Rab looked at her. His blue eyes were ringed in red, the pupils like the beady pinpoints. ‘I can’t do this,’ he said. ‘The money . . . I can’t do it.’ His voice sounded fragile.
‘Rab—’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night.’
‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ Erykah admitted.
‘I thought about coming into your room, but—’
‘No.’ Whatever else, she was not going to roll over this time. She knew that she couldn’t trust him. ‘We need to screw our courage to the sticking place, Rab. It’s only for a week.’
She had meant the line to be grimly ironic, but he nodded as if it was wisdom from a hilltop guru.
When she looked at him now it was like looking at someone she had only briefly known, long, long in the past. What had she seen in him? She shouldn’t have jumped into the marriage. She knew that. But she was still wounded from what had happened with Grayson when they had met. Marry in haste, regret at leisure – wasn’t that what people said? Wasn’t it the kind of thing Rab would have said, if it had been about anyone else but him?
Maybe he did say it, for all she knew. Behind her back. To his family and colleagues. To the interns and new hires he bedded year after year. Maybe it was another one of his scripted lines, another polished little nugget of ersatz wisdom, designed to pacify anyone who didn’t scratch the surface too hard.
Too late she had realised her husband was not, as she had first believed, deep. He was many compacted layers of shallow.
Well, what could she say now? They sat parallel on the sofa like a pair of dolls. A pair of dolls holding a lottery ticket worth twenty million pounds. Rab clutched a Keep Calm pillow so hard that his knuckles turned white. The tinkling sound of piano filled the room like snakes.
: 7 :
‘It’s only eleven,’ the landlord said to the silver-haired man with the handlebar moustache. He selected a pint glass and pulled the first draught of the day. The room, decorated in red tartan and polished dark oak, was empty apart from the barman and the fellow in head-to-toe Barbour leaning on the bar with a fiver in one hand and a newspaper in the other. ‘You’re druthy for a morn.’
‘Pardon, what?’ said Major Whitney Abbott.
‘Thirsty,’ the barman pushed the pint glass across the bar. ‘You’re thirsty for so early in the morning.’
‘Yes,’ the Major said. ‘My wife would be dragging me up and down the high street otherwise.’ The prospect of touring the dismal shops of Cameron Bridge, followed by stilted conversation over tea and cakes, did not appeal to the Major. Visits to their holiday abode in the Highlands rarely deviated from the same boring formula. She would likely squeeze in a visit to the town’s museum as well, which as far as he could tell contained the same dull exhibits on nineteenth century tweed weaving it had contained the other two dozen times they had been inside.
Whitney Abbott had long grown to despise the company of his better half, who seemed to choose her leisure activities specifically to irritate him. ‘I told her I had some work to catch up on.’
‘Aye, good call,’ the landlord said. ‘Leave the shopping to the lasses. Scunnered of it maself.’ The Major nodded. ‘I was meaning to ask—’
The Major flashed his dentures in a well-practised smile. ‘Am I Major Whitney Abbott? Why yes, yes, I am,’ he said in an impeccably posh accent. ‘Have you read my book?’
The memoirs of his time with the Royal Marines in the Falklands had been out a few years, but failed to trouble the bestseller list. Initially the publisher had hoped the book would gain some positive reviews and attention based on the fact that Abbott was the hero son of a WWII legend. What they hadn’t expected was that revelations that Abbott junior was shagging his ghost writer would take over the headlines instead.
It was uncomfortable to see the allegations splashed everywhere – he still referred to them as allegations, although everything that made it into print was true, or at least true enough. The frustration was that, instead of interviews about his military career, all anyone wanted to talk about was a bit of rumpy pumpy.
Still, if that meant the average man on the street recognised him, perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe the fellow had a copy handy and would like the Major to autograph it.
The barman shook his head and pointed at the Major’s crotch. ‘Nah, I was sayin’, do you hear that noise? Man, I think yer phone’s buzzin’.’
