Instead, it had to look like Brant was crumbling on his own and that only she was qualified to step in. Better yet, that the party membership demanded it.
To convince the rank-and-file members, though, it would have to be a particular kind of attack. What Morag needed was something that would show the leader as out of touch and, preferably, beholden to big money. A lobbying scandal, for example, maybe with links to Europe, a backhanders-for-the-boys club, or in a pinch, a health crisis, with hints that he was covering up late-stage cancer or serious heart disease.
A cut above the usual sex-and-drugs tabloid run. Blackface was nowhere. Even an affair wouldn’t be enough to knock a party leader off his roost any more. Those days were long gone. There would have to be accusations from people who were underage, preferably with some sexting, to raise even the least bit of media interest.
It was a double standard, of course. Men’s lives were private, women’s reputations, public. If people thought Morag was messing around on her useless husband that would end her career. A woman could never be caught cheating. Other female MPs had been done for far less. One unfortunate woman was dragged through the mill when her husband hired a soft core DVD. Since then any time the poor thing stood up in Prime Minister’s Questions the Commons erupted in loud, pornographic moans and jeers.
Morag had to look whiter than white. Not that she put it around without discretion, but she had been enjoying something of a budding romance recently. Even Arjun didn’t know. Couldn’t. The stakes were too high.
Either way she didn’t have time for this. ‘Have you got something or haven’t you?’ Delphine’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly: a no, then.
‘Meet me at the Pugin later for tea,’ Delphine pouted. ‘We’ll strategise.’ No doubt she wanted to be seen meeting with Munro, to try to drive up her stock in advance of being shoved out the door. It was an odd choice though. The heavily decorated Pugin Room was favoured by lobbyists and the odd tour group and not many others. Maybe she wanted to try to slide a copy of her CV in with the menus, Morag thought uncharitably.
Morag waved her hand. ‘Too busy,’ she said. Which was true, but she also hated the room’s overstuffed formality. It reminded her of uncomfortable visits with a despised auntie during her childhood. Even the members’ tea room was rarely on her agenda, though with its faded red armchairs and burnt toast it more closely resembled the kind of hotel in Cameron Bridge where coachloads of tourists grimly munched their Scottish breakfasts before trudging around the local viewpoints.
‘Please,’ Delphine wheedled. That was the final nail in the coffin. Cajole or bully, lie or swindle, do a favour to get a favour. These were all standard operating procedure. But heaven help you if you begged.
Morag rolled her eyes and disappeared into her office. With luck someone would have confiscated Delphine’s ID cards by tomorrow and she wouldn’t be ambushed in the hallway again.
The office was tiny and dark. The room had previously been assigned to a Labour backbencher, an ex-trade union man, who, after four decades’ stolid residence of the Commons bar keeled over one day in his customary lunchtime pint.
Morag kept the office as she’d found it; from the green-and-white flocked, leaf pattern curtains that looked straight from a 1970s Indian restaurant, to the upholstered green leather chairs, so old that permanent impressions of buttocks were worn into the seats. The smell of mildew permeated the entire place, especially in spring and summer, probably because the toilets on that floor were always malfunctioning. There was no air conditioning in her office, and the knocks and clanging of outdated radiator heating echoed well into the sunnier months. It was carpeted in the same forest green-on-bile print that covered most of the building, in a pattern whose main, and perhaps only, redeeming feature was that it did not show stains. This was in part because it already looked stained.
Morag had found it difficult to focus since coming back south. When she closed her eyes she could picture that corpse in Cameron Bridge as it had been laid out on the slab, the lipless smile pulled permanently into a macabre grin, with the sticky, waxy flesh that had looked like it was melting off his body and the loose, peeling skin of his hands. And the smell. Something between rotting seaweed and rotting meat with undertones of the industrial cleaner they must have to use in a place like that. A chemical smell identical to the one she sometimes detected in the toilets and stairwells here. Probably the same firm, privately contracted to supply institutions all over the country. She shuddered and opened her eyes again.
