Children of the Master

by Andrew Marr

  ‘You’re not suggesting she just waits around to find some chap to marry, I hope,’ her mother said.

  ‘Absolutely not. With the spread of pre-nups and so forth, we no longer recommend marriage. No. The extraordinary thing about Caroline is that people believe her. I think she needs to do something quite big, perhaps something in public life.’

  ‘Politics? She says she’d like to read politics at Edinburgh.’

  ‘You know, I was thinking more of banking. I think she’s too nice, too straightforward, for politics,’ said the headmistress.

  She had rarely ever said anything as nice about any girl to her parents; but on this occasion she was dead wrong. Caroline was perfect for politics.

  Pep’s parents, who had adopted her as a young child, never actually turned up to see the headmistress. There was no need. Their girl was utterly determined on a religious vocation. Her mum and dad joked that she’d become a nun. They were spared that. Angela studied theology at Sheffield, and after a year travelling in South America, she returned determined for ordination as a priest in the Church of England. Since they had left Queen Eleanor’s, Caroline and Angela had completely lost touch.

  A Terrible Story

  They think we are cynics. But if you don’t come into politics to make the world a better place, you’ll quickly find it a desolate trade.

  The Master

  There was literally nobody in Glaikit who David Petrie would have considered less likely to recruit him into a real political career than Tony Moretti. They’d known one another since school. Tony had been a couple of years ahead of Davie, and he was the same stoop-shouldered, lank-haired malcontent now that he had been back then. He’d been a Yesser, of course. The son of the local chip-shop owner, he was now a journalist – what else? – working for the Scottish Socialist newsletter, which at least kept him virtuously poor. He’d regularly denounced Davie’s father and the Labour clique in the council, which rather put him up in Davie’s estimation. Years of serving in a fog of cooking fat had given him a red, slightly pockmarked face, and his politics were appropriately rancorous; he seemed somewhere to the left of Galloway and Sheridan. So when Davie opened his door one evening to see Tony sternly staring back at him through his thick glasses, he had been unwelcoming – polite, but unwelcoming.

  ‘Weel, Moretti. This is a surprise. Come to see how the “embourgeoi‌sificationists” are doing?’

  ‘Naw, Mr Petrie. Here with a story. Need your help.’

  Eyebrows raised, Davie had let him in, helped him off with the scruffy, revolutionary-badged leather coat, and made him a cup of tea. It turned out that Moretti had one hell of a story; one that would change Davie’s life.

  It all went back to the Forlaw massacre, he explained. A deranged gunman, a loner called Tom Hooper, had killed fourteen schoolchildren getting off a Scouts bus, as well as the driver and a passing policewoman. He’d then turned the gun on himself, but had succeeded only in blowing off part of his jaw. Patched up, convicted, voiceless and despised, he was now one of Scotland’s most heavily protected prisoners, at HMP Grampian. It turned out that Hooper had been involved in anarchist as well as survivalist groups, and Moretti had been working on a theory that somehow he’d been drugged before the attack, as part of a conspiracy against the far left. To Petrie’s surprise, Moretti told him that he’d been allowed to visit Hooper in jail. That was why he needed his help.

  ‘Seems a bloody mad conspiracy theory to me, Tony. I hope that’s not why you’re here.’

  ‘Naw, Mr Petrie, that was a’ways daft. It’s what he told me efter that made my hair curl.’

  ‘Looks straight enough to me, Tony. And less of the “Mister”. Fire away then.’

  ‘Weel, Petrie, it wis a sore long bloody trek to get to see the man at all. His lawyers didn’t want me to go. This guy’s so hated they don’t want another word written about him – ever. Time and memory loss; they say that’s his best hope. Mebbe so. But, see, I didn’t understand why anything mattered to that guy any more, a man who’d been political, after all. Family don’t visit, naebody visits. Naebody asks what he knows. So I said I was writing a book. A lot of hassle with the prison service, right, but at last I get permission to contact the guy directly. He writes back: Okey-dokey, come over. The prison’s south of Peterhead. New, like. Train to Aiberdeen, then the bus. Guys like him are kept on their own corridor, bottom floor. They didnae want me wi’ the other visitors – with a’ the neds, I guess, he’s had a few beatings already – so we meet in his cell, wi’ the screw standing by. With me so far? Right.

