The Madness of July (22 page)

‘I do,’ said Flemyng. ‘And not just from Babble.’

They laughed at that, and for a few moments took refuge in family matters, speaking quickly. Wives, Abel’s children, Mungo.

Afterwards, Abel recognized the calm that his brother brought to their first conversation for two years. That had been warm enough, in New York, but brief. With the years, the distance had remained. Neither brother wanted to encourage it, but nor was there a reason to break the habit that had taken hold. Each knew that this might be the moment, and that it had been forced on them.

Abel’s method was direct, as ever.

‘I’m glad to say there’s one thing that would suit us both, might help us along. Because we’re both aware that we need to talk about my American friend, right?’

‘Indeed,’ said Flemyng, ‘and I’m at your service.’

‘I know it, so I’m coming north right now. Tell Babble I’m on the three-fifteen plane. Get my old bedroom ready. I’ll be with you for the evening.’

There it was. The years fell away. The front door from the hall was open as Flemyng answered, and he felt the warm flow of the afternoon. ‘This makes me glad, you know.’

Abel said goodbye. ‘There’s work to be done. It always helps.’

When Flemyng had told Mungo, they walked together to the front terrace, watching the ribbons of light on the loch below. They decided not to speak for a few minutes. Mungo lit his pipe again, rare in the afternoon, and Flemyng spent a little time on the path that led towards the river. The bees were in the honeysuckle and he felt the summer warmth from the stone dyke that ran alongside them. After a while they sat together on the bench near the front door, the roses scrambling up the wall behind and the light casting a long shadow from the holly tree beneath the window that had given light to their mother’s studio.

‘Shall we tell each other what’s wrong?’ said Mungo. ‘Before Abel arrives.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe that’s why he’s been sent. By one of the people who run your lives.’

‘You were right earlier,’ Flemyng said. ‘I’ve been pretending to myself that it’s you who’s taken the family thing badly. But it’s not you, it’s me.’

Mungo let him continue.

‘Sometimes my mind gets taken over by other things. Held hostage, you might say. Politics, really. It leaves me drained, then emotional stuff hits me harder. I suppose I once believed that my life wouldn’t be shaped by other people’s problems. I’ve learned. Listen to me. I’ve discovered something in the last few days that’s been turning me inside out. It may change the game for me. And maybe for ever.’ He stopped speaking for a full minute, letting the pause roll.

‘You glimpse something by chance,’ Flemyng said eventually. ‘Maybe something quite small. And you recognize the worm in the apple. The beginning of everything.’

Mungo said nothing, giving him the time he needed, pulled on his pipe, and looked steadily towards the loch.

His brother stood up from the stone bench and took a few steps to the front of the terrace. Rousseau came up from the garden and brushed past him on his way to the door. Bending down to touch the dog’s head, he looked up at Mungo.

‘I’ve stumbled on something evil. I do mean evil.

‘Someone who’s a power in the land is trying to destroy one of my colleagues. I know it now, although I can’t be sure who they are. I do mean complete destruction, nothing less. He’s trying to drive him mad.

‘And I don’t know why.’

13

Lucy answered Paul Jenner’s summons at a little after three o’clock. It was unusual for her to be in town at the weekend, let alone near the office, and she realized the depth of Paul’s distress by the fact that when he had rung that morning he’d made no reference to the awkwardness of the meeting, speaking as if it were one of their regular Tuesday mornings or Thursday afternoons. The crisis had reset his clock, the pattern of his days unrecognizable. She went to his office.

‘I have a difficulty,’ he told her.

‘A new one?’ she said, thinking she might get away with that. He was more serious than she had ever known him, the light in his eyes dimmed and the physical sharpness blunted.

‘I am going to have to ask you to be very frank with me,’ he said. ‘That may seem insulting, because you’re well aware of the rules and conventions that we all follow, and adhere to them meticulously. I know it, and have no reason to doubt it now. But you’re aware that we are afloat on treacherous waters and they could swallow all of us up. For once it’s not inflation or trouble in the streets. Something worse. Melodramatic, I know, but there’s no point in deceiving you. I need to emphasize that you must be open with me, however much you may feel a countervailing pressure.’

