‘So, what was your ace?’ Kate asked Turvey as they walked towards the Bristol, which had been impounded for forensic tests the night before and was now waiting in the street near the police station for collection.
The great man wheezed his irritation. ‘Let’s just make sure everything is in order with the car, shall we?’
‘Mr Turvey, I’m your client; I need to know.’
‘Sam Calvert is picking up the bill. That makes him my client, but I accept that you do have some rights in the matter.’
‘The bill’s not an issue. I’ll pay it. If you have any doubts I can call Sam now.’
His eyes were watering in the cold and his hands had acquired a purplish hue. ‘Miss Lockhart, I am going back to London,’ he said firmly. ‘It was a very early start.’
‘I may need this information to protect myself.’ Her mind was half on the tape in the car and wondering if they had found Eyam’s message; that and the vast discovery of the night before. There was now absolutely no doubt in her mind that Eyam was alive.
‘To protect yourself? No, this information won’t protect you. Indeed there’s every reason to suppose that it will have the opposite effect. And anyway, my dear, it must be checked and that is what my people will do when we get back to London.’ He stopped. ‘You should leave here. Let things cool down a bit. The reason I insisted the police bail did not specify that you stay at Mr Eyam’s residence was because it is unsafe. I was not being frivolous, Miss Lockhart.’
‘But this information may have a bearing on things that you are unaware of – implications that you can’t possibly know.’
‘I have no doubt about that. I sense a dark hinterland in this affair in which I do not wish to trespass. Still less do I want my firm to go to a place whence it may never return, Miss Lockhart. You should extricate yourself from these matters as soon as possible.’
They had reached the car. Turvey pulled off an emissions penalty notice stuck to the windscreen and gave it to her. ‘It seems you have not made the proper adaptations to this vehicle.’
She unlocked the door and placed the ticket on the passenger seat with her computer, which had also been seized by the police.
‘You’re right – there is much more to this than you understand.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Come on – trust me: one lawyer to another.’
Turvey banged the car door shut. ‘There is almost certainly a listening device in there now,’ he murmured. ‘You must be careful who you talk to while you are using it and guard against indiscretion in what you say on the phone.’ He began to make motions to the car and driver waiting a little distance off. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that they are targeting you for a reason. I urge you to leave for London as soon as you can.’
‘I’m going to collect my things and see Paul Spring and ask him to handle the sale. He was Hugh Russell’s partner.’ The offices of Russell Spring appeared in her mind. ‘I know what it is!’ she exclaimed. ‘It was something on the film, wasn’t it? The CCTV from Mortimer Street?’ He considered her and shook his head despairingly. ‘You or your team recognised one or both of the men,’ she continued. ‘You’ve got a name, haven’t you?’
‘A name that I do not as yet know: identification must be established beyond reasonable doubt.’
‘Then will you give me a copy of the film?’ she said.
‘This is not your property – it is the bank’s.’
‘Mr Turvey, I cannot tell you how important this is. I believe the men you’ve identified work for the government. Look, I have to have something to fight them with.’
‘“Give me the tools and I’ll finish the job.”’
‘What?’
‘That’s Churchill. Are you familiar with another quotation of his? “Courage is what it takes to listen.”’
‘I insist, Mr Turvey. I need that film.’
He opened his briefcase and gave her a DVD in an envelope. ‘Copyright belongs to the bank, of course.’
She took it with a broad smile. ‘I’ll credit them.’
‘Sam Calvert said you’d moved over here to work in the London office. He says he’s going to miss you in New York; he speaks highly of you.’
‘That was nice of him.’
‘Normally I might seek to lure you away from him, but I think you’re too hot to handle, Miss Lockhart.’ He smiled. ‘I hope that I have the pleasure again, but perhaps in less fraught circumstances.’ He offered her a great soft hand and nodded as though indulging a mischievous teenager.
‘And you will give me the name?’ she said.
‘We’ll see: the real question is whether the police made the same identification as my man did. I suspect they did because that would explain why they folded in there so quickly.’ He stooped and whispered. ‘But they don’t know we know. That’s my ace. So let’s keep it that way.’
He let go of her hand. ‘A bientôt d’avoir de tes nouvelles, as the French say, Miss Lockhart: I look forward to hearing your news.’
