The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (36 page)

The drawer creaked as it came open. It was stuffed full of files, each with the name of a different MP, each containing embarrassing and even incriminating material he had carefully withdrawn from the safe in the Whips’ Office. It had taken him nearly three years to amass these secrets, these acts of utter stupidity.

He knelt on the floor while he sorted through the files. He found what he was looking for, a padded envelope, already addressed and sealed. He put it to one side, then he closed the drawer and secured the filing cabinet, testing as he always did to make sure the lock and security bar had caught properly.

He didn’t drive straight home. Instead he drove to one of the twenty-four-hour motorcycle messenger services that flourish among the seedier basements of Soho. He dropped the envelope off and paid in cash for it to be delivered to its destination. It would have been easier, of course, for him to have posted it in the House of Commons where they have one of the most efficient post offices in the country. But he didn’t want a House of Commons postmark anywhere near this envelope.

Forty-Two

Cruelty of any kind is unforgivable. That’s why there is no point at all in being cruel in half-measure.

Wednesday, November 24

The letters and newspapers arrived almost simultaneously with a dull thud on Woolton’s Chelsea doormat. Hearing the early-morning clatter, he came downstairs in his dressing gown and gathered them up, spreading the newspapers across the kitchen table while he left the post on a small antique bench in the hallway. He received more than three hundred letters a week from his constituents and other correspondents and had long since given up trying to read them all. So he left them for his wife, who was also his constituency secretary and for whom he got a generous secretarial allowance from the parliamentary authorities to supplement his Cabinet minister’s stipend.

Inevitably, the newspapers were dominated by the leadership election. The headlines seemed to have been written by journalists moonlighting from the
Sporting
Life
and phrases such as “Neck and Neck,” “Three Horse Race,” and “Photo Finish” were splashed across the front pages. Inside, the less feverish commentaries explained that it was difficult to predict which of the three leading contenders was now best placed. He bent over the analysis in the
Guardian
, not normally his first port of call. It often hopped around uselessly on its left leg but, since it wouldn’t end up supporting any of the candidates at the next election, it was arguably more measured and objective about the outcome.

The Party is now presented with a clear choice. Michael Samuel is by far the most popular and polished of the three, with a clear record of being able to pursue a political career without throwing out his social conscience. The fact that he has been attacked by some elements of the Party as being “too liberal by half” is a badge he should wear with pride.

Patrick Woolton is an altogether different politician. Immensely proud of his Northern origins, he poses as a man who could unite the two halves of the country. Whether his robust style of politics could unite the two halves of his own Party is altogether more debatable. Despite his time in the Foreign Office, he professes to have little patience with diplomacy and plays his politics as if he were still hooking for his old rugby league club. The Leader of the Opposition once described him as a man wandering the streets of Westminster in search of a fight, and not particularly bothered with whom.

Woolton let out a muffled roar of appreciation, demolished half a slice of toast and rustled the paper once more.

Francis Urquhart is more difficult to assess. The least experienced and well known of the three, nevertheless his performance in the first round ballot was remarkable. Three reasons seem to explain his success. First, as Chief Whip he knows the Parliamentary Party extremely well, and they him. Since it is his colleagues in the Parliamentary Party and not the electorate at large who will decide this election, his low public profile is less of a disadvantage than many perhaps assumed.

Second, he has conducted his campaign in a dignified style which sets him apart from the verbal fisticuffs and misfortunes of the other contenders. What is known of his politics suggests he holds firm to the traditionalist line, somewhat patrician and authoritarian perhaps, but sufficiently ill-defined for him not to have antagonized either wing of the Party.

Finally, perhaps his greatest asset is that he is neither of the other two. Many MPs have certainly supported him in the first round rather than commit themselves to one of the more contentious candidates. He is the obvious choice for those who wish to sit on the fence. But it is that which could ultimately derail his campaign. As the pressure for a clear decision grows, Urquhart is the candidate who could suffer most.

