Taffin on Balance

  ‘Obrigado,’ says Rick.

  The door opens and Ed Pentecost walks in, still limping but without a stick.

  ‘Bom dia,’ he announces, with an expansive gesture.

  ‘Can we make English the official language now?’ Charlotte waves them all to chairs as Julia joins them, carrying Ed’s walking stick. ‘Has he been behaving, Jule?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘The four of you are revoltingly tanned.’ Charlotte examines them each in turn. ‘I’m dead jealous.’

  ‘Where did you and Himself get to?’ Kath asks.

  ‘Not far. He found a great pub in this quaint little village and we spent a few days pigging out, wandering around, admiring the view and ignoring everybody. Quiet stuff. We got some help unloading the skip before we left. One end of the machine shop is wall to wall books.’

  Ed looks up. ‘You didn’t have any unwanted visitors while we were gone?’

  ‘Nothing. I can set your minds at rest on that score.’

  ‘Obrigado,’ says Rick.

  Ed starts struggling to his feet. ‘I haven’t seen the Boss. Is he here?’

  ‘Not right now.’ Charlotte puts a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘He went off first thing this morning to meet someone. I didn’t ask who.’

  AT THIS PRECISE MOMENT the red Mustang is pulling into a parking space on the roof of a multi-story car park.

  Taffin relaxes in the driving seat listening to his engine cooling, watching the approach of a figure in a charcoal suit, complete with crisp collar and tie.

  Gordon Glennan lets himself into the car in response to Taffin’s signal and closes the door.

  ‘I could wish you hadn’t come in quite such a conspicuous vehicle,’ he begins. ‘With any luck, nobody’s looking, but you can never be sure. People know my face.’

  ‘What am I here for, Gordon? Or do you want me to call you Minister, since we’re on your patch?’

  ‘My patch...’ Glennan looks out across the spread of West London below them. ‘You think I have any credibility left here – or anywhere, come to that?’

  ‘I don’t know, Gordon. Why ask me?’ The ghost of a smile brushes the blank features. ‘I’m a cheap thug.’

  ‘You’re the only person in this sorry affaire who’s told me anything approaching the truth. You once said, maybe we could help each other. Now’s the time.’

  Taffin studies the profile of this man of politics, reading the tension.

  Glennan continues: ‘You’ve read the papers. StarTrack’s dead. What do you suppose that means?’

  ‘A lot of people are very happy, where I come from.’

  ‘Sure. The unfeeling politician didn’t get his way. People Power wins out. I’m guessing some of the locals will even credit you with a famous victory. Am I right?’

  Taffin shrugs. ‘That don’t make any sense.’

  ‘No it don’t – doesn’t – but that’s how the world works sometimes.’

  Taffin lets his hands wander over the Mustang’s steering wheel. ‘What am I here for, Gordon?’

  ‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it. I’m going to break Parliamentary protocol and tell you the truth. You don’t mind that, do you?’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘StarTrack was a myth from the beginning. It was never going to happen. The Select Committee was a charade.’ Glennan glances sideways for a reaction; the broad features tell him nothing. He continues: ‘You got it right. Property values dropped along all the proposed routes. They’ll start recovering in due course but the damage is done.’

  ‘Tell me about the damage.’

  ‘A lot of prime development land has changed hands – and I’m partly responsible, God help me.’

  ‘You work for the government, Gordon.’

  ‘I wish...’ Glennan waves a helpless hand. ‘That’s usually the excuse for any stroke a minister pulls. Policy – staying on message. I wish I could pin this on a government directive, but not this time.’ He pauses, shaking his head. ‘The government, from Number 10 downwards, wanted StarTrack from the beginning. My job was to make it work.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  Glennan shifts uneasily in his seat. ‘I must be insane, talking like this to you.’

  Taffin gazes out across London. ‘This meeting was your idea, Gordon. You can get up and leave any time.’

