This Honourable House (28 page)

‘Christine!’

But she had slammed the door behind her and they could hear muffled sobbing retreating up the corridor. Benedict picked up the ring and slipped it on his little finger. ‘She’ll return to her senses, you’ll see,’ he said defiantly.

‘Shouldn’t count on that,’ Lawrence muttered. ‘But she’s absolutely right on one thing, Benedict. Brazening it out is not an option. If you want to sue, you’ll have to do it from the peace and calm of the backbenches. Sword of truth, shield of justice and so on. If you don’t sue, you’re tacitly admitting that the spirit if not the substance of these stories is correct. In which case you’ve been grossly misleading the public and the party for ages. So resignation is what’s left.’

‘I do not understand,’ Benedict said slowly, woodenly. He had the air of a man at the barricades, wearily aware that the battle is lost but reluctant to abandon a defensive position. ‘Why should I have to resign when I haven’t done anything wrong, when I am one of the most popular figures in British politics, more so than the Prime Minister, when my record is exemplary and everyone speaks highly of me? Last week’s poll confirmed it. The future is bright. I am an honourable man. I’ve always done my best.’

‘An honourable man in an honourable place,’ Lawrence mocked. ‘Don’t talk daft. It’s all spin, all appearance. Precious little substance. Honour? What a barmy notion. Not in this House.’ He gestured at the ornate ceiling, at the carved wood fascia, the posters, the green library lamp that cast a pool of inadequate light on the leather-covered desk.

‘But why are you so convinced that I’ve got to go?’

‘Because you’re a fool,’ said Lawrence. ‘And this time you’ve been found out. Come on, I’ll help you draft your statement. There is one consolation.’

‘I don’t get it.’ Benedict had taken to rubbing his palms distractedly over his pate. His eyes had an empty glaze.

‘Tomorrow, you’ll be free of artificial obligations. You’ll be able to do whatever you want, with whoever you want. Say whatever you truly feel or believe. Get laid every night if you like, with somebody who suits you. No more sleight-of-hand, Benedict. A free man. Not a bad start to the rest of your life, is it?’

It was wonderful that the trains were running again. The last year had been a nightmare of broken rails, fatal accidents, go-slows, leaves on the line and cancelled services. It didn’t help either that the stations were dilapidated, that the information booths provided no information, and that the train companies seemed keener to dispute fractiously with one another instead of working together.

Frank sipped a cup of quite respectable coffee and spread the newspapers on the table before him. The British Rail breakfast, as it was still known, had settled comfortably in his stomach; he burped gently and tasted once more the poached eggs, bacon, sausage and black pudding mixed with croissants, buttered toast and marmalade. Hazel did not approve of such high cholesterol fare and refused to provide it at home. A man had to seize his chances.

His eye was distracted by the countryside whizzing past. Fields and copses, not much altered, he guessed, in half a century; sheep here, horses, a few cows grazing contentedly. A picture of peace and natural beauty. He found it hard to understand why farmers were forever bemoaning their lot. His own constituency was urban but he did not envy those parliamentary colleagues who were dragged regularly through the metaphorical mire by their local National Farmers’ Union. The farmers seemed convinced that somebody owed them a living. In any other business, a firm that made persistent losses would fold and its directors, albeit disgruntled, would find something else to do. Why couldn’t people in agriculture?

Because of lingering sentimentality, he supposed. Because it was assumed that the pretty rural view flashing past the window would vanish and be replaced by houses if farming subsidies ceased. But it was farming subsidies that had ripped up the hedges, spread pesticides and excess fertiliser to pollute the watercourses and built the ugliest sheds and farm buildings, and it was further subsidies that had paid farmers to clean up and restore the landscape. There were times, Frank felt, when the world had gone crackers; and that unwittingly, whenever he failed to protest in Cabinet, he was adding to the madness.

His attention reverted to the headlines. Poor Benedict Ashworth. Pilloried and made a laughing-stock, but then, these photographs were priceless. Frank allowed himself a deliberate stare and a smirk; he peered closer at the one showing the writhing legs, the naked butts of – was it one or the other? Ashworth had a toned, fit body and looked superb, far better than Frank would in such a pose. The companion Frank knew vaguely, had been at Benedict’s side in press conferences and the like. His cousin, the text said. Not that it mattered who he was. The relationship was close, that much was evident from the pictures; far too close, too intimate for it ever to be revealed in this fashion if the participants were to survive in politics.

Ashworth was on every front page including the broadsheets, standing with shocked face, statement in hand outside St Stephen’s Entrance to the Commons.
The Times
had three pages on him and his career. The television news had shown him emerging into a scrum of reporters and photographers, each vying to capture the most arrogant expression or body language; but Ashworth was distraught, as if it had not yet sunk in to him how relentlessly and absolutely he had been slaughtered.

