This Honourable House (12 page)

‘That it’s not the biggest, of course,’ Melvyn answered, as if it were self-evident. Betts’s disbelieving snort drove him to further elaboration. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘they’ll check out my entertainments, my lunch expenses and the like. Line by fucking line, if they’re in the mood. And woe betide me if I claim petrol to bleedin’ Northumberland or wherever when I’m supposed to be in London, or when it’s my weekend off. Got my fingers burned more than once. But the phone bill? Nah. That’s a necessary tool of the trade. Can’t manage without it. Plus the mobile, which costs loads more.’

‘Lucky bugger,’ Betts muttered. ‘Our lines in the office are monitored automatically. And our e-mails, every single one. If I tried calling a premium number, even a lonely-hearts ad out of curiosity, I’d be hauled over the coals by close of business unless I could prove I’m writing an article about them.’

Melvyn brightened. ‘You could say you’re researching a piece about sex lines,’ he offered. ‘Then next time we can do it at your place, and you could claim it back.’

‘I’m a fucking political reporter, not the social services correspondent,’ said Betts sourly. ‘As for doing it again, it depends on whether I get any fun out of doing it this time. What’s the point of wittering on to a complete stranger? It isn’t proper sex.’

‘You can say what you want, see.’ Melvyn was punching the numbers with a podgy finger.
‘Anything. You won’t get your face slapped. Here we are.’ He pressed the speakerphone button.

A bored female voice filled the room with pure Estuary. ‘Lucinda ’ere. Hello. Who’m I talking to?’

She sounded as if she was chewing gum as well. ‘Melvyn,’ said Melvyn eagerly. Betts’s eyes widened and he shook his head, but too late. ‘An’ me best mate Jim. Two gorgeous beefy boys needing a cuddle. You a blonde or a brunette?’

‘I’m twenny-four years old, vital statistics firty-eight, twenny-two, firty-six, and I’m a
part-time
model. And blonde.’

‘Great. Whatcha wearing, Lucinda?’

‘Oooh. You naughty boys. We’ve got a right pair of jokers ’ere.’ The woman tried a throaty giggle and coughed. ‘Lemme see. I’m taking a proper dekko at meself, just for you boys. Where d’you want me to start? The top or the toes?’

‘The toes,’ Melvyn yelped. ‘You got bare feet? I love bare toes, I love to suck them,’ and he made slurping noises with his mouth. The hand that was not holding the phone had slid between his trouser legs.

‘Now, boys. I’m wearing black stockings wiv seams up the back, sheer and silky, and shiny black leather shoes wiv four-inch heels. When we get together I will lay you out on your back, Melvyn, an’ take your shirt off, right off, an’ I will grind them heels into your bare chest. D’you reckon you could stand it?’

Betts began to chortle and mimed falling backwards in his chair clutching his heart. ‘Yeah, well,’ said Melvyn, apparently disappointed, ‘I still prefer your feet naked. And the rest of you.’

‘Not yet, naughty boy. Don’t be in such a hurry,’ the voice purred. ‘First you have to take off my clothes. One by one.’

Betts, who had his mouth at the neck of the bottle as she spoke, spluttered the whisky over the carpet. Melvyn squared his shoulders as if the talker were in the room with them. ‘Yeah, I could buy that,’ he conceded shakily, ‘but only if you tell me that those baby toes of yours, when we get them pesky stockings off, have dinky little painted toenails.’

‘What colour would you like them painted?’ Lucinda asked.

‘Scarlet. I like a scarlet woman,’ Melvyn answered briskly.

‘You’re in luck,’ came the immediate reply. ‘Me favourite nail polish. On me fingernails too. They’re like talons, my fingernails. I like to scrape them down my lover’s back and leave brilliant red scars in his skin. Makes him scream for more. Now then. Do you know what you have to do next?’

‘Yeah!’ both men chirped.

