House of Cards

by Michael Dobbs

  Five minutes later, in a corner of the garden near the weeping willow, where his gardener always had a small pile of garden rubbish ready to burn, he lit a fire. The tin was now empty, its contents flushed away, and he buried it in the midst of the blaze along with the blue writing paper and the rubber gloves. Urquhart watched the flames as they flared, then smoked, until there was little left but a battered old can covered in ash.

  He returned to the house, poured himself a large whiskey, swallowed it almost as greedily as had O’Neill, and only then did he relax.

  It was done.

  Forty-Five

  It was that wise old sailor of stormy seas, Francis Drake, who remarked that the wings of opportunity are fledged with the feathers of death. Someone else’s death, for preference.

  O’Neill had been asleep for three hours when he was roused by someone shaking him fiercely by the shoulder. Slowly he focused his eyes and saw Urquhart leaning over him, instructing him to wake up.

  “Roger, there’s been a change of plan. I’ve just had a call from the BBC asking if they can send a film crew over here to shoot some footage for their coverage on Tuesday. Samuel has apparently already agreed, so I felt I had little choice but to say yes. They’ll be here for some time. It’s just what we didn’t want. If they find you here it’ll start all sorts of speculation about how Party Headquarters is interfering in the leadership race. Best to avoid confusion. I’m sorry, but I think it best that you leave right away.”

  O’Neill was still trying to find second gear on his tongue as Urquhart poured some coffee past it, explaining once again how sorry he was about the weekend but how glad he was they had cleared up any confusion between them.

  “Remember, Roger. A knighthood next Whitsun, and we can sort out the job you want next week. I’m so happy you were able to come. I really am so grateful,” Urquhart was saying as he tipped O’Neill into his car.

  He watched as O’Neill edged his way with practiced caution down the driveway and out through the gates.

  “Good-bye, Roger,” he whispered.

  Forty-Six

  Lust broadens the horizon. Love narrows it to the point of blindness.

  Sunday, November 28

  The dawn chorus of the quality Sundays made sweet music for the Chief Whip and his supporters.

  “URQUHART AHEAD,” the Sunday Times declared on its front page, supplementing that with the endorsement of its editorial columns. Both the Telegraph and the Express openly backed Urquhart while the Mail on Sunday tried uncomfortably to straddle the fence. Only the Observer gave editorial backing to Samuel yet even this was qualified by its report that Urquhart had a clear lead.

  It took one of the more lurid newspapers, the Sunday Inquirer, to give the campaign a real shake. In an interview conducted with Samuel about “the early years,” it quoted him as acknowledging a passing involvement in many different university clubs. When pressed he had admitted that until the age of twenty he had been a sympathizer with a number of fashionable causes that, thirty years later, seemed naive and misplaced. Only when the reporter had insisted the paper had documentary evidence to suggest that these causes included the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and republicanism had Samuel suspected he was being set up.

  “Not that old nonsense again,” Samuel had responded testily. He thought he’d finished with those wild charges twenty years ago when he had first stood for Parliament. An opponent had sent a letter of accusation to Party Headquarters; the allegations had been fully investigated by the Party’s Standing Committee on Candidates and he had been given a clean bill of health. But here they were again, risen from the dead after all these years, just a few days before the final ballot.

  “I did all the things that an eighteen-year-old college student in those days did. I went on two CND marches and was even persuaded to take out a regular subscription to a student newspaper which I later found was run by republicans.” He had tried to raise a chuckle at the memory, determined not to give any impression that he had something to hide. “I was also quite a strong supporter of the anti-apartheid movement and to this day I actively oppose apartheid,” he had told the journalist. “Regrets? No, I have no real regrets about those early involvements; they weren’t so much youthful mistakes as an excellent testing ground for the opinions I now hold. I know how foolish CND is—I’ve been there. And I love my Queen!”

  That was not the line the Inquirer chose to emphasize. “SAMUEL WAS A COMMIE!” it screamed over half its front page, declaring in “shocking revelations” it claimed were “exclusive” that Samuel had been an active left-winger while at university. Samuel could scarcely believe the manner in which his remarks had been interpreted; he wondered for a moment whether it was actually libelous. Yet underneath the headline, the article got even worse.

  Last night Samuel admitted he had marched through the streets of London for the Russians in his days as a CND member in the 1960s when ban-the-bomb marches frequently ended in violence and disruption.

  He was also a financial supporter of a militant anti-monarchy group, making regular monthly payments to the Cambridge Republican Movement some of whose leaders actively voiced support for the IRA.

  Samuel’s early left-wing involvement has long been a source of concern to party leaders. In 1970 at the age of twenty-seven years old, he applied to fight as an official party candidate in the general election. The Party Chairman was sufficiently concerned to write to him demanding an explanation of “the frequency with which your name was associated at university with causes that have no sympathy for our Party.” He managed to pass the test and got himself elected. But last night Samuel was still defiant.

  “I have no regrets,” he said, adding that he still sympathized strongly with some of those left-wing movements he used to support…

  The rest of the day was filled with fluster and commotion. Nobody truly believed he was a closet Communist; it was another of those silly, sensationalist pieces intended to raise circulation rather than the public’s consciousness, but it had to be checked out. The inevitable result was confusion at a time when Samuel was trying desperately to reassure his supporters and refocus attention on the serious issues of the campaign.

