Political Suicide (15 page)

“Jeremy Grayling-Snaithe, as he was always called then,” the monk had explained in his tired, cultivated voice. “The Grayling-Snaithes are rather a good family. A good
Catholic
family, I mean. Came over in the 1850s. Father was in the Diplomatic, posted here there and everywhere, seldom appearing for parents' day or things like that. The boy was very keen then—committed Catholic, keen on keeping the other boys up to the mark. In fact, he was terribly committed all round—very sporty, captain of the first fifteen, very useful cricketer, in the school swimming team. Came down very hard on slackers and on the arty types. Very keen on the OTC, and kept all the younger boys up to scratch. I had an idea that he joined the army later, after university, but I may be wrong. I only teach the lower forms, you see. Certainly we never thought of him as a rabble-rouser—quite the reverse. He was a natural leader—the only thing was that one wasn't quite
sure of his judgment of
where
he should be leading people.”

“It was all marvellously usable stuff,” said
Grub
, concluding his pint of beer and his report to Sutcliffe. “I walked two miles there and back and I haven't done
that
since National Service days. But it was well worth it. It'll make a first-rate story.”

“Interesting,” said Sutcliffe. “A case of the leopard rearranging his spots rather than changing them, wouldn't you say? Fascinating that while Antony Craybourne-Fisk has acquired his double-barrel, Jeremy Grayling-Snaithe has jettisoned his.”

“That's it. Happens all the time. Antony Wedgwood Benn becomes Tony Benn and hopes that everyone will forget all about the Wedgwoods—though he remembered that Grandfather Wedgwood used to hunt around Chesterfield when he wanted to get the Chesterfield seat.”

“And somehow all this committed Catholic and officer-class stuff got transmuted into committed Socialism and class-warrior stuff. Interesting. One wonders how it happened.”

“Doesn't one ever! There's potential for all sorts of digging there. That sort of thing happened regularly enough in the 'sixties, but this would have happened very late in the radical boom at the earliest, and probably well after it.
Was
he in the army? I wonder. Still, I mustn't go on about it. I suppose you're not really interested in this by-election.”

It was common knowledge, since he had received the phone call from the Manor Court Farm worker, that he was a police officer, and that he was nosing into the
Partridge death. If Sutcliffe had not been so cagey, and if their newspapers had not been Tory to a rag, the various reporters would have made something of this by now, and still might. Sutcliffe kept his cage tightly locked.

“Oh, I don't know,” he said.

“Here—you did me a good turn, and I'll do you one in exchange. What I'd suggest to you is: the election you should be interested in is not this one, but the last one.”

“Oh?”

“That's it. Stands to reason, if you think about it. From your point of view the interesting election is the General Election of 1983. See, this Tory chap and the Labour chap are just Johnny-come-latelies: they couldn't have placed Bootham on the map, I bet you, before this constituency became vacant. That's why they have to dredge up their Yorkshire grandmothers and their Yorkshire schooldays, and so on. And of course none of the loonies was around then, because a General Election doesn't bring you in the same publicity. What does that leave us with? The only person who's actually fought Jim Partridge in an election is Mr Oliver Worthing.”

“And?”

“And
there was a funny rumour going around at the last election that's beginning to surface again this time. And that is that Mr Oliver Worthing's education was even more interesting than Jerry Snaithe's. The rumour goes that he spent part of it in Borstal, and that for a pretty serious offence.”

“Really?”

“Might be worth looking into, eh? Now, don't say I never return a favour. And if there's a story in it, keep it for me, eh?”

