The Circus (4 page)

‘Spotted dick tonight. Jolly good.’

‘Mm.’ Prime Minister Edgar Carlton sat beneath the imposing portrait of Kitty Pakenham, a long-dead minor aristocrat, and sipped daintily from his oversized snifter. After almost four years as Prime Minister, enjoying a very large measure of Hennessy Paradis Impérial at Pakenham’s had become an all-too necessary pre-dinner ritual. The cognac helped take the edge off the permanent sense of frustration and anxiety that came with the job.

The gentlemen’s club in St James’s provided a refuge from civil servants and colleagues alike. The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gavin O’Dowd – known as GOD to the fawning scribes of the lobby – didn’t like the fact that it had become an informal annexe to Number Ten, but that was tough. These days, the club was the nearest thing Edgar had to somewhere he could call home. Certainly it was one of the few places where he could find any peace. A wicked thought suddenly crossed his mind and he laughed out loud.

Christian Holyrod, the Mayor of London and Edgar’s closest political friend and ally, looked up from the evening’s menu. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘I’ve just had a fantastic idea. Why don’t we sack O’Dowd?’

Holyrod raised an eyebrow. ‘From which job?’

Edgar frowned. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Augie has three jobs,’ Holyrod grinned, referring to O’Dowd by his middle name, which was Augustine.

‘He does?’ Edgar looked genuinely surprised.

‘Yes,’ Holyrod nodded sagely. ‘As well as Cabinet Secretary, he’s Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office and Head of the Civil Service.’

‘Interesting.’ Edgar thought about that for a moment. ‘So what’s the difference between them?’

Holyrod shrugged. ‘Not a lot, as far as I can see. At the end of the day, it all comes down to the same thing.’ Dropping the menu, he picked up his glass, half-filled with Balblair 1965, and took a careful sip.

‘At the end of the day,’ Edgar mused, ‘he’s just a posh fixer.’

The Mayor stared into his whisky. ‘Quite.’

‘And if we wanted to, could we sack him from all three jobs?’

‘I suppose so.’ Holyrod took a larger taste of his single malt and let it roll around his tongue. ‘The question is –
why
would we want to? I thought he was doing quite a good job.’

‘I suppose so – but we could replace him with a woman,’ Edgar giggled, waving his glass in Kitty’s direction. ‘And then she couldn’t get admitted here. Then there would be one place in this damn city where I could be left alone.’

‘Good point,’ Holyrod noted. The last bastion of civilized behaviour, Pakenham’s had never allowed women through its doors, and with a bit of luck never would. ‘Why not? It might be worth a try.’

Feeling his stomach rumble, Edgar glanced at the clock on the far wall. ‘As it is, the bugger has insisted on coming over to brief me before dinner.’

‘On what?’

‘This phone-hacking business.’ Edgar sighed. ‘It’s turning into a complete pain in the backside.’

‘Yes.’

‘Technology can be such a total bugger. It makes life so much harder in so many ways, and it’s just impossible to keep up with it. I can remember the good old days when we didn’t even have mobile phones.’

‘Me too, just about,’ Holyrod interjected, not wanting to sound too old school.

‘Now,’ Edgar continued, on a roll, ‘it seems that everybody’s got two or three of the damn things, and everybody’s listening to everyone else’s calls.’

‘No one’s safe,’ Holyrod agreed sadly. ‘Not even the royal family.’

‘Who’d have thought that it could be so easy to hack into the wretched things? One of the interns explained it to me the other day. Apparently most people don’t bother to change the factory-default PIN for their voicemail, so anyone can just ring up and check their messages.’

‘Mm.’ Holyrod hadn’t even realized that he had a PIN. He would have to tell one of his PAs to get it changed asap. A cheeky thought popped into his head. ‘So, has
your
phone been hacked?’

Edgar Carlton thought about that for a moment. ‘Not as far as I know. But if anyone wants to listen in to my messages they’re more than welcome. It’s not like I ever receive anything interesting. It’s normally just Anastasia complaining about the kids’ latest transgressions or the fact that she’s gone over her credit-card limit again.’

‘Mm. That might be of interest to the tabloids.’

Edgar shot him a worried look. ‘Which?’

‘Either. Both.’

‘I would have thought they would be far more interested in the call I got from Sophia recently,’ Edgar remarked waspishly.

Holyrod held up a hand. ‘I don’t want to know.’ Sophia Carlton-Holyrod, Edgar’s half-sister, was technically still married to the Mayor. However, the pair had not lived together for years. Tired of her husband’s flagrant infidelities, Sophia had decamped to a riad in Marrakesh with her bodyguard boyfriend. ‘I hope you deleted the message.’