Arjun popped his head round the door. ‘There’s a call waiting on line one,’ he said. She nodded. ‘Are you OK?’ he whispered. ‘The heating seems to be out again today. Do you need a cardie?’
Morag smiled wearily. He was so keen. So very keen. And also irritating. ‘Arj, I’m good, thank you anyway,’ she said.
‘Are you sure?’ He gestured at his own cardigan, a vintage woollen knit under a Prince of Wales tweed jacket.
‘I think I have dressing myself covered, Arj, thank you,’ she said. Arjun flinched and disappeared to the outer office.
Morag’s eyes scanned her desk. The saying went that the truly powerful had empty desks, but then those people probably didn’t also have to campaign for re-election once every five years to an increasingly sceptical constituency. There was the combination pen holder and clock from the Highlands & Islands Rotarians, presented on the occasion of her second election win. A framed photo of her turning on the Christmas lights in Tobermory ten years ago. A squat glass block engraved with ‘Most Inspiring Politician’ from the Women of Alba Public Service Association.
She didn’t give a fuck for any of it.
There was a faint flicker of guilt at having brushed off Delphine so abruptly. It wasn’t that she didn’t have ambitions to leadership of the party, quite the opposite, in fact. But even if Delphine had any useful knowledge, Morag’s success was not guaranteed. The biggest problem with being Shadow Home Secretary was . . . being Shadow Home Secretary. Many regarded the post as the knacker’s yard of politics, to the point where senior civil servants openly joked about Morag’s bad luck after the Shadow Cabinet was announced. She had to toil there for now and bide her time, be seen to be on side – or else risk being backbenched forever.
Morag popped a couple of antacid tablets and washed them down with a swig of cold coffee. Since accepting the position she had battled crisis after crisis. Between her existing membership on the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, soothing hurt feelings over the Scottish referendum, and trying to keep up with her opposite number in the Cabinet, she barely had the time for any casual knife twisting these days.
The hold light of her desk phone was still blinking. Whoever it was, they were far more patient waiting for a call to be answered than she would have been. It was probably something important. No – it was probably something somebody else thought was important. ‘Morag Munro. Sorry to have kept you waiting.’
‘Hi! Hello,’ said the woman’s voice. ‘It’s Harriet Hitchin . . . you remember, the pathologist from the other day? You visited us in Cameron Bridge.’
‘Dr Hitchin, a pleasure to hear from you,’ Morag said. The unkempt English doctor and her friend the metal head mortuary gimp. Morag’s free hand resumed its impatient drumming on her desk. ‘How may I help you?’
‘I’m afraid I have an awkward request. When you came in, we were working on a post-mortem that we weren’t sure would become a murder investigation or not. Things are starting to look as if it might and we need DNA samples from anyone who was at the scene or in contact with the body.’
‘Oh?’ Morag wondered what would have made them think it was in any way a natural death. But then she hadn’t been impressed with the professionalism of the place when she saw it. Even she knew someone found zipped up naked inside a sports bag probably didn’t put himself there.
‘It’s a formality,’ Harriet assure
d her. ‘Everyone who works here or comes in regularly is already on the books. We do it in case of cross-contamination with any of the forensic samples.’
‘You need to make sure you don’t accuse someone who was in the morgue of being a potential murderer,’ Morag said.
‘Exactly.’
‘Do you have DNA from a suspect yet?’
‘Not yet, but we need to cover all our bases. Strictly between us, it would be a long shot to get anything useable,’ Harriet said. ‘A body exposed to the water that long . . . the chances of getting a sample are not impossible, but only if we’re lucky.’
‘Fifty-fifty? Less than that?’
‘It’s hard to put exact statistics on it,’ Harriet said. Morag figured that meant she didn’t know. ‘The police are keen we keep trying, though. A case like this will probably stay on their roster unsolved if there aren’t forensics. And putting the screws on us takes the pressure off them to spend any more time on the investigation.’