  ‘I asks Hooper to tell me about his political views. He just shakes his heid. I tell you, Mr Petrie, he’s a terrible sight. Nothing much on the wan side beneath his cheek, just a great hanging sack of purple, and lang white scars. He’s got a wee mouth left on the other side. He can suck up food through a straw, but he cannae speak.’

  Davie felt queasy. Tony Moretti was not what he’d expected. He was composed, direct and unembarrassed. He seemed to have human sympathy for this man who Scotland was trying to forget. ‘That’s terrible. I thought these days – you know, reconstructive surgery?’

  ‘Naw, not for the likes of him. Anyway, I ask him ma questions. But he’s no’ interested in a’ that tripe. He just writes some notes of his own.’ Moretti delved into a scuffed shoulder-bag. ‘I brought them.’

  There were a few short notes written on torn pieces of lined paper, in pencil and in awkward capital letters – not the writing of an educated man.

  WRONG I HAD GUN AT ALL

  POLIS SAID I COULD NOT

  TOLD GO STUFF THEMSELVES

  MINISTER/NOS WHAT I CAN SAY

  NO. BODY BELEEFS ME

  ‘Not sure I can make head or tail of these, Tony. What’s he saying?’

  ‘Well, I asked him, of course, and he can nod and shake his head. Turns out the local police tried to get his gun licence revoked. He’d always been a weird one – reputation for hanging round schools, that sort of thing. And he did have pretty wild views. But the police recommendation was squashed, overruled, whatever, higher up the chain.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Good question. I tracked down the chief copper from back then. First off, he didnae want to talk to me – “troublemaker” and all that – but I wore him down. Turns out that quite a lot of Hooper’s story is true: the copper did try to get Hooper’s firearms licence removed, he told me, but the chief constable intervened. My man didnae argue. Nae point. Pension, and a’. Efter we were finished he started greeting. Man o’ seventy years, but.’

  ‘What about the chief constable? Did you go to see him?’

  ‘He’s dead now. But wan step further up the ladder, the guy Hooper says was behind it all is very much alive and kicking. Lord Auchinleck these days, Tory minister at the Home Office at the time. Freemason, I’m thinking. Big golfer, and – you guessed it – best pal of the dear departed chief constable.’

  One step at a time, Davie thought to himself, and you could end up taking a very weird journey. ‘I think that’s what they call circumstantial. Why would Lord Auchinleck concern himself with the gun licence of an obscure saddo and – forgive me, Tony – political nutter, living in a small town in Scotland?’

  Moretti smiled a slow, sad smile, and his dark eyes caught Davie’s.

  ‘Bingo! Right damn question again, Mr Petrie. You could make a useful legman for the newsletter yet.’

  He paused, and his voice became slower, deeper. ‘Have you heard of the Cricklewood Boys’ Home affair? No? Well, this is where it gets verra interesting. It wasn’t a proper home, apparently, more a kind of haulfway hoose for lads coming out of young offenders’ institutions and council care. Lots of skinny, fucked-up, scared wee boys living there in the 1980s and 1990s. You ken where I’m going?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Well, so I am. It was a wee paradise for paedos. Early days of the internet. Harder back then. Nods and winks. Men came from all over. Tom Hooper, for o
ne. Politicians as well.’

  ‘A certain chief constable? A certain Lord Auchinleck?’

  ‘Aye. And aye. So they couldn’t have wee Tommy Hooper shooting his mouth off, could they?’

  ‘Not the most felicitous expression, Moretti, and still circumstantial. But – sweet Jesus. A sex ring cover-up that led to the Forlaw massacre. That’s fucking dynamite.’ David Petrie exhaled. He felt sullied, as if he needed to take a shower. He felt himself shaking with anger as well. He thought of his two boys, and those waifs in a north London hellhole. It was like something out of Dickens. No. It was worse than that.

