Heaven's Light (44 page)

Tully glanced at his watch. Time was running out. It was already Tuesday. People would be going to the polls on Thursday. If they chose to vote for Pompey First then surely the city deserved to know exactly what the leadership had in mind. Tully entered a number into the electronic lock that secured his filing cabinet. He kept a duplicate set of audio-tapes in the middle drawer. Consulting his master list, he selected a recent set of conversations from late April and closed the drawer again. He picked up the phone. The number was some time answering. In the street below, Pompey First were still trawling for votes. Finally, on the phone, a woman’s voice.

‘The editor, please,’ Tully said, ‘and tell him it’s urgent.’

Harry Wilcox was watching Prime Minister’s Questions on the parliamentary cable TV feed when the call came in. He reached back, plucking the phone from the desk. The Prime Minister was on his feet again. Wilcox’s pen hovered over the pad on his knee.

‘Yes?’

Wilcox listened for perhaps thirty seconds, scribbling as he did so. On television the Prime Minister was explaining that the Minister of Defence would be dealing with questions arising from the potential sale of Portsmouth dockyard as and when he deemed appropriate. Details of the negotiations were presently confidential. Members of the House would not expect Her Majesty’s Government to breach that confidentiality. The Prime Minister sat down while a Tory backbencher took up the running. His question addressed the latest inflation figures. Were they not
another confirmation that the country was on course to become the most successful economy in Western Europe?

Wilcox’s finger found the off button on the remote control. The screen went blank. ‘Very interesting,’ he said to the caller on the line. ‘By all means come on over.’

Twenty minutes later, Tully was sitting in Wilcox’s office. The two men had met before, at the Imperial Hotel on the day of the riot, and the conversation quickly turned to Hayden Barnaby. ‘I thought he was mad,’ Tully said candidly, ‘or drunk. Situation like that, you weigh the odds. They were appalling. He was bloody lucky not to get himself killed.’ He paused. ‘But then he’s like that, isn’t he? Death or glory? All or nothing?’

‘You’re right. He’s exactly like that. You know him well?’

‘Not really.’ Tully produced an audio-cassette, leaving it in his lap where Wilcox could see it. ‘He puts a bit of business my way from time to time and we’ve had the odd drink but I wouldn’t say I know him, not well at any rate.’

Wilcox caught the tiny lift in Tully’s voice, a signal, he thought, of disapproval. He nodded at the cassette. ‘What’s that?’

Tully ignored the question. He was looking at the framed front page hanging on the wall behind Wilcox’s desk. Already, Sunday’s exclusive belonged behind glass.

‘What’s your line on Pompey First?’ he asked.

Wilcox reached for a paperclip. Everywhere he went people were asking the same question and he’d not once wavered in his answer.

‘From where I sit they’re a blessing,’ he said. ‘If nothing else, they’ve made us think about ourselves. That’s rare in local politics, believe me.’

‘I meant personally. What do you think of them personally?’

Wilcox was looking at the cassette again, no longer sure where the conversation was headed. Had this man Tully heard the story he’d just picked up from the newsroom? About Liz and Haagen? And Amsterdam? He decided to stall. ‘Are you asking me about my vote?’

‘Not at all. I’m asking you about Pompey First. You know Hayden Barnaby. You probably know this Charlie Epple. What’s the verdict?’

‘Hayden’s a friend of mine,’ Wilcox said carefully. ‘That makes it difficult.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it makes me prejudiced.’ He shifted his bulk in the chair. ‘He’s a bright man. And he’s committed, too.’

‘Committed to what?’

It was Wilcox’s turn to let the question drift past. He looked at Tully for a long time. Then he leaned forward, shadowing the desk. ‘Mr Tully, what exactly do you want? I’m a busy man. You told me you had something I’d be interested in seeing.’

‘Hearing.’

‘What?’

‘Hearing.’ Tully tapped the cassette. ‘Have you got a player for this?’

Wilcox was briefly disconcerted. Then his curiosity got the better of him and he left the office. Tully watched him bend over an empty desk in the newsroom and pull at the drawers. When he returned with a player, Tully gave him the tape. ‘It’s cued up,’ he said. ‘Side A.’

Wilcox was going to say something but thought better of it. He inserted the tape and pressed the play button. At once, there was a distinctive bark of laughter.

