Exit Day: Brexit; An Assassin Stalks the Prime Minister

by David Laws

  She shrugged, reloaded, and pinged another plate. “I’ve got to have something to keep me active.”

  “Perhaps a little job somewhere?”

  “I’m incognito, remember – in hiding.”

  Harry grunted and turned to go, but she caught the sleeve of his jacket.

  “I’ve got a favour to ask. Your bike. What is it – a Triumph? It came back from the repair shop today.”

  “Right!” Just the news to brighten his day. He was halfway towards the garage when Erika spoilt it.

  “I want a ride,” she called.

  “Oh no!” He turned and shook his head vigorously. “Definitely not. That’s one favour too far.”

  And he didn’t like her answering expression. The expression with the hint of a smile that said she knew he’d cave in eventually. He sighed. Perhaps allowing a short test ride, just up and down the driveway, would be a price worth paying for Erika’s fabulous food: tonight it was thinly sliced Bavarian boiled ham with asparagus and hollandaise sauce made from butter, eggs and cream, plus fried potatoes.

  Later, in the mellowness of evening, he thought about the day to come: tomorrow would be a day for what Patronella had termed “lying low”. To that end he would make himself look entirely unthreatening to any hostile watcher. He would act the local freelance journalist uninterested in anything beyond his tiny patch of East Anglia, the routine reporter with nothing bigger on his horizon than the parish pump – or, to be more precise, in his case, the town courthouse and the office on Abbeygate Street.

  Chapter 42

  Monday 25th March 2019; 4 days to go

  Harry was drawing disapproving glances because of the noise he was making. He banged the keyboard of his monitor on the desktop to get rid of a curtain of crumbs and fluff. That was the trouble with hot-desking at The Anglian. The previous occupant always seemed to be someone who spilled remnants of a cheese sandwich or Victoria sponge down the little slots between the keys. And worst still were the discoloured keys, the leftover plastic teacups that tended to tip and spill, and the wrappings from the coffee shop next door.

  “Pedant!” A hissed jeer came from Mortimer Curtis on the next desk. Curtis was the town reporter.

  Harry grimaced and returned to his notebook, anxious to make a good job of that morning’s case at the Crown Court. Instead of regarding it with the usual detachment, he’d got quite worked up about the outcome – a ‘death-by-dangerous’ in the parlance of the court. A lorry driver who’d killed a woman pedestrian had escaped a guilty verdict, thanks to his filibustering brief who’d thrown dust and confusion in the eyes of the jury. Harry would have given the blighter ten years. He’d crafted a tight intro and was halfway towards his four-hundred-word limit when his mobile hummed. It was Barney Lufkin at The Globe.

  “A quick tip for you, Harry: turn on the TV. BBC Two right now. I tell you, this Government is collapsing right in front of our eyes. See you!”

  It was good to know some old colleagues were still looking out for him, Harry told himself, leaving the death-by-dangerous to simmer and walking over to the office TV monitor.

  He switched on to find an interview with the Prime Minister already in progress. She was talking about the need for compromise, to stay flexible during the negotiations for Brexit. This, she said, was the lesson learned from the recent close-run election. “I shouldn’t be remote, shouldn’t shrink into my shell, frightened of emotion. I do feel emotion and I do feel this experience has taught me to listen, to adopt a more moderate voice and try and bring all sides together.”

  To Harry, this sounded like an invitation to the EU negotiators to play hardball. A declaration, no less, of weakness.

  She was asked what she thought following her mauling at the polls. “Actually, I had a good weep, but my husband put me back together again.” She’d listened to bad advice, she added, and stumbled when the interviewer asked if she could be trusted in future to tell the difference between good and bad advice.

  Harry blew out his cheeks and returned to his desk. Within minutes Lufkin was back on the phone. “What d’you make of that?” he demanded. “Pathetic or what? She’s just falling apart.”

  Harry had to agree. “She’s on the brink. Came across as a bag of nerves. Felt a bit sorry for her, but she can’t stay in that job much longer. Looks to me like a broken woman.”

