Chapter One
At the clumsy push of his TV remote, a loud, defiant click sent an almost unbelievably exuberant young lady, saying something enticing about a toilet roll, spinning helplessly into the man made dilating black hole at the centre of Mick Jeans old television screen. ‘Bye, bye, baby, baby bye, bye,’ thought Mick.
He had heard those words on a song somewhere, some woolly haired Scottish guy, he remembered and had thought they would come in handy someday, which indeed they had.
He sat alone now, the room that was previously illuminated by the one eyed machine he had just switched off, was now shrouded in darkness. The silence was only punctuated at somewhat irregular intervals, by the ticking of his prize carriage clock. One sensed that this timepiece, the only award ever bestowed upon him in his entire life, was hoping to pass away the remaining service it had to perform, on these batteries anyway, without too much more fuss.
“Blow the sods up, blow up the bloody lot of them.” This statement from Mick's lips, coming out of the darkness could easily have been interpreted as the ranting of a drunken man, one bottle short of the crate.
Jeans had been a Fleet Street journalist, a third rate journalist some said, a something else others said, but now a guy who was lucky if he got to write the opening notice for the new chip shop in the high street. Blow the commons chamber at the official opening of Parliament. ‘It's been done,’ his counter conscience butted in, ‘but it's never been done properly,’ came the rebuff.
It had all started to go a little off, this was Mick's favourite one-liner, back in the heady days of 1993.
Back at his home, then a secluded barge moored permanently on the Thames, just outside Kingston over to the west, a message played on his phone, at Mick's somewhat hungover order, that fateful Sunday morning. The night before, he had been to the party to celebrate the 21st birthday of Angus Beever's daughter, Cheryl. One of those river boat affairs, nothing but loud noise, boring celebrities and inexhaustible booze. Mick had hung close to Angus, the Editor of the London Evening Satellite or LES as it was called by the street vendors, he had been to Uni’ with Angus at Nottingham but even in those days it was clear who was the really clever one.
“This is Mrs Knottly,” said the answerphone tape, “and I will be wanting to see both you and Philip in Philip's office at 7am on Monday,” there was a brief pause and then, “best you don't be late.” The words, you seemed, ever more sinister, maybe it was Mick's imagination. Mick played the message about five more times, each time he heard the rasping deathly voice, he sobered up a little more until finally his senses had all assembled into one almost coherent group.
Philip Green was the Editor in Chief of the Morning Globe and was Mick's boss, but more unsettling was Margaret Knottly. Mick had never met Mrs Knottly, nor had anyone else at the Globe for that matter, other than, so he said, Philip Green. Indeed, it had been a long established rumour that she was nothing more than a dusty old filing cabinet in Philip's office, and that he himself was the money man at the paper. Knottly Enterprises Inc., said the Globe letterhead, but then everybody has a pseudonym thought Mick, even good old Reg Dwight … Elton John as he is better known. This thought made him feel a littler better but the following thought, ’beware the voice without a face,’ made him feel bad again ...
After a small Scotch to steady his voice, he dialled Philip's number at home... ‘This is Philip Green, where you been and were you seen, leave a message and leave it clean …’ The number of times now that Mick had heard Phil's answer machine and yet each time that chorus made him shudder and his teeth go slanted in a kind of disdained embarrassment. “Phil,” he sighed, “it's me Mick, I have a strange message on my phone from Mrs Knottly, saying to meet you and her in your office tomorrow at 7am.” After a while and since Mick saw no really good reason to open up his heart to a bloody answer-phone, he said, “see you there.”
It was a wet, windswept late October Monday morning, already the working London drone of the cabs and buses pierced the last remains of darkness as Mick climbed the twenty-two steps to the front reception of Knottly Enterprises. He made his way past reception, along the corridor to the main office complex for the City Team and at the far end, the door labelled Philip Green, Editor In Chief .
Mick knocked, an apprehensive kind of knock, this was particularly difficult as he never usually knocked at all. This was much to Philip's annoyance since once Mick just barged in and caught Philip in the middle of a meeting with Sonya, his PA, a strange...kind... of meeting which Mick thought resembled more one to one piggy-back training… and anyway, despite what Philip said, Mick knew it was not warm enough to just wear shorts...
“Come,” it was indeed a female voice but alas, it was not Sonya's.
“Ah.” Michael said.
A grey haired, well groomed, chisel-faced woman in a trendy green business trouser-suit, and with the slightest hint of severity, “Sit.”
Mrs Knottly’s expression and demeanor scared Mick, he had interviewed some really evil business women in his time but this lady was different. She was calm and yet obviously lethal, she was the kind of person who Mick thought would be patient and pleasant until, wham, you had been lulled into a false sense of security and then your throat was being sliced in all directions, while actually you were thinking ‘this feels quite good.’
A quick glance at Philip, who was already seated to her right, not behind his desk as usual, gave little away. “I understand Michael,” she said, the term Michael did nothing to reassure Mick. It made the atmosphere even colder and introduced an almost belittling air to the conversation. “that you attended the birthday party for Cheryl Beever?”