  ‘I think you guessed it. I got suckered into another job as well. Not my idea, but irresistible once it was on the table. Very lucrative – beyond your wildest dreams. It meant abuse of privilege on an unthinkable scale but hell – I was tempted, I did the sums and caved in.’ Glennan slaps both hands down on his knees, rocking forwards. ‘If I could turn the clock back three years...’

  Taffin lets him settle.

  ‘They say no man can serve two masters.’ Glennan fishes out a handkerchief, twists it in his fingers. ‘I thought I understood the business world, but it’s got levels I never imagined – like another planet. It was easy to get drawn in, but the pressure kept on building, and one day I had a moment of clarity and realised there was no way back.’

  ‘Two masters –’ the voice is a whisper with tone – ‘who’s the other one?’

  ‘Just your average member of the Super-Rich with billions to play with. You meet these people when you move in government circles. This one’s not high-profile so you probably wouldn’t know his name.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Frey-Morton. I doubt if it’s the name he was born with. He made his money building shopping centers. Don’t ask me where the original finance came from.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘At a reception after some function – I don’t remember what for. Someone introduced us. My wife was there, I remember. We talked for a while. Later he got in touch and things started picking up pace from then on.’

  ‘Your wife.’ A pair of eyebrows lifts above the dark glasses.

  ‘My wife, Janice. You’ve met her.’

  Taffin caresses the steering wheel again. ‘Your wife doesn’t like me, Gordon.’

  ‘You seem to have touched a nerve.’

  ‘It’s my rustic charm.’

  ‘She thinks you give me ideas. She’s not wrong. These days, when I look at her I feel – I don’t know what to call it – self-loathing, revulsion, jealousy...’

  They both sit quietly for a while.

  Taffin inclines his head. ‘You know what’s going on, don’t you?’

  Glennan puffs a bitter laugh. ‘She let slip a casual remark in an unguarded moment. I said something about my pension. She told me pensions are poison because they create the illusion of a secure future. That didn’t come from her. I heard it first from Frey-Morton, in exactly those words.’

  Taffin becomes absorbed in the scenery for a moment, then: ‘Your billionaire friend used her to get to you. What’s yours is hers – what’s hers is his.’

  ‘So it seems. I had my suspicions but I didn’t see that coming. Her signature carries as much weight as mine and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it – not unless I want to be exposed as the prime mover in the fraud of the Century – and she’d do it.’ Glennan wraps and unwraps the handkerchief round his hand. ‘Now I feel personally threatened.’

  ‘That’s the only way, son. If it ain’t personal, you ain’t threatened.’

  ‘I mean I have the sense of being in real danger – and I’m not talking about anything abstract like career and reputation – I mean physical danger. Can you understand that?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here, isn’t it, Gordon?’

  Glennan sighs, reaches for the door handle, lets it go again. ‘I need some weight in my corner – someone who doesn’t think along conventional lines. I’m a politician, not a...’

&nbs
p; Taffin lets the silence draw out while Glennan fumbles for the word.

  ‘Frey-Morton produced a gun at one of our meetings, like a grotesque conjuring trick. One minute it was there being tossed around like a toy, then it was gone. How am I supposed to deal with a maniac like that?

  Taffin peers at a spot of dirt on the windscreen.

  We’ve got more in common than you think.’

  ‘You know the type, then?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Could be...’ Glennan echoes the phrase and falls silent for a moment. ‘Frey-Morton knows your name.’

  Glennan feels dark glasses turn on him. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He says you ruined his old boss – his business mentor – a man called Sprawley. Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘I remember the name. I never met the man.’

  Glennan nods, distracted, and turns his attention to twisting the handkerchief again. ‘You know the position I’m in. There’s no one I can ask this so I’m asking you: what would you do?’

  Taffin watches him passively.

  ‘Seems to me you’ve got two choices.’

  ‘I’m not going to like either of them, am I?’

  ‘You got yourself into this, Gordon. Don’t expect sympathy from me.’

