Fifty-First State

by Hilary Bailey

  He sipped his whisky while Petherbridge drank a glass of water. He waited.

  ‘Well, Gott,’ Petherbridge said with some satisfaction. ‘Here we are. That’s really it, isn’t it? Queen’s Speech over – time to get on with the business of government. I was sorry to see you in that fracas round the Lord Chancellor.’

  ‘Things got out of hand,’ said Gott.

  ‘That was a pity,’ Petherbridge said, no mercy in his tone.

  Gott was impassive. No one had ever referred to Alan Petherbridge as a charmer, he thought. No one he knew had reminisced about pleasant hours spent in his company. He was never going to be top of anyone’s party list. But Gott knew now what Jeremy had discovered about the PM’s background. That sort of upbringing was not likely to make a man easy in his skin. In fact, Gott reflected, you had to feel a certain amount of pity for the poor bastard, however unpleasant he was. Gott had a spasm of self-congratulation. ‘Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner,’ he said to himself. This charitable mood was destined to last about a minute longer.

  ‘What did you think of the Queen’s Speech?’ Petherbridge asked.

  ‘Controversial,’ Gott told him. ‘There’ll be trouble with the backbenchers. I don’t need to tell you that. They aren’t going to find it easy to support ordinary British men and women being picked up and banged up so easily—’

  ‘You know the system,’ Petherbridge said easily. ‘Ask for twice what you want and settle for half.’

  So – if Petherbridge had not asked him here for his views on the Queen’s Speech, and tactics to get his measures through, why, Gott asked himself again, was he here?

  He tried again. ‘The same rules apply, I suppose, to the bill about handing over the airbases to the US?’

  Petherbridge sat back in his chair. His face was very still and his tone icy when he replied. ‘Oh, no, Edward. There’ll be no compromises there.’ He continued, in the same cold way, saying, ‘I haven’t had the opportunity to thank you for your letter of congratulation. It was one of the better expressed. It’s astonishing how the most capable and intelligent men seem to fall to pieces when the moment comes to write a simple letter.’

  The way to deal with power is the same as the way to deal with drunks, madmen and angry tigers – carefully. Gott was careful. ‘I was educated in Scotland,’ he said.

  ‘So you were – so you were – MacCallum Academy, I believe.’

  He was somehow not surprised that Alan Petherbridge had taken the trouble to discover and remember the name of his relatively obscure Ayrshire school.

  ‘You’ve had an impressive career,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘You came from an ordinary family – as I did myself. I think your father was a manager at Robinson and Weber. Wool merchants, I believe.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Gott told him, thinking that his family had, thank God, been considerably more ordinary than Petherbridge’s. His own father had not driven his mother to her grave. He had not put his old man under house arrest in an old folk’s home. He disguised his wariness as Petherbridge continued to speak in the same flat tone.

  ‘Then Cambridge, then Harvard, then the Chicago Credit Bank, then Clough Whitney where you’re a director – a career not unlike my own.’ These were not friendly enquiries. They were to warn him that he was under scrutiny. Again – why?

  Gott thought, years ago, when he was still in the House, that this would have been a heart-stopping conversation. By now he’d have been looking at a Ministry, asking himself where – Health, Foreign Office, Education – or the wastes of Foreign Aid?

  The Prime Minister continued easily, ‘I thought you should know Derek Vigo’s trying for parole. He’s offering to give a fuller explanation of the Kirkham affair, hoping his candour will influence the parole board in his favour.’

  Petherbridge had not signalled the change of subject from Gott’s past career to this. Gott’s stomach lurched. He managed, he hoped, to disguise his concern and said casually, ‘Really?’

  A man who has been busy in politics and banking for twenty-five years is almost sure to have the odd skeleton in his cupboard. Derek Vigo was one of Gott’s.

  Three years earlier, Derek Vigo and Edward Gott had been two of the five directors of Clough Whitney Credit and Commerce. Vigo had brought some of his clients, many of them extremely wealthy, some famous, into a conglomerate specializing in health centres and hotels, Kirkham. It was not widely known that Vigo’s son-in-law was a major shareholder and CEO of the company. It emerged later that Kirkham was failing when Vigo recommended the bank’s clients to buy in. And a year later, it failed. The indignant shareholders mounted an investigation and discovered Vigo’s family connection to the firm and the evidence that, at the time when Vigo had recommended it to his clients, Kirkham was already in trouble. It was enough to get Vigo a three-year jail sentence.