“Y..y..y.es” replied Mick, not wishing to reveal anything elaborate since he did not yet know the scenario that Mrs Knottly was painting here. He had always remembered a passing throw-away line that Philip had once said, ‘if you don't get the scenario, don't go the mileo.’ Mick sometimes wondered which planet Philip's ancestors had actually come from.
“Quite a good evening, lots of interesting people,” Mick said, “It was…” Before he could go on though, Mrs Knottly broke in, “and you recall talking to Lisa Goldsmith obviously?”
Lisa Goldsmith, everyone knew of course that Lisa Goldsmith was the daughter of the Prime Minister, Eric Goldsmith. She was a wildly attractive, fun loving post graduate in her early twenties. The kind of girl nobody ever seemed to get really near to … but wished they could. To be honest though, Mick didn't remember many people at all from the party. ‘Shit,’ he thought, ‘I can just about remember the bloody boat let alone the people who pratted about on it…’
“Er yes, Miss Goldsmith,” Mick lied, “Charming young lady, full of life.”
“Indeed” said Mrs Knottly, there was that one word answer again, just like Sit, it made Mick tremble, ‘Why the hell am I scared?’ he thought to himself… ‘stay calm, you’re getting irrational.’
“But is the life she is so full of yours Michael?” that's the question
At this point the air kind of froze as Mick's brain tried to get to grips with events at this party, which had appeared to be the catalyst for all this. What happened, when, who was there, could he even recall leaving?. . His memory didn't stand a snowballs chance in hell, his brain had long given up even the remotest recollection of most of Saturday night. He remembered waking up among some industrial dustbins over on the east side of London, but how he got there from Surrey? … “Nuh sorry…”
He had even been given some money by a young couple he met in the morning to get the tube home.
Chapter 2
Amongst the bustle of the members’ chamber in the House of Commons, with order papers being waved around like white handkerchiefs at a gathering of hay-fever sufferers and the occasional hand rising upwards from a young backbencher who had clearly been instructed to put up his hand like a naughty schoolboy by the whips every single time Goldsmith tries to sit down… got it! A lone figure, dressed in a dark navy business suit complete with the obligatory old Etonian's tie stood in the shadowy corner of the lobby corridor. The sullen, almost mechanical expression on his clean-shaven but sunken face gave precious little away. He looked menacingly across at a small gathering of similarly dressed men, although one had blond hair unlike his own, which while mostly grey now, had the merest hint of once being a full head of handsome brown, and raised a single bony index finger.
The blond man seemed to whisper a few words to the gathering and they dispersed back to their duties in whatever government department they had come from. This was, after all, practice day and one week today, with a bit of luck, a prevailing wind and the right generic engineering from the permanent secretaries, a vote of no confidence would be foisted upon Eric Goldsmith, a vote of no confidence that had been meticulously planned by the ring of seven for some months.
At today's Questions, just like last weeks and the week before that, Eric Goldsmith was floundering. It seemed that every question asked by the pimply-faced back bencher who had the longest arms and the biggest piece of paper to wave and who had caught the eye of Mr Speaker, who was inevitably himself an ally of the ring of seven, asked the very question that nobody, but nobody outside the private PM's office would know about. Indeed had there been a book available in the members library, entitled Questions to make the PM squirm, it might have been understandable but there wasn't.
Time after time, the Prime Minister looked nervously at his front bench colleagues and then at his watch, a sedately looking timepiece given to him by his wife to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and muttered vague, almost noncoherent replies to what seemed a endless round of jeers, boos and cries of disdain from the opposition. At the end of this particular session, Eric Goldsmith shuffled up his papers, mopped his brow and hurried briskly from the chamber to the awaiting car that he hoped would whisk him quickly and most of all quietly back to number 10, Downing Street.
The short journey seemed to last forever but then it was over and the black Jaguar swung effortlessly off Whitehall, through the gates and on into Downing Street. The usual sideways looks by the bodyguards, at least one piece of instruction from training that had obviously sunk in, and the silent all-clear was given to the PM to get out of the car and make his way inside.
“I want them here, and I want all of them here now,” barked Eric Goldsmith .
“The full cabinet prime minister.......but it’s,” Harvey Poverton, the PM's parliamentary private secretary was a small, thin man in his mid fifties, a well educated and extremely experienced civil servant, he had seen many administrations come and go, many individuals rise and fall and yet somehow none of this had dampened his resolve to observe his high standards and always command respect.
“No buts Harvey, do it.” snapped the PM “and let me know the minute they’re in.”
Forty-three minutes later exactly , the white phone rang in the Goldsmith's flat at the top of No 10 Downing Street, this was the direct link to Harvey Poverton in the PPS's office in the annexe and had an unfamiliar kind of strangled tone to it that was reminisce of some distant time when Britain was the empire, punka walla’s waved bamboo leaves over the heads of British army generals and Queen Victoria, God bless her maa’m, was not amused ..
“The full cabinet is waiting in the CR, prime minister.” CR was short for cabinet room and this was one of Harvey's foibles, using acronyms that he was not about to relinquish...
