A Sentimental Traitor (21 page)

‘What, no photos or fingerprinting?’ Harry asked, when at last they had finished the humiliation.

‘No, Mr Jones. We know who you are. And where you live.’ It sounded like a threat.

They locked Harry in a cell. Bare walls, bright light, plastic mattress. ‘Sleep it off, Mr Jones. We’ll interview you in the morning.’

Sleep it off? They had to be joking. Then the door had slammed.

Harry had known many forms of incarceration. He’d been trained for it during his time in the SAS camp at Hereford, where the instructors had devised many ways of inflicting physical and
mental punishment on their charges, pushing them to their limits, and sometimes beyond. It was one of the ways they sorted those who would die for their country from those who might just live.
He’d been banged up on other occasions since then, sometimes in the most desperate circumstances. But never had he felt more lost.

They told him he could have two telephone calls, one to his solicitor and another to a friend or family. But it was 2.30 a.m., too early for his solicitor, and even if their long relationship
gave him the moral authority to drag him from his bed, Harry suddenly realized that he was no longer sure he had the financial authority to do so. And Jemma had enough on her plate, it wasn’t
how he wanted her to find out. So, at six, he called Oscar Colville.

‘Getting your own back, Harry?’ a weary voice enquired.

If only. Harry gave a brief explanation, and instructed him to call several people, starting with the Chief Whip. ‘You can get him through the Downing Street switchboard. He will need to
know.’

‘Will he be able to help?’

‘Help? No. He’ll probably run a thirty-second mile in the other direction. An enormous amount of sewage is being poured over me, Oscar, and it’s going to splash anyone who is
standing too close.’

A haunting silence played down the line before his constituency chairman spoke again.

‘Harry, you didn’t do this. Did you?’

‘I wish you hadn’t felt the need to ask that, Oscar,’ Harry replied, slamming down the phone. Suddenly he realized he wasn’t going to be walking out of this place a free
man.

It was almost nine before Theo van Buren, his solicitor, arrived, and only then was Harry allowed to put forward his version of events in a formal interview with a Detective Sergeant Arkwright
and his colleague, Detective Constable Finch. No theatrics from them, no grandstanding, just a double-deck tape recorder and unaggressive questions about the events of the previous night. How much
he’d had to drink. Whether he had kissed her. How much damage he thought the St Mary’s story had done. Why he hadn’t been married for such a long time. And particularly whether he
had put his hand on her breast. Harry wanted to scream, to shout out his innocence, denounce it all as a fraud, but a warning eye from van Buren insisted he restrain himself. The lawyer had an
expressive face and an equally expressive manner. A bit of a rough diamond for the high-powered legal world, a man who had got on not because of his accent or background, both of which were
London-rough, but because of his ability. He had to work even harder than most to make it up through the glass-encased floors of his firm, and he did.

Nothing seemed to make much difference to the police, they plodded on with their questions, didn’t seem even to listen to the answers, otherwise why was Harry still here. He felt cheated
when it finished.

‘Wait here, Harry,’ van Buren instructed when at last it was over. He disappeared for ten minutes. When he returned, his expression was dark.

‘What the hell am I doing here, Theo?’ Harry demanded wearily.

‘They’re going to release you on police bail in a little while.’

‘What does that mean? Exactly?’

‘They think there’s a case to answer but they can’t make it stick, not yet. So they’re biding their time. Not prone to rushing to conclusions, are the constabulary,
unless they’re in a bar. Waiting for the results of the forensics.’

Harry sprang to his feet and began pacing, unable to contain his frustration. ‘This is horseshit, Theo. Can’t you see that?’

‘Me? Of course. Sure I do. But our friend the Detective Sergeant can’t, not at the moment. Your word against hers. And . . .’ A slight hesitation while he ran his tongue across
his lips. ‘Well, you had been drinking.’

‘Since when has that been a crime in your own home?’

‘Murky water, Harry. Very murky water.’

Harry snapped, turned on his friend. ‘It was a neat malt, if you must know. Eighteen years old. From Islay. I’ll take you to the distillery one day.’

The lawyer’s eyebrows waggled in warning; this wasn’t a great time for sarcasm, but Harry ignored it.

‘For Chrissake, what sort of justice is this?’ he demanded, voice raised, gesticulating wildly. ‘I am a totally innocent man. Innocent, you hear me? She’s the one
who’s lying, perverting the course of justice. Yet I get locked up in this urinal while she’s out there with her feet up having her nails painted, for all we know. My word against hers,
you say. So why isn’t she here?’

‘You know why, Harry. ‘Cos sometimes life’s a puddle of poo. Talking of which, they’re suggesting you’ve been under pressure, with the election and
everything.’

Pressure from the election? They’re going to make a mess of their trousers when they find out about the money, Harry thought.

‘And you were alone with her. Very late last night.’

Harry stopped pacing. ‘Whose side you on, Theo?’

‘Yours, of course. Just showing you what the enemy’s got.’

A cold hand seemed to settle around Harry’s throat.

‘You ought to be aware there’s chaos out there. Underwear wrapped in knots. They don’t know how to handle it, Harry, you put fire up their bums. The Assistant Commissioner got
the Commissioner out of bed for this one, and I suspect he probably then went and spoiled the Prime Minister’s breakfast. No one’s going to crawl away quietly from this. There’s a
very large picture of you on the front page of the
Standard.
You’re in handcuffs, being arrested. And did I tell you there’s a media mob waiting outside?’

