The Madness of July (37 page)

Flemyng was expectant now, but Chester drew back, reasserting a professional distance. ‘Now let me go and say farewell to your brother. I look forward to our next meeting. You have a most interesting family, by the way. The historical piece makes that clear. Quite an inheritance. You have my card. We’ll talk, and soon, I hope, because I do think it’s really quite important. If it helps, remember I can come to you.’

Flemyng stayed outside the party for a few minutes more and composed himself, although he was used to the lightning speed of such exchanges. He was alone at the top of the stairs, having said goodbye to a couple of departing friends who were taking the evening at a placid pace, when the hall porter approached from below. ‘Mr Flemyng, sir, a message for you. Please ring Mr Jenner in his office as soon as you can. Thank you, sir.’

He went to say goodbye to his hosts and his brothers and gave Archie Chester a wave. The priests were still in the corner, reddened with refreshment and their eyes flickering across the crowd. They gave him separate little bows as he passed.

He took the stairs quickly and rang Paul’s secretary from the porter’s lodge and then Lucy, still at her desk. ‘Do me a favour, please. There’s an envelope in my desk drawer with “Private” written on it. It’s the letter. Could you bring it down and meet me in the courtyard in ten minutes? I’m on my way to Paul’s. Thanks.’

As he turned the corner at the Athenaeum, he could still hear from the first-floor windows the party enlivening the night air, and could have sworn he heard Mungo laugh.

*

Flemyng knew as he walked alone across Downing Street, with the letter in his inside pocket, that it fitted with everything else that he had been discussing in Paul’s office since the first strained meeting on Thursday. Some connections still eluded him, but he was confident that he would find them by the time the evening was over. Paul’s summons was unusually abrupt: Flemyng suspected a development that couldn’t wait.

Paul’s office was still a place of shadows. Two standard lamps cast pools of light in opposite corners and his green desk light was dimmed. As Flemyng arrived Paul rose and, for almost the first time since the affair began, took his hand. ‘Thank you, Will. I think we’re nearly there.’

There was no Gwilym.

Paul began with his own feeling of frustration. Manson’s death was a drug-induced accident, it was clear, but no one could establish his movements in London, his reason for visiting parliament and whether or not he was successful in contacting anyone in government. And if he was, what conversations he then had.

‘But I have something for you,’ said Flemyng, interrupting and patting his pocket.

The effect on Paul seemed disturbing rather than consoling, as if he had been hoping that the last awkwardness was passing away. He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t smile. The unspoken instruction to Flemyng was to wait.

Back at his desk, he opened a red file and took out a single sheet of paper. ‘Friend Osterley has done us a good turn. You’ll remember that he found a desk clerk who’d spoken to Manson as he left the hotel on Wednesday evening. Well, Osterley’s people checked the lines from the public phone boxes nearby. We have access to certain information about such lines, as you well know. The basics, no more. One was out of order, and Osterley established that no calls had been made from it for more than a week. The other, however, was clear as a bell, relatively speaking. Special Branch have identified all the numbers that were called from that phone on Wednesday evening. There weren’t many.’

Flemyng waited as Paul’s gaze settled on the sheet of paper in his hand, as if to make sure for a second or third time that he was not making a mistake.

‘We have checked the numbers. Two of them are of interest. Only two.’ Then, a statement that he tried to deliver with lightness: ‘Yours is not one of them.’

Flemyng smiled, and his rush of relief was obvious.

‘One is Sorley’s. Dialled first, and the connection lasted for just about four minutes. So, time to talk.’ Paul paused and allowed his eyes to meet Flemyng’s.

‘The other, to which the public phone box was connected for barely a minute, was Jonathan Ruskin’s. Very short.’

Flemyng sensed a flow of adrenalin, a sharpening of his senses. ‘Four minutes with Sorley? A proper conversation.’