She got into the Bristol and started the engine. John Turvey gave a little royal flick of the hand and then moved with the purpose of a locomotive engine to the waiting car.
For much of the next twelve hours she slept. Nock insisted on bedding down for the night in the sitting room, having told her again that he had not moved The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor. She waved his protestations away and apologised for being grumpy and obsessive. The book didn’t matter, she said. Again she was aware that Nock would make a move if he knew how, or was bold enough. He looked at her with an odd, rather amateurish hunger and once laid his hand on hers but quickly withdrew it and looked away. Another time she might have allowed things to progress, but there was too much on her mind just now and Eyam’s tape, which she had retrieved from the car, had warned her about Nock. She left him downstairs with a duvet she had found in the airing cupboard.
Next morning he rose early and to her amazement baked a loaf of bread, which he left outside her room with butter, marmalade and coffee. He called out to her that he’d be back later to do some work.
Sitting cross-legged on the bed in Eyam’s bathrobe, she breakfasted with a new clarity. As the beneficiary of a faked death, she was now absolved of responsibility for Dove Cottage. And with that also lifted the weight of guilt about her failure as a friend, which seemed quite absurd to her now. Eyam had cold-bloodedly used her, but worse he had made a fool of her. Of all the people he knew he had chosen her to be his patsy, and that made her very angry indeed.
She put the tray aside and began to write with a fluent objectivity in a notepad that Eyam kept on his bedside table. She must assume firstly that Eyam’s cover was blown or at least that his story would not hold for very much longer, because the clues would be picked up by others. The call he made to her a week after his supposed death would probably have been revealed during an examination of her phone and its records while she was in police custody. Even though the message had been deleted, it probably existed somewhere in the phone company’s system and a record of the call from Colombia – or thereabouts – would remain. And once that had been discovered, they would go back into the inquest and the whole fraud would be exposed. That call was a problem because it would inevitably lead those investigating Eyam’s case to conclude she was involved, but there was very little she could do about that.
She must also assume that every call she made on her phone and all internet use would now be monitored. Moreover it would be a folly to believe that the people working with Halliday – the Special Branch officer who sat mute throughout her interviews – had not discovered and listened to the cassette when examining Eyam’s car. Yes, it might serve to show she hadn’t been involved from the start, but that would make no difference. Hugh Russell appeared to have been murdered merely on the suspicion that he had seen Eyam’s dossier.
As a lawyer she was in the habit of sharing her distillation of a case with colleagues – Ralph Betts and Ted Schultz, particularly – and she missed them now because, despite her reputation as a loner, the truth was that she functioned best in a group. So did Eyam, which was what made her think of the way he had planned this daring fraud and who else might be involved. Were all those people in the pub part of it? She thought not. But what about Tony Swift, who had organised the interview in Colombia, led the coroner by the nose through the film and arranged for the fraudulent matching of Eyam’s DNA? It had been a huge risk to send the remains back to Britain, where they might be examined again, but they were only tested for drugs and then Swift had made sure they were delivered to the coroner’s office before sending them on to the funeral director. Eyam and his collaborators had thought of everything, right down to the dressings worn by Detective Bautista in the film. She wondered how much he had accepted from Eyam; whether Swift was also being paid or if he was doing it all from conviction.
What mattered to her was that she was now free of any obligation to Eyam or his cause. If he had wanted to enlist her help he should have been straight with her instead of attempting a kind of entrapment. She certainly wanted to see Eyam again, if only to give him a piece of her mind, but it would have to be on her terms and she could not allow herself to be used any more. Her raging curiosity about Eyam’s plans must not get the better of her or give the impression that she was part of the conspiracy. She didn’t have much on her side except the DVD of the two men leaving the offices of Russell, Spring & Co. That was worth some leverage with the authorities, at least for the time being.
She put on jeans, and a pullover, an old suede jacket and Wellington boots she found by the back door, and set off into the woods behind the cottage with Kilmartin’s phone, which she had retrieved from the flowerpot. She considered the possibility that, like the tape cassette, it had been discovered and left in place for her to use, but instinct told her not.