‘You should sort that out,’ Edgar admonished him.

‘I’m not giving her any more money.’

‘Whatever. It’s your problem, not mine.’ Edgar suddenly
remembered the original cause of his complaint. ‘I’ve got to sort out this hacking mess.’

Finishing his whisky, the Mayor placed the empty glass carefully on the side table by his chair. ‘How long?’

‘Sorry?’

‘How long,’ Holyrod repeated slowly, ‘do you have to wait for O’Dowd?’

‘I don’t know.’ Finishing his drink, the PM pushed himself to his feet. ‘He’s late, so I’m going to have another drink.’

‘Fine.’ Holyrod jumped up too, and hastened towards the door. ‘I’m starving. I’ll see you in the dining room.’

Refilling his glass, Edgar caught sight of his image in a nearby mirror and winced. His magnificent hair now contained more than its fair share of grey; it was as if he had aged decades in the last few years. ‘Chin up,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘You’re not done yet. Win election number two and the rest will take care of itself.’ The best part of ten years in Downing Street would be more than enough. Then it would be time for the memoirs, a few lucrative consultancies and the American lecture circuit.

A polite cough drew the PM from his reverie. He half-turned to find Sir Gavin O’Dowd standing behind him, with a couple of other advisers in tow. Hovering in the background was the reassuring figure of the Downing Street Security Chief, Trevor Miller.

‘Sir Gavin,’ Edgar smiled, resisting the temptation to call him Augie as Christian had done. Having recently returned from a fortnight’s R&R at his villa in Tuscany, the civil servant looked tanned and relaxed, something that made his boss resent him even more.

‘Prime Minister.’ Putting his hands together, O’Dowd gave a small bow that Edgar found deeply irritating. For God’s sake, he thought angrily, stand up straight, man. We’re not Japanese.

‘Thank you for coming over.’ The PM then glanced at Miller,
who was in inscrutable mode.
Everybody’s going bloody oriental on me
, Edgar despaired.

The others kept a discreet distance, waiting to see if they would be called into the conversation.

‘No problem.’ For a Knight of the British Empire, O’Dowd’s choice of language was often rather common. Then, again, he was rather common. Born in Brixton, he had studied Economics at Warwick University – Warwick, for God’s sake! Could one even find it on a map? – graduating with First Class Honours before joining the Treasury. There he rose quickly through the ranks, on his way to becoming Permanent Secretary. From Great George Street, it was only a short hop to Number Ten, where he had gone on to serve four different Prime Ministers in various roles.

Not for nothing was the bureaucrat known by the moniker ‘GOD’. After his election victory Edgar Carlton had quickly realized that, to the extent that anyone was actually running the country, it was Sir Gavin O’Dowd.

It certainly wasn’t Carlton himself.

Edgar raised the fresh snifter to his lips. ‘Would you like a drink?’

O’Dowd lifted a hand. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Fine.’ Edgar tried to remember if he’d ever seen a drop of alcohol pass the apparatchik’s lips. In his book, a man who didn’t drink was not to be trusted. Maybe he really should go ahead and sack the little bugger. Smiling at the thought, he let a mouthful of Hennessy trickle smoothly down his throat.

O’Dowd looked at him expectantly.

‘You’re late, and dinner is waiting,’ Edgar said, and with some effort, stifled a yawn. ‘I can give you ten minutes.’

A look of annoyance fleetingly crossed Sir Gavin’s face, only to be immediately extinguished as the mandarin’s mask slipped back into place. ‘My apologies,’ he said evenly. ‘Let me just recap where I think we are.’

If you must, Edgar thought wearily. ‘That would be most helpful.’

‘Well . . .’ Sir Gavin shot a look at Miller, who showed no signs of leaving them to it.

‘Trevor is my Senior Security Adviser,’ Edgar explained smoothly, ‘and as such he needs to hear this.’

‘Fine.’ O’Dowd cleared his throat. ‘So, stepping back for a minute, what do we know? What are the known knowns, as it were?’

Get on with it
. Edgar impatiently tapped his foot on the rather threadbare carpet.

Taking a deep breath, O’Dowd ploughed on. ‘It seems clear that the row over the involvement of the police in phone hacking undertaken by certain journalists is not going to go away.’

‘We know that,’ Miller grunted.

‘More specifically, it has not been defused by our decision to set up the Meyer investigation.’

