A Murder in Mayfair (2 page)

Music. I needed music. Not anything raucous and triumphal now—something gentle, ruminative. Maybe something English. English music isn't usually one of my things, but I found Vaughan Williams's Fifth and put it on the CD player. Then I went back to the hall to pick up my post.

Most of it wasn't post. The normal business of living and working and sending bills somehow gets suspended in Britain at election time. The real post at the bottom of the pile, which had been there when I left the flat that afternoon, was dwarfed by the cards, notes, scruffy pieces of paper that had been
stuffed through my letterbox by neighbors and by friends who lived in the vicinity. Somehow or other the news of my appointment had got around. The cards and notes were congratulatory, hortatory, humorous, or satirical. Only one was a little snide—not bad by the standards of political life. An Australian research assistant I'd used, a young student with the most exquisite English accent, had scrawled “Good on yer, Cobber” on a National Portrait Gallery card of Clem Attlee. I chuckled, suspended operations for the moment, and went to put on the spaghetti. Then I came back to continue going through the pile.

The top one was an old-fashioned plain postcard, rather grubby round the edges. It had a stamp on it, but the stamp hadn't been postmarked. The address was correct, in easily legible, rather old-fashioned handwriting which somehow suggested to me that the sender didn't do a great deal of writing these days. I turned the card over. On the blank reverse there was written, in capitals, one stark question:

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

I
can't pretend I thought much about the postcard and its message during the rest of the evening. The euphoria gripping me was too powerful for that. Yesterday I had been a newly reelected MP known to few, tonight I was a minister of the Crown. A minister of the Crown known to few, I told myself, in a vain attempt to keep my feet on the ground. But there were enormous opportunities to do good, and to be seen to be doing good, and promotion in a year or two's time was a definite possibility. My state was like what people always say champagne induces, though it only seems to induce flatulence in me.

So if I thought about it at all, it was as an attempt to cut me down to size, tell me I was getting a lot too big for my boots. It did seem to me that it was awfully early for a condemnation of this kind: getting above yourself usually takes time. But perhaps it was a prophecy more than a judgment. Someone could have heard of my appointment (how? on the radio? in the
Evening Standard
?) and decided to give me a dour warning. Someone jealous, presumably. Then, also presumably, someone who knew me. But with a politician that “knew” could be wide, covering a variety of different kinds of knowing. It could be a constituent, for example, who had taken against me—perhaps over something
I'd done for him, or failed to do. It could be someone whom I'd been involved with years ago in student politics. It could be someone who'd been a rival for the nomination when I got my Milton seat. Equally it could be someone who knew me well, someone, even, whom I liked, without realizing their jealousy of me.

I didn't give it much more thought than that. As I sluiced my plate under the hot tap I realized the Vaughan Williams had failed to calm me. I put on
Showboat
instead. To hell with calming down. I needed something to match my excitement.

But I did think of that card again in the early hours, when I was drowsing between sleep and waking, wanting to go in to start work in earnest but knowing I couldn't do that at 5
A.M.
At one transition from sleeping to waking my half-conscious mind said to me: “That was not what the writer meant.”

It came into my mind, apparently from nowhere. He was not telling me I was too big for my boots. Otherwise he would have made it more explicit: YOU'RE GETTING ABOVE YOURSELF. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? But he (or she) didn't. The writer just asked the bleak question, in capitals for dramatic effect: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Put baldly like that, it was almost like asking you what you thought the point of existence was. At a more specific level it seemed to want me to focus on how I had come into the world.

I lay there, luxuriously, thinking about the postcard. It was stamped, with no postmark. That meant it could have come through the post—it happened quite frequently these days. But if that was the case, it would mean that it was posted before I had been given my job in the new government. As far as I could remember it lay in the midst of personal messages posted through the letterbox by people in the flats or living nearby. Since there was no second post on a Saturday, it seemed likely it was pushed through the door by the sender. Why? A change of
mind? Or because the postcard was already stamped for another use, and he/she then decided to use it on me?

That seemed unprofitable speculation. So did consideration of the grubbiness of the card. More interesting was the fact that there was apparently no attempt to disguise the handwriting, beyond the use of capitals. The writer had no fear that I would recognize it. Or did not care whether I did or not.

I put the thoughts from me. What a daft thing to mull over on a wonderful day. Seven o'clock. Soon the wonderful day would start in earnest. I shaved, showered, and slotted two pieces of toast into the toaster.

“Oh, what a beautiful morning!” I sang.

Oklahoma,
the best musical there ever was. No, the second-best. After
Showboat.

It was a Sunday, a silly day to begin work. Patrick Latterby had told me that I could get into the Ministry from nine o'clock onward, and had promised that he would come in for a couple of hours around eleven, to point me in the direction of the first substantial issues I was likely to face. I rang to cancel the official car and set off to walk to work. Grosvenor Street and Millbank were warm, with a haze that was just lifting. I could still sense excitement in the air. That's a politician for you. What's the betting that a new minister in a Tory government reelected for the fourth time also felt excitement in the air on his way to work? You sense around you what you feel inside you. I dawdled along, had a cigarette in Victoria Gardens, and promptly at nine o'clock was at the door of the Ministry.

“Well, you're keen,” said the doorman, smiling in an I've-seen-it-all way.

“I suppose new young ministers are always keen,” I said. “Sorry to bring you in on a Sunday.”

“No sweat. Double time suits me fine,” he said, grinning.
“Always happens when there's a new government with new faces. Now, can you find your way?”

