Читать книгу Goodfellowe MP - Michael Dobbs - Страница 5

Thomas Goodfellowe made a grab for the brakes, only narrowly avoiding a fall to the pavement. He wasn’t yet in full command of his machine, an ancient bicycle with a scratched green frame and a mind of its own. He hadn’t ridden a bike in thirty years and if he hadn’t exactly forgotten how to ride, it was certainly taking time to make contact with the memories. Something had worked its way loose. He hoped it wasn’t him.

The streets of London’s Chinatown were congested with early-evening traffic. Obstacles were everywhere. Travellers rushing, tourists crushing, grubby urchins begging, lovers with blind eyes and revellers whose eyes if not blind were distinctly blurred, with every one of them apparently intent on tumbling from the pavement and falling directly into his path. A kamikaze run, he reckoned, this stretch of Little Newport Street that led to the tube station, but it had been entirely his fault. His eyes had wandered from the road as he waved to Madame Tang. Mind you, since he’d moved into Chinatown some months earlier he’d learnt that it was worth taking a few risks to be on the good side of Madame Tang. She was not so much a feature of the neighbourhood but was the neighbourhood. Of incalculable age and all but invisible wispy hair, she was draped in an ancient woollen cardigan so worn and full of holes that she might have been mistaken for a destitute, shuffling along the pavement pushing a shopping trolley in search of a few fresh vegetables. She had always shuffled, even at the age of thirteen when she had tramped across China, her family’s few possessions strapped upon her back, trying to keep from the clutches of Chiang Kai-shek’s retreating Kuomintang hordes. Black days those, with memories drawn in burning charcoal. Yet nowadays the winds of fortune blew more kindly for Madame Tang. Her eldest son had a degree in engineering from Cambridge, her second son possessed a still better degree from Yale, and beneath that misshapen cardigan dangled a huge bunch of keys which marked Madame Tang as one of the most powerful landlords in Chinatown, with an empire that embraced legitimate commercial premises, dens of impropriety and assorted short-lease apartments which she controlled with considered ruthlessness. And she understood ruthlessness. The soldiers of the Kuomintang had taught her everything there was to know, a lifetime of lessons crammed into one endless weekend in Wuhan when she passed through their hands. It was the last occasion she had seen her two younger sisters and mother, and the last occasion she had ever cried. After that she never indulged in sentiment, and never gave a second chance. Yes, it was worth taking a few risks to be on the good side of Madame Tang.

With a show of reluctance, she acknowledged his wave and shuffled by, clearing her throat in the traditional Chinese manner, which sounded as though she were scraping barnacles, while Goodfellowe’s attentions were drawn to the doorway behind her, where another female figure stood in shameless, almost indecent contrast. Young, barely nineteen but with older eyes, weary from spending too long off her feet and dressed in Lycra hot pants which left not even her moles to the imagination. It was Loretta, longingly watching the world go by just as, she hoped, it lustfully watched her. Two floors above was the room she called her cockpit, rented from Madame Tang, who retained the only key to the premises. It was where Loretta entertained her clients. Loretta described herself as an ordinary working girl, commuting each day from Brighton where she lived with her young daughter and ailing mother, on whose behalf only last week she had sought Goodfellowe’s advice. Something about a housing allowance. He couldn’t be of much help, but at least he had listened, which was more than most. She owed him. From her catwalk on the doorstep she caught his eye and mouthed a few silent words in his direction. He puckered his brow in concentration, unable to catch her meaning, so she repeated the message, her rubied lips shaping the words in a slow and deliberate manner, almost like a nun at devotions. Now he caught her drift and found he was smiling in spite of himself, before quickly glancing away, afraid his cheeks were showing colour. Wouldn’t do accepting such an offer, even if as she was suggesting no money changed hands. The News of the World wouldn’t understand and neither, he suspected, would his constituents. Nor the Chief Whip. Didn’t he know it but the Government was in enough trouble without enforced resignations, even from the obscurity of the backbenches. Still, he reflected, casting a final, fleeting look in Loretta’s direction, he could think of worse reasons to burn and sometimes, particularly of late, burning seemed an almost attractive fate.

He pedalled on. Loretta was scarcely a couple of years older than his own daughter Samantha. No, wouldn’t do, not by any stretch of his middle-aged imagination. Thoughts of Sammy pressed upon him, even more troublesome than the traffic on Charing Cross Road. Oh, Sammy. How much he owed her, how boundless was the part she played in his world, and how stupidly insignificant were the things which nowadays seemed to deplete their lives and form the focus of their row. Row. Not rows, not several of them, but one seamless collision of Goodfellowe stubbornness that felt as though it had lasted without pause since the last summer holiday when, at the age of fifteen, she hadn’t come home till two. The youthful anger that poured out had seemed relentless, like a river in flood. No sooner had he found some means of damming it than it found another, still more unpredictable and chaotic course. What was it last weekend? Yes, of course, her mother’s locket.

He pedalled more energetically, trying to work off his anger. She’d come home on exeat from school, that cripplingly expensive palace of teenage entertainments where they appeared to focus all their energies on finding new ways of extracting money from parents, to announce that she was organizing a charitable fashion show. To him it had seemed yet another excuse to raid his wallet; for her it had been little less than a moral crusade. ‘Fashion Against Famine!’ or some such nonsense. If her words had been sentimental and naive, his had been inexcusably dismissive. But it hadn’t been just the money. She had asked for her mother’s locket. Not to borrow, not just for the fashion show, but for keeps.

‘She doesn’t need it any more. Won’t even know it’s gone, Daddy!’ Sammy had protested.

And that’s what had hurt, scraped open wounds that had never properly healed. Of course she was right. He had bought Elinor the locket to celebrate their wedding anniversary, a lifetime ago when Sammy had been almost twelve and her brother Stevie almost fourteen. Sammy had helped him choose it, had wrapped it for him and admired it from first sight with such an intensity that her mother had promised that, one day, it would be hers. None of them had understood how quickly that day might come.

So he had said no, refused her, not yet willing to let go. Sammy had shouted and argued that it was what her mother would have wanted, and then it was his turn to raise his voice and demand to know how the hell she knew what her mother wanted. They used their anger as shields. Hurting each other, because they were family. Goodfellowes. Sammy had returned to school on Sunday, early and in silence, leaving him to feel as though he had been stranded on an ice floe. That’s what he liked about his rented apartment in Chinatown, not just that it was small and cheap and close to Westminster and because the streets offered impulse and inspiration to rouse the dullest of wits, but even more because you could never be alone in Chinatown, not in the way you could on an ice floe.

