The Closed Circle (31 page)

Steve looked more closely at the picture. “There isn't anybody else.”

“Look again.”

He picked up the photograph and held it just an inch or two from his eyes.

“I suppose this could be somebody's arm.”

“You've got it.” Philip took the photograph back, and showed it to Benjamin. “See? Just here. There's someone else standing on the edge of the picture. He's leaning against the desk.”

Philip paused, theatrically, relishing their state of suspense.

“Who is it?” Steve asked at last.

“I can't say for certain,” said Philip. “But I got the photo blown up as much as I could. And this might give us a little clue.”

He uncovered the second photograph, which showed just a small detail from the first—a man's disembodied arm—magnified to about ten or twelve times its original size. Steve and Benjamin leaned in, looked at the arm, the slightly scruffy black sleeve which suggested a well-worn suit, the pale flesh at the back of the hand, the thin, slender fingers; and on the middle finger, a ring. A ring which they both recognized at once. It was the ring that Harding had once bought at a Birmingham antiques market, countless years ago: the signet ring with which he had stamped, at the foot of any number of scurrilous letters and articles written for
The Bill Board,
the supposedly ancient and noble seal of the Pusey-Hamiltons.

NORFOLK RHAPSODY NO. 1

Winter

10

“‘Norfolk Rhapsody Number One,' it's called,” said the taxi driver. “By Ralph Vaughan Williams. Lovely, isn't it? I heard it on Classic FM and went out and bought the CD. Do you want me to turn it up a bit?”

“No thanks,” said Paul. He had only asked the question because, last week, a waspish young woman from the
Independent
had come to interview him, and one of her comments in the resulting profile had been that, “He seems to live within an absolutely impermeable bubble of self-absorption, incapable of taking any real interest in other people.”

Anyway, he had got the driver talking now, and there was going to be no stopping him, by the sound of it.

“Do you know his music, at all? Beautiful stuff, it is. They play a lot of it on Classic FM. He did this piece called ‘The Lark Ascending,' which is totally fantastic. Actually it's on this CD—coming up the track after this. You can
see
the bird taking off into the sky when the violin starts playing— you know, you can really see it. When that's playing, I just have to close my eyes and I'm back on the South Downs. My mum's old cottage. That's where I'm from, originally, you see. 'Course, I don't actually close my eyes when I'm driving, that'd be lethal, wouldn't it? I just mean metaphorically. But I need something to calm me down when I'm driving around London these days. Fucking unbelievable it is, the traffic. I need something to help me relax or I just get too fucking wound up. If I was at home I'd have a glass or two of Australian Shiraz, you know, something fruity and mellow. But I mean, I can't get pissed when I'm driving, can I?”

PAUL TROTTER, MP

His career has been on the up since returning to the back-benches two years ago. Frequent TV and radio appearances have made him one of the best-known New Labour faces, and his suits just seem to get sharper and sharper every time he pops up on screen. His Commission for Business and Social Initiatives has yet to report, but its findings are likely to confirm his position as a leading figure on the right wing of the party.

Paul Trotter wears:
Bespoke special made suit by Kilgour (from £2,300), white harness cotton shirt by Alexander McQueen (£170).

(
Extracted from magazine feature, “The 50 Sharpest Men in
Britain,” December, 2002
)

Paul stepped out of the taxi to find that there were two rows of photographers lined up outside the restaurant, and he was going to have to walk down the aisle formed between them. There wasn't actually a red carpet, but it did rather feel as though there should have been. As the taxi pulled away, he straightened his tie and patted his hair into shape. Then he stepped forward, feeling suddenly self-conscious, trying to move with the feline grace of a catwalk model but convinced, for some reason, that his arms and legs had started to swing in some weird, uncoordinated parody of the way he normally walked. He smiled to his left, and smiled to his right, not wanting to look as though he were unaccustomed to this kind of attention. But he needn't have worried. None of the dozen or so paparazzi bothered to raise their cameras as he passed, and the expected barrage of flashlights never materialized. Just as he was reaching the door of the restaurant a white stretch limo pulled up behind him, and a couple in their early twenties emerged: the man had designer stubble and wrap-around shades, the woman a virtually non-existent dress which seemed to consist of three tiny muslin handkerchiefs held approximately together by some pieces of string. Paul had no idea who they were, but all hell broke loose among the photographers, and he was almost knocked to the ground as they stormed past him, flashbulbs popping. He rubbed his elbow where it had been knocked out of joint by one of the stampeding crowd, and smiled an embarrassed greeting at the tall, supercilious doorman who now swung the glass door open for him and waved him inside.