It was a pity, Frank reckoned. Ashworth was a decent enough chap; had he been a member of Frank’s party, he would probably have been promoted quickly to the front bench. He was pleasant, charming, attractive. He had a beautiful wife –
had
had, it appeared, since the ubiquitous Christine was notable by her absence. In these dire moments the spouse was supposed to stand shoulder to shoulder with her man, to declare her undying love and faith in him. Support either existed or it didn’t. Mrs Ashworth’s silence was as eloquent as any words she might have uttered. Who was to say what had taken place behind closed doors? Who could point the finger of blame? The winner would be he, or she, who shouted loudest. In all likelihood her reaction, whatever it was, was currently being
solicited by the
Mail
or the
Express
, or even by the very newspaper that had shopped her husband, the
Globe
, with a great deal of money being offered.

Frank felt slightly sick. He knew exactly how it could be: Gail had made his life a misery after their own scandal, had deliberately sought additional publicity until he had wondered if she was seriously trying to drive him crazy. It was unclear, then as now, what precisely she hoped to gain. If she was aiming to persuade him to abandon Hazel and return to her, she was going about it in the worst possible way. Had she wanted to attract a new man, anyone sensible would have wondered if she was slightly unhinged, whether she could devote her attention to anything but herself and her resentments. She must have been paid, but Frank doubted that greed was her main motive. Gail was no moneygrubber.

That Inspector Stevens had spoken of her in the hospital with warmth and kindness. Indeed, to such an extent that Frank had begun to wonder. The police officer had acted almost suspicious of Frank, ludicrous though that was. It had taken a long chat to satisfy the man that Frank had had nothing whatever to do with Gail’s accident, or with whatever had befallen her before. Fortunately the injuries had proved superficial and she had been allowed home as soon as the stitches were removed. The memory of her bandaged head made Frank close his eyes in despair. That shouldn’t happen to anybody.

If, however, the official police reaction was to take Gail’s accusations on board, Frank was put at a big disadvantage. He wished her no harm. He wished, in fact, that she would vanish from his life. She had destroyed his serenity, had set out on purpose to destabilise his new marriage and to some degree she had succeeded. But it was not in him to damage another person, nor to set anything in motion with that end.

Frank pursed his lips and tried to put himself under the skin of the investigators. If Gail hadn’t done it herself – and she did not have the skill to wire up the computer, of that he was as convinced as Inspector Stevens – then who would? The most plausible theory was that someone was trying to get at Frank, through Gail, and had possibly misunderstood the relationship. It made sense: Frank was a prominent Cabinet minister. Anyone repeatedly in the news became a prime target for nutters. In that case the authorities were indeed searching for a needle in a haystack.

A more promising line of inquiry was his own previous career in law enforcement: somebody he had arrested, put away for a stretch, whose intention now was to seek revenge. But in that scenario, Frank reflected, he would have expected some claim of responsibility. There was no point in undertaking such a venture so obliquely without scaring the target, by issuing a threat via a news agency or radio programme, maybe, or at least writing a letter. Some rubbishy hate-mail had indeed been received at the department, but it was indistinguishable from the usual junk. It went straight into the ‘funny folder’ or, if it were especially evil or expressed racist sympathies, to the police unit who kept dippy people under surveillance. Experience showed that those who started by writing nasty sentiments heavily underlined in green ink to public figures occasionally progressed to attacking them in the street.

He was getting nowhere. He had promised to try to help and had come up with a few names, though he would have been amazed to discover that any of them had embarked on a sustained terror campaign. The only men he knew who were capable of that were his old mates from school, one or two of whom were, in police parlance, borderline psychopaths. By that Frank meant that they had resisted the civilising influence of home, school and society, and gone their own way oblivious of the needs and feelings of anyone else. Scouser and Vic the Villain were the most blatant examples. Vic had a record of violence, much of it carefully planned and executed. He was not a nice man, in anyone’s estimation.

Frank had said nothing about this to Stevens. The notion had only occurred to him after the interview, as he racked his brains to come up with anything useful. As far as Frank knew, Vic and his
pals were still ensconced in their Merseyside hideaways, too provincial to venture beyond the land of the Liverpool accent, too lazy to bother with any kind of hassle. It was hard to see a link between Gail’s miseries and that crowd of deadbeats. Other than himself, of course. It was like one of those association games in which spurious connections were made: horse, book, page, queen. The idea was preposterous.

But this weekend he had kept a few hours clear. He would go along to the Admiral Benbow down by the dock-side and ask around. He would be doing his duty, no more and no less. He hoped he would find nothing to report.