The morning was bright and sweetened with the smell of new leaves and flowering willow. She walked a couple of miles through the woods that ran along the ridge above the valley and then dropped down on the other side to find a bank of violets, whose scent released sudden vivid memories of her childhood. Staring down at a clump of purple and white flowers, she called Kilmartin. Even if he was working for the other side, she could use him as a conduit to explain she had no part in Eyam’s disappearance or his crusade.
‘Are we still meeting?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I think that would be a good idea, but I’m not sure when. Maybe tomorrow; certainly Monday. I’m tied up at the moment.’
‘Tell me when and where and I’ll be there.’
‘In the country; I’ll come to you.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘We’ll arrange something. I’ll let you know.’
She waited a beat. ‘You do know, don’t you?’
There was a silence at the other end. At length he replied, ‘Yes, I believe I do. How long have you . . . ?
‘A day or so,’ she cut in.
‘The phone is encrypted – it’ll last a few days – until they know you’re using it.’
‘Still . . .’
‘Yes, you’re quite right. We’ll be in touch.’
She hung up and walked back to Dove Cottage where she used her own phone to call and thank her mother, who told her that she was coming to London to see her sometime over the next week. Kate held off committing herself but clearly there was no escaping the reunion. Her mother closed with, ‘Do ring Oliver Mermagen.’
This she did immediately, because Mermagen represented another line into the other side. He was in his car. ‘Is this a bad time?’ she asked.
‘No, it’s fine; actually I’m just on my way to Chequers.’
‘You move in high circles, Oliver,’ she said, wondering why the prime minister would want Mermagen at his country residence.
‘To tell the truth it’s a bit of a bore. I had something fixed for the day – a client of mine was taking me to Deauville. Still, it’s important that I’m there.’
‘My mother said you rang, but I imagine that any interest you had in my legal career has waned after my night in custody.’
‘Not in the least: I knew the police were being idiotic. These things happen – no blame attaches to you, Kate.’
‘Tell that to the newspapers.’
‘Our cross to bear in this country: they get worse as they get more desperate for sales. Look, I rang because Eden White wants to meet you for a longer session. He’s interested in acquiring your services.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That seems rather surprising.’
‘I’ll see him at Chequers and—’
‘At Chequers!’
‘Yes, he’ll be there and I’d like to be able to say that you’d be willing to have a chat with him next week, while he’s still in London. He leaves on Thursday.’
‘That sounds fine,’ she said.
‘Great news! I know he’ll be pleased.’
‘Oliver, do you mind me asking what you’re doing at Chequers?’
‘The election, Kate! Temple is taking soundings before making his decision when to go to the country. It’s one of the great advantages of a political system without fixed terms.’
‘For the man that calls the election, yes.’
‘A finely balanced judgement, as you say.’
She smiled at the vintage Mermagen return, which typically failed to acknowledge her point; a technique that always provided Mermagen with the account of the world that suited him best. ‘Then I’ll expect to hear from you,’ she said.
There was just one more communication with the world outside Dove Cottage that morning. A postman arrived, parked his van at the track and delivered a bundle of letters, bills and mail-shots held together by two red rubber bands. When she took it from him in the garden, he said: ‘Good to see the old place being used again. You will be wanting to look at the first one now – it’s special delivery.’
On top of the pile was a plain white envelope without a name or address.
‘The issue is this,’ said Temple, looking round the Great Hall at Chequers. ‘Should we wait for better signs in the economic indicators, or play our hand now?’
Philip Cannon surveyed the prime minister’s group of political intimates – the men and women he relied on to keep him in power. Each served a distinct purpose in Temple’s life, though this seemed to be rarely appreciated by the individual. He had scooped up and shed individuals over the last two decades, gradually refining the inner circle with a cold certainty that he would one day be holding court at the Elizabethan manor that had been left by Arthur Lee to the nation for the sole use of the prime minister. There were the stalwarts from the beginning of his political career like his constituency agent and chief whip; the admen, media strategists and pollsters; and the people from Number Ten, Temple’s chief of staff and head of strategy and his chief economic adviser, the head of his Policy Unit and Temple’s principal private secretary Dawn Gruppo. There was no overlap, no repetition and little love lost between them.
Set apart both physically and in status from this group, which had gathered on the sofas at the centre of the room, were Eden White, sitting by the great window that looked out on the remains of the Tudor courtyard, and the press baron Bryant Maclean, who had sunk into a chair underneath the portraits of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria in the corner of the room, and watched the proceedings with a look of rubbery, wrinkled impatience.
