MICHAEL DOBBS

TO PLAY THE KING

Copyright

This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperColl‌insPublishers 1992

Copyright © Michael Dobbs 1992, 2014

Michael Dobbs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content or written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006471646

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2015 © ISBN: 9780007397617

Version: 2019-01-15

Praise for To Play the King:

‘With a friend like Michael Dobbs, who on earth needs enemies? Gloriously cheeky. Dobbs’ books grab because of their authenticity’

The Times

‘Highly readable…a model of its kind and impeccably timed’

Daily Mail

Lucy and Andrei

For Medford 1971. For Fiskardon 1981.

For Villars 1991.

For Everything.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Introduction

Prologue

PART ONE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

PART TWO

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

PART THREE

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Epilogue

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Michael Dobbs

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

When I wrote To Play the King in 1990 as a sequel to House of Cards, it was partly because I believed that the Royal yacht was heading for turbulent waters. And so it proved to be. I wrote about fractured marriages, financial scandal, political controversy and public humiliations, and for the next few years the Royal Family seemed to follow the script with breathless tenacity. At times it seemed as though various individuals were openly auditioning for parts in the story. If my book was intended to be by way of a warning, as I suppose it was, it failed completely. The House of Windsor was to endure some of its worst moments. The yacht nearly sank and some members of the crew were thrown overboard.

My fictional king isn’t simply a version of Prince Charles – there have been many heirs to the throne who have got themselves into difficulties and I took a little inspiration from more than one – but it was inevitable that some comparisons would be made. At the time I began writing, it was clear that his marriage was falling apart, despite all the official denials, so I decided that my kingly character would have no wife. I hope none of what I wrote amounted to disrespect because that is not what I intended.

In any event, despite those dire years, both he and the institution have displayed their tenacity and powers of recovery, and today they stand higher in public esteem than they have for decades. The Royal yacht sails on.

And so does FU. Nearly thirty years after I created him, he has developed a life of his own, in books, on global television, as a character who has been quoted both in Parliament and the press. Do you suspect he might even have been muttered about in the corners of various palaces? Well, you might say that but I am not going to comment…

M.D. 2013

PROLOGUE

Away with Kings. They take up too much room.

It was the day they would put him to death.

They led him through the park, penned in by two companies of infantrymen. The crowd was thick and he had spent much of the night wondering how they would react when they saw him. With tears? Jeers? Try to snatch him to safety or spit on him in contempt? It depended who had paid them best. But there was no outburst; they stood in silence, dejected, cowed, still not believing what was about to take place in their name. A young woman cried out and fell in a dead faint as he passed, but nobody tried to impede his progress across the frost-hard ground. The guards were hurrying him on.

Within minutes they were in Whitehall, where he was lodged in a small room. It was just after ten o’clock on a January morning, and he expected at any moment to hear the knock on the door that would summon him. But something had delayed them; they didn’t come until nearly two. Four hours of waiting, of demons gnawing at his courage, of feeling himself fall to pieces inside. During the night he had achieved a serenity and sense of inner peace, almost a state of grace, but with the heavy passage of unexpected minutes, growing into hours, the calm was replaced by a sickening sense of panic which began somewhere in his brain and stretched right through his body to pour into his bladder and his bowels. His thoughts became scrambled and the considered words, crafted with such care to illuminate the justice of his cause and impeach their twisted logic, were suddenly gone. He dug his finger nails deep into his palms; somehow he would find the words, when the time came.

The door opened. The captain stood in the dark entrance and gave a curt, sombre nod of his helmeted head. No need for words. They took him and within seconds he was in the Banqueting Hall, a place he cherished with its Rubens ceiling and magnificent oaken doors, but he had difficulty in making out the details through the unnatural gloom. The tall windows had been partially bricked up and boarded during the war to provide better defensive positions. Only at one of the farther windows was there light where the masonry and barricades had been torn down and a harsh grey glow surrounded the hole, like the entrance to another world. The corridor formed by the line of soldiers led directly to it.

My God, but it was cold. He’d had nothing to eat since yesterday, he’d refused the meal they had offered, and he was grateful for the second shirt he had asked for, to prevent him shivering. It wouldn’t do to be seen to shiver. They would think it was fear.

He climbed up two rough wooden steps and bowed his head as he crossed the threshold of the window, onto a platform they had erected immediately outside. There were half a dozen other men on the freshly built wooden stage while every point around was crammed by teeming thousands, on foot, on carriages, on roofs, leaning from windows and other vantage points. Surely now there would be some response? But as he stepped out into the harsh light and their view, their restlessness froze in the icy wind and the huddled figures stood silent and sullen, ever incredulous. It still could not be.

Driven into the stage on which he stood were four iron staples. They would rope him down, spread-eagled between the staples, if he struggled, yet it was but one more sign of how little they understood him. He would not struggle. He had been born to a better end than that. He would but speak his few words to the throng and that would be sufficient. He prayed that the weakness he felt in his knees would not betray him; surely he had been betrayed enough. They handed him a small cap into which with great care he tucked his hair, as if preparing for nothing more than a walk through the park with his wife and children. He must make a fine show of it. He dropped his cloak to the ground so that he might be better seen.

Heavens! The cold cut through him as if the frost were reaching for his racing heart and turning it straightway to stone. He took a deep, searing breath to recover from the shock. He must not tremble! And there was the captain of his guard, already in front of him, beads of sweat on his brow despite the weather.

‘Just a few words, Captain. I would say a few words.’ He racked his mind in search of them.

The captain shook his head.

‘For the love of God, the commonest man in all the world has the right to a few words.’

‘Your few words would be more than my life is worth, Sir.’

‘As my words and thoughts are more than my life to me. It is my beliefs that have brought me to this place, Captain. I will share them one last time.’

‘I cannot let you. Truly, I am sorry. But I cannot.’

‘Will you deny me even now?’ The composure in his voice had been supplanted by the heat of indignation and a fresh wave of panic. It was all going wrong.

‘Sir, it is not in my hands. Forgive me.’

The captain reached out to touch him on the arm but the prisoner stepped back and his eyes burned in rebuke. ‘You may silence me, but you will never make me what I am not. I am no coward, Captain. I have no need of your arm!’

The captain withdrew, chided.

The time had come. There would be no more words, no more delay. No hiding place. This was the moment when both they and he would peer deep inside and discover what sort of man he truly was. He took another searing lungful of air, clinging to it as long as he could as he looked to the heavens. The priest had intoned that death was the ultimate triumph over worldly evil and pain but he discovered no inspiration, no shaft of sunlight to mark his way, no celestial salvation, only the hard steel sky of an English winter. He realized his fists remained clenched with the nails biting into the flesh of his palms; he forced his palms open and down the side of his trousers. A quiet prayer. Another breath. Then he bent, thanking God that his knees still had sufficient strength to guide him, lowering himself slowly and gracefully as he had practised in his room during the night, and lay stretched out on the rough wooden platform.

Still from the crowd there came no sound. His words might not have lifted or inspired them, but at least they would have vindicated. He was drenched in fury as the overwhelming injustice of it all hit him. Not even a chance to explain. He looked despairingly once more into the faces of the people, the men and women in whose name both sides had fought the war and who stood there now with blank stare, ever uncomprehending pawns. Yet, dullards all, they were his people, for whose salvation he was bound to fight against those who would corrupt the law for their own benefit. He had lost, but the justice of his cause would surely be known in the end. In the end. He would do it all again, if he had another chance, another life. It was his duty, he would have no choice. No more choice than he had now on this bare wooden stage, which still smelt of resin and fresh sawdust. And they would understand, wouldn’t they? In the end…?

A plank creaked beside his left ear. The faces of the crowd seemed frozen in time, like a vast mural in which no one moved. His bladder was going – was it the cold or sheer terror? How much longer…? Concentrate, a prayer perhaps? Concentrate! He set on a small boy, no more than eight years old, in rags, with a dribble of crumbs on his dirt-smeared chin, who had stopped chewing his hunk of loaf and whose innocent brown eyes had grown wide with expectation and were focused on a point about a foot above his head. By God, but it was cold, colder than he had ever known! And suddenly the words he had fought so hard to remember came rushing back to him, as though someone had unlocked his soul.

And in the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine, they took their liege lord King Charles Stuart, Defender of the Faith and by hereditary right King of Great Britain and Ireland, and they cut off his head.

In the early hours of a winter’s day, in a bedroom overlooking the forty-acre garden of a palace which hadn’t existed at the time Charles Stuart took his walk into the next life, his descendant awoke with a start. The collar of his pyjama shirt clung damply and he lay face-down on a block-hard pillow stained with sweat, yet he felt as cold as…As cold as death. He believed in the power of dreams and their ability to unravel the mysteries of the inner being, and it was his custom on waking to write down everything he could remember, reaching for the notebook he kept for the purpose beside his bed. But not this time. There was no need. He would never forget the smell of the crowd mixed with resin and sawdust nor the heavy metallic colour of the sky on that frost-ridden afternoon. Nor the innocent, expectant brown eyes of a boy with a dirty chin smeared with crumbs. Nor that feeling of terrible despair that they had kept him from speaking out, rendering his sacrifice pointless and his death utterly in vain. He would never forget it. No matter how hard he tried.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Never cross an unknown bridge while riding an elephant.

(Chinese proverb)

December: The First Week.

It had not been a casual invitation, he never did anything casually. It had been an insistent, almost peremptory call from a man more used to command than to cajolement. He expected her for breakfast and it would not have crossed his mind that she might refuse. Particularly today, when they were changing Prime Ministers, one out and another in and long live the will of the people. It would be a day of great reckoning.

Benjamin Landless opened the door himself, which struck her as strange. It was an apartment for making impressions, overdesigned and impersonal, the sort of apartment where you’d expect if not a doorman then at least a secretary or a PA to be on hand, to fix the coffee, to flatter the guests while ensuring they didn’t run off with any of the Impressionist paintings enriching the walls. Landless was no work of art himself. He had a broad, plum-red face which was fleshy and beginning to sag like a candle held too near the flame. His bulk was huge and his hands rough, like a labourer’s, with a reputation to match. His Chronicle newspaper empire had been built by breaking strikes as well as careers; it had been as much he as anyone who had broken the career of the man who was, even now, waiting to drive to the Palace to relinquish the power and prestige of the office of Prime Minister.

‘Miss Quine. Sally. I’m so glad you could come. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.’

She knew that to be a lie. Had he wanted to meet her before he would most certainly have arranged it. He escorted her into the main room around which the penthouse apartment was built. Its external walls were fashioned entirely of high-impact glass, which offered a magnificent panorama of the Parliament buildings across the Thames, and half a rain forest seemed to have been sacrificed to cover the floor in intricate wooden patterns. Not bad for a boy from the back streets of Bethnal Green.

He ushered her towards an oversized leather sofa in front of which stood a coffee table laden with trays of piping-hot breakfast food. There was no sign of the hidden helper who must only recently have prepared the dishes and laid out the crisp linen napkins. She declined any of the food but he was not offended. He took off his jacket and fussed about his own plate while she took a cup of black coffee and waited.

