The Loyal Servant (10 page)

This is an honest and open request, Sir Fred. All we’re asking for is an unequivocal public condemnation of creationism in the school curriculum. Families living in the catchment areas of your three academies deserve to know exactly what your position is. They need to know they can trust your intentions are honourable. They deserve the truth. Or is that too much to ask?

She let the paper fall onto the seat beside her. The truth? They’d be lucky. Right now the truth felt as if it had been put on a high shelf, somewhere permanently out of reach. The facts surrounding Martin Fox’s death were either being deliberately misrepresented or disappearing entirely.

Maybe the truth was too much to ask for. She glanced down at the page and saw the journalist’s byline and a thumbnail photograph of a heavily made-up woman smiling up at her. Journalists didn’t really know what was going on any more than she did. How could any of them realistically expect to uncover the truth?

Caroline looked out of the window. The bus had made it halfway down Whitehall and was crawling past the bottom of Downing Street. She pictured William King ensconced inside Number 10 and remembered his chief of staff standing over Martin Fox’s open grave. Her silent promise to the schools minister seemed more impossible than ever. How could she promise to discover what really happened if the evidence was being systematically destroyed?

She glanced down at the newspaper again. Was it possible that this journalist could make a difference? Caroline flipped back through the pages and pulled her phone from her bag. She’d punched in the number she found on page two and was transferred to the newsdesk before she had a chance to change her mind.

‘I hope you can help me,’ she said as the security gates protecting the entrance to Downing Street disappeared behind the bus. ‘I’d like to speak to Angela Tate.’

13

Angela Tate was late. Caroline checked her watch – over twenty minutes late. She looked out through the enormous window of an Italian restaurant on The Strand, just a couple of hundred yards from Charing Cross station and a quick escape route back home if she needed one.

She watched people strolling by outside, chatting and laughing, enjoying the early evening sunshine. Caroline scanned their faces. She was dreading seeing someone from work. There was just an outside chance a familiar face from the department might pop up, pop in and sit down right next to her. How would she introduce Angela Tate?

Have you met my new friend, the investigative journalist?

She looked around the restaurant at the handful of pre-theatre diners and thought about moving to another table, further from the window.

Five minutes later she was checking her watch again, aware it was becoming a nervous tick. The waiter stopped and asked if she wanted bread or perhaps a bowl of olives while she waited for her friend. She’d refused him three times already. This time she agreed to some focaccia with a little olive oil – anything to occupy her fidgeting hands. She glanced again at her watch. It was 6:50pm. She’d already waited a week to be granted an audience with Angela Tate; a few more minutes wouldn’t make much difference.

The waiter delivered a small basket of bread and a shallow dish of bright green olive oil. Caroline broke off a corner of rosemary-crusted focaccia and was just stuffing it into her mouth as the door clanked open. She looked up to see a woman wearing a black raincoat and knee-length boots stepping confidently over the threshold.

‘Don’t get up!’ she said, striding towards the table. ‘Caroline?’

Caroline nodded and chewed fast.

‘I had to walk all the way from Blackfriars. What are you drinking?’

She wasn’t what Caroline had expected at all. The photograph in the newspaper was easily ten years out of date. The woman standing in front of her now, inspecting the half-empty bottle of San Pellegrino and screwing up her nose, had to be in her early 50s. The eye shadow and lipstick were just as thickly applied, but her blonde hair looked almost white under the restaurant lights.

‘Oh I think we can do a little better than that.’ Angela Tate waved at a waiter. ‘Excuse me! Bottle of Pinot Grigio. Make sure its not the cheapest.’ She turned to Caroline and winked. ‘Expenses,’ she said and smiled.

Caroline let out the breath that had stalled in her lungs and managed to smile back.

Tate wrenched her arms free of her raincoat and slung it over a chair. ‘Angela Tate.’ She slid a business card across the table and sat down. ‘But you worked that out already.’ She pulled her chair closer to Caroline’s and planted her elbows on the table. ‘Did you want to order something to eat? I’m not really hungry. But feel free.’ She looked at Caroline closely, unashamedly scrutinising her face.

Caroline felt a flush start in her neck and work its way upwards.

‘Have we met before?’ Tate said.

‘I think I would remember.’ Caroline sat a little taller in her seat.