No one heard Temple’s opening remark because June, his second wife, a former weather girl and latterly television cook and author of the bestselling Discreet Charm, a study of modern etiquette, had allowed the business of welcoming the guests to spill into the meeting. She moved around the room, lightly touching people’s shoulders with the end of her splayed fingertips. Tall and athletically trim with a helmet of blonde hair and a particle-beam smile, she possessed a glamour that was both remote and neighbourly. As one of the junior press officers in Cannon’s department had observed, she was one of Temple’s key assets, because women wanted to be like her and men wanted to have her. Whatever they thought of Temple, they admired him for laying siege and winning the hand of his Teutonic beauty. And of course June Temple had totally erased the memory of poor Judith Temple in her dowdy suburb near Leeds, her problem children and her career in sociology.
‘Thank you so much, dear,’ Temple said, the parentheses spreading wider than usual to emphasise that the glow of a newly married couple had not dimmed. June clasped her hands in an expression of hospitable satisfaction and took herself off. ‘The election,’ he said, ‘is upon us.’
Cannon’s heart sank. Weekends at Chequers were like the bonding sessions for the BBC’s management he used to attend in hotels that always seemed to be near Watford. In fact this great square room with its chandelier, heavy table lamps and June’s flower arrangements very much reminded him of the lobby of one of the posher country hotels. At Chequers he was reduced to an inmate, at the beck and call of the prime minister, unable to take a walk when he wanted, go for a pint without permission, have a nap or flick a fly over some unsuspecting trout. But he stayed in the job and put up with Chequers because of a straightforward fascination with Temple, who was in many ways the weirdest human being he had ever encountered. And at the end of it all would be a damned good memoir, a pension and the speaking circuit, where he would reveal John Temple, the man who took time off from the affairs of state to watch a daytime TV chat show, who once went missing at a G20 summit and was found – by the US Secret Service – in a railway museum, who wanted nothing more than to turn Britain into a republic and replace the monarchy with a president, presumably with an eye to his own retirement.
He drained the lukewarm coffee and withdrew into himself. Everyone in the room would have their say and to a man and woman they would opt for an October election. It was the orthodoxy, the unchallenged product of group-think: you couldn’t find anyone in the media or political establishment who favoured an election now, although six months before the spring offensive had been all anyone talked about. Cannon knew that, the prime minister knew that, but still they had to sit there on a beautiful morning as the bloody economic adviser went through his predictions for lending activity and interest rates, food and oil prices, public spending, growth and employment in the second half of the year.
From his chair beside the arcaded minstrel’s gallery he gazed at his boss with objective wonder. Like Lloyd George, Churchill, Thatcher and Blair, John Temple had energy and endurance. Having spent most of the night up with the American secretary of state, he’d completed forty lengths of the indoor pool donated to Chequers during the Nixon presidency, read all his papers and made notes for a speech. He did not stop and he never looked down – or back, perhaps another characteristic shared with the big names that had spent their weekends on this Buckinghamshire estate.
Two hours elapsed. No drink, no food. Thank God for Bryant Maclean, who rose to leave, but said he was doing so knowing that the prime minister had got the answer he wanted: October was the only sensible choice.
‘I’m not persuaded of that,’ said Eden White from the window. ‘A spring election looks very doable.’ The voice was flat and curiously unimpressive. This was the answer Temple wanted. He needed to dive off the high board now, get it over with and settle into another term. Heads swung round. The two titans looked at each other across the room, grinning not with humour, but relish. Cannon remembered a poem by Ted Hughes about two wolves that meet in a forest – ‘Neither can make die the painful burning of the coal in its heart till the other’s body and the whole wood is its own.’
White was utterly still; his face was polished alabaster in the reflected light from the courtyard. ‘From both the security as well as economic points of view,’ he continued, ‘I believe it’s better to go now. Prime minister, you know the circumstances you have to deal with, the criticisms you will face. Things are already beginning to improve. After years of the slump, difficulties with lending, there are signs that the public is feeling a little safer economically, yet they are still afraid for their physical well-being – two powerful reasons to support the status quo.’