He ate his breakfast in single-minded fashion; etiquette and table manners were not his strong points. He offered little small talk, his attention focused on the eggs rather than on her, and for a while she wondered if he might have decided he’d made a mistake in inviting her. He was already making her feel vulnerable.

‘Sally Quine. Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Aged thirty-two, and a girl who’s already made quite a reputation for herself as an opinion pollster. In Boston, too, which is no easy city for a woman amongst all those thick-headed Micks.’ She knew all about that; she’d married one. Landless had done his homework, had pawed over her past; he wanted to make that clear. His eyes searched for her reaction from beneath huge eyebrows tangled like rope. ‘It’s a lovely city, Boston, know it well. Tell me, why did you leave everything you’d built there and come to England to start all over again? From nothing?’

He paused, but got no reply. ‘It was the divorce, wasn’t it? And the death of the baby?’

He saw her jaw stiffen and wondered whether it was the start of a storm of outrage or a move for the door. But he knew there would be no tears. She wasn’t the type, you could see that from her eyes. She was not unnaturally slim and pinched as the current fashion demanded, her beauty was more classical, the hips perhaps a half-inch too wide but all the curves well defined. She was immaculately presented. The skin of her face was smooth, darker and with more lustre than any English rose, the features carefully drawn as though by a sculptor’s knife. The lips were full and expressive, the cheekbones high, her long hair thick and of such a deep shade of black that he thought she might be Italian or Jewish. Yet her most exceptional feature was her nose, straight and a fraction long with a flattened end which twitched as she talked and nostrils which dilated with emphasis and emotion. It was the most provocative and sensuous nose he had ever seen; he couldn’t help but imagine it on a pillow. Yet the eyes disturbed him, didn’t belong on this face. They were shaped like almonds, full of autumnal russets and greens, translucent like a cat’s, yet hidden behind oversized spectacles. They didn’t sparkle like a woman’s should, like they probably once had, he thought. They had an edge of mistrust, as if holding something back.

She looked out of the window, ignoring him. Christmas was but a couple of weeks away, yet there was no seasonal cheer in the air. The festive spirit lay discarded in the running gutters, and somehow it didn’t seem a propitious day for changing Prime Ministers. A seagull beaten inland by North Sea storms cartwheeled outside the window, its shrieks and insults penetrating the double-glazing, envying them their breakfast before finally tumbling away through the blustery sky. She watched it disappear into the greyness.

‘Don’t expect me to be upset or offended, Mr Landless. The fact that you have enough money and clout to do your homework doesn’t impress me. Neither does it flatter me. I’m used to being chatted up by middle-aged businessmen.’ The insult was intended; she wanted him to know he wasn’t going to get away with one-way traffic. ‘You want something from me. I’ve no idea what but I’ll listen. So long as it’s business.’

She crossed her legs slowly and deliberately so that he would notice. From her days as a child she had had no doubts that men found her body appealing and their excessive attention meant she had never had the opportunity to treat her sex as something to treasure, only as a tool to carve a path through a difficult and ungenerous world. She had decided long ago that if sex were to be the currency of life then she would turn it into a business asset, to open the doors which would otherwise be barred. And men could be such reliable dickheads.

‘You’re very direct, Miss Quine.’

‘I prefer to cut through it rather than spread it. And I can play your game.’ She sat back into the sofa and began counting off the carefully manicured fingers of her left hand. ‘Ben Landless. Age…well, for your well-known vanity’s sake, let’s say not quite menopausal. A rough son-of-a-bitch who was born to nothing and now controls one of the largest press operations in this country.’

‘Soon to be the largest,’ he interrupted quietly.

‘Soon to take over United Newspapers,’ she said, nodding, ‘when the Prime Minister you nominated, backed and got elected virtually single-handed takes over in a couple of hours’ time and waves aside the minor inconvenience of his predecessor’s mergers and monopolies policy. You must’ve been celebrating all night, I’m surprised you had the appetite for breakfast. But you have the reputation of being a man with insatiable appetites. Of all kinds.’ She spoke almost seductively in an accent that had been smoothed and carefully softened but not obliterated. She wanted people to take notice and to remember, to pick her out from the crowd. So the vowels were still New England, a shade too long and lazy for London, and the sentiments often rough as if they had been fashioned straight from the dole queues of Dorchester. ‘So what’s on your mind, Ben?’

A smile played around the publisher’s rubbery lips but his eyes remained unmoved, watching her closely. ‘There is no deal. I backed him because I thought he was the best man for the job. There’s no private pay-off. I shall take my chances, just like all the rest.’

She suspected that was the second lie of the conversation, but let it pass.

‘Whatever else happens, it’s a new era. A change of Prime Minister means fresh challenges. And opportunities. I suspect he’ll be more relaxed about letting people make money than was Henry Collingridge. That’s good news for me. And potentially for you.’

‘With all the economic indicators scooting downhill?’

‘That’s just the point. Your opinion-research company has been in business for…what, twenty months? You’ve made a good start, you’re well respected. But you’re small, and small boats like yours could be swamped if it gets rough over the next couple of years. Anyway, you’ve no more patience than I do in running a shoestring operation. You want to make it big, to be on top. And for that you need cash.’

‘Not your cash. If I had newspaper money poured into my operation it would ruin every shred of credibility I’ve built. My business is supposed to be objective analysis, not smears and scares with a few naked starlets thrown in to boost circulation.’

He ran his thick tongue around his mouth as if trying absent-mindedly to dislodge a piece of breakfast. ‘You underestimate yourself,’ he muttered. He produced a toothpick, which he used like a sword-swallower to probe into a far corner of his jaw. ‘Opinion polls are not objective analysis. They’re news. If an editor wants to get an issue rolling he commissions people like you to carry out some research. He knows what answers he wants and what headline he’s going to run, he just needs a few statistics to give the whole thing the smack of authenticity. Polls are the weapons of civil war. Kill off a government, show the nation’s morals are shot to hell, establish that we all love Palestinians or hate apple pie.’

He grew more animated as he warmed to his theme. His hands had come down from his mouth and were grasped in front of him as if throttling an incompetent editor. There was no sign of the toothpick; perhaps he had simply swallowed it, as he did most things which got in his way.

‘Information is power,’ he continued. ‘And money. A lot of your work is done in the City, for instance, with companies involved in takeover bids. Your little polls tell them how shareholders and the financial institutions might react, whether they’ll be supportive or simply dump the company for a bit of quick cash. Takeover bids are wars, life or death for the companies concerned. That information of yours has great value.’

‘And we charge a very good fee for such work.’

‘I’m not talking thousands or tens of thousands,’ he barked dismissively. ‘That’s petty cash in the City. The sort of information we’re talking about allows you to name your own figure.’ He paused to see if there would be a squawk of impugned professional integrity; instead she reached behind her to pull down her jacket, which had ridden up against the back of the sofa. As she did so she exposed and accentuated the curves of her breasts. He took it as a sign of encouragement.

‘You need money. To expand. To grab the polling industry by the balls and to become its undisputed queen. Otherwise you go belly-up in the recession. Be a great waste.’

‘I’m flattered by your avuncular interest.’

‘You’re not here to be flattered. You’re here to listen to a proposition.’

‘I’ve known that from the moment I got your invitation. Although for a moment there I thought we’d wound up on the lecture circuit.’

Instead of responding, he levered himself out of his chair and crossed to the window. The gun-grey clouds had descended still lower and it had begun to rain again. A barge was battling to make headway through the ebbing tide beneath Westminster Bridge where the December winds had turned the usually tranquil river into a muddy, ill-tempered soup of urban debris and bilge oil. He gazed in the direction of the Houses of Parliament, his hands stuffed firmly into the folds of his tent-like trousers, scratching himself.

‘Our leaders over there, the fearless guardians of the nation’s welfare. Their jobs are full of shared confidences, information waiting to be sensationalized and abused. And every single one of those bastards would leak the lot if it served their purposes. There’s not a political editor in town who doesn’t know every word of what’s gone on within an hour of a Cabinet meeting finishing, nor a general who hasn’t leaked a confidential report before doing battle over the defence budget. And you find me the politician who hasn’t tried to undermine a rival by starting gossip about his sex life.’ His hands flapped in his trouser pockets like the sails of a great ship trying to catch the wind. ‘Prime Ministers are the worst,’ he snorted contemptuously. ‘If they want to rid themselves of a troublesome Minister, they’ll assassinate him in the press beforehand with tales of drunkenness or disloyalty. Inside information. It’s what makes the world go round.’

‘Perhaps that’s why I never went into politics,’ she mused.

He turned towards her, to discover her seemingly engrossed in removing a stray hair from her sweater. When she was sure she had his full attention she stopped toying with him and hid once again inside the folds of her silk-cotton jacket. ‘So what is it you are going to suggest I do?’

He sat down beside her on the sofa. No jacket, only a swathe of tailored shirt, now at close quarters. His physical presence was, surprisingly to her fashion-conscious eye, indeed impressive.

‘I’m going to suggest you stop being an also-ran, a woman who may strive for years to make it to the top yet never succeed. I’m suggesting a partnership. With me. Your expertise’ – they both knew he meant inside information – ‘backed by my financial clout. It would be a formidable combination.’

‘But what’s in it for me?’

‘A guarantee of survival. A chance to make a lot of money, to get where you want to go, to the top of the pile. To show your former husband that not only can you survive without him but even succeed. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘And how is all this supposed to happen?’

‘We pool our resources. Your information and my money. If there’s any action going on in the City, I want to be part of it. Get in there ahead of the pack and the potential rewards are huge. You and I split any profit right down the middle.’

She brought her forefinger and thumb together in front of her face. Her nose offered an emphatic bob. ‘Excuse me, but if I understand you right, isn’t that just the tiniest bit illegal?’

He responded with silence and a look of unquenchable boredom.

‘And it sounds as if you would be taking all the risk,’ she continued.

‘Risk is a fact of life. I don’t mind taking the risk with a partner I know and trust. I’m sure we could get to trust each other very closely.’

He reached out and brushed the back of her hand; a glaze of distrust flashed into her eyes.

‘Before you ask, getting you into bed is not an essential part of the deal – no, don’t look so damned innocent and offended. You’ve been flashing your tits at me from the moment you sat down so let us, as you say, cut through it all and get down to basics. Getting you on your back would be a pleasure but this is business and in my book business comes first. I’ve no intention of cocking up what could be a first-class deal by letting my brains slip between my legs. We’re here to screw the competition, not each other. So…what’s it to be? Are you interested?’

As if on cue a phone began to warble in a distant part of the room. With a grunt of exasperation, he levered himself up, but as he crossed the room to answer the call there was also anticipation; his office had the strictest instruction not to bother him unless…He barked briefly into the phone before returning to his guest, his hands spread wide.

‘Extraordinary. My cup runs over. That was a message from Downing Street. Apparently our new Prime Minister wishes me to call on him as soon as he’s back from the Palace, so I’m afraid I must rush off. Wouldn’t do to keep him waiting.’ His candle-wax face was contorted in what passed for a grin. She would be the focus of his attention for only a few moments longer: another place, another partner beckoned. He was already climbing into his coat. ‘So make it a very special day for me. Accept.’