The story of Jerry Snaithe's education certainly made a good splash in the
Grub
on the next morning. But perhaps even better was the story of Jerry's bruiser in the
Strip
of the same day. Neither the
Grub
nor the
Strip
was in any real sense a newspaper. They were the successors to the weekend strip-and-sensation sheets that Sutcliffe had read and gained his knowledge of the female anatomy from in his boyhood, the only difference being that the
Grub
and the
Strip
catered for the same tastes daily. If anything, the
Strip
was one degree more moronic than the
Grub
, and the paper really went to town on Reg Bickerstaffe, the Labour Party's bouncer. After he had been paid off by the Labour agent, he had been followed by the
Strip
reporter from campaign headquarters and into a pub, where the reporter had bought him many a pint of ale, and had encouraged him, by his human sympathy, to talk not only about his unjust sacking, but also about his political beliefs. These last were perhaps not coherent enough to justify their being called a philosophy, but with judicious prompting from
Strip
Reg Bickerstaffe enlarged at length on the feelings he had towards Pakis, wogs, Yids, nignogs, black-arse bastards and so on—interspersed with his views on bints, tarts, and various unprintable synonyms for woman, whom he regarded with blanket and uniform contempt. It made a wonderful story for the
Strip
, the more so as the paper could print the racist and sexist terms, or at least a judicious selection of them, and then hold up its hands virtuously in horror
and ask: are these the sort of attitudes that the Labour Party in Bootham upholds? It had it both ways in no uncertain fashion, and the picture of the bouncer's right arm and chest and belly were among the most fascinatingly off-putting that the paper had run for years.

Certainly, Sutcliffe thought, as he ploughed through the populars, it wasn't Jerry Snaithe's day.

He had a late lunch in a Bootham pub that offered fare a notch or two above that of the Happy Dalesman. Then he decided to walk to the Tory campaign headquarters. As he approached them up Gordon Street he picked the place out at once, from the frenetic activity that was going on inside and outside the house. But as he neared it, in a leisurely fashion, a little cavalcade of vehicles drove off, one of them bearing Antony Craybourne-Fisk on his way to repel the voters of some part of the constituency or other. So that when Sutcliffe got to the headquarters' outer office, things were comparatively quiet. In one corner a woman with a hat like a dead hedgehog was addressing envelopes, while at a desk, surrounded by telephones, sat a smart, large and intimidating girl. Obviously Roedean. Probably, like Jerry Snaithe, she had been captain of rugby when she was at school.

“Yes?”

“Superintendent Sutcliffe.”

“Oh yes . . . Yes . . . Well, Mr Fawcett has said he
may
be able to give you the fifteen minutes.” (Certainly a sense of humour was not one of this girl's strong points. She should, on past form, go far in the party.) “But please remember how busy he is. Through there.”

She pointed to a door, and Sutcliffe obediently knocked
on it and entered. Harold Fawcett was on the phone, but he cut short the call and came over to shake Sutcliffe by the hand. A comfortable, paunched, cheery type of man—not too bright, perhaps, but reasonably honest if not pushed into a corner.

“Superintendent? Do sit down. Sorry I'm a bit rushed, but you know how it is in a by-election, or if you don't I hope you never find out! It's pandemonium here much of the time, you know. Do you know what they're calling us? The political focal point of the nation.”

“The cynosure,” agreed Sutcliffe.

“Aye. I meant to look that one up. It's a daunting thought.”

“Right, sir, then I'll come straight to the point and save you time,” said Sutcliffe, thinking Fawcett displayed some inclination to time-wasting. “You know what I'm here about.”

“Aye,” agreed Harold Fawcett carefully.

“I want to ask a few random questions, about things that have come up in the course of my little investigation. Could you tell me anything, for example, about Mr Walter Abbot?”

“Ah—Mr Abbot. Well, I'd have to watch my step there. He used to be on our Executive Committee, and he's still what you might call ‘prominent in Conservative circles.' He's not a man one would cross lightly. What exactly is it you'd like to know?”

“About his quarrel with James Partridge. I know all about the causes, and the letters that went back and forth, but what exactly did Abbot
do
when things blew up?”

“Well, it was all rather unpleasant, actually. He seemed
to regard this ‘Animals Charter' as some sort of personal insult. And once he'd fired off several salvoes through the post he started charging round the constituency trying to stir up people against Partridge.”

