by David Laws
Harry’s call caught up with The Globe’s political correspondent in his usual watering hole, the Paradise Club, a place peopled by politicos and journos exchanging gossip and indiscreet chatter. Lufkin answered on the third ring and told him to wait. Harry could hear murmurs of conversation, then footsteps as the man left his place at table for somewhere out of earshot of his dining companions. The lobby. What a crazy system, Harry thought. Non-attributable briefings that amounted to poison-dart attacks on political and personal rivals. He wondered who Lufkin had been milking when the man’s voice suddenly came back on the line. Was it really true, Harry demanded, that Tresham was on the brink?
“Looks that way. Leading contender. Seen as the safe pair of hands.”
“Is it likely? Will she topple?”
“Even more likely after people in her own party are threatening to vote her down.”
“What can I do to wreck Tresham?”
“Tell your story to one of the other contenders.”
It was a toss-up, they decided, between Quentin Huckabee, Brexit chief negotiator in Brussels, and the other big hitter in the Cabinet, Jake Pinckney. Huckabee, Lufkin decided, was a bruiser and combative to the last, while Jake held the strongest card – the EU hated him. ‘Anybody but Jake’ had been the reaction from Brussels the last time Jake Pinckney looked like grabbing the party leadership, and the fact that they feared him so openly made him the man most likely to resist compromise in the upcoming negotiations. “Not everybody’s cup of tea,” Lufkin said, “apt to make rash statements, some people love him, others hate him, but I reckon he might be the person to listen to you.”
It was fixed for the next day and Harry was grateful. Lufkin had been the right man to approach. His contacts were the envy of Grub Street, with unrivalled access to the political heavyweights of the day. He was always first to the inside story. You never knew who his sources were – only that they were impeccable.
Hence Harry’s special appointment in Jake Pinckney’s own constituency, well away from the hothouse of Westminster.
Chapter 15
Thursday 7th March 2019; 22 days to go
Whatever satisfaction Harry drew from obtaining a hearing so soon was quickly dispelled when he arrived at Rougham Airfield to discover the chairman of the Tiger Moth owners’ group waiting for him; a thin, lanky and dour-looking fellow by the name of Wyndham-Schofield who gave him a stern lecture on pilots who flew into rainstorms and stripped all the paint from the plane’s propeller. Harry stopped apologising when he saw the figures at the bottom of the bill for the repaint job. It was a somewhat chastened flyer who checked the weather forecast rather more carefully than usual and was punctilious about his preflight checks, accompanied by a severe pain in the wallet and blunt warnings about what would happen if he repeated the error.
He then ignored Control’s supercilious grins and set a course to retrace his earlier flight across The Wash, touching down at a tiny airfield just outside the Lincolnshire town of Boston. He’d strapped a folding electric bike into the passenger seat, using it to travel into the old town. Boston was his kind of place: tiny streets and alleyways and rustic houses telling a history of a once-vibrant port. He found the constituency office at the Market Hall in Wormgate, a thirteenth-century edifice of Dutch gables and elaborately patterned brickwork, and began to chain his bike to the railings.
“Can’t you read?” challenged an aged female voice from the doorway.
Harry looked down and found a small sign attached to the black ironwork: No bicycles to be attached to these railings. “Are you going to pay for my taxi?” he asked. “If my bike’s pinched?”
The objector was a pearls-and-blue-rinse matriarch in charge of the Jake Pinckney constituency surgery. She hunched her shoulders and retreated inside, then gave Harry her opinion about appointments from outside the district. “We shouldn’t be entertaining Londoners; this is for Boston folk.”
“I’m not a Londoner.”
“Political lobbying should be confined to Westminster. Anyway, you’re last in the queue, you’ll have to wait your turn.”
Harry looked around the waiting room. This was a centuries-old place. The creaking wooden floor dipped and bent, and turned down precariously in one corner. Don’t lean back in your chair, Harry warned himself, or you’ll be doing a loop-the-loop without leaving the ground. Pride of place went to a museum-piece three-bar electric fire that would have given Health and Safety a heart attack, plus a wobbly table loaded with assorted magazines. Harry found one about ephemera. Define ‘ephemera’, it challenged, and the answer appeared to be just about any junk you could find, from leaflets, till receipts and bus tickets to large chunks of metal. He grinned to himself when he began to read about ex-army surplus sold off after the war.
An adenoidal youth with a litter of colourful badges festooned on his jacket lapel leaned over to pass comment. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, pointing at the magazine, “you could buy an old tank and drive it around, no problem; just pop down to the Dog and Duck and park your Sherman in the car park.”
Harry shrugged. Was this the stuff that got them going in Boston? Considering the conspiratorial nature of his own mission, he decided the conversation had a touch of the bizarre. But then again, perhaps bizarre was what he had really come about.
His thoughts turned then to the man he was about to meet. He had a fair idea of what to expect following a detailed briefing from his friend. Jake Eustace Knollys Pinckney, Minister without Portfolio, was the jolly Weeble of the Cabinet Room. The PM had refused to give him high office in order to keep him out of trouble, the disadvantage being that Pinckney was then free to roam and meddle. She’d considered giving him the Foreign Office, but it was obvious he wasn’t into dip-speak. With his unique capacity to coin a telling phrase, Pinckney would have run a blizzard through the diplomatic service.
