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  ‘If I may say, Ms Deil, you don’t know anything you’re talking about. That’s a ridiculous scenario.’

  ‘And I may say, and I do say – do you retaliate? Why don’t we find out right now? What would you do if I hit you?’ Angela and the general are both standing up, inches apart. Suddenly she draws her hand back and slaps him across the face, reddening his left cheek.

  Goring’s eyeballs swivel. He gasps for sanity but, not being the sharpest tool in the toolbox, he finds none. Does he strike back at a woman, the CEO of one of the country’s principal media, on television? In a discussion programme? How incredible. I hate everything about this election because rotten and stinking as it is, still I cannot look away. Reality is changing and I am sea-sick. Rules which used to work don’t anymore.

  Goring grabs Angela by the shoulders. Will he punch? Three seconds of gasping and glaring feel like twenty before he barks, ‘You’ll be hearing from my lawyers,’ and storms off the set. Angela resumes her seat and smiles at the camera. ‘Well, it seems you don’t retaliate, you talk to your lawyers. How very civilised. But here’s the short sharp point: Trident is an utterly pointless weapon unless our enemies think we would use it. I suspect our enemies think Bob Grant would use it. After a short break, I ask a leading economist: will house prices be a financial game-changer in this election? Or on 8 May will we find that we’re back to the same-old, same-old?’

  10

  London, Thursday 23 April 2020 (2)

  Patrick cradled his forehead while Kathy killed the television in his private meeting room. ‘If only they’d asked me’ – he meant the chiefs of the armed services – ‘I’d have told them. With so many retired generals to choose from, why go back to the Triassic period? General Goring up against Angela Deil!’

  ‘They did ask,’ Kathy reminded him. ‘You did tell them. And Goring was a disaster. The gossip [the information shared among her private secretary colleagues] is that all the generals at pasture expected to be kebabbed, so they let Goring volunteer. Senior officer retires with pistol, all that.’

  ‘If the senior officer had retired with his pistol he’d have caused a lot less trouble. Look, Kathy, these role-plays next week – we’ve really got to up our game across Whitehall – dramatically.’

  ‘Now I can tell Zack who some of the other actors will be and promise him a script, I’m sure he’ll say yes.’

  ‘Say this from me: his country needs him. I need the shit scared out of people in this building who think BG isn’t going to happen, or that if it does that it’ll be back to business as usual. Of course we’ll pay – premium for short notice – preparation time – you name it.’

  ‘His concern was that you might expect him to write the material, but you’ve put that to rest. Before the pavement had a go, what was doing his head in was a fifteen-minute gig he’s got at an estate agents’ dinner on Saturday.’

  Patrick looked up. ‘Saturday?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘You’ve got a date Saturday night. With me and the Cabinet Secretary.’

  ‘Shima Patterson?’

  ‘Exactly. BG are lining up for their biggest rally so far. It’s on Bob’s home turf, at the reprieved Millwall stadium, but with rock star technology and live link-ups around the country. I’ve persuaded Shima that we need to be there incognito. We need to feel this beast in its lair, on its home ground. I’m sick to death of reading briefings and op-eds written by people who know less than we do. We need to know what we’re up against.’ Patrick paused. ‘Hmm, replace that with “what we’re up for”.’

  Kathy pondered why her boss and the Cabinet Secretary would want to spend Saturday night at Millwall with her – as opposed to plain-clothes police protection, for example? With Patrick, the answers were always multiple. On this occasion she guessed that he wanted an ally, that he had a hunch about how Shima would react to a woman, and that unveiling Bob’s sister-in-law would be an ace up his sleeve.

  He was dangling in front of her an amazing career opportunity: hours up close with the most powerful civilian in Britain. Was she up to it? Was she up for it? What Kathy wanted to say was, ‘Me, really? Are you sure?’ but she’d learned. Any of her opposite numbers on the private secretary network would snatch the offer out of her hands given half a chance. So she played the game. Was it what she wanted? Of course it was, and yet at the same time she was unsure. ‘Shall we go in my car? We’ll be less conspicuous.’

