The noisier and more aggressive the newcomers became, the more certain Spanners was that it was time to move on. The sweetener for coming to Brighton had seemed a gift from heaven when the alternative was a revolving door back to C Wing, but with a £100 per day habit you didn’t need to be a mathematician to work out how long that windfall lasted.
Moving on was great in theory but, in practice, it could be a death sentence. He had been told to sit tight until he was called, so what choice did he have?
But this squat was a shithole. The landlords had kicked the community bookshop out when, surprise surprise, they couldn’t meet the 100% rent increase. However, they failed to appreciate how quickly the city’s burgeoning homeless would swarm and, with current squatting laws and zero interest from the police, there was nothing they could do about the takeover.
So, Beach Books had become the Dubai Airport of Brighton’s underclass; most rough sleepers transited through there at some stage. Spanners was here for the second time in a month and he’d already 99noticed the difference in clientele. It wasn’t that he was scared – he’d moved through enough prisons in recent months to know what arseholes some people could be – it’s just there seemed to be an entitlement in the lot that had arrived over the last few days, almost as if they were starting a coup.
Most of the time he sat in a corner near a long-obstructed fire exit and just watched. Rarely emerging from his prized possession – a blue and grey survival sleeping bag – he feigned sleep or stupor and took it all in.
The windows were all boarded up, but they’d made such a poor job of it that slivers of daylight still leaked through. Enough for him to be hypnotised by dancing wafts of crack-pipe smoke and the euphoria of those who seemed to be permanently puffing away.
Spanners swigged from his Tennent’s Extra beer can and wondered whether attracting the attention of that bull of a policeman and his gentler sidekick would be the end of him or his salvation. He’d never been a grass, not even before his night terrors and flashbacks turned him to drugs and crime, but he’d been foolish to get himself locked in the talons of those forking out the £500. He’d heard what had happened to those who’d even whispered that they might run.
Suddenly among the snoring and the rumble of chatter came a yell.
‘Fooking wake up mate. Stop pissing about,’ a voice he didn’t recognise shouted, with more panic than he’d heard from someone not demanding a fix. ‘Somebody help me over here. He’s not fooking breathing.’
Spanners’ army training kicked in and he sprung up, barged his way through the mêlée of brain-dead spectators and dropped to his knees beside the flaccid body.
The strings of vomit ran as much from his nose as his mouth. His Wedgwood-blue eyes were so glazed they’d put a master potter to shame and his Adidas sweatshirt, which might have once been grey, was caked in so many substances Spanners couldn’t work out what was fresh and what was there to stay.
‘How long’s he been like this?’ he demanded. No one answered. He 100became conscious of feet shuffling away. He grabbed the weasel who’d raised the alarm by the leg as he tried to follow suit. ‘Stay here and help me,’ he said and gave him a look which countenanced no debate. ‘Help me get him on his back.’
‘I ain’t doing no mouth to mouth.’
‘No one’s fucking asking you to. I just need to see if there’s any hope left.’
Spanners grappled for a pulse on both wrists and the man’s neck, bent his head by his mouth to hopefully capture a whisper of breath and then, in the absence of proper light or anything else that might help with more humane checks, he took out his pocket knife and dug the blade into the man’s cuticles.
Nothing.
Spanners went through the checks again. Still nothing. Christ, he looked familiar. He turned and looked at the weasel, whose face had also taken on the colour of death.
‘He’s gone mate. Who was he?’
‘Fooked if I know. I don’t know any fooker here.’
Spanners took a closer look but couldn’t place where he’d seen him before.
‘How did he get like this?’
‘I don’t know, one minute he scored off me, the next minute he’s like fooking gasping for breath.’
‘Where did you get it?’ said Spanners.
The weasel eyed him up with steel. ‘What’s with all the fooking questions, man?’
Spanners leapt to his feet and grabbed the man up by his throat, shoving him back to the wall, nearly stumbling over a prostrate couple who’d been too out of it to notice the panic ensuing beside their heads.
‘Because you’ve fucking killed him.’
