State Secrets

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘How accessible was she? Could any MP have knocked on her door?’

  ‘Any MP, no. Backbenchers and lower echelon ministers would have to arrange to see her through Dr Satchell. Her most senior colleagues, yes.’

  I intervened again. ‘Particularly those within the Spitfire circle of knowledge?’

  ‘They were all required to be on hand today, to help her prepare the announcement.’

  ‘Are you saying it wasn’t finished?’

  ‘No; sorry, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. She was still working on it over the weekend. For reasons you will understand, having been briefed by Mr Kramer, the draft could not be entrusted to her private office for preparation. None of her immediate staff, not even the principal private secretary, knows about Spitfire.’

  ‘How does she work?’ I asked. ‘Did she do everything on screen?’

  ‘No, she was a scribbler. She would possibly have typed up the final version, but the drafts would usually have been hand written.’

  ‘But there was nothing there,’ I exclaimed, ‘no notepad, no paper at all.’ I stared at him. ‘Think back, please,’ I said. ‘When you walked into that office and saw the scene for the first time, was the desk clear, as it was when I arrived?’

  ‘It was as you saw it.’

  ‘Is it possible that if she was interrupted by someone, she put anything she was working on in the Red Box, the secure case in which ministers’ papers are kept, that was on the desk?’

  ‘It’s possible but if she put it in there, it wasn’t secure. I’m sure there was a key in the lock.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. I reached for my phone, called up the photos that I’d taken, and found one that showed the desk from the correct angle. I swiped to enlarge it, then nodded. ‘For the tape,’ I continued, ‘a photographic record of the scene confirms that there is a key in the lock of the Prime Minister’s Red Box. Mr Hamblin, I would like that box to be retrieved and brought here, but . . .’ I remembered my instruction to the MI5 man on the door.

  I paused the recorder and called Amanda Dennis on her secure mobile. I explained what needed to be done and she took it on board. ‘It’ll be with Mr Hamblin in ten minutes,’ she promised. ‘I can’t take a Red Box into my custody, but I can ask for it to be sent to the Cabinet Office.

  ‘While I have you on the line,’ she added, ‘I can tell you that the CCTV footage is available. I’ll text you a link that will take you into it on the server where it’s stored. Don’t wait for me, look at it.

  ‘I’ve found out from the protection officers that they dropped the PM off at the Commons an hour and a quarter before Mickey Satchell found her, at a quarter to ten. You’ll have to wait to interview them, I’m afraid. They refused to leave their charge as long as she’s breathing and I can’t argue with that. They’re hurting and they’re angry, as I’m sure you can understand.’

  ‘Of course,’ I agreed.

  ‘I did ask them if anything had happened recently that had given them cause for concern. They both said, “No, absolutely not.” Emily Repton is still in her honeymoon period as PM. Most places she goes, the reaction is positive.’

  ‘Okay. That saves some time. How about the phones and the letter-opener?’

  ‘Still working on all that, top priority. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have reports.’

  I cut the call and looked across at Hamblin. ‘The box is on its way,’ I told him, ‘and so is the CCTV footage.’ As I spoke, my phone played the tone that told me a text had arrived. ‘How do I get into this computer?’ I asked, pointing to the screen on my borrowed desk.

  ‘Switch it on,’ the Cabinet Secretary replied, ‘and it will ask you for a user access code. There is a default, though.’ He began to recite it, then stopped as he remembered that he was being recorded, scribbled it on a notepad and passed it to me.

  I followed his instructions; my monitor went live instantly. I passed the code to Neil so that he could do the same, then copied Amanda’s link into the address bar, digit by digit. I did the same for the others, arranging things so that we were all looking at the same frozen frame, from a camera looking along a corridor that I recognised as one I’d walked along myself. Neil and I had been there only for an hour or so, but it seemed like an eternity.

  ‘Press the “Play” arrow on my word, please,’ I began, ‘and pause on my command as each person comes into view. Okay, now.’

