of candidates on the top deck, Tully could see the woman with the microphone. He stepped back from the window. Kate Frankham, he thought. Hayden Barnaby’s bit of stuff.

Further down the street, a gang of contractors was digging up the road. There was a tail-back from the temporary traffic lights and the Pompey First bandwagon came to rest outside Tully’s office. Kate had handed over the microphone to someone else, and while the new candidate droned on about Opportunity ’96, another Pompey First initiative, Tully watched Kate pour a cup of coffee from a Thermos. She was deep in conversation with a tall man in jeans and a linen jacket. He had a wide grin and a mop of blond curls and as she beckoned him closer he began to laugh. Her gloved hand touched him lightly on the arm,
and Tully saw the coffee spill as the bus inched towards the traffic lights.

He returned to his desk, trying to shut his mind to the howl of the Tannoy below. The candidate was talking about the dockyard, stirring up the controversy over Samuels’s breach of faith, and Tully felt a fuse burning deep within him. He’d barely stopped thinking about the dockyard since he’d read Sunday’s
Sentinel,
and the longer he brooded, the more he became convinced that Barnaby must have been privy to the secret negotiations. He was Zhu’s chief of staff, for God’s sake. There was surely nothing that the Chinese got up to in Portsmouth that Barnaby wouldn’t, at the very least, suspect. Yet here he was, leading a party committed to a clean break and a fresh start, pretending that the
Sentinel
’s little scoop about the dockyard had come as a terrible shock. Did Barnaby seriously think he could have it both ways? Would he do to the city what he’d done to Liz?

Tully got up from the desk again. Yesterday, before Ellis had disappeared back to London, he’d done his best to find out what would happen to the information he’d passed on. He wanted a guarantee of action, an assurance that something would be done, but although Ellis had obviously understood what he meant, he’d been unable to offer anything firmer than a nod, and a mumbled aside about ‘appropriate channels’. Quite where these channels might lead was anyone’s guess, and it was beginning to dawn on Tully that Ellis’s pals in the intelligence community might well be playing a game of their own. From occasionally bitter experience, Tully knew far too much about the secret world for his own peace of mind. That’s the way these things work, he told himself. Debts settled here.
Obligations established there. But absolutely nothing set in motion that might attract unwanted attention.