The Madness of July (2 page)

‘Trouble?’ he said, without preliminary.

‘Of course,’ said Sam, giving his toothy smile. Flemyng absorbed his presence, rolling some scenes across his mind like the rerun of a favourite film with chance meetings and scrapes on the battlefield, remembered days of despair and the sound of the tunes of glory they’d sung, long into the night. He thought of Berlin and Helsinki, a freezing border post in the dark, chilly interrogation rooms, and nights on the street. The endless waiting.

He was touching the scar that ran from his neck across his chest.

‘The war wound?’ said Sam, who could remember when it hadn’t been there.

Flemyng had picked it up in Vienna, of all places, where the spies enjoyed opera and Sachertorte as well as thrills in the street. The Stygian darkness of an underground bar after midnight, a botched handover and a fight springing up from nowhere that left him bleeding and crawling back to the embassy with the thought that he might die before he’d got through his thirties.

‘Cherish it. We’ve all got our mementoes,’ said Sam. His were a broken marriage and a dry-out that had left him hollow for a year. With a touch of embarrassment, Flemyng took his hand away from his neck and leaned back against the railings behind him, looking directly at his friend. His own face was cast half in shadow, which emphasized his sharp profile and turned his longish dark hair to jet black. The deep hollow clefts on his cheeks were like two extra scars. The light cast the two friends differently – Flemyng’s sharp edges giving him a clear profile, Sam’s outline a construction of curves and wobbly lines.

‘So?’

‘First,’ said Sam, ‘I know my Will. Worried?’

Flemyng sighed. ‘I’ve found out something, old friend, and I wish I hadn’t. That’s all.’

Sam tried a joke. ‘That’s a change for you.’ But there was no response from Flemyng. Sam’s shoulders rose as he pressed on. ‘If you’re wondering why I summoned you to these parts, I have an appointment across the street with a quack of a certain kind. But I don’t think I’m going to be keeping it, do you?’ He pushed Flemyng’s shoulder to turn him slightly, and nodded up the street. He saw a government car. Not a numberplate he recognized, so a driver pulled from the ministerial pool with an anonymous vehicle for a one-off run. No passenger inside. ‘Who?’

Sam shook his head. ‘I’d like to find out – I daresay I will – but we don’t want to be seen, do we?’ Flemyng dipped his head and Sam led the way quickly round the corner. Before he turned, Flemyng glanced back at the black door of number six in the mews, where the car was parked. No one to be seen. He thought there was a hint of movement at a net curtain on the second floor, then nothing.

Head down, he fell into step with Sam, gesturing towards a pub in a side street that looked at first glance like a dead end, but had a narrow lane at the far end if it was needed for a fast exit. He had used it before. ‘Let’s have a quick one.’

Flemyng was alert for signs of fear in Sam but he seemed unrattled, relieved to see his old colleague. ‘I’ll fill you in quickly. Sorry for pulling you out, but I had to. Walls have ears.’ He spoke in a rich northern voice that had never picked up the speech of the south, of any class. The tone was flat, but in compensation Sam’s language always danced. ‘What’s the buzz on the Rialto? In the salons. Hear anything intriguing, anything odd?’ He paused. ‘Because I do.’

They sat down by a window without drinks, but the barman took no notice. Flemyng shook his head. ‘About whom?’

Sam’s smile flashed at him. ‘Can’t say. But somebody’s in trouble.’ Our kind of trouble, he might have said. His sunny expression disappeared.

‘Out with it,’ said Flemyng.

‘Something unusual, strange – a watch on somebody, and here’s the thing. It’s on your side of the fence and not mine, just for once. There’s a minister in the middle of this. Breaks all the rules, of course.’ He laughed. ‘Will, I can’t get a handle on it. I’m not sure why, and that’s the truth.’

Flemyng kept his voice low. ‘Leaks? Dirty work?’

Sam’s head was almost touching his. ‘I haven’t a clue, old cock. The place is tight as a drum. Hardly a whisper. Scary.’

As so often when they had walked the line together, wrestling the Great Bear as Sam used to put it, Flemyng’s mind cleared as if it had been cooled and refreshed by a passing shower. Concentrating hard, he gave Sam the question he wanted. ‘Why me? What can I do?’

Sam’s voice was almost inaudible now, and Flemyng could feel his breath. ‘This time, for once, I’m not taking from you. I’m giving. OK?’