  “Dead right,” said Lufkin. “You’ve got it – and thanks for the line: a broken woman.”

  Harry went back to his court case, which suddenly didn’t seem like the biggest story of the day. When he was clear of writing copy he tuned in again to TV coverage of the PM’s broadcast and listened to Heidi Sharnberger, the channel’s political analyst, talking up the leadership issue. It was festering within the party and weakening the Government, she said. Of course, the political predators were circling, knives were being sharpened, ready for the right moment to strike. Her verdict: it could all be settled very quickly if only there was agreement at the top. If the three big beasts of the party came together in one room, she suggested, and managed to agree which of them should be her replacement, then the Prime Minister would be gone within the hour.

  From Jake Pinckney’s room in the Commons there came an explosion of annoyance. A pair of cycle clips and a helmet went flying from their usual perch on a windowsill.

  “Have you just heard this load of rubbish on the TV?” he bellowed into the telephone. “This damnable woman has virtually committed political suicide and she’s going to take us all down with her.”

  A short pause before he continued: “She’s gone to pieces. Her backbone’s gone, I tell you. With all this latest guff, there’s going to be an eruption of protest from the country. The people’s decision betrayed. The three red lines are broken.”

  His listener – young, pretty and a shade more blonde than Jake – spoke appropriate words of agreement.

  “This great mushy-pea tearjerker isn’t going to win her any friends,” he insisted. “Just makes the PM look ridiculous, weak and adrift. The Opposition are even now claiming her as one of their own. Inviting her to join their party. Asking her to appoint their people to the Cabinet. For God’s sake, this can’t go on. Can’t let this drift any further. We need a meet. Yes, yes, absolutely. Quentin and Christopher. Two o’clock in my room, OK?”

  There were rictus grins and cupped whisky glasses as they looked around Jake Pinckney’s private room in the Commons. Attention centred mainly on the corkboard on the wall that demonstrated the man’s colourful political history. Columns clipped from the papers and photographs stuck on at odd angles, drawing wry glances. Jake on his bike. Always a bike. After all, this was the great ambassador for two wheels across London. Pictures of photographers chasing his bike and of Jake emerging on two wheels from a ruck of pedestrians. There was Jake in running gear, long shorts and T-shirt emblazoned with blue stripes; another in a terrible red tea-cosy hat with headphones and floral shorts; Jake dressed as a fish porter at Billingsgate, or up to his waist in water planting lilies; Jake holding a lizard in an animal sanctuary; heaving on a tug-of-war rope; and Jake falling over while playing footie with the kids.

  Finally attention switched back to their grinning, rumbustious host sitting deep in an armchair. There were three of them, and this was an armchair day. No sitting behind a desk, just chairs that made a careful statement: this was to be a meeting of equals, like some private, away-from-the-public-gaze summit.

  Tresham was wearing a tight-lipped expression that said he couldn’t imagine what had induced him to attend.

  Huckabee was more direct. “There’s something missing,” he said, pointing, in a jest of puzzlement. “Where’s that one of you stuck up a crane?”

  Jake appeared never to be affected by the hostility of his peers. He took it as a badge, part of the business of political rivalry. “Anyone would think ambition was a dirty word.” He was swirling his Glenmorangie a
round a giant tumbler. “I mean, the way some people talk, ambition’s some great sin, a total downer, as if you’re some kind of horned beast for possessing it… but for God’s sake, it’s perfectly natural, it’s what makes the world go round. To hell with the moaners, I say – celebrate success.”

  “Success?” Huckabee was scoffing. “What success? Last time I looked, your personal rating had slipped right down the polls.” Then, pointing at the corkboard: “All that tomfoolery is working against you.”

  Jake was still grinning as he ignored the no-smoking rule and lit up a Bolivar Corona.

  “And to hell with all regulations everywhere, eh?” suggested Huckabee.

  “Damn the rules, we’ve got bigger things to worry about. Like lighting a fire under this party if we don’t react to events. A fire from which we won’t recover in the next twenty years.”

