in the running gutters, and somehow it didn’t seem a propitious day for changing Prime Ministers. A seagull beaten inland by North Sea storms cartwheeled outside the window, its shrieks and insults penetrating the double-glazing, envying them their breakfast before finally tumbling away through the blustery sky. She watched it disappear into the greyness.
‘Don’t expect me to be upset or offended, Mr Landless. The fact that you have enough money and clout to do your homework doesn’t impress me. Neither does it flatter me. I’m used to being chatted up by middle-aged businessmen.’ The insult was intended; she wanted him to know he wasn’t going to get away with one-way traffic. ‘You want something from me. I’ve no idea what but I’ll listen. So long as it’s business.’
She crossed her legs slowly and deliberately so that he would notice. From her days as a child she had had no doubts that men found her body appealing and their excessive attention meant she had never had the opportunity to treat her sex as something to treasure, only as a tool to carve a path through a difficult and ungenerous world. She had decided long ago that if sex were to be the currency of life then she would turn it into a business asset, to open the doors which would otherwise be barred. And men could be such reliable dickheads.
‘You’re very direct, Miss Quine.’
‘I prefer to cut through it rather than spread it. And I can play your game.’ She sat back into the sofa and began counting off the carefully manicured fingers of her left hand. ‘Ben Landless. Age…well, for your well-known vanity’s sake, let’s say not quite menopausal. A rough son-of-a-bitch who was born to nothing and now controls one of the largest press operations in this country.’
‘Soon to be the largest,’ he interrupted quietly.
‘Soon to take over United Newspapers,’ she said, nodding, ‘when the Prime Minister you nominated, backed and got elected virtually single-handed takes over in a couple of hours’ time and waves aside the minor inconvenience of his predecessor’s mergers and monopolies policy. You must’ve been celebrating all night, I’m surprised you had the appetite for breakfast. But you have the reputation of being a man with insatiable appetites. Of all kinds.’ She spoke almost seductively in an accent that had been smoothed and carefully softened but not obliterated. She wanted people to take notice and to remember, to pick her out from the crowd. So the vowels were still New England, a shade too long and lazy for London, and the sentiments often rough as if they had been fashioned straight from the dole queues of Dorchester. ‘So what’s on your mind, Ben?’
A smile played around the publisher’s rubbery lips but his eyes remained unmoved, watching her closely. ‘There is no deal. I backed him because I thought he was the best man for the job. There’s no private pay-off. I shall take my chances, just like all the rest.’
She suspected that was the second lie of the conversation, but let it pass.
‘Whatever else happens, it’s a new era. A change of Prime Minister means fresh challenges. And opportunities. I suspect he’ll be more relaxed about letting people make money than was Henry Collingridge. That’s good news for me. And potentially for you.’
‘With all the economic indicators scooting downhill?’
‘That’s just the point. Your opinion-research company has been in business for…what, twenty months? You’ve made a good start, you’re well respected. But you’re small, and small boats like yours could be swamped if it gets rough over the next couple of years. Anyway, you’ve no more patience than I do in running a shoestring operation. You want to make it big, to be on top. And for that you need cash.’
‘Not your cash. If I had newspaper money poured into my operation it would ruin every shred of credibility I’ve built. My business is supposed to be objective analysis, not smears and scares with a few naked starlets thrown in to boost circulation.’
He ran his thick tongue around his mouth as if trying absent-mindedly to dislodge a piece of breakfast. ‘You underestimate yourself,’ he muttered. He produced a toothpick, which he used like a sword-swallower to probe into a far corner of his jaw. ‘Opinion polls are not objective analysis. They’re news. If an editor wants to get an issue rolling he commissions people like you to carry out some research. He knows what answers he wants and what headline he’s going to run, he just needs a few statistics to give the whole thing the smack of authenticity. Polls are the weapons of civil war. Kill off a government, show the nation’s morals are shot to hell, establish that we all love Palestinians or hate apple pie.’
He grew more animated as he warmed to his theme. His hands had come down from his mouth and were grasped in front of him as if throttling an incompetent editor. There was no sign of the toothpick; perhaps he had simply swallowed it, as he did most things which got in his way.
‘Information is power,’ he continued. ‘And money. A lot of your work is done in the City, for instance, with companies involved in takeover bids. Your little polls tell them how shareholders and the financial institutions might react, whether they’ll be supportive or simply dump the company for a bit of quick cash. Takeover bids are wars, life or death for the companies concerned. That information of yours has great value.’
‘And we charge a very good fee for such work.’
‘I’m not talking thousands or tens of thousands,’ he barked dismissively. ‘That’s petty cash in the City. The sort of information we’re talking about allows you to name your own figure.’ He paused to see if there would be a squawk of impugned professional integrity; instead she reached behind her to pull down her jacket, which had ridden up against the back of the sofa. As she did so she exposed and accentuated the curves of her breasts. He took it as a sign of encouragement.
‘You need money. To expand. To grab the polling industry by the balls and to become its undisputed queen. Otherwise you go belly-up in the recession. Be a great waste.’
‘I’m flattered by your avuncular interest.’
‘You’re not here to be flattered. You’re here to listen to a proposition.’
‘I’ve known that from the moment I got your invitation. Although for a moment there I thought we’d wound up on the lecture circuit.’
Instead of responding, he levered himself out of his chair and crossed to the window. The gun-grey clouds had descended still lower and it had begun to rain again. A barge was battling to make headway through the ebbing tide beneath Westminster Bridge where the December winds had turned the usually tranquil river into a muddy, ill-tempered soup of urban debris and bilge oil. He gazed in the direction of the Houses of Parliament, his hands stuffed firmly into the folds of his tent-like trousers, scratching himself.
‘Our leaders over there, the fearless guardians of the nation’s welfare. Their jobs are full of shared confidences, information waiting to be sensationalized and abused. And every single one of those bastards would leak the lot if it served their purposes. There’s not a political editor in town who doesn’t know every word of what’s gone on within an hour of a Cabinet meeting finishing, nor a general who hasn’t leaked a confidential report before doing battle over the defence budget. And you find me the politician who hasn’t tried to undermine a rival by starting gossip about his sex life.’ His hands flapped in his trouser pockets like the sails of a great ship trying to catch the wind. ‘Prime Ministers are the worst,’ he snorted contemptuously. ‘If they want to rid themselves of a troublesome Minister, they’ll assassinate him in the press beforehand with tales of drunkenness or disloyalty. Inside information. It’s what makes the world go round.’
‘Perhaps that’s why I never went into politics,’ she mused.
