The Turning Tide (9 page)
‘So if I understand correctly,’ Morag said. ‘Brant is using the Scotland results to circle his wagons, to try to derail a leadership challenge.’ She marched unhappily along the corridor. Morag despised people who made walking down a hallway together into a meeting. There was a special place in hell for this one in particular.
‘Well, more or less, yes,’ Delphine Barrett said. To be fair to her, Morag understood the long-time media advisor to the opposition leader was recently out of a job. Delphine would no doubt be working her remaining contacts and trying to secure a new position before security confiscated her ID cards. But with the shite-to-info ratio of her blather tipping firmly towards shite, Morag thought, it was no wonder Brant let her go.
‘The concern here is whether Brant’s likely to get support from the backbench, and whether someone – say, myself, would head a challenge. Is that right?’ Morag said. Last year’s election that followed the referendum had been a disaster, and she was the only MP her party had left in Scotland.
‘That’s the long and short of it.’ Delphine, in a tight pencil skirt, struggled to keep up as Morag and Arjun strode down the corridor. ‘The way I interpret the polls . . .’
Morag sighed. She wasn’t ready to be drawn either way on the topic. But there was also an opportunity to be had by someone. Lionel Brant was considered dead wood both by the public and his own party. He should have done the right thing and stepped down after the disastrous general election result, but he hadn’t. The most credible challengers – his Shadow Chancellor, and several longer-serving MPs – had all woken up the day after the poll to find themselves voted out of office. It was no secret that Brant had got the job in the first place because it was his turn, not because of an aptitude for leadership. The wrong man in the right place at the right time, as one cruel columnist put it.
While Delphine nattered on Morag thought about what she still had to get through today: two consultations, an energy committee review, and a debrief on what was likely to happen to the Scotland Bill in Lords.
They were at her office door. Arjun put his hand on the knob, an obvious cue to shove off that Delphine ignored. ‘Well?’ Morag asked. ‘What do you have, Delphine? I don’t need the full dark arts treatment, a little shade will do.’
‘There is this photo from an orchard wassailing event in his constituency at the weekend—’
‘Wassailing? God, how fucking grim.’ Morag rolled her eyes. Grim was her new word. Mondays were grim. Not quite as grim as that body in the mortuary back in Cameron Bridge, but not a pretty sight.
‘It’s all about the margins right now,’ Delphine said, and produced a printout from her folder. ‘An online poll last Tuesday predicted his seat might be at risk if the momentum is with the protest parties. This blackface gaffe is the toehold you need, Morag. Strike while the iron is hot and all of that.’
‘Blackface? Brant blacked up?’ Morag was surprised. Surely even a clot-faced public schoolboy like Brant knew better than to be caught smearing shoe polish on himself.
‘Not him, a group of dancers he was photographed with.’ Delphine jabbed at the printout. ‘Morris dancers.’
‘Is that a thing they do?’
‘Apparently it is.’
‘Trending on Twitter?’
‘Third in UK, top in London for about an hour.’
‘Any columnists on it?’
‘
Telegraph
has a strong piece hitting the hypocrisy angle. Otherwise no.’
‘Print, or online only?’
Delphine smiled apologetically. ‘Online only.’
Morag considered the picture while her fingers drummed the door frame. ‘No, not good enough,’ she said. Delphine and her bloody Internet polls. ‘Middle England loves its twee pish. Take away their blackface Morris dancing or Imperial pints and next thing you know it’s wall-to-wall nationalists banging on about building a wall to keep Romanian plumbers out.’ She paused. ‘If there are still thinkpieces on this a week from now, I’ll reconsider.’
If only Delphine’s intel was hotter. Morag knew she had what it took. She was younger than Brant, well into her forties, which in politician years was sweet sixteen. She’d also had a knack in the past for delivering cross-party support for unpopular bills.
But a woman could not make a challenge the way a man could. There was no way she would survive a failed challenge to the leadership in London, and no way she would survive a successful one back home. It had to be done softly-softly, or not at all. She could not afford to be the one holding the knife when the coup went down.
Instead, it had to look like Brant was crumbling on his own and that only she was qualified to step in. Better yet, that the party membership demanded it.
