Whispers of Betrayal (26 page)

Little wonder he’d found it difficult to concentrate during COBRA.

It isn’t, of course, a crime to be a homosexual and to conduct one’s relationships in private, even if you are Home Secretary, but if you are to escape without embarrassment from such relationships then you have to choose partners less brittle than Ernest, who had cracked and blubbed at the first sign of a reporter, and then agreed to hand over his story, illustrated with original copies of handwritten letters, photographs and excruciatingly personal memorabilia, in return for twenty thousand pounds and a club-class ticket to Florida.

Did the nation care that the third most powerful man in government, behind the security of his own front door, went by the sobriquet of Lady Lydia? That he bought his underwear from Agent Provocateur in darkest Soho and mailed his undeveloped films for processing to a photographic shop in Chelmsford which advertised its confidential services in the classified pages of
Boyz
magazine? Or that last New Year he had thrown a dinner party by candlelight at his hideaway in France during which the ever-artistic Ernest had played the piano wearing nothing but a chorister’s ruff? None of this was necessarily life-threatening in a modern and liberated country, given a little careful media management, but what rearranged all the furniture and finally threw it overboard were the notes in which Earwick compared Ernest’s manhood to the size of the Prime Minister’s ego, suggesting it was over-inflated and forever on display.

Stupid, of course, to have written in those terms, but middle-aged men under the influence of alcohol and pink poppers tend to do such silly things.

Later that morning the Home Secretary’s private secretary telephoned with his apologies, but Mr Earwick would be unable to attend Cabinet. He was too busy writing his letter of resignation.

Outside Number Ten, the gaggle of correspondents gathered before television cameras and tried to extract comments from those arriving for the meeting of the Cabinet, but failed. They didn’t get any smiles, either. However, a consensus did emerge amongst the waiting media. It was their unanimous view that, with two Home
Secretaries down inside a month, Bendall’s administration seemed suddenly to have the sense of direction of a supermarket trolley.

At the Cabinet meeting the Lord Chancellor insisted on delivering a statement. He was an old personal friend of the Prime Minister, well intentioned but with two considerable defects. He was incredibly dour – ‘the personality of a computer screen with the screensaver switched off,’ as one columnist had put it. He also possessed even less imagination than a screensaver, a characteristic which, up to now, had protected him from the many vagaries of politics. But his friend was hurting. He wanted to help. So he had hijacked proceedings by insisting on delivering a statement – ‘on behalf of all your colleagues and friends around this table, Prime Minister’ – that was unusually extravagant in support of Bendall and extolled the many virtuous qualities of his leadership in these troubled times. ‘We wish you to know that without either reservation or hesitation, Prime Minister, we support you one hundred per cent.’

The rest of his colleagues banged the table in a show of unanimity.

Fuck, but the guy was in trouble.

Dipwick’s curt letter of resignation was reported in full in every newspaper.

Amadeus cut it out, smoothed the creases and placed it in his file alongside Dipwick’s letter to the
Telegraph
. The one that had started it all. All that crap about feather beds. The one that said:
‘The truth of the matter is simple. The nation’s security remains safe in this Government’s hands.’
Except, of course, when those hands were straying.

He placed it back in the drawer of his desk, which closed with the gentle sigh of a knife being replaced in its sheath. One down, one still to go.

They hadn’t been able to pick up Freddie Payne easily. Sod’s law. His wife had taken the children away to her mother’s so he’d grasped the opportunity to stay over in London at his club in St
James’s. He’d invited Jamie Cairncross to dinner, paid him the eight thousand he was owed – ‘
splendid
, never doubted you for a moment, my dear fellow’ – and then settled down over several large tumblers of Highland Park to play a little backgammon, during which he’d doubled up with the brashness of Zorba on his saint’s day and promptly won two thousand of it back. Just when he didn’t need it. And when, over a late breakfast the following morning, he’d heard of Dipwick’s discomfort, he’d decided to take the day off. A minor celebration was in order. Buy some new ties, perhaps sacrifice a few virgins. The gods were playing on his side once more.

Or so he thought.

After another indulgent night, he had arrived at the gallery the following morning with cobwebs in his eyes and a tongue that had the tactile qualities of Velcro. He’d assumed the three men in raincoats were viewers of the new exhibition, but they weren’t. They were police officers. He was arrested as soon as he walked in, directly in front of the new white-on-white sand thing by Stephane Graff. He hadn’t even had time to take off his brand-new overcoat.

The moment they put their hands on his shoulder, Freddie Payne knew that his life had changed completely and for ever. There was no going back now, not to the way things had been, to that period of his life when his father was alive, to the years when he had served well and loyally in the cause of his country. Least of all could he go back to that short but elegant time when his wife had been in love with him, and he had loved her. He should have realized this much sooner. Perhaps he had been fighting too hard inside himself to hang on to what he had lost, looking back, clinging to the wreckage rather than rebuilding. Now he had no choice. There was no going back to the way things were, not when he was handcuffed to a police inspector in the back of a speeding police car filled with the sound of its wailing siren.

The sweat was beginning to trickle onto the fold of his new collar, his wrists were already sore and in the car mirror he could see a face that belonged to someone else, a face that was hollowed and aged with eyes shot through with red flecks of fear. A familiar face, but not his own face. It seemed to be the face of
his father. That was the moment Freddie Payne realized he hated himself.

As he looked at the angry eyes staring out at him from the mirror, they seemed suddenly to grow huge and fill his mind, boring into those hiding places he had built inside himself and confronting all the excuses he had made for failure. He had worshipped his father, tried to emulate him in everything he had done – joining the Guards, but never making it to command the regiment. Facing the dangers of active service in Northern Ireland, because that’s what his father would have wanted, but never winning the Military Cross. Why, he had even learned to abuse women in imitation of his father, learned how to lose money, too, although he had done both of these with considerably less finesse than the General. He had tried to live his life in his father’s footsteps, yet just when Freddie had needed him most the old bastard had blown his brains out. Taken the easy option, left the field of battle and run away, leaving Freddie to face the mess on his own.