  ‘So why’d you bring this to me, Tony? It’s the biggest story of your career.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s it – the career. I’ve got strong principles, Mr Petrie, the kind I’m afraid you and your like will never understand. But that makes me suspect in the eyes o’ the wider world. There’s a huge effing cover-up gone on. It isn’t just Auchinleck – there’s a whole bunch of them. I wouldn’t be surprised Labour as well as Tories, Liberals too. We go big on this in the newsletter and they’ll just stamp on us a’. Bring in the high-heidyin lawyers, criminal libel, you name it … Just some kind of left-wing conspiracy mania. But you – you’re different. The chancy wee footballer, son of the big man, wha’s dribbled and dodged his way intae the Premier League. You’ve spoken at national conferences. You’ve met the likes of Miliband and Straw, and that top shite Murdoch White. Wan of them speaks out on this in public, and the balloon goes up. It a’ goes sky high. It’ll help Labour in the next election – and Christ knows, you’re going to need some help under that bampot Grimaldi. It’ll help you too, because you’ll get the praise for bringing the story out. And it’ll help me, because you fucking well credit me for this or I’ll tear your balls off, Mr Petrie, no offence. We’ll get it into the nationals. And then we’ll get the bastardy bastards, and give those poor wee boys the justice they’ve been denied.’

  David Petrie realised two things. First, that he’d badly underestimated Tony Moretti. Second, that he had no choice. Politics, if it was about anything, was about justice. Boyhood should be sacred. His job now was to take this story and rub the faces of a few men in the shit until they cried for mercy. To his surprise he found himself feeling elated. Energetic. He wasn’t bored any longer.

  On an Island

  Always, the politician must inspire people; but not in a ridiculous way, obviously. Not too much …

  The Master

  When, a few weeks later, the former foreign secretary Murdoch White, himself an Ayrshire man, who had retired to the Isle of Arran after the Egyptian war, called him up and asked him to come for a visit, and to stay the weekend, Davie Petrie was ready.

  Most of Labour’s leading figures from Scotland, back in the day, seemed to have died early, or faded away from politics: Smithy himself, big Donald and wee Cookie all went far too early, while Derry, Brian Wilson up in the Highlands and John Reid, now running Celtic, had absented themselves from political life. Murdoch White, however, was still a player in his seventies, a tall, gangling, balding man with a hangdog face, he had kept the flag flying against the SNP and was a regular on the Scottish edition of Newsnight – variously known as Wee Newsnight and Newsnicht. He had retired to play golf and fish, but found that he missed the excitement of Westminster.

  The converted manse he had bought looked more like a small baronial pile, white-harled and spacious. Ostensibly, he had lured Davie there to talk about building a glass-fronted extension looking out over the Atlantic breakers. The two men spent most of the weekend walking together and staring at the view, or sitting over a chunky glass – malt for White, gin and tonic for Davie – and, as Davie put it to Mary later, ‘Just blethering.’

  Not just. Murdoch needed to know whether Petrie was ‘sensible’. By this he meant, was he basically pro-American, sound on Israel and pro-business?

  ‘A long time ago, Davie, when you were just a bairn, the Labour Party made itself unelectable with basically communist views. The Master, with quite a few of us helping him, changed all that. He showed that we can have social justice and prosperity at the same time; if we don’t shoot for the moon and if we accept the realities of the world, we can make life better for folk, and they’ll trust us. So not too much of the teenage Trotskyism, eh Davie? Another glass?’

  ‘Small one, Mr White. You can rely on me. I’m solid working-class, and I won’t sell my people out. But you know I’m a businessman first and foremost. I deal in balance sheets. Hiring and firing. Foreign markets don’t concern me – yet – but I was born with a good hard head on me. I’m not very keen on the Yanks, but who else do we have these days? The fucking Palestinians don’t make me weep.’ He rapped his forehead with his knuckles. ‘Hard heid.’

  ‘Europe?’

  ‘Ach, it’s a corrupt old bunfight, but there’s too much money there. By hook or by crook, we have to get back in. No’ the euro though.’

  ‘As for yourself, what do you want, Petrie?’

  ‘You won’t be expecting this, Mr White, but the real answer is justice. There’s a guy I want to bring down, and I’m going to bring him down if it’s the last thing I do.’