‘You know I’m sure we have.’ Tate pushed the sleeves of her fitted black shirt up to the elbows and pulled a notepad and pen from her bag. The wine arrived and she waved the waiter away. Caroline put her hand over her glass before Tate had a chance to fill it.

‘Just a small one, surely?’

‘I’d prefer to keep a clear head.’

Tate poured herself a glass and knocked back a third of it, then refilled the glass almost to the rim. She looked at Caroline. She waited.

‘Thank you for agreeing to see me.’ Caroline glanced over Tate’s shoulder towards the door.

Tate followed her gaze. ‘Expecting someone else?’

‘No. I just feel a bit—’

Tate smiled. ‘This isn’t something you do everyday.’

Caroline shook her head.

‘Well – in your own time. You’re my last appointment of the day.’ Tate glanced at her watch and started to tap her pen against her notebook.

‘I’m not sure where to start, really. Such a lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. I’m still finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that Martin’s gone.’

Tate stared at Caroline and pursed her lips. ‘Of course!’ She jabbed the pen in Caroline’s direction. ‘You were at the funeral last Monday.’

‘I didn’t see you there.’ Caroline felt suddenly exposed as if she’d somehow been found out.

‘I wasn’t exactly invited.’ Tate took a long slug of wine and refilled her glass again. ‘You were close to the schools minister then?’

‘I worked with him quite closely.’ Caroline cleared her throat. ‘I’m part of the academies division.’

‘Yes I know – you mentioned it on the phone… and Martin Fox was a great advocate of academies.’

Tate continued to tap the pen against her notebook. The sound was going right through Caroline’s head and into her jaw, setting her teeth on edge. She lifted her hand to cover Tate’s, holding the pen still.

‘Do you mind?’

Tate looked surprised, as if she hadn’t been aware she was doing it. Caroline removed her hand and poured herself a large glass of wine. She sank a mouthful of Pinot Grigio then proceeded to give Tate a blow-by-blow account of everything that had happened over the last fortnight, from Martin Fox’s strange voicemail message to the lying detective inspector and missing box of evidence. She even mentioned her boss’s appearance at Martin Fox’s house. Tate raised her eyebrows, but carried on making notes without comment.

When she was finished, Caroline watched Tate puff out a long breath, staring down blank-eyed into her glass. She said nothing.

‘Well?’ Caroline said.

Tate reached a hand into her bag. She pulled out an unopened packet of Marlboro Lights and put them on the table then shoved her hand back in her bag, rummaged around again and retrieved a wallet and a lighter.

‘They’re in here somewhere.’ Tate smiled and eventually fumbled out a blister pack of Nicorette. She punched two squares of gum through the foil, shoved them both in her mouth and started to chew vigorously.

‘What do you think?’ Caroline said.

Tate screwed up her face. ‘These things taste like indigestion tablets.’ She chewed for a few moments more, staring at Caroline. ‘It’s… well… it doesn’t really amount to much.’

Caroline’s heart sank.

‘A deleted message here, a missing envelope there. It doesn’t seem more than coincidence, circumstantial. Nothing really solid to get hold of.’

‘But it all adds up, surely?’

‘To what?’

‘I’m certain Martin Fox didn’t kill himself. I know that suicide note was fake.’

Tate stopped chewing. ‘How can you know that?’

‘He wasn’t that kind of man – he wouldn’t run away from his problems – no matter how big they were.’ Caroline looked down at the packet of cigarettes. ‘May I?’ She picked up the ten-pack.

‘Be my guest. I’ve given up. Again.’

Caroline ripped off the cellophane and tore open the packet. She shoved a cigarette between her lips and grabbed the lighter from the table. ‘I gave up sixteen years ago.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘I’ve had a terrible craving for a week now.’

Tate plucked the cigarette from Caroline’s mouth and crushed it into the remains of the focaccia. ‘Sixteen years is fucking remarkable,’ she said. ‘Don’t step back on that slippery slope. I’ve been there too many times. Before you know it you’re skidding on your arse and sliding towards thirty a day.’

A waiter walked past and snatched the plate from the table.

‘Look, I know what you must be going through,’ Tate said. ‘It’s always a shock when someone does something so… out of character. It’s natural that you’d look for another explanation.’

‘Why does everyone keep telling me that?’ Caroline raised her voice. ‘I know for sure there wasn’t a suicide note found at the scene and I know for a fact Martin Fox was not being blackmailed.’