Flemyng waited.

‘I heard something yesterday. Just a word muttered in the undergrowth. That’s why I scrambled you overnight; got you here fast. Sorry about that.’

‘Give it to me, Sam.’

‘It could be you.’ His hand was on Flemyng’s arm. ‘The one they’re after.’

2

Lucy Padstowe, twenty-nine and a woman of steely confidence, was shaking as she put down the phone. Melancholy visited her from time to time; but genuine alarm, the kind that penetrated to the core, was rare. Her habitual calm had been strengthened by two years in charge of the private office, riding the excitements and ploughing through the weary troughs, so the cabinet secretary’s words had brought on a tremor of unease that was unfamiliar to her. She closed the door to the inner office and sat behind Flemyng’s desk.

The window was shut despite the heat, and long white net drapes kept out the glare of the sun. She arranged his papers, embarrassed herself by trying the top drawer of his desk and finding it locked, and started trying to track him down. She’d turn to his network, which was hers as well as Flemyng’s, the gift of her ministerial patron to his closest civil servant which shaped her days and coloured both their lives. She took to its byways to try to find him.

Ringing Jonathan Ruskin’s office on the other side of Downing Street was a natural start. The Co-ordinator sat in an island mid-stream and events flowed towards him. Colleagues thronged at his door, with favours to trade. Although he was a graceful bird of passage in government and a master of the soothing phone call, the barons of Whitehall had a natural resistance to his existence. With the power to break the territorial rules by which officials lived, Ruskin was a constant irritant. For gossip, however, he was always reliable. And around the watering holes of Westminster, he was fun.

She rang his office first: ‘Lucy in Will Flemyng’s office. Has my man dropped in?’ – but she got nothing, tried Jay Forbes’s private secretary next and felt the tinge of frost that came with Defence, even gave Sparger’s people at the Home Office a call despite their minister’s serpentine ways, and talked to Harry Sorley’s bag-carrier at Education, although she was sure Flemyng would avoid that quarter for the moment. There were two or three others, and a disingenuous call to the press people downstairs just in case. No news. His constituency secretary knew nothing, but begged for a quick word in the afternoon; Flemyng’s chairman was agitated.

Lucy was lost.

She considered her options and after a few moments rang the cabinet secretary’s office, aware of her nerves. ‘Is Paul around? Lucy Padstowe again. Sorry to come back so quickly, but I need him if he’s there.’

The line went quiet, a red light winking every two seconds on Flemyng’s phone as she waited. Then Paul Jenner himself. ‘Have you spoken to Will?’

‘I’m sorry, no. I’m sure he’ll be here soon. But I’m afraid I have to confess something that I didn’t say earlier. I don’t know where he’s been, or why.’ She added, by way of defence, ‘Does this sound odd?’

‘Not in the least,’ said Paul. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘Nothing. I’m just saying.’

She found herself continuing without waiting for an answer. ‘It’s natural that I’m a bit worried, given what you said a few minutes ago. Unusual things have been happening.’ Her voice was speeding up. ‘He’s been distracted. Off-kilter. No fun around the office, and you know what he’s like.’ She rushed on. ‘I’m sorry, I know this is a little embarrassing. Private secretaries shouldn’t blab.’

‘I wish more of them did. Let me know when Will’s back. I’ll need him here. He’s just away from his phone. Some day we’ll find a way of tracking them everywhere – can’t come soon enough for me – but there’s nothing we can do for now. Try not to worry.’

The conversation was over. Having wound herself up, the words tumbling out, Lucy felt a heaviness in the room as if time was slowing down around her, forcing her to think. She’d suspected from his voice that Paul Jenner, spider at the centre of her web, was trying to suppress a tremor of his own, which surprised her because his command appeared effortless and the power of his writ was unquestioned, running through every channel of government, from its sacred places to the last secret corner. Nothing bypassed Paul. She pictured him at his vast desk, looking to the high bow window that gave on to the park, his perfectly round grey eyes unblinking while he concentrated. Flemyng said that when he was in that mood it looked like the onset of
petit mal
; but Paul never lost control.

Back to her minister. One of her assistants had seen Flemyng leave the office about an hour earlier, and told Lucy that nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Jacket over his shoulder, he had traded smiles with her in the corridor as he turned towards the broad staircase to take him down, gesturing to the sunshine outside. His tie was loose, the collar of his pink shirt open.