‘Well, Melvyn, first you have to talk dirty. And while you do that, I’ll be running my hand up my thighs, to my stocking tops, until my fingers reach the suspenders. Black they are, black as midnight. You there, Melvyn? Jim? I can’t hear you.’

Melvyn’s arm was pressed tightly between his own thighs and his face was turning puce. ‘Oh, yes, go for it, oooh, lovely Lucinda, I can see you now, big curvy thighs and a currant bush at the top. You’re not wearing any knickers, you naughty girl, your cunt is all wet, I can see your fingernails now, oh, God, oh, God …’

He began to jerk about as the voice from the phone spoke loudly and with more authority. ‘That’s it, keep moving, I’ve undone the suspenders and I’m rolling the stockings down my legs and
off
my feet, and now I’m wriggling those toes – and, yes, Melvyn, you’re right, I’m not wearing any knickers, only a thong, black lace, I’m opening my legs, you can put your fingers there …’

Melvyn made a noise like a strangled chicken, fled for the bathroom and slammed the door. Betts, his eyes popping, sat mesmerised by the phone whence the woman’s voice was still issuing in steady accented rhythm punctuated by ‘Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!’

‘Oh, piss off, you silly cow,’ Betts said, and pressed the stop button.

A few moments later Melvyn emerged from the bathroom to the sound of a flushing toilet, wiping his hands on a towel. He gazed bewildered at the silent phone, then at Betts, examining his companion for signs of disturbance. ‘Not your cup of tea?’ he asked sadly. ‘Or maybe you simply weren’t legless enough. Too respectable by half, you are. Let’s finish off the bottle and then we can try again. Or we can get a takeaway if you prefer.’

She flung back the covers. The bedroom was too hot. That damn thermostat – the place was either freezing or roasting, there seemed to be no satisfactory average. But it was probably foolish to expect better from this cheap walk-up flat near Morpeth Terrace. It was within walking distance of the House, and had been the best she could afford in backbench days. The elderly couple overhead were the only neighbours she ever saw. Since her elevation there had been scant opportunity to find anything better, not least because of the intense demands of the job. Only those more senior in the Cabinet pecking order were offered stylish grace-and-favour residences in Admiralty Arch and the like. Lucky devils. They probably had air-conditioning and ideal temperature control in all seasons, courtesy of the long-suffering taxpayer.

A sliver of steel-grey light slid in under the blind. Diane gritted her teeth. She needed to talk to somebody. Dammit. She did not like sleeping alone. With her dressing gown half on half off, she trudged to the bathroom then returned and sat on the edge of the bed cradling the phone in her lap.

There was someone she would love to be able to phone. Someone whose current name she did not have, whose address and personal details were a mystery. She did not even know if he was still alive, or in which country he might be located. He might have died ages ago, or been injured in an accident, or suffered from a life-threatening disease, and she would not know; nobody would tell her. Not now, not ever. Even her mother did not have access to the information, and she herself, despite her significant position, had no means of obtaining it. The hole it left in her heart was as big as the universe, not least because it could never be acknowledged or filled by any action of hers.

But she knew how he had looked in the first few days, before he had been handed over. For his own good and, she had believed, for hers. The anguish had been so great that she swore to herself that never again would she risk such misery.
Never
. Yet in the dread dead of night what she had done would return to haunt her, and she would never be free.

It had been a tiring session. Peter rubbed his eyes and prayed that he might be lucky and have no more clients. The young man with the clipped accent and the employer in the House of Commons had unsettled him, and made him wonder whether he ought to take a break. Lots of Samaritans continued for years, but perhaps they were the most sanguine, or realistic. Try as he might, he often felt he wanted to get involved. The realisation that he could quite easily establish the identity of the young staffer – and that, moreover, something in him wanted to – undermined his sense of duty to the charity and his respect for its long-established methods. He would have to stop himself, he muttered sternly. He could not allow himself to show, even by a flicker of an eyelid, that he suspected a particular individual had had the misfortune to be hospitalised for mental illness, nor that the same young person was in danger of going over the top in his admiration for his boss. Given who the boss was, this was a danger not to be lightly dismissed.