‘Oh, right. So it is,’ the Major said. He fumbled inside his sporran for the mobile phone. He had managed to avoid owning one of the things for years, but had recently been convinced to keep it on hand in case of emergencies. Why people these days accepted unsolicited interruptions to their day was beyond his ken.
‘Abbott here,’ he barked into the handset, which rang again in response. He jabbed at it with his finger, ‘Damned thing.’ The Major finally found the answer button. ‘Abbott here,’ he said again, not as loudly.
‘Whitney, it’s me.’ A woman’s voice, Scottish accent. ‘Where are you?’
That would be his darling goddaughter, then. She never had been one for pleasantries. ‘Betty and I are in Cameron Bridge for a long weekend, checking up on the cottage. She wanted to see a—’
‘Fascinating, I’m sure,’ the woman interrupted. ‘When are you back in London?’
‘Tomorrow, possibly the day after,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’ The Major wandered to the bar window. The inn overlooked the decaying town centre with its downtrodden hotels and muddy little square and clutches of visitors snapping photos of the grey waterfront. Tourist buses carried people in and out all times of year, dozens of Canadians and Americans disgorging to have a look around at the shortbread tin landscape, take a couple of photos with a bagpiper on the high street and then climb back aboard to be whisked away to Loch Ness.
‘We have a situation, Whitney,’ she said. ‘The . . . thing I had you take care of over the holidays? Three guesses what turned up on a beach in Scotland yesterday afternoon.’
The Major sucked in his breath. Suddenly a pint of ale seemed entirely insufficient for the occasion. This called for a stiff whisky. ‘No,’ he protested.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you hear anything about it in the news up there? It was in the paper and on a couple of websites, though they haven’t identified the body yet.’
‘I never read the local news,’ he said. ‘Pointless waste of time.’
‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘Well, try not to say that too loudly or too often, if you can manage to do so. I can’t imagine your future constituents would be terribly pleased to hear it.’
‘Do we know anything about the . . . package?’ he asked.
‘Nothing yet,’ she said. ‘It’s in Cameron Bridge mortuary.’
‘How do you know it’s him? If it was only found yesterday. Don’t bodies usually take, I don’t know, months to identify?’ The Major really did not know, although his sinking stomach felt as if he probably did.
‘Maybe, maybe not. But the location. And the news is already reporting it was found in a bag,’ she said. ‘The body is with a pathologist, although from what I understand, she isn’t top-tier.’
Whitney breathed out. ‘Good. Good. Even if it is our man, there may be wiggle room yet.’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I hope you understand it’s a situation that I would sooner not be in at all. And that if this is what I fear it is, then you need to be as far away from this as humanly possible.’
‘Goes without saying,’ the Major said. ‘But no plan survives first contact, as we say in—’
‘Yes, yes, as you say in the Corps,’ she finished for him. ‘You’ve mentioned it once or twice.’
Major Whitney Abbott gritted his teeth but said nothing about her dismissive attitude. He needed her more than she needed him. The penny had dropped around the time he found
himself giving an after-dinner speech at a banking conference last year. He was rehashing the Battle of Mount Harriet for the hundredth time and noticed the audience looking fidgety and bored where before they had been amused and engaged. When he described what it had been like in the middle of the night, dug into his own trench, eyes searching the dark – that was where he was accustomed to the audience falling silent, reverent, in awe. But it wasn’t happening. Instead of a thousand eyes on him, he looked across the room to see heads bent over the light of a hundred mobiles. The room clinked and jangled with glasses and the sound of cutlery on dessert plates, hummed with vibrating phones replying to texts and calls.
They weren’t interested in war stories. They were there for the scandal, and as soon as he refused to talk about it, they switched off. He might as well have been talking to the bathroom mirror. He looked out over the crowd and saw more than just young people who had never known war glued to their mobiles. He saw the gulf between his generation and theirs. He had committed the cardinal sin of any entertainer – good or bad, you had to hold the room. They had to love you or hate you. Indifference was poison.
