The House

by Tom Watson

  She gestures towards the black screen of the TV.

  ‘It’s why I find this story of Georgina’s a bit … troubling. They’ve been married longer than we have, raised children. Either she was so obsessed with her work she really didn’t ever think about those accusations again, even while the whole Weinstein thing was unravelling, or she knew perfectly well what and who he was and that whole interview was a crock of shit.’

  Phil puts his pen down. ‘But you still sound as if you admire her.’

  ‘I think I’m slightly in awe. And a little afraid. But not as afraid as her husband has been for the last ten years, I would think.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Kieron being afraid of anything.’

  She waves her drink at him. ‘Exactly! Look, suppose she knew exactly what he was when they married – and note there have been no complaints since they married. Just imagine the strength of will, of character, it must take to keep a man like Kieron Hyde, a powerful predator what, fifteen years older than her, on a short leash.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘God and to have children with him! That’s terrifying.’

  Phil thinks about Georgina, her brilliance at university. ‘She never had many female friends.’

  Sara gives a gurgling laugh. ‘Not surprised. We women have to develop a much more sensitive radar for super-predators than men do.’

  He doesn’t have an answer for that. She picks up the file and an envelope slips out. She holds it up. No name on it so she shrugs and opens it.

  It’s midnight when she speaks again.

  ‘Honey?’

  He puts down the page he is working on.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I hope that whisky hasn’t dulled your brain.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because this thing Owen has stumbled into is a toxic hell-hole and we are going to need a strategy.’ She looks at him and her usual expression of wry amusement is gone. She’s deadly serious. ‘And you might need to do the right thing again.’

  He listens with a blossoming sense of dread as she tells him what Owen has so far. No wonder Greg was ready to go to extremes to try and keep Owen quiet.

  ‘If the Secretary of State for Health has done this, Phil, there must be evidence in the department somewhere.’

  Phil feels sick. He doesn’t want to know.

  ‘I don’t think they get together and write down the details of their conspiracy in a handy email chain, Sara! Hey, Mr Secretary of State, just a quick email to confirm that we’ll keep donating vast sums to your party and rolling out fat speakers’ fees if you’ll just crush this data initiative thing.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’ She finishes her whisky and looks sadly at the glass.

  ‘Do you want another?’

  ‘No, got to think.’

  He taps the submission he just read together and returns it to the red box. What is he supposed to do now? If Owen’s right he has to do something. Somehow it’s a relief to find he believes that. Perhaps he is still more human than politician after all.

  ‘That’s it! Paper!’

  He closes and locks the box. ‘You’ve gone insane. Shall I fetch someone?’

  ‘Ssh, I’m having a moment. I know they are always trying to modernise the House, but it’s still medieval really. There is paper about this Collins deal somewhere. The ministerial box!’ She claps her hands together. ‘Your civil servants put stuff in it, you read it and make notes on it and give it back, yes? But what happens to those notes?’

  ‘They are filed in the department.’

  ‘Look, honey, go at it from the other end!’ She swings her legs round and sits crosslegged among the papers on the bed. ‘There must have been a … what do you call it?’

  ‘The papers from the civil servants? A submission.’

  She shrugs. ‘Don’t know why you don’t just call it a report like reasonable human beings, but look, there must have been a submission about the Collins project, mustn’t there?’

  ‘Probably several, if Owen’s information is correct. One when Collins first got in touch and they decided the idea was plausible, then another when they’d drawn up a letter of agreement they wanted signed.’

  She holds up Owen’s note again. ‘And that agreement was ready to go! Owen says Collins had his copy, but then the department went dark and there followed three weeks of silence while Greg’s bosses and their minions got ready to blackmail Collins into selling his company.’

  ‘So the Secretary of State must have told the Head of Procurement to put a hold on it.’ He catches some of her excitement.

  ‘And isn’t there a chance that he would do that in response to a submission? Wouldn’t that be the best way just to stop things in the department? He wouldn’t want to call a meeting on it where he could be challenged, would he?’

