Suddenly Mayday Avenue was filled with the sounds of chaos – the angry shriek of a car alarm as the flying door buried itself in the windscreen, the howling of terrified dogs, the grave-spinning screams of officers as they poured though the hole in Number 27. Then the sound of other doors being smashed in, followed by more screams.
It was over in seconds. Only two occupants and no resistance, which in the circumstances was scarcely surprising. It’s damned difficult to resist when you’re caught naked in bed with your arms and legs wrapped around each other.
The sounds and sights of that night were captured for posterity and profit by the cameras of Sky TV. They could see it all from their position at the far end of the road, shooting from the bedroom window of a house owned by a quick-witted Asian family who had demanded five hundred pounds cash-in-hand for the disruption. Had they known it they could have bargained for considerably more. The video images were dark and grainy, lit only by the street lamps and lacking the sunlit clarity of the footage from the Iranian Embassy siege, but it was an exclusive on a night when competing newsrooms would slit veins for half as much. Sky had it all. The dark shapes of police in Kevlar-coated body armour scurrying along the road, crouching for every inch of cover. The Land Rover reversing into position. The brief tug of war and its explosive aftermath. The sudden invasion of the house and, only minutes later, the faint image of two bodies being dragged through the remains of the front door and spreadeagled on the pavement outside. Even in the poor light it was possible to see that one was a woman. It was only when the man started struggling that anyone was able to tell that the two were still alive. A boot on the back of the neck rapidly put an end to the protest.
There are many ways for a man to be humiliated. Being caught in the wrong bed is, perhaps, reasonably common, being suspected as a terrorist considerably less so. But being dragged goose-bump naked into the street and left lying face down on the freezing pavement for many minutes is a humiliation afforded to few. Yet then to be raised, arms manacled behind the back, and presented to television audiences around the world, with your career, self-respect and manhood withered in the cold, is all but unique.
For Colonel Abel Gittings, OBE etc, these humiliations had come all rolled up together.
Goodfellowe heard the blast through ears deadened by alcohol. He was drunk and wallowing in it. Not entirely his fault. The diet had lowered his resistance to alcohol, and what little tolerance remained had been finished off by Elizabeth.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand. He wasn’t an insensitive, uncomprehending male. She had problems that weighed heavily on her humour and left her distracted, unable to concentrate on the little rituals of courtship. ‘It’s because I love you that I don’t have to pretend,’ she explained. That was good enough for Goodfellowe. If the magic of their moments together had waned, squeezed aside by her money problems, it would only be for a short while. One of those relationship things. Anyway, he’d been distracted, too, with COBRA and all. Power was a great aphrodisiac, but there was the other side of it which could also leave you knackered at the end of the day. No matter, soon it would all be over, they’d be back to normal, and then he would find that memorable moment when he would ask her to marry him and they could put it all behind them, in bed, like they used to. Hell, no rush.
So, late that evening after the final vote, he had dropped in at The Kremlin. He wanted – needed – to say hello. Cheer her up, if he could. Or was it to cheer himself up? Anyway, he arrived.
‘Missed you,’ he explained.
‘Me, too,’ she replied, and meant it. She squeezed him briefly but passionately, then sat him down at one of the tables and proceeded to fetch a very special bottle of Crimean champagne, from Massandra, which came with the crisp hint of gooseberries and apple blossom and was the colour of gently baked biscuit. The cork came out with an understated explosion of joy and he relished the moment, playing with the wine, pushing it around his mouth with his tongue before allowing it to trickle slowly down the back of his throat. ‘This is superb. Terrific. To what do I owe this pleasure? Guilt?’ A clumsy joke which deserved its fate of being ignored.
‘Celebration. I think I’ve found a new financial backer,’ she muttered softly.
‘That’s fantastic. Who?’ he responded with enthusiasm.
‘He’s called Ryman. An old friend.’
‘Wonderful!’ Then Goodfellowe paused, ransacking his store of recollections. ‘Ryman. An old boyfriend.’