The next few moments were to amount to a minute and a half of intense and potentially dangerous confusion. He was preoccupied by lingering thoughts of Sammy, and distracted by the small band of buskers playing jazz on the steps of the Garrick in the half-hour before the theatre doors opened. His new shoes were rubbing raw, which didn’t help when you were about to launch yourself upon Trafalgar Square in the teeth of the rush hour. And if he had to carry his mobile phone along with copies of Hansard and a bottle of Bulgarian Cabernet in the battered wicker basket on his handlebars, he really should have switched the damned thing off. But it started to burble just as he passed South Africa House, just as the traffic lights changed, just as dusk began to muster her forces and take control of the sky – and just as a retired actuary from Margate, jaw defiant beneath uncompromising NHS horn-rims, and driving his treasured Vauxhall in town for the first time in twelve years, came to a complete halt in the middle of the intersection while he attempted to locate the switch for his sidelights. Cabbies shouted, traffic weaved, Chaos Theory took the entire east side of the square in its grip. Butterfly wings had nothing on retired actuaries from Margate. Goodfellowe, caught off guard while scrabbling for his phone, lost control.

The chauffeur in the Rolls-Royce behind had witnessed both the mounting confusion and the changing lights. He had also seen what he thought to be a gap, a window of opportunity, a chance to beat the muddled masses. And his passenger was in a hurry. So he had put his foot down, only to find the leap for freedom suddenly barred by what appeared to be an attempted suicide. His foot slammed from accelerator to brake. Turbo drive to rodeo ride. From the back seat of the wildberry-red Silver Dawn, an exasperated and freshly rumpled passenger bent down to gather up his scattered documents. Then he turned to mouth an unmistakably personalized oath at the cyclist.

Thomas Goodfellowe, tribune of the people and Member of Parliament for Marshwood, had had his first brush with Frederick E Corsa, a man who took pride in representing no one but himself.

At almost the same moment as he was staring into the storm-whipped eyes of Freddy Corsa, another confrontation was taking place which was to have an equally significant effect on Tom Goodfellowe’s life and reputation.

Scarcely more than a moderate stone’s throw from Little Newport Street could be found ‘Zhu’s Apothecary’ – but only if one knew where to look. The entrance stood in a covered alleyway off one of Chinatown’s back streets, and nothing but a small window presented itself to the street. The pseudo-Shanghai lamp-post which had once illuminated the end of the alleyway had been moved – at the insistence of the local feng-shui man and at the considerable expense of the City of Westminster – ten yards farther down the pavement, leaving both alley and apothecary in the grey shadow of evening. All sight of the frugal herbal emporium inside was blocked by display cases packed with the strange wares of the Oriental pharmaceutical trade – weirdly shaped roots, seeds, exotic barks, deer tails, dissected life forms of indeterminate origin, sun-dried sea horses and absurdly twisted ginseng, forces of herbalism that offered restoration and renewal from an extraordinary range of ailments, many of which Western medicine scarcely pretended to understand and some it hadn’t even heard of. Chinese doctors, as Mr Zhu was fond of remarking, had been at it a long time, surgically removing abdominal tumours under anaesthetic while Boadicea was still bathing in pig shit and knee-capping Romans.

‘Westerners strange,’ he reflected in his castrated English. ‘Pay doctors when sick. Chinese punish doctor when sick, pay to keep healthy.’ And so from a hundred different bottles and a score of rosewood drawers he would dispense herbs and potions, weighing out the ingredients in his hand-held scales and wrapping them in twists of brown paper, while above him a bright brass ceiling fan turned slowly, mixing the peppery aromas and pushing them gently around his unpretentious shop.

Mostly his customers were, like Zhu himself, from Hong Kong, with a scattering of regulars from the other Malay, Singapore and Vietnamese Chinese communities which were threaded through the fabric of Chinatown. Western customers were few, and usually ignorant, ripe for picking. Often they had little idea of what they wanted and no idea of what they were getting; they were there to experience the atmosphere rather than the herbal cures, most of which required lengthy boiling and smelled foul. So he would mix ingredients like a short-order chef, a pinch of this and a handful of that, anything which could do little harm and which would smell inoffensive to the squeamish Western nose. Much of the bulk was made up of used tea leaves from his brother’s restaurant in Gerrard Street, which his niece and receptionist, Jya-Yu, dried in the kitchen out back. ‘Every ingredient tested,’ he would promise with a grin, although his teeth protruded and his accent was so bad that few Westerners would understand, happily lost in the performance as his hands moved like a magician’s above the piles of strangely coloured herbs. They would smile, Mr Zhu would smile and give a little bob and bow, and on most days everyone would be happy. But not today.

The previous night had been a long and difficult one for Zhu, locked in a fevered game of pei-gau in the basement room beneath Madame Tang’s cake shop. He had emerged at three a.m. with a savage headache and without a penny of the two thousand pounds he’d had in his pocket at the start of the evening. ‘Fate’, as Jya-Yu had pronounced caustically, trying to put the disaster behind them, but Uncle Zhu was the type of man who always believed in giving Fate a little helping hand. So when the callow corporate-image executive shambled into his shop after an extended lunch, demanding tiger bone as a pick-me-up for his manhood and digging in his suit pocket for a handful of notes, Uncle Zhu was not slow to see the possibilities.

‘Tiger bone not legal,’ he warned, unable to scrape his eyes from the cash.

‘Neither’s not paying your VAT,’ the young man responded gruffly and dug out yet more crumpled notes. ‘Come on. Tiger bone. The real stuff.’

Jya-Yu muttered a warning but Uncle Zhu spat back, his judgement temporarily impaired by poverty and his inability to cure his own headache. ‘Fate,’ he snapped, and proceeded to rummage in a drawer at the bottom of the counter, out of sight of the customer. He reappeared with a twist of silver paper, which he opened with considerable care on the counter to reveal a small spoonful of pale grey-white powder.

‘That all?’ rasped the image executive, swaying slightly. ‘Give me more. Tonight’s a big night.’

Zhu ducked down again and bobbed back up with a second twist. ‘Plenty strong, even for big man like you,’ he chuckled. He exposed the additional powder before carefully rewrapping both parcels. He looked deep into the executive’s eyes, which were glazed, focusing in a laboured manner. The breath smelt desiccated, dried by too much red wine. Uncle Zhu decided to add another fifty per cent to the first price he’d thought of.

‘Hundred and fifty.’

Surprisingly, Uncle Zhu’s accent coped with figures far better than any other aspect of the English language and it appeared to be the first part of the transaction the customer even partially understood.

‘A hundred and fifty what?’

‘Pounds. Hundred and fifty pounds,’ Uncle Zhu responded.

