Heaven's Light (29 page)

Lolly pushed open the door of Jessie’s bedroom and slipped in. The duvet on the bed was thrown back. On the pillow was a half-completed pencil sketch of the view from the window. Lolly got down on her knees and felt under the bed for the box. The jar was still inside. She lifted it out. It was cheap and nasty, the glass rim already chipped. She held it in her hand, remembering the voice on the telephone, then she hurled it at the wall. The broken glass showered onto the bed and Lolly grinned, looking down at it, before running upstairs to her own room and slamming the door.

Minutes later, dressed, she was back in the hall, hunting for Jessie’s mum’s address in the phone book.

Charlie Epple was due at the cable TV headquarters for a two o’clock meeting. The studios were ten miles inland, off the old London trunk road, and, at the top of Portsdown Hill, with half an hour in hand, he pulled his sleek new
Calibra onto one of the car parks that looked out over the city.

The view from the hill had always fascinated him, the tricks that height and distance played with the grid of endless streets, the big council tower blocks and the tangle of distant cranes that hung over the warships in the dockyard. Up here, where the wind always seemed to blow, you could half close your eyes and play God with the city below, demolishing the gasworks that disfigured the Hilsea industrial estate, realigning the sweep of motorway that funnelled traffic across the upper harbour, expanding the roll-on, roll-off berths in the commercial docks choked with cross-Channel ferries. It was a fun thing to do, ridiculously easy, and he sauntered back across the car park, his hands deep in his pockets, wondering whether Pompey First might bring the fantasy alive.

The last few days he’d done nothing but explore the implications of founding a brand new political party, all too aware that the difference between success and failure would lie in the small print. To his surprise, the business of fielding candidates in the city’s thirteen wards was remarkably simple. A phone call to the council’s electoral officer had produced a thick envelope stuffed full of nomination forms. They came in two versions: signature of one testified that the candidate either lived or worked within the electoral borough; completion of the other required eight seconders to support the candidate’s nomination. Neither of these hurdles was especially daunting and, with five months to go before the local elections, it shouldn’t be impossible to find the right individuals to put themselves forward. Within each ward there were three council seats. That made a total of thirty-nine candidates, local men and women committed enough to their own city to turn the political
system on its head and break the stranglehold of the three major parties.

Charlie kicked a stone and watched it tumble down the hillside. He’d seen Barnaby only this morning, dropping off some stuff he’d got together with a local graphics student. Barnaby had given him coffee, shown him the draft constitution, together with the bones of the manifesto that he and Kate were knocking into shape. The latter had a beautiful simplicity: here was a message addressed to no one but the inhabitants of a specific city. Nothing had been blurred by the interests of Westminster or Whitehall. Nothing had been fudged to accommodate some national interest group. Just Pompey, First, Last and Always. Charlie played with the phrase, trying to imagine it on billboards beside the city’s major roads, and when he got back to the car, he made a note of it, scribbling the line on the back of his electricity bill.

The sight of the bill brought a smile to his face. Behind him, across the rolling countryside on the other side of the hill, a line of pylons carried electricity to the city. Already, in conversation with Barnaby, he’d explored the logic of Pompey First. What if they cleaned up at the May elections? What if they’d identified a real appetite for putting the city’s interests first? What if that hunger extended as far as a bid for genuine independence?

Charlie wound down his window. Pompey’s only power station had been demolished years ago. Every household in the city was dependent on the national grid. Given some form of independence, who’d guarantee that the lights stayed on? Charlie folded the bill into his pocket, blissfully happy, knowing that questions like these were the stuff of the best adventures, infinitely more challenging than
campaigns for aftershave or ice lollies. Pompey First, he thought, midwife to Europe’s youngest city-state.

The cable TV headquarters comprised one half of a modern, system-built office block on an industrial estate outside the suburb of Waterlooville. The tiny reception area was criss-crossed by busy young men on mobile phones, and a line of framed faces on the wall beamed down at prospective customers. Each belonged to a salesman of the month, and while Charlie waited to meet the PR manager, he listened to the swirl of conversation around him. This kind of language was all too familiar: it came straight from America, and over the last couple of years it had swamped the companies he was used to dealing with in London. These people were dedicated to the aggressive sell, everything up-front, everything in your face, and they fired their bullets with total conviction, immensely proud of the product. Hitching onto the cable was a steal. It gave you options, choice. Something for Mum. Something for Dad. Loads of stuff for the kids. Charlie grinned. If fourteen quid a month bought you lifestyle, science, sport, music and kids’ cartoons, why not Pompey First as well?