  This was met with an outbreak of coughing while the others waited for their host to set out his stall. They all knew the score. The three of them had been circling the wounded incumbent at Number 10 for weeks, like sharks sensing a kill but wary of drawing blood, fearful of the likely consequences. Moving against a woman when she was down was bad for one’s public image. So, too, was revealing naked ambition and putting the Government in danger at a low ebb in its fortunes. But much more than that: they were fearful of each other.

  “We all know the delicacy of the situation,” Jake said, shorthand for all of the above, and he could see in the eyes of his rivals recognition of a critical moment. “But the thing is, surely we must all recognise that the matter has achieved crisis status. We can’t allow this weak leadership to drift any longer. That last broadcast of hers! Pathetic. I thought she was about to shed a tear on screen. Extraordinary! Something has to happen, and quickly too. The only real question is what?”

  “Jake! Let’s be plain.” Huckabee again. “If you think you’re getting a free pass into Number 10, just forget it! You’ll never make it, you haven’t got what it takes – all buffoonery and no substance. No one is going to take you seriously.”

  “Hear, hear!” A consenting negative from Tresham, staring at the ceiling, adopting a habitual superior tone.

  “Just a temporary blip in my ratings,” Jake said. “Can change in an instant.”

  “Look,” Huckabee said, “I told you at the outset, there’s no point to this meeting, we’ll never agree.”

  “Nevertheless…” The host would not be put down. “We three probably represent the party’s future. We all know this situation can’t go on. It’s really up to us to decide it.”

  Tresham roused himself. He didn’t make eye contact. Instead, he spoke to the ceiling as if he were above the fray. “I’m sorry, but there is a definite no to any open leadership contest. Utterly divisive. Would kill us off as a Government. We’d be slaughtered at the polls and I can quite see a vote of no confidence coming up any day now that we wouldn’t survive, given our own awkward squad in the Commons.”

  Jake was nodding. “Absolutely! My thoughts entirely. That’s why it’s down to the three of us to pick the next leadership. Fix it between ourselves so we get an instant exit from Number 10, an immediate coronation for the new man and a strong pledge on the need for firm leadership.”

  Tresham was speaking from the side of his mouth, which had a certain contemptuous curl. He was known to view his colleagues with disdain. “What is required in this situation is a high level of competence which has been, and is, sadly lacking. Disorganised, shambolic, all over the place.” He lowered his gaze to look at Jake. “People who’ve never really mastered the business of high office. What is needed is a safe pair of hands and solid experience to impress the public. In the search for competence you should look no further than a thirty-year record of service with distinction.”

  The other two grinned. This lofty reference was meant, of course, to indicate Tresham himself.

  Jake was first in. “But you’re too boring, Tresh! That awful stuffy image! You’d go down with the public like a lead balloon. What we need in these circumstances is some pizzazz, some spirit, some joy of life…”

  “Oh, you mean more buffoonery?”

  “The public have had enough of the plain envelope. The hard-working bureaucrat is not enough. That’s what has got us into this mess. A plunge in public esteem, from hero to zero in one dead-easy election. So, no more pitches on the need for the hard worker, please!”

  Huckabee scoffed. “And no one could accuse you of being a hard worker, Jake.”

  “I’m still the one,” Jake insisted, “the right one to do the business. It’d be just for a short period, anyway,” he added in a sudden placating note. “No one lasts long in this business, you know that. Your turn will come.”

  Stony silence.

  “Everything depends on the deal we do here now,” Jake said. “If the new leadership is a done deal we need to come out of this room a team, knowing who we are and all pulling together, all sewn up and no backing out. I propose you, Tresh, with your great experience, as the new Foreign Secretary and Deputy PM—”

  “Done that! And now I’m Home Secretary…”

  “This is a good step up for you, Tresh. Just remember, you looked like you were about to get the chop in the last reshuffle. And besides, too many rumours about you, too much baggage, a dodgy past…”

  “Rumours? What rumours? What’s this reference to my past? I cannot believe anyone is casting doubt on my record of solid service—”

  “Shut up, you two!” Huckabee was losing patience. “I have much the greater claim than either of you. Pushing things through in Brussels. Great success in the negotiations ahead…”

  Jake was shaking his head. “We haven’t seen any success as yet. Speaking too soon. And besides, you can’t do both jobs. Too much for any man. Someone else needs to be PM. And it’s imperative to have someone in the hot seat who can exude some sparkle, some colour. A personality, a presence, pizzazz, not just another bloody politician!”