‘Countervailing pressure?’ she asked, surprised by the phrase and startled by Paul’s heavy formality.

‘Loyalty to your minister. To Will.’

For the first time, Lucy understood for a certainty that nothing would be the same when the alarm was over. They wouldn’t disappear for the summer on a tide of relief and reappear with balance restored and adrenalin running strong. Paul might as well have made an announcement: they’d all be changed by the coming days. Alone with the cabinet secretary,
capo di tutti capi
in her world, watching him in the shadows of an office from which the sun seemed to have been deliberately excluded, she knew that he believed the crisis might, in some way, be the end for him. His eyes said as much.

She spoke steadily, without expressing any alarm. ‘So what do you want from me?’

Paul separated two files on his desk, pushing them apart. He left them both closed, and Lucy wondered if they had been placed there as props, to give his hands something to do. A bureaucrat’s lifebelts.

He began, still talking with a formality that was unnatural.

‘You are aware that I have asked Will Flemyng to assist in handling the difficulties brought on by Thursday’s events, because of certain qualities – and knowledge – that he can bring to the task. You are aware of his past experience. This, you will realize, is because of my trust in him.’ Paul looked up, as if to check her response. ‘He is doing that now, and I’m still hoping we shall all meet – you, me, Gwilym, Will, and maybe one other – tomorrow. I’m expecting to hear from Will later this afternoon with his thoughts. Has he spoken to you today?’

‘Nothing from Scotland. Mind you, I wouldn’t expect it. He has his speech tomorrow, and he’s due down in the afternoon immediately afterwards. He has his box. I made sure it was an unexciting one. He’ll have another in the morning. Nothing too onerous, I promise.’

Paul shook his head. ‘The speech is off. Make the arrangements. I need him here. I’d be grateful if you could handle that now, with all the usual apologies – ministerial business, and so on. And there’s something else.’

Lucy’s mind roamed back over the meeting in the same room the day before, and felt the frisson of collective fear.

‘Something has come to my attention that troubles me greatly.’ He sounds as if he’s giving evidence to a parliamentary committee, she thought. ‘You should be made aware of that, although there is much in this business I’m afraid you can’t be told, even you, because your minister is dealing with exceptionally sensitive matters. You know more than enough from day-to-day business to understand that. What I do need to know now is whether Will is pursuing something else of his own, wandering down another path. Because I am told he is, and that he is very upset as a result.’

Paul was looking down at his desk while he spoke, which Lucy took for a sign of embarrassment.

Before she could answer, he added awkwardly, without looking up, ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you how I know this. I’m very sorry.’

The awkward codicil was a painful confession of discomfort. She tried to keep her hair back, and avoided any physical response to his statement, giving no signal of anger, let alone contrition. But they knew that a line had been crossed.

As a consequence, the balance in the room shifted. Paul remained cabinet secretary, master of a rolling domain, with phones that could connect him to anyone he wanted, night and day, and the power to summon or dismiss. But he had revealed a lack of inner conviction, let her glimpse that his heart was not in the interrogation he had begun.

That was enough for Lucy. She took him on.

‘No. There’s nothing. If you insisted, I could pass on some of his views on certain colleagues, though you know I’d fight not to. They’re no more or less spicy than anyone else’s in politics, and a good deal more generous than most, as you’d expect. There are confidences that I wouldn’t give you – personal ones – and I’d go to the wall with them, resign if I had to. But I assume that’s not what you want, because I think I understand your loyalties.’

Emboldened by his hesitation, she held the floor. ‘Will’s helping you with the business we spoke of in this room yesterday, and I know no more about it now than I knew when I left you two alone. He disappeared yesterday afternoon, on your business, then went to Scotland later on. There’s nothing else to report. What do you know that has changed all this? Don’t I have a right to know, even if he doesn’t?’

Paul sighed. ‘Yes, you do.’

She remained straight-backed in the chair opposite him, holding her gaze steady.