  By midday Lord Williams had issued a stinging denunciation of the newspaper for using confidential documents that he claimed had been stolen. The Inquirer immediately responded that, while the Party itself seemed to be unforgivably incompetent with safeguarding its confidential material, the newspaper was happy to fulfill its public obligations and return the folder in its possession to its rightful owners at Party Headquarters—which they did later that day in time to catch the television news and give the story yet another lease of life.

  Nobody took the story as having deep meaning. Most dismissed it as being as much about the typical incompetence of Party Headquarters as Samuel himself. But his campaign had run into misfortune since it began. Napoleon had asked for lucky generals and Britain could demand no less. None of it was reassuring for someone who claimed to be on top of events. It wasn’t the way to spend the final hours before battle.

  * * *

  He had called Mattie. “I need you. Can you come round?”

  She had all but run to him, at his home in Cambridge Street, and the moment he had closed the door against the outside world he was on her, over her, soon inside her. He seemed to have extraordinary energy, a man in desperate need of release. He had cried out as he had finished, a lonely sound that for a moment she mistook for anguish, or was it guilt? The pursuit of power raised many passions that didn’t always sit comfortably with each other. She knew that herself.

  When they had finished and she had eased her body off his, they lay silently beside each other for a while, lost in their thoughts.

  “Why did you call me, Francis?” she asked eventually.

  “I needed you, Mattie. I was feeling suddenly very lonely.”

  �
�You’ll soon be surrounded by the entire world. You won’t have a moment to yourself.”

  “I think that was partly it. I’m a little frightened. I need someone I can trust. I can trust you, can’t I, Mattie?”

  “You know you can.” She kissed him. “This won’t last forever, I know that, but when you’ve finished with me I’ll understand more about myself and everything I’m interested in.”

  “Which is?”

  “Power. Its limits. The compromises it requires. The deceits.”

  “Have I made you so cynical?”

  “I want to be the best political correspondent in the country, perhaps in the entire world.”

  “You’re using me!” he chuckled.

  “I hope so.”

  “We are different in so many ways, you and I, Mattie, but somehow I feel that if I can be certain of your”—he searched for a suitable word—“loyalty, then for a while the entire world might follow in your footsteps.”

  She ran a soft finger across his lips. “I think it’s more than loyalty, Francis.”

  “We can’t get too deep, Mattie. The world won’t let us.”

  “But there’s only you and me here, Francis.” She slipped on top of him once more and this time he didn’t cry out in anguish.

  Forty-Seven

  Sometimes I hate myself for my inadequacies. But I find it easier to hate others more.

  Monday, November 29

  The janitor found the body soon after he had clocked on at 4:30 on a dark, frost-kissed morning for his shift at the Rownhams service area, located on the M27 outside Southampton. He was cleaning the toilets when he discovered that one of the cubicle doors wouldn’t open. He was nearing his sixty-eighth birthday and cursed as he lowered his old bones in order to peer under the door. He had difficulty making it all the way down but eventually spotted two shoes. Since socks and feet were attached to the shoes he needed nothing more to satisfy his curiosity. There was a man inside the cubicle and whether he was drunk, diseased, or dying it was going to knock hell out of the cleaning schedule. The elderly man cursed as he staggered off to fetch his supervisor.

  The supervisor used a screwdriver in an attempt to open the lock from the outside but it appeared that the man’s knees were wedged firmly up against the door, and push as hard as he might he couldn’t force it open more than a few inches. The supervisor bent his hand around the door in an attempt to shift the man’s knees but instead grabbed a dangling hand that was as cold as ice. He recoiled in horror and insisted on washing his hands meticulously before he stumbled off to call the police and an ambulance, while the cleaner stood guard.

  The police arrived shortly after 5:00 a.m. and, with rather more experience in such matters than the janitor and supervisor, had the cubicle door off its hinges in seconds. O’Neill’s body, fully clothed, was slumped against the wall. His face was drained of color and stretched into a leering death mask exposing his teeth. The eyes were staring wide open. In his lap the police found two halves of an empty tin of talc, and on the floor beside him they discovered a small polyethylene bag containing a few grains of white powder and a briefcase stuffed with political pamphlets. They found other small white granules of powder still clinging to the leather cover of the briefcase, which had evidently been placed on O’Neill’s lap to provide a flat surface. From one clenched fist they managed to prise a twisted £20 note that had been fashioned into a tube before being crumpled by O’Neill’s death fit. His other arm was stretched aloft over his head, as if the grinning corpse was giving one final, hideous salute of farewell.

  “Another druggie taking his last flaming fix,” the police sergeant muttered to his younger colleague. “It’s more usual to find them with a needle up their arm but this one looks as if he did his dying swan routine on cocaine.”

  “Didn’t realize that was lethal,” the constable said.

