‘That’ll be a task,’ I observed. Merlin Brady, the leader of the Labour Party, known inevitably as The Magician by the media, had emerged from the drama that had followed his predecessor’s incapacitation by a malignant stomach tumour, having been persuaded to stand as a compromise candidate, acceptable to both warring wings of his party. He had been regarded until then as a career back-bench loyalist devoid of personal ambition, but he was rumoured to be settling into the job.
‘Whose idea was it to approach me?’ I asked her, bluntly.
‘It was a joint suggestion really,’ Aileen admitted. ‘There was a sense coming out of the Lords that we’re not being forceful enough. The government pretty much ignore us. Lord Pilmar and I were tasked by Merlin’s office with finding a strong man to go in there and exercise a bit of discipline, without undermining Georgia Mercer.
‘We kicked some names around, but couldn’t find anyone who suited the job description. Paddy suggested Sir Andrew Martin, now that he’s no longer head of the Scottish Police Service, but with his tongue in his cheek. We laughed at that, then went quiet, both of us thinking the same thought, until he spoke it.
‘I said you’d never do it, but Paddy was fired up by the idea. He persuaded me that there would be no harm in asking, so we took your name back to the leader’s office.
‘Merlin didn’t know anything about you, but when I told him you’d had a big fallout with Clive Graham, that made him sit up. Anyone who’s an enemy of the Scottish First Minister is a friend of his.’
‘Clive and I aren’t enemies,’ I protested. ‘I like the man, on a personal level. He’s okay as a politician too, but when it came to putting pennies before public protection, there we went our separate ways.’
She smiled. Aileen has a very attractive smile when she isn’t thinking about running whatever country she happens to be in at the time. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very often. ‘I know that,’ she chuckled, ‘but I wasn’t going to tell Merlin.’
‘Do I get to meet him?’
‘Depends on how you get on next door,’ she replied, then glanced at her wrist. I noticed that her watch was one I’d given her as an anniversary present . . . not that we had many of those. I wondered if she wore it often or had dug it out for the occasion. ‘Speaking of which, it’s time you were getting along there.’
I stared at her. ‘Aren’t you coming?’
She shook her head. ‘We MPs aren’t welcome next door,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ll take you along to meet Lord Pilmar at the Peers’ Entrance, then you’re on your own.’
We walked out of the great building, past security and past Westminster Hall. I paused and looked at the impressive space, trying to put myself in the midst of the great events that have happened there, and the history that was made, over the centuries. I’m not a romantic by nature, but that place does get to me.
Aileen knows me well enough to understand that; she was smiling as we moved out into the street and turned left, heading for the House of Lords.
‘How’s Sarah?’ she asked, out of the blue . . . or maybe it was the red, given her politics. I searched for anything in her tone beyond a sincere enquiry, but couldn’t detect it.
‘She’s fine, thanks. She’s started her maternity leave. How’s Joey?’
It was her turn to throw me a sideways look. Joey Morocco is the Scottish film actor with whom Aileen had a relationship before and during our marriage. It became all too public when a paparazzo took a very revealing photograph of her in his house and sold it to the tabloids.
‘Joey’s fine,’ she said, cautiously, ‘as far as I know. He and I were never going to be a permanent thing. Why do you ask? Is he still on your hit list?’
I laughed at her question. ‘He never was, not really; you can tell him that if you want. If I’d encountered him when it happened, and nobody had been around, I might have clipped him round the ear, but that would have been hypocritical. Joey, you, me: we’ve all taken a pretty relaxed view of the sanctity of marriage in our time.’
‘So why did you and Sarah remarry, after saying you weren’t going to?’
‘It was the right thing to do for the baby’s sake. We’re both old fashioned that way. Also, I’ve changed. I’ve had a second chance and I’m not going to blow that.’ I glanced at her, raising an eyebrow. ‘How about you? If not Joey, who? Your friend on the Army General Staff?’
She grinned. ‘That would be a she, and I haven’t switched sides yet. I’m unattached and not looking around either. I’m number two in the shadow defence team and I hope to be number one after Merlin’s next reshuffle. I can’t afford any casual relationships.’ Then she smiled again, the Aileen smile that I like. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘Joey passes through London every so often.’
She walked me up to a police box that was guarding an enclosed forecourt; it was manned by two officers, older cops, the kind whose service had earned them what was probably a nice easy station, most of the time. She spoke to them, quietly, then turned back to me.
‘I’ve told them you’re meeting Lord Pilmar,’ she said. ‘That’s the Peers’ Entrance over there.’ She pointed at a small arched doorway on the other side of the courtyard.
‘Not very grand, is it?’ I observed.
‘We don’t have signs over the door in this place. Good luck. I hope it goes well. Please, Bob, give it some serious thought. We’re not joking about this.’
‘I’ll listen,’ I promised. I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then headed for the House of Lords.
Baron Pilmar of Powderhall was indeed waiting for me; he didn’t look noble at all, just a cheery wee man with a ruddy complexion. I knew that he was seventy-three years old because I’d done a refresher check on him in preparation for the meeting, but he didn’t look it.