  ‘I accept that. What are my two choices?’

  ‘You can behave like nothing’s happened – bluff it out, cry foul when they point the finger, call it a smear campaign. You’re a politician – act like one.’

  ‘I might wind up with some remnant of a career, I suppose. What’s the other choice?’

  ‘Put your hands up to messing with the committee and take the bad guys down with you.’

  Glennan bows his head. ‘I’m not sure I would survive that. I think you’d soon be reading about a tragic accident. These are not people who play by normal rules.’

  ‘Maybe the bad guys have got a weakness.’ Taffin reaches for the ignition and the V8 rumbles into life. ‘Be patient, maybe they’ll show it.’

  Gordon Glennan climbs out and pauses.

  ‘I may have to call on you.’

  Dark glasses incline slightly in acknowledgement.

  Glennan closes the door and watches the Mustang drift along the ranks of parked cars, listens to the engine muttering away down the spiral exit lane and feels, against all reason, that a weight has been lifted.

  ‘I THOUGHT Mister Adams might want to see me before I go.’ Silver stands by, cradling his plastered left arm while Dean Elton stows his cases in the back of the Porsche Cayenne Turbo S.

  ‘He’s a busy man.’ Elton gives him a parody of a pleasant smile.

  ‘Where are my instructions?’

  ‘You worry too much. In a couple of hours you’ll be in your private cabin on a luxury yacht, and then it’s cruising all the way to the Caribbean.’

  ‘I’d like to know what I’ll be doing when I get there.’

  ‘Destination, the British Virgin Isles – that ought to tell you something. A bit of business to sort out – child’s play to a man of your abilities.’

  ‘That doesn’t tell me a lot. When I take on a job I expect to be prepared.’

  ‘Very commendable.’

  ‘So how about giving me a clue?’

  ‘No point asking me, I’m just your driver today. You’ll get your instructions on the voyage. The crew knows who you are.’

  ‘I don’t know them.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, they’re the soul of discretion.’ Elton slams the tailgate shut and opens a back door for his passenger with heavy-handed ceremony.

  Silver climbs in awkwardly and fumbles with the seat belt. ‘I can’t strap myself in.’

  Elton leans across him to click the belt into place.

  Silver winces. A glare of white teeth.

  ‘You’re a gentleman. I’ll send you a postcard.’

  ‘Mister Adams doesn’t like postcards.’

  ‘Fine, no postcard, let’s just get moving.’

  ‘Relax, you’re going to a dream location in the height of luxury. The crew will spoil you to death.’

  THE RED MUSTANG pulls up outside the front office at Muscle Motors. Taffin climbs out, stretches his limbs and wanders inside.

  Charlotte looks up from her computer.

  ‘You’ve got that look on your face, young man.’

  ‘What look’s that, girl?’

  ‘The one that says you’ve worked something out.’

  Taffin sits down, causing distress to a flimsy office chair. ‘The troubles we’ve been having go back a long way.’

  ‘Are you any closer to who it is?’

  Taffin makes a wavering hand in reply.

  Charlotte nods. ‘Someone with a grudge from way back.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘That narrows the field down a bit.’

  The same wavering hand, then: ‘I had a job offer today.’

  Charlotte swivels to face him. ‘I hope you told them to stick it.’

  ‘This was more of a request – flattering, in a way. It came from a Member of Parliament.’

  ‘Gordon Glennan Emm Pee?’

  ‘You’ve got it.’

  ‘What does Mister Glennan want from my boy? Does he know we’ve got his books? That could be a nice second career for you – librarian.’

  The immobile features twitch imperceptibly. ‘Mister Glennan don’t feel safe.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Maybe he shouldn’t put so many noses out of joint. So he wants you to babysit – don’t the government supply bodyguards for the likes of him?’

  ‘Not any more. He’s been misbehaving. Fell in with the wrong crowd.’