  White raised his eyebrows but said nothing as Davie – he couldn’t help himself – spilled out the story of the Forlaw massacre, the child sex ring, and Lord Auchinleck.

  When Davie had finished, Murdoch White puckered his mouth. ‘It’s a horrible story. On the other hand, Auchinleck was always a horrible man. Known him for years. Thank God he’s not one of ours. Well, once you’re an MP – if you become an MP – you can certainly take him down. Parliamentary privilege is a fearsome weapon in the right hands.’

  ‘You say if I become an MP?’

  ‘The selection’s the thing. Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond – slippy wee fishes – have almost wiped us out. After 2015, our game’s all about survival. Hold on to the redoubts. Don’t let the bastards through. Fix bayonets. Ireland rations. All that. One day, seat by seat, we’ll fight our way back. But even now there’s a few wee places the bastard Nationalists haven’t got. Glaikit’s wan. So get selected, and you’ll be elected as an MP. Can’t help it, really. The old guy’s retiring – we’ve helped him along a little, and in any case, it’s the kindest thing for him. His ticker’s shot. But getting selected isn’t a formality. It’s a plum constituency, so all the busy little bees – the sleekit Oxbridge boys and girls, never done a hand’s turn – will be up from London buzzing around. Crusade will have their union candidate too, and he – or she – will be formidable.’

  Davie had worked all of that out long ago. ‘Aye, but it’s hardly impossible. I’ll be the local candidate, unless they line up the council leader. And I’ve got a lot of friends in the party.’

  Murdoch White snorted. ‘No, you dinnae. There are no friends in our trade, laddie. You can’t control what Crusade do, so you’ll have to stitch up all the branch parties early on. Hard graft, no help for it.’ He bent over and vigorously rubbed his face with both palms, as if massaging himself awake. ‘It’s an illusion to think the local candidate has an advantage. That’s what the newspaper writers will tell you, but they know nothing. The truth is, most folk – our side, Tories, Scotland, England, anywhere – are looking for somebody they can project their hopes and ideals onto. They know fine well they’re going to get fooled again, but they want to believe – somebody fresh, bit of glamour, clean sheet of paper. They don’t necessarily want Davie Petrie, that guy who’s been hanging around Glaikit half their lives. Go into this thinking you’re ahead and you’ll fall flat on that bonny face of yours.’

  Petrie shrugged, and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You need two things, my young friend. You need a story – something to inspire folk. I can help you with that. And you need to show some steel. That bit’s up to you.’

  Davie was uncharacte‌ristically quiet over lunch on the Sunday. He handed across the drawings for White’s extension that he’d brought with him, alo
ng with several pages of costings. He’d brought two sets. The one he passed over had a 20 per cent mark-up on them; the other 10 per cent. White wanted him, quite clearly; he might at least turn a little profit from that. Neither man was feeling like small talk. By the time a local taxi arrived to take him to the ferry, Davie’s mind was whirring over the task ahead. Murdoch White was quite right. Born politicians proved it first at the local level.

  The constituency of Glaikit covered the small town itself, once known for its weaving, and now for having one of the lowest levels of life expectancy in the UK. There were two former mining villages on the outskirts, one of them Davie’s, which had long since been swallowed up by the town. There was a skirt of rich farmland. Glaikit had returned a Labour Member almost since the days of Keir Hardie.

  Once he had informed his branch party – a small gathering in the back of the pub, all of them well known to him – Davie had leaflets printed announcing his candidature. Labour here was intertwined with the Catholic Church, and many of the families bore Irish names, so he was badly shaken to learn that Crusade’s candidate was a bus driver called Patrick Connelly – the brother of priests, and well known in the local party. The second piece of bad news was the quality of the blow-ins from London: a popular former government minister who’d lost his seat at the last election, and a senior adviser to the current leader, who’d been profiled in the Guardian, amongst them. Murdoch White had been right. This was going to be a tough fight.

  Davie was undressing for bed, tugging off a sock. Mary was already under the duvet. She was pretending to check his Twitter feed, but he could see she was barely concentrating.

  ‘So. What then?’

  ‘I don’t like it, love. You’ve built up such a lot here. I just don’t want you to get hurt.’