  I clicked on the white triangle, watched, and waited, but for only a couple of seconds. The recording appeared to be motion-activated; the first figure to appear was walking away from the camera, but I recognised her back view. ‘Dr Satchell,’ I said, for Neil’s benefit. The time was shown in the top right corner of the image: one minute past ten.

  Playback was at double speed and so her movements were jerky, like an old silent movie, but shot in full colour. She passed out of view in a few seconds; the screen froze once more, but briefly until another figure appeared, a grey-haired man I didn’t know.

  ‘Pause,’ I called out, stilling his movement.

  ‘That’s Mr Dunlop,’ Hamblin announced. ‘Graham Dunlop, the deputy Serjeant-at-Arms. Quite normal for him to be there. Remember, not everyone you see will have been going into the PM’s office corridor.’

  I took his word for it and we moved on. At ten sixteen another male figure appeared. I thought I recognised him but I paused for confirmation.

  ‘That is Mr Radley,’ he said, ‘the Foreign Secretary. The only reason he would have to be there would be if he was going to see the PM.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I acknowledged. ‘We need to ask him why. He goes to the top of our interview list.’

  ‘You may need to make an appointment,’ Hamblin warned me, ‘to suit his convenience. As you may well have heard, Monty Radley sees himself as a very important man.’

  ‘I don’t have time to pander to anyone’s bloody ego,’ I retorted. ‘Either he sees me without delay or I’ll have him brought to me.’ I thought I detected a flicker of a smile on the Cabinet Secretary’s face, as he considered the prospect of the Right Honourable Mr Radley having his collar felt by the Security Service, but I didn’t dwell on it, carrying on instead with the review of the recording.

  Faces popped up, individually and in groups of two or three, mostly heading towards the corridor, or the area behind the Speaker’s chair, only a few walking in the other direction. Hamblin recognised them all, and was able to discount the possibility of any of them dropping in on the Prime Minister. In the main they were Commons officials, or backbenchers whose presence there was unexceptional.

  ‘Members like to keep their faces in front of the Speaker,’ he explained. ‘If there is a question on a list with a direct bearing on their constituency, they make sure he knows about it, and that they’re called when it comes up.’

  The timing of each sighting was shown on screen; as we watched, the clock advanced towards ten fifty-nine, the hour at which Mickey Satchell had found the stricken Repton. It showed ten twenty-six when Radley came back into vision, heading in the direction from which he had come. He was striding briskly, almost aggressively, so much so that he might have collided with the person who came into our view just as he disappeared from it, had she not stepped out of his way.

  The newcomer was a woman; she wore a dark suit that even I could see was expensive, with silver high-heeled shoes that reminded me of a Jimmy Choo pair that Sarah wears on special occasions. Her hair was auburn with what I’m told are called autumn streaks, although she looked very much in the summer of her years, around the forty mark. No question, she was dressed to make an impression, and she was heading somewhere in a hurry.

  We froze our three screens on my word. ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

  ‘Who is she indeed?’ Hamblin murmured, suddenly looking more animated than I had seen him since our first meeting. �
�That is Mrs Siuriña Kramer, the wife of the Home Secretary, and chair of the Conservative Party, and she very definitely does not have business with the Speaker’s clerks.’

  ‘So what was she . . .’ I pondered. ‘Let’s move on.’

  We did, staring at the empty screen until the clock changed and action resumed. The clock changed to ten fifty-three, and the back view of Siuriña Kramer came into shot. The playback speed made it appear that she was moving as fast as her medium-high heels would carry her. ‘Pause,’ I called to my companions.

  ‘What the hell?’ McIlhenney murmured.

  ‘My thoughts almost exactly,’ I said. ‘Does she have the right to move freely in the House of Commons?’ I asked Hamblin.

  ‘Within limits, yes,’ he replied.

  ‘And that corridor, does it fit within those limits?’

