Authors: Graham Hurley
For four long weeks
Pompey First
had fought tooth and nail to upset the political order, and the unvoiced suspicion around the table was that nothing would probably change. More meaningless promises about non-essential budget cuts. More stern warnings about holes in the national coffers. The usual bollocks about Whitehall and Westminster stepping aside to give the locals a fighting chance.
In the end it was Gill Reynolds who put this feeling into words. She’d spent the last week or so working on the special post-election supplement for the
News
, and this exercise had made her realise how much sheer graft had gone into the BazzaMac campaign. If democracy didn’t deliver the right result in Pompey North, she said, then it was no fault of
Pompey First
.
‘At least you guys tried.’ She raised her glass. ‘Respect.’
Bazza spent the rest of the day touring various outposts of the
Pompey First
machine in the company of three 6.57 heavies and a plentiful supply of Moët for the front-line troops. A stop at the uni got rid of half a dozen bottles, chiefly to the tyro video kings who’d serviced Andy Makins’ YouTube operation. They insisted on cracking the bottles on the spot, toasting Bazza’s electoral fortunes, and Mackenzie returned the compliment by inviting them down to the Trafalgar War Room to watch the results come in. Free bar all night, he promised. And somewhere to be sick once the Tories hit the lead.
Mid-afternoon, back in the hotel, he bumped into Winter.
‘Five’o clock,’ he grunted. ‘Spinnaker Tower.’
Misty was still waiting for Trude to be discharged from the Spinal Unit. She’d spent most of the day being checked over by an endless queue of specialists, and Misty was getting tired of re-reading all the information that had been pressed upon her.
Most of this stuff she’d known already, and in the long hours waiting beside Trude’s empty bed she began to fret about Winter.
Finally she made her way out of the unit and back into the car park. It was still glorious, the sun warm on her face. She rummaged in her bag for her mobile and dialled a number from memory. It took an age to answer but finally there was a voice in her ear.
‘Baz? It’s me.’
The Command Post nesting in Gail Parsons’ office was operational from mid-morning. Techies fine-tuned the comms, and by early afternoon the Covert Ops D/I was happy with the results. He was keeping the surveillance logs, with updates forwarded hourly to Parsons and Suttle. Mackenzie, he said, had been touring the city all day to say his electoral thank yous. His last bottle of Moët had gone to the Custody Sergeant at Central police station in recognition, according to Bazza, of ‘services rendered’. At first the custody skipper had refused to accept it, but then Bazza asked for it to be registered as lost property. This, it seemed, had done the trick.
When Parsons arrived at her office, thirty minutes ahead of Willard, she wanted to know where Mackenzie was headed next. The Covert Ops D/I sent a message to the surveillance shift leader and got a reply within seconds.
‘Spinnaker Tower, boss. He’s just arrived.’
Mackenzie and Winter rode the express lift to the upper viewing platform. Mackenzie had abandoned his escort of 6.57 in the café on the ground floor, leaving them with a twenty-pound note and instructions not to drink it all. As the lift slowed at the top of the shaft, Mackenzie moved towards the exit door. So far he hadn’t said a word.
Except for a gaggle of Asian tourists, the viewing platform was empty. Late afternoon, at this time of year, the sun hung
over the distant swell of the Isle of Wight, throwing a long golden stripe across the Solent. From this height Pompey was a child’s plaything, a busy maze of tiny streets and houses stretching inland as far as the eye could see. Winter walked to a window to peer down at the narrow alleyways of Old Portsmouth, then watched one of the Fishbourne car ferries churning past the end of Spice Island. The benches outside the Still and West were beginning to fill, and Winter could just make out a solitary figure at the rail gazing out at the harbour mouth. Faraday, he thought. His favourite pub. His favourite view.
‘Amazing, eh?’ Mackenzie was at his elbow. Winter followed his pointing finger. The sturdy facade of the Royal Trafalgar was clearly visible, headbutting the huge green spread of Southsea Common.
Mackenzie drew Winter to another window, the northerly aspect this time. Beyond the clutter of the dockyard lay the continental ferry port. Then came street after street of houses, receding into a blur of rooftops, before the island nudged the lower slopes of Portsdown Hill. From here, thought Winter, it was easy to see what had been the making of Portsmouth. It was defensible. It had two huge harbours. It was bang on the English Channel. And thousands of acres of marshland, once drained, sucked in the men and women who’d finally made it what it was.
