He gently drummed with his fingertips on the table surface. ‘My fault. I should have explained my decision—’
‘Decision?’
‘Suggestion. I’ve done some work on this. I can take you through it. There’s a general consideration, then there’s the empirical research.’
‘Someone will get hurt.’
It was as if I hadn’t spoken.
‘I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t tell you it all at this stage. That is, don’t push me when I exclude some final details. The work is ongoing. But look, Charlie, none of us, especially Miranda, can live with this threat, however improbable it is. Her freedom has been compromised. She’s in a state of constant anxiety. It could go on for months, even years. It’s simply not endurable. That’s my general point. So. My first task was to find the best possible likeness of Peter Gorringe. I went on the website of his and Miranda’s old school, found the year photographs and there he was, a great lump in the back row. I found him again in the school magazine, in articles about the rugby and cricket seasons. Then, of course, the press coverage during the trial. A lot of head-under-the-blanket, but I found some useful shots and merged what I had into a composite, high-definition portrait and scanned it. Next, and this was the enjoyable part, I devised some very specialised face-recognition software. Then, I hacked into the Salisbury District Council CCTV system. I set the recognition algorithms to work, mining the period since he came out of prison. That was a bit tricky. There were various setbacks and software glitches, mostly due to problems marrying up with the city’s outdated programs. Using Gorringe’s surname to locate his parents’ house on the edge of town was a great help, even though there are no cameras where they live. I needed to know his most likely route past the nearest camera. At last I was getting good matches and I’ve been able to pick him up in various places when he arrives by bus into town. I can follow him from street to street, camera to camera, as long as he’s in or near the centre. There’s one place he keeps returning to. Don’t trouble your head trying to guess what it is. His parents are still abroad. Perhaps they prefer to stay clear of their convict son. I’ve come to certain conclusions about him that make me think it’s safe to pay a visit. I’ve told Miranda everything that I’ve told you. She knows only what you know. I won’t say more at this stage. I simply ask you to trust me. Now, Charlie, please. I’m desperate to hear your thoughts about Hamlet, about Shakespeare playing his father’s ghost in the first production. And in Ulysses, in the Nestor episode, what about Stephen’s theory?’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But you go first.’
Two minor sex scandals followed by resignations, one fatal heart attack, one fatal, drunken collision on a country road, one member crossing the floor on a matter of principle – in seven months the government had lost four consecutive by-elections, its majority had narrowed by five and was hanging, as the newspapers kept saying ‘by a thread’. This thread was nine seats thick, but Mrs Thatcher had at least twelve rebellious backbenchers whose main concern was that the recently passed ‘poll tax’ legislation would destroy the party’s hopes at the next general election. The tax financed local government and replaced the old system based on the rental value of a house. Every adult aged over eighteen was now levied at a flat rate, regardless of income, but with reduced charges on students, the poor and the registered unemployed. The new tax was presented to Parliament sooner than anyone expected, though the prime minister had plans drawn up seven years before, when she was Leader of the Opposition. It had been in the party’s manifesto, but no one had taken it seriously. Now here it was, on the statute book, ‘a tax on existence’, difficult to collect and generally unpopular. Mrs Thatcher had survived the Falkland defeat. Now, still in her first term, it was possible she would be toppled by her own legislative mistake, ‘an unpardonable act’, said a Times leader, ‘of mystifying self-harm’.
Meanwhile, the loyal Opposition was in good shape. Young baby boomers had fallen in love with Tony Benn. After a great push to expand the membership, more than three-quarters of a million had joined the party. Middle-class students and working-class youths merged into one angry constituency, intent on using their votes for the first time. Trade union bosses, tough old operators, found themselves shouted down at meetings by articulate feminists with strange new ideas. New-fangled environmentalists, gay liberationists, Spartacists, Situationists, Millennial Communists and Black Panthers were also an irritant to the old left. When Benn appeared at rallies, he was greeted like a rock star. When he set out his policies, even when he itemised the minutiae of his industrial strategy, there were hoots and whistles of approval. His bitter opponents in Parliament and press had to concede that he gave a fine speech and was hard to beat in a TV studio confrontation. Fiery Bennite activists were appearing on local government committees. They were determined to purge the ‘dithering centrists’ of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The movement appeared unstoppable, the general election was approaching and the Tory rebels were dismayed. ‘She has to go’ was the muttered slogan.
There were riots with customary ritual destruction – smashed windows, shops and cars set on fire, barricades thrown up to block the fire engines. Tony Benn condemned the rioters, but everyone accepted that the mayhem helped his cause. There was yet another march planned through central London, this time to Hyde Park where Benn would give a speech. I was his cautious supporter, anxious about the purges and riots and the sinister pronouncements of Benn’s band of Trotskyite followers. I counted myself a non-dithering centrist who also felt ‘she has to go’. Miranda had another of her seminars, but Adam wanted to come. We walked with our umbrellas through steady rain to Stockwell Tube and travelled to Green Park. We arrived on Piccadilly in sudden glistening sunshine, with huge white cumulus clouds stacked high against a mild blue sky. The dripping trees of Green Park had a burnished coppery look. I had failed to talk Adam out of the black suit. In the drawer of my desk he had found an old pair of my sunglasses.
‘This isn’t a good idea,’ I said, as we shuffled with the crowd towards Hyde Park Corner. Somewhere far behind us were trombones, tambourines and a bass drum. ‘You look like a secret agent. The Trots will give you a good kicking.’
‘I am a secret agent.’ He said it loudly and I glanced around. All fine. People near us were singing ‘We Shall Overcome’, a song whose hopeful sentiments were crushed at first utterance by a hopeless melody. Its second line feebly repeated its first. I cringed at the three weak, inappropriately falling notes crammed into ‘come’. I loathed it. My mood, I realised, was crepuscular. The jollity of crowds had this effect on me. A shaken tambourine put me in mind of those shaven Hare Krishna dupes by Soho Square. My shoes were wet and I was miserable. I wasn’t expecting to overcome.
In the park there were probably 100,000 between us and the main stage. It was my choice to get to the back. Stretching far ahead of us was a carpet of flesh for the Provisional IRA to shred with a ball-bearing bomb. There were several worthy speeches before Benn’s. Tiny distant figures blasted us with their thoughts through a powerful PA system. We were all against the poll tax. A famous pop singer came on stage to huge applause. I had never heard of him. Nor of the girl on tiptoe at the mic, a nationally adored teenager from a TV soap. But I had heard of Bob Geldof. This was what it meant to be over thirty.