  ‘That’s a great idea. But how will Zack feel that you’re not there? There’s a limit to how stupid I want to look, begging him to do his bit for the country and pissing him off at the same time.’ Through the glass door Patrick could see a blue-jumpered officer with Royal Air Force shoulder boards arrive at his desk.

  Kathy laughed. ‘If I can tell him what I’ll be doing he’ll think it’s a hoot: two of the cleverest people in the country going to Millwall to pick holes in his brother. It’s a trip to Cairstine which I’ll be missing, not his gig. My whole line with him is, it’s estate agents, it’s not a major performance. I can’t say Cairstine will miss me, but I’ll have to cancel a flight to Glasgow.’

  Patrick held the meeting room door open for Kathy. ‘Then we’ve got a deal. I owe you a flight up to Helensburgh.’ His gaze swivelled to the new arrival. ‘Wing Commander, how can I help?’

  ‘I thought you’d want to know right away: finally we’ve got one of the BG drones. Of course we haven’t formally traced it to BG, but it’s obvious – a jet-black triangle, one metre sides, about two and a half kilos in weight.’

  Both Patrick’s and Kathy’s faces lit up. ‘That’s great news. Where did it come from?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘The Metropolitan Police have just brought it in. Several members of the public saw it come down on open ground in Southwark Park. Its batteries must have failed. Fortunately no-one was hit.’

  ‘You’ve dispatched it to Farnborough?’

  ‘A car is on its way now.’

  ‘Good. I’m afraid you’ll need to spoil the lab boys’ weekend – I want the analysts crawling over it all night and all weekend if need be.’

  ‘I doubt you’ll be spoiling their weekend. You might be helping a few marriages instead. If the thing is half as interesting as BG want us to believe, they’d be over it all weekend anyway. Now they can say it’s an order. I’ll speak to the team right away.’

  Kathy went to check her voicemail as the RAF officer withdrew. Finding an actual BG drone so soon after completing her report was exciting. ‘That could be really interesting.’

  ‘At this stage balsa wood and rubber bands would be interesting, unless of course it’s a plant. Why Southwark Park? Is there a park in Southwark?’

  ‘It’s close to Millwall,’ Kathy hazarded. ‘I can’t think of anything else near there. Oh, listen – something from voicemail. Angela Deil would like to speak to you.’

  Patrick dropped into his chair and popped his feet up on the desk. ‘Fancy that. She probably wants me to say whether it’s constitutional for retired officers to make fools of themselves during elections.’

  ‘Zack and I met her once, a long time ago. It was at a party Bob was giving: she was with him.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘Smart. Always on the look-out. I remember thinking, I wonder what she’s on the look-out for.’

  ‘A future prime minister, perhaps.’

  Kathy laughed. ‘Well, she’d have had to have been clairvoyant to have spotted Bob then. It was more than twelve years ago. Bob invited us round to his house-warming. Afterwards Zack gave Angela a new name, which I couldn’t possibly tell you. Like the Ice Maiden, but worse.’

  ‘Canine?’

  ‘Worse.’

  Patrick winked. ‘It must have been some party.’

  ‘It was. In fact, it was the last time Bob and Zack spoke.’

  11

  Eton, September
2007

  ‘I blame John Betjeman’s friendly bombs,’ Zack opined. The area around Slough station had been rebuilt with English Modern Town Centre Lego – the special edition including a faux Zaha Hadid bus terminus. A supermarket stuck its supersized car-park behind into their faces.

  Betjeman’s bombs had spared the station so that Britain could keep an independent strategic reserve of Victorian ironmongery. Once-white garden-fence trimmings fringed the station’s roofs, reminding Kathy of Cairstine’s crown of lamb with paper frills. Cairstine had put out the family silver and excelled at it three weeks before.

  Opposite the taxi rank posters introduced the country to its prime minister, his government ten weeks old. ‘Not flash, just Gordon’ looked downwards and to his left, his hands buttoning his suit, crumpled hair failing to protect a furrowed brow.

