Almost a Crime (9 page)

very high priority We can do some lobbying, of course, and

I can try and set up a meeting between you and the

appropriate minister, but that won’t be easy either. I agree

with you, these regulations are a nightmare. And the

trouble is, being British, we will play by the rules. Places like Italy and Spain, they ignore half of them. Much more

sensible.’

The personal conversation, which had been much longer

and more difficult, concerned Bob Macintosh’s marital

difficulties, and his reluctance to go along with the spin

doctors within the new, rollercoasting Labour Party and be

photographed playing happy families with his adulterous

wife.

‘I just don’t see why I should, Tom,’ he said, draining his

claret glass, nodding gratefully as Tom refilled it. ‘I’m

prepared to take Maureen back because I love her and I

know she’s sorry—’ ‘Tom doubted this very much, but

didn’t say so - ‘but I don’t give a monkey’s about the

wonderful new government being tainted with sleaze, as

that little shit who called me put it. Why should I? As far as

I’m concerned, the bloody minister can drown in his own

excrement. It’s so undignified, and hard on the kids.

They’re not daft, they know why the press suddenly want

to photograph us. The lad doesn’t know what’s been going

on, too young, but the girls have a pretty shrewd idea, and I

don’t like the signals we’ll be sending them.’

‘Like what?’ said Tom.

‘Well, like, it’s all right if you don’t get caught, and then

it’s still all right as long as you keep on lying.’

‘Presumably the other chap’s got to put on the same

performance?’

‘Oh, yes, and he’s more than willing. There he is, only

about a month into his grand new job. His wife’s agreeable

too; she’s enjoying her new life as well. And their kids are

younger.’

‘I’m amazed they want you to do it,’ said Tom. ‘I’d have

thought they’d be into a new form of damage limitation by

now. Everyone knew that picture did Mellor more harm

than good. No, of course you shouldn’t do it if you don’t

want to.’

‘I bloody don’t,’ said Macintosh. His jaw set in a way that

Tom recognised, and had come to dread himself.

‘The only thing I would say is that there might be

something you could get out of it.’

‘Oh, yeah? What? I’ve got Maureen back, that’s all I care

about. On my terms too, this time, no more of that lingerie

party nonsense.’

‘But is that really all you care about?’ said Tom.

‘Well, yes. That and the kids. I mean, what did you have

in mind, Tom?’

‘I’m not quite sure. It was something Octavia said,

she—’

And then he remembered Felix and the missed phone

call and its inevitable consequences - thinly veiled implications

that he hadn’t wanted to call at all, truculent

questioning as to whether he could cope with the project

anyway if he was so busy, Octavia’s resentment at his

negligence, when she heard about it from her father — none

of these things was helping his concentration. He’d have to

ring Felix straight away.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look, Bob, can you excuse me a

minute? I have got an idea, but I’ve got to ring my

secretary. She was getting some information for me that I

need before I go on to the House.’

It always worked, that one; sounded as if he was going to

the House of Commons to speak on the floor, rather than

hang about in the committee corridor for an hour or so, or

in the main lobby, waiting for someone to arrive.

‘Sure. Can I order another coffee?’

‘Of course. Brandy?’

‘No, thank you. Got work to do this afternoon.’

Tom ran down the wide steps to the men’s cloakroom,

pulling out his mobile phone, and punched out Miller’s

private number.

Felix Miller’s secretary said she was sorry, but Mr Miller

had left the office for the day and couldn’t be contacted

until that night, when he would be in Edinburgh. Could

she ask Mr Miller to phone Mr Fleming from there? She

couldn’t give Mr Fleming the number as it was a private house, and she had specific instructions not to.

Tom said that would be very kind of her and would she

give Mr Miller his good wishes and tell him that he had

been unable to call any earlier, as he had been in back-to

back meetings since eight thirty that morning.

He went back to the table, sat down again, drained his

coffee cup.

Macintosh was leafing through some papers. ‘You’ll get

back to me then on this regulation business? Very soon.’

‘Yup. Early next week. I’ll have a chat with an old chum

of mine in Whitehall. Meanwhile, sit tight, don’t do

anything rash.’

‘You sure about that? I did meet someone at a dinner last

week, someone quite high up in the government, who said

any time I wanted help, I had only to lift the phone. We

could shortcut the whole—’

‘Bob, please don’t do that. Let me put it more strongly.

On no account do that. Half the time these guys you meet

at dinners don’t mean it, or don’t have the clout and then

you’ve ruffled feathers in Whitehall which in the long run

are more important. Okay?’

‘Yes, okay,’ said Macintosh. But he didn’t sound

convinced. ‘And you don’t think I should do this ruddy

photo shoot?’

‘No, I don’t. Not if you don’t want to. Unless—’ Tom

stopped. He felt rather cold suddenly, as he always did

when he had a brainwave. ‘Unless we did something really

very clever. Made everybody happy.’

‘Does that include me?’

‘Oh, it does, Bob. It most certainly does. Pass me the

water, would you, there’s a good chap. Now listen…’

‘Fleming!’ Melanie’s head appeared round Octavia’s door.

‘Look, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask, could you possibly

come into my office? We do have a meeting scheduled and

it’s already ten minutes late.’

‘Sorry. I was on a complicated call.’ Octavia was never sure if it was Melanie’s personality, or her own innate sense of hierarchy, bred from her rigid childhood and education,

that made her so constantly nervous of annoying her.

‘That’s okay. Now listen,’ she said, leading Octavia back

into her own office, pushing a large tortoiseshell comb into

her wild hair, ‘any progress on Cultivate yet, and a sponsor?

Margaret Piper’s written me a letter, saying she’s very

dissatisfied.’