  ‘There’s a chance.’

  ‘Then we should take it.’

  ‘It’s impossible, Sara. They are looking for an excuse to stick the knife in. If I get caught going through the Secretary’s files, I’ll be crucified.’

  She waits. But if it is there … If Owen’s information is correct … Owen had just brought all the furies down on his own head over this, and politics is his entire life. If Phil does get caught, does get thrown out of the party and parliament, what will he be left with? His kids, his home, his wife, who’ll still be able to look at him the way she’s looking at him now.

  ‘Fine. I’ll try.’

  Chapter 48

  Thursday 17 March 2022

  The professor’s house is a pleasant two-storey building on the edge of Southwark Park, not far from Canada Water Station. His narrow front yard is full of geraniums.

  ‘No car? No security?’ says the man who opens the door to Owen, looking up and down the street.

  ‘Professor Graves?’ He nods. Graves is in his late sixties and wears a collar and tie under his thin sweater. Owen thinks he looks like a retired naval officer, the sort whose shoes are still polished to a gleam every morning. ‘I’m just a backbench MP, we get a panic button and a travel card.’

  That surprises a reluctant smile out of him. He watches as Owen gets his mask out of his pocket and puts it on.

  ‘Come through. We can talk on the patio and then you won’t have to wear that thing.’

  Owen follows him through the house. A woman, the same age as the professor, is filling the kettle. ‘My wife.’

  They exchange their bows and then Owen hurries after his host out onto the patio area beyond the kitchen.

  Graves gets straight down to business. ‘I can only tell you what I told Victor’s sister when she contacted me,’ he says as soon as they sit down round a wrought-iron garden table, looking over a long narrow garden. ‘It was made very clear to me by the people Victor sold the company to that if I talked about the abandonment of his work, I would suffer for it. I signed an NDA when Victor first came to me, with his company. Of course I did. So when Victor sold his company, that NDA went with it.’

  The patio is decorated with pots of herbs, and Owen can smell rosemary on the air as the breeze shifts. This man is obviously not the sort given to small talk, and Owen guesses he will not be given long to make his case. And he needs Professor Graves. If the government and the company who bought Victor’s intellectual property can just keep repeating the line Victor’s work was no good, then Owen will have gone through this for nothing.

  ‘Last weekend when I was at my surgery a woman collapsed in my arms. She hadn’t eaten for days. Some kids had chalked NHS rainbows all over the pavement and she just keeled over among them. She’s in hospital recovering now.’

  ‘What does that have to do with me?’ Graves is caught between defensiveness and curiosity.

  ‘Doesn’t that woman deserve her dignity, her privacy? God knows the pandemic and the crappy social security system in this country have taken most of it all already, but doesn’t she deserve to be more than a datapoint in some health insurance database?’ Graves frowns but says nothing, so Owen ploughs on. �
��Elsie has a copy of the letter you wrote in support of Victor’s project. I don’t pretend to understand the technical details but you also spoke very passionately about the need to protect patient data in the way Victor suggested, and how whole communities could be victimised by its improper use. “Human beings are not commodities. When they are treated as such we are in danger of treating our fellow citizens as mere units of value to be bought and sold.”’

  ‘You memorised my letter?’

  Owen shakes his head. ‘Only parts of it. You still believe that, don’t you? And in Victor’s work?’ Graves crosses his legs, folds his arms. ‘Because if you were wrong, Professor, and his work was faulty, I should leave.’ He starts to stand up.

  ‘I wasn’t wrong! Victor was brilliant and his work was exceptional. Ground-breaking but beautifully engineered and I have absolutely no doubt about its quality or the practicality of his proposals. And the current use and abuse of the data is a scandal, or it damn well should be. Sit down, Mr McKenna.’

  Owen lowers himself back into the chair. ‘Then now is the time to speak up, Professor.’