To convince the rank-and-file members, though, it would have to be a particular kind of attack. What Morag needed was something that would show the leader as out of touch and, preferably, beholden to big money. A lobbying scandal, for example, maybe with links to Europe, a backhanders-for-the-boys club, or in a pinch, a health crisis, with hints that he was covering up late-stage cancer or serious heart disease.
A cut above the usual sex-and-drugs tabloid run. Blackface was nowhere. Even an affair wouldn’t be enough to knock a party leader off his roost any more. Those days were long gone. There would have to be accusations from people who were underage, preferably with some sexting, to raise even the least bit of media interest.
It was a double standard, of course. Men’s lives were private, women’s reputations, public. If people thought Morag was messing around on her useless husband that would end her career. A woman could never be caught cheating. Other female MPs had been done for far less. One unfortunate woman was dragged through the mill when her husband hired a soft core
DVD
. Since then any time the poor thing stood up in Prime Minister’s Questions the Commons erupted in loud, pornographic moans and jeers.
Morag had to look whiter than white. Not that she put it around without discretion, but she had been enjoying something of a budding romance recently. Even Arjun didn’t know. Couldn’t. The stakes were too high.
Either way she didn’t have time for this. ‘Have you got something or haven’t you?’ Delphine’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly: a no, then.
‘Meet me at the Pugin later for tea,’ Delphine pouted. ‘We’ll strategise.’ No doubt she wanted to be seen meeting with Munro, to try to drive up her stock in advance of being shoved out the door. It was an odd choice though. The heavily decorated Pugin Room was favoured by lobbyists and the odd tour group and not many others. Maybe she wanted to try to slide a copy of her CV in with the menus, Morag thought uncharitably.
Morag waved her hand. ‘Too busy,’ she said. Which was true, but she also hated the room’s overstuffed formality. It reminded her of uncomfortable visits with a despised auntie during her childhood. Even the members’ tea room was rarely on her agenda, though with its faded red armchairs and burnt toast it more closely resembled the kind of hotel in Cameron Bridge where coachloads of tourists grimly munched their Scottish breakfasts before trudging around the local viewpoints.
‘Please,’ Delphine wheedled. That was the final nail in the coffin. Cajole or bully, lie or swindle, do a favour to get a favour. These were all standard operating procedure. But heaven help you if you begged.
Morag rolled her eyes and disappeared into her office. With luck someone would have confiscated Delphine’s ID cards by tomorrow and she wouldn’t be ambushed in the hallway again.
The office was tiny and dark. The room had previously been assigned to a Labour backbencher, an ex-trade union man, who, after four decades’ stolid residence of the Commons bar keeled over one day in his customary lunchtime pint.
Morag kept the office as she’d found it; from the green-and-white flocked, leaf pattern curtains that looked straight from a 1970s Indian restaurant, to the upholstered green leather chairs, so old that permanent impressions of buttocks were worn into the seats. The smell of mildew permeated the entire place, especially in spring and summer, probably because the toilets on that floor were always malfunctioning. There was no air conditioning in her office, and the knocks and clanging of outdated radiator heating echoed well into the sunnier months. It was carpeted in the same forest green-on-bile print that covered most of the building, in a pattern whose main, and perhaps only, redeeming feature was that it did not show stains. This was in part because it already looked stained.
Morag had found it difficult to focus since coming back south. When she closed her eyes she could picture that corpse in Cameron Bridge as it had been laid out on the slab, the lipless smile pulled permanently into a macabre grin, with the sticky, waxy flesh that had looked like it was melting off his body and the loose, peeling skin of his hands. And the smell. Something between rotting seaweed and rotting meat with undertones of the industrial cleaner they must have to use in a place like that. A chemical smell identical to the one she sometimes detected in the toilets and stairwells here. Probably the same firm, privately contracted to supply institutions all over the country. She shuddered and opened her eyes again.
Arjun popped his head round the door. ‘There’s a call waiting on line one,’ he said. She nodded. ‘Are you OK?’ he whispered. ‘The heating seems to be out again today. Do you need a cardie?’
Morag smiled wearily. He was so keen. So very keen. And also irritating. ‘Arj, I’m good, thank you anyway,’ she said.
‘Are you sure?’ He gestured at his own cardigan, a vintage woollen knit under a Prince of Wales tweed jacket.