She stretched for her handbag on the sofa but he was there also, his huge labourer’s hand completely encasing her own. They were very close and she could feel the heat from his body, smell him, sense the power beneath the bulk which was capable of crushing her instantly if he so chose. But there was no threat in his manner, his touch was surprisingly gentle. For a moment she caught herself feeling disarmed, almost aroused. Her nose twitched.

‘You go sort out the nation’s balance of payments. I’ll think about mine.’

‘Think carefully, Sally, and not too long.’

‘I’ll consult my horoscope. I’ll be in touch.’

At that moment the seagull made another screeching attack, hurling insults as it pounded against the window, leaving it dripping with guano. He cursed.

‘It’s supposed to be a lucky omen,’ she laughed lightly.

‘Lucky?’ he growled as he led her out of the door. ‘Tell that to the bloody window cleaner!’

CHAPTER TWO

A man should sleep uneasy in his palace if he wishes to keep it.

It hadn’t been as he had expected. The crowds had been much thinner than in years gone by; indeed, fewer than two dozen people standing outside the Palace gates, skulking tortoise-like beneath umbrellas and plastic raincoats, could scarcely be counted as a crowd at all. Maybe the great British public simply didn’t give a damn any more who their Prime Minister was.

He sat back in the car, a man of bearing and distinction amidst the leather, his tired smile implying a casual, almost reluctant acceptance of his lot. He had a long face, the skin ageing but still taut beneath the chin, austere like a Roman bust with lank silver-sandy hair carefully combed away from the face. He was dressed in his habitual charcoal-grey suit with two buttons and a brightly coloured, almost foppish silk handkerchief which erupted out of the breast pocket, an affectation he had adopted to distance himself from the Westminster hordes in their banal Christmas-stocking ties and Marks & Spencer suits. Every few seconds he would bend low, stretching down behind the seat to suck at the cigarette he kept hidden below the window line, the only outward show of the tension and excitement which bubbled within. He took a deep lungful of nicotine and for a while didn’t move, feeling his throat go dry as he waited for his heart to slow.

The Right Honourable Francis Ewan Urquhart, MP, gave a perfunctory wave to the huddled group of onlookers from the rear seat of his new ministerial Jaguar as it passed into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. His wife Mortima had wanted to lower the window in order for the assorted cameramen to obtain a better view of them both, but discovered that the windows on the official car were more than an inch thick and cemented in place. She had been assured by the driver that nothing less than a direct hit from a mortar with armour-piercing shells would open them.

The last few hours had seemed all but comic. After the result of the leadership ballot had been announced at six o’clock the previous evening, he had rushed back to his house in Cambridge Street and waited there with his wife. For what, they hadn’t quite known. What was he supposed to do now? There had been no one to tell him. He had hovered beside the phone but it stubbornly refused to ring. He’d rather expected a call of congratulation from some of his parliamentary colleagues, perhaps from the President of the United States or at the very least his aunt, but already the new caution of his colleagues towards a man formerly their equal and now their master was beginning to exert itself; the President wouldn’t call until he’d been confirmed as Prime Minister and his aged aunt apparently thought his telephone would be permanently engaged for days. In desperation for someone with whom to share their joy, he and Mortima took to posing for photo calls at the front door and chatting with the journalists on the pavement outside.

Urquhart, or FU as he was often known, was not naturally gregarious, a childhood spent roaming alone with no more than a dog and a satchelful of books across the heathers of the family estates in Scotland had attuned him well to his own company, but it was never enough. He needed others, not simply to mix with but against whom to measure himself. It was what had driven him South, that and the financial despair of the Scottish Highlands. A grandfather who had died with no thought of how to avoid the venality of the Exchequer; a father whose painful sentimentality and attachment towards tradition had brought the estate’s finances to their knees. He had watched his parents’ fortunes and their social position wither like apple blossom in snow. Urquhart had got out while there was still something to extract from the heavily mortgaged moors, ignoring his father’s entreaties on family honour which in despair had turned to tearful denunciation. It had been scarcely better at Oxford. His childhood companionship with books had led to a brilliant academic career and to a readership in Economics, but he had not taken to the life. He had grown to despise the crumpled corduroy uniforms and fuzzy moralizing which so many of his colleagues seemed to dress and die in, and found himself losing patience with the dank river mists which swept off the Cherwell and the petty political posturings of the dons’ dinner table. One evening, the Senior Common Room had indulged in mass intellectual orgasm as they had flayed a junior Treasury Minister within an inch of his composure; for most of those present it had merely confirmed their views of the inadequacies of Westminster, for Urquhart it had reeked only of the opportunities. So he had turned his back on both the teeming moors and dreaming spires and had risen fast, while taking great care all the while to preserve his reputation as an academic. It made other men feel inferior, and in politics that was half the game.

It was only after his second photo call, about 8.30 p.m., that the telephone jumped back to life. A call from the Palace, the Private Secretary. Would he find it convenient to come by at about nine tomorrow morning? Yes, he would find that most convenient, thank you. Then the other calls began to flow in. Parliamentary colleagues unable any longer to control their anxieties about what job he might in the morning either offer to or strip from them. Newspaper editors uncertain whether to fawn or threaten their way to that exclusive first interview. Solicitous mandarins of the civil service anxious to leave none of the administrative details to chance. The chairman of the party’s advertising agency who had been drinking and couldn’t stop gushing. And Ben Landless. There had been no real conversation, simply coarse laughter down the phone line and the unmistakable sound of a champagne cork popping. Urquhart thought he might have heard at least one woman giggling in the background. Landless was celebrating, as he had every right to. He had been Urquhart’s first and most forthright supporter, and between them they had manoeuvred, twisted and tormented Henry Collingridge into premature retirement. Urquhart owed him, more than he could measure, while characteristically the newspaper proprietor had not been coy in identifying an appropriate yardstick.

He was still thinking about Landless as the Jaguar shot the right-hand arch at the front of the Palace and pulled into the central courtyard. The driver applied the brakes cautiously, aware not only of his regal surroundings but also of the fact that you cannot stop more than four tons of reinforced Jaguar in a hurry without making life very uncomfortable for the occupants and running the risk of triggering the automatic panic device which transmitted a priority distress alert to the Information Room at Scotland Yard. The car drew to a halt not beneath the Doric columns of the Grand Entrance used by most visitors but beside a much smaller door to the side of the courtyard, where, smiling in welcome, the Private Secretary stood. With great speed yet with no apparent hurry, he had opened the door and ushered forward an equerry to spirit Mortima Urquhart off for coffee and polite conversation, while he led Urquhart up a small but exquisitely gilded staircase to a waiting room scarcely broader than it was high. For a minute they hovered, surrounded by oils of Victorian horse-racing scenes and admiring a small yet uninhibited marble statue of Renaissance lovers until the Private Secretary, without any apparent consultation of his watch, announced that it was time. He stepped towards a pair of towering doors, knocked gently three times and swung them open, motioning Urquhart forward.

‘Mr Urquhart. Welcome!’

Against the backdrop of a heavy crimson damask drape which dressed one of the full-length windows of his sitting room stood the King. He offered a nod of respect in exchange for Urquhart’s deferential bow and motioned him forward. The politician paced across the room and not until he had almost reached the Monarch did the other take a small step forward and extend his hand. Behind Urquhart, the doors had already closed; the two men, one ruler by hereditary right and the other by political conquest, were alone.

Urquhart remarked to himself how cold the room was, a good two or three degrees below what others would regard as comfortable, and how surprisingly limp the regal handshake. As they stood facing each other neither man seemed to know quite how to start. The King tugged at his cuffs nervously and gave a tight laugh.

‘Worry not, Mr Urquhart. Remember, this is the first time for me, too.’ The King, heir for half a lifetime and Monarch for less than four months, guided him towards two chairs which stood either side of a finely crafted white stone chimneypiece. Along the walls, polished marble columns soared to support a canopied ceiling covered in elaborate classical reliefs of Muses, while in the alcoves formed between the stone columns were hung oversized and heavily oiled portraits of royal ancestors painted by some of the greatest artists of their age. Hand-carved pieces of furniture stood around a huge Axminster, patterned with ornate red and gold flowers and stretching from one end of the vast room to the other. This was a sitting room, but only for a king or emperor, and it might not have changed in a hundred years. The sole note of informality was struck by a desk, placed in a distant corner to catch the light cast by one of the garden windows and completely covered by an eruption of papers, pamphlets and hooks which all but submerged the single telephone. The King had a reputation for conscientious reading; from the state of his desk it seemed a reputation well earned.

‘I’m not quite sure where to start, Mr Urquhart,’ the King began as they settled in the chairs. ‘We are supposed to be making history but it appears there is no form for these occasions. I have nothing to give you, no rich words of advice, not even a seal of office to hand over. I don’t have to invite you to kiss my hand or take any oath. All I have to do is ask you to form a Government. You will, won’t you?’

The obvious earnestness of his Sovereign caused the guest to smile. Urquhart was in his early sixties, ten years older than the King, although the difference appeared less; the younger man’s face was stretched and drawn beyond its years with a hairline in rapid retreat and the beginnings of a stoop. It was said that the King had replaced his complete lack of material concerns with a lifetime of tortured spiritual questioning, and the strain was evident. While Urquhart had the easy smile and small talk of the politician, the intellectual aloofness of an academic and the ability to relax of a man trained to dissemble and if necessary to deceive, the King had none of this. Urquhart felt no nervousness, only the cold; indeed, he began to pity the younger man’s gravity. He leaned forward.

‘Yes, Your Majesty. It will be my honour to attempt to form a Government on your behalf. I can only hope that my colleagues won’t have changed their minds since yesterday.’

The King missed the mild humour as he struggled with his own thoughts, a deep furrow slicing across the forehead of a face which had launched a million commemorative mugs, plates, tea trays, T-shirts, towels, ashtrays and even the occasional chamber pot, most of them made in the Far East. ‘You know, I do hope it’s auspicious, a new King and new Prime Minister. There’s so much to be done. Here we are on the very brink of a new millennium, new horizons. Tell me, what are your plans?’

Urquhart spread his hands wide. ‘I scarcely…there’s been so little time, Sir. I shall need a week or so, to reshuffle the Government, set out some priorities…’ He was waffling. He knew the dangers of being too prescriptive and his leadership campaign had offered years of experience rather than comprehensive solutions. He treated all dogma with a detached academic disdain and had watched with grim satisfaction while younger opponents tried to make up for their lack of seniority with detailed plans and promises, only to discover they had advanced too far and exposed vulnerable ideological flanks. Urquhart’s strategy for dealing with aggressive questioning from journalists had been to offer a platitude about the national interest and to phone their editors; it had got him through the twelve tumultuous days of the leadership race, but he had doubts how long such a game plan would last. ‘Above all, I shall want to listen.’

Why was it that politicians uttered such appalling clichés, which their audiences nevertheless seemed so blithe to accept? The Monarch was nodding his head in silent agreement, his tense body rocking gently to and fro as he sat on the edge of his chair. ‘During your campaign you said that we were at a crossroads, facing the challenges of a new century while building on the best from the old. “Encouraging change while preserving continuity.”’