‘Yes,’ said Paul. ‘I haven’t spoken to Harry yet, nor to Jonathan. He’s coming back from Oxford after his speech about now, I gather. But it’s obvious that we have to talk to them both. They’re the only people we know who may have spoken to Manson, apart from his embassy friend. We assume he didn’t try to ring you, and as yet there’s no suggestion connecting him directly to Forbes. We’ll speak to him, of course, but I propose to ask Harry and Jonathan to come here tomorrow morning. Tom Brieve we’ll talk to again, though he’s now in France. I’d like to sleep on it, and I’m sure you would.’

Flemyng put his hand in his inside pocket. Strengthened by the events of the past hour, he spoke confidently and without any hint of hesitation.

‘Paul, I have something that you need to see. I’ve been keeping it back, but events have made it clear that it’s part of this story in some way. I had once thought it separate, one element in a random collision of events. I should have known better from the start.

‘I’ve never believed in coincidence in politics. And this is so disturbing that I can’t separate it from our crisis. I’ve learned, I think, that this whole affair is driven by the heart.’ Paul puckered his brow.

‘Think of it as an exercise in fragility.’

As Flemyng placed the envelope on the desk, he reached for something else in the pocket of his blue suit. He pulled out a handkerchief, shook it, and from it tumbled the small piece of marble that he had picked up in the room where Joe Manson’s body was discovered for the first time.

‘And this is intriguing. I suggest you keep it in your desk. I’ll explain tomorrow.’

He gestured to the envelope. ‘Read what’s inside.’

Like Lucy, Paul bent over the page, pressing it flat on his desk, and read slowly with concentration, seeming to cover each paragraph twice. After he’d finished, he stared at the letter without saying a word.

‘Any thoughts?’ said Flemyng.

‘God Almighty,’ Paul said. He looked up, then down again. ‘I wonder which of them is more in need of help.’

‘I agree.’ Flemyng’s face was a picture of relief.

‘Who is this?’ said Paul. ‘I can’t work anything out from the style and there’s not a mark on the thing. You know, don’t you?’

‘Not for certain, but maybe. Forgive me, but I’ll wait, because I must.’

Paul sat back in his chair and sighed, covering his eyes with his hands. ‘This place should be run by psychiatrists, not civil servants. What am I supposed to think? People give up half their lives trying to get into public life, fighting elections till they drop, then spend the rest of their time enjoying the destruction they’ve visited on themselves. I’m not sure I can take this.’

Flemyng shook his head. ‘We have to. I got a hint from Lucy that you’re wondering why I’ve been preoccupied. Well, here’s your answer. Madness is such a hateful word, but it haunts me. Because in these corridors – balanced and rational though we believe ourselves to be – there’s madness on the loose. I knew it the moment I saw this letter, waiting to be signed and delivered. My guess is that it’s one of many, probably sent to the same person, and they take us into the dark.

‘Paul, we have to face the fact that he speaks here about being killed by this. Killed.’

‘I share your alarm,’ said Paul quickly.

‘You asked me to think. I’ve come to one conclusion – that this is at the heart of things. How and why I don’t know, but I’ve decided it must be. I’ll be honest and say that this is instinctive rather than rational on my part, but I’m going with it.’ Flemyng asked Paul to put the letter in his desk, and said they should turn to the Manson calls. Paul said the morning conversations would take place in his office, Sorley first, at ten, then Ruskin an hour later.

‘We must realize that we could be dealing with a number of different stories here. A misunderstanding, an old friendship, an innocent request, a dead end. You name it. And let’s not forget that you are still
Friend Flemyng
in the notebook, the man who knows something. But what does it mean?’

Flemyng laughed. ‘We’re used to that, aren’t we? What’s politics for, if it doesn’t teach you to look both ways at once?’

They were more sombre as they shook hands, and parted. Flemyng watched Paul turn back to his desk, his shoulders dropping as if weighed down by an unseen burden. His last words were, ‘Leave Forbes and Brieve to me.’ His burdens alone.

*

Abel’s next message to Maria was, for him, unusually long. He didn’t send it until after midnight on the evening of the Travellers’ party, when Flemyng was already in bed beside Francesca and Paul’s office was dark, and the dispatch of the coded request and his account of the day’s business, received by Maria with Fat Zak Annan squatting in his chair by her side, was the first act of the last day.