So the choice is clear. Those who wish to air their social consciences will support Samuel. Those who thirst for blood-and-thunder politics will support Woolton. Those who cannot make up their minds have an obvious choice in Urquhart. Whichever way they decide, they will inevitably deserve what they get.

Woolton chuckled as he finished off the last of the toast and his wife arrived to join him, her arms laden with the morning’s post.

“What do they say?” she said, nodding at the newspapers.

“That I’m Maggie Thatcher without the tits,” he said. “Home and bloody dry.”

She replenished his mug of tea and sighed as she sat beside the pile of mail and began sifting through it. She had gotten the process down to a fine art. Her word processor was carefully programmed with a series of standard responses that, with only the barest brush of a keyboard, would make a reply seem personalized. Then they would be signed with the help of a little autograph machine he had brought back from the States. Even though many of the letters were from the usual bunch of discontents, lobbyists, professional whingers, and nutters who wrote in green ink, they would all get an answer. She wouldn’t risk losing her husband even a single vote by failing to offer some form of reply even to the most abusive.

She left the padded brown envelope until last. It had been hand-delivered and was firmly stapled down; she had to struggle to open it, risking her manicure in the process. As she pulled out the last tenacious staple a cassette tape fell into her lap. There was nothing else in the envelope, no letter, no compliments slip, no label on the tape to indicate where it had come from or what it contained.

“Fools. How on earth do they expect us to reply to that?”

“It’s probably a recording of last weekend’s speech or a tape of a recent interview,” he suggested distractedly, not bothering to look up from his newspaper. “Give us some more tea, lass, and let’s give it a whirl.” He waved broadly in the general direction of the stereo unit.

His wife, dutiful as ever, did as he bade. He was slurping his tea, his attention fixed to the editorial in the
Sun
, when with a burst of red light the playback meter on the tape deck began to show it was reading something. There was a series of low hisses and crackles, it was clearly not a professional recording.

“Turn the bloody thing up, then, love,” he instructed, “let the fox hear the chicken.”

The sound of a girl’s laughter filled the room. It was followed, moments later, by her low, deep gasp. The noise hypnotized the Wooltons, rooting them to the spot. No tea was supped and no paper turned for several minutes as through the speakers came many noises: heavy breaths, low curses, a complaining mattress, a grunt of happiness, the rhythmic banging of a headboard against a wall. The tape left little to the imagination. The woman’s sighs became shorter and more shrill, only pausing to gasp for breath before they climbed ever higher.

Then, with mutual cries of ascension and fulfillment, it was done. A woman’s giggles mixed with the deep bass panting of her companion.

“Oh, my, that was bloody marvelous,” the man gasped.

“Not bad for an oldie.”

“That’s what you get with age. Stamina!”

“Can we do it again, then?”

“Not if you’re going to wake up the whole of bloody Bournemouth,” an unmistakable Lancashire accent said.

Neither Woolton nor his wife had moved since the tape had begun but now she stepped slowly across the room and switched it off. A soft, gentle tear fell down one cheek as she turned to look at her husband. He couldn’t return her gaze.

“What can I say? I’m sorry, love,” he whispered. “I’ll not lie and tell you it’s bogus. But I am sorry, truly. I never meant to hurt you.”

She made no reply. The look of sorrow on her face cut him far more deeply than any angry word.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked gently.

She turned on him, her face flooded with pain. She had to dig her nails deep into her palm to retain control. “Pat, I have turned many a blind eye over the last twenty-three years and I’m not so stupid as to think this is the only time. You could at least have had the decency to keep it away from me and to make sure my face wasn’t rubbed in it. You owed me that.”

He hung his head. She let her anger sink into him before she continued.

“But one thing my pride will not tolerate is having a tart like that trying to break up my marriage and make a fool of me. I’ll not stand for it. Find out whatever the blackmailing little bitch wants, buy her off or go to the police if necessary. But get rid of her. And get rid of this!” She flung the tape at him; it bounced off his chest. “It doesn’t belong in my house. And neither will you if I have to listen to that filth again!”