He yawned and stretched, then folded his arms behind his head. His finger joints ached and he cracked them one by one, wincing at the advancing arthritis. He would go home, kiss his wife as she stirred in bed, have a shower then climb in beside her and sleep all morning. Later, since she had adjusted her working days to coincide with his, they would go to the supermarket and relish the simple ordinariness of their domestic lives. This was his bedrock, especially in comparison with the disorder and misery of those who felt driven to lift the phone –

It rang again, shrilly. He picked it up and gave the usual greeting.

The voice was male, soft, barely audible. ‘Hello? Can I talk to you for a few minutes?’

‘Of course, that’s what we’re here for.’

‘I have done something really terrible. Cruel and wicked. And I am being punished for it, God in heaven.’

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ Peter made a note of the call, the time, the opening statement. Even though no details could normally be passed on to the police, if a crime was about to be described he might discuss the issue with his organiser. Decisions like that were taken over his head.

‘I got married. To a beautiful, lovely woman. God help me.’

‘Ah. And why is that a problem?’

The man at the other end began to groan softly, as if unwilling to disturb someone who might be in earshot. He did not answer, but his faint whimpers were like those of a mortally wounded animal. Then he went quiet.

‘If it helps to explain, I’m listening. Take your time.’ There were myriad reasons why marriage to a beautiful woman might not bring the equanimity and love his own home conferred. It was not for him to make any suggestions or drop any hints.

It came at last, after an agonised silence. ‘Because I wonder if I’m gay. And if so then what I’ve done is truly unforgivable. And I’ve no idea how to cope with it. I thought I could manage, but I can’t cover it up any more and it’s driving me crazy. I suspect she’s guessed, too, which makes it worse. I’m fine during the day, but at night – oh, God …’

Suddenly there was a rustle, as if the phone had been brushed against a body or garment. Peter heard a female voice speaking in alarm: ‘Darling, it’s five-thirty in the morning. Who are you talking to? Benedict – are you okay?’ And then the phone went dead.

The tall man removed his spectacles and placed them carefully in their case. He rubbed his eyes then examined the fingers, as if the wisdom of the world had been stored in their swollen joints. He would be desperately glad to get home. He would not return to this desk for at least six months. Enough of charitable service. It was his turn for a break.

And Major-General Sellers, Serjeant-at-Arms at the House of Commons, rose, put on his mackintosh, belted it thoughtfully and went out into the cold bleak dawn. 

Gail stood helplessly on the pavement and gazed at her car. The blue Vauxhall Astra was hardly a magnificent motor. At the date of the divorce it had been sitting neglected in the garage for months, the battery flat, and would not start when she had tried to drive it away. This car, unlike Frank’s adored old Jaguar, had had no repairs or servicing for years; the main use to which Frank put it was for toddling round the constituency during election campaigns, the better to convince the punters that their Member was a man of the people. In fact, older voters preferred to see him in the bigger car, which advertised his authority; they would wave and flag him down, peer inside the back and touch the cream leather interior, full of curiosity. They felt included in, not excluded from, his fame and shared his taste for the trappings of success. Those youngsters who sneered and showed two fingers as the Jag swept majestically past were unlikely to vote anyway, for anyone.

So the Astra’s paintwork was dull, its rust and blemishes a testimony to lack of funds and care. But with some effort Gail had got it moving, and had laid claim to it beyond the final settlement. Frank had seemed puzzled that the insignificant vehicle could mean so much to her and had been quick to give in. Not that she needed a car daily, when she was spending most of the time indoors and was not employed, but a car was a status symbol. And it was precious: something she had demanded and won from her husband, in the darkest days after her world fell apart.

