The Madness of July (6 page)

She brushed herself down. ‘Let’s go.’

Flemyng said, ‘Has anyone been in touch in the last hour or so?’

‘Jonathan Ruskin’s office wants you. Personal. That’s it.’ She pointed to his phone and went to the door. ‘Two minutes. Then it’s Paul. Are you going to ring Ruskin?’

Flemyng moved to his desk. ‘Not now. One family thing. I’ll be quick.’

Soon, they were walking together down the stairs and across the courtyard into Whitehall. Within four minutes they arrived at Paul Jenner’s door, having passed from the street without being stopped, only giving a nod towards the glass box at the end of the corridor. A sleepy guard behind a whirring fan waved them through.

Inside the cabinet secretary’s lair, high summer seemed to be at bay. The heavy curtains on the wide windows that opened towards the park were half closed, and someone had switched on a tall lamp that cast a pool of light in the corner under the Disraeli portrait. Paul’s desk, set at an angle so that visitors coming through the door didn’t meet him face-on, was an elegant defence against chaos. Flemyng could see three files of different colours lying closed, side by side, and not much more: a metronome that seemed marooned there, a few pens in a fish-shaped glass dish and a small bronze figurine keeping watch over the three phones, her arms meeting over the head. Paul was a balletomane. Otherwise, the desk was clear. Behind it was a bookcase that reached to the ceiling, each shelf neatly packed.

Paul himself was standing in the corner away from the window, and as he approached them he unfolded his arms as if he’d been practising a formal pose before they arrived. ‘So.’ He said nothing more as he helped to pull two chairs into position in front of his desk. ‘Let’s try to straighten this out.’

Paul was jacketless but still formal. He had more than ten years on Flemyng, but no one would have thought the gap so wide because Paul was in good shape, with a helmet of flecked grey-blond hair and a fresh complexion. He wore a pale blue shirt with faint stripes, his daily uniform, and a loosened cricket club tie. As he opened a file, Flemyng watched the tilt of his face, which was dominated by wide, light grey eyes. Long lashes gave them extra power. Everything else played second fiddle – the short nose, his full lips, the ears scrunched up as if someone had nibbled them. When he spoke it was in a classless voice devoid of any drawl, clipped and precise, like his grammar. He was hard to place, except as a man of decision.

‘We have a delicate problem here,’ he began.

‘Where?’ said Flemyng, familiar enough with the Jenner style to know that Paul would not think him frivolous.

‘Well may you ask. In a bloody cupboard somewhere in the bowels of our beloved parliament.’

Flemyng shifted in his chair, head forward.

‘As awkward a place as you could imagine for this kind of business,’ Paul continued, as if he had been expecting just such an event to come his way some day. ‘I needn’t tell you what the House authorities are doing.’

‘Crapping themselves,’ said Flemyng quickly and quite softly, to make clear that he didn’t want to interrupt.

‘Indeed,’ said Paul. ‘The very few who know. I’m going to let you hear the story first hand.’ His grey eyes fixed on Flemyng, as if he might ask him to swear an oath first. ‘I tell you now that it has become more complicated than I would like. There have already been mistakes, and…’ – he produced a rare unpolished phrase – ‘… we’ve hardly started.’ Flemyng saw him glance at his watch, and felt a jolt: everything must have happened within the last hour or two. Paul was still standing, one hand resting on the edge of his desk.

‘Will.’ Flemyng could hear longing in Paul’s voice: he needed reassurance. ‘You’re here because your phone number has turned up in strange circumstances. We’ll come to that. But there’s more. Your boss, like mine’ – he looked back at his watch with a touch of theatricality – ‘is leaving the country as we speak. Mine
en route
to watch a military exercise in the northern seas – and to be watched in turn by our Russian friends, naturally – and yours on a quieter African swing for lots of handshakes and not much else. That’s his lot. Then both to Paris for the signing on Tuesday. Good news. When prime ministers and foreign secretaries are away, we’re a little more free, as you well know. We can operate in our own way.’

‘You might even say we were alone,’ Flemyng said. In an enterprise that they both knew might involve deceit.

‘You’ll gather,’ Paul was continuing, ‘that I have already started to play this one in a rather unorthodox manner. I may regret that. History tells me I almost certainly will, but there we are. I’ve set a course. Some of it, I’m sorry to say, has been set for me. I’m going to produce for you the nearest thing we have to a witness. Gwilym is the best we can do.’ He lifted the phone on his desk.