‘There, mush, there.’ Mackenzie was pointing again. Winter guessed he meant Copnor. He was right.
‘Well done, Baz. Some journey, eh?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘You should be proud.’
‘I am.’
Mackenzie grinned. It had been fun, he said, the whole trip.
‘Are we talking
Pompey First
?’
‘No, mush. The whole deal. Start to finish. If my old man was alive he’d die to think of me tucked up in Craneswater. Silly,
isn’t it? How that generation couldn’t get their heads around money? What it can buy you? Where it takes you? What sort of bloke you become at the end of it?’
Winter spared him a look. He’d rarely seen his boss so reflective, so philosophical. In this mood, he thought, he could give Joe Faraday a run for his money.
‘No regrets, then?’
‘Hundreds, mush. Thousands. You get let down, all the time, but that’s life, isn’t it? You think people are going to measure up and they don’t. You have a rant, or even a ruck maybe, and you think you’ve sorted it, but you’re always wrong. And you know why? Because some people are born to be cunts.’
‘And I’m one of them?’
‘You are, mush. You are. I never thought I’d hear myself saying it, but it’s true. Down where it matters you’re an evil little grass, just like the rest of them.’
‘The rest of who, Baz?’
‘The Filth, mush. People said I was off my head when I took you on, people I respect, and I always told them they were wrong. That Paul Winter, I says, that Paul Winter’s a one-off. He’s got a brain. He’s funny. Get to know the geezer and you realise you can trust him. Worth every penny, mush. Worth every fucking cent. And you know what they said? They said just wait. What you see ain’t necessarily what you get. One day the fucker will turn you over. And when that day happens, you know where to come for help.’
Winter was thinking of the 6.57 tucked up in the café below with their pints of Foster’s, sharing the back pages of the
News
. Was this the moment Mackenzie had chosen for a settling of accounts? Something told Winter the answer was no. This was a subtler Bazza Mackenzie. But he still had to get it off his chest.
‘What were you thinking last night, mush?’
‘When?’
‘When you realised I’d sussed it. The Polish woman. Pavel
fucking Beginski. That evil little trap you all dreamed up. Bazza desperate for moolah. Bazza chasing Martin fucking Skelley with a meat cleaver. Bazza making it easy for you cunts at long last.’
‘What was I thinking?’
‘Yeah. Be honest. I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘OK.’ Winter nodded. ‘I thought I’d like to get home. I thought I’d like to see the back of all this shit. And I thought I’d like to give Mist a cuddle.’
‘I know. She phoned.’
‘She did?’
‘Yeah. This afternoon. And you know what she said? She said she wanted us all to be friends. Fuck me …
friends
? With a fat old grass like you?’ He shook his head, staring out at the view again. ‘I dunno what you’ve done to her, mush. That woman used to be proper Pompey, she used to have a bit of pride.’
Winter smiled. He’d no idea where this conversation was heading next but he knew the time had come to take the initiative.
‘You’re right, Baz. We all make decisions, and mine was the wrong one. I thought you were a decent bloke once, but that’s all gone. You hurt people. You make people’s lives a misery. One of them happens to be your wife, which is a very great shame, but she seems to love you so that must be OK.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Nice view, Baz. Thanks for the ride.’
He shot Mackenzie a final glance, recognising the sudden flare of madness in his eyes, then turned on his heel and made for the exit signs. The lift was full of chattering Japanese. Back at ground level, in the shadow of the Gunwharf promenade, Winter paused to look up. A tiny figure was still framed in one of the observation windows, his arms rigid on the handrail, staring out at the city of his birth.
The polls closed nationwide at ten o’clock. Gail Parsons, who’d had the wit to order a small portable TV for the
Gehenna
Command Post, was glued to the set when the titles rolled for the start of the BBC’s live coverage. David Dimbleby kicked off with the night’s big headline: the shock results of an exit poll conducted by all three major broadcasters. After bossing the political scene for the last couple of years, the Tories were forecast to fall just short of a working majority. Another bombshell suggested the Lib Dems would win no more than sixty-one seats, one short of their total in 2005. Nick Clegg may have turned heads throughout the campaign, but celebrity didn’t, in the end, win votes.