‘That’s not what my papers have been saying,’ growled Maclean. ‘The polls are bad; the country is beset by problems that never get any better. You’ve got riots; you’ve got rot – a total breakdown of society in some of the big cities. You’ve all read what the bloody liberal columnists are saying about the country’s malaise. Look, John, people are beginning to like you; they appreciate your calm and competence. It’s taken time for them to get to know you, but now they are daring to think you’re doing a good job. But you need more time to prove it.’ He turned, shrugged and slipped a hand inside his cashmere jacket to knead the back of his hip. ‘And don’t forget you still have the option to go to the country next year.’
‘That would be a death wish,’ said White.
‘Not half as dangerous as going now,’ returned Bryant, and then he looked back at Temple and grinned. ‘But hey, prime minister, it’s your picnic; you choose the ant hill.’
Was that a threat, or was Maclean disowning his power in the land? Everyone in the room knew that if Maclean were not onside the election would probably be lost, and if he defected to the Opposition with the full panoply of broadcast and print media plus the range of ‘independent’ attack dogs that he financed in the blogosphere, Temple would be crushed. But they also knew that Bryant Maclean faced scrutiny of his tax status as well as a monopoly inquiry if the Opposition won.
A couple of beats later – the famously unnerving Temple pause – the prime minister rose with an unreadable expression. ‘You’re right to say what you have, Bryant. I appreciate your candour and your wisdom. You know how much we all value your advice. It was really very good of you to come all this way.’ He took him by the elbow and steered him under the minstrel’s gallery. ‘Are sure you won’t stay for lunch?’
‘No, I gotta be going. Gotta talk to the Chinese.’ Then he called out as they disappeared from view. ‘Cheerio, Eden. See you soon I hope. My regards to your wife.’ The wife that Eden had unceremoniously ditched after she suffered a nervous breakdown several years before.
Cannon got up and followed. At that moment he was not so much dismayed as mystified by Temple bringing his two main supporters – both of whom lived abroad and so rarely saw each other – to come face to face and fall out. Now, whichever way he jumped he’d risk angering one of them. For a reason that remained totally obscure to Cannon, Temple seemed to have decided that would be Bryant Maclean.
They reached the entrance. Temple signalled for Cannon to stay back and walked Maclean over the lawn to his helicopter. They stopped short of it, about a hundred yards from the house. Temple was having the last word, gesturing and craning to look Maclean in the eye. Maclean stared at the ground, then at the trees and after a minute or so began shaking his head. This he did not stop until he reached the door held open for him by one of the helicopter crew.
Later, during the abysmal lunch of sandwiches in the Great Parlour conference room, the chief pollster used two screens to show the results of secret polling from the marginal constituencies, which – though few knew it – had been financed by Eden White. Because of the peculiarities of the British electoral system, the election would be decided by between 120,000 and 200,000 voters. The pollster team had names and addresses for that target group and every detail you could wish to know about their lives, from the brand of toothpaste they used to the number of times family members had visited hospital in the last four years. He knew the religion, the performance of the children at school, where they went on holiday, their commitment to the community – a particular obsession in these days of pro-social programmes for the responsible citizen. It was, he said, the most refined voter profiling in the history of elections: if you could get to these people – and there were ways of doing that which he wasn’t going to bore the prime minister with – he could guarantee a workable majority of twenty-five to thirty-five seats.
They rose at three p.m. and all except Eden White, who went off to his room, moved to the western end of the Long Gallery for coffee. Through the window decorated with coats of arms, June Temple could be glimpsed beyond the bare trees flying about on the tennis court with a female member of the security detail. Temple watched fondly. It was Cannon’s moment.
‘Am I going to have to calm Maclean’s people down?’ he asked. ‘We don’t want them jumping all over this in tomorrow’s papers. Maclean is a hack first of all and he’ll leak if you parted on bad terms.’
‘Yes, I imagined he would,’ said Temple without interest.
‘Then we are going to have some trouble if he believes you’re going to call a snap election.’
‘Yes,’ said Temple, ‘but we needed to prepare the country somehow, even though a spring election has always been on the cards. Might as well have Maclean do it.’
‘You don’t want those bastards going over to the other side. I can talk to a couple of political editors this afternoon.’
