Connections (16 page)

“Your choice,” said Fleur.

“At least I make them, unlike some,” Jess returned. She looked up at Dominic and smiled. “Get some drinks – then I want to hear all about you.”

When he was at the bar she looked at Fleur. “God – he's handsome.”

“I noticed you'd noticed,” Fleur said.

Drink and drugs aside, she thought, Jess would never have behaved like this – making passes at Dominic and insulting Joe – with people she considered her equals. The last ten years had seen Jess married to a respected journalist and getting more successful at her job until she'd effectively become Debs Smith's second-in-command. The Drakes had bought a big house in Highgate and a farmhouse in France. Jess had joined the “media-ocracy”, which, if it didn't mean having real power, meant contacts with and some influence over those who did. Fleur had done it herself and knew what it felt like, but she'd come down to earth with a bang and
joined the punters. Jess hadn't and that was why she didn't care what she did here.

Fleur went to the bar, picked up a glass and followed Dominic back to the table.

Jess had an address book out and said to Dominic, “Put your number down and I'll give you a ring when I've fixed up a meeting. We could go out – Fleur could bring her cousin.” She leaned forward. “You see, Fleur's had this surprise. She's found out something about herself. I mean, to you and me, Dom, she might look all meek and mild, somewhat depressed if the truth were told, and out of work –
but
– and this is the point –
but
—”

“Shut up, Jess. Just shut up,” said Fleur, leaning towards her. “You're drunk. I don't know what's the matter with you and I don't care. I'm going home.” She stood up.

Jess said, “If you can call it a home.”

Fleur said to her, “Things change, Jess, you know. Friendships
can
end. I'm going. Are you coming with me or not?”

Jess shook her head. “One day, Fleur, you'll wake up and think what you've lost and you'll bloody want to kill yourself. Don't expect me to sympathise.”

“This is money, Jess – only money.”

“Just money. Just money. You're talking about the most powerful thing in the world.”

“You've changed, Jess Stadlen,” Fleur said. “God – how you've changed …”

“You haven't – that's the trouble.”

Dominic, too, stood up. He said, “Goodbye, girls. I'm off.” He nodded at both of them and walked away.

“I'll call you,” Jess called after him. He walked out.

Jess turned to Fleur. “Charming friends you've got. Lovely manners.”

“I don't think you've got any right to criticise. This evening hasn't been fun. I'll call a cab for you.”

“I'll come back to your place. I don't want to sit waiting in this grim pub.”

They walked silently back to Adelaide House. There were no
lights on in Dominic's flat. Fleur thought he wouldn't want to be there alone. She called a minicab and they both sat waiting for it to arrive. “I'm only trying to help you,” Jess said finally.

“Don't say any more,” warned Fleur.

“See reason,” Jess appealed.

“‘Money, the most powerful thing in the world',” Fleur mocked. “Do you know what you sound like?”

“A fucking realist, that's what. OK – money's not the most important thing in the world, but it certainly feels like it when you haven't got any.”

“How the hell would you know?” Fleur questioned, knowing she should not be drawn into the argument, but unable to resist. “You've never been without anything.”

“My family were immigrants,” Jess stated.

“Two generations ago,” said Fleur. “And your parents don't go on like you. Your father would faint if he heard you. It's the last ten years of hanging around with all those yuppies snorting coke and flashing gold cards about. If you can't buy it, fuck it and if you can't do either, throw it away.”

“I loved it,” said Jess.

“Everybody did. Then it changed.”

“For you, maybe. Not for the rest of us. It's still there, Fleur. Bigger and better than before, maybe a tad more discreet, that's all. And you can come back. Your father's your chance.”

The phone rang. The minicab was outside. Jess picked up her bag and charged off. “Think about it,” she said over her shoulder.

Fleur sat down, thinking: Another awful evening, worse than last night.

Dominic rang the bell and edged in cautiously. “She gone?”

Fleur laughed.

“I crept back to the flat as if I was going to rob the place. I didn't dare come round till I heard your front door close.”

“She's not always like that. Honest.”

“If you say so,” he replied. “She didn't seem to take to Joe, did she?”

“She took to you, though,” Fleur said.

“I don't think she hated me,” he said.

“I could kill her. I told her you'd been at a funeral. She was fucking demented. Basically, she's depressed.”

“Let's go to bed,” he suggested. She was in his arms in a flash.

Later he murmured, “I wonder where Joe is.”

“Does it matter?”

“I had a premonition of doom.”

“Don't,” said Fleur. “You know – you're terrific.”

“Be careful. I'm not.”

“Don't believe you.”

“Watch it,” he warned, his arms round her. “Don't get too close.”

“Can't get much closer than this.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“You'd better.”

Fleur's mother rang her the next day as she was about to set out to work the lunchtime shift at the Findhorn Star.

“I haven't got much time, Grace,” she said. “I'm off to work.” She was feeling frantic. The morning post had included a huge envelope of forwarded mail from the old Verity office. It had included tax demands, letters from creditors and a threat of bankruptcy.

“I don't mind,” Grace told her. “In fact, I'd just as soon cut this short.” She paused. “It's slightly awkward.”

Fleur wondered. It wasn't like her mother to find things awkward. She and Robin lived in a crystal-clear world, achieved by allowing nothing untoward to enter their lives. Faced with an intrusion of unpleasantness, they got the stupid thing under control rapidly, like hitting a badly behaved dog with a rolled-up copy of the
Radio Times.

Grace started up again. “I've had a call from Henry Jones, who I gather you met at your father's house.” She paused again. Fleur thought – Ouch! She wished she'd mentioned going to meet her
father before Grace and Robin heard the news from someone else. And why had Henry Jones got in touch with her mother, she wondered? How had he even got the number? Easily, she supposed. In that world such things were easy.