It was no surprise therefore that he should have tried to destroy it. The car, her scruffy little runaround, was the symbol of her independence. Frank resented that. He had treated her like dirt. He had wanted her to turn a blind eye to his infidelities, wanted her to accept his betrayal with That Woman. She had risen above such humiliation. She had divorced him and won a settlement. She had demanded and got the car. And now look what the monster had done to it.

The nearside tyres had been slashed, crudely, with a large knife. That would have been the work of a moment; the knife could have been hidden inside a sleeve and then, maybe with shreds of black rubber trailing, concealed again as the perpetrator walked on. He would whistle, under his breath maybe. This was a crime of revenge, and would make the criminal feel wonderful.

For once she did not feel like crying. The hysteria seemed to have abated. Instead rage welled up inside her and she kicked at the driver’s door, which made no impression on the metalwork: whoever had put that dent in the offside wing must have done it with far greater force. A man, obviously. Perhaps Frank himself had stopped here during the night and vented his frustration on her by wrecking the tyres, then, finding that act insufficiently satisfying, had booted the wing as well. She hoped the brute had hurt his foot. He deserved to.

The scratches down the side … She bent close, then straightened up. It was possible that those were not fresh; a film of rust surrounded the widest. Perhaps they should be omitted from her official complaint. Of course, leaving a car in any public car park, but especially in the grimmest holes in the constituency, was an invitation to hooligans. Whatever they could not have for themselves they were wont to destroy. That was exactly Frank’s own approach to their life together.

It stood to reason that he was responsible. Who else would want to trash the car? Hers, in particular, and none of the others in the street. Why on earth would anybody do such a thing?

A passer-by stopped. He was elderly and tidily dressed, a pensioner on his morning constitutional. At his inquiry Gail growled wordlessly, giving herself the luxury of sounding like a lioness at bay. Her own desire to return to a normal life, as expressed to the Samaritans, was again under threat. That must be Frank’s intention.

‘The pig,’ she addressed the passer-by. ‘The pig. I’ll get him for this, just see if I won’t.’

The pensioner hesitated. He made a noncommittal noise.

‘I’ll get him,’ Gail assured him. ‘Frank Bridges. He’ll rue the day, he will.’

The question to be resolved was, how? Nice Mr Clifford Maxwell? Or the press, direct? The
police? The memory of her two interviews with Inspector Stevens came flooding back. As the elderly man trotted off into the distance, she pondered. The police would have to be informed, but it was also a matter for the media. If the boys in blue chose to protect one of their own, it was her duty to expose him, and them.

Inspector Michael Stevens ran his fingers distractedly through his hair. Strands of dark brown came away interspersed with grey. He rubbed his moustache and wondered, not for the first time, if that trademark of the Met had not outlived its appeal; in the new century the chap most likely to be sporting a luxuriant lip growth was not one of Her Majesty’s boys in blue but a gay man, a Freddie Mercury type, advertising his testosterone. That was not the message he wanted to give.

He wished he had a wife to consult. There had been a Mrs Stevens, but she had left in a flurry of recrimination years before, taking their sons with her. He was too wrapped up in his work, she alleged, too engrossed in the details of street crime and burglary, too ambitious for promotion, to notice her unhappiness. Indignation at the unfairness of her accusation had swelled in him. A policeman’s job was never going to be nine-to-five with every weekend off: she must have realised that when she married him. But it had been an honourable profession in those days, its success central to the fabric of society, and should have secured her admiration.

His protests fell on deaf ears. She went, and he had found solace in the lonely times afterwards by concentrating on the tasks in hand. It was not till some time later when a casual girlfriend made exactly the same parting remark that it occurred to him these women might have a point. By then it was too late. He enjoyed his work, and relished being carried away body and soul into an investigation or inquiry. He loved the camaraderie, the sense of a team together with a single objective, the joshing good humour and the inbuilt satisfaction from an essential job well done. Perhaps he had a mildly obsessive nature, but police work was often like that.