Urquhart acknowledged the phrase.

‘Bravo, Mr Urquhart, more power to your hand. It’s an admirable, summation of what I believe my own job to be, too.’ He grasped his hands together to form a cathedral of bony knuckles, his frown unremitting. ‘I hope I shall be able to find – that you will allow me – some way, however small, of helping you in your task.’ There was an edge of apprehension in his voice, like a man accustomed to disappointment.

‘But of course, Sir, I would be only too delighted…did you have anything specific in mind?’

The King’s fingers shifted to the knot of his unfashionably narrow tie and twisted it awkwardly. ‘Mr Urquhart, the specifics are the stuff of party politics, and that’s your province. It cannot be mine.’

‘Sir, I would be most grateful for any thoughts you have…’ Urquhart heard himself saying.

‘Would you? Would you really?’ There was a rising note of eagerness in his voice, which he tried to dispel, too late, with a chuckle. ‘But I must be careful. While I was merely heir to the Throne I was allowed the luxury of having my own opinions and was even granted the occasional privilege of expressing them, but Kings cannot let themselves be dragged into partisan debate. My advisers lecture me daily on the point.’

‘Sir,’ Urquhart interjected, ‘we are alone. I would welcome any advice.’

‘No, not for the moment. You have much to do and I must not delay you.’ He rose to indicate that the audience was at an end, but he made no move towards the door, steepling his fingers to the point of his bony, uneven nose and remaining deep in thought, like a man at prayer. ‘Perhaps – if you will allow me? – there is just one point. I’ve been reading the papers.’ He waved towards the chaos of his desk. ‘The old Department of Industry buildings on Victoria Street, which are to be demolished. The current buildings are hideous, such a bad advertisement for the twentieth century, they deserve to go. I’d love to drive the bulldozer myself. But the site is one of the most important in Westminster, near the Parliament buildings and cheek by jowl with the Abbey itself, one of our greatest ecclesiastical monuments. A rare opportunity for us to grasp, don’t you think, to create something worthy of our era, something we can pass on to future generations with pride? I do so hope that you, your Government, will ensure the site is developed…how shall I put it?’ The clipped boarding-school tones searched for an appropriately diplomatic phrase. ‘Sympathetically.’ He nodded in self-approval and seemed emboldened by Urquhart’s intent stare. ‘Encouraging change while preserving continuity, as one wise fellow put it? I know the Environment Secretary is considering several different proposals and, frankly, some of them are so outlandish they would disgrace a penal colony. Can’t we for once in our parsimonious lives make a choice in keeping with the existing character of Westminster Abbey, create something which will respect the achievements of our forefathers, not insult them by allowing some misguided modernist to…’ – his lips quivered in indignation – ‘to construct a stainless-steel mausoleum which crams people on the inside and has its mechanical entrails displayed without?’ Passion had begun to overtake the diffidence and a flush had risen to colour his cheeks.

Urquhart smiled in reassurance, an expression which came as easily as oxygen. ‘Sir, I can assure you that the Government’ – he wanted to say ‘my Government’ but the words still seemed to dry behind his dentures – ‘will have environmental concerns at the forefront of their considerations.’ More platitudes, but what else was he supposed to say?

‘Oh, I do hope so. Perhaps I should apologize for raising the matter, but I understand the Environment Secretary is to make a final decision at any time.’

For a moment, Urquhart felt like reminding the King that it was a quasi-judicial matter, that many months and more millions had been poured into an official planning inquiry which now awaited the Solomon-like deliberation of the relevant Minister. Urquhart might have suggested that, to some, the King’s intervention would look no better than jury-nobbling. But he didn’t. ‘I’ll look into it. You have my word, Sir.’

The King’s pale blue eyes had a permanent downward cast which made him appear always sincere and frequently mournful as though burdened by some sense of guilt, yet now they sparkled with unmistakable enthusiasm. He reached out for the other man’s hand. ‘Mr Urquhart, I believe we are going to get along famously.’

Seemingly unbidden, the King’s Private Secretary was once more at the open doors and with a bow of respect Urquhart made his way towards them. He had all but crossed the threshold when he heard the words thrown after him. ‘Thank you once again, Prime Minister!’

Prime Minister. There it was. The first time. He’d done it.

‘So…what did he say?’ They were in the car on the way to Downing Street before his wife roused him from his reverie.

‘What? Oh, not a lot. Wished me well. Talked about the great opportunities ahead. Went on about a building site near Westminster Abbey. Wants me to ensure it’s built in mock Tudor or some such nonsense.’

‘Will you humour him?’

‘Mortima, if sincerity could build temples then the whole of England would be covered in his follies, but this is no longer the Dark Ages. The King’s job is to give garden parties and to save us the bother of electing someone else president, not to go round interfering.’

Mortima snorted her agreement as she fumbled impatiently through her bag in search of lipstick. She was a Colquhoun by birth, a family which could trace its descent in direct line from the ancient kings of Scotland. They had long since been stripped of the feudal estates and heirlooms, but she had never lost her sense of social positioning or her belief that most modern aristocracy were interlopers – including ‘the current Royal Family’, as she would frequently put it. Royalty was merely an accident of birth, and of marriage and of death and the occasional execution or bloody murder; it could just as easily have been a Colquhoun as a Windsor, and all the more pure stock for that. At times she became distinctly tedious on the subject, and Urquhart decided to head her off.

‘Of course I shall humour him. Better a King with a conscience than not, I suspect, and the last thing I need is sour grapes growing all over the Palace. Anyway, there are other battles to be fought and I want him and his popularity firmly behind me. I shall need it.’ His tone was serious and his eyes set upon a future of perceived challenges. ‘But at the end of the day, Mortima, I am the Prime Minister and he is the King. He does what I tell him to, not the other way around. The job’s ceremony and sanctimony, that’s all. He’s the Monarch, not a bloody architect.’

They were driving past the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, slowing down as they approached the barriers at the head of Downing Street, and Urquhart was relieved to see there were rather more people here to wave and cheer him on for the benefit of the cameras than at the Palace. He thought he recognized a couple of young faces, perhaps party headquarters had turned out their rent-a-crowd. His wife idly slicked down a stray lock of his hair, while his mind turned to the reshuffle and the remarks he would make on the doorstep, which would be televised around the world.

‘So what are you going to do?’ Mortima pressed.

‘It really doesn’t matter,’ Urquhart muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he smiled for the cameras as the car turned into Downing Street. ‘As a new King the man is inexperienced, and as constitutional Monarch he is impotent. He has all the menace and bite of a rubber duck. But fortunately, on this matter, I happen to agree with him. Away with modernism!’ He waved as a policeman came forward to open the heavy car door. ‘So it really can’t be of any consequence…’

CHAPTER THREE

Loyalty is the vice of the underclasses. I hope I am above such things.

‘Put the papers down, David. For God’s sake, take your nose out of them for just a minute of our day together.’ The voice was tense, more nervous than aggressive.

The grey eyes remained impassive, not moving from the sheaf of documents upon which they had been fixed ever since he had sat down at the breakfast table. The only facial reaction was an irascible twitch of the neatly trimmed moustache. ‘I’m off in ten minutes, Fiona, I simply have to finish them. Today of all days.’

‘There’s something else we have to finish. So put the bloody papers down!’

With reluctance David Mycroft raised his eyes in time to see his wife’s hand shaking so vigorously that the coffee splashed over the edge of her cup. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

‘You. And me. That’s the matter.’ She was struggling to control herself. ‘There’s nothing left to our marriage and I want out.’

The King’s press aide and principal public spokesman switched automatically into diplomatic gear. ‘Look, let’s not have a row, not now, I’m in a hurry and…’

‘Don’t you realize, we never have rows. That’s the problem!’ The cup smashed down into the saucer, overturning and spreading a menacing brown stain across the tablecloth. For the first time he lowered his sheaf of papers, every movement careful and deliberate, as was every aspect of his life.

‘Perhaps I could get some time off. Not today, but…We could go away together. I know it’s been a long time since we had any real chance to talk…’

‘It’s not lack of time, David! We could have all the time in the world and it would make no difference. It’s you, and me. The reason we don’t have any rows is because we have nothing to argue about. Nothing at all. There’s no passion, nothing. All we have is a shell. I used to dream that once the children were off our hands it might all change.’ She shook her head. ‘But I’m tired of deluding myself. It will never change. You will never change. And I don’t suppose I will.’ There was pain and she was dabbing her eyes, yet held her control. This was no flash of temper.

‘Are you…feeling all right, Fiona? You know, women at your time of life…’

She smarted at his patronizing idiocy. ‘Women in their forties, David, have their needs, their feelings. But how would you know? When did you last look at me as a woman? When did you last look at any woman?’ She returned the insult, meaning it to hurt. She knew that to break through she was going to have to batter down the walls he had built around himself. He had always been so closed, private, a man of diminutive stature who had sought to cope with his perceived physical inadequacies by being utterly formal and punctilious in everything he did. Never a hair on his small and rather boyish head out of place, even the streaks of grey beginning to appear around his dark temples looking elegant rather than ageing. He always ate breakfast with his jacket on and buttoned.

‘Look, can’t this wait? You know I have to be at the Palace any—’

‘The bloody Palace again. It’s your home, your life, your lover. The only emotion you ever show nowadays is about your ridiculous job and your wretched King.’

‘Fiona! That’s uncalled-for. Leave him out of this.’ The moustache with its hint of red bristled in indignation.

‘How can I? You serve him, not me. His needs come before mine. He’s helped ruin our marriage far more effectively than any mistress, so don’t expect me to bow and fawn like the rest.’

He glanced anxiously at his watch. ‘Look, for goodness sake, can we talk about this tonight? Perhaps I can get back early.’

She was dabbing at the coffee stain with her napkin, trying to delay meeting his gaze. Her voice was calmer, resolved. ‘No, David. Tonight I shall be with somebody else.’

‘There’s someone else?’ There was a catch in his throat, he had clearly never considered the possibility. ‘Since when?’

She looked up from the mess on the table with eyes which were now defiant and steady, no longer trying to evade. This had been coming for so long, she couldn’t hide from it any more. ‘Since two years after we got married, David, there has been someone else. A succession of “someone elses”. You never had it in you to satisfy me. I never blamed you for that, really I didn’t, it was just the luck of the draw. What I bitterly resent is that you never even tried. I was never that important to you, not as a woman. I have never been more than a housekeeper, a laundress, your twenty-four-hour skivvy, an object to parade around the dinner circuit. Someone to give you respectability at Court. Even the children were only for show.’

‘Not true.’ But there was no real passion in his protest, any more than there had been passion in their marriage. She had always known they were sexually incompatible; he seemed all too willing to pour his physical drive into his job while at first she had contented herself with the social cachet his work at the Palace brought them. But not for long. In truth, she couldn’t even be sure who the father of her second child was, while if he had doubts on the matter he didn’t seem to care. He had ‘done his duty’, as he once put it, and that had been an end of it. Even now as she poured scorn on him as a cuckold she couldn’t get him to respond. There should be self-righteous rage somewhere, surely, wasn’t that what his blessed code of chivalry called for? But he seemed so empty, hollow inside. Their marriage had been nothing but a rat’s maze within which both led unrelated lives, meeting only as if by accident before passing on their separate ways. Now she was leaping for the exit.

