A Delicate Truth (37 page)

‘There’s a lecture at Chatham
House,’ he replied. ‘I’m expected to put in an appearance.’

‘Talk later in the evening
then.’

‘Sure. See how the land lies. Good
idea,’ he agreed, conscious of Kit’s befuddled gaze glowering at them from
inside the cab.

Had he lied to her? Not quite. There was a
lecture at Chatham House and he was indeed expected, but he did not propose to attend.
Lodged behind the silver burner in his jacket pocket – he could feel it pricking at his
collarbone – was a letter on stiff paper from an illustrious-sounding banking house,
hand-delivered and signed for at the main entrance of the Foreign Office at three that
afternoon. In bold electronic type, it requested Toby’s presence at any time
between now and midnight at the company’s headquarters in Canary Wharf.

It was signed G. Oakley, Senior
Vice-President.

A chill night air whipped off the Thames,
almost clearing away the stink of stale cigarette smoke that lingered in every fake
Roman arcade and Nazi-style doorway. By the sodium glare of Tudor lanterns, joggers in
red shirts, secretaries in top-to-toe black livery, striding men with crew cuts and
paper-thin black briefcases glided past each other like mummers in a macabre dance.
Before every lighted tower and at every street corner, bulked-out security guards in
anoraks looked him over. Selecting one at random, Toby showed him the letter
heading.

‘Must be Canada Square, mate. Well, I
think
it is, I’ve only been here a year’ – to a loud peal of
laughter that followed him down the street.

He passed under a walkway and entered an
all-night shopping mall offering gold watches, caviar and villas on Lake Como. At a
cosmetics counter a beautiful girl with bare shoulders invited him to sniff her
perfume.

‘You don’t by
any
chance know where I can find Atlantis House, do you?’

‘You wanna buy?’ she asked
sweetly, with an uncomprehending Polish smile.

A tower block rose before him, all its
lights blazing. At its base a pillared cupola. On its floor a Masonic starburst of gold
mosaic. And round its blue dome, the word
Atlantis
. And at the back of the
cupola, a pair of glass doors with whales engraved on them that sighed and opened at his
approach. From behind a counter of hewn rock, a burly white man handed him a chrome clip
and plastic card with his name on it:

‘Centre lift and no need for you to
press anything. Have a nice evening, Mr Bell.’

‘You too.’

The lift rose, stopped, and opened into a
starlit amphitheatre of white archways and celestial nymphs in white plaster. From the
middle of the domed firmament hung a cluster of illuminated
seashells.
From beneath them – or as it seemed to Toby from among them – a man was striding
vigorously towards him. Backlit, he was tall, even menacing, but then as he advanced he
diminished, until Giles Oakley in his new-found executive glory stood before him: the
achiever’s rugged smile, the honed body of perpetual youth, the fine new head of
darkened hair and perfect teeth.

‘Toby, dear man,
what
a
pleasure! And at
such
short notice. I’m touched and honoured.’

‘Nice to see you, Giles.’

An air-conditioned room that was all
rosewood. No windows, no fresh air, no day or night. When we buried my grandmother, this
is where we sat and talked to the undertaker. A rosewood desk and throne. Below it, for
lesser mortals, a rosewood coffee table and two leather chairs with rosewood arms. On
the table, a rosewood tray for the very old Calvados, the bottle not quite full. Until
now, they had barely looked each other in the eye. In negotiation, Giles doesn’t
do that.

‘So, Toby. How’s love?’ he
asked brightly when Toby had declined the Calvados and watched Oakley pour himself a
shot.

‘Fair, thank you. How’s
Hermione?’

‘And the great novel? Done and
dusted?’

‘Why am I here, Giles?’

‘For the same reason that you came,
surely’ – Oakley, putting on a little pout of dissatisfaction at the unseemly pace
of things.

‘And what reason is that?’

‘A certain covert operation, dreamed
up three years ago but mercifully – as we both know – never executed. Might
that
be the reason?’ Oakley enquired with false jocularity.

But the impish light had gone out. The
once-lively wrinkles
round the mouth and eyes were turned downward in
permanent rejection.

‘You mean
Wildlife
,’
Toby suggested.

‘If you want to bandy state secrets
about, yes.
Wildlife
.’

‘
Wildlife
was executed all
right. So were a couple of innocent people. You know that as well as I do.’

‘Whether
I
know it or
you
know it is neither here nor there. What is at issue is whether the
world knows it, and whether it should. And the answer to those two questions, dear man –
as must be evident to a blind hedgehog, let alone a trained diplomat such as yourself –
is very clearly: no, thank you, never. Time does not heal in such cases. It festers. For
every year of official British denial, count hundreds of decibels of popular moral
outrage.’

Pleased with this rhetorical flourish, he
smiled mirthlessly, sat back and waited for the applause. And when none came, treated
himself to a nip of Calvados and airily resumed:

‘Think on it, Toby: a rabble of
American mercenaries, aided by British Special Forces in disguise and funded by the
Republican evangelical right. And for good measure, the whole thing masterminded by a
shady defence contractor in cahoots with a leftover group of fire-breathing neocons from
our fast-dissolving New Labour leadership. And the dividend? The mangled corpses of an
innocent Muslim woman and her baby daughter. Watch
that
play out in the media
marketplace! As to gallant little Gibraltar with her long-suffering multi-ethnic
population: the cries to give her back to Spain would deafen us for decades to come. If
they don’t already.’

‘So?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘What d’you want me to
do?’

Suddenly Oakley’s gaze, so often
elusive, was fixed on Toby in fiery exhortation:

‘Not
do
, dear man!
Cease
to do. Desist forthwith and for ever! Before it’s too
late.’

‘Too late for
what
?’