‘What? For two tiny packets?’ the customer continued, picking up the twists in the hand that was not holding the money.

‘Very genuine. Very rare.’ Zhu extended his hand for payment, a gesture which the customer, a man of overactive imagination and Bruce Lee fantasies, somehow translated as a demand with menace.

‘You’re ripping me off, you little yellow bastard. You’re not getting me. Shouldn’t be here in the first place.’ He began to back out towards the door. ‘Bet you’re an illegal, no work permit. You wouldn’t dare call the police.’

At this point Uncle Zhu let forth a minor hurricane of untranslatable Cantonese but made no move to come out from behind the protection of his counter. Instead it was Jya-Yu who chased after the fleeing customer, catching hold of his sleeve as he reached the end of the alley and was about to disappear into the crowded street. A shouting match ensued as Jya-Yu continued to tug at his arm and a small crowd rapidly gathered, although no one attempted to intervene, not even Uncle Zhu who had at last left the protective custody of his apothecary and stood remonstrating from the end of the alleyway. The noise level grew.

‘What’s going on here, then?’ A new voice had entered the fray. ‘All right, all right. Cut it out or I’ll nick the both of you.’ The local constabulary had arrived but, at first, seemingly to little effect. Uncle Zhu maintained his stream of abuse, gesticulating at the man, while Jya-Yu, whose English was normally at least passable, found her control of the language falling to pieces in the excitement. Around them the voluble gathering of Chinese traders and foreign tourists offered noise but no greater understanding. Puzzled, the constable turned to the image executive. ‘Perhaps you can explain, sir?’

The sight of the blue uniform had had a remarkable effect upon the young man. His voice had lost all trace of its contemptuous tone while the glaze had disappeared from his eyes, which were now sharp, calculating. ‘Damned if I know, officer. I was just walking back to my office for a meeting when this girl comes up. Says for a hundred and fifty she’ll give me anything I want. When I said I wasn’t interested she starts having a go at me.’

The youthful constable examined Jya-Yu. She didn’t look much like a tart. Very little make-up, a vigorously coloured silk jacket that was perhaps a little gaudy. Anyway, most Chinese vice was kept very much to themselves, not paraded out on the streets. Maybe she was an amateur, doing a little freelancing. ‘You’re saying she propositioned you for sex, sir?’

‘Absolutely. Anything I wanted, any way I wanted it. She’s a hooker.’ He sniffed righteously. ‘But I don’t go in for that sort of stuff.’

At that point Jya-Yu, unable to express herself in any other fashion, launched herself at the man, clubbing at him, scratching. Uncle Zhu resumed his screaming and the crowd began to press closer. It was the sort of situation where a young constable might lose both his helmet and his reputation. He radioed for back-up.

It was as the constable stepped in to separate Jya-Yu from the executive that he noticed a small packet fall to the ground. A silver twist which, on closer inspection, contained a white powder he couldn’t identify. Not for certain, at least, not until it had gone for testing, but he reckoned he was already way ahead of the forensic lab at Lambeth.

‘Yours, sir?’ he asked the executive.

‘Mine? Never!’

‘Miss?’ the constable turned to Jya-Yu, but all he got was a stream of untranslatable abuse and a further indiscriminate pounding of fists. He was still holding her wrists when the wagon arrived and a WPC took control of the struggling girl. Jya-Yu was led to the cover of the alleyway where she was searched. That’s when the police discovered two things.

The first was that, in the confusion, the executive had disappeared.

The other was that in Jya-Yu’s jacket pocket, where the executive had thrust it during the struggle, was the second twist of powder.

The retired actuary from Margate had still not budged, mesmerized by the swaying of the windscreen wipers, still desperately surfing his switches, wits dulled by the insistent horns of complaint which surrounded him. Up to this point he’d always been censorious about drink-driving; now he considered it might be the only option.

Meanwhile the Silver Dawn had eased away and already Corsa’s attentions had been dragged elsewhere. There were always reasons for his attentions to be dragged elsewhere. As Chairman of the Granite News Group (‘one of Europe’s most rapidly expanding and profitable newspaper publishing companies’, as his annual report proclaimed), he lived on a diet of distractions. A headline on a front page. A detail in a corporate report. Finance. His charitable works, or perhaps an engaging woman, both of which he used for public effect. Then there was the new headquarters complex in Docklands. And more finance. Much More Finance.

The newspaper world had changed almost beyond recognition in recent years, somehow skipping over several stages of the industrial revolution. A world that had once been centred on the Gothic wine bars and union chapels of Fleet Street had, in the shadows of night and through the legs of wild-eyed pickets, been shifted out into several large cakes of concrete scattered along the banks of the Thames. Printing presses and distribution operations, traditionally run by the Spanish practices of the union fathers and manned by phantoms and cartoon characters, were now run by New World Control Systems Inc of Korea and scarcely required manning at all.

Corsa had been a prominent rebel in this revolution – ‘a modern-day Merchant of Venice who has fallen upon more refined table manners,’ as the Investors Digest had once jibed. The sensitive souls over at the Commission for Racial Equality must’ve been out to lunch that day and missed the point, but anyone of consequence in the newspaper industry understood. Corsa wasn’t ‘one of us’. Could never be. Bad blood. His father, the founder of the Granite Group, had been an Italian and a prisoner of war who had lost patience with his countrymen’s predisposition to chaos during his one-sided battle with Montgomery and sandflies in the deserts of North Africa. His flight from the true path had been encouraged still further by his POW indenture on a Norfolk farm, where he had come to admire the English, their inherent reserve and particularly the fair-skinned daughters. So Papa had stayed on. His admiration, however, was not always reciprocated in a country still struggling with food queues and black-market nylons. Many simply took the view that Papa Corsa was and would always be a first-generation wop and, still worse, an uppity wop at that. So he’d been cautious, conservative, bought a share in a failing local newspaper and slowly created what became a modest-sized yet comfortably successful newspaper operation. But no knighthood, certainly no peerage, none of the public respects normally accorded to newspaper proprietors and not even much of the fear, not even after he had rescued the ailing Herald and restored it to significance amongst the Fleet Street dailies. But Papa wasn’t bitter. ‘If we’d gone back to Italy to run newspapers there,’ he would explain in his pasta accent to his Winchester-educated son, ‘we’d probably be sweating in a prison cell along with all the rest. Be happy with what we have, Freddy.’