Soon after that the slowdown in bookings hit. News shows stopped inviting him to be on panels. Papers sent fewer requests for interviews. He went to his publisher and begged them to reissue the paperback with a new afterword, but he could not nail them down to a deal. Major Abbott’s editor suggested he might have better luck pitching a biography of his famous dad instead. The Major told him where he could stick that idea and stormed out.
So when his goddaughter approached him with a new project in mind, he was in no position to refuse. And it was a doozy.
‘So what do we do now?’ he said. Whatever it was, he hoped it wouldn’t involve the Internet. He had a strong dislike for the Internet and, he suspected, the feeling was mutual.
‘Now? We push the next stage forward.’
‘The shipment, you mean?’ the Major said in a stage whisper.
‘Shipment?’ She sounded confused.
‘You know, the shipment,’ Abbott said. They had agreed on a code for phone calls, so why wasn’t she using it? ‘The shipment of expenditures.’
‘Oh, right, that silly code of yours,’ she sighed. ‘You mean the money.’
‘Don’t say it!’ Abbott hissed. He glanced over his shoulder to where the pub landlord was polishing glasses. ‘Anyone might be listening.’
‘Fine, whatever. Organising the shipment. This week, if we can manage it. We’ll announce your bid for Brussels straight away. Start getting coverage for the campaign.’
‘May as well wrap them up into the same event,’ Abbott suggested. ‘Maximise media impact. If I may be permitted to make a suggestion with regards to getting the press corps on side—’
‘Let me handle it,’ she said. ‘Your idea of media attention is reporters papping you and your totty in flagrante. Cheers, but I’m on top of this.’
Politics had never interested the Major, apart from an historical and, he supposed, genetic, right-leaning tendency. He had seen too many of their tribe close up to have much respect for supposedly democratically elected leaders of office. Theirs was the breed of man who sat behind a desk and commanded that troops be sent to the front, rather than leading from it.
As he saw it, though, he had few options but to go along with the scheme. His goddaughter was a smooth talker with valuable connections. And he needed a new wheeze or else it would be coach tours and Highland museums with his wife from now until the grave. His goddaughter assured him that, for the price of public representation and being the face of a new political party, he would be all but guaranteed a seat in Brussels.
Once the election was over he planned to spend more time in Brussels and London than in his proposed constituency, enjoying the perks. His mouth watered. He could taste the sweet return to fame. The news panel invites, the Eurostar. First class. He would be back in the headlines, back where it mattered. Not forgetting the women. He had always had a soft spot for the women of the Continent.
‘I need you to do something else,’ the woman said.
‘What’s that?’ Whitney said.
‘I don’t know what the post-mortem will turn up. I hope nothing. But we need to clean up the other end. Make sure no one can draw the connection between him and us. Hit his office, his computer – whatever it takes.’
The Major scowled. ‘Very well.’ Yet again another task being dropped into his lap that shouldn’t be his responsibility. For an uncharitable moment he suspected that his goddaughter had nothing like the resources she had claimed, and that all the people in London and Scotland whose names she had dropped in order to entice him into the scheme were not friends at all.
Outside, the stout form of his beloved wife barrelled up the path to the hotel. Betty, in her cornflower blue top and trousers, clutching a handful of pamphlets advertising local excursions, with a face like a Rottweiler that had eaten a nest of hornets.
‘But get on a train today, Whitney. We need you back in London ASAP. Leave Betty up there if you have to. In fact, it’s probably better if you do.’
Whitney smiled at the thought of reprieve from his wife. ‘I will do it as soon as humanly possible,’ he said.
‘See that you do.’ The woman rang off without saying goodbye.
: 8 :
‘So if I understand correctly,’ Morag said. ‘Brant is using the Scotland results to circle his wagons, to try to derail a leadership challenge.’ She marched unhappily along the corridor. Morag despised people who made walking down a hallway together into a meeting. There was a special place in hell for this one in particular.