‘For your career – what else? Give up
this self-righteous pursuit of the unfindable. It will destroy you. Become again what
you were before. All will be forgiven.’

‘Who says it will?’

‘I do.’

‘And who else? Jay Crispin?
Who?’

‘What does it matter
who
else
? An informal consortium of wise men and women with their country’s
interests at heart, will that do you? Don’t be a
child
, Toby.’

‘Who killed Jeb Owens?’

‘Killed him? Nobody.
He
did.
He shot himself, the poor man. He was deranged for years. Has nobody told you that? Or
is the truth too inconvenient for you?’

‘Jeb Owens was murdered.’

‘Nonsense. Sensational nonsense.
Whatever makes you say that?’ – Oakley’s chin coming up in challenge, but
his voice no longer quite so sure of itself.

‘Jeb Owens was shot through the head
by a gun that wasn’t his own, with the wrong hand, just one day before he was due
to join up with Probyn. He was bubbling over with hope. He was so full of hope he rang
his estranged wife on the morning of the day he was killed to tell her just how full of
hope he was and how they could start their lives all over again. Whoever had him
murdered got some B-list actress to pretend she was a doctor – a male doctor, actually,
but she didn’t know that, unfortunately – and make a cold call to Probyn’s
house
after
Jeb’s death with the happy message that Jeb was alive and
languishing in a mental hospital and didn’t want to talk to anyone.’

‘Whoever told you such drivel?’
– but Oakley’s face was a lot less certain than his tone.

‘The police investigation was led by
diligent plain-clothes officers from Scotland Yard. Thanks to their diligence, not a
single clue was followed up. There was no forensic examination, a whole raft of
formalities were waived, and the cremation went through with unnatural speed. Case
closed.’

‘Toby.’

‘What?’

‘Assuming this is the truth,
it’s all news to me. I had no idea of it, I swear. They told me –’

‘
They? Who’s they?
Who
the fuck is
they
?
They
told you
what
? That Jeb’s murder
had been covered up and everybody could go home?’

‘My understanding was and is that
Owens shot himself in a fit of depression, or frustration, or whatever the poor man was
suffering from –
wait
! What are you doing?
Wait!
’

Toby was standing at the door.

‘Come back. I insist. Sit down’
– Oakley’s voice close to breaking. ‘Perhaps I’ve been misled.
It’s possible. Assume it. Assume you’re right in everything you say. For
argument’s sake. Tell me what you know. There are bound to be contrary arguments.
There always are. Nothing is set in stone. Not in the real world. It can’t be. Sit
down here. We haven’t finished.’

Under Oakley’s imploring gaze, Toby
came away from the door but ignored the invitation to sit.

‘Tell it to me again,’ Oakley
ordered, for a moment recovering something of his old authority. ‘I need chapter
and verse. What are your sources? All hearsay, I’ve no doubt. Never mind. They
killed him. The
they
you are so exercised about. We assume it. And having
assumed it, what do we then conclude from that assumption? Allow me to tell you’ –
the words coming in breathless gasps – ‘we conclude decisively that the time has
come for you to withdraw your cavalry from the charge – a temporary, tactical, orderly,
dignified withdrawal while there’s time. A détente.
A
truce, enabling both sides to consider their positions and let tempers cool. You
won’t be walking away from a fight – I know that isn’t your style.
You’ll be saving your ammunition for another day – for when you’re stronger
and you’ve got more power, more traction. Press your case now, you’ll be a
pariah for the rest of your life.
You
, Toby! Of all people! That’s what
you’ll be. An outcast who played his cards too early. It’s not what you were
put on earth for – I know that, better than anyone. The whole country’s crying out
for a new elite. Begging for one. For people like you – real men – the real men of
England, unspoiled – all right, dreamers too – but with their feet on the ground.
Bell’s the real thing, I told them. Uncluttered mind, and the heart and body to go
with it. You don’t even know the meaning of real love. Not love like mine.
You’re blind to it. Innocent. You always were. I knew that. I understood. I loved
you for it. One day, I thought, he’ll come to me. But I knew you never
would.’

But by then, Giles Oakley was talking to an
empty room.

Lying on his bed in the darkness, the silver
burner at his right hand, Toby listens to the night shouts from the street. Wait till
she’s home. The sleeper leaves Paddington at 11.45. I’ve checked and it left
on time. She hates taking taxis. She hates doing anything the poor can’t afford.
So wait.

He presses green anyway.

‘How was Chatham House?’ she
asked drowsily.

‘I didn’t go.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Called on an old friend. Had a
chat.’

‘About anything in
particular?’

‘Just this and that. How was your
father?’

‘I handed him over to the attendant.
Mum will scrape him off the train at the other end.’

A scuffle, quickly suppressed. A smothered
murmur of ‘Get off!’

‘That bloody cat,’ she
explained. ‘Every night she tries to get on my bed, and I shove her off. Who did
you think it was?’

‘I didn’t dare
wonder.’

‘Dad’s convinced you have
designs on me. Is he right?’

‘Probably.’

Long silence.

‘What’s tomorrow?’ she
asked.

‘Thursday.’

‘You’re meeting your man.
Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have a clinic. It finishes around
midday. Then a couple of house calls.’

‘Maybe the evening then,’ he
said.

‘Maybe.’ Long silence.
‘Did something go wrong tonight?’

‘Just my friend. He thought I was
gay.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘No. I don’t think
so.’

‘And you didn’t succumb out of
politeness?’

‘Not that I recall.’

‘Well, that’s all right then,
isn’t it?’

Keep talking
, he wanted to tell
her. It doesn’t have to be your hopes and dreams. Any old thing will do. Just keep
talking till I’ve got Giles out of my head.