“What exactly was he trying to do?”

“I don't think he knew himself, exactly. He is a political ignoramus, really. We don't have de-selection in our party, and with the Labour Party pulling itself to pieces with one de-selection after another, the last thing we'd want is for them to be able to point to anything similar happening in our party. I think what he was hoping for was some sort of vote of no confidence, which he thought might make Partridge stand down before the next election, or even resign his seat at once. It was all nonsense.”

“He didn't get anywhere?”

“Of course not. He just huffed and puffed, perhaps got one or two individuals on his side, but in the end he put up more backs than Jim Partridge ever could.”

“So he'd have known by early December that he wasn't getting anywhere?”

“Oh yes. But, Superintendent—”

“I'm not implying anything. Merely asking. Did you know anything about Partridge's marital affairs up here?”

“Know anything—no. Suspect—? Well, it had been noticed that Mrs Partridge had hardly been in the constituency over the last three or four months before he died. That sort of thing gets itself commented on in Conservative circles. The member's lady is an important person.”

“Mrs Partridge was popular?”

“No. But she was the member's wife.”

“She seems to have been disappointed and surprised when her husband was dropped from the government. Were you?”

“Surprised, yes. We'd rather been under the impression that he was one of the coming men. We weren't really disappointed, because a back-bencher who does his job is often a better member from the constituency's point of view than a member of the government. And Partridge would certainly have done his job.”

“Why do you think he was dropped from the government?”

“That you'd have to ask the Prime Minister.”

“I don't think I'm likely to be given the opportunity. I thought you might have heard some rumours.”

“Aye, well, I suppose I did. Don't know how reliable they were. What one or two people were saying at the time was—well, it was two things, really. You know he was one of the juniors at Health? Yes, well, he was very much involved in those disputes over nurses' pay, and the pay of people lower down in the Health Service. Now, James was all for efficiency and keeping pay settlements down, but there were people said he actually became convinced that the nurses especially had an unanswerable case.”

“Convinced by their arguments?”

“Yes. It was most unfortunate. He went around saying that the State had been capitalizing for years on their dedication. He was very unconvincing when answering parliamentary questions on the subject, because he really felt they'd been hard done by, and he would have liked to right it. Then there was the other thing . . .”

“Yes?”

“Well, I think it goes back to the Abbot business we've been talking about. He started straying outside his own territory. That's not done in politics these days. You keep your nose down to your own particular grindstone. But he started bombarding the Ministry of Agriculture with questions about intensive farming, doing it more or less privately, as government members have to. He used to buttonhole the minister in the Commons bar, have the juniors round to dinner and press them with questions. It was this bee in his bonnet about there being cruelty involved, but taking it up in that way really wasn't done, and people resented it. Now, in both these things there were questions of loyalty involved. Even in cabinet the PM doesn't much like discussion. The relevant minister has his say, the PM backs him up, because they've thrashed it out in advance, and then the rest say ‘Yes.' They're not exactly a rubber stamp—”

“No?”

“No, no. But they're certainly not a debating society. So there was a bit of a question-mark against his loyalty, his total commitment. And added to this there was the slight feeling that he was putting his conscience above his loyalty, and that that conscience was being paraded. There's nothing the PM likes less. We've all got consciences, nobody more so, but we don't parade them, that's the line these days. So all this agonizing about animals really went against the grain, and against the whole government image that's been built up. After all, the little buggers don't have a vote!”

“I see. That's all very interesting. Look, I think I've
got two or three minutes of your time left. Could I ask you about Oliver Worthing?”

“Worthing?” Harold Fawcett perceptibly brightened up, as the discussion moved outside Tory circles. “I'm hardly the expert on the opposition.”

“Specifically about rumours that surfaced during the last general election.”

“Oh yes: those. Well, I wouldn't say they surfaced. After all, they never got into the Press.”