  “No, no, no!” Tresham at his most explicit.

  And from Huckabee: “For God’s sake, Jake, go and lie down in a darkened room!”

  At this there was silence. The desperate silence of failure. The trio was sinking slowly into the torpor of stalemate and defeat.

  But Jake would not be stilled. Here was a man never short of a plan, never stumped for a new direction. “So,” he said, “there seems to be only one solution.”

  More silence.

  “We need a zombie.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the only solution. The zombie solution.”

  Huckabee was laughing. Rumbling guffaws from deep down in his chest that sounded almost like a coughing fit, fuelled by the tobacco fug around Jake’s armchair. “Are you mad?” he asked.

  “Think about it,” Jake said. “The idea will grow on you, I promise. You’ll soon see the sense of it. We need someone who can be manipulated, someone we can run. We’ll be the hidden, secret triumvirate just below the surface, pulling the strings of our puppet man, running the show from behind the curtain. He can be the frontman – smile in the right places and take the flak when necessary. Get us over this tricky point in time. Later events will move on, the situation will change and we can dump him, as and when. What do you say?”

  “How utterly Machiavellian,” said Tresham.

  “Well,” said Jake, “you’ll know all about that.”

  Huckabee was still amused. “Three puppetmasters to one puppet; how’s that going to work?”

  “He’ll have no shortage of songs to dance to,” Jake said, “and with luck he’ll get us over this hump to better times. We’ll provide him with our script and he’ll be our very own charming parrot as well as our puppet.”

  “You wish!”

  “Really. I know of such a personality. I’m confident we can issue him with precise instructions. Programme him like a
robot. I tell you, this man’s a blank sheet of paper just waiting for us to write on him. A nobody who’ll be eternally grateful to us for making him into a somebody.”

  “And where do you propose we find this convenient puppet?” asked Huckabee.

  Another big grin from the centre of the smoke. “I have just the candidate.”

  Chapter 43

  Tuesday 26th March 2019; 3 days to go

  In the morning Erika had a bright idea. A fun run – for both of them, plus a friend. “Bit of a drive,” she said, “but we could take the bike. Give the Triumph a road run.”

  Harry feared the worst. A manoeuvre to lull him into acceptance, then pressure for her to take control and put his beloved machine in danger of some risky riding. He could well imagine her trying stunts before she’d even mastered the basics.

  She stood admiring the bike, remarking on its shiny surfaces, its gleaming aspect, then said, “I’ll ride pillion.”

  “All the way?”

  She nodded and smiled and seemed to be going out of her way to be amenable. Perhaps this would help bring some calm to her life, some semblance of normality, Harry decided. At least she wouldn’t be shooting tin cans or climbing trees. He decided to indulge her enthusiasm for another circular fun run, like all the ones they’d done before, even though he wasn’t presently in the best of trim.

  “Get some of that fat off you,” she said, digging a finger into his bulge.

  “But why over there?” he objected when he saw from the map where she was headed – the Dunstable Downs.

  “A friend recommended it.”

  “Thought you didn’t have any friends.”

  “Someone I met in the Cafe Blue.”

  “What, in Bury? And they live over there?”

  She nodded, and he shrugged.

  Crouching on the pillion seat, arms wrapped round Harry’s waist, was a windswept experience not conducive to conversation. However, when they stopped at some traffic lights speech became possible. A family with small children trooped by on the other side of the street, and a young mother pushing a pram smiled at them. This seemed to provoke Erika into thinking about her son. She leaned close and said into Harry’s ear: “You know, I’ve been concerned about Stefan. He’s always got his nose in a book or his phone. It’s worrying. He doesn’t converse.”