  Over crown of lamb Cairstine had toasted a Scots prime minister at last – proper Scots, someone she had even met at the University of Edinburgh. Kathy had been no less chipper. Barely one month into the job Gordon had announced two new aircraft carriers, biggest-bollocks-ever ones. The Navy was intensely proud, even as they dubbed the two ships Unaffordable and Unserviceable. They would be launched in Scotland, at Rosyth.

  Lunch in a British garden can be glorious, with sunshine and on occasion without wasps, verbal or otherwise. Last month in Helensburgh had been exactly that. The lamb was accompanied by new potatoes and a salad from the garden. The finale had been McGinnis bread pudding with berries, cream and whisky. Zack had just landed his first leading role, not West End but on the way. Kathy had just finished her first year as a lieutenant. Doors were opening and they had decided to get married in 2008. Zack would be thirty and Kathy twenty-six.

  So when a phone call came out of the blue to the newly-betrothed to say some new doors were opening for Bob as well – a house-warming for a renovation which had been nine months in labour – Kathy was surprised how little she had to twist Zack’s arm to accept. ‘You’ve changed in the past five years, I’m sure he has too,’ she had pointed out. Later Zack had gone into a predictable tizz about the impossibility of buying a present for a brother who had sold his business for a reputed £20 million. In her usual way, Kathy had sorted it.

  Fifteen minutes after reaching Slough they arrived at a stone-fronted house in a twisty lane. The taxi dropped them in front of a garish façade bathed in lights like a specimen in a display case. More lights were set into flagstones bordering the drive. The floodlit front door was ajar.

  ‘What a disgrace!’ An elegant woman dressed for cocktails at Cannes stormed out, accompanied by an intensely embarrassed fifteen-year-old in white tie and tails.

  It was Kathy’s turn to panic. A phone call was all very well but printed invitations had their uses, such as specifying dress code. But when she looked inside the house, she saw varying assortments of track suits, shorts and flip-flops, with skirts cut so skimpily about the hips that anything from Ibiza to Ibrox appeared acceptable.

  A group camped inside the front door cheered as a darkened, chauffeur-driven sedan pulled up. Three men in their twenties and matching blue suits, barely worn, bounced up the steps.

  ‘Footballers. There’ll be a few of those,’ Zack said. ‘Millwall, obviously. One of those might be Gary Alexander, their new hope?’

  From the first reception room Kathy and Zack could see at least two others, similarly-sized, and a large garden. Each was noisily occupied by different gangs. Teams of designers with different concepts (Versailles, oriental fusion and something from Mars) appeared to have competed in the different spaces to create the most expensive effect. Some of the gangs were in business suits, some were in smart casual but most were in the sports and supermarket attire which had greeted them at the door. Zack was nervous; it had been five years since he and Bob had bumped into each other at King’s Cross. ‘Remember your temper,’ Kathy whispered.

  ‘My temper?’ Zack’s shoulders snapped back, ready to be provoked.

  ‘Bob’s is worse, but you’re proving my point.’

  ‘Far worse.’

  ‘It’s not a competition.’

  ‘Wotcha, Jack? How come we don’t see you down the Den no more?’ Zack was embraced in a beery hug by a stocky middle-aged man in a suit two sizes too small. ‘This your bird? You gonna introduce us?’

  Zack introduced Kathy, leaving the schoolmate whose name he could not remember to introduce himself as Steve. Zack explained that the two of them had just got engaged, but intended to live in Putney which wouldn’t help getting to the Den. Steve’s business, concrete mixing, was turning over nicely.

  ‘The boys will be dead chuffed to see you. And the missus. God, it must be ten years at least. And keep your eyes peeled for John Berylson. The Yank. He’s just put a ton of dosh into Millwall.’

  ‘An American’s bought the club?’ Kathy asked. Millwall’s Lions (‘No-one likes us, we don’t care’) were ferociously south-east London.

  ‘We don’t care, if he sorts the place out. Would you believe six fucking managers in two fucking years!’ Steve was on an important mission to get a round of drinks at the bar but made Zack promise to find them in the ‘Chinky’ room. ‘Karaoke’s gonna be starting in half an hour.’

  ‘Let’s head into the garden, let me get myself a roll-up,’ Zack said.