The woman who ran the PR operation invited him upstairs. Her name was Nicky. She was neat and businesslike, with bobbed blonde hair and a lovely mouth. She had a desk and a spare chair in a big open-plan office, and there was room beside her computer for a teddy bear dressed in Pompey colours. While Charlie explained the excitement of launching a brand new political party, she made notes on a pad at her elbow. When he had finished, she offered him a polite smile.

‘I’m not quite with you,’ she said. ‘Where do we fit in all this?’

Charlie was looking at a map on the wall. At the bottom
was the city of Portsmouth. Across the island, and inland to the north, colour-coded pins recorded the advance of the fibreoptic cable that carried the company’s thirty-two channels. Charlie had seen maps like this before in some of the other cable franchises. In national terms, the industry had been a big disappointment but he’d heard rumours that the Pompey operation was the exception to the rule. ‘How many homes are we talking here?’

‘Serviceable? Seventy-four thousand.’

‘And how many have signed up?’

‘Eighteen thousand.’

Charlie nodded. The rumours had been spot on. Eighteen thousand homes was a penetration rate of nearly 25 per cent, way above the national average. He looked at the map again, trying to calculate how many of the customers lived within the city itself. Inland, where the monied folk tended to settle, the take-up rate would be low. The cable people hated admitting it, but signing on for Sky and the Disney package was still emphatically down-market.

‘Do you look at the demographics?’ Charlie asked. ‘Area by area?’

Nicky smiled. She was bright. She’d seen the question coming. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you’re right. Cold calling on the council estates is a doddle. Ask any of the blokes.’

Charlie thought briefly of the faces on the wall downstairs. No wonder the salesmen of the month looked so cheerful. In Paulsgrove or Portsea, you could sell anything that kept the kids off the street.

Nicky fetched coffee from a nearby machine. Her earlier bemusement seemed to have gone. She was looking at the wall map again. ‘Where have you drawn the line?’ she asked. ‘Where does Pompey First begin and end?’

‘Existing city boundaries. All thirteen wards are up for
grabs in May.’ He sensed an ally in this undeclared war. ‘You think that’s sensible?’

‘I think it’s perfect. More to the point, it’s what the punters think too. Did you see the MORI poll in ninety-three?’

Charlie hadn’t. Nicky explained that the city council had commissioned an opinion poll as part of its submission for something called unitary status. Under the current arrangements, the city was administered jointly from the Civic Centre and from County Council Headquarters, twenty-five miles away in Winchester. The division of responsibilities was confusing and inefficient, and the local officers naturally wanted to be masters in their own house. Charlie had heard a little of this before from colleagues in the Strategy Unit, and knew that the city had won its case. The MORI poll, though, was a mystery.

‘What did it say?’

‘It was a questionnaire. People were given various options. Did they want Pompey to amalgamate with Fareham and Gosport? With Havant? With East Hampshire? Did they want to stick with the current arrangement? Or would they prefer to go it alone?’

‘And?’

‘Forty-seven per cent said go it alone.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Draw the line at the city boundaries.’ She smiled again. ‘Just like Pompey First.’

Charlie reached for a pen. This was a killer figure, rock-solid evidence that Pompey First would hit a nerve city-wide. In marketing terms, 47 per cent was the jackpot.

‘Do you want the rest of it?’ Nicky asked.

‘There’s more?’

‘Absolutely. You know it’s the densest-populated city in
the country outside London? You measure these things by the hectare. Up country, in Hampshire, we’ve got four people per hectare. You know the figure for Pompey?’

Charlie’s pen was poised.

‘Twenty?’ he guessed. ‘Thirty?’