  Lord Gott’s problem was this. According to Clough Whitney’s banking procedures, sales of shares above a certain level had to be passed by two directors. In this instance, Gott was the second. Vigo had produced information about Kirkham for his scrutiny. Gott saw instantly that the accounts had been doctored. And Vigo told Gott about the son-in-law, the vulnerable daughter, the autistic grandson and said, persuasively, ‘Come on, Edward. Temporary difficulties. It’s all being put right. Health centres and hotels. How can they fail?’ But the trouble was that oil and gas prices rose, as did inflation, as did interest rates. And six months after Gott, suppressing his doubts, had signed off on the deal, a plane from Atlanta, coming in to land at Heathrow, crashed. It was never proved to be the result of a terrorist bomb. It was never proved not to be, either. The rising costs and reduced tourism finished Kirkham. It collapsed. Vigo went to jail. The bank investigated the deal, and the sign-off. Gott was exonerated and found guilty only of incompetence, not dishonesty. Derek Vigo never implicated his co-director. Two years later, in a rationalization, Gott, who had redeemed himself, merged Vigo’s former job with his own.

  Gott guessed, somehow, from somewhere, that Petherbridge had discovered his part in the Kirkham affair. And was now threatening to encourage Vigo to tell the full story, including Gott’s own complicity in the crash, in exchange for early release.

  The Prime Minister feigned doubt. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘Letting Vigo out early could give the wrong signal. Then again, perhaps he deserves some leniency.’

  Gott saw clearly now that he was being blackmailed. But what did Petherbridge want? Whatever it was, he was controlling the conversation now and all Gott could do was sit tight and react as little as possible.

  Petherbridge glanced, apologetically, at his watch. ‘I just thought I’d let you know about your former colleague’s situation. What I really wanted to tell you is how much the party has appreciated your support during the election and to hope we can continue to count on it. Oh – and though it may be premature to mention it, it may be that Graham Barnsbury will be retiring as Party Chairman soon. His wife’s unwell. Very sad – but I wondered if you might think, if he does go, of letting your name be mentioned. Nothing set in stone at this point, obviously.’

  The prospect of occupying the enormously powerful position of Party Chairman, with access to everything and everybody and a loud voice in all discussions was intoxicating to Gott. The last time the job fell vacant he had missed it because he was in the middle of the battle with Muldoon which had ended with him being thrown upstairs to the Lords. He’d desperately wanted the Party Chairmanship then. He still did. Here was the carrot Petherbridge was offering. The stick was the possibility of Vigo implicating him in the Kirkham affair. You had to hand it to Petherbridge – he was good at this – not so subtle the victim couldn’t understand the threat or the bribe and not so blunt the bought or intimidated victim would lose face. And now he had only to nod and offer a few words of thanks and the threat would go away and the job he coveted would be his.

  And that was the point when Lord Gott, sitting in his chair at Downing Street, opposite the Prime Mini
ster, had one of those flashes, like a dream, which seem to come from some very primitive part of the brain, take a mass of information, process it and in a microsecond tell us a whole, coherent story. Often an alarming one. Later, of course, he wondered how he could have been slow enough not to see it all before – but at that moment, he was staggered by the revelation.

  It had been in August that he had discovered the future Prime Minister had gone AWOL, leaving no contact details with his office, his wife in Gloucestershire or his housekeeper in Kensington. Petherbridge had resurfaced ten days later, offering no explanation. Three weeks before the election Gott had been talking to a bank client, who was on the board of a major oil and natural gas company. It was another tale of toughness and endurance from a battle-hardened executive. ‘To get this Kazakhstan deal up and running I had to meet Greg Koslowski and the President of the USA at Camp David in August. Arrived by jet in time for lunch and left at three – deal done. Not bad – eh?’

  ‘Not bad at all,’ Gott had agreed.

  ‘There’s a pretty fast turnover of people out there, high days and holidays included. Fly in the Canadian timber guys one day, the Venezuelan president the next, then as the President greets the Venezuelan on the tarmac, the Canadians are being loaded for the return flight – hail and farewell – fast turnaround.