‘You fooking Old Bill or summat?’
‘You’ll fucking wish I was if you don’t tell me.’ 101
Just then Spanners’ legs gave way and his neck jarred like a 240 volt current had been fired through it. He collapsed on a teenage girl in the process of sticking a needle into her crotch. ‘Get off me you fucking perv,’ she shouted. ‘Look what you’ve done to my gear.’
Thankfully he didn’t pass out but, as soon as he’d reorientated himself, he was hauled to his feet and dragged backwards through a door to what must have been an old stockroom. He was thrown back to the floor and when he could focus, two steroidal men in surprisingly clean black sweatshirts and cargo trousers were glaring at him, one ratcheting out a polycarbonate baton.
‘Get that fucker out of here,’ one shouted back towards where the body lay.
‘Meanwhile, we need to have a little chat about who the fuck you are,’ said the other.
The two stepped forward, and Spanners curled up like a foetus in the vain hope of protecting his vital organs from the onslaught that followed.
Sir Ben had lost count of how many of his peers had badgered him to get a full-time driver. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it, it was just that his working-class roots made him regard such luxuries as bourgeois peacocking. In any case, despite the fact he could work in the car if someone else were behind the wheel, he enjoyed the headspace driving himself gave him. And some of his calls were not for a chauffeur’s ears.
However, he drew the line at battling the capital’s traffic so opted for the lesser evil of the Brighton to London train, despite punctuality being an optional extra. As it pulled into Victoria Station, just thirteen minutes late, he gathered up his coat and shoulder bag. He squeezed past the student who’d spent the journey bunking in first class from Three Bridges, invading his personal space and tapping the table vaguely in time with the tinny beat leaking from his AirPods.
If only there had been a ticket inspection.
Once through the barriers, Sir Ben opted to walk the short distance to 102the Busby Club in Pall Mall. Trains were one thing, but the Tube? Never.
Striding down Buckingham Palace Road, he wondered how peaceful these streets must have been in the 1800s when the Palace became the monarch’s official residence. No swarms of buses, impatient white van drivers or darting Deliveroo riders, just genteel horses pulling gentry-filled carts. But, then again, the manure must have brought its own challenges.
In less than fifteen minutes he was climbing the steps to the Busby and didn’t have to break stride as the door was invisibly pulled open.
‘Afternoon, Angus.’
‘Afternoon, Sir Ben, I trust you’re well.’ The doorman’s clipped Highland brogue was both respectful and authoritative. There were rumours that he’d led an SAS advance party onto the Falkland Islands following the 1982 Argentinian invasion. Sir Ben had never asked him, and if it was true, he knew Angus would never tell. ‘Mr Baker is already here. Your usual booth.’
‘Thank you.’ Sir Ben slipped him a £10 note, for which he received the shallowest nod of thanks. He swept through the hallway, watched by the distinguished past members’ portraits adorning the imposing walls. The maître d’ mumbled ‘good day’ as Sir Ben walked through the door at the end, turning sharply left, smiling at the Brighton MP and policing minister fidgeting at the secluded table.
‘So sorry to keep you waiting, Edward,’ said Sir Ben with no trace of contrition.
‘Not at all, although I do have to be back in the House for a vote at 2.30 p.m.’
Sir Ben glanced at his watch. ‘Plenty of time.’ If he’d had his way, he would have much preferred to meet the Home Secretary herself; she would certainly have made time for him, had done ever since he’d dropped her backstory into a conversation. Unsurprisingly, she’d been desperate to keep that out of the headlines. But meeting the grown-ups was tricky in terms of both what he needed to discuss and distancing himself when they fell off their perch, which they always did. 103
Baker, with his constituency role, ministerial appointment and the fact he was the mentor of Sussex’s Police and Crime Commissioner, was an acceptable substitute.
Both men picked up the menu, Edward Baker reading it closer than his host.
‘I’m having the lobster bisque and the beef. What about you?’ said Sir Ben.
‘Oh, I’ll have the same and a sparkling water.’
