The Bell Ringers (37 page)

She sat down, leaned forward and slapped the top of her thighs with frustration. ‘Nobody cares, Eyam. That's the whole point. Nobody gives a shit as long as they feel safe, they can feed themselves and watch TV. Most people have no higher political aspiration than a snail. The public buys the idea that these things make their lives easier and safer.'

‘But they haven't been given the choice! Officials and politicians lied. Public money was spent without Parliament knowing.'

‘That's hardly a first. The whole point of governments is that they take decisions about issues the public don't want to think about. That's what you spent your life doing.'

He got up, walked to the door and looked out. ‘Tell me you haven't become as dumb and cynical as you seem,' he said.

She shot to her feet, picked up the empty mug and flung it at him, missing by several feet. ‘God, you can be so bloody rude and patronising, Eyam. That's why I didn't reply to your emails.'

He turned. ‘I'm sorry: that
was
rude, I apologise. But you don't seem to see that this isn't a game: Eden White ordered the deaths of Holmes and Russell to protect his system.' He moved to her and put his hands on her shoulders. Again he said he was sorry. ‘But their deaths are as nothing,' he continued, ‘when you really understand that this system has begun to presume to know the intentions of every mind in the
country and is penalising tens of thousands of people with increasing vindictiveness. You see, it allows no private realm. People can't exist inside themselves. It is totalitarian because it dominates and terrorises from within. Once a government has that kind of power it not only develops extremely brutal characteristics as a matter of course, it becomes grossly inefficient because it is no longer accountable and its actions are never held up to scrutiny.'

She shifted under his hands. ‘I don't need an elementary course in government studies.'

‘We all do,' he said, ‘because this is the classic totalitarian sickness of the twentieth century, updated for the twenty-first century.'

She looked up to the rafters. ‘Oh please God – save me from this. You were the one who helped Eden White, the man who threatens to destroy the very system you cherished.'

‘Exactly.'

‘You set up the Ortelius Institute for Public Policy Research – his think tank.'

‘Yes.'

‘You gave him credibility. He used your brain, your ideas and policies to get to the most powerful people in the land and become one of them himself. You made it possible for him. He bought you.'

‘Let's not forget White developed into a murderer and tyrant by proxy long after I worked for him.'

She freed herself gently from his hold and they stood looking at each other.

‘Look, I have to get out of this damp shirt.'

‘Be my guest,' she said.

He went over to the sink, took off his jacket, sweater and a plaid shirt and washed himself in cold water with a flannel. He was tanned and there was little spare flesh on him. ‘You look fit,' she said.

‘Thank you, Sis.'

‘I meant you've lost a lot of weight.'

‘A couple of stone since I began running: actually that's why I didn't notice I was ill. I put my fatigue down to the running. Would you hand me the towel?'

She went over to him with the towel and dried his back. ‘I will help
you,' she said to the back of his head, ‘because you are sick and you are my friend and well, you know . . . for old times' sake. But there are conditions.'

He turned and reached for a shirt on top of a neat pile. ‘That's my girl,' he said.

‘You have to tell me everything you know. Where possible I want to see the documents and the proof. If I think that there is no case to answer, or that your evidence is insufficient, I reserve the right to withdraw my support.'

He nodded. ‘I'll tell you everything, but as you know the proof is dispersed and hidden. What made you change your mind so quickly?'

‘You can be sure it wasn't your lecture on twentieth-century totalitarianism. It's the illegality of it all – the two murders and the fact they tried to incriminate you as a paedophile. I'm a lawyer: I believe in the law and the rule of law.'

‘Carry me over floods, Sister, carry me to the other side.'

She smiled despite herself. ‘Look, I'm meeting Kilmartin later. I need to think about getting to a place called Long Stratton.'

‘Don't worry about that: Freddie will take you, but I want you to meet somewhere else – a village called Richard's Cross.' He picked up a walkie-talkie, which she hadn't noticed, and spoke: ‘Give us about an hour.'

‘OK,' came a voice.

She switched on Kilmartin's phone. ‘I'll just text him.' But before she could compose the message the phone vibrated with an incoming text, which she read to Eyam:
‘Meet 5.00–6.00 – where?'

‘Tell him the parish church in Richard's Cross. It's a little way out of the village. We'll look after the arrangements. Freddie will get your stuff from the Dove and he'll take things from there.' He sat down rather heavily on the bed, then lay back and propped himself up with a rolled sleeping bag.

‘You don't look so good.'

‘I'm fine,' he replied. ‘Another cup of tea would be appreciated.'

As she made it, he began to set out the case against John Temple and Eden White. His narrative was clear and unswerving: he did not stray or
repeat himself and only paused to drink. He was the best witness that Kate had ever heard and as she listened she knew that he deserved all her help.

The guests at June Temple's lunch moved slowly along the southern wall of the rose garden in front of Chequers looking at a new collection of narcissi planted by her the year before. Philip Cannon ambled behind the group smoking a cigarette, which caused some annoyance to the prime minister's wife, who claimed the smell would spoil the scent of the flowers.

Cannon had had his fill of the weekend and took no notice of her, yet he conceded to himself she had done a fine job over lunch, charming a group of well-known guests that included a dramatist with a hit at the National Theatre, a historian, a TV anchorman, an actress, the Astronomer Royal and Oliver Mermagen. Over lunch they had talked of cultural renewal and the government's campaign against pornography. The guests wore the slightly flushed and thrilled expression that Cannon was used to seeing on the faces of those who approached the centre of power. In his experience it was almost always accompanied by a manner of exaggerated fascination, no matter what the politics of the individual.