It seemed to Freddie that he had spent the years since then in an impossible struggle, trying to continue to love his father even while he had learned to loathe him, blaming his father for everything, using him as the excuse of last resort. It was all the old man’s fault, or so he pretended. Now, sitting in the back of the police car as it jumped the lights on the way to the top security cells at Paddington Green, Freddie Payne reckoned he had about ten minutes in which to grow up.

He had little idea why they had picked him up or what they knew, but many things were already certain. His wife would leave him, that was inevitable, taking their two daughters with her. They were spoilt brats anyway, took after their mother. The job at the gallery was history, too; Charlie would never forgive him for the embarrassment. The bank manager would also get in on the act and bring a complete stop to his stumbling line of credit. That part of the equation gave him cause to smile. He had made the best part of eight hundred thousand on the water and telephone deals and almost none of it had found its way into that unimaginative idiot’s hands. Payne had opened a new account, in Switzerland, where neither his wife nor his bank manager could get at it; maybe they’d never find it, maybe
it would still be there for him when he got out. Something to look forward to.

His wife, his bank, most of all his father, they’d all let him down, but not as much as he’d let himself down. Throughout his adult life only one thing had always been there for him, constant and unquestioning. The Army. Until the bloody politicians had got at it. The Army was the one thing he’d always been able to rely on, and in turn it had always been able to rely on him. It was the only thing in his life he had ever got right.

As the car swept in behind the reinforced steel gates of Paddington Green, Payne knew what he had to do.

‘He’s done what?’ Bendall didn’t try to hide his exasperation.

‘Remained silent. He refuses to give us anything but his name, rank and serial number,’ the Police Commissioner sighed, not sure what he might say that would mollify the Prime Minister. There had to be more to life than being used as a doormat.

Police work had become so intensely political. You entered the service with some vaguely formed idea about fighting for justice but instead, as you rose through the ranks, you found yourself distracted by the fight for budgets, for press coverage, for breathing space from the onslaught of pressure groups and politicians. You never won, it was always a rearguard action, until you ended up disillusioned and simply fighting for something to retire to.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Peter Jevons, had played the game with skill. Throughout his career he had always kept on the move, taking care not to get bogged down in unnecessary confrontations with either the media or his political masters, making sure he never gave the impression of being stale. A career wrapped in clingfilm, they had said, out on show but untouched, although now he was seated behind the Commissioner’s desk with nowhere else to run there was the suspicion that his reputation was beginning to moulder slowly at its edges. Yet a safe pair of hands, they’d always said that of him. That’s why he had decided to bring the news of Payne’s arrest personally to the Prime Minister, not because he wanted
praise, but because he expected trouble. His instincts were entirely accurate.

The interview in the Downing Street study had started civilly enough. Faced with the possibility of several more days’ revelations in the
Sun
about his colleagues’ dipped wicks, Bendall knew he was in desperate need of a diversionary tactic. The tide was beginning to run ferociously against him; if he couldn’t turn it, perhaps he could at least redirect it before it succeeded in surrounding him completely.

‘This is the moment to hand the media another story, wouldn’t you agree, Commissioner?’ Bendall had suggested, drawing on a cigarette. He only ever smoked in private, and only when under pressure. Bad for the image, to be seen smoking, so he never did so in public and never allowed any photographs of himself with a cigarette. Bit like Hitler and his reading glasses, thought Jevons. ‘So we’ll call a press conference this afternoon. To announce the latest developments.’

‘Developments, Prime Minister?’ the policeman’s face had crumpled into creases of concern.

‘That I have taken personal charge of this investigation. Hands on. I’ll not tolerate any further failures. And neither will the public.’ He had disappeared for a moment behind a grey-blue haze before reappearing, his eyes agitated, dancing around the room in search of a resting place. ‘I’ll be able to announce the bloody man’s arrest and reveal that they’re no better than common thieves, in it for the money. I want no doubt left in the voters’ minds that these people want nothing less than to hold London to ransom.’

‘That may be, but I would advise strongly against a press conference so soon.’

‘Why, for heaven’s sake? It’s the only decent spin we’ve had in weeks.’

‘Because the matter is still spinning. It’s not yet under control.’

‘He’s locked up in top security at Paddington Green. How much more control do you need?’

It was at this point that Jevons had told him about Payne’s stubborn silence. Nothing but name, rank and serial number. And there was more, Bendall’s equanimity was about to undergo a further assault.

‘That’s not our only problem, Prime Minister.’

‘What?’

‘Unless we find some hard evidence – and so far we haven’t – we’re going to have the devil of a time making any charges stick.’

‘Several hundred grand in his pocket and you say you’ve got no evidence?’

‘It’s all circumstantial. Completely circumstantial. We may have to let him go.’

‘He’s not the only one who can be let go, you just remember that, Commissioner,’ Bendall spat.

Jevons flushed. ‘Am I to take that as a threat?’

Bendall didn’t answer immediately but stubbed out his cigarette – only half finished – before straight away lighting another. Then, through the smoke: ‘Of course not. Just a reminder that there are all sorts of potential outcomes to this one. For both of us. We need to nail these bastards.’

‘I can’t guarantee a charge. We may have to let him go. We have power to hold him for thirty-six hours, no longer.’

‘For God’s sake, have you no imagination?’ Bendall exploded. ‘Can’t you think of some other charge? His kind often have exotic tastes. With traces of it in their pockets, so I’m told.’