‘You’ve got an excellent memory, Goodfellowe.’ She smiled for the first time that evening. It needed more practice, he thought, the first attempt was unconvincing.
‘Forgive my stupidity, but why would an old flame of yours want to lend you money?’
‘For old times’ sake, stupid.’ Her lips puckered, she was flirting, the old Elizabeth, teasing him, but the eyes still looked serious, bitter-sweet. ‘Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Tom. It’s the first good thing that’s happened in ages and I could really do without any menopausal male inadequacy right now.’
Was he jealous? Perhaps. But to him her words seemed an unnecessarily brutal attempt to put an end to that line of conversation.
She had mentioned the name only once before, during a long and deliciously alcoholic evening they had spent at a country hotel owned by a friend of Elizabeth where, in an elaborate game of foreplay, they had left their bedroom strewn with the confidences of their previous entanglements – although, to be fair, most of the confidences had been Elizabeth’s. He’d been married so long that his only entanglements in recent years had been with duvets. She’d used her past conquests to goad him, to inflame his male possessiveness to the point where he needed to invade and reclaim every inch of her. If she lived to be as old as Methuselah she was never going to forget the drapes of that particular four-poster. They had loved and laughed, then loved a lot more, and he had forgotten all those names and past indiscretions of hers that had scratched away at him – until now.
‘He lives in the South of France,’ she hurried on, as though aware that some further explanation was called for but keen to redirect it onto safer, foreign fields. ‘Bit of a playboy. Inherited squillions.’
‘And keen to help.’
She nodded and held his gaze.
‘So what happened between you two? Why didn’t it work out?’
‘As I said, he’s a playboy. I found him in bed with my best friend.’
‘Thought you didn’t do jealousy.’
‘I don’t. But I do a fine line in revenge. I put sugar in the fuel tank of his yacht on a night when they were sailing off for one of their little trysts. Left them stranded for hours. They had to be rescued by the coast guard, got lots of local publicity. Unfortunately, she had told her husband she was going to a cookery class.’
‘Ouch. And he forgave you after that?’
‘The boyfriend? Well, that’s all ancient history.’
Until now. Goodfellowe chided himself. He had to be grown up about this. ‘Well, if he’s willing to help, that would be …’ – he stretched for the word, almost stumbled – ‘helpful.’
‘It would be a loan. I’d have to let him have a share of the restaurant until I’d repaid it. But he wouldn’t interfere.’
‘A sort of –’ he was about to say ‘sleeping partner’ until something he was forced to recognize as menopausal male inadequacy gripped him savagely by the throat. ‘You’ve discussed this with him?’
‘Of course. We had dinner last week.’
The night of that little white lie, no doubt.
‘I’m hoping we can finalize it this weekend. It would be a great weight off my mind, Tom.’
‘Mine, too.’ Hell, he’d got to stop being such a wimp. This was great news. A new start for Elizabeth, a new start for them both. He squeezed her hand, leaned across the table and kissed her. Perhaps it was the table between them that prevented it from being the long and lingering expression of desire he had intended to show. ‘I’m so happy
for you. Well done.’
‘Thanks, darling. Means me playing hooky next weekend. He can’t come to London. I’ve got to meet him halfway.’
‘Where?’
‘Paris.’
At which point Goodfellowe had decided to get seriously drunk.
If modern Prime Ministers lead less decadent lives than some of their predecessors, it’s perhaps less to do with their virtues than with their diaries, which are crammed. Packed to the point of exhaustion. It leaves them little time to relax, still less time to think. Scarcely time to fit in a good game of cricket or a prayer meeting, let alone a torrid affair.
There is no privacy in Downing Street, even in the upstairs apartment, where the door swings open through day and night as messengers come to demand the attention of the nation’s overworked leader. Whatever it might have done for Lloyd George, home turf is no longer suitable for Prime Ministerial mischief. Booking into a hotel under the name of Mr and Mrs Smith is also unlikely to bring the privacy required, while popping round to her place for a quiet evening has its own desperate limitations when two cars crammed with bodyguards have to tag along. So modern Prime Ministers behave themselves, not so much because they are beyond temptation but rather because temptation is beyond their reach. Pity the same can’t be said of their Cabinet colleagues.
