And the Land Lay Still (88 page)

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The story of the last gasp. The original Mr Bond’s final case. He beds the girl – not a classic Bond girl, it has to be said – and she leads him to the villain, who turns out not to be a villain but a sad bastard like himself, but nevertheless old Bondy has a job to do. The bad guys have fucked him over once too often – Croick, Canterbury, Thatcher, Major, Forsyth, they’re all part of the same team – it’s just a shame that the only one in his sights is an inferior specimen of bad guy called David Eddelstane, but that’s how it works sometimes and Jimmy Bond has only one throw of the dice, one last stick of dodgy gelignite to detonate, and he goes for it. What the hell has he got to lose? Sorry, pal, this is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. Sky-High Joe’s identity revealed at last – and jings! it was Wee Jimmy all along!

Lucy was using Peter and he was using her. No deception there, it was an honest relationship based on mutual exploitation. She went down to London and followed her brother around and then she came back to Edinburgh and did some more snooping. A proper wee detective. He could have given her some tips but he left her to it. Claudine, the waitress flatmate, knew a girl who knew a girl. Lucy talked to her. Then, on the crumb-strewn, wine-splashed, lumpy mattress she talked to Peter. Did he know what ‘strictly by appointment’ meant in the small ads? Yes he did. And that most of the city’s saunas were brothels? Yes. But that there were other places, hidden away, out of the limelight? Yes. This girl worked in one of them, or had done so. Discretion was the watchword of such operations but Lucy had found out what her brother liked. Peter said, Do I want to know this? Lucy said, Of course you do, isn’t that what this is about?

It wasn’t much. It wasn’t anything really. He had a thing about shoes and what he enjoyed was a woman who made him worship her shoes, her feet. There was more, about him lying on the floor and being walked on, cleaning the shoes with his tongue, that kind of stuff. A foot-and-mouth outbreak, Peter said, but this time Lucy didn’t laugh. It’s pathetic, she snorted. And it was. The point,
though, was not that it was pathetic but that it was paid for. In the current climate that was enough.

We need proof, Peter said. But Lucy wouldn’t tell him where Eddelstane went to get his kicks. Peter said, I could shadow you shadowing him but let’s not get complicated. He gave her his Minox camera. Get me a picture or two. Lucy said, She won’t do that. Meaning the shoe goddess. He said, We don’t need him in the act of licking. We just need him entering or leaving the premises. That’s all.

It was autumn, then it was winter. Everything was brown and dead. For weeks, months, Peter missed Lucy in the pub near Haymarket. He rang the doorbell of her flat and no one answered. He thought, she wants some kind of justice of her own, or maybe she wants money. He lamented the loss of the wee camera.

Then one day she was there again. She sat down without a word. He went to buy her a drink and when he came back the camera was on the table and next to it a slim white envelope.

What kept you? he said.

I had to be patient.

He opened the envelope. There were four photos, all the same: David Eddelstane MP, unmistakable in the light flooding on to his face from behind the door that was being opened to him. There was a legible number on the door, and the person opening it, though obscure, was definitely female. There was also a sheet of paper with Eddelstane’s home and office details and phone numbers.

Is it enough? Lucy asked.

We’ll see.

I want him destroyed.

The look on her face. Peter didn’t like it.

For this?

For everything. They got Al Capone on tax evasion, didn’t they?

He laughed, then stopped when she didn’t.

Later, back at her place, after they’d done sex, before he got up to go, he tried to reason with her. He didn’t want to leave, he said. He’d rather stay. He’d missed her. He said, I’d like us to be together.

What? she said.

We could be together. The two of us on the one life-raft. I think we might just about keep one another alive.

She shook her head. What are you talking about?

He said, Lucy, I really like you.

She said, You must be fucking insane then.

He said, You don’t really want to do this, do you? Why do you want to do it?

She said, I got you the fucking photographs. Don’t change your mind now.

He said, I never …

He said, Lucy.

He said, You’re hurt, Lucy. You’ve been an outsider so long you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have someone care about you. I care about you. Why don’t we let it all go?

She said, If you care about me you’ll do this one thing.

