The Truth (5 page)

She laid her phone on the table, throwing it a meaningful glance as she did so.

‘That was Ron Latham.’

He frowned.

‘Ron Latham. Urgent Books. Used to be with Waddilow and Bowler until they became Herald and Barker. Did the Flapjacks.’

Mabbut knew the name, but from the business, not the literary, pages.

‘He’s one of the biggest players now. Stacks of money behind him.’

Mabbut’s eyes narrowed. Silla clinked her glass against his with such abandon that it was clear it wasn’t her first.

‘And he’s after you.’

‘What for?’

But Silla was off again, leafing through the menu then waving at the waitress.

‘Let’s order,’ she barked.

They both chose the day’s special. He drank his glass of wine and half the bottle she later ordered. She remained almost coquettishly mysterious about the matter in hand, and only politely interested as he expanded on his novel, so they talked about this and that, and a small fight outside the Spanish club farther down the street provided some unexpected entertainment. An hour later Silla switched on her phone, and kissed him briefly.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’

‘Look, Silla, you’ve torpedoed my first day on
Albana—
’

‘On what?’

‘
Albana
. The
novel
! Remember?’

Silla pushed back her chair and stood up, smiling crisply.

‘Not a good title, by the way.’

She waved the bill.

‘Albania or Nirvana. You can’t have both. Excuse me!’

The lovely Croatian switched off her mobile and came towards them.

‘It’s a working title.’

‘We had one bottle of water. The rest was tap, I think.’

Mabbut persisted. ‘I can’t let you sabotage my
second
day.’

‘There. Two San Pellegrinos. We only had one.’

The waitress looked down at the bill for some time, as if trying to decipher ancient runes.

‘OK. I change.’

Silla reached for her coat.

‘The life of a writer is unlike any other, Keith. It’s lonely, it’s unpredictable, it’s blown by the winds.’

‘So?’

‘A writer’s mind must never be closed. It’s his duty to be curious and my duty to feed that curiosity. Think of it as the start of a big adventure.’

She gave him a brisk, breathy hug.

‘Meeting’s at eleven. Pick you up at ten.’

‘I’ll take the Tube.’

She frowned.

‘They’re in darkest Southwark, darling.’

For Silla public transport was a foreign country. She shook her hair, pulled on a beret and smiled reassuringly.

‘I’ll send Hector.’

Which was exactly why Mabbut had suggested taking the Tube.

FOUR

S
illa Caldwell was one of the few writer’s agents who still employed a driver. This was partly to do with an old-fashioned concern over image and partly because a year or so previously she’d totalled her own car after a carafe too many with a Swedish thriller writer. No one had been hurt and it was quite likely she would have got away with it had the car she’d hit not had a policeman in it. With a deftly mixed cocktail of charm and remorse Silla had avoided public opprobrium and all who knew her reckoned she’d been very lucky indeed. Apart from the loss of a colourfully eccentric Alfa Spyder, the only real penalty she’d incurred was the arrival of Hector Fischer in her life.

And it was Hector Fischer’s large, close-shaven, ever so slightly perspiring head that Mabbut could see from the back of the BMW as they sat becalmed in the Russell Square one-way system.

‘She was no good for him,’ Hector insisted, in his menacing Austrian accent. ‘No good for him at all.’

Silla was deep in a phone call, so Mabbut felt duty bound to respond.

‘So what did he do?’

Hector’s eyes flicked up to the mirror and focused on Mabbut, like someone peering into a house through the letter box.

‘What did he do? What would
you
do?’

The traffic edged forward. Keith, whose attention had wandered during the early part of the story, shook his head equivocally.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You’ve no
idea
! A woman you’ve helped out of the gutter turns and spits on you, and you’ve no
idea
!’

Fischer braked sharply to avoid killing a frail elderly person who was making their way over a designated crossing.

‘I tell you what I would do,’ he shouted over the blast of his car horn. ‘I would have kicked her out and changed the locks! That would be my idea of what to do!’

They turned into Doughty Street. When he’d first arrived in London, Mabbut had come down here to pay homage to Charles Dickens, who’d lived and worked in one of these houses.

‘Every time she sobbed a tear and shook her bum he took her back. “Oh it’s OK! Don’t worry! I’ll look after you! Put your head on my shoulder. There!”’

After all these years, the amount of history in a single London street was still something to marvel at.

‘I would have said there was only one place for that head. On the block!’ Hector chuckled grimly and accelerated towards a traffic-calming platform ahead of them.

‘On the block!’ he repeated with satisfaction.

Silla finished one call and started another. Mabbut decided to feign sleep.

Urgent Books occupied the first two floors of an old tobacco warehouse on the south bank of the river between Southwark and London Bridge. It had been brusquely converted for a quick sale at the height of the property boom and despite its cast-iron columns and sturdy brick walls the change of use had rendered it virtually indistinguishable from a host of similar commercial developments which had sterilised a once quirky riverside.

Automatic glass doors gave access to a wide open-plan reception area, a curious conjunction of marble tiled floor and whitewashed brick walls. A curving glass staircase led up to a gallery and a bank of lifts serving the upper floors. Mabbut and Silla were halfway up the stairs when a wiry, athletic man strode out on to the balcony above. Silla waved. He nodded back at her with a wink that could have been a twitch. Or just a wink.

Ron Latham didn’t fit any preconceived idea Mabbut had of a publisher. He had very black curly hair and an almost unnaturally clear complexion, such as you might see on a waxwork. His shirt was collarless, and worn tucked into snug-fitting black jeans. He wore a pair of rimless glasses, so thin that they almost could be mistaken for
part of his skull. His age could have been anything between twenty-five and forty-five. He greeted Silla with a kiss and Mabbut with a firm grip from a surprisingly soft hand.