The great thing about Jake, Lufkin had told Harry, was that he could view his contemporaries with a degree of objectivity bordering on disdain. They were merely career politicians, while he was the all-rounder, the writer, the adventurer, the historian – well, he’d turn his hand to history sooner or later. He operated outside the merely political milieu. His public visibility on the TV sofa would be the thing that would clip the wings of his rivals. He could connect with ordinary people and saw himself in the maverick role of an early Winston Churchill – though he was careful to keep that allusion to himself. Pinckney routinely made light of setbacks. His rule was never to show offence or hurt. Always put on a good show, always perky and bright, even when the knife was twisting in the back.
Of course, Lufkin had admitted, Pinckney’s vulnerabilities were his many peccadilloes, but so far no one in Fleet Street or Westminster had stooped low enough to turn them to political advantage. Just as Harry was thinking about the potent mix of love and politics, the inner door rattled on its ancient hinges and the man himself stood on the threshold, beaming and waving an inviting arm.
Jake Pinckney was as you saw him on TV and in the papers. A round bubble of mischievous good humour, a big mop of blond hair, a ready grin. His first words to Harry were: “I must say, old son, you’re a highly privileged person; someone has put in a very good word for you.”
Harry could imagine it, could guess how it was done: A good friend of mine has something of importance to say to you… He also guessed that Lufkin would have sweetened the package. Pinckney apparently knew all about Harry’s arrival by Tiger Moth and was suitably intrigued. The intrepid aviator thing was always a plus. It was a bit of glamour, an element of pizzazz that appealed to the showman. The man was not beyond the occasional PR stunt himself.
“Always ready to help a fellow scribbler,” Pinckney said. He had once penned a daily column for the Telegraph.
Harry glanced around the den. A tiny desk, a wobbly chair. No gleaming modern office block on some out-of-town trading estate for him. The place said a lot about
the man.
Harry said, “All sorts of rumours are flying around about a change at the top. That you’re one of those about to thrash out a succession—”
“They said you had something to tell me,” interrupted Jake, clearly disappointed. “Would have made a nice change from demanding a favour or a promise, or a rant.”
Harry’s hands were up in a gesture of surrender. “It’s OK, I’m not going to ask about that. I just assume it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. The point is my big fear.”
“And that is…?”
“That the Home Secretary will get it.”
“It is beginning to look that way, but why the worry?”
“Because there are serious questions about Christopher Tresham.”
“Oh yes, like what?”
“Information suggesting he has a very questionable past.”
“Stuff and nonsense – he’s as clean as a whistle, impeccable Tory credentials, a stalwart of the party, a grandee with a record stretching way back…” Jake’s testimonial fizzled out when he saw the expression on Harry’s face.
Harry spoke into the void. “Links to the old Stasis. To the East German secret police.”
“Nonsense! They’re history!”
“They still exist and they’re highly active.”
“You can’t be serious – dead and buried!”
“Wrong. Heard of the Kameraden?”
“Fanciful paper talk.”
“They’re not merely active right now, they’re involved right up to their armpits in this Brexit thing. And Tresham’s one of them. He’s their man on the inside. Where do you think all these Cabinet leaks are coming from? How do Brussels know our negotiating stance in advance?”
Jake’s face clouded. Doubts were being raised, seeds of suspicion planted. “These are serious allegations…”
“In time I’ll be able to lay it all out beyond any reasonable doubt. Not there yet, still searching for the undeniable proof. Facts he won’t be able to wriggle out of. But I’m getting there, and when I do I’ll give you the full picture.” He took a deep breath. “But for now, what I’m saying to you is, Tresham is both dangerous and treacherous.”
“You’d better have something to back this up.”
“What’s crucial for you to realise at this very moment…” Harry paused for emphasis. “Is that Tresham must not on any account become the Prime Minister.”
Jake’s expression remained grave. He paused, then muttered, “Believe me, old son, I’m with you there, all the way.”
Chapter 16
22 days to go
The grinding machine sent a high-pitched wail out through the walls of the garage, over the garden wall and across the countryside, but Erika couldn’t help that. She already felt a whole lot better about herself. Sparks flew and the wail became a deep howl as she ground the steel of the twelve-inch kitchen knife to a finely honed and cruelly thin edge. Beside it lay her previous accomplishment: a curved knife that gleamed with fatal intent.
When she was satisfied, she took off the goggles she’d found on a peg and considered her handiwork. Harry was away flying his aircraft to some place the name of which she couldn’t remember, and his absence had given her free rein to investigate the estate of Scobie Johnson’s Blackthorpe Grange. What she found improved her mood immeasurably. It calmed her nerves, reduced her sense of helplessness, lessened her feeling of total dependence on Harry.
This was Scobie’s garage. Inside was the old car, but behind that a little workshop area had fired her imagination. Now she could improve the rather crude trail of weapons she had laid inside the house to deal with the sudden emergence of any unwelcome intruder.
