too outraged for speech. “Fuck! How dare he? The lying little …”
“I’ll pick you up at seven.” Teddy beamed. “We’ll go to Rules.”
RULES WAS UNLIKE ANY RESTAURANT ALEXIA had ever been to. Since moving to London, she had occasionally been taken out to smart establishments where they served champagne and oysters, and where pretentious maître d’s lorded it over their wealthy clientele by denying them the best tables.
Rules was in a different class to any of those places. Yes, it was expensive, but the menu read like a boarding school lunch board: toad in the hole, spotted dick, jugged hare, steak and kidney pudding, jam roly-poly. The average age of the waiters must have been eighty if they were a day, all of them men and dressed as if they’d walked off the pages of a Dickens novel, in long black aprons and stiffly starched shirts. Everything about the place, from the overcooked vegetables, to the smell of beeswax on the polished wood floors, to the cut-glass accents ricocheting off the walls, was as upper-class English as Buckingham Palace.
The moment she walked through the door, Alexia realized two things.
The first was that she did not belong here.
The second was that Teddy De Vere did.
“You’re not still miffed about the crabs thing, are you?” Teddy asked, in a voice Alexia could have wished were at least a decibel lower.
“No, I am not miffed,” she whispered back. “I’m furious. Everyone knows the only way in to the Commons for a woman is as a secretary. I’m wildly overqualified, but now, thanks to that asshole, I don’t stand a chance. I mean, as if anyone could give Clive Leinster crabs! As if he isn’t alive with them already, the revolting little pervert.”
Teddy De Vere chuckled. “You know you have a marvelous way with words, Alexia. You should be a politician.”
Alexia prodded her unappetizing Yorkshire pudding. “One day.”
“Why not today? There’s a seat going begging in Bethnal Green.”
Alexia laughed. “It’s not begging for me.”
“It could be,” Teddy said seriously. “I put some feelers out at the Carlton Club the other night, in between spying for you. They’re looking for someone different to contest that seat. A ‘younger, more modern face’ was how Tristan put it.”
“Tristan? As in Tristan Channing?”
Teddy De Vere nodded. “We were at Eton together.”
Of course you were. Tristan Channing ran Conservative central office. He was the closest thing to God within the party. “Young and modern is one thing. But do you really think a woman from my background has a chance in that seat?”
“Why not?” Teddy shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? Forget all this nonsense about being a secretary and throw your name in the hat. What’s the worst that can happen?”
It was hard to believe that that conversation had taken place more than thirty years ago. And now here she was, home secretary. I always had ambition. But Teddy was the one who pushed me. He gave me the confidence and he opened the doors.
“Home Secretary? Commissioner Grant has arrived.”
Alexia’s permanent private secretary, Sir Edward Manning, broke her reverie. Immaculate as ever in a bespoke three-piece suit, with his hair smoothed flat against his scalp, Edward smelled faintly of the same Floris aftershave that Teddy wore.
“About bloody time. I’m supposed to meet the Russian ambassador at four-fifteen, you know. My day just got completely squeezed.”
“I know, Home Secretary. This shouldn’t take too long.”
A couple of influential Russian oligarchs based in London were spitting teeth at the new regulations Alexia had proposed to Parliament, designed to close tax loopholes for the super rich and to prevent Russian money from being laundered through the City. As a result, the ambassador had demanded a meeting, and Sir Edward had granted it. Russian oligarchs were not the sort of people whom the Home Office wanted as enemies. Commissioner Grant was going to have to cut to the chase.
“Home Secretary, I do apologize. We had a developing situation to deal with in Burnley this morning, a possible Islamic terrorist cell.”
Commissioner Grant was in his late forties, overweight and altogether unattractive, with a pale, doughy face, piggy little eyes, and thin lips that he permanently wetted with a nervously darting tongue. Next to Edward Manning he looked horribly disheveled in a crumpled nylon suit, his cheap Tie Rack tie splattered with coffee stains.
Alexia was not reassured. I hope his mind is less disordered than his dress sense.
“Is this something I need to be aware of?”
“Yes, ma’am. The threat has been neutralized but your office has been given a full briefing.”
“I thought we’d go through everything after this meeting,” Sir Edward Manning said smoothly.
“Surely a terror threat takes priority over a few nutters showing up at my house or making crank calls?”
“As I said, Home Secretary, the threat isn’t active. And your security is vitally important. If I may …”
Without waiting for approval, Commissioner Grant pulled a laptop out of his briefcase and plunked it down on Alexia’s desk. Pushing a stack of documents to one side, he launched directly into a PowerPoint presentation.
“As prisons minister, you received more threats last year than any other Tory politician.”
It was a punchy opening. Alexia thought, He’s not frightened of me. That’s good.
“I did upset a few people.”
“More than a few, Home Secretary. This is a list of incidents relating to your security. Everything from protest marches to egg throwing to hate mail is listed here, in order of seriousness. My job is to isolate the genuine danger from the, er …”
“General sea of loathing?” Alexia smiled. The commissioner smiled back.
“I was going to say ‘from the merely unpleasant.’ ”
“Right. How can I help?”
“If I understand correctly from Sir Edward, there have been three specific incidents since your appointment as home secretary. The individual who tried to gain admittance to your country residence. The poisoning of your husband’s dog. And the threatening phone call made to your London home.”
“That’s correct. Do you think the three are linked?”
“No.”
Alexia raised an eyebrow. It was a more unequivocal response than she’d expected.
“At least, the death of the dog may be connected to the late-night visit to Kingsmere. But the phone call we’re treating as a separate incident. Here’s what we know so far.”
With
