Gridlock (6 page)

Detective Constable Collingwood was absolutely delighted.

'I rather think this bears out the point I made earlier, sir,' he had said proudly, 'regarding the fact that this city is a murky melting-pot of sleaze and crime. I mean there you were, not an hour ago, with nothing more to complain about than a pilfered telly, and now you've got a couple of raving deadies on your doorstep. Welcome to life at the sharp end, sir.'

'Shut up, Collingwood,' said the superintendent, having finished his inspection of Geoffrey's corkscrew. 'All right, Doctor Peason. Let's have this story again, shall we?'

For a long time it had proved impossible to make the police believe that Geoffrey had despatched the two thugs alone. However, after he had painstakingly demonstrated the process by which he had achieved his victory they scratched their heads in awe.

'Well it's a neat bit of work, sir. A very neat bit,' said the superintendent. 'Especially considering as how you're a, well a . . .'

'Spasmo,' prompted Geoffrey.

'Yes, that's right,' the policeman replied. 'A disabled gentleman. I mean these two are well known to us. And very hard cases they are too. I wouldn't have wanted to face them if I had a shotgun. You done 'em with a bottle opener and a pot of coffee.'

'I think me being a spastic put them off guard,' said Geoffrey modestly.

'Yes, well, we could do with a few more like you on the force,' the superintendent replied. But he didn't really mean it. Impressed though he was, he would never have trusted a spastic with the famous tit helmet.

'I reckon the papers will go wild for this one when they hear,' DC Collingwood interjected.

'I'd really rather they didn't hear,' said Geoffrey. 'I mean if somebody wants me dead, the lower a profile I keep the better, don't you think?'

'Oh I don't think it's you they wanted dead, sir,' said the super with an annoying tone.

Geoffrey enquired, as clearly as he could, if the copper would like to suggest an alternative interpretation as to why the two men had broken into his house and pointed pistols at him.

'I think it was probably some sort of mistake. After all, sir, why would anybody want you dead? You're a . . . disabled gentleman. Either way I'm sure we'll sort it all out once we get down the station.'

And leaving Geoffrey's flat filled with pathologists and photographers and men with bits of chalk, whose job it was to draw lines round dead bodies, Geoffrey was trooped off to the police station – at present two nil up against the forces of darkness.

As Geoffrey and the two police officers emerged from his front door, the London night was, as usual, filled with the ringing and wailing of various alarms.

'Listen to that, sir,' commented DC Collingwood. 'Like I said, this mean city is a seething, writhing, bubbling hotbed of a satanic melting-pot. Your two raving deadies are just part of the devil's mosaic.'

In fact the detective constable was the only person to pay any attention to the alarm bells (except of course the thousands of people with pillows wrapped round their heads screaming, 'Turn them off!
Please
turn them off!' into the darkness of their bedrooms). Everyone always ignores alarm bells, which is a shame, because if they didn't Sam Turk might not have found it quite so easy to burgle the Office of Patents and hence he would have had no cause to attempt to have Geoffrey murdered. A little social responsibility can go a long way.

Digby Parkhurst, the Minister for Transport, prided himself on being a quiet, well-ordered, law-abiding citizen. Hence he would have been astonished to learn that through his unprofessional relations with Sam Turk he was the man who had unwittingly set in motion the events which led up to the deaths of Frank and Gary, the alarm bell ringing at the Office of Patents and Geoffrey being forced from his home.

At present, though, blissfully ignorant of the mayhem he had unleashed, the minister was stuck in the same traffic jam that had caught both Geoffrey and Sam Turk – the one caused by the anti-road protest. It was lucky for the minister that his car had darkened windows, for had he been recognized by the crowds milling about along the road, he might have been lynched. Fortunately, the leather-lined opulence of his ministerial limo offered all the privacy Digby required, for it was a spanking new Panther 'Chief Executive'.

The Chief Executive was the first car to come out of the Panther Motor Company since the Japanese had bought a majority shareholding in it – a deal which Digby had himself orchestrated. It was a wonderful machine. A fitting flagship for a great new partnership, a partnership which, as Digby had said at the time, built on the strengths of both nations. And of course it did; the Japanese contributing the technology, the design, the materials and the money; the British contributing the prestige name.

Names are very important in cars. Panther had agonized for months over the name 'Chief Executive'. It was most frustrating, all the really superior names had been done. Ambassador, Statesman, Senator . . .

'Come on, what are you paid for?' the chief executive at Panther had shouted at his hapless creative people. 'We need a power name, a smug name. We're losing our traditional predominance in the arrogant git end of the car-buying market. I want a name that says "up yours" to every two-year-old family saloon on the road! I want a name that says "kiss my arse, pauper!" to anything under three litres. I want a name that says that the chap in our car has four houses, five directorates, a six-figure income and a pork bayonet that measures seven inches in repose. All right? I want a name that is
well hung.'

'The Presidential,' one creative person suggested.

'Sounds like a hotel suite,' barked the chief executive. 'The chap
sleeps
in the Presidential, the chap does not drive the Presidential. You're fired.'