The nation’s leaders are prisoners of their diaries, and all too frequently in their memories the dates become scrambled and details blurred, yet there are some moments they remember with the clarity of finest Irish crystal. Moments such as escaping assassination. Declaring war. That first visit to kiss hands at Buckingham Palace. Viewing the videotapes of what the bishop got up to in the lift of the US Embassy during the Independence Day celebrations.
Jonathan Bendall had woken after only three hours’ sleep with the feeling that this would be one of those days he would remember without any need to refer back to his diary. He’d grown used to lack of sleep, to anxiety, to being disturbed by the thought that events were stretching beyond his control. But today things would be different. The breakthrough had come. It was just as he had said, they were bombers and there was blood on their hands. By a stroke of good fortune it was their own blood. Well, that’s what came of playing with fire – and messing with him.
He strode into COBRA with a sense of expectation. This was the beginning of the end for the Beakies. They’d been caught, quite literally, with their trousers down – he was still chuckling at the news pictures. He could see the headlines now. ‘Beaky’s Gone Bonkers!’ God was good. Truly a moment for the memoirs. He made a mental note to pursue his gentle enquiries about literary agents.
‘So, Commissioner, to business,’ Bendall began, taking his place at the central seat and opening his folder with an officious snap. He was anxious to get on with the matter, like a top spinning at full speed. ‘Let’s start with our little lovebird, shall we? What have you got for me?’
The capital’s chief policeman swallowed. ‘Very little I’m afraid.’
The top hummed aggressively. The atmosphere in the room seemed to grow several degrees cooler.
‘We’re still pursuing enquiries, Prime Minister, but to all intents he is no longer a suspect.’
‘But this man’s a soldier –’
‘Correct. A Colonel Abel Gittings.’
‘A bomber!’
‘A Signals officer.’ He began reading highlights from the file. ‘On the directing staff at Camberley – commanded an electronic warfare unit in Germany – then Military Secretariat – now Deputy Director Defence Strategic Plans based here in Whitehall. Man’s got a track record as long as your arm.’
‘So’d Philby.’
‘Caught in flagrante, for sure, but that seems to have been the sole purpose of this little exercise. To set him up. We pulled his car apart, as we did the house of his girlfriend and his London apartment. Now we’re doing the same to his family home, although his wife is taking it all rather badly. But so far we’ve found exactly nothing. Not a sniff of explosives or bomb-making equipment – apart, that is, from the traces of plastic explosive smeared on the outside of the car to leave a signature for the dogs. But inside – nothing. He’s clean. Almost certainly he has no connection with Beaky.’
‘Nothing to do with the cutbacks? That’s at the root of all this, isn’t it?’
‘No more than many. Gittings isn’t an axeman, he’s merely a very capable survivor. At least, has been, up till now.’
The top wobbled slightly before spinning on.
‘So what about the other one? The dead man at Battersea? What about it, Defence?’
The Secretary of State for Defence scanned his briefing note. ‘Albert Andrew Scully. Parachute Regiment. Age 42. Regimental Sergeant Major. Falklands veteran. Decorated for bravery, including a Military Medal and a Queen’s Gallantry Medal. Impeccable record – until two years ago. He was injured in Germany, disabled out. So he wasn’t part of the general cull, strictly speaking.’
‘And since then?’
‘Nothing. No trace of him anywhere. We’re still checking, but nothing so far from the DHSS or the police. He’s got no bank account, hasn’t even taken out a library book –’
‘His disability pension?’
‘Goes straight to his wife, and he’s had no contact with her either. For two years RSM Scully seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth, until last night. Quite the invisible man …’ He trailed off. This wasn’t what Bendall wanted to hear, not at all.
Another turn of the top. ‘Jumpers? Come on, Jumpers. What about the bloody media?’