‘Ron Latham. I’m the CEO. Everyone calls me Ron.’

He smiled mirthlessly and led them through an open-plan office, past twenty or thirty consoles from which no one looked up. At the far end was the only room with a proper door: steel with a hardwood finish. Latham held it open and beckoned them into a conference room with a wide picture window overlooking the Thames. Mabbut caught sight of a train rumbling over the bridge to Cannon Street station before Latham pressed a remote control and blinds clicked into place.

‘Sorry. Bit bright. Coffee?’

A complete breakfast had been laid out at one end of the glass-topped conference table. Latham poured coffee and stretched his arm out over the spread.

‘There’s juice and pastries. Croissants. Whatever you want.’

He didn’t make it sound tempting.

Latham and Silla talked a little of mutual friends and the ups and downs of the market. The two of them seemed comfortable together. Mabbut looked about him. At one end of the room stood an easel from which hung sheets of paper, ruffled almost imperceptibly by the softly humming air con.

Considering this was a publishing house, there were very few books to be seen. Maybe this was the shape of the future. The world on a screen. Mabbut was old fashioned in these matters. He used a mobile and a computer, neither very competently, but when he was on the road his first point of contact remained his notebook and pencil.

As he reached for a croissant, Mabbut caught Latham’s eye. Latham smiled crisply, professionally. Maybe he was nervous too, for when he spoke it was with a touch of unconvincing matiness.

‘I’ve known Priscilla since she worked the show-biz pages at the Chronicle group. I like her, because she’s always gone her own way. Never followed the herd.’

Mabbut was about to reach for the butter, but thought better of it.

‘So when this came along, she was the first person we went to for a recommendation.’

Mabbut looked across at his agent. Her expression gave no hint of her trademark hard-nosed scepticism. Instead she stared back at him with a look of bright anxiety, like a mother who was taking her child to the doctor.

Latham finished his coffee and put his cup back on the table. He smiled.

‘She thought of you.’

‘For what, exactly?’ asked Mabbut.

‘Something quite exciting.’

Latham indicated a row of chairs and at the press of a remote control, a screen purred down from the ceiling.

‘This is super-confidential, but it’ll give you some idea of what we’re after.’

He flicked the remote and the room darkened. Suddenly the screen was illuminated and an arresting image appeared, a figure walking from left to right across what looked like stony scrub in some hot country. The camera zoomed in and revealed an imposing middle-aged to elderly man with a mane of thick greying hair.

Mabbut recognised the man even before the title caption came up.

‘Hamish Melville,’ intoned a sententious voice-over. ‘Aged seventy-five. Anthropologist and activist.’ A series of close-ups showed a large head and a strong face with eyes deep set beneath the brow, as if they were peering out from the mouth of a cave. The face was not so much handsome – the nose and cheekbones were too prominent for that – as it was mesmerising; the way John the Baptist looked in Renaissance paintings, an impression strengthened by hair worn long and tangled. Various film clips followed. Usually shot on the move, with Melville striding through the bush, or surrounded by a group of tiny tribal people, or, in one case, sitting cross-legged with a group of fellow protesters in front of a police line. Place names clicked up on the screen: Bangladesh, Brazil, Borneo. All the environmental hot spots.

The presentation was clinical and factual, but to Mabbut it was fascinating stuff. In an age of universal access Hamish Melville remained an enigmatic maverick. The Action Man of the environmental movement. Mabbut was familiar with the background. The
cancellation of the million-dollar Puerto Jainca dam project and the saving of the Akwambe lands in the Niger delta were just two of Melville’s successes, yet the man himself was famously reclusive. He rarely gave interviews and when he did they were more likely to be for a school magazine than a national broadsheet. Apart from his hit-and-run campaigns, his legendary influence on everything from conflict resolution to economic development stemmed from two books and the occasional address, delivered, more often than not, to a convention of rickshaw drivers rather than a UN assembly. For journalists of Mabbut’s generation this combination of the inspirational and the subversive was a constant source of speculation. They admired and envied Melville’s unique ability to stay out of the headlines and yet remain extraordinarily effective in pricking consciences. To see these glimpses of the great man – working on a farm, riding a train, swimming and laughing in some frighteningly turbulent river – was almost like watching footage of some old communist icon.

The last sequence was quite different. It was a montage of maybe a dozen shots of Melville in urban locations, caught on what looked like a CCTV camera, leaving an airport, entering a building, on the steps of a government facility, shaking hands with movers and shakers. In some of them Melville wore a suit. In one, getting into a large car, with security men holding the door, he was carrying a briefcase. On this last, incongruous image, the commentary drew to a conclusion. ‘Who is the real Melville? And where does his power lie?
Melville. The True Story
. An Urgent exclusive. Coming to you next Christmas.’

The words faded and slowly the lights came up. Latham reached for the remote. The screen ascended, disappearing soundlessly into the ceiling. Almost simultaneously the blinds folded back and daylight flooded the room.

‘That’s interesting stuff,’ Mabbut murmured. He glanced towards Silla. ‘But why are we . . . er . . . why are we watching Hamish Melville home movies?’

Latham raised his immaculately trimmed eyebrows.

‘More coffee?’

Mabbut shook his head. Latham stood, refilled his own cup,
added sugar, glanced briefly towards the door then turned back again.

‘We, that is, Urgent Books, want to commission a book on Melville. Everyone loves him, everyone respects him. He’s admired all over the world. By the people whose land he saves, by the conservationists and the ecologists, as well as a hell of a lot of people who don’t agree with what he’s saying, but like the way he says it.
And
he has an international profile.’