Paul had been to this restaurant before: it was at the corner of Kingsway and the Aldwych, and he regularly met journalists here to talk off the record over steak and oyster pie or pressed guinea fowl terrine. Tonight, however, it had been transformed. The tables had been cleared away and the walls covered with posters emblazoned with the logo of the magazine and messages of welcome to “Britain's 50 Sharpest Men.” The lights had been dimmed to the point where guests had to grope their way towards the bar through a crepuscular gloom. The speaker system had been cranked up to top volume, but for all the racket it was making, it could have been playing anything: all Paul could hear was a pounding bass drum and a lurching, robotic bass line that throbbed so fiercely it rattled his bones. He had been hoping, irrationally enough, that it would not be long before he saw someone he knew at this party. But as soon as he began to push his way through the clusters of shouting people, he realized not only that no one from his social or political circle was likely to be there, but he wouldn't even be able to spot them if they were. If he was not going to pass the evening in humiliating isolation, he would somehow have to break in to one of the small, exclusive, tightly knit groups that already seemed to have formed all around him. But how was he supposed to do that? Who were all these people, anyway? Most of them looked at least ten years younger than him. The men were more at ease than Paul, and more handsome, and the women had blonde hair and tight black dresses and all looked bored and beautiful. Presumably most of the people here worked for the magazine, in some capacity or another. Was one of them the editor? The editor had written to Paul personally, congratulating him on making the list. It was a prestigious, glossy men's magazine, with an affluent young readership, and Paul would have liked to thank the editor for the letter, and used it as a lever to get into conversation with him. But he had no idea what he looked like.

Paul had a contingency plan, which he had been hoping he would not have to fall back on: he could always talk to Doug Anderton. Doug was also on the list—a good deal higher than Paul, at number twenty-three, gallingly. But at the moment, Paul couldn't see him anywhere. Perhaps he hadn't bothered to come.

He went to the bar and armed himself with a glass of champagne. The champagne was free, tonight, and someone had had the bright idea that it should be served in tumblers, and drunk through straws. It tasted horrible that way. Paul tossed his straw on to the floor and began to look around him with something approaching desperation.

Finally he homed in upon a middle-aged man with wavy grey hair and horn-rimmed spectacles, standing in a corner with a woman who was almost certainly his wife. She had a tight perm and was wearing a suit that looked as though it came from Marks and Spencers, and they both gave the impression of being lost and more than slightly horrified by the situation in which they found themselves. Surely, Paul thought, this couldn't be one of the fifty sharpest men in Britain? He looked like a rural sub-postmaster on a day out with his wife in the big city, after they had both drifted away from the rest of their tour group and wandered by mistake into this party when they should really have been watching
Cats.

Paul decided to give them a try anyway.

“Paul Trotter,” he said, approaching the grey-haired man and holding out his hand. “Number forty-nine.”

“Ah! Very pleased to meet you.” The man shook his hand warmly. “Professor John Copland. Edinburgh university. Number seventeen.”

Seventeen?
Paul was astonished.

“Thank goodness you came to talk to us,” said Professor Copland's wife. “We feel like fish out of water here.”

It turned out that Professor Copland was one of the country's leading geneticists, and the author of several best-selling books on the subject. Paul, unfortunately, had never heard of him, and knew next to nothing about genetics, so the conversation—which they managed to stretch out for nearly half an hour, with some considerable effort on all three sides—was confined to generalities. The professor and his wife were interested to hear Paul's views on the impending invasion of Iraq; they seemed to be in some confusion, even after reading many of his newspaper articles, as to whether he was in the pro- or anti-war camp. He wasn't able to enlighten them much. This was, in truth, the first issue over which his loyalty to the party leadership had started to fracture, but he found it impossible to say so, either in public or in private. On the one hand, he felt an absolute debt of allegiance to the party which had swept him to office in 1997; on the other, his most basic political (and moral) instincts told him that this adventure was ill-advised and dangerous, that the justifications being offered for it were disingenuous, that it skirted the limits of international law and was more likely to provoke terrorism than to prevent it. He could not understand why the Prime Minister, whose judgment he trusted wholeheartedly on every other issue, was so fiercely wedded to this course of action. It puzzled him; and that was perhaps the most unsettling thing of all, as far as Paul was concerned. He did not like being puzzled. He liked to deal in certainties.

