Just three people were working in the Downing Street communications centre when the prime minister, John Temple, slipped in and sat down to watch a TV permanently tuned to a news channel. The lights had been turned off at that end of the room as part of the energy-saving fervour that periodically swept the heart of government and Temple remained in the shadows. He was in evening dress, having recently left a private dinner at the embassy for the American secretary of state, but even after a long day he looked his usual dapper and contained self. One of the garden girls – the secretaries that run the prime minister’s office – had pursued him into the communications department with a folder and now hovered about ten feet away wondering if she should disturb him. It was her presence that attracted Philip Cannon, the director of communications, who stirred from his screen, stood up and stretched, then moved slowly towards the prime minister and gave a cough by way of announcement.
Temple looked up. ‘Ah, Sarah, what have I forgotten to do?’ That was the prime minister all over – blaming himself rather than the people who worked for him. He turned on a desk light and took the folder with a smile that involved squeezing his eyes shut and nodding. She pointed to a passage in the foreign secretary’s statement on the Middle East. Temple read it with the warmth still lingering in his expression then handed it to her. She beamed back at him and almost bobbed a curtsy. Temple’s manners, his inexhaustible consideration whatever the pressures of office, were such a contrast to his recent predecessors: one addicted to a dangerous informality where no one was sure what decisions had been taken until they read it in the next day’s papers; another given to sulks and rages and epic rudeness, in one famous instance turfing a young woman from her chair so he could use her screen.
Cannon nodded to her as she left and moved to the prime minister’s side. ‘Is there anything that particularly interests you?’ he asked, turning up the volume of the TV a little.
The prime minister shook his head. ‘Just thought I’d look in. How’s it going, Philip?’ Cannon didn’t answer because Temple’s attention had moved to the bulletin and a reporter who addressed the camera while trying to control her hair in the wind. ‘A coroner’s court in the picturesque market town of High Castle on the English-Welsh border was this morning shown dramatic footage of the moment a former senior civil servant was killed in an explosion in Cartagena, Colombia.
‘David Eyam, once acting head of the Joint Intelligence Committee and confidante of the prime minister, was holidaying in the Colombian port where there has been a long-running campaign by the drug cartels against union power and the political establishment. Mr Eyam, who was forty-three years of age and single, was killed instantly by the blast. After it was discovered that Mr Eyam was a likely victim, the prime minister’s spokesman issued a statement saying that all those who worked with Mr Eyam were shocked and saddened by his death. Although he left Downing Street two years ago, he was still remembered fondly by the prime minister’s staff for his acuteness and originality of mind. He had made a great contribution to John Temple’s administration, particularly, it is understood, at the prime minister’s side during international negotiations. The coroner, Roy Clarke, paid tribute to Mr Eyam’s exceptional qualities and recorded a verdict of unlawful killing by persons unknown.’
They watched in silence as the film of the explosion was run. When it was over Temple sucked air through his teeth and shook his head. ‘Can you get that back for me?’
‘What? You want the explosion again?’ asked Cannon.
‘No, just the report, not the explosion.’
Cannon selected instant replay from a menu on the right of the screen. The woman began her report again. Halfway through Temple jerked forward. ‘Stop it now!’ The frame froze with the woman’s hand reaching up again to her hair. ‘No, go back a little.’ The prime minister peered at the screen. Cannon did likewise.
‘What is it?’
‘Peter Kilmartin is there on the court steps! What’s he doing at the inquest?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Cannon. ‘You want me to have it copied?’
‘No, that’s fine,’ he replied and leaned over to write on a pad that was on the desk. ‘What about the funeral?’ He tore the page out and folded it in four.
‘It’s next week. The home secretary will represent you. He knew Eyam well and I gather he may be asked to give an address – a stepmother is organising things.’
‘We should be there.’ One of the famous prime ministerial pauses ensued. His index finger rubbed the unusually deep philtrum, the indentation above his lip. ‘Seen the early editions?’ he said eventually. ‘Any adverse coverage on the web?’
‘They’re taking it at face value. There’s no hint of anything sinister, apart from the barbarous act. The film is sensational – it speaks for itself.’
‘Good . . . yes . . . that’s good . . . we would not want it said that . . .’
‘That there was something untoward?’ offered Cannon. ‘No. There’s nothing like that.’
‘Yes, well, we’re not Russia – the British government doesn’t behave like that. We don’t have people dispatched.’
‘No. Quite. Actually the papers are full of news about some toxic red algae that has appeared in the reservoirs. That looks the most worrying of all the stories.’
‘Still, I’m interested in what he was doing in Cartagena.’
‘A holiday it seems.’
‘In Colombia? It doesn’t seem very likely. Eyam was a man for the opera houses of Europe, the great libraries and museums of the world. He failed us, but he did not lose his culture. I mean . . . Colombia?’
‘Yet he had a lot of obscure passions,’ said Cannon.
‘The point, Philip, is that it wasn’t known he was in Colombia and, given the difficulties surrounding his departure from government, it should have been known. A failure in the system perhaps, or were his plans intentionally obscured? Colombia is after all not a place associated with legitimate activity, is it? And David Eyam was, as I understand it, still regarded as a problem.’
Cannon kept quiet: he had no interest in things that were unlikely to reach the headlines. David Eyam was old news and had long ceased to be of any concern to him. His ejection from government had occurred without publicity and barely any fuss at Number Ten and in the necessary focus of Cannon’s professional life the film from Colombia was little more than a brief diversion from the algae problem. The next day a tide of fresh events would need to be finessed, burnished or buried to keep John Temple’s government afloat and credible as it moved towards an election. He looked down at his boss – the Everyman of British politics and his best asset in this endeavour – and thought that never was anyone more misconstrued by the public. Seemingly average in all things, formal and infuriatingly prosaic, Temple was one of the most enigmatic personalities that Cannon had ever encountered, a character opaque and inscrutable even, he suspected, unto itself.
Temple rose. ‘Yes, I think we will find out what Kilmartin was doing down in High Castle.’
He left the communications centre holding the piece of paper and headed towards his room, where in the evenings he would sit with a whisky, mulling over the day in the worn leather armchair that had moved with him from one ministry to the next as he climbed, unnoticed but inexorably, to the top job. Now he sat at the desk, thought for a few moments while staring at the uncurtained window, then picked up the phone.