Yet Freddy never was. He’d resented being two inches shorter than all the others at school, no way was he going to have others look down on him after he’d joined the family firm. ‘I bought my manners in Winchester,’ he would later relate with his habitual smile, ‘but I bought my boots in Naples. And neither place sold much scruple.’ Freddy developed an appetite as sharp as a flensing knife and, at the age of thirty-five, pushed his way past his ailing father to usurp the Granite chair, vowing that the Corsas would never again be ignored. In less than five years Freddy had been as good as his word. He had turned the starched and stuffy Herald into a tabloid, added an evening edition and several hundred thousand to its circulation, and bought a series of regional and magazine titles to support it until Granite had matched its corporate claim about being ‘one of Europe’s most rapidly expanding newspaper publishing companies’. Still not in the premier league, perhaps, but well on the way. Trouble was it had not, in spite of the hyperbole, also become ‘one of the most profitable’. He’d borrowed dear and floated the new Granite Group in a sea of debt, only to see interest rates rise and paper costs spiral. Advertising revenues had shattered, while his competitors took him on in a series of desperate price-cutting wars.

And then it got worse. Just as all the froth and fizz was leaking away from the newspaper market the Government had announced, at the insistence of its masters in the European Commission, that it would introduce a new Press (Diversity of Ownership) Bill designed to break the stranglehold which in the view of Monsieur Bourgeois, the Commissioner, was enjoyed and abused by the largest newspaper groups. ‘Competition, not cartel!’ Monsieur B had declared with Gallic fervour and the British Government, almost alone in Europe, had taken him seriously. So the legislative knee was bent. Observers, unused to the inverted logic that a Government should push around the media, predicted conflagration. Having lit the blue touch paper, the Government would now be expected to retire.

But the expected open warfare failed to materialize. The biggest players, already frustrated by the diminishing returns on their investments in newspapers, were growing increasingly distracted by new adventures. ‘I’ve packed my rucksack,’ one of Corsa’s fellow moguls had muttered over lunch in the Savoy Grill, explaining his decision to desert the rock face of Fleet Street for the fertile ground of cable television. ‘This ledge on which we press barons live has given us a great view, but it’s grown too damned draughty for my comfort. Time to find a new perch.’

They’d had their fun and now the big boys seemed almost content to dump a few titles – to the advantage of the second-rank players like Corsa. Or so it seemed. During the first week of the announcement he’d vociferously supported the new Bill and the opportunities it represented to pick up still more titles and move into the big time. By the second week, however, the prospective sales had served only to drag down share prices across the sector, including the price of Granite shares. Shares that Corsa had used to guarantee his huge bank borrowings. Whoops.

The bankers. Let me die alongside my bankers! That way I’ll be sure to take the bastards with me … They’d called a meeting for next week, wanted to discuss the covenants he’d given them for the most recent thirty million pounds. No problem. Not yet at least. He’d get through that one as he’d got through all the discussions with his bankers over the last eighteen months. Encourage them with praise, confuse them with inflated prospects, weigh them down with paper, above all allow them to be deceived by their own voracious appetites and ambitions. Corsa had added so many new companies and newspaper titles to the Granite chain that there had never been two consecutive balance sheets that were comparable. Assets, valuations, hypothecations and depreciations, he’d moved them all around the financial chess board with a speed that left his opponents, and occasionally even himself, bemused. No one knew that so much of the bottom line of the Granite accounts which he proudly proclaimed as profit existed only on paper. No one knew, not yet. But they would. In those silent moments at the very end of day, when sleep eluded him and darkness allowed ghouls and hobgoblins to prey, he knew his time was running out.

They were passing the statue of King Charles I which stood at the end of Whitehall looking down towards the parliament buildings. The Killing Field, where they had taken the King one freezing January morning, paraded him before the crowd and chopped off his head. Where so many others had found their ambitions and abilities dragged in the dust behind the baying mob. The men of the media were kings now. But here of all places he knew that even kings could fall. Torn to pieces and hurled onto the rocks which lay below the crumbling cliff face. He needed a lifeline. And in a hurry. He glanced at his watch. Already he was late.

‘Downing Street,’ he prompted his driver impatiently.

By the time Goodfellowe had parked his bike in the rack at the front of Speaker’s Court he was out of breath and the third toe on his left foot was developing a blister. It was almost seven o’clock, a series of votes lay ahead of him stretching into the night, and he knew he was in danger of being late. He couldn’t remember what they were voting about but there would be trouble if he didn’t make it to the division lobby in time, so he was trying to hurry. Even on a good day the Government’s majority stretched only to nine and there had been few good days recently. Two colleagues on the Government backbenches were recovering from heart attacks, another had had an attack of conscience after his constituency association failed to reselect him, while a fourth was under attack from the tabloids for multiple philandering. She hadn’t been seen in Westminster since the last issue of the Sunday People, hoping in vain that colleagues and correspondents would lose interest in her reported non-culinary uses of lo-fat banana yoghurt. It was at times like these that Whips lost their sense of humour. He wondered whether in another life Madame Tang had been a Whip. Or merely a cat castrator. He’d better hurry.

Then the phone started warbling again. It was getting to be a dangerous distraction. He should switch it off. Would switch it off. Next time.

‘Goodfellowe,’ he panted.

‘Mr Goodfellowe MP. Help. Help. Help!’ The voice was thin, perceptibly stretched by tension. ‘I am arrested. This is Jya-Yu. You know, Zhu’s niece. In prison. Help me. Please!’

The phone was handed to someone else. ‘Detective Constable Ferrit here at Charing Cross. Is there any chance that I’m talking to Mr Thomas Goodfellowe MP?’ The policeman sounded deeply sceptical. When he’d offered the prisoner the one phone call, he hadn’t expected a Chinese girl whose anxiety had reduced her command of English to little more than gabble to suggest that she would phone a politician rather than a solicitor. She didn’t know any solicitors, she had struggled to explain.

‘What’s going on, constable?’

‘Lady here’s been arrested. Had your number and says she wants your help. I can always call a duty solicitor if it’s a pain, sir. Do you know the lady?’

‘Sort of. Her uncle’s herbal shop provides me with fresh tea. Gave her my number because I’m expecting a new supply to arrive. What’s the problem?’

‘Soliciting and being in possession of a controlled substance, sir.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘And we might throw in a charge of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. Actual bodily harm unless his nose stops bleeding in five minutes.’

‘She’s only – what – eighteen?’

‘Old enough, sir. You coming or not?’

‘Ple-e-e-ase Minister Goodfellowe.’ Jya-Yu’s fear was all too evident.