  ‘This time, believe it or not, who did I see being routed out, just as I’d got out of the plane, but our possible new PM, Petherbridge. I’m arriving – he’s leaving. My seat must still have been warm.’ Gott had made no comment at the time, guessing that Petherbridge’s trip to the USA must have been during the time he was off the radar in August. He concluded the meeting must have gone badly so that Petherbridge, who had not told anyone he was going, had decided not to refer to it later. But, as he sat in Downing Street, Gott, in a flash, was mentally unscrolling the list of donors to the party during the run-up to the election. Petherbridge had been talking to the President in mid-August. The first heavy donations came in on the twenty-fifth. Followed by more millions in September and October. Arthur Pelman of Pelman Building and Construction, Daniel Oakes of BG Light Engineering, James Bentley of Star Casinos, Haver, of course. Twenty major donors in all. Well, now at least he knew why he was being simultaneously threatened and bribed.

  As he said later, that might not have been enough to prevent him from going along with the Prime Minister, until he heard, as if through a fog, the Prime Minister saying, ‘We don’t see enough of you, Edward. Surely you can persuade your wife down from Scotland occasionally to dine? With some of your sons, perhaps. Or, then, you have daughter, haven’t you? Chloe? Why not bring her? These official functions can be very dull without some women present.’

  If Gott’s revelation about the sources of the party funding had been the nature of an earthquake, this was a bad aftershock. Petherbridge had gone through his life with a toothcomb. The investigation must have taken months, had probably begun as far back as September, when he had calculated that Gott was a loose end which would need to be tied up. The Vigo threat, the Chairmanship promise and now the we-know-where-you-live threat.

  Having said what he had planned to say, Petherbridge half-rose in his chair. Gott had just enough control to rise fully and say, ‘Thank you, Prime Minister. You’ve given me a great deal to think about.’ If there was anything unusual in his tone, Petherbridge did not seem to notice.

  Petherbridge, standing, put out his hand. Gott took it. ‘Don’t think for too long,’ Petherbridge said.

  Outside on the murky pavement of Whitehall, with the lights of traffic crawling past in the gloom, Gott stood for a moment, fists clenched at his sides. He knew now that Petherbridge had been months ahead of him. Petherbridge had known from the beginning that sooner or later Gott would work out the real source of the election funds. Gott, as treasurer, was the man who could start credible rumours about the money, or credibly deny them. There was only one reason for the meeting he’d just had, and that was to silence him.

  But although Gott was too angry at that point to think clearly, later he realized that Petherbridge’s mistake was that however much digging he’d done into Gott’s life, he hadn’t been similarly energetic when digging into his mind. He had struck Gott in the area of his family relationships. He must have seen Gott’s guilty secret as just another means of controlling him but, without realizing it, he had found Gott’s sticking point, the area where he was not prepared to concede or negotiate. That last barb he had planted in Gott’s hide, instead of making him more docile had maddened him.

  Gott marched off towards Trafalgar Square, fists still clenched. As he went he thought, I’ll get you for this, Petherbridge. You don’t know it, but you’re a dead man.

  The Garrick Club, Garrick Street, London WC2. November 15th, 2015. 6.30 p.m.

  Gott had been at work for two days. Jeremy had gone for almost forty-eight hours without sleep following paper trails from London to Washington to Tokyo to the Caymans through the Channel Islands and on to Hong Kong. He was at last asleep when Gott met Joshua Crane at the Garrick Club.

  The bar at the Garrick was full of men in suits, publishers, theatre managers, actors and broadcasters. There was the quick-drink-before-dinner brigade, and there were others who, eminent Shakespearian actors or famous broadcasters though they may have been, had the faces of steady topers everywhere. Crane thought it was somehow typical of Gott to belong to the raffish Garrick Club as well as the gentlemanly White’s. Useful, too, for here they were less likely to be spotted by other politicians.

  ‘Let’s go and sit down,’ suggested Gott. Once they were at a brown table on brown chairs in the brown room he bent forward and said, ‘It’s like this, Joshua – I’m taking some soundings and you, with your exposure on Westminster Unplugged, could be useful.’