She was immovable. She turned away from him. She told him to get out. She said, If you don’t do it I’ll fucking do it and I’ll take us all down with him.

He got dressed. He said, I need to think it through.

She said, from under the sheet, Do it for me.

To think it through he had to stay clear of her for a few days. He stayed away from the pub – from all pubs in fact. He came off the booze completely. One last effort. Okay, supposing he did it? What power did the photograph contain? And if there was power, what would it achieve? Maybe if he’d had time he’d have come up with the answers but it was the Croick business all over again, he didn’t have time. Time was running out for everybody. Parliament was dissolved in mid-March and a General Election scheduled for 1 May. Six weeks of suicide for the Conservative Party.

He thought, I’ll do a test run. He called a news editor he’d done freelance work for in the past. He said he had a story about an MP in compromising circumstances. Who hasn’t? the man said. This one’s Scottish, are you interested? Aye, maybe, who’s the MP and what are the circumstances? Do you think I’m stupid? Peter said, but then he gave him enough to keep him interested. Is the story watertight? Peter said, Yes, but I can’t reveal my source. (Because
Lucy had made that a condition.) The man at the paper said, Either we need proof or we need an admission from the MP. Peter said, Leave it with me.

A week later the Scottish Tories went into self-destruct mode, thus at least demonstrating their Caledonian genes. One MP announced he wasn’t seeking re-election following revelations about an affair. The party chairman withdrew from being proposed as a candidate when allegations were made about a homosexual relationship. Recriminations and accusations among rival officials and factions followed. Peter thought, what the hell, if I don’t move now I’ll be trampled in the rush.

He had nothing to lose. Except Lucy. And he didn’t want to lose her.

He dialled the Glenallan number.

EDDELSTANE
: Why are you doing this, Mr Bond?

BOND
: It’s my job.

EDDELSTANE
: Is that really why you’re doing it?

BOND
: What other reason would there be?

EDDELSTANE
: I can think of many. It takes a special kind of person to do a job like yours.

BOND
: I’ll take that as a compliment.

EDDELSTANE
: I dare say you will. And I dare say, too, that nothing I can say will dissuade you from running your grubby little story?

BOND
: It’s not me that made it grubby. If it isn’t true, you know what to do.

EDDELSTANE
: You don’t even know me.

BOND
: You’re the Member of Parliament for Glenallan and West Mills. Do you not agree that the public has a legitimate interest in your behaviour?

EDDELSTANE
: You say that almost as if you mean it. This is not yet about the public interest though, is it? It is about you writing a story about me. Actually, Mr Bond, I don’t expect you to believe me but I don’t care about myself. It’s my family that concerns me. You will do my family irreparable damage.

BOND
: I think it’s you that has done the damage, Mr Eddelstane.

EDDELSTANE
: You sound very sure of yourself. I hope you can live with your conscience.

BOND
: Can you live with yours?

EDDELSTANE
: I shall have to. This isn’t going to be about David Eddelstane MP after a day or two. The circus will have moved on. This is going to be about me, my wife and my children. I shall have to hope that they will forgive me. Have you thought of that? I’m asking you to show a little mercy. No, not even that. A little kindness.

BOND
: That’s not what this is about.

EDDELSTANE
: No? Well, if it isn’t, what is it about?