Cannon stopped and looked over the wall at the four protection officers with automatic weapons, who discreetly shadowed the prime minister's movements in the open ground beyond the garden, then glanced back at John Temple and Eden White, who had paused at the centre of the parterre to listen to Mermagen. White glanced towards the main group, underlining what Cannon had noticed at lunch: Eden White had a weakness for celebrities and particularly the petite dark-haired girl who had made it big in Hollywood on the back of an art house movie.

The tour of the garden was a signal that the lunch party was over and soon the guests were departing. The prime minister beckoned Cannon. Inside, the garden girls and other members of staff were packing up and carrying laptops and files through the house to the cars parked at the rear of the building that would take them back to Downing Street.

Cannon followed Temple and White – but not Mermagen, who was
somehow shed by White along the way – to the Long Gallery. As they arrived, a large Aerospatiale helicopter in burgundy livery and carrying White's corporate logo – a version of the Eye of Horus – landed on the ground to the north of the house and disgorged three men.

Temple sat on one of two sofas facing each other and gazed intently at the blue and white chintz pattern, while waiting for the noise of the helicopter's engine to subside. Cannon looked out of the window at the light on the trees against the black clouds in the north and remembered the skies of his boyhood in the Yorkshire Dales.

‘Do you play croquet, Eden?' asked Temple.

White shook his head.

‘We should play more croquet at Chequers this summer. It nurtures the strategic instinct. You know that Harold Wilson dreamed up the idea of a Commonwealth peace mission in Vietnam while playing croquet here?'

‘It doesn't say a lot for the game,' said White. ‘Wilson was a clown.'

‘Came from France,' said Temple.

‘What?'

‘Croquet. It was originally called
jeu de mail.
The Irish made it into the game we know; the Scots made golf out of it.'

‘I don't play that either,' said White.

‘You see that bastard Maclean has been talking to the Leader of the Opposition?' continued Temple, but in the same idling tone he had used about croquet. ‘Met with him in London last night, though he said he was going to China.'

‘He's pathetic,' said White. ‘He can't take his support to the other side now. And the Opposition can't go back on their word to reduce his influence in British national life. They are both in a bind. Call the election. He'll live with it.'

‘What do you think, Philip?'

‘Maclean has been around a lot longer than any of us. There aren't too many governments that get the better of this guy. He's a snake. Business is always first with him. He could make some kind of concession to the Opposition parties that placates them but saves most of his interests, and then in exchange give them his backing. You're seven
points ahead in the polls and rising, but he could turn that around with a campaign against you.'

‘Maclean's not going to do that,' said White softly. ‘Look at it logically, John. The only reason Maclean is angry with you is because he thinks you have a better chance of winning in six months' time, and that's obviously because he
wants
you to win and
needs
you to win. If he goes against you, you'll still win. And where does that leave Maclean? I guarantee he's thought of that.'

‘I hope you're right,' said Temple.

‘But you can stop all this debate by calling the election immediately.'

‘You mean next week?'

‘Why not?' said White. ‘It would forestall the other problem.'

Which other problem, wondered Cannon – Eyam or red algae?

Temple turned to him. ‘Philip?'

‘In principle there's no reason why you shouldn't go next week. The Easter holiday will fall earlier in the campaign, which will mean it won't start properly until afterwards.'

‘A good thing,' said White.

‘The manifesto can go to press this week,' Cannon continued. ‘The advertising slots are booked, the websites geared up. Financially it won't make any difference. The party is as ready as it ever will be. And finally there has been no really adverse reaction to the revelation in Maclean's papers this morning that you were considering a spring election. People are resigned and seem to want to get it over with.'

‘You're right. Have you got a diary?' asked Temple. ‘Remind me of the dates.'

Cannon pulled out his phone and caressed the screen. ‘You were thinking of April the twenty-fifth; if you call it this week you can hold the election on the eighteenth.'

‘The eighteenth it is, then. I will go to the palace on Wednesday.'

‘You have a meeting with the president of the European Commission that morning,' said Cannon.

‘Then I'll see HM at midday,' said Temple. ‘But I want to retain the element of surprise. This information must be kept completely restricted.'

There was a sound at the end of the Long Gallery. ‘Are we disturbing
you, prime minister?' It was Jamie Ferris and the two men he'd brought with him in White's helicopter.

‘No, come along and join us,' Temple called out without turning round.

Ferris arrived at the pair of sofas with the men, whom he did not introduce. They wore business suits and conservative ties. The larger of the two had a thin white plaster covering an injury on his cheek. ‘I felt I should bring you up to speed in person on developments concerning David Eyam, sir.'

‘Yes – we were expecting you.'

‘We know he's here in Britain.'

‘Has he been sighted?'

‘Not as yet, but the money trail has led back to the UK. One of the accounts in the Dutch Antilles transferred half a million dollars to the account held in the name of Pirus Engineering on Friday. The company had connections to Eyam's late father.'

‘Anything else?'

‘GCHQ picked up two calls from the Milford Haven area a week or so ago. Both were made from a point a few miles off the coast. We have checked with Customs and the Coast Guards and now believe Eyam was put ashore by a tender to the private yacht Picardy Rose, which set out from Barfleur in Normandy two days before.'

‘I see,' said Temple. ‘Has he contacted anyone?'

‘The first call was made to a cell phone in the High Castle area.'

‘To this woman you have been watching?'

‘No, we know her number. It was someone else.'

‘But she is his friend – the same person Peter Kilmartin is making contact with.'

‘That's right, Kate Lockhart.'

‘And she is his main contact?'

‘No, I wouldn't say that by any means. We know that communications between them have been infrequent over the last two years. We have learned that she failed to reply to several of his emails before he even left government. There appears to have been some kind of falling out. However, he did leave his property and a considerable sum to her in his will, which would seem to indicate that she is an
integral part of his plans. He phoned her after he had faked the explosion in Colombia. A call shows up in her American phone records. The Americans have let us hear it.'