‘Charlie Epple,’ Tully explained. ‘The other voice you’ll know.’

Wilcox sat back in his chair, revolving it slowly, first one way, then the other. Charlie was humming. At length, he broke into song. It sounded like a chorus, at once intimate and exhortatory.

‘Nothing in shadow, nothing to hide,

Heaven’s Light Our Guide… yeah!’

There was more laughter, then Barnaby’s voice. He was telling Charlie to hang onto the day job. If he wanted a failed rock star to lead the Department of Culture and Arts, he’d bear him in mind. In the meantime, maybe they could get on with the business in hand. Had Charlie pursued the currency thing? Had he talked to the economics guy at the university? The conversation rambled on. Charlie said he knew fuck all about ecus but the bloke with the doctorate insisted it was the obvious route. Even if the Treasury didn’t cut up rough about hanging on to sterling, the ecu was still favourite.

‘Why?’

‘Something to do with stability. It’s not a floater. It doesn’t bounce around, like the pound. You understand any of this stuff?’

‘Not really, but Zhu does and he says the same thing. Either the ecu or the Swiss franc. Hates dealing in anything else. You happy to go with the ecu?’

There was a pause on the tape, then more laughter from Charlie.

‘Fine by me, Mr President. You name it, I’ll sell it.’

Wilcox indicated that he’d heard enough. Tully stopped the tape.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘It’s recent?’

‘Last month.’ Tully showed him the spine of the cassette. ‘April the twelfth.’

Wilcox nodded. His hands were knotted behind his head and he was staring out across the newsroom. ‘So what’s the point you’ve come to make?’ he asked.

Tully wondered whether he’d chosen the right excerpt. Maybe he should have gone for something less technical. Like Charlie’s plans to enter the city’s swimming team for the next Olympic games.

‘They were discussing a national anthem,’ he said, ‘and a new local currency. These guys want to pull us out of the UK, lock, stock and barrel. It’s all there, hours and hours of it. A blueprint for UDI.’

Wilcox shook his head emphatically. ‘It’s a piss-take,’ he said. ‘They’re fucking about.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know it, I know these guys, they’re at it all the time, especially Charlie Epple. He’s a headbanger. Always was.’

‘And Barnaby?’

‘Barnaby’s different. He’s a regular bloke. He’s reliable. He delivers. With Barnaby you get what you see. He cares about the city. He wants things to change. But there’s no secret agenda.’

‘Is that what his wife thinks?’

‘That’s cheap.’

‘Not to her, Mr Wilcox.’ Tully glowered at him, then stood up and reclaimed his cassette from the machine. He was half-way to the door before Wilcox called him back. He was still sprawled behind the desk but Tully could see the uncertainty on his face. People were right about him and Pompey First. He was wedded to the cause. But he
was a newsman, too. And he couldn’t resist the scent of a really big story.

He was fiddling with the cassette machine. ‘You say there are more tapes?’

‘Plenty.’

‘Can I listen to them?’

‘No,’ Tully lied. ‘I’ve passed them up the line.’

‘What line?’

This, at last, was the question Tully had anticipated. He’d scrawled the number in his diary before he’d left the office. He read it out to Wilcox, suggesting he get in touch at once. Wilcox pretended he hadn’t heard and reached for the phone. He hated being told what to do.

When the number answered, he introduced himself then mentioned Tully’s name. He’d been listening to a tape-recording. It had to do with an outfit called Pompey First. He pulled a pad towards him. When he’d put the phone down, he looked up.

‘So who the fuck’s Louise Carlton?’ he said. ‘And why’s she so keen on tea at the Imperial?’

Barnaby’s council of war in the Pompey First press room had already turned into a victory celebration.

Charlie Epple had spent most of the day in the editing suite, assembling all the campaign’s TV reports onto a single tape, and the fact that he could end the montage with a one-minute clip from Prime Minister’s Questions was the icing on the cake. Six months ago, Pompey First hadn’t existed. Yet here he was, viewing nearly an hour of campaign highlights, courtesy of various television networks.