The bells of Big Ben directly above him were already announcing the hour and the first vote. He’d miss it unless he started for the division lobby now, and his vote might make all the difference. Yet she was sobbing. He was wondering if he could find an excuse that might satisfy the Whips, rather like when he had failed to sign his last Inland Revenue cheque, but that hadn’t worked either. Perhaps if he hurried to the police station he might miss only the first couple of divisions, be back for the rest almost before anyone had noticed. Yet this was a running three-liner, a summons by the Whips which only death might excuse, and even then it had to be certified. There again, why should he bother with her? He scarcely knew her, no more than a passing smile and a request that she call when the tea came in.

‘They lock me up!’ she was wailing.

He knew what it was like to be locked up. Arrested. To know the stench of fear and humiliation. That’s why he was riding a bloody bike rather than driving a car. You didn’t need a licence for a bike. He’d only been a little bit over the limit but it was during the pre-Christmas purge and whereas twenty years ago they might have made an exception for a Member of Parliament, nowadays they made examples of them. All over that Christmas his constituency had been plastered with the Government’s drink-drive posters – ‘Don’t Be An Idiot’, the posters had warned. ‘And Don’t Vote For One Next Time!’ his opponents had added in huge yellow graffiti across every single one.

He had to go.

‘I’ll be there in fifteen.’

His arrival at Charing Cross police station in Agar Street turned out to be less than authoritative.

‘You’re an MP?’ the reception constable had asked dubiously. The intervening fifteen minutes between phone call and arrival had not been kind to Goodfellowe. A sudden spring shower had ambushed him as he passed Downing Street; as though the Chief Whip were using his occult powers to give him one last chance to change his mind and turn. He had arrived at the police station red in cheek, dripping slightly, with his suit crumpled and his trousers still tucked inside his socks.

‘You sure you’re an MP?’ the constable repeated.

‘Used to be a Minister. Home Office,’ Goodfellowe responded, but this only served to make his appearance all the more unconvincing. His suits, even when dry, seemed to suggest faded elegance, memories of better times and evidence of several dry cleanings too far. His age lay somewhere in the late forties, that point in a man’s life which is neither young nor yet old, when ambition’s flame has begun to flicker if not yet die, when many a man grows preoccupied with the stretching of his waistline rather than his intellect. But not Goodfellowe. The hair at his temples was beginning to show grey in a manner which could seem distinguished when not frizzing in the rain, although it normally looked as if he had just been roused from a nap on the sofa – unruly, a little battered, much like Goodfellowe himself. But nothing about him suggested either sleepiness or indolence. He was a man of enthusiasms, sometimes excessively so, with a mind so open to possibilities that it worked best only when it was almost too late. A mind that had not always commended itself to party managers who preferred discipline and routine. They compared him to a great tanker, very difficult to turn or manoeuvre once set on his course, often in bad weather refusing to answer the helm, and as he glanced at the station clock which showed twenty past and the first two votes missed, he knew there would be more rough sailing ahead. But it was in his eyes that the depths of Goodfellowe were revealed. They were dark, almost blue-black like the night sky. Sometimes they would sparkle as though filled with a thousand stars and captivate all who were allowed close enough to see, yet at other times they would darken as though great clouds were passing and threaten the most violent of storms.

He had once, until four years ago, been part of the constellation himself, one of the brightest and most rapidly promoted politicians of his time. A junior Minister who, although he did not hide his ambition, had sufficient sense to wear it with a smile and was regarded by an increasing number of colleagues as good Cabinet material and possibly, one day, even more. But at that time he had had a wife and a son, as well as Sammy. There had also been a driving licence and a Government driver too – all the trappings of success which, piece by piece, had fallen away, leaving him in a rain-sodden suit with his trousers tucked inside his socks standing in Charing Cross nick.

He reached into his pocket for his wallet. He didn’t have his House of Commons pass on him, couldn’t remember where he had left it, but his credit card had become one of his closest allies in his battle against misfortune, never leaving his side. ‘Thomas Goodfellowe MP’ it announced, and the constable at last seemed satisfied.

‘We have to be careful, you understand,’ he offered by way of apology, opening the heavily secured door that allowed Goodfellowe into the heart of the police station.

‘I understand all too well, Constable,’ he replied, bending down to release his trouser cuffs from captivity.

He was led downstairs to the Charge Room, which resembled the ticket counter of a bus station, except that the boards behind the reception desk carried duty rosters and charge sheets instead of timetables. It seemed to be rush hour.

‘Sarge, I’ve got one for the Chinese girl,’ the constable announced.

‘You her solicitor?’ the custody sergeant enquired, continuing to give his attention to a large batch of forms in front of him.

‘A Member of Parliament.’

‘Ah, you must be Mr Goodfellowe.’ The sergeant looked up. ‘She a constituent, sir?’

‘No. A friend, I suppose.’

‘Your … friend’ – the policeman tested the term cautiously – ‘is in a spot of real trouble, Mr Goodfellowe. Soliciting. Possession. Punching an officer. We’re all going to have to be rather careful about this, if you take my meaning.’ Goodfellowe took it to be a friendly warning. ‘We tried to get her to call a solicitor but she insisted it should be you. I can still call the duty solicitor, if you want. If you’re too busy. Got more important things to do.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant. Might as well see her while I’m here, don’t you think?’

‘Up to you. Entirely up to you,’ the sergeant pronounced, washing his hands of any further advice. Rush hour was well underway, the Charge Room was getting backed up and it was going to be a long night.

‘Are you going to charge her, Sergeant?’

‘Depends. Haven’t got her side of the story yet, she’s having trouble explaining herself. And we’re running a check through Clubs & Vice and through the Immigration Service to see if they’ve a handle on Miss Pan … Chou-you. That her real name?’

‘Zsha-yu,’ Goodfellowe pronounced phonetically. ‘I think so.’

‘Know the young lady well, do you, sir?’

‘Not really.’

‘I see.’

‘I doubt very much whether you do, Sergeant,’ Goodfellowe responded, more than aware of what was swirling through the policeman’s excessively stimulated mind. ‘I think perhaps I’d better see her now.’

All this time Jya-Yu had been sitting in a detention room. Less than ninety minutes beforehand she had been a carefree, bright-eyed eighteen-year-old looking forward to a night out with friends. Now she was rigid with terror, sitting on a plastic mattress on a concrete bunk in a cell whose painted brick walls were covered in crude graffiti and scratchings which seemed like the claw marks of animals. The room had been designed so that prisoners could do no harm to themselves, yet Jya-Yu, simply by sitting here, felt more harmed and in more pain than at any time in her short life. The scuffle, her arrest, the ride with head bowed in the back of a police wagon to a basement car park, with policemen and women shouting at her (or so it seemed), thrown amidst all the dregs that collected in a busy Charge Room. And then the strip search, the violation, to her the most profound humiliation of her life, almost as Madame Tang had described it to her, as though the Kuomintang army had marched right up Charing Cross Road and started to lay waste. When she was led from the cell and into an interview room to discover at last a familiar face, the emotions she had kept caged within at last escaped her control. She stood to attention, hands by her side, head bowed, and began to sob inconsolably. Instinctively Goodfellowe crossed to her and placed his arms defensively around her, trying to bury the tears in his embrace. The constable smirked.