It also gave her new ideas for the possibility of escape, or sudden flight, should that emergency arise. She located the car keys in the kitchen and had started up the old Sunbeam, revving it up, listening to the sound of the engine, checking the fuel level, working out just how much emergency luggage she could squirrel away inside without Harry noticing.
Carefully, she cleared away the debris of her knife-sharpening and returned to the house, making a list of her escape kit: spare clothing, camp stove, blankets, money, map.
Then she made herself a decent cup of coffee. None of that terrible instant stuff the locals drank. Real ground coffee, vacuum-packed and filtered in the proper way; waiting for the coffee to bloom, then a slow pour and filter. Did these people know nothing? The soothing taste of it added to her new sense of calm as she considered her situation.
She really had no choice other than to seek Harry’s help to escape her tormentors. She had few friends in England – none on whom she could rely – and she knew she was not welcome into the bosom of the Topp family. Harry’s sister-in-law had made that more than clear during a visit to Birmingham which had been an essay in English frostiness.
Of course, there was Mary. She had helped with the arrangements for getting Stefan to school, using her car and an ever-changing series of pickup points to prevent the boy from being trailed back to the Grange. Mary. Erika’s one good friend besides Harry. But Mary was old. There was a limit to what she could do.
Before today Erika had been jittery, but now, over her coffee, she felt prepared. She had to regard Harry as her saviour – but if necessary she would flee, if necessary without him.
Chapter 17
Friday 8th March 2019; 21 days to go
Marianne Corbishley, well down on Harry’s list of spies as a clerical officer at the Ministry of Defence, lived in one of a line of prestigious Victorian villas fronting Highbury Fields. Deep basement areas, wide steps up to front doors, brass knockers and black railings. All shouting money and status. You wouldn’t find an average earner living at this London address.
Harry was doorstepping, to use the journalistic vernacular. Had been all day. Not close to the steps, of course, nothing that obvious, and well away from the open fields where his presence would be noticed. Instead he operated his stake-out from the shadows of some dustbins and a nondescript utility hut opposite Marianne’s usual route home from the Tube station.
He took out a box of Swan Vestas and lit a Craven A. It was an act of camouflage. That was the great thing about smoking. There was such a down on it that most smokers were sent outside the house, the office or the factory to hang about in the street, puffing self-consciously, looking furtive, cigarette behind their back, wary of disapproval. Harry’s tactic was to play the embarrassed smoker.
He coughed and licked a sour lip. Menthol tips kept the taste mild but they were still an ordeal. He could do this; he’d been a teenage smoker, but he didn’t enjoy it. He took short puffs without inhaling. No chance he’d continue after this stake-out, he told himself. The evening was chilly, the light fading, rain a possibility. She hadn’t arrived at her usual time. Was she drinking with a friend? Perhaps even staying out for the night? Marianne, his friend Toby had warned him, oozed attitude. And she also had Big Daddy.
Harry did not possess a photograph but was quite sure he had the right woman. That morning he’d studied everyone entering and leaving the house on Highbury Place. There could only be one thirty-something female with a moon face and shoulder-length black hair, and he tracked her to the Ministry building to make sure his identification was correct.
Now he was on his third Craven A. His vigil was threatening to become a long one. Was he going to hang around all night waiting for this woman? He knew he risked arrest for loitering and decided to change tactic to the waiting-for-a-friend ploy, checking his watch, looking up and down the street and folding and unfolding a newspaper to suggest anguish.
With time on his hands, he began to worry about what might be happening back at Blackthorpe Grange. He was concerned about Erika’s frame of mind. He didn’t like leaving her on her own for so long, but felt it was a risk he had to take.
He sighed and peered clos
ely towards the Tube station. Still there was no sign of his quarry. The one thing he didn’t have regrets about was his decision to target Corbishley. Her treachery precluded sympathy and, besides, what he sought from her was merely information. The world had moved on from the days of the Stasi; perhaps she had moved with it. Perhaps her spying was all in the past, but he still thought he was due an explanation. And there was always the danger she remained an active agent.
Harry’s thoughts turned to his father. What would he make of it all, had he been alive to pass comment? Probably disapproving; probably advising a more savoury activity and a different career. Harry felt forever in the shadow of the man’s halo.
He had abandoned the anxious-friend ploy and the cigarettes – they were beginning to make his head swim – when he finally caught a glimpse of her. Corbishley was walking at an even, unhurried pace, the green Harrods bag a clue to her recent activity.
Harry stepped across the road on a trajectory to intercept before she could reach the steps to Number 10. “Marianne, isn’t it?”
She stopped, a look of puzzlement changing to wariness that said she didn’t expect to speak to strange men, but at least she didn’t deny her identity.
He proffered a business card. “A quick word, if you don’t mind. This is me, Harry Topp, I’m a freelance journalist investigating the recent release of a list of former agents of the Stasi operating in England.”
Her expression became rigid.
“And it seems your name is on the list. That you’re one of them.”
He waited, expecting a denial. Instead, she stayed silent. She blinked, seemed incapable of movement. Holding her breath, he decided.
“I wondered if you’d like to tell me about it,” he said. “What made you sign up, what you think about it now…”