  ‘But what about me? And my wife?’ Graves’ voice rises. ‘I do not want to spend my retirement savings on lawyers! What if I read stories about myself in the media to discredit me? It’s one thing for you … I mean, you signed up for this sort of nonsense. What if they set their trolls on me? I wish to be left in peace and you want to set me up in front of a firing squad!’

  ‘Honestly, John,’ Professor Graves’ wife comes out from the kitchen. She is holding an oversized mug in both hands. ‘You haven’t been living in peace since you heard the news about Victor.’

  She pulls up a garden chair next to him and sits down, puts a hand on his knee.

  Owen looks out over the neat garden. An orderly life and one he has no right to disrupt. It’s not me who is threatening it, he tells himself, it’s Greg’s clients and the shifting tides of money and influence behind them. Time to push.

  ‘Professor, it’s not just my job to do this. It’s yours too. It’s everyone’s job. We only get to live in a free country if we are willing to fight for it. That doesn’t just mean being ready to sign up the way our parents and grandparents did. It means standing up and telling the truth, even when doing so has consequences. It’s lonely and messy, much less clear than just heading out for the barricades or to the front line in a troop train, but it’s still our duty.’

  The word ‘duty’ hits hard. Graves studies the wrought iron of his picnic table then looks at his wife. She takes his hand and squeezes his fingers.

  ‘Poor Victor,’ Graves says at last. ‘He was so brilliant, but fragile. A butterfly broken on a wheel. Very well, Mr McKenna. I’ll be your expert witness. What do you need me to do?’

  Owen calls Elsie on the way back to Canada Water Tube Station. When she answers he is standing in the lee of the modernist library on the edge of the old timber pond. He tells her the professor has agreed to vouch for Victor’s work; it sounds like she will cry.

  ‘Thank you, Owen,’ she says after a moment. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘We’ve got a long way to go, Elsie,’ he says quietly. A woman goes past him pushing a pushchair with one hand and holding a small child with the other. They pause a few yards away from him and the child starts throwing oats to a pair of swans. He is trying to make sure, Owen realises, that they get equal shares. ‘When we go public with this story, the danger is the people who have come after me will come after you too. Even with the professor onside, it’s going to be hard to prove his work was knowingly suppressed. If we can’t do that, then the more we ask questions the more you and your brother will be smeared. If the stories about me keep coming, I could also lose my seat in parliament, and any power and platform that goes with it.’

  She sounds defiant when she replies. Owen pictures her, sitting in her room in front of the picture of her and her brother, lifting her chin. ‘Victor was on his own. I’ve got you and Christine and now the professor. We press on. Have faith, Owen.’

  They make their farewells and Owen pauses a little longer to watch the swans being fed. He wonders if Phil has read Jay’s file, if he has read the notes Owen sent with it about the Collins case and what in God’s name he’ll do with them.

  Chapter 49

  The Secretary of State’s offices in the department are on the same floor as the main boardroom, the floor below Phil’s. Phil shuts down his computer and puts on his suit jacket, pushes open the door, lifts his coat off the stand. His private secretary looks up.

  His red box is open on her desk. Submissions must be made by five p.m., that’s their rule. He eyes it suspiciously.

  ‘Not too bad tonight, Minister. I promise.’

  ‘You’ve said that before, and I’ve found I have the equivalent of War and Peace to get through before breakfast.’

  She types something on her computer as she replies. ‘I’d say it was more Crime and Punishment tonight.’

  He glances at his watch. ‘Don’t let it get out of control. I’m going to show my face at the boardroom. It’s Gibbons who is leaving, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, poor man’s got a promotion into International Trade. The party is supposed to be a celebration, but I suspect he’ll be choking on his sherry.’ She notes his coat. ‘Shall I send the box to the car when it is ready?’

  ‘Yes, please. Though it does seem foolish to be driven across the bridge. I’m at the Plaza again tonight.’

  She nods towards the battered red case. ‘Well, we have to keep an eye on the paperwork.’