‘Bob,’ he exclaimed, as I came through the double doors, ‘good to see you. Come on in and let these lads fit you up with a badge.’
He led me to two more security guards; they were in uniform, but civilians rather than police. There was a security gateway but I couldn’t pass through because of my cardiac pacemaker. Instead they gave me a wave down with a hand-held detector, and took my briefcase to put it through an X-ray machine. I told them about the Victorinox card, but they weren’t bothered about it.
Once I was official and wearing my badge, Paddy Pilmar returned to take me into his charge. ‘Good journey?’ he asked, as I hung my overcoat on a vacant peg on one of the racks that filled most of the area. Search all these for illegal substances, I thought, and what would you find?
‘Fine,’ I assured him. Rather than risk delay and to avoid the remarkable crowds that can gather in Edinburgh airport departures for early morning flights, I had taken the train down the day before and had booked myself into a hotel. With time on my hands after breakfast I had put yet another tick on my rapidly shrinking bucket list by visiting the Cabinet War Rooms, and making a mental note to take my boys there, on a long-promised visit to London.
‘Let’s go for a coffee,’ my custodian said. ‘Georgia’s in a committee, but she’ll join us as soon as she can get out.’
He led me out of the entrance area and up a wide stone staircase. Halfway up, he paused and pointed at a series of coats of arms that decorated the walls. ‘Chiefs of the Defence Staff,’ he informed me. ‘They all wind up here after they retire and lately they’ve let them put their heraldic crests on this stair.’ He frowned. ‘I’m no’ really sure why.’
I knew Lord Pilmar pretty well; he had always struck me as one of nature’s doubters rather than the full-blooded cynic that a thirty-year police career had made me. He had taken an unusual route to the top. He had been a clerk on the old Edinburgh Corporation, before any of the reforms of local government that led to Scotland’s present system, but had switched from servant to master by being elected as councillor for a ward in Leith, combining
his public duties with a job as a trade union official, created, I assumed, to give him a salary.
Paddy had made his mark on the council, becoming a committee chairman in his twenties, and was earmarked as a future Labour group leader and political head of the Corporation . . . the Lord Provost having the title and the chain of office, but not the power . . . but he had walked away from that in the mid-seventies to contest and win a Westminster seat.
A popular and active MP, he had spent most of his parliamentary career on the Opposition benches. The highlight had been a brief stint as shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, but when his party’s outlook and tone had changed with the creation of New Labour, he had been moved aside and eventually out, with a peerage as a reward.
Our paths had crossed a few times, occasionally at formal social events, the kind where police and politicians had to be seen, but more often professionally, when my work took me into his constituency. We had been useful to each other over the years. I won’t say that he was an informant, but he was as firmly on the side of law and order as was I, and there were occasions when he had access to information that my officers and I did not. In other words, people trusted him to keep their names out of it, when they did not trust us.
While he had helped us, he had also been a thorn in my side. If he ever felt that one of his people had been given an undeservedly hard time by the police, I was his ‘go to’ man when it came to sorting it out. It had led to a couple of confrontations, but mostly I had found it as useful as he had. Paddy had marked my card about quite a few officers who were disasters waiting to happen, letting me correct their attitude or when necessary take them out of the picture altogether, by transfer or, in extreme cases, dismissal.
I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years when we met that Monday morning. He hadn’t aged at all; if anything he looked younger and his bright little eyes had an added twinkle.
At the top of the stairs we turned into a long corridor. It was busy, but Paddy nodded to everybody we passed and stopped to talk to a couple of them, introducing me as ‘a visitor from Scotland’. One had been a member of the ‘Gang of Four’ back in the eighties; meeting him threw me for a couple of seconds as I had genuinely believed him to be dead.
The little baron must have sensed and understood my confusion. ‘I know,’ he chuckled quietly. ‘This place is like an animated Madame Tussaud’s, isn’t it?’
Our destination was a large room, a bar, but only coffee and tea were being consumed at that time of day. I hadn’t gone there to people-watch, but I recognised several of the faces: a former justice secretary in a rejected government, an ennobled television personality, and a female Conservative Cabinet minister from the nineties. Lord Pilmar greeted each of them with a smile, a word or a nod.
The room in which we sat was opulent. Looking at the wallpaper I remembered the scandal when a lord chancellor was pilloried for the cost of refurbishing his accommodation, and found myself sympathising with him. Opulence was the standard set when the palace was built; faking it with a cheap copy would have been wrong.
‘What’s your thinking, Bob?’ Paddy said, bluntly, after our coffee had been served by a breezy lady who reminded me very much of the queen of the senior officers’ dining room in the old Edinburgh police headquarters.
‘It starts with a question,’ I replied. ‘Why me? Have I ever given you any hint that I’m of your political persuasion?’
He shot me a sly grin. ‘Apart from setting up house wi’ our leader in Scotland, you mean?’
‘An alliance which was dissolved,’ I countered. ‘Come on, answer me.’
‘No,’ he admitted, ‘you haven’t. But there have been a few folk joined our party, and others, on the same day they were appointed to this place. We’ve never discussed politics, you and I, but I know what you are: you’re apolitical.’