  ‘Yes, Edward,’ Joshua said attentively. After all, it had been Gott who had pulled some strings (probably here at the Garrick) inducing someone else to pull some strings, who had in turn tugged a few more, to get him the Westminster Unplugged spot. Joshua had never regretted it. He enjoyed it; he and Julia hit it off and the programme raised his profile and helped to protect his seat in Parliament from any sudden strike by an angry PM.

  ‘What did you think of the speech?’ Gott asked him.

  ‘If the new Anti-terrorism goes through we could all end up in jail. It defies European law and the civil liberties groups are going to be up in arms—’

  ‘It’s not easy for the liberal-minded among us,’ Gott said.

  Joshua Crane had never thought of Lord Gott as a libertarian. ‘It isn’t,’ he agreed cautiously.

  ‘I’m beginning to think Petherbridge must be stopped,’ Gott said.

  Joshua was amazed. He knew Gott to be a man who liked power and knew that most often power was the gift of the powerful. And Petherbridge was the recently elected Prime Minister of Gott’s party. Joshua’s too, but he had long been among the dissidents. The Chief Whip had once been overheard saying angrily, ‘The usual suspects? Crane, Clare, Whittington, Harrington, Miss Pym, Mrs Appleby, Treadwell, Seymour and all the wankers? I’ll have to go round and tell them their duty – I’d rather go round, stick them up against a wall and shoot them.’ He was part of the awkward squad. Gott was not, or never had been up to now.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why now?’

  ‘The bases,’ Gott said.

  ‘Petherbridge won’t get that one through. He can’t – half of us are against him and what do you think Labour will do – they’re bound to go against it. And the Liberals. It’s suicidal to start your career as PM with a massive defeat.’ He paused and looked closely at Gott. ‘Do you know why he’s proposing it?’

  ‘He’ll get it through because he must and yes, I do know why he’s proposing it. You’d better have another drink.’

  He told Joshua everything he and Jeremy had found out in the two days following his meeting with Petherbridge. Gott and Jeremy had investigated in detail the pre-election donors to the Conservative
Party.

  From November 2012 up to the announcement of the upcoming election, donations to the party had amounted to a meagre £34,000, part of which had had to go to service a million pound overdraft, the rest not enough to cover anything like the cost of running the party. Then in August had come a two million pound contribution from Lord Haver, a very rich man and descendant of a long line of Conservative politicians, including a Victorian Prime Minister – and, incidentally, a man who had known and disliked Gott for fifteen years. And half a million from Mrs Caris Brookes. The mysterious Mr Finch-O’Brien had given £750,000. Two days later Sheikh Mohammed Khali came up with a million and a half. Lady Davina McCleod gave a million. As September opened the astonished Gott received a flood of donations – half a million pounds from Arthur Pelman of Pelman Building and Construction, a million from Perry Briggs-Anderson of MGA Light Engineering and another from Daniel Silverman of Opal Entertainment. And so it went on. Bewley Aeronautics, Fargo Records, Star Casinos, Mr Daniel Oakes, Mrs Maria Hughes, Halliwell Small Arms, Lord Greaves, Mr Jay Stanton, Jago Prefabricated Buildings – adding up, in all, to a little under thirty million pounds and all delivered when the election campaign was most in need of funds.

  The corporate donors were largely entertainment companies, building firms, arms and plane manufacturers and oil companies. When Gott had rung the private donors to express thanks, what had they told him? Haver had said, ‘Must get the country on an even keel – try for a working majority.’ Mrs Brookes, who was a middle-aged lady with a small estate in Wiltshire had said, ‘Now is the time for all good men – and women, too – to come to the aid of the party.’ Dan Oakes – ‘Must break the stalemate.’ The business donors had told Gott much the same as Oakes – the new government must be a government which supported business and must have a working majority. The stasis over legislation was harming them. The stories were all much the same. Suspiciously so, thought Gott – the same tale over and over, and stiffly told. They might have been scripted. Now, after his lightning revelation at Downing Street, Gott thought they probably had been. So what was the pattern, if any? Arms, planes, oil and building (the reconstruction) spelt war, one way or another. Haver, he knew, had enormous holdings in oil and gas, much of the money in the States.