  ‘Not really, no. She has her official position within the Conservative Party, and because of that she has a pass that gives her access to the public areas of the building without having to queue, but the precincts of the chamber itself should be off limits to her.’ He paused. ‘But she’s the wife of the Home Secretary, and she’s well known about the place, so who’s going to stop her? As for her presence at that time, I can only imagine that she was visiting her husband.’

  ‘He wasn’t there,’ I pointed out. ‘We know that Kramer arrived at his office just as Satchell was finding the Prime Minister. Let’s finish this,’ I said, ‘then think about it.’ We restarted the recording but there was very little more to see, the clock showing ten fifty-six as one of the people we had seen and discounted earlier moved in and out of shot, then ten fifty-eight as Mickey Satchell reappeared, on her way to find her stricken boss.

  The recording ran on until four minutes past eleven, when a Speaker’s clerk made another appearance, and then the screen went dead as it ended.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ Neil exclaimed. ‘If the Home Secretary didn’t arrive until the very moment that the PPS found the victim, why isn’t he on the tape?’

  ‘He will have used the other entrance,’ Hamblin replied.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, heavily. ‘I thought the senior ministers’ offices could only be accessed from the corridor we’ve just been watching. I didn’t see any other way when I was there.’

  ‘Ah, but there is one. There is a doorway just past the Chancellor’s office. It opens on to a stairway that goes down one level to another door, beyond which you’re outside the building on a vehicular throughway; usually the Prime Minister will be dropped off there by her official car, also the Home Secretary and the Chancellor.

  ‘Earlier this morning Mr Kramer had a public engagement; he addressed the Prison Governors’ Association in the Central Hall conference centre. The speech was timed for ten, it will have lasted for around forty minutes, and given the proximity of the venue he would have returned to the Commons at the time stated.’

  ‘Travelling by car?’ McIlhenney asked. ‘Central Hall’s on the other side of Parliament Square.’

  ‘To be honest, I am not certain,’ the Cabinet Secretary admitted. ‘But even if his protection officers were happy with him walking, he could still have been back within that timescale, and he would still have used that entrance as it’s the closest.

  ‘There is a permanent police presence there, always experienced officers. They don’t log people in and out of the entrance, but there are no more than a dozen people who are entitled to use it, so they will know who passed through it this morning and will be able to confirm Mr Kramer’s arrival.’

  ‘Then it needs to be checked,’ I decreed. ‘Not just him but everyone who used it this morning, in and out.’ I glanced at McIlhenney; he had read my mind, and was halfway out of his chair.

  ‘Siuriña Kramer,’ I said to Hamblin as the door closed behind my friend. ‘Where do I find her?’

  ‘You could begin with Conservative Party Office in Matthew Parker Street.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Behind and alongside the Central Hall.’

  ‘Where her husband was speaking?’ I murmured. ‘There’s no way she wouldn’t have known that.’

  ‘What does that signify?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Possibly nothing at all, but it does beg a couple of questions. Why would she visit her husband’s office at a time when she knew he wouldn’t be there? Alternatively, did she go to his office or to one of the others? I know that the Chancellor’s room was locked when I arrived, but do you know if he was there at any time this morning?’

  ‘I know that he wasn’t. He chaired a Cabinet subcommittee meeting in this building from nine forty-five until shortly after eleven.’

  ‘Therefore there was only one person in that corridor when Mrs Kramer got there: the Prime Minister. She couldn’t have been going to see anyone else. Would she have known that? Would she have known that the Chancellor wouldn’t be there?’

  Hamblin raised his eyebrows. ‘I can’t say for certain, but the Cabinet sub is a regular weekly event. The Chancellor’s special adviser is always there. She is on the party payroll, not the Civil Service; as its chairperson, those people are under Mrs Kramer’s overall supervision. Yes, it’s probable she would know, or could have found out.’

  ‘Then she’s at the very top of my list.’