“Well, lovely talking to you,” said Professor Copland's wife, after a longer than usual silence between them had signalled that all the possible conversational avenues had now been explored. Her husband's eyes had started to glaze over. “We'd better be getting along. This isn't really our scene.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Paul, waving goodbye, and when they had gone and he was once again reduced to solitary eavesdropping on the fringes of the unwelcoming young groups, he felt genuinely bereft.

He was rescued a few seconds later by an unexpected greeting.

“Paul Trotter, isn't it?”

Paul turned to see a man he didn't recognize; or at least, recognized only vaguely. He met hundreds of people in the course of his working week, and this could have been any one of them. He seemed to be in his early thirties and had a goatee beard and a shaved head, perhaps to hide incipient baldness.

“Hello,” Paul said, uncertainly. “I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I . . .”

The man introduced himself, reminding Paul that they had met almost three years previously, when he had been one of the producers on a television comedy quiz show. It had been Paul's first television appearance, and not an outstanding success; but in any case, they had both moved on since those days. For his own part, he now ran an independent production company and currently had two hit sitcoms to his credit—one on Channel 4, one on BBC 2—with another half dozen in development. On the basis of these achievements, the magazine had decided that he was the fourteenth sharpest man in Britain.

“I'm number forty-nine,” said Paul, glumly. It was beginning to feel like a less impressive statistic by the moment. It would have helped if he could meet number fifty, but he couldn't remember who it was.

“All by yourself tonight?” the producer asked him.

“Yes,” said Paul. “Susan would have loved to be here—that's my wife— but . . . you know. Kids.”

The producer nodded. He didn't know, having no kids of his own. Besides, Paul was lying: he had not mentioned to Susan that he was attending this party. Instead, he had invited the waspish young journalist from the
Independent
to come with him, but she hadn't answered any of his emails.

“Bit loud, isn't it?” the producer said. “God knows who all these people are.”

“Dreadful,” Paul agreed. “I think I'm going to slope off in a minute. Grab something to eat.” Clutching at a straw—because he couldn't face the prospect, now that it lay before him, of going to a restaurant alone, or returning to his flat and ordering a takeaway—he asked awkwardly: “I don't suppose you'd care to join me? We seem to be the only two single blokes at this party. No harm in sticking together.”

“Thanks all the same,” said the producer, “but I'm with someone, actually.”

And just then, his companion returned from the ladies' toilet, and appeared at his side.

Paul would not have thought it possible that Malvina should be even more slender than he remembered her. And even paler. She had added red streaks to her black hair, and there were dark moons of mascara under her eyes, which gave her a look of sleeplessness. She was wearing a black chiffon dress which allowed glimpses of the milky thinness underneath. In her eyes, in the split second when she first glimpsed him, he saw a wild flare of panic; but it was subdued immediately. Instead, she cleared her throat and adopted a formal pose, clutching her handbag to her waist with both hands.

“Hello,” she said, with not the smallest emotion in her voice; and then turned to the producer, who was regarding them both with some curiosity. “Paul and I worked together for a while. Remember?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “Of course.”

“I'd like some more champagne, please,” Malvina now said, bluntly.

The producer nodded, and after asking Paul if he would like some too, went to the bar to get three glasses. It looked as though he was used to obeying such orders.

“So,” said Malvina, when they were left alone in the centre of the evernoisier, ever-drunker crowd. “How have you been?” Her voice was still drained of any feeling.

“Fine,” said Paul. “Things have been fine.” Then he asked: “Did you know I was going to be here tonight?”

Malvina shook her head. “You're on the list, are you?”

Paul nodded.

“Well done.”

“Thank you.”

There was a longish pause. “You've got another daughter now, I see.”

“Yes, that's right. She'll be two in April. Time just seems to whizz by.”

“Is Susan here?”

“No. No, she's not.” Paul looked at her closely, trying to read the expression in her eyes. It was impossible. “I've thought about you a lot,” he said.

She looked at him directly for the first time. “Have you?”

He nodded.