'How about the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union?' another creative person offered timidly.

'Hmm,' the chief executive pondered. 'The Panther General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It certainly has power.' But then he rejected the idea. 'No, the Soviet Union is falling to bits, our cars fall to bits anyway, we do not need to draw attention to the fact. You're fired as well, clear your desk and get out.'

'I know,' said a youthful enthusiast, taking an insane risk with his career prospects, 'why don't we name it after you, sir?'

'The Panther Kevin?' replied the chief executive. And there was a lengthy pause whilst the youthful enthusiast reflected that redundancy would at least give him time to lag the roof . . .

'Not bad, not bad at all'

'Actually I meant "Chief Executive", sir,' corrected the enthusiast. And so it was that the latest overpriced personal wealth advertisement on the road came to be called the 'Chief Executive' (Kevin Class).

So there was Digby, stuck in traffic in his Chief Executive, on his way to Brighton for his party's annual conference. The jam was likely to make him late, he hadn't planned for traffic (which would make it the only event in Digby's entire week at conference that wasn't planned, for the conference was to be so meticulously choreographed it would make a New Kids on the Block dance routine look like a spontaneous, free-spirited improvisation).

[Author's note:
As it is to be hoped that this book will have a shelf-life longer than a fortnight and will hence be around long after the New Kids on the Block's flame has dimmed and their ten testicles have descended, the reader is kindly requested to substitute whatever pimply teen sensation is currently charging a million quid for a tour programme, a crap T-shirt and about forty-five minutes of synchronized miming.)

There was a time when the three main British political party conferences were very different. The Liberals were courteous and rather worried, Labour were rude and quarrelsome, and the Conservatives were positively robotic in their ruthless insistence on the serflike tugging of the forelock and toeing of the party line. Sadly, as the years go by, all three parties are tending more towards the Tory version. A mindless, gung-ho jamboree being considered rather safer than a debate. Millions and millions of pounds are spent on elaborate security precautions. Delegates are continually being felt up by members of the constabulary. Ostensibly, all this compulsory groping is concerned with terrorism: the truth is that it is to prevent any delegate bringing an opinion into the building. The other reason is of course that some MPs rather like being felt up by the constabulary.

The reason for this desperate desire to be bland is one of the great misnomers of modern political life – party unity. It has become a cornerstone of British political thinking that the single and greatest ideal for any political party to aspire to is that of unity. We got the idea from Stalin. No conference can look to a higher goal than to maintain throughout the week an impression of complete harmony and bland acceptance of the party line. A conference that forgets itself so far as to allow discussion and differences of opinions is deemed to have been marred by rows, open revolt and damaging splits. The ultimate conference delegate would be a person who has no face and ten sets of hands to clap with.

Anyway, Digby was nervously running over the rest of the speech he intended to give the following afternoon. There was, as has been said, no need for him to be nervous because he would probably have had to bugger a dog live on stage to fail to get an ovation. Even in that event, party loyalty would probably have held.

'I thought it a considered and statesmanlike speech,' the delegates would say to the news crews, as they left the hall . . . 'Perhaps slightly overlong, I would probably have cut the bit where he buggered the dog.'

Perhaps Digby was nervous because he intended to speak on his very favourite subject. A subject much beloved of all transport ministers: the subject of freedom . . .

'I hardly think,' . . . the Minister muttered to himself, practising the toadyish sneer for which he was justly loathed by all right-thinking people, and adored by conference delegates . . .

'I hardly think,
thnn thnn,'
he carried on muttering to himself, adding the little rhythmic nasal wheeze with which he habitually prefixed what he considered to be a humorous observation.

'I hardly think,
thnn thnn,
that the British public will be prepared to exchange the personal freedom that their motor cars invest them with, for a,
thnn thnn thnn,
donkey and trap.'

It was not, perhaps, a classic gag, in fact it was something in the nature of a turkey. A gag unlikely to qualify for entrance into even the meanest of Christmas crackers – the sort that contain a three-centimetre-high blue plastic Indian chief that won't stand up.

Digby may have been aware that he was opening his speech with a gag that would be unlikely to find favour, even with the studio audience of a television sitcom – a demographic group that has been known to laugh at an unoccupied sofa. If he knew, he certainly didn't care, because the jokes in Digby's speeches always went well. The fact that most of these said gags would, under normal circumstances, be unlikely to raise a laugh from a pill-popping hyena was irrelevant. For Digby was politician and, as such, was not subject to the rigorous critical standards of humour by which the rest of us are judged.

With one or two rare exceptions, the average politician would not recognize a decent joke if they encountered it wearing a red nose, while sidling towards a banana skin and reciting the
Monty Python
parrot sketch. As a purveyor of turgid, swamplike non-humour the average politician is second only to game-show hosts and headmasters. And yet strangely, like headmasters, they are never brought to book.