She saw Tate stiffen. The journalist spat the ball of gum into a paper napkin and picked up her glass. She rolled a gulp of wine around her mouth as if it were mouthwash and swallowed. She held her pen over her notepad.

‘How do you know?’

‘Don’t you think it’s strange we’ve heard nothing from the police about their investigation into tracking down the blackmailers?’

Tate let out a little disappointed sigh and laid down her pen. ‘They’ve not got an awful lot to go on, have they? Just a few lines in a note.’

‘They could be doing something.’

‘I’ve been digging around a bit myself, and I’ve come up with bugger all.’

Caroline sipped her wine, taking a moment to think. ‘You’ve been digging around what exactly?’

Tate made a non-committal shrug of her shoulders.

‘You’ve been poking around the minister’s private life, isn’t that what journalists do?’

Tate leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs under the table.

‘I bet you haven’t found anything to confirm Martin Fox was gay, have you?’

Tate just stared at her.

‘It would have been all over the papers if one of your lot had managed to prise an ex-boyfriend out of the woodwork. But you haven’t, so that makes a mockery of the blackmail story.’

‘It proves nothing. He might just have been extraordinarily discreet. We haven’t found any girlfriends either.’

Caroline felt her heart speed a few beats. She tried to catch her breath. ‘There was no suicide note.’

‘So you say. But it’s their word against yours.’ Tate drained her glass. ‘And there’s a lot more of them.’

Caroline shook her head. ‘This is ridiculous. I don’t know why I thought you might help me.’ She pushed back her chair again and started to stand.

Tate put a hand on her arm. ‘What is it you were hoping I’d be able to do?’

A sudden wave of fatigue spread through Caroline’s body. She collapsed back into her seat. ‘I just wanted you to help me get to the truth. I can’t do it on my own. I thought with the weight of the
Evening News
behind me…’ She looked into Tate’s face, but couldn’t read her expression. She shook her head. ‘Oh God… I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘There’ll be a bit of press interest when the toxicology report is made public, then again for the inquest, but I can’t really see what’s left to investigate.’

‘He didn’t kill himself.’

‘You’re suggesting foul play? You really believe someone murdered the minister for schools at his desk?’

Caroline stared into her glass and nodded.

‘If you had even a shred of evidence to back that up, I’d go at this like a bloody terrier after a rat. But everything you’ve told me is circumstantial at best.’

Caroline swallowed. She had one last card to play, one final piece of information. But she wasn’t at all sure she could share it with Angela Tate. She watched Tate refill her glass. What kind of woman was she? In the past week she’d done some research and discovered Tate had won awards for her work in the 80s and 90s and generally seemed well respected among her peers. But did that mean she could trust her? Tate turned and caught Caroline staring at her.

‘The suicide note.’ Caroline blurted out the words.

‘I know, I know – you didn’t see it.’

‘No!’ Caroline took a breath. ‘Not just that. I know the note was fake.’

The journalist made a sympathetic face.

‘I know absolutely that Martin Fox wasn’t gay.’

Tate narrowed her eyes.

‘I’ve never told anyone.’ Caroline buried her face in her glass, and then knocked back what remained of her wine. She waited a moment, hoping to steady the tremor in her voice.

‘Last year Martin and I… we…’ She sucked in a deep breath. ‘We became close.’ She spoke in a murmur.

Tate leaned closer. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘We were…’ Caroline hesitated, the word sounded ridiculous in her head, she wasn’t sure she could say it out loud. She tried again: ‘We were lovers.’

Tate stared at Caroline, her lips slightly apart, her eyes wide. Caroline could almost hear the journalist’s brain whirring

‘I see,’ she said eventually.

‘Do you? Really?’ Caroline’s legs felt weak, as if her bones were melting into the flesh. She couldn’t have stood up now if the restaurant was on fire. Her hands were trembling. She clasped them together in her lap. She’d said it. The secret that she’d kept buried for over six months had finally burst out.

Tate’s face pinched into a grimace. Her tongue traced a line along her bottom lip. ‘For how long? How long were you—’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

Tate uncrossed her legs and sat up very straight. ‘You said you were… close last year. When did it end?’

‘Why would that have any bearing on what I’m telling you?’

Tate scribbled something in her notepad. Caroline grabbed her hand. ‘You can’t write that down. You can’t use it! For God’s sake.’

‘Who ended it?’

‘I’m not telling you any more.’ Caroline leaned a hand on the table and struggled to her feet.