‘Ah, could we be left alone to talk, Constable?’ Goodfellowe enquired when at last Jya-Yu had regained her composure.

‘’Fraid not, sir.’

‘But I thought …’

‘Not a privileged conversation, sir, not unless you’re a solicitor.’

The first battle lost. And so they had talked and Jya-Yu, calmer now and with better control of her English, had tried to explain, and the arresting constable, nose no longer weeping, had come in and recorded a formal interview during which he had displayed a plastic bag containing two twists of silver paper.

‘Are these yours, miss?’ the policeman had enquired, still slightly nasal.

She had nodded.

‘For the record, the prisoner has indicated that the silver packets belong to her. And what is the off-white powder inside them?’

She looked at Goodfellowe, her eyes flushed with confusion and torment, then sat with her head held low and would say no more.

‘Miss Pan Jya-Yu, it seems to me probable that this powder is a controlled substance, cocaine I would guess. Have you got anything to say?’ The constable sounded a little bored and began to make patterns on the table top with the rings left by his plastic coffee cup. ‘OK. For the benefit of the record, the prisoner refuses to answer. And you do understand, don’t you, that your refusal to say anything can be used against you in court?’

‘Yes. I do,’ she whispered.

They were taken back to the Charge Room, now in a state of controlled bedlam, where an inspector appeared. They had run Jya-Yu’s name through their records but had found no sordid past, no vice conviction, she was not an illegal, her presence in the country was entirely in order.

‘And you have no witness for the soliciting charge,’ Goodfellowe intervened.

‘But we do have a suspicious substance, sir. And the constable’s bloody nose.’

‘That was accident,’ Jya-Yu protested, but the inspector ignored her, continuing to address Goodfellowe.

‘I’m not going to charge the lady at the present time but we’ll release her on bail to return at a time when our lab analysis of the substance is completed. Probably in about six weeks’ time. When we know what it is, then we’ll know what to do.’

‘And in the meantime?’

‘If you’ll let me offer you a word of advice, I should concentrate on running the country, sir. Tears and trouble. That’s all a gentleman like you will get from becoming tied up in a case like this. People have such suspicious minds.’

Corsa was feeling out of sorts. He hated receptions, even in Downing Street. Three hundred people crushed into a couple of steaming drawing rooms where they sipped cheap wine – Spanish this month, Sainsbury’s had a special – and waited for one of the Prime Minister’s funny little speeches. Corsa was used to making dramatic entrances, demanding the attention of all present, not shuffling along in an anonymous line, like his father. In a crowd his lack of physical stature made him feel claustrophobic, insignificant. He hated cheap wine, held disdain for casual acquaintance and had no high regard even for the Prime Minister. How could one take a man seriously whose eyebrows resembled two ferrets locked in coitus?

He turned to take out his frustrations on the Minister for Overseas Development, a man of giggles and girth who wore his suit as though beneath its immense folds it hid a chest of drawers with all the drawers open. ‘Bunny’ Burrowes was also notoriously Catholic and unmarried. And, this evening, he was a target that had moved out into the open. The Herald had recently launched a campaign exposing the high infant-mortality levels in Angola caused by an epidemic of flu believed to have been introduced by European nuns. As his features editor had pointed out to Corsa, the death rates in Angola were no higher than in Iraq or Mongolia but, as Corsa had in turn pointed out to the features editor, there was little public sympathy to be generated by Arabs or Orientals ‘and black babies have such enormous eyes. So appealing.’ Anyway, neither Iraq nor Mongolia had a Royal visit planned for three months’ time. So the Herald in traditional campaigning mood had promised to build them a hospital. Much fanfare, still more moral outrage, and all by Royal appointment. Great publicity. Sadly for the plans and promises, however, the Herald’s campaign had found its readers in a profound state of compassion fatigue. Both heart strings and purse strings remained steadfastly unplucked, and the Herald’s appeal was a quarter of a million short – money which Corsa had neither mood nor means to find from his own resources. So, privately and with great politeness, they had asked the Foreign Office whose officials, still more politely, had said no. Yet here, giggling in the middle of the Green Drawing Room, was the Minister in all his voluminous flesh. Corsa felt a challenge coming on.

‘My dear Minister, what a pleasure.’

Burrowes scowled at the interruption. Unlike some of his colleagues he did not welcome over-familiarity with the press, being neither photogenic nor particularly prudent in his private life. He replied with no more than a nod of his heavily jowled head and was about to pick up his interrupted conversation about costume with the country’s leading male ice skater when, with only perfunctory apologies, Corsa took his arm and led him off to a quieter corner.

‘Not your bloody hospital, Freddy,’ Burrowes started, objecting to the heavy hand upon his sleeve. ‘I’ve seen the papers. It won’t wash. We don’t have the money.’

‘Of course you have the money, Bunny. It’s simply a matter of priorities. But of course I understand your difficulties.’

‘Good,’ responded the Minister, his eyes dancing back to the skater and making to leave, but Corsa kept a firm grip on his sleeve.

‘I merely wanted to make sure that you had been fully briefed on the opportunities.’

‘What opportunities?’

‘The opportunity to get some richly deserved credit. For the Government. For the Foreign Office aid programme. And, when it comes down to it, for you.’

The Minister pulled distractedly at each of his pudgy fingers in turn as though checking that the press man hadn’t stolen any in the crush.

‘Think of the free publicity,’ Corsa continued. ‘The hospital building is all prefabricated. We could load it onto an RAF transport and fly it in together. You and me. Accompanied by a handirpicked selection of reporters and television cameramen, of course. Imagine the reception. The crowds on the runway. Laughing children, weeping doctors, dancing mothers, and as many effusive local dignitaries as their Mercedes can shuttle in. The lot. And you and the Cardinal being greeted like saviours – which is precisely what this hospital project is all about.’

‘The Cardinal?’ enquired the Minister.

‘Yes. I’ve had a word with his office,’ Corsa lied impetuously. ‘They say in principle he’d be delighted to help. Thinks it’s an excellent idea. Sort of absolution for the nuns. We Catholic boys should stick together, Bunny.’