‘Well, more or less, yes,’ Delphine Barrett said. To be fair to her, Morag understood the long-time media advisor to the opposition leader was recently out of a job. Delphine would no doubt be working her remaining contacts and trying to secure a new position before security confiscated her ID cards. But with the shite-to-info ratio of her blather tipping firmly towards shite, Morag thought, it was no wonder Brant let her go.
‘The concern here is whether Brant’s likely to get support from the backbench, and whether someone – say, myself, would head a challenge. Is that right?’ Morag said. Last year’s election that followed the referendum had been a disaster, and she was the only MP her party had left in Scotland.
‘That’s the long and short of it.’ Delphine, in a tight pencil skirt, struggled to keep up as Morag and Arjun strode down the corridor. ‘The way I interpret the polls . . .’
Morag sighed. She wasn’t ready to be drawn either way on the topic. But there was also an opportunity to be had by someone. Lionel Brant was considered dead wood both by the public and his own party. He should have done the right thing and stepped down after the disastrous general election result, but he hadn’t. The most credible challengers – his Shadow Chancellor, and several longer-serving MPs – had all woken up the day after the poll to find themselves voted out of office. It was no secret that Brant had got the job in the first place because it was his turn, not because of an aptitude for leadership. The wrong man in the right place at the right time, as one cruel columnist put it.
While Delphine nattered on Morag thought about what she still had to get through today: two consultations, an energy committee review, and a debrief on what was likely to happen to the Scotland Bill in Lords.
They were at her office door. Arjun put his hand on the knob, an obvious cue to shove off that Delphine ignored. ‘Well?’ Morag asked. ‘What do you have, Delphine? I don’t need the full dark arts treatment, a little shade will do.’
‘There is this photo from an orchard wassailing event in his constituency at the weekend—’
‘Wassailing? God, how fucking grim.’ Morag rolled her eyes. Grim was her new word. Mondays were grim. Not quite as grim as that body in the mortuary back in Cameron Bridge, but not a pretty sight.
‘It�
�s all about the margins right now,’ Delphine said, and produced a printout from her folder. ‘An online poll last Tuesday predicted his seat might be at risk if the momentum is with the protest parties. This blackface gaffe is the toehold you need, Morag. Strike while the iron is hot and all of that.’
‘Blackface? Brant blacked up?’ Morag was surprised. Surely even a clot-faced public schoolboy like Brant knew better than to be caught smearing shoe polish on himself.
‘Not him, a group of dancers he was photographed with.’ Delphine jabbed at the printout. ‘Morris dancers.’
‘Is that a thing they do?’
‘Apparently it is.’
‘Trending on Twitter?’
‘Third in UK, top in London for about an hour.’
‘Any columnists on it?’
‘Telegraph has a strong piece hitting the hypocrisy angle. Otherwise no.’
‘Print, or online only?’
Delphine smiled apologetically. ‘Online only.’
Morag considered the picture while her fingers drummed the door frame. ‘No, not good enough,’ she said. Delphine and her bloody Internet polls. ‘Middle England loves its twee pish. Take away their blackface Morris dancing or Imperial pints and next thing you know it’s wall-to-wall nationalists banging on about building a wall to keep Romanian plumbers out.’ She paused. ‘If there are still thinkpieces on this a week from now, I’ll reconsider.’
If only Delphine’s intel was hotter. Morag knew she had what it took. She was younger than Brant, well into her forties, which in politician years was sweet sixteen. She’d also had a knack in the past for delivering cross-party support for unpopular bills.
But a woman could not make a challenge the way a man could. There was no way she would survive a failed challenge to the leadership in London, and no way she would survive a successful one back home. It had to be done softly-softly, or not at all. She could not afford to be the one holding the knife when the coup went down.
The Turning Tide Page 8