The pictures of Benedict Ashworth had found their way on to more than one noticeboard. At Cannon Street police station, relocated to the Embankment side of the new Portcullis parliamentary building, they were pinned up around two a.m. in the canteen, alongside the poster urging membership of the Police Federation and the mugshots of known criminals believed to be operating in the area. It was there that Inspector Stevens saw them later that morning, as he stirred sugar into his tea.

‘One more chap not to worry about,’ a sergeant commented. ‘Smashing pics, aren’t they? You’d think they’d learn.’

‘One born every minute,’ Stevens answered noncommittally.

‘They really believe they can get away with it,’ the sergeant continued. ‘Makes you wonder, when there’s so much to lose, why these geezers still take such risks.’

‘Feasting with panthers,’ Stevens answered.

‘Come again?’

‘Feasting with panthers. That’s what Oscar Wilde called it. Top people are risk-takers. They can’t help it, that’s their nature. When they’ve won everything and have everything to lose, that’s when they take the worst risks. And get caught.’

The sergeant blinked. ‘Oh, right. But most people’d be more careful, don’t you reckon?’

Stevens shrugged. ‘It’s like gamblers. They win a packet, they see it all lost on the turn of the dice. They don’t think they’ll ever come a cropper. But the odds are exactly the same.’

This was proving a mite too intellectual for the sergeant. ‘So what are you here for? This isn’t your usual beat.’

Stevens drank his tea and checked his watch. ‘Handing over a duty,’ he said. He rose, tugged down his uniform jacket and headed for the door.

On the stairs he wished he had been more friendly with the sergeant. Or more accurate. Ashworth and his friend had not believed they were taking risks at all. Whatever might have been going on in their minds, Stevens accepted their version of events. But they should have recognised what would go on in other more cynical minds the instant those coiled sweaty limbs were revealed to public gaze.

‘Ah, Stevens.’ Assistant Commissioner Moore was expansive in more ways than one. He had attended too many force dinners, had eaten too many bread-and-butter puddings, and it showed. He was fat – not grossly so, or comments would have been made about his fitness for the job. But as with the military, in a normal year more police officers were disabled by heart-attacks than killed on duty. The AC looked set to become such a statistic before too long. Stevens sucked in his own stomach, shook hands and took a seat.

‘I understand you want to be taken off a case?’

‘Yes, sir. The one involving Mrs Bridges. The wife – former wife – of the Secretary of State.’

‘Ah, yes.’ The AC consulted a file. ‘How is she? Better?’

‘Not too bad. The trouble is that nobody had taken her case on board, sir, not properly, until this last incident. But it was clear she couldn’t have done it herself. So I’m inclined to accept her version right from the start.’

‘In that case, why leave it?’

Stevens shuffled his feet. ‘It should be CID now, sir – it should have been from day one, and that’s my bad judgement. But the lady in question …’ His voice trailed off.

The AC waited. Stevens would not be the first officer to quit a case because he had got involved with a witness; it occurred frequently, not least because close proximity was readily replaced by intimacy. Too often a relationship was kept secret, and emerged in court when a case collapsed in disarray. Male and female officers were only human, as open to temptation as anyone else, a fact too readily ignored by their myriad imperfect critics.

‘I have become very fond of Mrs Bridges. She is a lonely and unhappy woman and it definitely is not her fault. I’m sure she has been treated very badly. I would like to be the person, or one of the people, to help her back on her feet. That means I face a conflict of interest. It is necessary for me either to bury my personal feelings, if I am to continue taking some responsibility for this file, or to stand aside. I choose to do the latter if I am permitted.’

‘She’s a lucky lady, Stevens. It’s about time you started skirt-lifting again.’ The AC chuckled, then halted as he saw the irritation on the inspector’s face. The chap was too prone to take offence, but he was a sound if somewhat unimaginative officer. And close to retirement. If permission were refused he might quit in a huff. That would not assist the drive to improve the force’s recruitment figures.

The AC made up his mind and rose with a broad smile. ‘Now you’ve explained yourself, I don’t see why not. Take a month off. You deserve a holiday.’

They shook hands on it; the AC found his bonhomie revived. Perhaps Stevens needed a word of manly advice. ‘Take her with you. Abroad. Why not?’

More rapidly than he had expected Stevens found himself outside in the corridor. An oppressive burden had been lifted from his shoulders: not guilt, since he had committed no misdemeanour, but fear of dereliction of duty, or the danger of it. The sense of relief surprised him, till he reflected that he had become virtually demob happy. It would not be long now before he would be on holiday every day, drawing his pension. He could start at once, discard the inevitable pressure of work, learn to enjoy himself again.

He found himself smiling, then laughing, then punching the air. He almost ran down the stairs, knocking over the sergeant and tipping the mug of tea intended for the AC over the navy uniform. Without waiting to apologise, he sped into the street and began to hunt around for the nearest travel agent.