Our
decision? Edgar wondered. It was your idea to pluck some provincial plod from obscurity and place him in charge of the biggest and most high-profile police internal investigation since the Corruption and Dishonesty Prevention Review Board in the 1990s. However, it was too late to quibble about that now. They were all in it together. ‘That doesn’t mean that creating a taskforce under Chief Inspector Meyer was not the right thing to do.’

‘No.’

‘It was important that Operation Redhead was set up so that people can perceive that we are taking this matter seriously.’

Perceive
being the key word.

‘Indeed,’ O’Dowd smiled. ‘But it is going to be a slow burn. And don’t forget, Operation Redhead comes
after
Operation Tulisa and Operation Elf. It’s not the first time we’ve tried to sort this thing out.’

‘What he’s trying to say,’ Miller interrupted, ‘is that they need to get on with it. There have been less than two dozen arrests so far. People want to see more action. The FBI are even saying that they will step in if we drop the ball again.’

‘Jesus!’ Edgar exclaimed, coughing as a mouthful of cognac went down the wrong way. ‘We don’t want that.’

‘No, we don’t,’ O’Dowd agreed. ‘But, by the same token, we have to follow due process. Meyer has to proceed with care. He cannot afford to do anything that might prejudice any potential future criminal investigation.’

‘Why do you think we put him in charge in the first place?’ Miller grumbled. ‘We don’t want any of this getting to court – on either side of the Atlantic.’

‘Due process,’ O’Dowd repeated.

‘In the meantime,’ Miller went on, ‘we ourselves are getting nowhere, the Americans are threatening to stick their oar in, and the expenses keep racking up.’

Edgar made a face. ‘How much is all this costing?’

‘The bill for Operation Redhead is already more than four and a half million pounds,’ O’Dowd said, ‘including almost a million spent on overtime. The current run rate is more than three hundred and fifty thousand pounds a month.’

‘So?’ The last thing the PM wanted was a lecture on finances. It was only the little people who had to worry about money.

A pained expression appeared on O’Dowd’s face. ‘Well,’ he said gently, ‘it will have to come out of
someone
’s budget.’

‘Pfff . . .’ Edgar made a gesture as if he was swatting a wasp away from in front of his face. ‘The Commissioner will have to raid one of the MPS’s slush funds.’

‘Slush funds?’ Now the civil servant looked offended.

‘Or whatever,’ Edgar huffed. If that fellow Chester Forsyth-Walker, head of the Metropolitan Police, doesn’t have some cash stashed away for a rainy day, he thought, then more fool him. ‘Just make sure that it gets dealt with.’

‘Of course.’ O’Dowd paused. ‘Then there’s one other thing that you have to bear in mind . . .’

Edgar sighed theatrically. That was the big problem with his job: there was always
one more thing
. ‘Which is?’

‘Which is the potential for Chief Inspector Meyer himself to become something of a liability.’

‘What?’ Edgar gripped his snifter so tightly that his knuckles went white. He looked at Miller. ‘I thought you told me he was the most boring provincial plod you could find.’

Miller shrugged. ‘Apparently there is a relationship with a Community Liaison Officer that we didn’t know about.’

‘Neither did his wife,’ O’Dowd added. ‘And there are dalliances with a couple of civilians to consider too.’

‘Women?’ Edgar asked, as a whole range of possible scenarios began whizzing through his mind.

‘Yes,’ Miller nodded. ‘Nothing exotic, I’m glad to say.’

‘Well,’ Edgar said, ‘I suppose that’s something, at least.’

‘The boy likes playing away.’ Miller grinned. ‘Seems he just can’t keep it in his trousers.’

‘That’s one of the risks when you pluck this kind of person from obscurity,’ O’Dowd said, ‘and they go straight under the glare of the media spotlight. There’s always something to be dug up – skeletons in the cupboard and all that. You never know for sure if they can survive the scrutiny.’

‘Mm.’ Despite the news about Meyer, the cognac was beginning to make Edgar feel a little mellow. ‘Should I sack him, do you think?’

‘I would try and avoid that, if possible,’ O’Dowd replied. ‘It would undermine the legitimacy of the whole process at a very early stage.’

‘And we wouldn’t want to do that, would we?’ Edgar’s stomach had started rumbling again and he was distracted by the thought of tucking into a hearty plate of spotted dick.

‘No, we wouldn’t.’

‘Anyway,’ Miller interjected, ‘we’ve checked out every Chief Constable in England and Wales, and none of them come without baggage of some description. So a bit of extra-curricular shagging is manageable.’