Gwilym. Red-striped shirt askew at both ends, with the collar splayed wide, leaving his black tie to hang down like an afterthought, he stumbled through the door. He was what he appeared: a blue blood who pulsed with confidence and bonhomie, a kenspeckle presence in parliament and government, drinking with backbenchers one minute and secretaries of state the next, for ever appearing around corners. He carried the misleading label of private secretary to the government chief whip, true as far as it went but catching none of his significance. Half manipulator and half honest broker, oiling the wheels, he was family solicitor to parliamentarians who had to be extricated from an affair or a plot that had backfired; did the deals that had to be done across the floor, behind the arras. Got the government’s business done. Along the way, he saved marriages and broke them, gave a career his blessing or prepared it for the end. Knew every corner of the political landscape, and all the darker secrets that moved events.

A daily cry went up, ‘Send for Gwilym!’ – it was rare to use his second name, which was Crombie – and he was there, often before the message was sent, having a nose for trouble and a genius for never being far away. He was ready with a hand for any shoulder, a confidence to offer in exchange for a confession of weakness or terror. Treasured and feared, he lurked, and almost always smiled.

Flemyng had seen him the previous evening, doing his rounds. They’d exchanged a cheery word about parliamentary business for the last few days before the coming summer recess. ‘Harry Sorley’s education bill is a mess,’ Gwilym had said. ‘You saw it coming, which is more than he did. Well, I’ve got it in hand. He’s going to have to swallow his medicine. Chaos otherwise. Do help, won’t you? Speak to him as a friend. You have a way at these moments. We don’t want the rising of the House postponed, and trouble.’ Unthinkable, with the summer sun so high.

But the Gwilym in front of him now was a different man. His face was blotchy, his straw-blond hair matted in violent spikes, cheerfulness transformed into a visible nervousness that had him clutching the top of his trousers with one hand and waving the other like a flag of distress. Flemyng was stirred. There was a hint of terror in the room. Paul seized the moment.

‘Will, I know how good you are at this kind of stuff.’ Flemyng gave no acknowledgement. ‘I need you on board.’ That he wasn’t yet in cabinet, hadn’t yet taken the oath that made brethren of the highest ministers, was neither here nor there, it seemed. Paul pressed on, ‘Who cares about seniority? An advantage, really. I know what you’ve done in the past, under the radar, before you got out.’ He did a half-turn of his head to look directly at Lucy, who stayed stock still. After a few moments, when he had received a slight nod of understanding from her, he turned back to Flemyng. ‘I do need you now. All the advice you can give. It’s your political brain I want, your feel for things. I can’t read them the same way.’

Flemyng’s response was largely for Lucy’s benefit. But he looked to Paul. ‘Do you trust me?’

‘Do you think you’d be here…?’ He rubbed his head. ‘Of course I do. I think I may be in great difficulty and there are people in this building who mustn’t know that. Not until I’ve got a grip of this. I don’t even know what I want you to find out. I need your understanding, that’s all.’

Flemyng interrupted. ‘You know what I’m saying. Really trust? On board to solve a problem, or to be watched so that you can make your judgement of me – if my phone number’s tied up in this somehow.’

He appeared not to have stiffened in the course of this awkward exchange. His legs spread out wider, he loosened his tie and across his face there was no sign of alarm. He seemed to draw in energy in preparation for springing to life and racing from the room. ‘I’m with you, of course. I’ll work with you, as best I can. But I know nothing.’

‘Fine,’ said Paul. ‘I do want you, from which it follows that I have trust.’

Flemyng muttered, ‘Are you sure? Which phone? Home…, office?’

‘Let’s hear from Gwilym,’ was Paul’s answer. He gave the signal to begin.

In the pause that preceded Gwilym’s account, the scene took on the appearance of a staged photograph, which Flemyng saw in sepia, drained of colour and everyone held in a pose by the moment. Gwilym had steadied himself in the comfortable armchair Paul had placed in the bay window, the strong light from behind him keeping his face dark, by contrast with the circle of brightness round his head from the sun. He’d dropped his jacket on the floor in a heap. Lucy was sitting upright with her hands folded over a closed notebook, the perfect servant. At the centre of the tableau was Paul, in command behind his wide desk, quite still, eyes turned towards the window, their grey untouched by the sun.

‘I’m afraid it was a bugger’s muddle from the start,’ said Gwilym.