‘What an awful business,’ Morag said. ‘I suppose it’s lucky you found the body at all. I’m happy to help in any way that I can.’
‘Brilliant,’ Harriet said. ‘I’ll post down a sample tube. If you would swab your cheek and pop it back in the post? Won’t take five minutes.’
‘Fine,’ Morag said. ‘Mark it for the attention of my assistant, Arjun Lakhani; he’ll see that no one handles it before it lands on my desk.’ As soon as she said it, it occurred to her that it was hardly the most secure way to handle samples. Anyone could send a swab back and claim to be her – within reason, of course. But she was not keen to go back to the mortuary again, next time she was in Cameron Bridge, any more than she was to mention her thought about tampering with evidence to Harriet.
Harriet exhaled. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘It is a bit awkward. We should have done it when you were here, but you know . . . ’
‘Yes, I understand. Unexpected guests can sometimes mess with your internal protocol,’ Morag said. ‘It happens all the time in Westminster, let me assure you.’
‘And you don’t even have a bunch of dead bodies hanging about,’ Harriet said.
‘Now that’s an arguable point,’ Morag said. ‘But they do a good job of appearing animated enough to represent their constituents, mind.’ Harriet chuckled on the other end of the line. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, do you know who the man is yet?’
‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but this could turn out to be an interesting one,’ Harriet said. ‘There’s a fellow who went missing in London in January, and so far all the particulars of the case match.’
‘Really?’ Morag’s hand paused above the desktop she had been drumming.
‘A researcher, some geology professor,’ Harriet continued. ‘The lab is working on the DNA and dental identification, but so far, a connection is looking stronger all the time. Nothing has been ruled out. Apparently the chap’s disappearance was kind of a big deal. They thought a suicide at first. Did you hear of it?’
‘Can’t say that it rings any bells,’ Morag said. ‘But when I get a chance to read anything other than the news . . . well, I read anything other than the news.’
‘I understand,’ Harriet said. ‘On which note I should mention this info is not common knowledge, for now. The forensic lab is still working through a backlog. If the press get hold of this information before police officially statement it, that could be awkward for me.’
‘I’m the last person to go handing the media vultures any confidential information,’ Morag said in what she hoped was her most reassuring voice. Though most people these days assumed all politicians had a handy leak on the side, or a reporter they slipped unattributed quotes to from time to time, that had never been how she operated. She liked her schemes to be a little subtler. Under the radar. ‘Anyway, I do have to get to a meeting, so . . . Harriet? Thank you again for calling. Why don’t we have lunch the next time I’m in Cameron Bridge.’
‘I’d love to!’ Harriet said eagerly, but Morag had already hung up.
: 9 :
‘Erykah, Nicole, you’re here.’ The coach popped his head out of his office as they walked from the weights gym to the changing room. ‘I was hoping to catch you. A quick word?’
This was unexpected. The head coach, Dominic de Besombes, was so seldom in his office that rowers called him ‘Dom the Doorknob’ behind his back on account of the fact that he never stayed on the premises long enough to let go of the door handle.
There had been a lot of excitement when he got the job, thanks to his reputation as a powerhouse in the gold medal winning Sydney Olympic eight. What quickly became clear, however, was that he was incapable of transferring any of his ability to anyone else. Unkind remarks started sprouting behind his back that he was past it.
‘Everything all right?’ Erykah asked. She needed a shower after a hard session on the deadlifts and squats. Nicole, after being frosty to her on the phone, had seemed fine tonight, even inviting Erykah back to hers after training. Maybe there was room for reconciliation after all. She hoped so. The atmosphere at home was unbearable. At least she had the club as an escape.
Erykah and Nicole stood in the tiny coaching office because two of Dom’s mates were already sitting in the chairs, leaning back at precipitous angles. Rupert and Oliver, or whatever they were called, eyed the women with the prurient leer that men of entitlement seem to be born with.
Dom tugged at the frayed, turned-up collar of his rugby shirt. He gestured to the evening newspaper on the desk. ‘I take it you’ve seen the news today?’