  I reached out and restarted the recording device. ‘Finally, Mr Hamblin,’ I continued, ‘I’d like to ask you about the last time you saw the Prime Minister. You’ve told me already that you were here in the Cabinet Office when you were made aware of the attack. Were you in the House of Commons at all today before being called there by Dr Satchell?’

  ‘No, I was not. I did meet with Ms Repton at eight forty this morning, but it was in Downing Street.’

  ‘Why?’

  He glared at me; his initial prickliness was back. ‘We discussed matters of state, Mr Skinner. That is all I am prepared to say.’

  ‘How did she seem?’

  ‘I would say that she was her usual self.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Serious, thoughtful, calm and in control; that’s the Emily Repton I knew.’

  ‘Knew?’ I repeated.

  He nodded, tight lipped. ‘You’ve heard the prognosis, Mr Skinner. Even if the hospital manages to save her life, it will be a different woman who emerges.’

  ‘Do you like her?’

  He blinked, surprised by the bluntness of my question. ‘Like her? That’s immaterial: she’s the Prime Minister. It’s not for me to have a personal view of any minister. My position gives me oversight of the ministerial code of conduct, so personal feelings would be inappropriate.’

  I nodded. ‘Then let me rephrase that. What does your sister think of her?’

  Hamblin stared at me; and then he surprised me again by laughing. ‘You are well briefed, sir, are you not?’ He pointed to the recording device. I read his signal and switched it off.

  ‘My sister Constance,’ he said, ‘has no constraints. She has met Ms Repton on two social occasions, once when she was Secretary for Work and Pensions and once since she has been in Downing Street. She couldn’t stand her. “Cold, calculating and opportunistic”; those were the words she used to describe her.’

  ‘But in the classic mould, you couldn’t possibly comment?’

  ‘Exactly, Mr Skinner, exactly. But why do you ask about my feelings?’

  ‘I’m trying to get a sense of how all of her colleagues see her, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t regard myself as a colleague. There is a clear distinction between ministers and their servants . . . as there is between the public and the police, if I may say so, although I don’t know too many police officers who really see themselves as public servants.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I confessed.

  ‘As an observer,
’ he continued, ‘I see no great fondness for Ms Repton among most of her senior colleagues, although I do see great respect in most of them. They all have their cliques, you know, all PMs; kitchen Cabinets, they are often called, and as each administration goes on, they tend to gather more and more influence, until all of the key decisions are taken within that tight little circle. The present incumbent is still relatively new in office, so hers hasn’t developed fully; now it never will, it seems. If it had, I suspect that it would have been very small, perhaps only three or four people.’

  ‘Who will they be?’

  ‘I would imagine they would have been the Chancellor, then Grover Bryant, her official spokesman, and the Defence Secretary.’ He paused. ‘Yes, definitely the Defence Secretary. Of all of her colleagues, Nicholas Wheeler is closest to her.’

  ‘So even now, you see a core group having developed within the core group, do you,’ I said, ‘with the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary on the outside?’

  ‘Not completely on the outside, perhaps; you can’t freeze those two individuals out altogether. But in terms of influencing the PM’s thinking, the three I’ve mentioned have the greatest influence. You asked me how Ms Repton’s colleagues feel about her: I’d say that Kramer actively dislikes her, and that Radley dislikes everyone. Leslie Ellis, on the other hand, appears to like everyone.’

  ‘Appears?’

  ‘Yes. I find him inscrutable. He is unfailingly courteous, and endlessly patient. None of my colleagues in Treasury have a bad word to say about him.’

  I made eye contact. ‘But you think he’s too good to be true?’ I asked.

  ‘I suspect that he might be. I have held my position for a long time now. I have, as they say, seen them come and seen them go. All of them, the good, the bad, the excellent and the barely competent have one thing in common, their sheer driving ambition. But the Chancellor is an exception; he doesn’t appear to have any.

  ‘I have observed his rise to that office and I have to say that it was like watching someone being washed in on the tide. I believe that the Prime Minister, and also the Home Secretary, I have to say, are, were, comfortable with him because they don’t see him as a threat.’