Wherry had been helpful. Communication was his trade, he said cheerily, and he stayed while Abel made his calls and composed his message securely without fear of disturbance. He took his time. Maria told him in a phone call that Barney Eustace had gone to New York the previous evening, as Abel had requested, and after she had spent a nervy few hours, had reported success. She would be waiting for Abel’s full account of the London developments, but it was his show and he had as much time as he needed.

So he laid it out in careful paragraphs that said enough but not too much – his confidence that the proper connections were now being made, his brother’s place at the centre of the affair, and his belief that in a few hours all the pieces would be in place because of his private visit that morning. Before sending his message, he made two short phone calls, speaking to an old friend to postpone a dinner he’d arranged for the next evening. He then placed a brief call to Poughkeepsie, New York. He saw no reason to alter his careful text as a consequence, and off it went to Maria by the secure means provided by Wherry, leaving Abel tired but ready for the exertions of the day ahead.

‘Nightcap?’ said Wherry, with a beaker of scotch at the ready.

‘I will,’ said Abel. They toasted the morrow, knowing that the reckoning had come at last.

Tuesday

23

Flemyng slept, and dreamed of home. He was fishing on a boat tossed wildly on the loch, then running on the drove road so fast that he seemed to twist in a spiral across the eastern landscape. By contrast, at the same moment, he was watching the orrery move so slowly that it seemed as if the earth was refusing to spin. A kaleidoscope of colours from the woods and the hills sparkled and flashed in his eyes until he imagined himself blinking in pain. The house was bending to the wind, and the burn turned into a rushing river, spume rising from the rocks and water spreading across the land. Papers had been cast on the surface – files, letters, telegrams and torn pages – all swept along in a torrent until they disappeared in a whirlpool that seemed to draw him down. His eyes opened with a start, and he found himself in a sweat. He had been trembling, and took a few moments to find calm.

Did he wake or dream? He could see his mother in her studio, the muddle of easels turning it into an obstacle course of canvas and wood, her brushes scattered on the floor and her still-life arrangements giving the place the air of a deserted theatrical set. He watched her, big-boned and dark, long fingers working with the oils, her eyes alert for any change in the light.

As consciousness came, so memories crowded into his mind. He’d sometimes sit with her for an hour or more, and she’d speak of New England and the whole family that he knew from their summer laughs and adventures there, the rickety cabin on the lake that he remembered from the early days, why she had always loved the Atlantic breakers more than the silent woods, where she’d learned to paint, how she wanted the boys to share among themselves all her books and American things, and treasure them after she was gone. She’d read Lowell and Frost to him, and he still held them close.

She would stop painting for a few minutes, stand by the window, then come slowly back to the stool where she perched while she worked. Sometimes she’d sing quietly to herself, and Flemyng remembered days which he knew moved all three of her boys in different ways. Each kept his set of secrets, hidden as if they were locked away in jewelled boxes and placed in private corners of the house.

The light was coming, and he became aware of time. After a few minutes he was able to recall the shape of the day that was planned. His confidence had returned. Francesca breathed quietly alongside him, dead tired. He knew she was bearing the burden of his anxiety, and he promised himself that he would make amends. Quietly, he rose and prepared for the office.

He heard her ask softly if he was OK, then go back to sleep. He moved steadily through the house. Within fifteen minutes he was ready, his mind clear.

Sitting at his desk, he took a blank sheet of parliamentary notepaper, crested with the green portcullis. From outside, the dawn chorus was an accompaniment to his thoughts. He tried to write two lists of questions, one for himself and one for the meetings in Paul’s office.

He had wrestled in the night with the search for the last link, and it eluded him still. He pictured the pieces of paper lying in Paul’s office – the travelogues, the newspaper and magazine cuttings, the timings of the phone calls, the letter itself. They made different patterns in his head, one springing to the fore and then another. He thought of the piece of marble, which had helped him, and from his pocket he pulled Archie Chester’s card, placing it in front of him. Then for long minutes, he thought of his night-time phone conversation with an old friend to whom he had once thought he might never talk again.

For nearly half an hour, he tried to construct a list of questions on the notepaper. In the end, he had put a line through each of them, except one.