He had told the office that he would need no driver, so Lawrence could have a quiet lunchtime with no fear of a summons. The weather was up and there were personal errands to run, no more than that. The word was a welcome breeze in the private office. ‘He’ll be buying a birthday present,’ someone said. ‘No,’ said Lucy. ‘Covent Garden for lunch, I’d say.’ But she wondered why he hadn’t told her.

In his absence, a lazy air settled on the three rooms that protected Flemyng’s own; the tea trolley squeaked to a stop in the corridor, and a little queue formed; leisurely gossip flowed through ministerial offices, each protecting its own oasis. Everyone was trying to enforce the calm, driven on by the heat. Meetings were cancelled across Whitehall, as if to hurry summer along.

Little Simon, than whom no one was more junior, was putting together pen portraits of backbenchers due for end-of-term drinks on Monday, writing in loopy longhand because the new electric typewriters ran away with him – and because it was a shirt-sleeve day and lunchtime, with the minister not at his desk, he pushed the boat out, rowing with schoolboy gusto, stripping the guests of their last shreds of dignity. Wife trouble, new boyfriend, money worries, love affairs with the booze… all the chatter he’d heard. It would be filleted and cleaned up in the afternoon, the list rendered acceptable for Flemyng’s overnight red box, but no one took Simon aside for a heavy word of advice, which was a symptom of the season, because in sharper, cooler times he’d have been pressed against the wall and filleted himself for his foolishness. But it was hot, and rules were suspended.

Summer had come and parliament would rise in a few days. Relief, and everyone felt the beguiling touch of an unexpectedly balmy time. From the office they could sniff the atmosphere beyond the long windows, see the greenery through the scaffolding that had gripped the building for a year and more. Layers of soot and grime were being scraped away and carted off in processions of wagons that left black trails along Whitehall; the inner courtyard held a ring of iron skips filled with decades of pigeon droppings from the roof, and an acrid reminder lingered in every hallway. Some day, they were told, their Victorian palace would shine again, a painting with its bloodless colours restored and cracks healed. But not yet.

Lucy wondered how she would explain to Flemyng why Paul wanted to see him. Peering through her window, streaked with dust, she sensed the warmth outside.

Taking to the corridor to steady herself, she set off on a clockwise circumnavigation of the building. It echoed to scraping and banging from the courtyard. They were carrying off the skips again.

It would have been no reassurance to her as she walked out of the office if she had known that at that moment Flemyng had been lost to the world for a minute or two in the fetid heat of a phone box near Oxford Circus. A hand banged on the door. ‘Get on with it!’ Then banged again. Flemyng, who had not entirely lost his capacity for embarrassment, burst from the box without ringing Lucy as he’d meant to, and walked quickly to a bus stop with his head down. She would have to wait. He ignored a taxi rank, climbed on the platform of a bus that was crawling towards the traffic lights, and swung through a crowd of Dutch schoolchildren on the bottom deck. It would be a slow haul down Regent Street, and the more welcome for that.

The man next to him leaned across.

‘I know who you are.’

Flemyng’s head snapped back.

‘Sorry, but I saw you on TV the other night. You weren’t bad. Better than the bird in the red dress anyway. A bimbo, that one.’

Flemyng said, ‘Well, we try our best.’

‘Mind you, I can’t remember your name. Sorry about that.’

‘Flemyng.’

‘That’s it. I’ve always had you down as one of the posh ones. Top drawer. I’m surprised to see you on the bus, Mr Flemyng. Nice, though. You working today?’

‘There you are, you see. Taking the bus, taxpayers’ interests at heart. Just out for a few minutes.’ Flemyng smiled and leaned towards his companion. ‘Good to meet you.’ They had reached Pall Mall. He took his leave, crossed the street and headed for the park. From the top of the Wellington steps he could see the window of his own office through the trees, three along from the foreign secretary’s corner lair. Five minutes away at a gentle pace.

Behind the window, Lucy was back at her desk and making another call. ‘Francesca, it’s me.’

‘Hi. What’s up?’

‘Have you got my wandering minister with you?’

‘Wandering?’

‘I need him.’

‘No. Don’t you know where he is?’ Flemyng’s wife laughed. ‘That’s a change.’

‘Just out, that’s all.’

She knew Francesca would be alerted by the oddness of the word. Lucy was precise about where her man was, day and night, the dog who was never off his leash. ‘Out’ carried no conviction.