Ten Days. Gillian Slovo
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He straightened up and smiled.
‘To give the background to the appointment which saw the Prime Minister and Home Secretary involved in a public spat, we go to our home affairs correspondent . . .’
5.35 a.m.
As his Jaguar drifted through the deserted streets, in the wake of an unmarked Rover, Peter sat back and listened to the news.
‘Following reports of corruption at the heart of the Met,’ he heard, ‘and the unexpected resignation of the last Commissioner, the new man, Joshua Yares, whose nickname of “The Wall” is said to derive from his refusal to accept lower standards, was the Prime Minister’s choice.’
Now the test of whether they were going to fall into the trap that he had set for them.
‘In a recent interview,’ he heard, ‘the Home Secretary, Peter Whiteley, suggested that Yares’s well-documented friendship with the Prime Minister might put the independence of the Met at risk. In expressing his disgruntlement, and in such a forthright manner, the Home Secretary gave grist to the rumours that there has been a rift between the two politicians and that he is about to launch a leadership challenge – something that many in the Party have long anticipated.’
Yes – he smiled – they’d taken the bait.
Clever Frances: it had been her idea for Peter to go public with his defeat over the new appointment. That the Prime Minister had overruled his Home Secretary had increased the Party faithful’s dissatisfaction with their leader’s rising control-freakery, which, according to the latest poll, was also beginning to annoy the electorate.
‘That’s the news this morning. Now let’s see what the weather has in store for us.’
No prizes for guessing that what the weather had in store was hot, even hotter or the hottest day since records began. ‘Switch it off,’ he said.
When his driver obeyed, he settled himself into the silence, ignoring the pile of red boxes and early editions beside him and blurring his vision so that the flashing past of dim street lights and the night buses carrying a cargo of workers on their way to wake the city did not intrude. He yawned.
He was able to function on little sleep, and pretty well, but on the rare occasions when it was possible just to be, and not to act, this same weariness would wash over him. He could feel it in his bones, as if he had just run the marathon, although the truth was he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done any exercise. The swimming pool at Chequers two weekends ago might have been his chance – especially in the heat – but the hosepipe ban and the resulting surface of green slime that no amount of straining seemed to shift had put him off. Another yawn. The strain of preparing to launch a leadership challenge – even though he was convinced that it had to be done – was telling on him.
‘Tired, sir?’
Although he pretended he hadn’t heard the question, it did break his reverie.
He glanced at the boxes, thinking of the heap of briefing and official papers they contained. He’d gone through the lot the previous evening: glancing at the ‘to see’; reading more carefully through the summaries of the ‘to decide’ papers and then deciding; and after that he had spent some considerable time pondering the ones that had been specially marked as having potential presentational problems. These – the problems that the press might seize on – he couldn’t risk. Not now when the stakes were about to go sky high.
This thought carried him back to Yares, whose appointment the Prime Minister had bludgeoned through. Why had such an adept politician, whose deviousness included giving his ministers their heads (along with rope to hang themselves), interfered in Peter’s choice? Sure, Yares looked good on paper, but the other candidate, Anil Chahda, was already Deputy Commissioner. Having served under the last bod, Chahda knew the ropes, and given he was also Britain’s highest-ranking ethnic officer his promotion would have been a coup not only for Peter but also for the whole government. Never mind that Chahda was the kind of policeman that a Home Secretary could do business with.
Yet the PM had been so intent on seeing Yares in the job he’d left Peter with no choice other than to concede. It was all too odd. The Prime Minister was far too ruthless to do anything for the sake of friendship, so his actions could not be explained by his connection to Yares.
Something else was going on, although Peter couldn’t figure out what. He must set somebody to solving the mystery, somebody he could trust, which thought sunk him into the soup of wondering, at this, the most decisive moment of his career, who he could and couldn’t trust. This led him in turn on to the things he knew and the things he didn’t know, and then to facts and figures and questions he hadn’t answered, and questions he might be asked at the dispatch box, all of them piling up one against the other, so that it was as if he were being sucked under a particularly boggy marsh, the gluey waters closing over his head about to suffocate him and . . .
‘In the marsh,’ he heard.
He came to with a start. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your offices in Marsham Street? Is that where you want to go?’
He glanced at his watch: 5.53.
He could picture the fuss that would ensue if he pitched up at Marsham Street at such an early hour. Private secretaries, diary secretaries, and their secretaries, researchers and the tea makers who lubricated them all would be rousted from their beds and made to taxi in, and all because their Secretary of State was having trouble sleeping. Not the kind of reputation he wanted and, anyway, he needed time to think and calm to do it in. Where better than in his office behind the Speaker’s Chair? ‘If you wouldn’t mind dropping me at the House.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘St Stephen’s entrance.’
He caught the surprised flicker of the driver’s eyes.
‘I like to, every now and then,’ he said. Because it reminded him, although he didn’t say this, of his first time walking in as an MP. And of the time before as well, the very first in his life, when he was the boy on a school trip who’d said out loud what he was thinking – that one day he would belong to this place – and then had to endure the mocking hilarity of his peers. ‘Is that a problem?’
‘I’m fond of St Stephen’s myself,’ the driver said. ‘We all are. But it only opens at eight.’
‘Drop me by Carriage Gates, then. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’
5.57 a.m.
The car carrying Met Commissioner Joshua Yares swept round Parliament Square and before it turned into Bridge Street Joshua’s gaze was snagged by the sight of a Jaguar that had stopped by Carriage Gates. That any car had been allowed to stop there rather than being waved away or through was what first attracted his attention, but what kept him looking was the sight of the door of the Jaguar being opened by a waiting policeman to allow the disgorgement of the portly figure of Home Secretary Peter Whiteley.
‘Strange.’
‘It’s early,’ the driver said. ‘And he is the Home Secretary. They wouldn’t normally stop there.’