‘They’re desperate for news on the dead man but so far we’ve been able to give them … well, practically nothing.’ He glanced at Defence, almost sulkily. ‘Doesn’t help that he’s a war hero, not at all.’ Jumpers had sleepless eyes and was suffering from the symptoms of incipient flu. The strain was getting to him. His words were imprecise, his enunciation often trailing away as it stumbled between the East End and Night Nurse. ‘I’ve got the Ministry of Defence working on whether we can establish a track record for him as a drunk or wife beater, that sort of thing, but we’re still struggling to work out a line to take on the main issue.’
‘Which is?’
‘Uhh, why we shot a man who appears …’ – Jumpers sniffed, battling with catarrh. Or was it conscience? – ‘well, to put no finer point on it, why we killed a man who wasn’t even armed.’
‘Because he was a bloody bomber!’
‘Precisely, but –’
‘But what? Why is there always a but? He blows up half of London and there’s a but?’
‘You see, the Mirror’s wondering why only three of the chimneys went down. It’s trying to stand up a theory that he died trying to stop the bombs going off. That we shot the wrong man. And several of the newspapers are focusing on the fact that there was remarkably little damage, although I’m encouraging the Express to do a feature on the dogs’ home. Apparently many of the dogs became hysterical and three have had to be put down. Could provide some helpful colour.’
‘Save me.’ Bendall buried his head, the enthusiasm drained from his day. He found himself envying the dogs. ‘Pass the anaesthetic.’
‘Beg pardon, Prime Minister?’
‘A joke, Jumpers, a joke. But you’re right, it’s a bloody awful moment for humour. Is there more?’
‘That’s it, really. The chimneys fell inside the empty walls of the power station. Just a pile of rubble waiting to be carted off. Apart from the one remaining chimney.’ Another sniff. ‘I’m afraid that’s going to be a cartoonists’ paradise. ‘
‘Was the fourth chimney damaged?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘I want it down anyway. We can’t have the bloody thing mocking us from halfway across London.’
‘Ahem, I hate to be the one bearing bad tidings, Prime Minister –’
‘The one?’ Bendall whirled once more in the direction of the interruption. It was the Cabinet Secretary.
&n
bsp; The Cabinet Secretary remained undaunted, a resolution borne of having hacked her way through the mandarin grove to become the first female Cabinet Secretary in history. She wore a face that was lined but defiant, the marks of a woman who had devoted the best years of her life to men, all of whom had been left in no doubt that she believed she could have done their job far better. Many of them had agreed. So when she talked, they listened. ‘There may be no easy means of demolishing the remaining chimney.’
‘Why the hell not? The other three put up remarkably little resistance.’
‘It’s listed. Grade Two. Which means that by law the owners have a duty to rebuild, unless given dispensation to demolish by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions – which, in light of the enormous expense involved in rebuilding, they will undoubtedly seek. But that would inevitably be bitterly opposed by English Heritage and the conservation lobby who’ve spent the last twenty years battling to keep the thing standing. Meanwhile, no matter what course of action is proposed, it’s my judgement that we can rely on the local residents of Battersea to be split absolutely and militantly down the middle between those who want it up and those who want it down. I can foresee a fresh set of planning enquiries taking years.’
‘Your foresight never fails to inspire me, Dame Patricia.’
Bendall was growing giddy. Tops, once they begin to lose their equilibrium, never recover. ‘So let me get this straight.’ He began counting on his fingers. ‘We’ve got a suspect who’s not a suspect. A body who is, apparently, nobody. A national monument that’s been turned into the biggest circus site in the city. And nobody’s got a clue.’ He studied his palms as though trying to read his own future. The top gave a final savage, unbalanced twist, then toppled. ‘Well, with apologies to the ladies present, fuck it.’
The blatant obscenity jarred upon the meeting. The complaint of a man in considerable trouble. It made him dangerous, required wary walking. It also had the effect of jarring Goodfellowe to life. He had been sitting quietly, feeling desperately hung over, oppressed and claustrophobic in this day-less room, struggling to keep up with the discussion and struggling even more to sort out his own problems.