‘Fiona, can’t we—’

‘No, David. We can’t.’

The telephone had started ringing in its insistent, irresistible manner, summoning him to his duty, a task to which he had dedicated his life and to which he was now asked to surrender his marriage. We’ve had some great times, haven’t we, he wanted to argue, but he could only remember times which were good rather than great and those were long, long ago. She had always come a distant second, not consciously but now, in their new mood of truth, undeniably. He looked at Fiona through watery eyes which expressed sorrow and begged forgiveness; there was no spite. But there was fear. Marriage had been like a great sheet anchor in strong emotional seas, preventing him from being tossed about by tempestuous winds and blown in directions which were reckless and lacking in restraint. Wedlock. It had worked precisely because it had been form without substance, like the repetitive chanting of psalms that had been forced on him during his miserable school years at Ampleforth. Marriage had been a burden but, for him, a necessary one, a distraction, a diversion. Self-denial, but also self-protection. And now the anchor chains were being cut.

Fiona sat motionless across a table littered with toast and fragments of eggshell and bone china, the household clutter and crumbs which represented the total sum of their life together. The telephone still demanded him. Without a further word he rose to answer it.

CHAPTER FOUR

The scent of victory blinds many men. The game isn’t over until the bayonet has been run in and twisted.

‘Come in, Tim, and close the door.’

Urquhart was sitting in the Cabinet Room, alone except for the new arrival, occupying the only chair around the coffin-shaped table which had arms. Before him was a simple leather folder and a telephone. The rest of the table stood bare.

‘Not exactly luxurious, is it? But I’m beginning to like it.’ Urquhart chuckled.

Tim Stamper looked around, surprised to discover no one else present. He was – or had been until half an hour ago when Urquhart had exchanged the commission of Chief Whip for that of Prime Minister – the other man’s loyal deputy. The role of Chief Whip is mysterious, that of his deputy invisible, but together they had combined into a force of incalculable influence, since the Whips Office is the base from where discipline within the parliamentary party is maintained through a judicious mixture of team spirit, arm twisting and outright thuggery. Stamper had ideal qualities for the job: a lean, pinched face with protruding nose and dark eyes of exceptional brightness that served to give him the appearance of a ferret, and a capacity for rummaging about in the dark corners of his colleagues’ private lives to uncover their personal and political weaknesses. It was a job of vulnerabilities, guarding one’s own while exploiting others’. He had long been Urquhart’s protégé; fifteen years younger, a former estate agent from Essex, it was an attraction of opposites. Urquhart was sophisticated, elegant, academic, highly polished; Stamper was none of these and wore off-the-peg suits from British Home Stores. Yet what they shared was perhaps more important: ambition, an arrogance that for one was intellectual and for the other instinctive, and an understanding of power. The combination had proved stunningly effective in plotting Urquhart’s path to the premiership. Stamper’s turn would come, that had been the implicit promise to the younger man. Now he was here to collect.

‘Prime Minister.’ He offered a theatrical bow of respect. ‘Prime Minister,’ Stamper repeated, practising a different intonation as if trying to sell him the freehold. He had a familiar, almost camp manner which hid the steel beneath, and the two colleagues began to laugh in a fashion which managed to be both mocking and conspiratorial, like two burglars after a successful night out. Stamper was careful to ensure he stopped laughing first; it wouldn’t do to outmock a Prime Minister. They had shared so much over recent months but he was aware that Prime Ministers have a tendency to hold back from their colleagues, even their fellow conspirators, and Urquhart didn’t continue laughing for long.

‘Tim, I wanted to see you entirely à deux.’

‘Probably means I’m due to get a bollocking. What’ve I done, anyway?’ His tone was light, yet Urquhart noticed the anxious downward cast at the corner of Stamper’s mouth and discovered he was enjoying the feeling of mastery implied by his colleague’s discomfort.

‘Sit down, Tim. Opposite me.’

Stamper took the chair and looked across at his old friend. The sight confirmed just how much their relationship had changed. Urquhart sat before a large oil portrait of Robert Walpole, the first modern and arguably greatest Prime Minister who had watched for two centuries over the deliberations in this room of the mighty and mendacious, the woeful and miserably weak. Urquhart was his successor, elevated by his peers, anointed by his Monarch and now installed. The telephone beside him could summon statesmen to their fate or command the country to war. It was a power shared with no other man in the realm; indeed, he was no longer just a man but, for better or worse, was now the stuff of history. Whether in that history he would rate a footnote or an entire chapter only time would tell.

Urquhart sensed the swirling emotions of the other man. ‘Different, isn’t it, Tim? And we shall never be able to turn back the clock. It didn’t hit me until a moment ago, not while I was at the Palace, not with the media at the front door here, not even when I walked inside. It all seemed like a great theatre piece and I’d simply been assigned one of the roles. Yet as I stepped across the threshold, every worker in Downing Street was assembled in the hallway, from the highest civil servant in the land to the cleaners and telephonists, perhaps two hundred of them. They greeted me with such enthusiasm that I almost expected bouquets to be thrown. The exhilaration of applause,’ he sighed. ‘It was beginning to go to my head, until I remembered that scarcely an hour beforehand they’d gone through the same routine with my predecessor as he drove off to oblivion. That lot’ll probably applaud at their own funerals.’ He moistened his thin lips, as was his habit when reflecting. ‘Then they brought me here, to the Cabinet Room, and left me on my own. It was completely silent, as though I’d fallen into a time capsule. Everything in order, meticulous, except for the Prime Minister’s chair which had been drawn back. For me! It was only when I touched it, ran my finger across its back, realized no one was going to shout at me if I sat down, that finally it dawned on me. It isn’t just another chair or another job, but the only one of its kind. You know I’m not by nature a humble man yet, dammit, for a moment it got to me.’ There was a moment of prolonged silence, before his palm smacked down on the table. ‘But don’t worry. I’ve recovered!’

Urquhart laughed that conspiratorial laugh once more, while Stamper could only manage a tight smile as he waited for the reminiscing to stop and for his fate to be pronounced.

‘To business, Tim. There’s much to be done and I shall want you, as always, right by my side.’

Stamper’s smile broadened.

‘You’re going to be my Party Chairman.’

The smile rapidly disappeared. Stamper couldn’t hide his confusion and disappointment.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll find you some ministerial sinecure to get you a seat around the Cabinet table – Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster or some such nonsense. But for the moment I want your mittens firmly on the Party machine.’

Stamper’s jaw was working furiously, trying to marshal his arguments. ‘But it’s been scarcely six months since the last election, and a long haul before the next one. Three, maybe four years. Counting paper clips and sorting out squabbles amongst local constituency chairmen is scarcely my strong suit, Francis. You should know that after what we’ve been through together.’ It was an appeal to their old friendship.

‘Think it through, Tim. We’ve a parliamentary majority of twenty-two and a party that’s been torn apart by the recent leadership battle. And we are just about to get a beating from a swine of a recession. We’re no better than even in the opinion polls and our majority won’t last three or four years. We’ll be shot to pieces at every by-election we face and we’ve only to lose fewer than a dozen seats before this Government is dead. Unless, that is, you can guarantee me no by-elections, that you’ve found some magic means of ensuring none of our esteemed colleagues will be caught canvassing in a brothel, misappropriating church funds or simply succumbing to senility and excessive old age?’

‘Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun for a Party Chairman, either.’

‘Tim, the next couple of years are going to be hell, and we probably don’t have a sufficient majority to survive long enough for us to get through the recession. If it’s painful for the Party Chairman, it’ll be bloody agony for the Prime Minister.’

Stamper was silent, unconvinced, unsure what to say. His excitement and dreams of a few moments before had suddenly frayed.

‘Our futures can be measured almost in moments,’ Urquhart continued. ‘We’ll get a small boost in popularity because of my honeymoon period while people give me the benefit of their doubt. That will last no longer than March.’

‘You’re very precise about that.’

‘Indeed I am. For in March there has to be a Budget. It’ll be a bastard. We let everything rip in the markets to get us through the last election campaign and the day of judgement for that little lot is just around the corner. We borrowed off Peter to buy off Paul, now we have to go back to pick the pockets of them both. They’re not going to care for it.’ He paused, blinking rapidly as he ordered his thoughts. ‘That’s not all. We’ll take a beating from Brunei.’

‘What?’

‘The Sultan of that tiny oil-infested state is a great Anglophile and one of the world’s most substantial holders of sterling. A loyal friend. Unfortunately, not only does he know what a mess we’re in but he’s also got his own problems. So he’s going to unload some of his sterling – at least three billion worth sloshing around the markets like orphans in search of a home. That’ll crucify the currency and stretch the recession on for probably another year. For old time’s sake he says he’ll sell only as and when we suggest. So long as it’s before the next Budget.’

Stamper found difficulty in swallowing, his mouth had run dry.

Urquhart began to laugh but without the slightest hint of humour. ‘And there’s more, Tim, there’s more! To top it all, the Attorney General’s office has quietly let it be known that the trial of Sir Jasper Harrod will begin immediately after Easter. Which is March the twenty-fourth, to save you looking it up. What do you know of Sir Jasper?’

‘Only what most people know, I guess. Self-made mega-millionaire, chairman of the country’s biggest computer-leasing operation. Does a lot of work with Government departments and local authorities, and has got himself accused of paying substantial backhanders all over the place to keep hold of his contracts. Big into charities, I seem to remember, which is why he got his “K”.’

‘He got his knighthood, Tim, because he was one of the party’s biggest contributors. Loyally and discreetly over many years.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘Having come to our aid whenever we asked for it, he now expects us to come equally loyally to his. To pull a few strings with the Director of Public Prosecutions. Which of course we can’t, but he refuses to understand that.’

‘There’s more, I know there’s more…’

‘And he insists that if the case comes to trial he will have to reveal his substantial party donations.’

‘So?’

‘Which were paid all in cash. Delivered in suitcases.’

‘Oh, shit.’

‘Enough of it to give us all acute haemorrhoids. He not only gave to the central Party but supported the constituency election campaigns of almost every member of the Cabinet.’

‘Don’t tell me. All spent on things which weren’t reported as election expenses.’

‘In my case, everything was recorded religiously and will bear full public scrutiny. In other cases…’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘I’m told the Trade Secretary, later this afternoon to reinforce our glorious backbenches, used the money to pay off a troublesome mistress who was threatening to release certain compromising letters. It was made over to her, and Harrod still has the cancelled cheque.’

Stamper pushed his chair back from the table until it was balancing on its rear legs, as if trying to distance himself from such absurdity. ‘Christ, Francis, we’ve got all this crap about to hit us at a hundred miles an hour and you want me to be Party Chairman? If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather seek asylum in Libya. By Easter, you say? It’ll take more than a bloody resurrection to save anybody caught in the middle of that lot.’

His waved his arms forlornly, drained of energy and resistance, but Urquhart was straining forward in great earnest, tension stiffening his body.