‘Evil old bat,’ said Octavia. ‘She’s my client, what’s she

doing complaining to you? Honestly, she’s getting more of

my time proportionately than any of my other clients. I

watched her feeding her chins for over two hours, and she

didn’t even thank me.’

‘I think she sees me as headmistress here,’ said Melanie.

‘Now calm down, Octavia, I’m not blaming you, obviously,

and I know how hard it is to get sponsorship at the

moment, and specially for a charity like that one. But I

don’t want to lose her, and if we’re not careful, we will.

And if, as you say, Lloyds Bank aren’t going to come up

with the goods, then we do have a problem and maybe I

should throw some names into the ring.’

It was pride as much as anything else that made Octavia

say she had actually, she thought, now got a sponsor for

Cultivate. Foolish, dangerous pride, as she saw very clearly

afterwards …

Marianne Muirhead had had a very good day. She had won

her golf match, on a course she was particularly fond of, the

Royal Surrey in Richmond. It had been the first course

ever to be designed for women players, and was extremely

pretty, studded with trees and ornamental shrubs and set on

the edge of the Old Deer Park, in that lovely area between

the Thames and Kew Gardens.

She had then stopped off to shop in Sloane Street on her

way home and bought herself an extremely chic black crepe

trouser suit from Prada, some perilously high-heeled boots

to wear with it, and an exquisitely beaded evening bag in

Valentino, and had then reached home to find a spur-of

the moment dinner invitation with one of her more interesting women friends, a barrister, waiting for her on

the answering machine. She phoned to accept and to agree

on a restaurant — Mon Plaisir in Monmouth Street, ‘so

pretty and the best frites in London’ — and then went down

to greet Romilly, who was calling her from the hall, flushed

with excitement at being chosen to play a saxophone solo at

the concert her school was putting on at the end of term.

‘Very well done, darling! That is just so exciting. What

are you going to play?’

‘“Summertime.” From Porgy and Bess. It’s really really

hard but—’

‘But you’ll be wonderful. Darling, I’m really pleased for

you. And proud. We must make sure Daddy is here - let

me have the date straight away, so I can brief him.’ It was

one of Marianne’s strengths as a divorced parent that she did

not just pay lip service to involving her ex-husband in their

children’s lives — she worked extremely hard and successfully

at it.

‘Sure. Thanks.’

Romilly kissed her mother. She was very tall for her age,

as tall as her sister Zoe’, and still growing. She was very thin,

and she had braces on her teeth, but she was clearly going to

be lovely, with a sheet of fair hair falling down her back,

perfect clear skin, and her mother’s large green eyes and full

mouth. She was shy and rather serious, hard working and

dutiful.

Zoe, who was none of those things, found her sister’s

goodness trying and teased her constantly about it, not

always kindly, while using her remorselessly as slave, banker

— Romilly always had money in her account while Zoe’s

allowance was spent long before she got it — and source of

alibi. Nevertheless, Zoe adored her and was fiercely

protective of her, more so than Marianne, constantly

watchful for what she felt might be unsuitable friends and

influences, critical of any clothes that seemed to her

remotely sexy — ‘Mum, you can’t let her go out in that

dress! It’s disgusting, you can see her knickers’ — and volubly anxious at Romilly’s naivety and gullibility. ‘Honestly, Romilly, you’ll end up in a brothel one of these days.

If some old perv came up to you in the street and told you

he needed you to come home with him, and make him a

nice cup of tea, you’d believe him.’

It annoyed Romilly, this protectiveness, and amused

Marianne, who was inclined to be liberal and argued that

Zoe would never have submitted to such censure. Zoe,

however, responded with some truth that she had been

born streetwise and could see trouble before it actually hit

her in the face.

‘You’ve got to be more careful with her, Mum; she’s

okay translating Chaucer, but she’s a complete spastic when

it comes to real life.’

Marianne said humbly that she would try to be more

careful.

But it was Zoe who was occupying her attention that

day: she needed to talk to Alec about her. Zoe planned to

take a gap year when she left school and spend it working

with some youth volunteer scheme in Zimbabwe. It

sounded rather worrying to Marianne, and, she couldn’t

help feeling, owed less to Zoe’s highmindedness and social

conscience than to an attachment to a boy she had met and

fancied who was joining the scheme himself. Marianne

didn’t dislike the boyfriend, he was extremely nice and

considerably more highminded than Zoe, but she felt he

was better equipped to survive the rigours of the scheme

than her daughter, and that he might become disillusioned

with her and thus prove a disappointment over the time

they spent out there: with potentially disastrous results.

It was, of course, out of the question to suggest any of

this to Zoe; the only hope was to distract her with a more

attractive and suitable plan for her gap year. Alec had

suggested he spoke to his sister in Sydney who ran a fashion

PR business, to see if she could employ Zoe in some

capacity. Zoe had long wanted to go to Australia, and from

Sydney would be able to join the teenage travel trail round

the rest of the country; Marianne had heard no more from

Alec about it, though, and Zoe was pressing her to sign papers and make large deposits on the volunteer scheme.

Zoe was going to be late home that evening, so

Marianne went up to her room, picked up the phone next

to her rather beautiful French roll-top bed, and dialled her

ex-husband at his New York office.

Mr Muirhead was in a meeting, his secretary said, but she

would have him call. Less than half an hour later, Alec

Muirhead’s voice — drawly, gravelly, the voice that

Marianne had so foolishly fallen in love with — was on the

line.

‘Good morning, dear. How are you?’

‘I’m fine, Alec. It’s late afternoon here, of course, it’s a

perfect English summer day, and I’ve won a golf match.

And bought a very expensive outfit. What more could a

woman ask?’

‘Very little, I’m sure. And the girls?’

‘Fine. I’m ringing about—’