I assured him I could find my way, and I spent the next couple of hours partly in rereading the stuff I'd gone through sketchily the day before, partly in walking round the Ministry and finding where every subsection was. When Patrick came in we had a good, hard session dealing with problems on the horizon and discussing the prioritization of several possible contributions of my section to any government legislative program. At a quarter to one I asked him if he had time for a drink, and he nodded.

“Have to be a quick one, though.”

We went to the Bull and Barrel, and I managed to get a thickly filled sandwich with my pint. We stood drinking companionably by a window, talking with a degree of ease, but keeping off issues we shouldn't be discussing in a public place. He told me about his background, about where his children went to school, and what his wife was thinking of doing when they were a bit older. We were just getting to a transition point when he would ask me for matching personal details when, out of the blue it seemed, I heard myself asking:

“Do you know if my appointment got any coverage in the media?”

Patrick smiled secretively, apparently registering that I was not immune to the vanity of politicians.

“There was a picture in the
Evening Standard.
They had a whole page of junior ministerial appointees, so you were one of twelve or so, all photographed arriving at No. 10 or leaving it.”

“I see.”

“Are you wanting a photograph to send your parents?”

“I've only got a father, and I'm afraid he's past registering. What about television?”

“I don't know. My wife didn't mention seeing my new minister.
I'd doubt it. With television news these days you'd be lucky to be mentioned on a quick run-through of junior posts. Why?”

I decided to go carefully here. If someone was wanting me to focus on my own background there might be reasons to keep other people out of the matter.

“Oh, I just got rather an odd postcard yesterday, and I wondered what sparked it off.”

“Can't be the
Standard
photograph if you got it yesterday.”

“I suspect it was put through the door.”

“What kind of thing was it?”

I took a swill of my beer.

“Seemed to think I was getting above myself.”

Patrick laughed.

“In record time! You could say that in time every government minister gets above himself, but on the first day!”

“When the process does start you'll have to give me a warning.”

“Oh, we always do, in subtle little ways. Most politicians find subtle little ways of ignoring the warnings. But you're worried about this postcard, aren't you?”

“I just wonder what kind of person would send something like that on my first day as a minister.”

“Some kind of nutter, I imagine. We can screen nutters at the Department. Most of them are totally harmless. A nutter who has your home address and access to your letterbox is a bit more worrying. You could inform the police at the Houses of Parliament, but I think I'd wait before doing that.”

“Oh, sure. I've no evidence it's anything other than a harmless crank. You seem to have a lot of experience of the type.”

Patrick took a pull at his pint before he replied.

“I do, but the type may change with the new government. The previous lot had been in a long time, so people had had time to develop personal obsessions: they had conceived a desperate passion for Michael Heseltine, for example, convinced
themselves that Michael Portillo was the father of their unborn child.”

“Real
nutters,” I commented. Patrick smiled a Civil Service sort of smile. He was telling me that jokes about our opponents were out of bounds.

“But hardly any of the new men are widely known on a personal level,” he went on. “By that I mean few have become public personalities whom people feel they know. So I would guess that your correspondent either
does
know you personally, or else his or her grievance is political: someone who really feels it an affront for you people to get into power at all.”

“Plenty of those, I suppose,” I said. “So all things considered, the best thing to do is put the whole thing out of my mind, unless she comes back for a second go at me.”

“He or she. Yes, I think so.”

“He or she, of course. I don't know why I said she. Perhaps it was the handwriting, or because the nutters you mentioned must have all been women.”

“They come in all shapes and sizes and sexes, I assure you. The difficulty is to sort out the difficult and dangerous ones.”

“Of course. I suppose the truth is all that the others call for is a thick skin.”

Patrick raised his eyebrows.

“Surely you've got that already.”

“I suppose so. I'm a Yorkshireman, and a Yorkshire MP. I've had to get used to bluntness. Somehow personal things are different.”

“I'm not sure that they are,” Patrick said, finishing his pint. “The political slides quite easily into the personal. You'd be well advised to get an all-purpose thick skin pretty damned quick. This government will have a honeymoon period, but after that, if there are any peccadillos, political or personal, to make capital out of, the opposition and the tabloids will make sure the shit starts flying—pardon my off-duty language—the
same as with the last government. Are there any skeletons in your cupboard?”

I shook my head with more confidence than I felt.

“I haven't even got a girlfriend at the moment. We split up last year. We'd lived together for two years.”

“That counts as respectability these days.”

“But I've had no illegitimate children, never molested minors, haven't even had a boyfriend.”

“That's starting to count as respectability with your lot.”

“Looking back, I feel almost ashamed at the dullness of my personal life.”

“You should be grateful for it. But it's a pity you and your girlfriend split up.”

I shrugged.

“Politicians are a bit like policemen: they need a stable home base more than most, but the conditions of the job make it very unlikely they'll have one. I think for the moment loneliness is the lesser of two evils. The thought of having a relationship that I had no time to give anything to is not attractive.”

And, symbolically, off he went home to family and Sunday lunch, and off I went back to the Ministry.

It was not this talk of a stable family base that decided me to go and see my father the next weekend. My father was not in a condition to provide me with any sort of base. I had decided, whether I got a job in the government or not, to be as good a constituency MP as I had been in the last Parliament. Many of the MPs who were joyfully thrown out at the election were men (usually men) who had treated their constituencies as a sort of fiefdom: they gave voters the impression that they believed they held their seats as a right. The voters had taken pleasure in showing them that they were mistaken. Arrogance is not a preserve of any one political party, and I was resolved not to fall into that trap.

So on Friday night, at the end of a week of stimulus and discovery
such as I had never had in my life before—I was, I think, drunk with delight in power, experiencing all its aphrodisiac qualities—I took the train to my constituency, to my home.