Sometimes, at moments like this – feeling the day’s first charge of nicotine; watching the endless river heading home – she could allow her mind to empty, and simply feel alive. Today, though, that wasn’t going to happen. She’d been fizzing for hours.
‘Ah. A beautiful woman indulging in vice. Is there any more arousing sight?’
If Peter Judd appreciated the specifics of a clandestine meeting, he went out of his way to challenge them.
Diana peeled the transfer away, allowing him space to sit, and as he lowered his carefully tailored bulk onto the bench, he said, ‘A summons. An urgent summons, no less. Who’s been putting sand in your Vaseline, Diana?’
‘Why did Damien Cantor join a visitor group at the Park this morning?’
‘Flattering as it is to have you think I’m pulling strings all day, I’m usually as much in the dark as you.’
‘I’m not generally in the dark.’
‘No. I seem to recall you prefer it with the lights on. May I have one of those?’
She took packet and lighter from her bag and handed them to him. He shuddered at his first inhalation, a parody of pleasure. ‘Thank you. Look, Cantor’s an investor. He wants to kick the skirting boards, check for damp. And he probably thinks he was being subtle, or even funny, joining a tour group, but you can put that down to his age. And being mega-rich. The mega-rich always think they’re the dog’s bollocks.’
‘My understanding of dogs’ bollocks,’ said Diana, ‘is that you can lop them off and chuck them away, and the dog will still operate.’
She finished her cigarette and ground it underfoot. A nearby gull watched with hungry interest.
‘It’s a little soon,’ said Judd, ‘to contemplate altering the composition of, what shall we call it, our caucus? Besides which, as I think I mentioned, Cantor is a major contributor. Sidelining him now would be like dropping Beckham before the semi-final.’
‘I see you’re letting your sporting references lapse. Now you no longer depend on the goodwill of the electorate.’
‘Fuck the electorate.’
‘Cantor might be a big noise in his world, but this is mine,’ she said. ‘And his role in my world is to offer his backing and accept my gratitude, or remove himself entirely.’
‘I do love it when you draw lines,’ Judd said smoothly. ‘It brings out the feminist in me. I’ll have a word with our Damien, all right? And all shall be well, and all manner of thing and so on. Now. Crisis over, moving on. Your meeting with Nash went well, I trust?’
‘… Passably.’
‘Don’t tell me. You invented a project that’s no longer fit for purpose, and claimed you could make a saving by closing it down and redirecting the funds to your preferred use. And all you need the committee to do is rubber-stamp the process.’
‘It’s in hand.’
‘And you’re confident Nash won’t, ah, put two and two together?’
‘Two and two? He’d have trouble adding one and one.’
Which was unfair, and both knew it, but politics was the art of cutting absent parties down to size.
‘Excellent. I’m glad your qualms of yesterday have settled. This work we’re doing, this path we’re on – it’s of enormous benefit to the nation. I feel stirrings of heroism.’ He glanced at his crotch. ‘There is one other small thing. I’ve been talking with our, ah, angels, and there’s general agreement that we’d like you to ease off on your infiltration of the Yellow Vest movement.’
The river still flowed, the breeze still blew. The evening light was still leaking away from the sky.
She eased another cigarette from the packet. The lighter wouldn’t spark first time.
‘I probably didn’t hear you correctly. For a moment, I thought you were daring to dictate Service policy.’
‘Hardly policy. I don’t wish to engage in semantic quibbles, but we’re talking about one minor line of surveillance. Nothing more.’
She didn’t need to look his way to know the pout was in place, the rhetoric forthcoming.
‘Look, I understand your concern about the unwashed getting jiggy on the streets, but it’s a minor blip. The disturbances will die down – they always do – and on the smoke-blown landscape left behind, we’ll see one or two figures emerge who it’s wise to pay attention to. Look at You-Know-What. A minor figure, a local joke, never even managed to get elected, somehow positions himself as head of a party everyone wrote off as a bunch of small-minded xenophobes, and ten years later he’s changed history. This, these Yellow Jackets, who knows? Maybe they’re the start of something similar. Just another stage in our political evolution. Democracy is all very well, Diana, but nobody’s ever suggested it’s the be-all and end-all. Especially not the end-all. Harks back to ancient Greece, thank you, but where’s Greece now? Knocking on the back door, asking for scraps. That’s where its big idea got it.’
‘Thanks for the history lesson,’ Diana said. ‘But the big picture isn’t the only thing worrying me. No, what I find concerning is you telling me that this decision has apparently been made, and I’m here to take instruction. And that’s not how this works.’
‘You’ve been over-bureaucratised for too long. All those subcommittees and oversight boards, all that middle-fucking-management whose only purpose is to assert its own importance, because if anyone took a good hard look they’d see it doesn’t have any. Like it or not, that’s the world you’re coming from. Where the only decisions you’re allowed to make are either so piddlesome nobody else can be bothered with the paperwork, or so incendiary nobody wants to be caught near the fire. Sound familiar?’
‘Peter—’
‘No one’s trying to strong-arm you, Diana. It’s simply a matter of encouraging you to see things from a wider perspective, now you’re heading up a team with more diversified interests.’ He shook his head solemnly. ‘If I thought anyone was trying to hold you over a barrel, I’d be the first to stand in their way.’
This was a familiar trope. Theoretically, Judd was always ready to lie down in front of bulldozers for a principle, even if, in practice, he tended to be out of the room when the short straw was pulled.
‘Well you can let our angels know that their desires will not be considered. Not when I’m making operational decisions, or any other kind. And if any of them want to withdraw their support in light of that, they’re free to do so. Are we clear?’
‘As crystal. But bear in mind that if they do decide to withdraw their support, you’ll be back where you started from, rattling your cup in front of a panel of thwarted pygmies.’ He touched the knot of his tie with an index finger. ‘Always supposing you weather any bad publicity arising.’
‘Say that again?’
‘I’m simply pointing out that when you disappoint rich and powerful men, they let their displeasure be known. But I’m sure it won’t come to that. One small favour, Diana. Allow the Yellow Vest campaign to reach its natural end without attempting to discredit those spearheading it. Where could be the harm?’
‘Have a good evening, Peter.’
She was halfway across the Millennium Bridge before she remembered she’d failed to reaffix the bird-shit transfer. But then, that was the thing about shit, real or fake: once you’d begun spreading it about, it never ended up precisely where you wanted it.