Burrowes’ fingers began dancing across the folds of his damp chin. Even on a good day he was no longer what he could regard as young, and his contemplation of indiscretions both past and proposed had begun to produce in him a growing attachment to his religious roots, and particularly to the understanding and forgiveness those roots might provide. Yes, if the Cardinal was considering giving his personal approval …

‘And the Herald would keep the campaign going. Reports on the children saved, the disasters averted and the good deeds done. Your good deeds, Bunny. Right through the summer.’

Burrowes’ jowls wobbled in growing anticipation. Public duty and personal piety all wrapped up in one endless photo opportunity, right through the summer – and the next reshuffle. The Minister’s eyes grew moist.

‘It’s only a drop in the ocean so far as your budget is concerned but it’s in a damned good cause. Your cause. An excellent cause, don’t you think?’ Corsa continued, and the Minister found himself nodding in agreement. He’d get stick from his officials when he went back to the office, but he could squeeze it out of the disaster fund and pray that Bangladesh wouldn’t disappear beneath flood water again this year. A gentlemen’s agreement forged for God’s work. After all, that was a Minister’s job, to decide. ‘For the greater good,’ he burbled enthusiastically. ‘And sod the civil servants.’

At last Corsa allowed the Minister to return to his ice skater. Two hundred and fifty thousand. Not a bad return on ten minutes’ work and a glass of Sainsbury’s Rioja. It was fine sport and the fool hadn’t even realized, had been so pathetically grateful. How he despised them, the politicians, the would-be rulers with their airs and arrogances, strutting around this tiny world of Westminster like peacocks with their flight feathers plucked.

He found himself wandering away from the general crush, stepping around the White Drawing Room in search of more convivial distraction. He examined a Constable landscape of storm clouds and sodden fields, not one of the painter’s best. Corsa had better in his own boardroom, although in private he preferred more modern works, the sort of things in which it looked as though reality had been taken apart and put back in an entirely different order. Rather like his accounts. On a table by the window stood four china dolls, porcelain figures of former Prime Ministers – Gladstone, Wellington, Disraeli and Palmerston, giants of the Victorian age but all with private lives and peccadilloes which would in the modern era have brought them low long before their time. ‘Publish and be damned!’ Wellington had challenged his mistress when confronted with her all-too-explicit diaries. Nowadays she would, and he would too. Be damned, that is. Cut down to size quicker than a forest of mahogany.

‘The only good politician …?’ a voice beside him suggested.

Corsa turned to find another guest, an elegant woman in her early forties, smiling at him mischievously.

‘I’m sure we all retain a considerable regard for them. In their proper place,’ he offered cautiously, unable to resist the conditional. He knew her, he thought, but couldn’t place her.

‘That proper place being swinging from a lamp-post by their testicles, according to some of your editorials.’ She held out her hand. ‘Diane Burston. I don’t think we’ve met.’

‘We have, in a way,’ Corsa returned, at last recognizing her. ‘You’ve graced the business pages of my newspapers on many an occasion.’

Diane Burston was a phenomenon. A woman who had risen to the highest ranks of the oil industry on merit and on the basis of her extraordinary financial skills. It wasn’t enough any more simply to be a good oil man, not in an industry forced to spend so much of its effort trying to climb out of the holes which a previous generation of eager executives and ill-controlled prospectors had dug for it. Rusting oil platforms, misplaced oil terminals, sinking oil tankers, oceans of oil pollution; suddenly the oil companies had become about as popular as anthrax. And in the game of damage limitation a handsome feminine face coupled with an astute financial mind had proved to be powerful assets.

‘Grace is scarcely a word which springs to mind when I think of some of your coverage,’ she continued, still smiling but with lips which had taken on the suppleness of etched glass. The eyes were like diamond drilling bits. She seemed surrounded by an air of exceptional intensity and turbulence, a battlefield, not a territory to be entered by those of uncertain spirit. ‘Your City Editor on the Herald is one of the most prejudiced and poorly informed commentators I’ve ever encountered.’

‘Surely an exaggeration.’ He was smiling, as he did habitually, with expensively burnished teeth and lips that were a fraction too thick. But the smile never reached his eyes. They remained restless, in constant search of advantage. Di Burston offered none.

‘What else can you expect from a man with his background?’ she continued.

‘You. mean the BBC?’ Corsa offered, curious as to where this was leading.

‘Before that. Before the BBC.’

Corsa’s puzzlement increased. He had no idea where his City Editor’s origins lay. The man was simply another of the phalanx of young, aggressive journalists brought in over the last three years to replace the older, perhaps more experienced but endlessly more expensive journalists he’d inherited from his father. ‘You’re telling me you didn’t know that until eight years ago he was a publicity director for Greenpeace?’ There was an edge of advantage in her voice. First blood to the girls.

Corsa, unsure of his next line, turned to examine the view from the window. She was inspecting him, and under pressure he became uncomfortably aware of the genetic Corsa tendency for the waist to spread and the hair to retreat. Early stages, in his case, only a couple of pounds and a few strands, but enough to remind himself every time he looked in the mirror that there was so much more still to do, and so little time to do it.

She came to join him, her voice dropping until it had reached a conspiratorial, almost seductive register. ‘You call yourself an entrepreneur, a man of free enterprise, yet you throw open your pages to every bunch of tree huggers who can plaster together a press release. Eco-warriors, New Age nonentities, the menopausal middle-class. Anyone who would rather crawl than drive, or choke on coal dust rather than live within a thousand miles of a nuclear power station. They shout, and you give them a front page. The bigger their lie, the better your coverage. It’s a war out there. Seems to me you’ve chosen the wrong side.’

She had drawn near to him now, in the lee of the heavy sash window, close enough that he could smell her. She was playing with him. He didn’t object.

‘The public has a right to hear both sides,’ he offered, grasping at a cliché.

‘And businesses like yours and mine have a right to make a living. Do you really think we can all survive by selling air cake and nut burgers?’

‘So what are you suggesting should happen?’

‘In my case, what I’ve already decided is going to happen. As from next month I’m pulling all my advertising from your newspapers.’ She allowed the news to sink in. ‘You know, Mr Corsa, I spend tens of millions of pounds every year on building my company’s image. And all I get for it is hate mail – thanks to you and your limp organs.’

‘You’re taking this very personally,’ he replied, his manhood under attack.

‘But of course I am,’ she breathed softly. ‘Just as I took it personally when your City Editor attacked my pay and pension package, even though it’s still considerably less than yours. Touch of double standards, do you think?’

Corsa made a mental note to find a new City Editor. The present incumbent was proving all too tiresome. His staff were there to serve their proprietor and paymaster, not to provide an excuse for giving him a public thrashing. He stood in silence, gazing out from the first-floor window across the broad expanse of Horse Guards. The bell above the arch chimed the hour.