  “Might have been too much for his heart. Or maybe the stuff was adulterated. There’s a lot of it pushed around these motorway service stations and the junkies never know what they’re buying. Sometimes they get unlucky.” He started rummaging through O’Neill’s pockets for clues to his identity. “Let’s get on with it, laddie, and call the ruddy photographers to capture this sordid little scene. No use us standing here guessing about…Mr. Roger O’Neill,” he announced as he found a wallet bearing a few credit cards. “Wonder who he is? Or was.”

  It was 7:20 by the time the coroner’s representative had authorized the removal of the body. Ambulance men were struggling to get the contorted body out from the cubicle and onto their stretcher when the call came over the radio. The body not only had a name but also a track record.

  “Hell,” the sergeant told the radio controller, “that’ll put the pussies among the pigeons. We’ll have CID inspectors, superintendents, even the chief constable arriving to get a gander at this one.” He scratched his chin as he turned to the fresh-faced constable. “Got ourselves a prize one here, we have. Seems our boy beneath the blanket was a senior political figure with his fingers in Downing Street. You better make sure you write a damned good report, laddie. Dotted I’s and crossed T’s. Going to make a bit of a bestseller, is my guess.”

  * * *

  Mattie was in the shower, washing away the last traces of the previous evening, when her phone rang. It was Krajewski, calling from the Chronicle’s newsroom.

  “It’s a little damned early, Johnnie,” she began complaining before he cut her off.

  “You need to know this. Another of your impossible coincidences. It’s just come over the tape. Seems the Southampton police found your Roger O’Neill dead in a public lavatory just a couple of hours ago.”

  She stood naked, dripping over her carpet but oblivious to the mess that was spreading around her. “Tell me this is simply your tasteless way of saying good morning, Johnnie. Please.”

  “Seems I’m destined always to be a disappointment to you, Mattie. It’s for real. I’ve already sent a reporter down to the scene but it appears the local police have called in the Drug Squad. Word is he may have overdosed.”

  Mattie trembled as one of the pieces fell into place like the slamming of a cell door. “So that was it. An addict. No wonder he was all over the place.”

  “Not the sort of guy you’d want sitting beside the plane’s emergency exit, that’s for sure,” he responded, but even as he did so a wail of misery and frustration poured down the phone.

  “Mattie, what on earth…?”

  “He was our man. The only one we know for certain was involved in all the dirty tricks, who left his prints over everything. The man who could unlock the whole bloody mystery for us. Now he’s disappeared from the scene the day before they elect a new Prime Minister, leaving us with a big fat zero. Don’t you see, Johnnie?”

  “What?”

  “This can’t be coincidence. It’s bloody murder!”

  * * *

  As soon as she had thrown on some clothes and even without drying her hair, Mattie rushed off in search of Penny Guy, yet it seemed a futile chase. She rang the bell of Penny’s mansion block continuously for several minutes with no response until a young resident in a hurry left the door ajar and Mattie slipped inside. She took the creaking lift to the third floor and found Penny’s apartment. She knocked on it for several further minutes before she heard a scuffling from inside and the latch was thrown. The door opened slowly. At first there was no sign of Penny, but when Mattie walked inside she found Penny sitting quietly on the sofa, curtains drawn, staring into emptiness.

  “You know,” Mattie whispered.

  The agony that had run lines through Penny’s face was answer enough.

  Mattie sat down beside her and held her. Slowly Penny’s fingers tightened around Mattie’s hand as a drowning woman clings to driftwood.

  When at last Penny spoke, her voice was faltering, soaked in misery. “He didn’t deserve to d
ie. He was a weak man, maybe, but not an evil one. He was very kind.”

  “What was he doing in Southampton?”

  “Spending the weekend with someone. Wouldn’t say who. It was one of his silly secrets.”

  “Any idea?”

  Penny shook her head stiffly, by fractions.

  “Do you know why he died?” Mattie asked.

  Penny turned to face her with eyes that burned in accusation. “You’re not interested in him, are you? Only in his death.”

  “I’m sorry he died, Penny. I’m also sorry because I think Roger will be blamed for a lot of bad things that have happened recently. And I don’t think that’s fair.”

  Penny blinked slowly, like a simpleton struggling with a matter of advanced physics. “But why would they blame Roger?”

  “I think he’s been set up. Someone has been using Roger, twisting him and bending him in a dirty little political game—until Roger snapped.”

  Penny considered this for several long moments. “He’s not the only one who’s been set up,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pat. He was sent a tape. He thought I’d done it.”

  “Pat who?”

  “Patrick Woolton. He thought I’d made a tape of us in bed together so that I could blackmail him. But it was someone else. It wasn’t me.”

  “So that’s why he quit!” Mattie gasped in a rush of understanding. “But…who could have made such a tape, Penny?”

  “Don’t know. Almost anybody at the Party conference I suppose. Anyone in Bournemouth, anyone at the hotel.”

  “Penny, that can’t be right! Whoever blackmailed Patrick Woolton would have to know you were sleeping with him.”

  “Rog knew. But he would never…Would he?” she pleaded, suddenly desperate for reassurance. Doubts were beginning to close in on her.

  “Someone was blackmailing Roger, too. Someone who must have known he was on drugs. Someone who forced him to leak opinion polls and alter computer files and do all those other things. Someone who…”