His forehead twitched, into a small frown. ‘You’re like me,’ he continued. ‘First and foremost, we’re public servants; my branch of the service called for party membership for me to make progress. As an MP I worked on a short-term contract that was renewed at the pleasure of my masters; they were the party, and ultimately the electors. Your warrant card was your entry to the public service; your progress depended on the quality of the service you gave. Latterly you worked on a fixed-term contract too, that was renewable at the pleasure of your masters, the Police Authority. We’re the same animal, you and me.’
‘The policeman and politician argument?’ I suggested. ‘The notion that the two words mean exactly the same thing? Often cited, but not actually true; they have different roots.’
‘Never mind that; it’s no’ what I meant. You’re a man who gets things done, and you’re a leader; folk like you are needed in this place.’
‘Nice of you to say so, Paddy,’ I conceded, ‘but there must be lots of people like me who are actually members of the Labour Party!’
‘Bob, don’t be self-deprecating; Christ, there’s a big word for a boy from Powderhall . . . by the way, I added that to hint that I actually know what “self-deprecating” means. There are not lots of people like you, period. As for being a Labour Party member, that counts for fuck all now.’
Realising that he might have been overheard, he leaned closer to me. ‘I’m going to assume,’ he continued, ‘that to prepare for this meeting you’ve read our last manifesto.’
I nodded.
‘How much of it do you agree with?’
‘Quite a lot, but I could say the same about all the manifestos. But I also read Merlin Brady’s policy statement when he ran for leader, and I disagree with practically every line of that.’
‘Eighty per cent of the parliamentary party have issues with him one way or another,’ a female voice interjected, ‘which is why it won’t become official policy.’
I wasn’t facing the door, and so I hadn’t seen Baroness Mercer arrive. I looked up at her intervention, then I stood. If anything she was even shorter than her colleague, but her perfectly cut, wiry, iron-grey hair gave her an added presence. Paddy did the introductions, and we shook hands.
‘We’re the Opposition party,’ she continued, once we were seated, ‘and we’re having our backsides kicked in the Commons on a daily basis. This is the place, the Lords, in which we can make a difference and do most to keep a reckless government in check. The problem is, Mr Skinner, as Ms de Marco and Lord Pilmar may have explained, we need to be better organised, and to be honest, better led.’
Self-deprecation seemed to be the order of the day. ‘That’s a hell of a thing for a leader to say, Lady Mercer,’ I remarked.
‘Maybe, but it’s the truth. My title is Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the House of Lords, but I was given the job because there was nobody else here that Merlin felt he could trust. My predecessor supported his principal rival for the party leadership, and declined to continue in the post. For some reason he turned to me, possibly because he realised that I am emotionally detached from politics. So are you, from what I’ve been told.’
I smiled. ‘Who told you that?’ I asked.
‘Your former wife.’
I think my smile widened. ‘Did she say that I have an instinctive distrust of politicians that borders on outright dislike?’
‘That’s not quite how she put it. But she did say that anyone who had you on their side didn’t need anyone else.’
‘That’s a laugh,’ I retorted. ‘I was on hers, but she did.’
Baroness Mercer seemed to recoil from my bluntness. Bad start there, Bob, I thought.
But Lord Pilmar laughed. ‘You touched a nerve there, Georgia,’ he said.
She recovered her poise. ‘She’s still a strong supporter of yours, nonetheless. She was forceful in recommending you to me as a person with the qualities we need.’
‘Then spell it out for me,’ I challenged. ‘What are t
hose qualities?’
‘We need a fixer, Mr Skinner, a person with authority in any situation, a person who cannot be ignored at any time, someone with command experience.’
‘You want me to be a policeman again?’
‘When necessary, but the role we have in mind is more motivator than enforcer. We’re out of power, Mr Skinner, and our party in the Commons is, to be frank, a shambles. Government is walking all over us, the Scottish Nationalists are showing us up on a weekly basis. But this is a different chamber; here we can be effective.
‘It’s our job to contain where we can the excesses of government and to moderate legislative proposals for which the majority of electors certainly did not vote. We have a chance of doing that, for the Conservative troops in the Lords are far less malleable than those in the Commons, without the pressure of re-election or even deselection, should they step too far out of line.
‘We think that someone like you, operating quietly in the background, could affect the thinking of their wobblier members.’
I was sceptical about that. ‘Look, I don’t know too much about your procedures down here, but I do know what whips are. If I was spreading sedition on the Tory side of the House, theirs would catch on in very short order, surely, and put me on some sort of a blacklist.’
‘Aye,’ Paddy Pilmar murmured, ‘but only if you actually took the Labour whip.’
I frowned. ‘Explain, Noble Lord,’ I commanded.
‘You wouldn’t necessarily be taking our whip,’ he replied.
‘I wouldn’t?’ I exclaimed. ‘Then what the . . .’
‘If you’re reluctant to do that, there is another way.’
‘Do you know what cross-benchers are?’ Baroness Mercer interrupted.
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘they’re neutrals. Members of the House of Lords but with no political allegiance. Much the same as independent members of the House of Commons, or any politically elected chamber.’
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