Grace said, “He told me he had the impression on the basis of that one encounter that you didn't want to maintain any relationship with your father and his family. He told me your father was quite upset about this.” There was yet another pause, then she went on gallantly, “To cut a long story short, Mr Jones was anxious for me to stress to you how much your father wanted to keep up a relationship with you. Robin and I do find it a little odd but I told him I'd talk to you, pass on the message. Though I told him I thought this was a matter for you and your father to sort out between you.”

Fleur thought of the long years of silence. “You don't mind me going to visit him?”

“Of course not. He's your father, after all.”

“He tracked me down. I just don't want to get involved. I don't know what he wants from me.”

“I think if he wants to see you occasionally you should comply,” her mother told her.

Fleur was surprised by this approach. “He did leave you when you were pregnant,” she pointed out.

“That was a long time ago, Fleur. I've no reason to believe your father's a bad man. Give him a chance.”

“What does Robin think?”

“Much the same as I do. This isn't easy to go into over the phone, but I do think you might make an effort.”

“I'll think it over, Ma. I've got to go – I'll be late at the pub.”

“He might be able to help you,” Grace told her.

“That's what Jess says.”

“I think she may be right. I'll let you go – but do think it over.”

“All right.”

“Goodbye, darling.”

“Goodbye.”

Fleur dashed across the road to the pub and as she hurried in Patrick jumped out from behind the bar. “You'll have to manage on your own for a few hours. My car's been vandalised. I've got to get it sorted.”

Fleur was too busy to think during lunchtime, but when things quietened down she stood behind the bar, staring towards the windows, feeling puzzled. Her mother's attitude to the phone call baffled her. After twenty-eight years of Jethro silence and neglect an unknown man had telephoned and asked her to intercede with her daughter on behalf of the man who had stepped out on her all those years ago. Fleur would have assumed her mother would resent this, but, no – she'd taken it for granted and done what Jones asked. But, Fleur thought, if her mother didn't resent Jones's call, she did. It was cheek, the kind of commanding attitude she'd seen revealed during her evening at Eaton Square: the assumption that if you wanted something you just asked and expected the other person to comply.

She turned and started absent-mindedly dusting the optics. “Henry,” her father would have said, “get hold of Fleur's mother and persuade her to tell Fleur to love me.” And, “Right,” Henry Jones would have said. “Miss Smith – find the Carew-Stockleys and get them on the phone.” No sooner said than done. Or had her father over the years kept some kind of check on her mother's doings? It was weird, thought Fleur.

“Miss,” cried a man who, she realised, had been tapping his money on the counter for some time. “Miss – when you've finished the dusting do you think I could have a drink?”

In fact there were two customers there. She served them. Weird, that was what it was, she thought again. Her unworldly, socially responsible mother and Jess, her ambitious, socially irresponsible friend – if she still was a friend – both agreed. And she still hadn't told Dominic about her father – she was worried he'd jeer at her for being a rich girl slumming and assume that made him a bit of rough trade to be picked up, used and then dropped. Not that she was sure, really, what Dominic was to her. And he had never said what she was to
him, except to warn her, mysteriously, not to get too close.

A man came up to the bar. “Don't worry, darling. It may never happen,” he told her.

Next morning a letter arrived from Zoe Andriades inviting Fleur to stay with her, her husband and the Jethros over Christmas at their house in Barbados.

By God, William, if ever you get into one of those moods where you regret a misspent life, what you did, what you missed, where did it all go wrong and so forth, try walking into an out-of-season South Coast pub in the middle of the week. Look at the other punters – a couple of poor old guys nursing a pint – a group of small town boasters who probably went to school together, all in bad leisurewear. Spend an hour or two in a place like that and you'll soon be convinced your own life's been a blissful dream. There's nothing here, William, nothing at all.

Here's some stuff taken from the press at around the time we're thinking about:

Washington Post,
September 10
^th
: IRANIAN BOMB NOT A POSSIBILITY.

Daily Telegraph,
December 15
^th
: ISRAEL CLAIMS IRAN HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN PRODUCTION. Support is growing in Western official circles for the claims, believed to be based on spy satellite communications, that Iran is on the verge of producing some form of nuclear weaponry. At a press meeting on the Quai d'Orsay, Mr René Drouet, a senior Foreign Ministry official, warned that if Iran had produced or was on the verge of producing any form of nuclear capability the entire balance of power in the Middle East might be affected in the gravest possible way.

Washington Post,
December 15
^th
: Though the White House has questioned the possibility that the Iranian leadership
has control of nuclear warheads and medium to long-range rocket launchers, intelligence reports from neighbouring Lebanon, Israel and Jordan tend to support the claims, as does France, which has traditionally had good intelligence sources in the region.

BBC World Service,
December 16
^th
: The British Foreign Office today refused to either confirm or deny the truth of stories emanating from the Middle East suggesting that the Iranian Government has a silo of nuclear warheads at a secret location. It is claimed with some authority that spy satellites reveal the existence at or near this site
…

Not funny, was it, William, when these reports started coming? Less so now, nearly a year later.

But I'll get back to my story. After the abortive attempt to track down the three alleged perpetrators of the supposed robbery at Gordon Mews, having sent in my bill and got paid, I forgot about it.

Then last December, just my bloody luck, round came Gus Prothero. Prothero was a senior desk warrior from the Foreign Office whose chief responsibility, I'd heard, was recruitment. A man who'd never been in the field was, I feared, about to become my handler, spymaster, controller, whatever jargon you want to use.

I said nothing when we sat down. I let him lead. He said, “I believe around four and a half years ago you were asked by the Home Office to make enquiries concerning the whereabouts of three people, two men and a woman.
”

“
By Adrian Pugh,” I said firmly, naming names.