  ‘You don’t have to go outside,’ Kathy pointed out, gesturing at the wide array of used ashtrays. ‘But it will be quieter. We don’t need to stay too long once you’ve met Bob.’

  ‘You’re right. I didn’t think that they would be that drunk by five in the afternoon, but I forgot.’

  In the garden Dr Nassia Sotiris spotted Zack and introduced herself. ‘Forgive me, but Bob mentioned his brother might be coming? You resemble him so much, Jack. Apart from the hair. Even the eyebrows are similar, although Bob’s are slightly flatter.’

  Sotiris was dressed like a professor of something very clever who happened to be employed by Vogue. Kathy caught the way Bob’s name rolled off her tongue. She couldn’t help wondering if other intimate parts of Bob might have rolled off there as well.

  ‘I’m Zack.’

  Sotiris touched Zack’s arm. ‘Zack, Zack. My mistake.’

  Kathy intervened, her alarm bells ringing. ‘Do you know about the house? What a lovely garden.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Sotiris gushed. ‘Bob didn’t buy this place until he could also get the strip of land, down there. Do you see? Beyond the trees.’ She pointed to the foot of the garden. ‘There are the famous playing fields of Eton. Or at least some of them, Agars Plough. There are quite a lot elsewhere as well. But then there are quite a lot of boys, over one thousand three hundred Did you see one of them earlier in his school uniform? I’m one of the beaks. Sorry, masters. We’re committed to helping all our students discover their passions.’

  ‘That was a school uniform?’ Kathy exclaimed. ‘I thought it was three months’ wages.’

  Muscles clamped Zack from behind. ‘Would you believe it, bro? I live next to a school where they help you discover your passions. Where Jack and I went, if you discovered your passions, they fucking put you inside. True or not, bro? Millwall. Girls. Music. Es. Good you could make it. And you must be Kathy.’ The breath which pressed against Kathy’s cheek was hot, neat alcohol.

  12

  Eton, September 2007 (2)

  ‘Hello Bob,’ I say, as Bob gives Kathy an appraising look and a kiss. He’s got an inch on me in height but his paunch spoils the effect. His head is still shaven. I see the small tattoo behind his left ear but no more earring.

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Kathy says.

  ‘Well, forget it all, especially anything about knife fights. I’ll show you the scar later.’ Bob winks. ‘All this is a new start. I’ve sold up the business, all the lard is coming off’ – he slaps his belly – ‘and Nassia is going to educate me, aren’t you? Fix me up p
roper…’ – he seems to be stopping there, but then adds – ‘…ly.’

  I don’t need to be Brain of Britain to work out what Nassia Sotiris is doing with Bob – £20 million means you don’t have to use aftershave, although he could do with a generous spray right now – but what’s Bob doing playing school with a doctor? The last he told me, he couldn’t stand wankers who bothered with college and that. Wankers like me.

  Memories come back as I watch Bob sussing Kathy out, almost by sniffing her. I say to Sotiris, ‘What’s your subject?’

  ‘Sociology.’

  ‘Is there much call for it in a boys’ school?’

  ‘A lot!’

  Surprise me. Eton is a testosterone fondue – boys only, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. I wonder how many have crushes on Nassia Sotiris? ‘Thirteen hundred boys sounds like a state school. Isn’t Eton supposed to be exclusive?’

  ‘It is exclusive. All the boys live in houses of about fifty, so the educational experience is very personal. We need the size in order to offer an exceptional choice in activities as well as studies.’

  Bob is man-handled towards one of the reception rooms by an atomic-powered redhead. She contrives to be both deeply apologetic and imperious at the same time – a journalist who has spotted a big-wig Bob should meet. ‘Hi, I’m Angela. No offence guys?... Are you really his brother?...Ohmigod, I’ll bring Bob back right now. Like, before right now.’

  Kathy joins my conversation with Nassia. She wants to know about my name. ‘I was born Jack Grant, but I changed to Zack Parris,’ I explain. ‘I’m an actor. Bob and I don’t really approve of each other. To him being an actor is a complete waste of space, whereas to me being a dangerous selfish ignorant twat trumps that by a mile.’