He looked at her with tears in his own eyes. “I’ll sort it out. I promise. You’ll hear no more about it.”

Forty-Three

Love reaches a man’s heart. Fear, on the other hand, gets to his more persuadable parts.

Thursday, November 25

Penny cast an unwelcoming frown in the direction of the solid steel sky and, muffled in wool, she stepped carefully onto the pavement from the Earl’s Court mansion block in which she lived. The weathermen had been talking for days about the possibility of a sudden cold snap and now it had arrived, intent on getting on with its job. As she picked her way over frozen puddles she regretted her decision to wear heels instead of boots. She was moving slowly along the edge of the pavement, blowing hot breath on her fingers, as a car door swung open, blocking her path.

She bent low to tell the driver to be more bloody careful when she saw Woolton at the wheel. She beamed at him but he didn’t return her warmth. He was looking straight ahead, not at her as she obeyed his clipped instruction and slipped into the passenger seat.

“What is it you want?” he demanded in a voice as hard as the morning air.

“What are you offering?” She smiled, but an edge of uncertainty was already creeping in as she saw his eyes. They were soulless.

The lips were thin, curled, exposing his teeth as he spoke.

“Did you have to go and send that tape to me at home? That was a damned cruel thing to do. My wife heard it. It was also extremely stupid because she knows about it now so you can’t blackmail me. No newspaper or radio station will touch it, the potential libel damages will have them all running for cover, so there’s not much use you can make of it.”

It wasn’t the truth. The tape could still do immense damage to him in the wrong hands but he hoped she would be too stupid to see all that. His bluff seemed to have worked as he watched her face fill with alarm.

“Pat, what on earth are you talking about?”

“The bloody tape you sent me, you silly trollop. Don’t you go coy on me!”

“I…I sent you no tape. I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

The unexpected assault on her feelings had come as a considerable shock and she began to sob and gasp for breath. He grabbed her arm ferociously and tears of real pain began to flow.

“The tape! The tape! You sent me the tape!”

“What tape, Pat? Why are you hurting me…?”

The trickle of tears had become a torrent. The street outside began to disappear behind misted windows and she was locked in a world of madness.

“Look at me and tell me you didn’t send me a tape of us in Bournemouth.”

“No. No. What tape?” Suddenly she gasped and the tears died in horror. “There’s a tape of us in Bournemouth? Pat, that’s vile. But who?”

He released her arm and his head sank slowly onto the steering wheel. “Oh, my God, this is worse than I thought,” he muttered.

“Pat, I don’t understand.”

His face was gray, suddenly aged, his skin stretched like old parchment across his cheeks. “Yesterday a cassette tape arrived at my home. It was a recording of us in bed at the Party conference.”

“And you thought that
I
had sent it? Why, you miserable shit!”

“I hoped it was you, Pen.”

“Why? Why me?” she shouted in disgust.

He gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white, looking ahead, but not at the road. “I hoped it was you, Pen, because if it’s not you then I haven’t the faintest idea who’s doing this. And it can’t be any type of coincidence that it’s arrived now, so many weeks after it was made. They’re not trying to blackmail me for money. They want me out of the leadership race.” His voice faded to a whisper. “As far as next Tuesday goes, I’m toast.”

* * *

Woolton spent the rest of the morning trying to think constructively. He had no shred of doubt it was the leadership race that had caused the sudden appearance of the tape. He threw a dozen ideas against the wall as to who was behind it, even the Russians, but nothing stuck. He had nowhere else to go. He called his wife—he owed her that, and more—then he called a press conference.

Faced with such a problem, some men might have decided to fade gently from the scene and pray that their quiet retirement would not be disturbed, but Woolton wasn’t some men. He was the type who would rather go down fighting, trying to salvage whatever he could from the wreckage of his dreams. He had nothing to lose.