The media collude in the fiction that those who hold over us the power of life, death and the new dog licence legislation are possessed of great wit. They describe a speech which contains three snide little put-downs against the opposition as 'peppered with wry humour'. They use the term 'memorable' to sum up phrases which everyone has already forgotten. The reason for the perpetration of this flattering deceit is quite simple. It is in order to prevent revolution. If people were ever to realize just how mediocre the minds of most of those who govern us are, come the next by-election, we'd all vote for the joke candidate with a silly name, top hat and yellow tights who stands at the back and grins when the count is read out.

The conference would not be officially starting until the following day but Digby was in a rush because that evening he was to be a guest of honour at a dinner and booze-up organized by Global Motors to mark the occasion of the launch of their latest car. This was of course the real business of the conference. Elsewhere in town the Minister for Defence would be being entertained by arms dealers, and the Health Minister would be dining with drugs companies.

Digby booked into his hotel in a rush, something he hated doing. Normally he liked to luxuriate over it, checking out all the little treats in his room, the individually wrapped soaps, the tiny shampoo bottles, the sachets marked 'shoe shine' which contain a strangely impregnated tissue which leaves shoes entirely unaffected but makes your fingers unbearably whiffy right through dinner. Digby never tired of these small luxuries and would always pocket the soaps and take them home with him. He had a big wicker basket full of them in his bathroom.

However, on this evening there was no time to relax. Digby just shoved on a bow-tie and rushed off to the Global Motors reception where Sam Turk was waiting to greet him.

Sam had been told by Springer that the Minister was at the door and had hurried out into the foyer.

'Minister, Minister,' he said, rushing up and shaking the hand of the smug, obsequious-looking fellow in the bow-tie.

'That's the head waiter, boss,' Springer whispered urgently under his breath. 'Parkhurst's behind him.'

Sam never missed a beat. He looked about the room with a serious expression on his face and then gave the head waiter an American $100 bill. 'Nice work, thanks, bud,' he said, and, passing the waiter, he approached Digby who was on the point of being deeply offended.

'Simple security measure, Minister, we do it for the President. Throw in a decoy and see if he gets shot. Today the guy was lucky,' said Sam. 'I know your cops are good, but frankly, Minister, you're too important for me not to care.'

Of course Sam had met Digby on a number of previous occasions but Digby, like most cabinet ministers, did not really have a proper face. Even his mother had trouble recognizing him. In the early days of his career he would leave for work in the morning and say, 'Bye, Mum,' and his mother would say, 'Who the hell are you?' Then Digby would say, 'I'm the Junior Under Sub Deputy Minister for Fisheries, Mum,' and she would say, 'Oh.'

Sam ushered Digby towards a glass of champagne.

'Well, Minister, this really is an honour, yes it is, sir. A heck of an honour.' Of course Sam actually considered Digby to be a pretty pathetic figure, but Digby's job involved the annual expenditure of £15 billion of public money. That was a figure Sam thought worthy of respect. He would have been honoured to meet a cockroach with a turd in its pocket if it had fifteen billion a year to spend.

I am afraid you've just missed the video, Minister, but it was really something,' continued Sam. 'Yes sir, it sure was something.'

Prior to Digby's arrival the guests at Sam's little soiree had been watching an obscene video. A really nasty one; a disgusting piece of exploitative filth, featuring human degradation and child abuse. It was the television advert that was to launch the new Global car on the market.

The star of the advert was a child. Not the sort of child any real parent would recognize. Not a child born on planet Earth. No, this child hailed from Olympus, she was a child of the gods. So petite, so vulnerable, so clean and pretty, she just made you want to gather her up in all her pink and golden fluffiness, dump her in a bathful of mud, slip her twenty Benson and Hedges and send her off for an afternoon shoplifting.

'I like the kid,' Sam had said. 'Cute.'

Cute indeed. This little angel made Cabbage Patch dolls look like they had been sculpted by a stern-minded socialistic realist in a bad mood. If Barbie had escaped from the toy box and shagged her plastic boyfriend Ken behind a Fisher Price garage, and had so far forgotten herself as to forsake the principles of safe sex, the child that might have been produced could well have grown up to become the gruesomely cutesome little girl in Sam Turk's car advert. She was perfectly calculated to make every parent in the country wonder why they themselves had given birth to the dirt monster. And there, in the video, she stood, innocent and utterly vulnerable on a tough city pavement whilst her father, a lean, finely chiselled, confident man, locked the fortresslike front door of their apartment building.

It was important that this super-yuppy and his Cabbage Patch daughter lived in an apartment, as opposed to a flat. Despite being British actors, playing British characters in a British advert for a British car (which is officially defined as a car in which a minimum of the ashtrays and seat covers are fitted by British workers), the story was none the less set in New York.

The reason for this was because the director wished to create an atmosphere of gritty realism, and New York will always seem more real than anything Britain has to offer. It is strange that, although the majority of British people have never seen a skateboarding body-popper, an exploding fire hydrant, or anybody dunk a doughnut, these things seem infinitely more immediate and happening images than that jar of Horlicks which has stood in the cupboard for forty years.