  ‘And I thought you were all just worried about me. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Minister. Enjoy the sherry.’

  He takes the stairs down to the main floor. The main working area looks like any other large office, with suites of offices like his own, the open-plan area and the boardroom where he can see a small gathering sipping sherry and enjoying the view towards parliament.

  He takes his coat off and walks into the Secretary of State’s outer office.

  The Secretary’s private secretary smiles tightly at him.

  ‘Minister? Are you looking for him? He’s got a meeting for another hour or so, then will be making an appearance at the boardroom.’

  Phil lifts the bundle of his long wool coat. ‘No, I don’t need him. I was hoping to leave my coat here while I pop in and raise a glass to Gibbons.’

  She nods. The gunmetal-grey cabinets of the live files are in a wall behind her. Sara has sent him on a search for a needle in a haystack. He has an image of himself tossing folders over his shoulders, scattering memos and submissions and confidential data across the nylon carpet tiles. He puts his coat on the bank of grey nylon chairs which mark the informal waiting area opposite the secretary’s desk then heads for the boardroom, his heart thumping. He is not cut out for espionage.

  The boardroom party gives him a warm greeting, warmer than he was expecting. The civil servants gathered in the room perk up when he arrives. If he was in the House itself, among the politicians and their staff, he would be beset with questions about Georgina, Owen and Jay. This lot have been trained against indulging in political gossip and he can’t help admiring their restraint, even while he notes their interest.

  ‘Sherry, Minister?’ Gibbons is playing host.

  ‘Thank you, and congratulations.’

  Phil hates sherry. It reminds him of Christmas at his grand-mother’s house, trapped for hours in her over-heated living room. Even if they serve a much better vintage here than Nan did, the taste still twangs uncomfortable chords in his memory.

  He wants to ask his host what people gossip about here. Their colleagues, probably. Instead he asks about the promotion Gibbons has just received. A safe space. His private secretary was right. Gibbons doesn’t look too pleased about it.

  ‘Apparently, there is a lot of travel. My wife isn’t happy. She doesn’t trust the infection figures coming out of Thailand.’

  How long does he need to stay he
re? ‘I thought everything was done by Zoom.’

  Gibbons shakes his head. He can’t be over thirty, but has the jowly face of a much older man. ‘The Minister insists on the importance of face-to-face meetings.’

  Phil can imagine. The Minister believes if she stares someone down in a meeting room, entire governments will just see sense and do what she wants them to.

  He manages twenty minutes. The Secretary of State will still be in his meeting. Phil’s secretary will have sent the red box down to the car. It’s now or never.

  He makes his farewells. There’s another waiting area outside. A chair, a pot plant, a coffee table. He sees the photos on the front page. A three-column-wide image of Georgina, and below it one of Kieron packing his bags into his car. He can see yesterday’s front page next to it. Owen at a football match, arms raised. Christ, what are they doing? Phil keeps walking and turns into the Secretary of State’s outer office again. He makes to pick up his coat, then sits down heavily on the chair.

  ‘Minister?’

  He glances up at her. ‘Sorry, it’s been a tough few days. I’m sorry to ask you this, but do you think there’s any chance you can chase my driver for me? He occasionally pops out for a smoke out back. I told him I’d be longer than this at the party and he’s not answering my calls.’

  She looks at the filing cabinets behind her. ‘I shouldn’t leave these unlocked, Mr Bickford. Even for a minute.’

  Phil gives his best weary smile. ‘I promise I’ll keep an eye on them until you come back.’

  He can see the little war going on behind her eyes. Protocol says she should lock the cabinets, but then Phil is a minister, and he’s promised to keep an eye on them. It has to be OK.

  She gets up and picks up her keycard. ‘By the car park? Under the balcony?’

  Phil nods like he hasn’t even got the energy to speak and she smiles sympathetically then exits into the main office. He counts to ten. All quiet, apart from the hum of the supercharged air-conditioning and the distant chatter from the boardroom.