‘What do you think that would be worth?’ she enquired, indicating the great gravelled parade ground which was used once a year to Troop the Colour and for the remainder as a car park for civil servants. ‘Move all the bureaucrats and retired admirals out and sell it for development?’

‘That’s outrageous.’

She shrugged. ‘Look at it another way. That’s about sixty million pounds.’

Slowly Corsa began to laugh, genuinely and almost with affection. He’d lost every single round of this contest with his elegant new opponent, and somehow he didn’t seem to mind. Something was stirring inside, the germ of an idea which unwittingly she had planted and which, although as yet dimly seen, might yet reshape his world. Or at least rebuild his cliff.

‘Ms Burston, you leave me breathless. And defenceless. I surrender! But before you put both me and the advertising budget to the sword, do you think we might discuss this further? Over dinner?’

‘Are you after my body or my business?’

‘Both if I can. Business, if I have to choose.’

‘I didn’t think newspapers encouraged adultery amongst public figures.’

‘One of the few advantages of my lonely job is that, in this dog-eat-dog world, there is a degree of solidarity enjoyed between newspaper proprietors which ensures that our private lives remain, by and large, just that. Private. A sort of mutual nonaggression pact.’

The diamond bits in her eyes had begun to sparkle. ‘I think we had better stick to business.’

‘That, too, would be my pleasure.’

‘At least for the moment …’

They had left the police station by the back entrance. Fewer staring eyes that way. And it brought them out by the ornate cast iron lamp-post, complete with Royal insignia and griffins, to which Goodfellowe had manacled his bike. The lamp-post was still there, directly beneath the busy windows of the police station, but the wheels of the bike were not and neither was the bell nor saddle. The basket had a hole in it the size of a boot. Goodfellowe picked up the remains, cursed, and morosely let them fall once more to the pavement.

Yet again Jya-Yu burst into tears. ‘I’m so sorry. My fault.’

‘If what you tell me is true, then it patently wasn’t your fault. Don’t worry. We’ll find a way.’ He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘Anyway, where’s your uncle? Shouldn’t he have come?’

‘No, no,’ she protested. ‘Uncle be busy in shop, on his own now.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I do not want to cause trouble for Uncle Zhu.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

She would only give a shake of her head.

‘Tell me, Jya-Yu, what was in those packets? What was the powder? The police will know soon enough. Was it cocaine?’

‘Never. Not cocaine!’

‘Then what?’

‘Uncle say it was tiger bone.’

‘You mean, an aphrodisiac?’

‘A gentleman’s pick-me-up.’

‘That’s a controlled substance, isn’t it? Was it tiger bone?’

She looked tormented. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘If it wasn’t, you have no problem.’

She shook her head. ‘If it is not, and it is known that Uncle is selling tiger bone which is false, it will be even worse. Great loss of face, great loss of business.’

‘You’re not serious. Tell me it’s not true.’

‘But of course,’ she protested. ‘You see, tiger bone is ancient Chinese cure, helps open up gate of life in man. If it makes man feel he is better lover, then he is better lover. Like alcohol, but without the, you know, falling-down problem. You would like to try it sometime?’

Goodfellowe managed no more than what he hoped would sound a dignified and noncommittal grunt.

‘Simple, Minister Goodfellowe. With such problems, if tiger bone works in man’s mind, then it will work for body too.’ Her eyes turned to water once more. ‘Which is why I cannot allow it to be thought that Uncle Zhu does not sell good powder.’

‘You’re trying to tell me that the powder may or may not be tiger bone. But even if it isn’t, you can’t admit it? Because of your uncle’s image?’ He ran his hand through his hair, ransacking it in frustration.

‘You are kind to help, Minister Goodfellowe. I am so sorry to bother you. Now I make sure you get only best tea. Fresh spring tip. From top of bush. No more mix. No more old dust.’ Her emotions were unravelling, she was blubbing now and struggling to show her gratitude. Awkwardly she stretched up to kiss his cheek. Goodfellowe’s emotions were equally unsettled. A dismembered bike and several missed votes. Seemed his tea supply had scarcely been Guandong Grade One, either.

He would have been laden with considerably more apprehension had he known what was taking place inside the pub on the other side of the road. The Marquis of Granby was, in the finest traditions of the brewing trade, a watering hole, not dissimilar to the desert wells around which Arabs would tether their camels and retire to the shade in order to contemplate the hidden meanings of life. Since it was frequented by so many off-duty policemen, the Marquis was usually awash with hidden meanings which representatives of the national media were more than happy to divine. No need to put unscrupulous policemen on retainers to keep their press paymasters informed of who and what were passing through the hands of the Custody Sergeant; a few rounds at the bar of the Marquis were usually more than sufficient. Oscar Kutzman was one such desert dweller, a photographer whose duties were to find and photograph distinguished people in less than distinguished circumstances. The job required talent – a sharp eye, an excellent memory for faces, an exceptional lack of scruple, all of which Oscar had in abundance. He was also conscientious in paying for his tip-offs, one of which only last week had led him to the rear door of a Bloomsbury apartment block at precisely the moment a senior Catholic cleric emerged in the embrace of his four-year-old son.

‘Oscar, you find my stories that boring?’ his guest enquired, aware that Kutzman’s attentions had wandered elsewhere.

‘A thousand apologies, my dear Inspector,’ the photographer responded, fumbling in his bag. ‘You recognize that fellow with the Chinese girl?’

‘Beneath the lamp-post? Never seen him before.’

‘No matter, I’ve just remembered. I covered his drink-driving case a few months ago at Horseferry Magistrates.’

‘Seems safe enough now, with a bike. Or what’s left of it.’

‘But with a young girl like that? I fancy not – Oh, that’s great!’ he enthused, grabbing his Nikon and squeezing off several frames as he studied Jya-Yu reaching up to embrace Goodfellowe. Bound to be a bit grainy in the fading evening light, but with a little help from the darkroom and a judicious choice of neg, it could probably be made to look as though she was kissing him full on the lips. An exaggeration, of course, but scarcely a deception, since Oscar had few illusions as to what this public show of affection might mean in a private context. Not a story, not yet, maybe never, but he’d been around long enough to believe in rainy days when, without warning, the great compost heap of life bursts into flower and onto the front page. This was definitely one for the compost heap.

As the couple disappeared down the street, he turned to his colleague and smiled. ‘You know, we may just have paid for your next brandy, Inspector.’

For the second time that evening, Goodfellowe had brushed against the world of Freddy Corsa.