‘By Easter. Precisely. Which means we have to move before then, Tim. Use the honeymoon period, beat up the Opposition, get in ahead of the recession and get a majority which will last until all the flak has been left well behind us.’

Stamper’s voice was breathless. ‘An election, you mean?’

‘By the middle of March. Which gives us exactly fourteen weeks, only ten weeks before I have to announce it, and in that time I want you as Party Chairman getting the election machine as tight as it can be. There are plans to be made, money to be raised, opponents to be embarrassed. And all without anyone having the slightest idea what we’re about to spring on them.’

Stamper’s chair rocked back with a clatter as he endeavoured to recover his wits. ‘Bloody Party Chairman.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s only for fourteen weeks. If all goes well you can have the pick of any Government department you want. And if not…Well, neither of us will have to worry about a political job ever again.’

CHAPTER FIVE

A politician has no friends.

‘This is truly appalling.’ Mortima Urquhart screwed up her nose with considerable violence as she surveyed the room. It had been several days since the Collingridges removed the last of their personal effects from the small apartment above 10 Downing Street reserved for the use of Prime Ministers, and the sitting room now had the ambience of a three-star hotel. It lacked any individual character, that had already been transported in the packing cases, and what was left was in good order but carried the aesthetic touch of a British Rail waiting room. ‘Simply revolting. It won’t do,’ she repeated, gazing at the wallpaper, where she half expected to find the faded impressions of a row of flying china ducks. She was momentarily distracted as she passed by a long wall mirror, surreptitiously checking the conspicuous red tint her hairdresser had applied earlier in the week as she had waited for the final leadership ballot. A celebratory highlight, the stylist had called it, but no one could any longer mistake it for a natural hue and it had left her constantly fiddling with the colour balance on the remote control, wondering whether it was time to change the television or her hair salon.

‘What extraordinary people they must have been,’ she muttered, brushing some imagined speck of dust from the front of her Chanel suit while her husband’s House of Commons secretary, who was accompanying her on the tour of inspection, buried herself in her notebook. She thought she rather liked the Collingridges; she was more definite in her views of Mortima Urquhart, whose cold eyes gave her a predatory look and whose constant diets to fend off the advance of cellulite around her expensively clad body seemed to leave her in a state of unremitting impatience, at least with other women, particularly those younger than herself.

‘Find out how we get rid of all this and see what the budget is for refurbishment,’ Mrs Urquhart snapped as she led the way briskly down the short corridor leading to the dark entrails of the apartment, fingertips tapping in rebuke the flesh beneath her chin as she walked. She gave a squawk of alarm as she passed a door on her left, behind which she discovered a tiny galley kitchen with a stainless-steel sink, red and black plastic floor tiles and no microwave. Her gloom was complete by the time she had inspected the claustrophobic dining room with the atmosphere of a locked coffin and a view directly onto a grubby attic and roof. She was back in the sitting room, seated in one of the armchairs covered in printed roses the size of elephants’ feet and shaking her head in disappointment, when there came a knock from the entrance hall.

‘Come in!’ she commanded forlornly, remembering that the front door didn’t even have a lock on it – for security reasons she had been told, but more for the convenience of civil servants as they came to and fro bearing papers and dispatches, she suspected. ‘And they call this home,’ she wailed, burying her head theatrically in her hands.

She brightened as she looked up to examine her visitor. He was in his late thirties, lean with razor-cropped hair.

‘Mrs Urquhart. I’m Inspector Robert Insall, Special Branch,’ he announced in a thick London accent. ‘I’ve been in charge of your husband’s protection detail during the leadership election and now they’ve been mug enough to make me responsible for security here in Downing Street.’ He had a grin and natural charm to which Mortima Urquhart warmed, and a build she couldn’t help but admire.

‘I’m sure we shall be in safe hands, Inspector.’

‘We’ll do our best. But things are going to be a bit different for you, now you’re here,’ he continued. ‘There are a few things I need to explain, if you’ve got a moment.’

‘Come and cover up some of this hideous furniture, Inspector, and tell me all about it…’

Landless waved as the crowd applauded. The onlookers had no idea who sat behind the darkened glass of the Silver Spur, but it was an historic day and they wanted a share in it. The heavy metal gates guarding the entrance to Downing Street drew back in respect and the duty policemen offered a smart salute. Landless felt good, even better when he saw the pavement opposite his destination crowded with cameras and reporters.

‘Is he going to offer you a job, Ben?’ a chorus of voices sang out as he prised himself from the back seat of the car.

‘Already got a job,’ he growled, showing off his well-known proprietorial glare and enjoying every minute of it. He buttoned up the jacket flapping at his sides.

‘A peerage, perhaps? Seat in the House of Lords?’

‘Baron Ben of Bethnal Green?’ His fleshy face sagged in disapproval. ‘Sounds more like a music hall act than an honour.’

There was much laughter, and Landless turned to walk through the glossy black door into the entrance hall but he was beaten to the step by a courier bearing a huge assortment of flowers. Inside, the hallway was covered with a profusion of bouquets and baskets, all still unwrapped, with more arriving by the minute. London’s florists, at least temporarily, could forget the recession. Landless was directed along the deep red carpet leading straight from the front door to the Cabinet Room on the other side of the narrow building, and he caught himself hurrying. He slowed his step, relishing the sensation. He couldn’t remember when he had last felt so excited. He was shown directly into the Cabinet Room by a solicitous and spotty civil servant who closed the door quietly behind him.

‘Ben, welcome. Come in.’ Urquhart waved a hand in greeting but didn’t rise. The hand indicated a chair on the other side of the table.

‘Great day, Francis. Great day for us all.’ Landless nodded towards Stamper, who was leaning against a radiator, hovering like a Praetorian Guard, and Landless found himself resenting the other man’s presence. All his previous dealings with Urquhart had been one-on-one; after all, they hadn’t invited an audience as they’d laid their plans to exhaust and overwhelm the elected head of government. On those earlier occasions Urquhart had always been the supplicant, Landless the power, yet as he looked across the table he couldn’t help but notice that things had changed, their roles reversed. Suddenly ill at ease, he stretched out a hand to offer Urquhart congratulation, but it was a clumsy gesture. Urquhart had to put down his pen, draw back his large chair, rise and stretch, only to discover that the table was too wide and all they could do was to brush fingers.

‘Well done, Francis,’ Landless muttered sheepishly, and sat down. ‘It means a lot to me, your inviting me here on your first morning as Prime Minister. Particularly the way you did. I thought I’d have to sneak in round the back by the dustbins, but I have to tell you I felt great as I passed all those cameras and TV lights. I appreciate the public sign of confidence, Francis.’

Urquhart spread his hands wide, a gesture meant to replace the words he couldn’t quite find, while Stamper jumped in.

‘Prime Minister,’ he began, with emphasis. It was meant as a rebuke at the newspaperman’s overfamiliarity, but it slid off the Landless hide without making a dent. ‘My apologies, but the new Chancellor will be here in five minutes.’

‘Forgive me, Ben. Already I’m discovering that a Prime Minister is not a master, only a slave. Of timetables, mostly. To business, if you don’t mind.’

‘That’s how I like it.’ Landless shuffled forward on his chair in expectation.

‘You control the Chronicle group and have made a takeover bid for United Newspapers, and it falls to the Government to decide whether such a takeover would be in the public interest.’ Urquhart was staring at his blotter as if reading from a script, rather like a judge delivering sentence. Landless didn’t care for this sudden formality, so unlike their previous conversations on the matter.

Urquhart’s hands were spread wide again as he sought for elusive words. Finally, he clenched his fists. ‘Sorry, Ben. You can’t have it.’

The three men turned to effigies as the words circled the room and settled like birds of prey.

‘What the ’ell do you mean I can’t bloody have it?’ The pronunciation was straight off the streets, the veneer had slipped.

‘The Government does not believe it would be in the national interest.’

‘Crap, Francis. We agreed.’

‘The Prime Minister was careful throughout the entire leadership campaign to offer no commitments on the takeover, his public record on that is clear,’ Stamper interposed. Landless ignored him, his attention rigidly on Urquhart.

‘We had a deal! You know it. I know it.’

‘As I said, Ben, a Prime Minister is not always his own master. The arguments in favour of turning the bid down are irresistible. You already own more than thirty per cent of the national press; United would give you close on forty.’

‘My thirty per cent supported you every step of the way, as will my forty. That was the deal.’

‘Which still leaves just over sixty who would never forgive or forget. You see, Ben, the figures simply don’t add up. Not in the national interest. Not for a new Government that believes in competition, in serving the consumer rather than the big corporations.’

‘Bullshit. We had a deal!’ His huge fists crashed down on the bare table.

‘Ben, it’s impossible. You must know that. I can’t in my first act as Prime Minister let you carve up the British newspaper industry. It’s not good business. It’s not good politics. Frankly it would make pretty awful headlines on every other front page.’

‘But carving me up will make bloody marvellous headlines, is that it?’ Landless’s head was thrust forward like a charging bull, his jowls shaking with anger. ‘So that’s why you asked me in by the front door, you bastard. They saw me coming in, and they’ll see me going out. Feet first. You’ve set up a public execution in front of the world’s cameras. Fat capitalist as sacrificial lamb. I warn you, Frankie. I’ll fight you every step of the way, everything I’ve got.’

‘Which only leaves seventy per cent of the newspapers plus every TV and radio programme applauding a publicly spirited Prime Minister,’ Stamper interjected superciliously, examining his finger nails. ‘Not afraid to turn away his closest friends if the national interest demands. Great stuff.’

Landless was getting it from both sides, both barrels. His crimson face darkened still further, his whole body shook with frustration. He could find no words with which to haggle or persuade, he could neither barter nor browbeat, and he was left with nothing but the physical argument of pounding the table with clenched fists. ‘You miserable little sh—’

Suddenly, the door opened and in walked Mortima Urquhart in full flow. ‘Francis, it’s impossible, completely impossible. The apartment’s appalling, the decorations are quite disgusting and they tell me there’s not enough money left in the budget…’ She trailed off as she noted Landless’s fists trembling six inches above the table.

‘You see, Ben, a Prime Minister is not master even in his own house.’

‘Spare me the sermon.’

‘Ben, think it through. Put this one behind you. There will be other deals, other interests you will want to pursue, in which I can help. It would be useful to have a friend in Downing Street.’

‘That’s what I thought when I backed you for Prime Minister. My mistake.’ Landless was once again in control of himself, his hands steady, his gaze glacial and fixed upon Urquhart, only the quivering of his jowls revealing the tension within.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted,’ Mortima said awkwardly.

‘Mr Landless was just about to leave, I think,’ Stamper cut in from his guard post beside the radiator.

‘I am sorry,’ Mortima repeated.

‘Don’t worry,’ replied Landless, eyes still on her husband. ‘I can’t stay. I just learned of a funeral I have to attend.’

CHAPTER SIX

A Monarch lives in a gilded cage. Happiness depends on whether he spends more time looking at the depth of the gilding or the size of the bars.

‘I won’t hear of it, David.’