The early material, admittedly, was locally sourced, and he’d used clips from Kate’s performance on
The South
Decides
as a kind of running gag, but the interest he’d attracted over the last seven days had come from the big national operations and it was this kind of heavy-duty coverage that had surely swung the votes to Pompey First. As well as
Newsnight,
Charlie had supplied interviewees to
News at Ten, Sky Tonight,
and a Channel Four political slot,
Grass-roots.

Word had even spread as far as BBC network radio.
Call Nick Ross,
that very morning, had devoted an entire hour to the subject of what they’d christened ‘stand-alone political parties’, and Charlie had been heartened by the stampede of disgruntled callers that news of Pompey First’s success had released. All over the country, it seemed, people had tumbled the myth of parliamentary sovereignty. The government had been ignoring the people for well over a decade, and after its contemptuous dismissal of the Scott Report ordinary voters had finally had enough.

Charlie raised the remains of his bottle of champagne as the Prime Minister sat down. At a nearby desk, Barnaby was trying to collate his notes. All the candidates were due at the hotel by half past three. Most had to be away within the hour. This would be his last chance to confirm arrangements and set the mood for the campaign’s final push.

Charlie had retrieved the video-cassette from the player. He showed it to Barnaby. ‘I’ll get another two duped as back-ups,’ he said, ‘plus fifty more for press giveaways.’

‘Fifty enough?’

‘A hundred, then. We’ll be running the master on small monitors at the Guildhall tomorrow night.’

Barnaby nodded, scribbling a note to himself about the Guildhall. From the start of the campaign, he and Charlie had always planned to end with a modest eve-of-poll rally at which all the Pompey First candidates would be present.
Anyone who fancied it could attend, and candidates were pledged to answer any question that came their way. On the basis of early indications, Charlie had hired a church hall in Fratton but the events of the past week had tempted them into the Guildhall, Pompey’s pride and joy, a big 2,000-seater auditorium with a stage and a proscenium arch, a full lighting rig and a professional sound system. The decision hadn’t been cheap, and hundreds of empty seats could still make them look silly, but Charlie had taken the precaution of halving the prices in the Guildhall bars and word had gone round that Pompey First was on a roll. With luck, given the torrent of press coverage, Charlie was predicting a turnout of around nine hundred. With the upstairs seating closed off, it would look like a full house.

Candidates were arriving at the hotel now, and Barnaby glimpsed Zhu outside in the corridor, shaking each one gravely by the hand. Normally impenetrable, the excitements of the past few days had made a visible impression on him. Barnaby wasn’t entirely sure, but he sensed that Zhu viewed Pompey First as the child he’d never had: boisterous, noisy, occasionally wayward, but full of promise. The stream of camera vehicles arriving every morning for the regular press conferences had at first amused him. Like so many others, he seemed surprised that these people should come so far for so little. Yet only this morning, overhearing Charlie and Barnaby discussing the fee for the hire of the Guildhall, he’d stolen quietly away, returning minutes later with yet another four-figure contribution to campaign funds. He’d always believed, he said, in enterprise and commitment. Pompey First, in his view, embodied both.

Kate Frankham was the last to arrive. Breathless and excited, she’d just done a stand-up interview with a visiting
American TV crew on the pavement outside the hotel. They’d been tracking the Republican campaign in the US election and they’d told her what a pleasure it was to have found some real people at last. She’d responded to their flattery with a scorching denunciation of big-money politics, and at the end of the piece, the interviewer had kissed her hand.

Charlie’s eyes revolved. ‘Americans’ll do anything for a shag,’ he said. ‘You should have asked for money.’

Finally, later than he’d intended, Barnaby called the gathering to order. Candidates settled on chairs or sat around the edges of the room, their backs against the wall, while Barnaby asked Charlie Epple to outline the programme for the last forty-eight hours of the campaign. Tomorrow, Wednesday, candidates and a swelling army of supporters would be blitzing their respective wards. Charlie had done a deal on 74,000 felt-tips, one for each of the city’s households. The pens carried the Pompey First logo and each would be posted through a letter-box with a single sheet of sea-green paper listing the ten deadly ways the big national parties had sinned against the local community. At noon, weather permitting, an airship would appear over the city, flying slow figures-of-eight for most of the afternoon. Suspended beneath it, a giant flag carrying the star and the crescent moon, the city’s emblem, plus the invitation to
REACH FOR THE SKY – VOTE POMPEY FIRST
!.