Willard was helping himself to a second biscuit, another of Gail Parsons’ thoughtful little additions to the evening. She knew he had a weakness for Waitrose Classic Gingers and had laid in ample stocks. Willard, who lived and voted in Winchester, made no secret of his disappointment at the exit poll. A Tory government with a decent majority would, in his view, be excellent news for the forces of law and order. Now, with a hung Parliament a distinct possibility, anything could happen.
‘This could get ugly,’ he growled, reaching for another biscuit.
In the War Room at the Trafalgar Hotel the exit poll brought whoops of approval. As Leo Kinder had predicted, the electorate were much more volatile than any of the pundits believed. If the results mirrored the forecasts, the election could offer rich pickings for the likes of
Pompey First
.
Winter had found himself a perch in a corner of the room near the door. Unlike the hordes of students who’d descended on the hotel, he’d so far limited himself to a single bottle of Stella. Like Bazza himself, he anticipated a long night and knew that getting pissed was the last thing he needed to do.
Half an hour ago, once it was dark, he’d gone upstairs and
made his way out onto the street. Twenty years in the Job had given him a keen eye for spotting surveillance, and he’d been comforted by what he’d found. A couple of unmarked cars were parked up with line of sight to the hotel, and when he ducked back inside he recognised the guy on obs in a corner of the bar.
Gehenna
, for once, had done him proud.
Houghton and Sunderland South was the first seat to declare at 22.52. Labour clung on with a decent majority, but the swing to the Tories was 8.4 per cent, which appeared to confirm the findings of the exit poll. At midnight, with most of the students out of their heads, Bazza decided it was time to go to the Guildhall for the count. The 6.57 were still in attendance, remarkably sober, and Winter joined Leo Kinder and Gill Reynolds in a second car.
They followed the Bentley north through Southsea and walked the final hundred metres across the Guildhall Square. The square boasted a huge TV screen, and Winter was amused to watch their progress live as they were filmed by a local BBC crew. This had to be Kinder’s work, he thought, as Mackenzie stopped for a word with the young reporter. Asked how he fancied his chances after the exit poll, Bazza reckoned there was everything to play for. ‘People have come to their senses,’ he said. ‘People have realised that this is about them, not a bunch of has-beens up in London, and that can only be good for us.’
Alas, the hard evidence suggested otherwise. In Pompey the count was complicated by local elections in all fourteen of the city’s wards, and progress was going to be slow, but already the whisper on the floor of the huge auditorium was that
Pompey First
would be lucky to hang onto its deposit.
All the parties, including
Pompey First
, had stationed tellers outside polling stations throughout the day. Bazza, in what he regarded as a masterstroke, had insisted that potential
Pompey First
voters be greeted by 6.57 volunteers, beefy men from Bazza’s past. At the time this had seemed a good idea, but now
it seemed that voters, sensing intimidation, had put their cross elsewhere.
Winter stepped onto the floor of the auditorium. The last time he’d been here was for a Tom Jones concert years back. Now the theatre seating had been cleared away, making space for big open oblongs of tables. Inside sat the counters, most of them women. Opposite stood little knots of party supporters, making sure their votes ended up on the right pile. Once again Bazza had briefed 6.57 to defend his interests, and Winter circled the room, following in Bazza’s footsteps, checking on
Pompey First
’s progress.
The news wasn’t good. Votes were tallied in bundles of twenty-five. In ward after ward the
Pompey First
pile was dwarfed by those of the major parties. Despite four weeks of wall-to-wall publicity, hundreds of posters, a major media profile, trillions of postings on the Internet and some truly inventive stunts, Bazza Mackenzie was heading for electoral oblivion.
Winter, hidden in the swirl of bodies on the floor, was watching Mackenzie, who was doing his best to ignore his opponents. For four hectic weeks he’d done his level best to destroy these people. He’d mocked them, belittled them and badged them as spineless puppets bossed by their masters in London. As an electoral strategy this had appeared to work. Digs about dancing to their masters’ tunes always raised a laugh. People nodded in approval when he wondered whether any of the other candidates had a single original thought in their empty heads. Now, though, reassured by towering piles of votes, it was their turn to gloat. When they managed to catch Mackenzie’s eye, a nod and the faintest smile was all it took.
Pompey First
, the express train of Bazza’s dreams, had finally hit the buffers.