It was ludicrous. Mycroft was in turmoil; there were so many unformed doubts, half-fears that he could not or dared not realize, which he needed to talk through with the King, for both their sakes. Yet he was reduced to snatching a few words along with mouthfuls of chlorinated water as they ploughed through the waves of the Palace swimming pool. The King’s only concession to the interruption in his daily exercise schedule was to switch from the crawl to the breaststroke, enabling Mycroft more easily to match his pace. It was his rigid discipline that enabled the King to maintain his excellent physical shape, and kept all those who served him struggling to keep up.

The King was a fierce defender of the forms of marriage – it came with the job, he would say – and Mycroft had felt it necessary to make the offer. ‘It’s for the best, Sir,’ he persisted. ‘I can’t afford to let you become embroiled in my personal difficulties. I need some time to sort myself out. Better for all of us if I resign.’

‘I disagree.’ The King spat out a mouthful of water, finally resolving to finish the conversation on dry land, and headed for the marbled poolside. ‘We’ve been friends since university and I’m not going to throw away the last thirty years simply because some reptilian gossip columnist might hear of your private problems. I’m surprised you should think I would consider it.’ He ducked his shiny head one last time beneath the water as he reached for the steps. ‘You’re part of the management board of this firm, and that’s how it’s going to stay.’

Mycroft shook his head like a dog, trying to clear his vision. It wasn’t just the marriage, of course, it was all the other pressures he felt crowding in on him which made him feel so apprehensive and wretched. If he couldn’t be completely honest even with himself, how could he expect the King to understand? But he had to try.

‘Suddenly, everything looks different. The house. The street. My friends. Even I look different, to myself. It’s as if my marriage was a lens which gave the world a particular perspective over all these years, and now that it’s gone nothing seems quite the same. It’s a little frightening…’

‘I’m sorry, truly, about Fiona. After all, I’m godfather to your eldest, I’m involved.’ The King reached for his towel. ‘But, dammit, women have their own extraordinary ways and I can’t profess to understand them. What I do know, David, is that it would make no sense for you to try to get through your problems on your own, to cut yourself off not only from your marriage but also from what you have here.’ He placed a hand on Mycroft’s dripping shoulder. The contact was very close, his voice concerned. ‘You understand me, David, you always have. I am known by the whole world yet understood by so few. You do, you understand. I need you. I will not allow you to resign.’

Mycroft stared into his friend’s angular face. He found himself thinking the King’s leanness made him look drawn and older than his years, particularly with his hair grown so thin. It was as if a furnace inside was burning the King up too quickly. Perhaps he cared too much.

Care too much – was it possible? Fiona had tossed Mycroft back into the pool and he was struggling in the deep waters, unable to touch bottom. It dawned on him that he had never touched bottom, not once in his life. Far from caring too much, he realized he had never really cared at all and the sudden understanding made him panic, want to escape before he drowned. His emotional life had been shapeless, without substance or roots. Except here at the Palace, which now provided his only support. The man he had once tossed fully clothed through the ice of the college fountain and who had come up spitting bindweed and clutching a lavatory seat was saying, in the only way a lifetime of self-control allowed, that he cared. Suddenly it mattered, very much.

‘Thank you, Sir.’

‘I don’t know a single marriage, Royal, common or just plain vulgar, which hasn’t been through the wringer; it’s so easy to think you’re on your own, to forget that practically everyone you know has jumped through the same hoops.’

Mycroft remembered just how many nights of their marriage he and Fiona had spent apart, and imagined what she had been up to on every one of those nights. There really had been a lot of hoops. He didn’t care, not even about that. So what did he care about?

‘I need you, David. I’ve waited all my life to be where I am today. Don’t you remember the endless nights at university when we would sit either side of a bottle of college port and discuss what we would do when we had the opportunity? We, David, you and me. Now the opportunity has arrived, we can’t throw it away.’ He paused while a liveried footman deposited a silver tray with two mugs of herbal tea on the poolside table. ‘If it’s really over with Fiona, try to put it behind you. Look ahead, with me. I can’t start on the most important period of my life by losing one of my oldest and most trusted friends. There’s so much to do, for us both.’ He began towelling himself vigorously as though determined to start that very minute. ‘Don’t make any decisions now. Stick with it for a couple of months and, if you still feel you need a break, we’ll sort it out. But trust me, stay with me. All will be fine, I promise.’

Mycroft was unconvinced. He wanted to run, but he had nowhere and no one he wanted to run to. And the thought of what he might find if he ran too far overwhelmed him. After so many years he was free, and he didn’t know if he could handle freedom. He stood, water dripping from the end of his nose and through his moustache, weighing his doubts against the Sovereign’s certainty. He could find no sense of direction, only his sense of duty.

‘So, what do you feel, old friend?’

‘Bloody cold, Sir.’ He managed a weak smile. ‘Let’s go and have a shower.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Of course I have principles. I like to dust them down regularly. With a trowel.

‘Circulate, Francis. And smile. This is supposed to be a celebration, remember.’

Urquhart acknowledged his wife’s instruction and began forcing his way slowly through the crowded room. He hated these occasions. It was supposed to be a party to thank those who had helped him into Downing Street, but inevitably Mortima had intervened and turned it into another of her evenings for rubbing shoulders with anyone from the pages of the social columns she wanted to meet. ‘The voters love a little glamour,’ she argued, and like any self-respecting Colquhoun she had always wanted to preside over her own Court. So instead of a small gathering of colleagues he had been thrust into a maelstrom of actresses, opera stars, editors, businessmen and assorted socialites, and he knew his small talk couldn’t last the evening.

The guests had clattered through the dark December night into the narrow confines of Downing Street, where they found a large Christmas tree outside the door of Number Ten, placed at Mortima Urquhart’s instructions to give TV-viewers the impression that this was simply another family eagerly waiting to celebrate Christmas. Inside Number Ten, the glitterati had crossed the threshold, unaware they had already been scanned by hidden devices for weapons and explosives. They handed over their cloaks and overcoats in exchange for a smile and a cloakroom ticket, and waited patiently in line on the stairs which led to the Green Room, where the Urquharts were receiving their guests. As they wound their way slowly up the stairs and past its walls covered in portraits of previous Prime Ministers, they tried not to stare too hard at the other guests or their surroundings. Staring implied you hadn’t done this a hundred times before. Most had little to do with politics, some were not even supporters of the Government, but the enthusiasm with which they were greeted by Mortima Urquhart left them all impressed. The atmosphere was sucking them in, making them honorary members of the team. If power were a conspiracy, they wanted to be part of it too.

For ten minutes, Urquhart struggled with the confusion of guests, his eyes never resting, darting rapidly from one fixed point to another as if always on guard, or on the attack, forced to listen to the complaints of businessmen and the half-baked social prescriptions of chat-show hosts. At last he reached gratefully for the arm of Tim Stamper and dragged him into a corner.

‘Something on your mind, Francis?’

‘I was just reflecting on how relieved Henry must be not to have to put up with all this any longer. Is it really worth it?’

‘Ambition should be made of more solid stuff.’

‘If you must quote Shakespeare, for God’s sake get it right. And I’d prefer it if you chose some other play than Julius Caesar. You’ll remember they’d had him butchered well before the interval.’

‘I am suitably reproached. In future in your presence I shall quote only from Macbeth.’

Urquhart smiled grimly at the cold humour, wishing he could spend the rest of the evening crossing swords with Stamper and plotting the next election. In less than a week, the polls had already placed them three points ahead as the voters responded to the fresh faces, the renewed sense of urgency throughout Whitehall, the public dispatch of a few of the less acceptable faces of Government. ‘They like the colour of the honeymoon bed linen,’ Stamper had reported. ‘Fresh, crisp, with just enough blood to show you’re doing your job.’ He had a style all his own, did Stamper.

Across the chatter of the crowded room they could hear Mortima Urquhart laughing. She was immersed in conversation with an Italian tenor, one of the more competent and certainly the most fashionable opera star to have arrived in London in recent years. She was persuading him through a mixture of flattery and feminine charm to give a rendition later in the evening. Mortima was nearing fifty yet she was well preserved and carefully presented, and already the Italian was acquiescing. She rushed off to enquire whether there was a piano in Downing Street.

‘Ah, Dickie,’ Urquhart chanted, reaching out for the arm of a short, undersized man with a disproportionately large head and serious eyes who had thrust purposefully through the crowd towards him. Dickie was the new Secretary of State for the Environment, the youngest member of the new Cabinet, a marathon runner, an enthusiast and an intervener, and he had been deeply impressed by Urquhart’s admonition that he was to be the defender of the Government’s green credentials. His appointment had already been greeted with acclaim from all but the most militant pressure groups, yet at this moment he was looking none too happy. There were beads of moisture on his brow; something was bothering him.

‘Was hoping to have a word with you, Dickie,’ said Urquhart before the other had a chance to unburden himself. ‘What about this development site in Victoria Street? Had a chance to look into it yet? Are you going to cover it in concrete, or what?’

‘Good heavens, no, Prime Minister. I’ve studied all the options carefully, and I really think it would be best if we dispense with the more extravagant options and go for something traditional. Not one of these steel and glass air-conditioning units.’

‘Will it provide the most modern office environment?’ Stamper intervened.

‘It’ll fit into the Westminster environment,’ Dickie continued a little uneasily.

‘Scarcely the same thing,’ the Party Chairman responded.

‘We’d get a howl of protest from the heritage groups if we tried to turn Westminster into downtown Chicago,’ Dickie offered defensively.

‘I see. Planning by pressure group.’ Stamper gave a cynical smile.

The Environment Secretary looked flustered at the unexpected assault but Urquhart came quickly to his rescue. ‘Don’t worry about Stamper, Dickie. Only a week at party headquarters and already he can’t come into contact with a pressure group without raising his kneecap in greeting.’ He smiled, this was considerably greater fun than being preached at by the two large female charity workers who were hovering behind Dickie, waiting to pounce. He drew Dickie closer for protection. ‘So what else was on your mind?’

‘It’s this mystery virus along the North Sea coast which has been killing off the seals. The scientific bods thought it had disappeared, but I’ve just had a report that seal carcasses are being washed up all around Norfolk. The virus is back. By morning there will be camera crews and newshounds crawling over the beaches with photos of dying seals splashed across the news.’

Urquhart grimaced. ‘Newshounds!’ He hadn’t heard that term used in years. Dickie was an exceptionally serious and unamusing man, exactly the right choice for dealing with environmentalists. They could bore each other for months with their mutual earnestness. As long as he kept them quiet until after March…‘Here’s what you do, Dickie. By the time they reach the beaches in the morning, I want you there, too. Showing the Government’s concern, being on hand to deal with the questions of the…newshounds.’ From the corner of his eye he could see Stamper smirking. ‘I want your face on the midday news tomorrow. Alongside all those dead seals.’ Stamper covered his mouth with a handkerchief to stifle the laugh, but Dickie was nodding earnestly.

‘Do I have your permission to announce a Government inquiry, if I feel it necessary?’

‘You do. Indeed you do, my dear Dickie. Give them whatever you like, as long as it’s not money.’

‘Then if I am to be there by daybreak, I’d better make tracks immediately. Will you excuse me, Prime Minister?’