The years had sapped his ambition even as his sons had grown up and distant from him. On days like this he wondered whether he had sacrificed too much, with too little to show for it except a scattering of Commissioner’s commendations and a golf handicap that did not bear boasting about.

‘I’m beginning to associate Mrs Gail Bridges with a bad day,’ he admitted ruefully to the sergeant. ‘I do wish I could be more sympathetic. What’s she on about now?’

‘Car’s been vandalised.’ The sergeant was brisk. ‘Says the tyres have been slashed and the bodywork dented. She’s brought some Polaroid photos to show us.’ He placed the collection on the desk and fanned them out.

Stevens frowned. ‘Bit calculating, that. Odd how she happened to have a Polaroid camera, plus some film, when she just happened to need them.’

‘It’s an insurance job, really,’ the sergeant said, in a neutral tone, ‘but of course she’s got to report it to us first.’

‘I do wish people wouldn’t do that. We’re not a validating authority. It makes the crime figures look terrible and wrecks the progress we’ve made towards our targets.’ Stevens allowed himself to sound testy.

‘Failure to reach targets may result in the service being penalised in subsequent years,’ the sergeant intoned. Both men knew the Home Office documents virtually by heart. It infuriated them that the forces which recorded crime with less assiduity than their own scored more highly in national league tables. And received both praise and extra funds that, by rights, were not their due. A crime that was not recorded did not exist; by definition all were unsolved, and subsequently unpursued. Nor were their snippets of information available, on record, to help in other inquiries. Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary had railed against the practice, had demanded accurate record-keeping, even if it was apparently to the detriment of a particular establishment; but had succeeded merely in drawing the problem to the thoughtful attention of senior managers in forces that had resisted the idea
up till now.

‘Damn.’ Stevens struck his fist on the desk. The model Porsche leaped an inch or two and he grabbed it before it could fall off and suffer more damage. ‘Do you know, I quite liked her. She’s been badly treated, there’s no doubt about that. That visit I paid to her flat, it was depressing, but apart from her completely unrealistic pursuit of her husband, underneath she seemed to be a nice woman.’

‘Ex-police officer’s wife,’ the sergeant said diplomatically.

‘What?’ Stevens was preoccupied, fiddling with the Polaroids, and did not notice the slight smirk on the sergeant’s face. At last he pushed away the pictures. ‘Well, let’s have a report on the details, especially the time, place, that sort of thing. I don’t suppose there’d be any witnesses. Send a uniformed constable round to check. See if she requires advice with the insurance. I’m conscious that she might be stuck without the car. We can give her the name of a good garage. Oh, and one more thing.’

‘Yes?’ The sergeant’s face had returned to gruff inscrutability.

‘Ask her if she’s managed to get her drains fixed. When I was there she was having problems. Everything getting on top of her a bit, I reckoned.’

‘Her drains?’

Stevens waved a hand helplessly. ‘If she can get her life sorted out, Ron, she might put herself back together. Then we might hear no more of this nonsense. Understand?’

‘Bloody ’ell.’ Frank Bridges spread out the midday newspaper on his desk and smoothed it flat with the palm of his hand. He hissed through his teeth.

‘The latest MORI poll merely confirms our own private polls, Secretary of State, and the trends shown in the NOP in the last couple of months.’ The young staffer hovered nervously. His name was Norman; his cheeks were smooth and shiny, his eyes prominent. He had a doctorate from the prestigious South Bank University and a pronounced ‘sarf Lunnun’ twang.

‘But our lead’s been halved,’ Frank said indignantly. ‘And see the headline: “
GOVERNMENT LEAD SLIDES, CRISIS MEETING IN DOWNING STREET
”.’ He reached for the daily diary. ‘Are we having a meeting? What time?’

‘No, sir, not you,’ said Norman. ‘That’s for the inner Cabinet and press officers only.’ His cheeks had turned pink.

‘It is, is it?’ Frank shoved away the diary. ‘So now we know who runs the country, don’t we? But not for much longer, if these polls are accurate.’