‘Nonsense. We’ll share a bottle of claret.’ He glanced at a white-tied waiter, who scurried over. Rattling off their order, once the flunky had stepped away, he cut to the chase.
‘Now, Edward, we have a few problems in the city as you well know, and we’d really appreciate some support from the centre.’
‘Yes, the chief constable briefed me on the shooting. Is it true it was an undercover officer? The Home Secretary has been asking but even she seems to have been stonewalled.’
‘I have no idea I’m afraid. Anyway, as I was saying, you’ll be well aware of the irritating voices in Brighton naively spouting that reducing the demand for certain substances might improve the fabric of the city. Unfortunately these ideas seem to be developing some traction and, were it to happen, I don’t need to tell you how many very influential people might feel the pinch.’
‘I see.’ Baker might have been slightly moist behind the ears but Sir Ben could tell from his reaction that his point had hit home.
‘Now, we are doing what we can on the ground but some additional persuasion at, shall we say, a more strategic level would be appreciated.’
‘What did you have in mind?’
Sir Ben waited while the wine was poured and tasted, and the glasses filled.
‘I know you have to balance your local and national roles – but how right is it, for example, for the police to have such ready access to goods and services others might struggle to procure?’ 104
‘Such as?’
‘Nothing that will completely cripple them, but I was thinking fuel, utilities, the web. Maybe private contracts for, say, custody, forensics, maintenance, estates. Perhaps if they felt a squeeze on their infrastructure they might be more inclined to focus in on their core responsibilities rather than these vanity projects which, in the long run, would create significant difficulties and embarrassment all round.’
Baker hadn’t touched his wine. ‘I’m not sure how we’d even go about that. It’s really not that simple.’
Sir Ben took a sip of claret and leant in. ‘Of course it’s not, but wouldn’t a father do anything to protect his children?’
Baker’s expression had taken on an air of shock and puzzlement. ‘What do you mean?’
‘How’s young James getting on at Cambridge? First year, isn’t he?’
‘Er, yes?’
‘Well he’s certainly fitted into the Tory-boy stereotype quicker than most.’
‘Listen. We are both busy men so, unless you’ve got something to say, let’s finish our lunch and go about our days.’
Sir Ben reached into his inside pocket, opened his phone and navigated to his photos. ‘Some nice snaps for the family album.’ He handed the phone to Baker and watched his expression change as he swiped through the images. Each showed young James Baker dressed in a Nazi uniform, clearly wasted on drink or drugs. A couple more photos confirmed it was the latter, as in them he was crouched over a black girl held down by four unseen people, snorting a powder through a £50 note off her naked breasts. Just enough of her face was in shot to suggest she was far from a willing participant. The final crystal-clear picture of him with three others giving a ‘Heil Hitler’ salute removed any doubt as to his identity.
‘You must be so proud,’ said Sir Ben.
‘Where did you get these?’
Ben tapped the side of his nose. 105
Baker’s eyes flared and he scoured the vicinity in case any other diners had glimpsed the screen. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’ll speak to him, I promise, but please don’t do anything.’
‘No. You will not speak to him. He seems to be having fun, so why spoil it? In any case I might need some more like these and if my source is compromised or he moderates his behaviour, where would that leave me?’ He leant in. ‘If I get a whisper you’ve told him, these will be on every news site, in every paper. Am I making myself clear?’
The minister blanched. ‘Of course, of course. I’ll see what I can do, but you appreciate I’ll have to speak to other departments. What you’re asking is not all in the Home Office’s gift.’
‘I’m sure you’re right and if you’re concerned about ministerial approval, don’t be. All your lot and the majority of those elsewhere, especially the Department of Health, have already been persuaded in a similar way to be helpful, if I ever need them to be. Like now.’ He held the silence and his glare for a good five seconds. It was Baker who broke it.
‘Yes, of course. But please keep James out of it.’
‘That’s up to you, Mr Baker.’
The minister stood up, nearly toppling a glass in the process. ‘I understand. I’ve just remembered an urgent meeting back at Marsham Street. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to leave.’ He grabbed his briefcase and dashed for the door.