As the Environment Secretary hustled self-importantly towards the door, Stamper could control himself no longer. His shoulders shook with mirth.

‘Don’t mock,’ reproached Urquhart with an arched eyebrow. ‘Seals are a serious matter. They eat all the damned salmon, you know.’

Both men burst into laughter, just as the two charity workers decided to draw breath and swoop. Urquhart spied their heaving bosoms and turned quickly away to find himself looking at a young woman, attractive and most elegantly presented with large, challenging eyes. She seemed a far more interesting contest than the elderly matrons. He extended a hand.

‘Good evening. I’m Francis Urquhart.’

‘Sally Quine.’ She was cool, less gushing than most guests.

‘I’m delighted you could come. And your husband…?’

‘Beneath a ton of concrete, I earnestly hope.’

Now he could detect the slightly nasal accent and he glanced discreetly but admiringly at the cut of her long Regency jacket. It was red with large cuffs, the only decoration provided by the small but ornate metal buttons which made the effect both striking and professional. The raven hair shimmered gloriously in the light of the chandeliers.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs…? Miss Quine.’ He was picking up her strong body language, her independence, and couldn’t fail to notice the taut expression around her mouth; something was bothering her. ‘I hope you are enjoying yourself.’

‘To be frank, not a lot. I get very irritated when men try to grope and pick me up simply because I happen to be an unattached woman.’

So that’s what was bothering her. ‘I see. Which man?’

‘Prime Minister, I’m a businesswoman. I don’t get very far by being a blabbermouth.’

‘Well, let me guess. He sounds as if he’s here without a wife. Self-important. Probably political if he feels sufficiently at ease to chance his hand in this place. Something of a charmer, perhaps?’

‘The creep had so little charm he didn’t even have the decency to say please. I think that’s what riled me as much as anything. He expected me to fall into his arms without even the basic courtesy of asking nicely. And I thought you English were gentlemen.’

‘So…Without a wife here. Self-important. Political. Lacking in manners.’ Urquhart glanced around the room, still trying to avoid the stares of the matrons who were growing increasingly irritated. ‘That gentleman in the loud three-piece pinstripe, perhaps?’ He indicated a fat man in early middle age who was mopping his brow with a spotted handkerchief as he perspired in the rapidly rising warmth of the crowded room.

She laughed in surprise and acknowledgement. ‘You know him?’

‘I ought to. He’s my new Minister of Housing.’

‘You seem to know your men well, Mr Urquhart.’

‘It’s my main political asset.’

‘Then I hope you understand your women just as well, and much better than that oaf of a Housing Minister…In the political rather than the biblical sense,’ she added as an afterthought, offering a slightly impertinent smile.

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘Women. You know, fifty-two per cent of the electorate? Those strange creatures who are good enough to share your beds but not your clubs and who think your Government is about as supportive and up-to-the-mark as broken knicker elastic?’

In an Englishwoman her abruptness would have been viewed as bad manners, but it was normal to afford Americans somewhat greater licence. They talked, ate, dressed differently, were even different in bed so Urquhart had been told, although he had no first-hand experience. Perhaps he should ask the Housing Minister. ‘It’s surely not that bad…’

‘For the last two months, your Party has been pulling itself apart while it chose a new leader. Not one of the candidates was a woman. And according to women voters, none of the issues you discussed were of much relevance to them, either. Particularly to younger women. You treat them as if they were blind copies of their husbands. They don’t like it and you’re losing out. Badly.’

Urquhart realized he was relinquishing control of this conversation; she was working him over far more effectively than anything he could have expected from the charity representatives, who had now drifted off in bitter disappointment. He tried to remember the last time he had torn apart an opinion poll and examined its entrails, but couldn’t. He’d cut his political teeth in an era when instinct and ideas rather than psephologists and their computers had ruled the political scene, and his instincts had served him very well. So far. Yet this woman was making him feel dated and out of touch. And he could see a piano being wheeled into a far corner of the huge reception room.

‘Miss Quine, I’d like very much to hear more of your views, but I fear I’m about to be called to other duties.’ His wife was already leading the tenor by the hand towards the piano, and Urquhart knew that at any moment she would be searching for him to offer a suitable introduction. ‘Would you be free at some other time, perhaps? It seems I know a great deal less about women than I thought.’

‘I appear to be in demand by Government Ministers this evening,’ she mused. Her jacket had fallen open to reveal an elegantly cut but simple dress beneath, secured by an oversized belt buckle, which for the first time afforded him a glimpse of her figure. She saw he had noticed, and had appreciated. ‘I hope at least you will be able to say please.’

‘I’m sure I will,’ he smiled, as his wife beckoned him forward.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Royal palaces are dangerous places in which to sleep or serve. They have far too many windows.

December: The Second Week.

The signs of festive celebration were muted this year. Mycroft, with the pressure of work easing as journalists forsook word processors for the crush of Hamley’s toy counter and the karaoke bars, trudged aimlessly through the damp streets in search of…he knew not what. Something, anything, to keep him out of the tomb-like silence of his house. The sales had started early, even before Christmas, yet instead of customers the shop doorways seemed full of young people with northern accents and filthy hands asking for money. Or was it simply that he’d never had time to notice them before? He made a pretence at Christmas-shopping along the King’s Road, but quickly became frustrated. He hadn’t the slightest idea what his children might want, what they were interested in, and anyway they would be spending Christmas with their mother. ‘Their mother’, not ‘Fiona’. He noticed how easily he slipped into the lexicon of the unloved. He was staring into the window of a shop offering provocative women’s lingerie, wondering if that was really what his daughter wore, when his thoughts were interrupted by a young girl who, beneath the makeup and lipstick, looked not much older than sixteen. It was cold and drizzling, yet the front of her plastic raincoat was unbuttoned.

‘’Ullo, sunshine. Merry Christmas. Need anything to stick on top of your tree?’ She tugged at her raincoat, revealing an ample portion of young, pale flesh. ‘Christmas sale special. Only thirty quid.’

He gazed long, mentally stripping away the rest of the raincoat, discovering a woman who, beneath the plastic, imitation leather and foundation, retained all the vigour and appealing firmness of youth, with even white teeth and a smile he could almost mistake as genuine. He hadn’t talked to anyone about anything except business for more than three days, and he knew he desperately missed companionship. Even bickering with his wife about the brand of toothpaste had been better than silence, nothing. He needed some human contact, a touch, and he would feel no guilt, not after Fiona’s performance. A chance to get back at her in some way, to be something other than a witless cuckold. He looked once again at the girl and even as he thought of revenge he found himself overcome with revulsion. The thought of her nakedness, her nipples, her body hair, the scratchy bits under her armpits, the very smell of her suddenly made him feel nauseous. He panicked, at the embarrassment of being propositioned – what if someone saw? – but more in surprise at the strength of his own feelings. He found her physically repellent – was it simply because she was the same sex as Fiona? He found a five-pound note in his hand, thrust it at her and spat, ‘Go away! God sake…go away!’ He then panicked more, realizing that someone might have seen him give the tart money, turned and ran. She followed, calling after him, anxious not to forgo the chance of any trick, particularly one who gave away free fivers. He’d run seventy yards before he realized he was still making a fool of himself out on the street and saw a door for a drinking club. He dashed in, lungs and stomach heaving.

He ignored the sardonic look of the man who took his coat and went straight to the bar, ordering himself a large whisky. It took a while before he had recovered his breath and his composure sufficiently to look around and run the risk of catching someone’s eye. The club itself was nothing more than a revamped pub with black walls, lots of mirrors and plentiful disco lights. There was a raised dance floor at one end, but neither the lights nor juke box were working. It was still early, there was scarcely a handful of customers who gazed distractedly at one of the plentiful television monitors on which an old Marlon Brando film was playing, the sound turned off so as not to clash with the piped Christmas music the staff had turned on for their own entertainment. There were large photos of Brando on the walls, in motorcycle leathers from one of his early films, along with posters of Presley, Jack Nicholson, and a couple of other younger film stars he didn’t recognize. It was odd, different, a total contrast to the gentlemen’s clubs of Pall Mall to which Mycroft was accustomed. There were no seats; this was a watering hole designed for standing and moving, not for spending all evening mooning over a half pint. He rather liked it.

‘You entered in something of a hurry.’ A man, in his thirties and well presented, a Brummie by his accent, was standing next to him. ‘Mind if I join you?’

Mycroft shrugged. He was still dazed from his encounter and lacked the self-confidence to be rude and turn away a friendly voice. The stranger was casually but very neatly dressed, his stone-washed jeans immaculately pressed, as was his white shirt, sleeves rolled up narrow and high and with great care. He was obviously fit, the muscles showed prominently.

‘You looked as if you were running from something.’

The whisky was making Mycroft feel warmer, he needed to ease up a little. He laughed. ‘A woman actually. Tried to pick me up!’

They were both laughing, and Mycroft noted the stranger inspecting him carefully. He didn’t object; the eyes were warm, concerned, interested. And interesting. A golden shade of brown.

‘It’s usually the other way round. Women running from me,’ he continued.

‘Makes you sound like something of a stud.’

‘No, that’s not what I meant…’ Mycroft bit his lip, suddenly feeling the pain and the humiliation of being alone at Christmas. ‘My wife walked out on me. After twenty-three years.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why should you be? You don’t know her, or me…’ Once more the confusion flooded over him. ‘My apologies. Churlish of me.’

‘Don’t worry. Shout if it helps. I don’t mind.’

‘Thanks. I might just do that.’ He extended a hand. ‘David.’

‘Kenny. Just remember, David, that you’re not on your own. Believe me, there are thousands of people just like you. Feeling alone at Christmas, when there’s no need. One door closes, another opens. Think of it as a new beginning.’

‘Somebody else I know said something like that.’

‘Which must make it right.’ He had a broad, easy smile which had a lot of life to it, and was drinking straight from a bottle of exotic Mexican beer with a lime slice stuffed in the neck. Mycroft looked at his whisky, and wondered whether he should try something new, but decided he was probably too old to change his habits. He tried to remember how long it had been since he had tried anything or met anyone new, outside of work.

‘What do you do, Kenny?’

‘Cabin crew. Fly-the-fag BA. And you?’

‘Civil servant.’

‘Sounds horribly dull. Then my job sounds horribly glamorous, but it’s not. You get bored fending off movie queens in first class. You travel a lot?’

Mycroft was just about to answer when the piped strains of ‘Jingle Bells’ was replaced by the heavy thumping of the juke box. The evening was warming up. He had to bend close to hear what Kenny was saying and to be heard. Kenny had a freshly scrubbed smell with the slightest trace of aftershave. He was bawling into Mycroft’s ear to make himself heard, suggesting they might find a place to eat, out of the din.

Mycroft was trembling once again. It wasn’t just the prospect of going back out alone onto the cold streets again, perhaps finding the tart waiting to accost him, or returning home to an empty house. It wasn’t just the fact that this was the first time for years someone had been interested in him as a person, rather than as someone who was close to the King. It wasn’t even that he felt warmed by Kenny’s easy smile and already felt better than he had done all week. It was the fact that, however much he tried to hide from it or explain it away, he wanted to get to know Kenny very much better. Very much better indeed.

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