Harry slumped back into his chair, eyes fixed on the door. Any moment he expected Franz Kafka to walk in, pen and notepad at the ready.

‘They’ll release you soon, once they’ve had their tea and signed fifty different bits of paper.’

Harry stared at his lawyer with disbelieving eyes. ‘Release me?’ he whispered. ‘They’re throwing me to the wolves.’

And the wolves were waiting, an entire howling pack of them, spreading out across Agar Street, blocking pavements, interfering with the traffic. Harry had sent back to his home for more clothes;
he couldn’t appear in the white overall with the hopelessly wrinkled collar, as if he’d just jumped over the wall of an asylum. Yet still he was unshaven and unkempt as he stood on the
front steps of the station, van Buren at his side, his eyes so raw the television lights blinded him. He couldn’t see how many had gathered, but he could hear them, smell them. He told them
he had a brief statement to make, then waited for them to stop screaming and snarling at him before he took a deep breath.

‘I have been arrested on a charge of serious sexual assault made against me by my press officer, Emily Keane. There is not a single shred of truth in those allegations. They are, quite
simply, lies, and time will prove them to be lies. But the law requires a full and proper investigation. I will help the police in every way I can. In the meantime, I remind you all, that I am an
innocent man.’ He stared around him for a few moments, chin up, knowing he had to exude confidence and calm, then made his way through the scrum to the taxi that was waiting for him.
Questions were hurled at him from all sides, but he ignored them, even the retard who asked him if he was going to sack Emily Keane.

There was another mob outside his home. He had to battle his way through elbows and camera equipment onto his own doorstep, in the melee he thought someone might have punched him. Even after he
had slammed the door they kept banging on it. The telephone was ringing, a hundred messages demanded his attention; in blind fury he ripped the phone cord from its socket and threw his keys down
beside the other set on the hall table. He noticed someone had been inside the house, forensics presumably; it was, after all, allegedly a crime scene. The sofa cushions had been moved, the whisky
glasses gone, as was the coat she had left behind. He hauled himself upstairs, had to use the banister rail, surprised at how exhausted he was, then threw himself on his bed. He closed his eyes,
hoping the world might cease to exist.

He felt close to despair. He was alone, wanted to have Jemma by his side; he sat up, intending to call her, until he realized she must already know. He was juggling words in his mind, struggling
how best to tell her about what had happened, when he noticed a wardrobe door was slightly ajar. Dammit, had forensics been everywhere? He rose, intending to close it, then opened it instead. An
entire half rack was empty. Her half rack. Jemma’s clothes were gone, every one of them, and the same with her toiletries in the bathroom.

He charged downstairs to his front hall, ignoring the hubbub that was still coming from the other side of the door. There, on the table, was his set of keys. And beside them, hers, lying on top
of a neat turquoise file of the interviews she had completed into the Speedbird crash. There was no note.

‘A beautiful day, my love.’

‘Isn’t it just, Felix? Simply perfect.’

They were walking along the South Bank in the shadow of the London Eye whose great wheel was moving magisterially through a freshly washed blue sky. It was the Easter holiday, the weather warm,
the spring sun generous. Couples and young families were spreading across the grass, turning their backs on winter.

‘It’s good to have you home for a while, Patricia.’

‘Just for a few days.’ Before she returned to her other home.

‘You’ve been so busy these past months.’

‘Let’s just say, Felix, that the time has been profitably invested.’

‘Mr Jones?’

‘Is no longer a problem.’

‘He’s not yet been charged.’

‘But disgraced. That’s enough.’

They walked on in silence beneath Westminster Bridge, sharing their thoughts, until they were opposite the Houses of Parliament. There was little sign of life. The Palace was closed, except for
tourists, the river terraces empty but for the striped canvas awnings that were used as hospitality marquees.

‘Hideous,’ Felix muttered. ‘Look at it, an extraordinary Victorian Gothic palace, a most wondrous gingerbread confection that was once the envy of the world, and now look at
it. Despoiled with those hideous tents.’

She looked at where his finger was pointing. The tents – pavilions, as they were pretentiously described – seemed hideously out of place, and shabby. ‘They have no idea how
ridiculous they look from the outside,’ she said.

‘The tents?’

‘The entire place.’

‘You know, if this were France, or Berlin or Rome or Madrid, those awnings would have been ripped out and replaced with something significant, something truly cultural. But instead they
make it look like a village fête.’

‘Don’t upset yourself, Felix. It simply doesn’t matter any more. Best leave the place as it is. A tourist attraction.’

They watched as a boat filled with tourists leaning on rails, their cameras clicking, turned at the end of its run up from Greenwich, negotiating the current, churning up the heavy silt
waters.

‘By the way,’ he mentioned as an afterthought, ‘I put you down for a postal vote. Wasn’t quite sure where you’d be.’

‘Thank you, but . . .’

‘Did I do wrong?’

‘No, it’s simply that I don’t think I’ll bother to vote. What’s the point? It doesn’t make much difference who parks their car in Downing Street. We’ve
gone beyond that. The rules aren’t made here in Westminster any more.’

‘You intrigue me,’ he said, turning to face her, staring inquisitively, ‘if it doesn’t make any difference, then why . . .’

‘Why have I been so unkind to poor Mr Usher?’ She threw her head back, the sun catching the highlights in her hair and sparkling from her eyes. Then she started laughing, as if he
couldn’t have invented a more preposterous question. The sound was so intense it almost seemed masculine, and continued for many moments, almost uncontrollably. Then she looped her arm
through his and began walking him on. ‘For fun, Felix. I do it for fun.’