‘I think I have dressing myself covered, Arj, thank you,’ she said. Arjun flinched and disappeared to the outer office.
Morag’s eyes scanned her desk. The saying went that the truly powerful had empty desks, but then those people probably didn’t also have to campaign for re-election once every five years to an increasingly sceptical constituency. There was the combination pen holder and clock from the Highlands & Islands Rotarians, presented on the occasion of her second election win. A framed photo of her turning on the Christmas lights in Tobermory ten years ago. A squat glass block engraved with ‘Most Inspiring Politician’ from the Women of Alba Public Service Association.
She didn’t give a fuck for any of it.
There was a faint flicker of guilt at having brushed off Delphine so abruptly. It wasn’t that she didn’t have ambitions to leadership of the party, quite the opposite, in fact. But even if Delphine had any useful knowledge, Morag’s success was not guaranteed. The biggest problem with being Shadow Home Secretary was . . . being Shadow Home Secretary. Many regarded the post as the knacker’s yard of politics, to the point where senior civil servants openly joked about Morag’s bad luck after the Shadow Cabinet was announced. She had to toil there for now and bide her time, be seen to be on side – or else risk being backbenched forever.
Morag popped a couple of antacid tablets and washed them down with a swig of cold coffee. Since accepting the position she had battled crisis after crisis. Between her existing membership on the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, soothing hurt feelings over the Scottish referendum, and trying to keep up with her opposite number in the Cabinet, she barely had the time for any casual knife twisting these days.
The hold light of her desk phone was still blinking. Whoever it was, they were far more patient waiting for a call to be answered than she would have been. It was probably something important. No – it was probably something somebody else thought was important. ‘Morag Munro. Sorry to have kept you waiting.’
‘Hi! Hello,’ said the woman’s voice. ‘It’s Harriet Hitchin . . . you remember, the pathologist from the other day? You visited us in Cameron Bridge.’
‘Dr Hitchin, a pleasure to hear from you,’ Morag said. The unkempt English doctor and her friend the metal head mortuary gimp. Morag’s free hand resumed its impatient drumming on her desk. ‘How may I help you?’
‘I’m afraid I have an awkward request. When you came in, we were working on a post-mortem that we weren’t sure would become a murder investigation or not. Things are starting to look as if it might and we need
DNA
samples from anyone who was at the scene or in contact with the body.’
‘Oh?’ Morag wondered what would have made them think it was in any way a natural death. But then she hadn’t been impressed with the professionalism of the place when she saw it. Even she knew someone found zipped up naked inside a sports bag probably didn’t put himself there.
‘It’s a formality,’ Harriet assured her. ‘Everyone who works here or comes in regularly is already on the books. We do it in case of cross-contamination with any of the forensic samples.’
‘You need to make sure you don’t accuse someone who was in the morgue of being a potential murderer,’ Morag said.
‘Exactly.’
‘Do you have
DNA
from a suspect yet?’
‘Not yet, but we need to cover all our bases. Strictly between us, it would be a long shot to get anything useable,’ Harriet said. ‘A body exposed to the water that long . . . the chances of getting a sample are not impossible, but only if we’re lucky.’
‘Fifty-fifty? Less than that?’
‘It’s hard to put exact statistics on it,’ Harriet said. Morag figured that meant she didn’t know. ‘The police are keen we keep trying, though. A case like this will probably stay on their roster unsolved if there aren’t forensics. And putting the screws on us takes the pressure off them to spend any more time on the investigation.’
‘What an awful business,’ Morag said. ‘I suppose it’s lucky you found the body at all. I’m happy to help in any way that I can.’
‘Brilliant,’ Harriet said. ‘I’ll post down a sample tube. If you would swab your cheek and pop it back in the post? Won’t take five minutes.’
‘Fine,’ Morag said. ‘Mark it for the attention of my assistant, Arjun Lakhani; he’ll see that no one handles it before it lands on my desk.’ As soon as she said it, it occurred to her that it was hardly the most secure way to handle samples. Anyone could send a swab back and claim to be her – within reason, of course. But she was not keen to go back to the mortuary again, next time she was in Cameron Bridge, any more than she was to mention her thought about tampering with evidence to Harriet.