‘It’s not quite so bad,’ said Norman nervously. ‘True, our lead was twenty-nine points at its peak and is down to fifteen. But it’s worth remembering that every government benefits from
post-election
euphoria. We expected a surge up, and now we’ve got a surge back down.’

‘But we were bloody invincible!’ Frank roared, and slapped the newspaper with the back of his fingers. ‘The Boss has laid down the law. The Great Project means we have to be in office for a decade. If we start slipping in the polls, it’ll vanish. Melt like snow in our hands. Ashes to ashes. Then there’ll be no more meetings in Ten Downing Street for any of us. We’ll be out for a generation.’

The young staffer, who at some stage in his education had been taught by a lover of good English, winced at the plethora of mixed metaphors. ‘It isn’t so bad, honestly,’ he said hesitantly. ‘We have forty-eight per cent support. If you remember, we won the election on forty-five, so we’re still way ahead. The official opposition haven’t budged much above thirty per cent in any recent survey. We’re not going to lose. Barring a miracle.’

‘Miracle? For who? Barring a miracle, we could see these figures continue to crash, and back to the opposition benches we’ll go.’ Frank refused to be other than gloomy. ‘Opposition. Years in the wilderness. I tell you, Norman, I couldn’t face that again at my time of life. Ghastly, with those buggers sniggering at us with their pinstripe suits and self-satisfied smirks. And tell me, clever clogs,
if we’re losing out, and the other lot are static, where are the votes going?’

‘Mainly to the don’t-knows.’

‘Oh, terrific. The great unwashed army of the don’t-knows, don’t-cares and don’t-
bloody-votes
. The can’t-be-bothereds of this world. If that tribe begins to grow seriously, it can be God’s own job to budge them. Specially in constituencies like mine. In last year’s local elections, in the heartlands, we had turnouts of ten per cent. Horrible. And undemocratic. Too damned easy to let the other lot in, if they get keen.’

‘Or extremists,’ Norman murmured. His doctoral thesis had been on Militant, the left-wing conspiracy that had almost destroyed the Labour Party in the 1980s. The South Bank University, situated in Lambeth, had a mountain of authentic material. ‘People who merely use our banner to cloak their real intentions.’

‘Or one of the other lot,’ Frank ruminated. ‘If you take out the don’t-knows, is there anyone else with reason to smile?’

‘Oh, yes, the New Democrats. They’re doing fine, compared with the election. But even there the level’s slipped. When Benedict Ashworth got married he could do no wrong. That’s worn off too.’

‘Tiny span of attention, the punters, haven’t they?’ said Frank, in despair. He folded the newspaper angrily. ‘I blame Margaret Thatcher. She ruined this country, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.’

The staffer was about to comment soothingly that the antics of Mrs Thatcher had eventually resulted in her demise, and in the destruction of the electoral hopes of her party. Frank Bridges and his cronies had been the beneficiaries. But the Iron Lady was not a subject guaranteed to raise his master’s spirits. He thought better of it and changed tack. ‘I guess it’s action they want now, not words. Enough of targets and promises. They’re looking-for results. That’s how we’ll be judged.’

‘God help us,’ said Frank again, and threw the newspaper to the far side of the room.

The polls were being perused avidly and with varying degrees of delight and misery throughout the square mile of crowded streets in SW1 that is the political marrow of the nation. To Diane Clark they were not news. Her safe seat was crammed with voters dependent on public services, men and women whose inarticulacy and lack of funds relegated them to the end of every queue. The new government had awoken in them a latent yearning for inspirational leadership and had been the object of much awe and admiration, mostly overdone. Their hopes for rapid growth in those public services were soon dashed, for improvement required changes that would be resisted, inevitably, by recalcitrants within those organisations who stood to lose out. Rationing, queues, delays and waiting lists suited a surprising number of operators. The complaints of the disadvantaged were outweighed, for a long time, by the interests of the unions, boardroom and shareholders while the government stood aside.