‘It begins with Denbigh. You’ll know him, by sight anyway, one of the younger clerks in the House. Hair everywhere, beard and all the rest of it, child of the decade past, I suppose. Odd-looking chap, but conventional underneath, funnily enough. Sorry for rambling.

‘He was going about his business this morning, trundling through the shortcut that they use down from the Speaker’s office. I think myself that he was heading early to the strangers’ bar for a swift one, but that’s by the by.’ His voice was rising to its natural confident tenor. ‘Anyway, he noticed that the door to one of the store cupboards was open – a walk-in thing, full of boxes and spare bits and pieces. There’s a bust of Gladstone for some reason, old door handles, ghastly candelabra, you name it. They put the Baldwin portrait in there, the one that was slashed. Rolls of wallpaper, lanterns and brass rails dangling all over the place. Anyway, tried to pull the door shut. Natural thing to do. Couldn’t.’

He hadn’t lost his sense of timing, and waited for a moment.

‘It was jammed open by a dead man’s foot.’

Though Gwilym’s eyes were in shadow, Flemyng could see that he was looking up at his audience. Lucy’s concentration had kicked in. She was holding her hair behind her head, so that her broad mouth, usually turned up, was her main feature. Her face was expressionless. ‘Denbigh took a minute to realize what it was,’ Gwilym said. ‘Thought there might have been a statue or something that had fallen over. Silly, but fair enough when you think about it. You don’t expect corpses in his line of work.’ Paul showed no sign of impatience but allowed Gwilym time, to let him settle. ‘As he put it to me, the body was twisted and contorted, pale – you’d hardly expect anything else, would you? – and the eyes were open. Horrible, of course.’ He paused, an attempted mark of respect.

‘The man was so obviously dead that Denbigh realized he wouldn’t have to touch him, or speak to him. That was a relief, of course.’ Gwilym added, ‘I mean, he wasn’t still alive and in need of something. Rescue, kiss of life, I don’t know. He had another reason for relief – knowing them all, he knew that it wasn’t the body of a member. Better or worse if it had been? I don’t know.

‘Then Denbigh did something a bit silly.’

‘But understandable,’ Paul put in, to help.

He took in expectant glances from Flemyng and Lucy and raised a palm. Wait.

‘He did his best to conceal the body without disturbing things too much.’ So he had tried to move the foot, using his own, to allow the door to close. ‘It was bloody difficult,’ said Gwilym. ‘Not because it was stiff, but because it was floppy. Denbigh kept thinking it was going to come to life again. Ghastly, and he was a youngish man, too. Blondish curly hair, fit-looking if you know what I mean. Wearing jeans, believe it or not, in the House. Must have stuck out like a sore thumb. Anyway, no blood, not a drop. That was a relief. But an awful look on his face. Anyway, Denbigh got the foot, leg I suppose, back far enough and shut the door. There was a key. He locked it.’ Flemyng noticed that Paul was shaking his head slowly, for the first time.

The police officer who should have been on duty down a few stairs, round the corner near the strangers’ bar, had taken a walk on to the terrace, Gwilym said. It was a hot morning; no one around, wind-down time. ‘This is where he bent the rules a bit. Didn’t look for an officer, but came to me. We’d been together a few minutes before, so he knew I’d still be in the chief whip’s room a minute away.’

Paul made his first intervention, knowing the answer, but wanting it laid out. ‘And what did you do then?’

‘I’m afraid I made a mistake. Me too.’ Gwilym’s head was down again. ‘This was so odd that I didn’t want to leave it to ordinary policemen.’ Aware of the childish phrase, he hurried on. ‘I know the number for the Special Branch folk so I rang it. Panic, I suppose. Friend of mine helps me out there from time to time – you remember when we found the IRA boys on the kitchen staff – and it seemed their sort of thing. Chap called Osterley picked up the phone; an officer not known to me. I gave him what information I could.’ At this he stopped, and seemed to be about to offer an explanation, but Paul gestured to him to resume the core story. ‘He told me to get to the scene, wait with Denbigh and say nothing.’

‘You mean, not to tell the House authorities? Which you should have done first?’ Paul as head prefect, getting Gwilym to repeat what he already knew.

‘Exactly.’ He nodded miserably. ‘I pressed the alarm bell when I shouldn’t have. Tourist keels over. So what? But a body in a cupboard… I suppose that’s what did it; that and what we found at the scene.’ There was a moment’s silence, as if to give sympathy in his predicament.