“I’d hardly be coming to ask for your help if I knew what to do, would I? I’ve got some madman threatening economic warfare against Britain unless I help turn Anthony Bannister into fish food.
Wouldn’t you say that was a matter for government, rather than me?”
“Fish food?” The Honourable John could be wonderfully obtuse when he wanted to be.
“They want me to turn out his lights, John. Switch him off. Banjo him. Kill the fucker.”
He looked immensely pained. “Did Kassouli say as much?”
“Not exactly, but I can’t think what the hell else he wanted. I’m supposed to steer the good ship Lollipop straight to point X on the chart. What do you think is going to be waiting for us? Mermaids?”
“I shall really have to insist that I’ve heard no implications of murder. So far as I know, all Kassouli wishes to do is deny Bannister the chance of winning the St Pierre.”
“Don’t be pompous, John. The bastard’s up to no good. You want me to go and squeal this tale down Fleet Street? Someone will listen to me. I’ve got a fragment of bronze that will insure that.”
“They’ll listen only too avidly, I fear. Nothing excites the press so much as a chance to damage our relationship with the United States.” He stared at me helplessly.
“Then for Christ’s sake, reassure me! Tell me the Government’s on top of this problem. Don’t you have friends in Washington who can tell Kassouli to rewire his brain?”
“Not with the amounts of money he contributes to members of Congress, no.” He shrugged. “And you forget that Kassouli has never made these threats openly. They have been—how shall we say?—hinted at. Usually by intermediaries like yourself. Kassouli naturally denies making such threats, nevertheless HMG is forced to take them seriously,”
“Then give him his God-damned enquiry! Why ever not?”
“Because counter to the squallings of the left-wing press, Nick, HMG do not actually control the judiciary. A new inquest can only be instituted if there are fresh revelations of fact. There are not.
So we must look to you—”
“Hold it!” I said. “Here’s a revelation of fact. I’m not going to help Kassouli, because I don’t fancy joining my father in jail. What I’m going to do is go back to Devon and, if Bannister’s bloody mistress hasn’t stolen my boat, I’m going to tow it off to a nice safe place where I shall rig it. Meanwhile you’ll be losing lots of jobs, but don’t blame me, I’ve done my bit for the country and I’ve got a fucked-up spine to prove it. And you can tell Melissa not to try and find me before I sail, because I’ll have disappeared. The kids’ school fees are in the bank, and there isn’t any more money, so it isn’t worth her looking. Will you tell her that, John? Tell her I’m up a bloody creek and bankrupt.”
“Nick, Nick, Nick!” The Honourable John held up a pained hand.
“Of course we’re not asking you to adopt responsibility for this situation.”
“You’re not?”
He waved away a waiter. “I repeat that I am not a member of Her Majesty’s Government…”
“…yet.”
“But I think I can fairly reflect what the Government is thinking.
Frankly, Nick, we’d rather Mr Kassouli did not press his threats against us. I think that’s a fair stance, and a sensible one. But, as I said, the threats have not been made openly and we need to know a great deal more about their nature. Your information is valuable, but we’d like more. Is it a real threat, for example? Do I make myself clear?”
“The answer to your first question is yes; to the second, no.” He wouldn’t look at me. “What I think I’m saying is that HMG
would be most grateful, most grateful indeed, if you were to keep us informed of Mr Kassouli’s intentions. Nothing more, Nick. Just information.”
“How grateful would HMG be?” I mimicked his pronunciation.
He gave a small laugh. “I don’t think we’re talking about fiscal remuneration, Nick. Shall we just agree that we would silently note and privately approve your patriotism?”
“Jesus bloody wept.” I waited till he looked at me. “You want me to go along with Kassouli, don’t you?”
“We want you to keep us informed. Through me, though naturally I shall deny this request was ever formally made. It’s entirely unofficial.”
“But the only way I can keep an eye on Kassouli is by going along with his plans, isn’t it? So I do help him, and HMG will be very grateful in the most nebulous and undeniable manner. Is that it?” The Honourable John thought about his answer for some time, but finally nodded. “Yes, I think that is it. And you do want your boat back, don’t you? This would seem to effect that desideratum.” It was all so very delicate. Kassouli justified revenge as righteous anger. The Honourable John was making it a case of expediency.
And I was to be the instrument. “Why don’t I just go to the police?” I asked.
He gave me a very small, very tight smile. “Because you would discover that the matter was beyond their competence.”
“Meaning HMG put it there?”
“Indeed.”
I thought of Harry Abbott; always so close to me, nudging me away from trouble like an escort ship taking a merchantman past a minefield. Except Abbott’s job, I suddenly realized, was to steer Bannister into the mines. “God, but you’re a slimy lot.” I stared at him. “Do you think Bannister murdered his wife?”
“I think it would be unscrupulous to make any conjecture.”
“If you want him dead,” I said brutally, “why don’t you use your thugs to do it? Or are you telling me that those chaps who used to disappear from my regiment went into monasteries?”
“Our thugs,” he said in a pained voice, “don’t have boats on Bannister’s lawn, nor the honour of Bannister’s acquaintance.”
“You could introduce them,” I said helpfully. “I thought Bannister was a friend of yours?”
“Rather more of Melissa’s, I think.” He did not look up at me as he spoke.
Poor sod, I thought. “Really? I never got that impression.” He tried to hide his relief, but couldn’t. “Not that they’re especially close, I think, but she has more time for a social life than I do.”
More time to slide in and out of bed, he meant. Both the Hon-John and I wore Melissa’s horns. “So HMG,” I said instead, “would be jolly grateful if I helped knock off Melissa’s friend Tony, and you’re telling me, in the slimiest and most roundabout manner possible, that the police will turn a blind eye.”
“You may put whatever construction you choose upon my words, Nick, and once again I entirely deny any imputation of a conspiracy to murder. All I am prepared to say, and that unofficially, is that we would like you to be helpful to a most important industrialist who could bring a great deal more investment and many more jobs to Britain.”
“Is that what Kassouli promised you if you turned a blind eye?
Jobs?”
That made him twitch. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick.”
“The man’s as mad as a hatter, John. He talks about unquiet souls.
He’s probably chatting to his daughter on a planchette board, or through some half-mad fucking spiritualist!”
“Was madness an occupational risk of hatters? I don’t know.” He looked at his watch. “Good Lord. Is that the time? And Nick?”
“John?”
“Not a word to the press, there’s a very good chap.” He paid and left me. I had gone to the Government for help, and I’d been abandoned. So I did the one thing they did not want me to do. I phoned Fleet Street.
The pub was dingy, smelly and, compared to the Devon pubs, expensive, but it was close to the newspaper offices which was why Micky Harding had suggested it. Harding had been one of the reporters who had marched every step of the Falklands with my battalion which, inevitably, had nicknamed him ‘Mouse’.