But here, as elsewhere, as always, the transcript goes to ratshit. The original Mr Bond murders the High Commissioner and several of his lackeys but one of them manages to wallop him on the head on the way down so he slips into something less comfortable and the walls close in and all the voices and all the one-versations merge and overlap. Croick is dead but long live Croick as Canterbury as Lucy as Edgar as Eddelstane. The shoe-licker. Never met him face to face but by Christ Peter can still hear his voice down the phone line he no longer has. The accuser accused. The accused accusing. Whichever fucking way round it was. Eddelstane sounded dignified. He was the one going down to defeat and he sounded like a bloody martyr. Whereas Peter … And for what? He went looking for Lucy and she was gone, vanished, not a trace of her, disappeared as suddenly and permanently as old Uncle Jack. A ghost. The paper ran the story and the cheque fell through the letter box but for what, for what? Betrayal. Endless fucking betrayal.
I need to show you what happens.
Betrayal of others, betrayal of self.
And let the lesson be to be yersel.
Bondy in the lion’s den. The voice of the arch-villain, the evil genius with the nuclear bomb, the white cat and the soft-spoken voice of unreason.
What is it all about, Mr Bond? Answer me that. What are we to be if not ourselves? What are we to be if not kind to one another? What else is there to be? To be cruel, to be brutal, to hurt or destroy by hatred – where is the profit in that? Profit isn’t even the right word. Where is the humanity in that? We all have it in us to be kind, Mr Bond, because somewhere in us we all desire the same – that someone else be kind to us. Yes, even me, even you. That someone think of us, remember us, consider us. I’m not even talking about love. I’m talking
about being treated with consideration and care. That’s all. Not love, just care and consideration. Do you understand that, Mr Bond? Mr Bond? Mr Bond?

§

With less than a month to go before the General Election, the airwaves were suddenly full of the latest scandal to hit the Conservatives. Out of the blue David Eddelstane announced that he would not be seeking re-election as MP for Glenallan and West Mills. There he was on the evening news outside a Glasgow hotel, looking like he was going to throw up, with his wife beside him looking equally sick as he read from a prepared statement and said that after he’d finished reading it he would not be answering questions or giving interviews. Allegations, he intoned, concerning indiscretions in his private life were about to be made public – allegations which he had no intention of either disputing or discussing. In the current climate of fevered interest in any politician’s perceived misdemeanours he believed it was best for his party, his constituents and most of all for his family that he step aside immediately and allow another candidate to fight the seat. He deeply regretted the great distress his actions had already caused his wife and children, and the embarrassment and difficulties they were likely to cause the Conservative Party, and asked the media to show some humanity by allowing him the time and space to attempt to repair the damage he had done to his friends, colleagues and loved ones. Thank you very much.

Cue mad media scrum and shouted questions as the Eddelstanes disappeared back inside the building. Cut to a BBC correspondent who said that the allegations were ‘believed to centre on Mr Eddelstane having paid for sexual services at premises in both London and Edinburgh’. ‘Presumably, Brian,’ the newsreader asked, ‘this is something the Conservatives could do without right now?’ ‘Frankly, Jackie, it’s the last thing they need. I understand that Central Office is, to put it mildly, absolutely furious.’

There was more in the next day’s papers, specifically about Eddelstane’s predilection for ladies’ footwear. That evening Adam turned up at Mike’s flat, full of derision regarding Eddelstane’s predicament.

‘A shoe fetish? I’d have expected a decent family man like him tae admit tae a boyfriend at least,’ he said.

‘There might be one out there,’ Mike said. ‘He has form, after all.’

It was a stupid thing to say, but it could not be unsaid. Adam looked at him sharply. ‘How d’ye mean?’

‘Forget it.’

‘Naw, how d’ye mean? What dae
you
ken aboot his form?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Aye it does. Tell me.’

Mike shrugged. ‘I had a wee fling with him once. I probably wasn’t the only one.’

‘You what?’ Adam’s face was dark with anger.

‘Like I said, forget it.’

‘Ye had sex wi that Tory bastard? When?’

‘I didn’t say that. I said a fling.’

‘Well, I assume we’re no talking aboot a Highland dance. Or is “fling” public-school slang for something mair innocent, like a snog behind the bike sheds?’

‘He’d left school before I even got there,’ Mike said. ‘We met by accident later, here in Edinburgh.’

‘And?’

‘And something happened.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, either something happened or nothing happened. Which was it?’

Suddenly Mike was angry too. ‘I don’t have to justify myself to you.’

‘Aye ye dae,’ Adam said. ‘A fling? What exactly did ye get up tae wi him?’

‘Nothing. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

‘Well, ye fucking did, Mike!’ Adam shouted. ‘So fucking tell me what happened.’

‘It was years ago!’ Mike shouted back. ‘Decades ago. Nothing fucking happened. We had a wee grope and that was it.’