  ‘I see.’ Charlotte swivels left and right, rhythmically. ‘D’you mind if I ask you a personal question?’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘Are you still up to that kind of thing? I mean, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t like to move any faster than you have to.’

  Taffin lifts a languid hand. ‘I didn’t promise anything. He just needs someone to call on when he can’t sleep.’

  Charlotte scrutinizes him. ‘He’s a politician, love – I’m surprised you’re giving him the time of day.’

  ‘I’ve met his wife. Anyone stuck with her deserves all the help they can get.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TO ANYONE in a contemplative frame of mind, the warm wind rippling the treetops along the valley could sound like a sigh of satisfaction. Lasherham is at ease. The spectre of trains shooting at bullet speed from a tunnel close to the village boundary has been set to rest. The rumour of a housing development on ten acres of land behind the old bookshop sounds civilized by comparison.

  ‘It’s all gone quiet,’ Julia remarks.

  The assembled company of Muscle Motors stands back to admire the freshly renovated Dodge Charger, now an immaculate example of its marque in deep bottle green with a broad central strip from nose to tail.

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ Ed Pentecost whacks his hands together in triumph, ‘that’s because this baby stands us in at ten grand and it’s worth eighty to the right buyer – maybe more.’

  ‘Think big.’ Charlotte makes an upward gesture. ‘You’ll go a long way to find another one like this.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ Julia levels her camera and kneels for a low shot of the car. The shutter clacks several times as she moves round it. ‘I mean everything’s gone quiet. I’m surprised McDermott hasn’t been back looking for us. I’m not sorry – don’t get me wrong – but we didn’t part on good terms and he never struck me as the forgiving type. And what’s happened to that scumbag with the teeth?’

  ‘He won’t be back.’ Rick Bishop plants both thumbs in the belt of his jeans. ‘Him and h
is gorillas got a good kicking last time they was here.’

  Charlotte looks up, privately amused, and looks down again. ‘Don’t write them off. Like Jule says, they’re not the forgiving type – none of them are.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve given up.’ Julia moves round the car with her long lens, looking for angles. ‘What are the odds?’

  ‘Fifty-fifty.’ Taffin detaches himself from the office doorway where he was leaning and ambles over to stand by the Charger.

  ‘You reckon?’ Julia straightens up and turns to look at him.

  ‘They should have come back the next day.’ Taffin weighs an invisible balance in his hands. ‘It’s been weeks. Something ain’t working out for them.’

  Julia steps back to line up a long shot. ‘I keep thinking they might turn up any time.’

  ‘We’ve got better things to think about today.’ Taffin stoops to examine the car’s interior. ‘This baby’s got four hundred and forty cubic inches to play with. Right now we should be finding out if it goes as good as it looks. What do you reckon, Ed?’

  Ed Pentecost runs a clean rag over the Charger’s wing, takes a deep breath and climbs in. The engine turns, turns, barks and hammers the stillness flat.

  ‘THE CHURCH, THE PUB, THE LIBRARY AND THE POST OFFICE –’ Perry Butt executes a practiced 180 degree turn on his bar stool – ‘take any one of those out of the equation and the village stops functioning.’

  ‘And now they’re talking about closing the Post Office.’ Meg wipes the bar with unusual savagery, addressing the back of the old journalist’s head. ‘Don’t you love the way THEY feel free to dispose of things WE can’t do without?’

  The old Post Office occupies the ground floor of a looming Victorian building on the corner of the High Street and Station Hill. The sorting office, on a separate lease, extends behind it. The main building is privately owned and the owner wants to sell.

  ‘I wonder who THEY are this time.’ Ivy Lewis has caught the scent of a new cause and is already winding herself up to marching pitch.

  ‘No mystery there –’ Ashley Gunn pulls up a bar stool and flicks an eyebrow at Meg, who pours his pint without a thought – ‘the building belongs to Alice Becker. Her old man died, remember? You must know her, Ivy – she’s Debi Royce’s sister.’