Erykah picked up the paper. Above the fold, a snap from the lottery shoot. They had cropped the shot of Rab spraying her with champagne, so only she remained. Without context her smile looked manic, almost threatening, like a snarl.
Below it, the headline ‘Lottery Dame Is Pop Cop Murder Moll’. Then in a smaller section header: ‘Notorious Rikki Barnes and her rich new life in Molesey’.
‘Thanks for the heads-up, Dom,’ she said and threw the paper back on his desk.
‘You don’t want to read the rest of the story?’ he said.
Erykah shook her head. ‘No thanks, I’m pretty sure I know how it goes,’ she said.
No doubt a curious journo had gone through old archives and found her. It was inevitable that someone would.
Grayson had been dealing to a former pop star called Rory Lovelace. Rory scored a few hits with his group Northern Boyz back in the day and a few more when he went solo, then dropped off the radar as his party lifestyle took over.
Erykah had no idea that Grayson knew Rory. A sale is a sale was Grayson’s motto. Except Rory had fallen behind paying to the tune of several thousand pounds. And Grayson being Grayson, well . . . this was not going to stand.
One night they were on the way to a dinner date when Grayson made a side trip to a client’s house, a quick stop, he said. He had been arguing with Erykah, again, about the amount of time she was spending with the university rowing club. ‘Your studies are number one, I’m number two. You should be investing any free time in your man,’ Grayson had said. He kept taking his hands off the wheel, gesticulating in the air to make his points, but his eyes were staring straight ahead. ‘That coach of yours is putting nonsense in your head with this Olympic talk.’ She bridled at his suggestion. Sure, Grayson had given her a lot, but she was still her own person and this was her decision. Wasn’t it? Who would turn down the offer to do GB trials for the national squad?
It was a moist night, summer came early that year. The air felt as thick and close as the tension between them. He parked on double yellow lines and told Erykah to stay in the car; he wouldn’t be long. She sat and waited, stewing over what he had said. Grayson came back five minutes later.
He opened the boot of the car and Erykah looked at him in the wing mirror. Was that blood on his shirt? He didn’t look hurt. He reached in the
back and pulled a fresh shirt out of a bag, unbuttoned the one covered in blood, and put the new one on. No marks on him. So it wasn’t his blood.
‘What happened?’ she said when he got back in the driver’s seat.
‘Shut up, bitch,’ Grayson snapped. Erykah was shocked. He had never spoken to her like that before. Had he killed someone? Would he kill her?
They sat silently through dinner that night. He dropped her home without a word, didn’t even walk her to the door. She couldn’t sleep. What had he done? In the past, if anyone didn’t pay, Grayson turned up and waved a gun around. That was usually all it took. And if they still didn’t pay, he let someone else handle enforcement. She had never wanted to think about what that meant before, but now she couldn’t ignore it.
She went to her early morning training session the next day, then to uni. The police were waiting outside her Differential Equations lecture. They didn’t cuff her in front of the other students, but it hardly mattered. Everyone froze where they stood, watching as she was led away to a waiting Rover.
The drive to the station was short. ‘So you’re Rainbow’s girl,’ one of the cops said. ‘With a mum like that I’m surprised we haven’t seen you sooner.’
The other cop smirked. ‘Rainbow Barnes, yeah. I wouldn’t touch that cunt with someone else’s knob.’ His eyes met Erykah’s in the mirror. ‘Guess not every man thinks that way though.’
The driver shook his head in mock sorrow. ‘Trying to turn Streatham into Brixton is what they’re doing,’ he said. The other one nodded. It was not necessary to explain who they were. ‘Used to be our kids could play in the streets. If we weren’t in negative equity I would have moved the family out of London a long time ago.’
At the station, another cop patted her down, smiling as his hands lingered over her waist and hips. The knowing glances he exchanged with the police who had brought her in frightened her. She was led to a small room with reinforced glass on the door and told to wait there.
The Turning Tide Page 9