‘Let me put it like this,’ said Paul. ‘I’ve been given a version of his current state that suggests he has developed an obsession with a particular colleague – I know not whom – and that he has become somewhat…’

For the first time in her experience, Paul was lost for the right word.

‘… disturbed. That’s the talk in certain quarters.’

Lucy took her time replying. Her alarm didn’t show, and deciding to deceive him was not difficult. Her task was to defend Will Flemyng.

‘If you are suggesting that my minister is veering off the rails, or starting to talk to himself, you’re living on another planet.’ She picked up pace. ‘Disturbed? Nonsense. He’s never been more focused, more interested in analyzing all the things that come across his desk, picking them apart until he understands every detail. If you think his balance has gone, then you’re the one who’s off the rails.’

She thought she had gone too far. But it produced the first smile from Paul she had seen since arriving in his room. As with her fear, she hid her relief.

‘I’m glad you’ve stonewalled,’ he said. ‘I hate moments like this – I’ve had plenty – when people fold up and collapse. I don’t know what I’d have done if you had. I’m sorry if I went over the top a moment ago. I need Will, and it’s obvious to me that he’s firing on most cylinders. But there is talk around here. I can’t ignore it. You do understand?’

He waved a hand to show that he could say no more and they should move on.

‘We both know how cruel this game is, don’t we? Glad you and I are on our side of the fence, rather than theirs?’

She murmured agreement, and waited.

‘There are things going on around this place that you wouldn’t believe, even you,’ he said.

‘Do me a favour, Lucy. Talk to Will. Don’t mention this conversation, which I’m glad we’ve had. Tell him about the speech and so on, and get him to ring me tonight. I’ll be here, I’m afraid. I’ll update him on our late American friend. We’ll meet at eight tomorrow evening, come what may.’

Lucy got up and thanked him, with no apology for her forthrightness.

When she had left, Paul opened one of the files on his desk. Before him lay an account of everything that was known about Joe Manson’s movements in London after he was tailed to the Lorimer Hotel. It was thin. On Wednesday night, according to a helpful member of staff, he had left cheerfully for what seemed likely to be a night on the town. No one remembered seeing him again.

But Chief Inspector Osterley himself had returned to the hotel early that morning, alone, in case there might be something more to be gleaned. He had spent some time in the lobby, and had a coffee round the corner with a front desk clerk who had last been on duty on the Wednesday and had therefore not been interviewed after what Osterley now called the second coming, enquiries having been carried out in a routine fashion by local officers. He was rewarded with an intriguing fact.

When Manson was leaving the hotel, mid-evening on Wednesday, he asked at the desk if there was a public phone box nearby. An unusual request. The desk clerk offered him the use of the switchboard. He declined, with the explanation that he had an American calling card that would let him use a box cheaply. The clerk thought nothing of it, knowing that such cards existed, and told him of two telephones within a hundred yards, with the warning that he would be lucky if either was working.

Osterley’s note to Paul ended: ‘Let’s hope one of them was.’

14

Sassi and Abel lunched early and heartily in a Greek restaurant near the Lorimer. Sassi reported that he was making progress and would report that to Maria. ‘Bases loaded,’ he said, and they raised glasses of rough retsina to success. ‘But not home yet,’ said Abel, and shook his head. ‘Not by a long way. We’re asking a lot of them, and there’s pride at stake here.’ He spoke of his coming visit home, his hopes for his brother, and Sassi said he would ride with him to the airport – in a black cab, not an embassy car, so that they could talk.

Abel knew that he had to answer one question, and it came even before they had manoeuvred their way through the west London football crowds, skirting the beginning of a street fight in Fulham. They were moving slowly along a police line that was preparing for battle when Sassi said, ‘How much do you think your brother knows?’

Abel’s response involved a gentle deceit. Sassi’s store of knowledge did not include the course of the relationship with his brother, let alone the intimation from Mungo of a family drama, so he said that he could be quite sure of his answer because they were still close. ‘Not too much. You think Paul Jenner has been discreet, and I think you’re right. My brother won’t know what went wrong. I’ll know for certain by the end of today,’ he said. ‘I have to ask him straight out whether Manson rang him and spoke about Berlin.’

Sassi nodded.