Temple put down his cup, spun the nearest of a pair of antique globes and gave an imperceptible nod of his head. ‘You look like you need a walk, Philip.’ He moved to the bookcases and opened a panel of shelves lined from top to bottom with dummy books. Behind it was an old linen-fold carved door, which he unlatched and closed behind them. Before the rest of the party knew what had happened they had vanished into a corridor of portraits. Cannon had seen the trick before and was amazed at the pleasure it still seemed to give Temple. ‘I’d like one of these in Number Ten – in the Cabinet Room preferably,’ he said.
They stopped by Robert Walker’s portrait of Oliver Cromwell in armour. ‘I need to get going on Maclean now,’ said Cannon. ‘If he’s really pissed off he will start running stuff on the web tonight.’
‘Yessss. I suppose he may be a little irritated because he doesn’t like being boxed in.’
‘How’s he boxed in? He is one of the most powerful men on earth. He doesn’t look boxed in to me.’
‘Put it this way – he’s now got all three major parties wanting to scrutinise his business empire in Britain.’
‘You threatened him with an inquiry – Jesus!’
‘I said it was on the political agenda and that being the case we obviously might have to respond to what was being said by the two Opposition parties. That was all. I didn’t threaten him.’
‘That was a threat, if you don’t mind me saying so,’ said Cannon. ‘And what can you possibly gain from it?’
Temple worked his jaw as though chewing on this. ‘Well, he knows that he hasn’t got time to run to the other side and anyway it is the one thing the Opposition parties agree upon, so they are unlikely to go back on their word to gain his support at this stage. There’s nowhere for him to go.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘I am. If all three parties are threatening him it will affect his share price and Bryant cares a lot more about that than politics – or when I choose to hold an election.’
‘Or losing to Eden White?’
‘That too.’ He looked up at the picture of Cromwell. ‘The Great Lord Protector – an odd title to choose, don’t you think? Prime minister, first minister, president – none of these occurred to him. Yet I see what he meant. That is exactly what you feel leading the country: an acute desire to protect the people. I admire Cromwell more than most of the men who have occupied this house, you know.’
‘Really?’ said Cannon. ‘Standing there in that armour and sash like the Black Prince, he looks more royal than the king that the Parliamentarians beheaded.’
‘The armour is symbolic, Philip. They’d given up wearing full armour in battle by that time because of firearms. It’s a symbol of his readiness to defend and protect the Commonwealth.’
Ten minutes later they were striding with three protection officers up the hill to Cymbeline’s Castle, an ancient earthwork not far from Chequers. From the summit there was a good view of the local village and the parish church, but no sooner had they got there than Temple set off southwards across the rolling grassland.
Cannon hurried to catch him up. ‘Will you tell me exactly when you are going to call the election?’
‘Certainly Philip – on Tuesday March 26th. The election will be held a month later on April 24th. That will give us about four and a half weeks of campaigning.’
‘Then I’ll go back to London tonight, if you don’t mind. There’s going to be a lot to do.’
‘Not quite yet, if you don’t mind,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ve got one or two more meetings and I want to show you something over there.’
A few hundred yards on they reached two large, round tanks, one covered and the other open to the air – the water supply for Chequers. Around the open tank several men in protective gear were sampling the water. A Range Rover was parked nearby, from which appeared Harry Tombs, the prime minister’s de facto personal photographer, who was always on hand at Chequers. Temple started putting on one of the suits worn by the men and then made his way to the edge of the open reservoir.
‘When President Nixon visited Edward Heath in the seventies,’ he said, peering into the water, ‘the Secret Service tested the water supply. They were right. Did you know that as of this morning, we’ve got six more reservoirs affected by TRA?’
‘Yes, I read that.’
‘That’s ten in all – and they have only just begun checking. We may have a very large problem on our hands. So we’ll get some pictures taken and you can distribute them this evening.’
‘Is that wise?’ asked Cannon out of earshot of the others. ‘It looks like you’re stoking a crisis and that may not be the wisest thing to do with an election in five or six weeks’ time. And this tank hasn’t got a trace of red algae – or has it?’
‘No, but you’re missing the point. This will show that I’m taking the crisis seriously. We all have to.’ He lowered a plastic visor from the safety helmet. ‘Remember Cromwell’s armour. This is symbolic, Philip, symbolic of my protective role.’