‘Forty-five. It’s written on my heart. It’s one of the reasons the board give us so much rope. Pompey’s perfect for cable. Tightly packed housing. The right demographics. Strong local feel. You know the employment profile? How many people in work find jobs within the city?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Eighty-six per cent. That’s unheard of. And it’s the same for shopping, too. Ninety per cent of householders never leave the city. It’s all here for them.’

Charlie’s pen raced across the pad. Better and better, he thought. He looked up. ‘How come you know all this stuff?’

‘I used to work for the council. And it’s handy for this job, too. As you might imagine.’

Charlie frowned. Nicky Bannister wasn’t a name he’d come across during his sessions with the Strategy Unit.

‘What did you do?’

‘PR stuff, organizing mainly. I was on board for the whole of ’ninety-four. All the major celebrations.’

‘D-Day? Tour de France?’

‘Yes, all that.’ She looked at the teddy bear. ‘I was Nicky Elliott then. I remarried last year.’

Charlie sat back. Nicky Elliott was a minor legend amongst certain council officers. Almost single-handed, she’d held the ring while various heavyweights from Whitehall and Washington fought tooth and nail over the arrangements for the fiftieth anniversary of the D-Day landings. Portsmouth, for one wet June weekend, had become
the focus of the world’s attention, and Charlie remembered his own amazement, coming home to find the city thick with foreign heads of state.

‘How was it?’ he asked at once. ‘Busy? Mad? Huge buzz?’

‘Enormous buzz. Good fun. But interesting, too.’

She told him about the constant battles with Westminster and Whitehall, bits of turf fought over again and again, often literally.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Southsea Common. They were always wanting to dig it up, lay more cables, sink more drainage. I don’t think it ever occurred to them that it might belong to someone.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like all of us. It was odd. We lived here. It was our city. But the bigger the event became, the more fingers there were in the pie. Security was the real nightmare. You can imagine, fourteen heads of state, people like Clinton, Major, Mitterrand, and all with their own little plans – top-secret, of course. We were the poor relations, really. Us and the veterans. They were the ones that really mattered. Which is why we fought so hard to keep them in the picture.’

Charlie was transfixed. The TV images from the D-Day weekend were still pin-sharp in his mind. Clinton and the Queen at the drumhead memorial service. The royal yacht gliding out through the harbour mouth. A Spitfire and a Hurricane dancing in the wake of the big black Lancaster bomber the RAF rolled out for special occasions. He glanced down at the pad. He’d circled the word TV.

‘There’s stuff in your licence about providing a community service, isn’t there?’ he said.

‘Yes. We run a text and graphics operation, a sort of electronic billboard. Channel Eight, if you’re interested.’

‘Nothing more elaborate?’

‘Next year, yes. Come March, we’ll be running a weekly special. Reporters, pictures, the lot.’

‘How long?’

‘An hour.’

‘An hour a
week?
’

‘Yes.’

Nicky looked briefly shamefaced. Money was tight. Production costs were astronomic. But it was, at least, a start. ‘You should try the BBC,’ she suggested. ‘Or Meridian, if you’re looking to run stories.’

‘We will, we will. It would just be nice to have a local tie-in,’ Charlie said. ‘That’s the essence of the thing. That’s the message. Your city. Your vote.’ His eyes drifted back to the map. ‘Have you lived here long?’

‘All my life. Born and bred.’

‘So what do you think? Seriously?’

‘I love it. Always have.’

‘And Pompey First?’

Nicky’s hand found the polystyrene cup beside the teddy bear. She sipped the coffee. ‘You want the truth?’ she said. ‘I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s years overdue. And I think it’s absolutely in tune with the way the city’s going.’

‘And do you think it’ll work?’

‘No.’ She smiled. ‘You haven’t got a prayer.’

Hayden Barnaby was leaving the health club at the Venture Hotel when he spotted Harry Wilcox. The
Sentinel
’s editor was emerging from the restaurant. With him was one of the city’s two MPs.

Hayden watched the ritual exchange of handshakes as the two men said their goodbyes. A taxi was waiting on the
hotel’s forecourt. The lunch had been excellent. Their respective secretaries would be in touch. The MP swept across the lobby and disappeared into the gloom of a foggy afternoon. When Barnaby suggested a drink, Wilcox consulted his watch.