The Crash, page 26
Jess studies it. ‘Sion Evans,’ is all she says.
‘Who?’
‘A brilliant photographer. Sion Evans. As a student in the 1980s he made his name recording the antics of Oxford’s gilded youth. Got him gigs with smart mags like Tatler and GQ. He’s still around; very successful. We sometimes use him at the FC.’
‘Do you think he’s got the negatives? It would be useful to see who else Elliott was connected to.’
‘What’s a drinking club for privileged wankers from twenty years ago got to do with anything?’
‘The Malmsey is more interesting than you think.’ Jess didn’t go to Oxford: she’s too brainy for that. She got a first in maths at Imperial, and a doctorate in monetary economics at Chicago. ‘New members of the Malmsey pledge allegiance to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III, the Plantagenet who put the accretion of power above all else. They would say that’s a joke, but the joke may be on us. You wouldn’t believe how many senior politicians and CEOs were in the Malmsey.’
‘Isn’t that because the establishment is dominated by Oxford graduates? Surely that’s the correlation. The Malmsey is just incidental.’
‘I’m not so sure. The club’s name is a reference to the apocryphal death by drowning – reputedly on Gloucester’s instructions – of Gloucester’s brother George, Duke of Clarence, in a butt of Malmsey.
‘The initiation ceremony, known as a “Clarencing”, involves the novitiate downing a yard of Malmsey. Almost everyone pukes immediately afterwards. But the club was about more than just getting off your tits on drugs and booze and smashing things up. They were sort of Oxford freemasons, with only one rule, namely that members were supposed to promote each other’s interests, till death them do part.’
‘Are you sure? Isn’t that just the conspiracy theory of a state-school oik who would never have been invited to join?’
‘You’re right that they wouldn’t touch a lefty Jew like me with a bargepole. It was mostly Etonians, very occasionally someone from Westminster or Winchester. They’d have taken Harrovians, if any had been bright enough to get into Oxford.’
Jess lifts her eyes to the ceiling. ‘You’re in your forties, you have one of the best jobs in the media, and you’re still pissed off that the Etonian boys didn’t ask you to join their club.’
‘Actually I’m not. But you take privilege for granted, because you went to Roedean, or Cheltenham Ladies’ or St Trinian’s or somewhere.’
I regret my sarcasm as soon as it’s out of my mouth. Jess doesn’t seem fussed, however.
‘Very funny.’
‘I didn’t have a lot of time to look at the picture last night – but a couple of the people in it are familiar.’ I stare at it now, but the lake water has muddied the faces too much. ‘It would be useful to ask Sion what he remembers, if he’ll speak to me.’
She laughs. ‘Sion is a terrible snob. He’ll love being courted by television’s Gilbert Peck.’
Chapter 22
I
USE JESS’S MOBILE TO RING Sion Evans and arrange to go to his studio that evening. I also ring my GP, Dr Hyde, who says he can see me if I can get to him in an hour. Jess offers to drive me. We put all my wet things in a Sainsbury’s plastic bag. Before leaving, I receive a text from Luke. I’m around tonight if you want to collect the diaries.
An hour later, I’m sitting in a small Georgian reception room, net curtains drawn, probably originally built to be a back-of-house pantry. It’s been a place of counsel and reassurance since I was a child. When I neurotically assumed I must have contracted venereal disease the first time I had sex, aged fifteen, it was Dr Hyde – white-haired even then – who told me not to be so silly.
I hope for similar reassurance today. ‘I’m only seeing you out of loyalty to your mother,’ he lectures me, his Viennese accent faintly audible. ‘How is my precious Ginger? She’s responding well to the treatment, according to reports the Marsden has sent me.’
‘That’s what Dad says. The Marsden has been amazing.’ I cover up my failure to ring Mum for days. I haven’t seen my parents since my last trip to the hospital.
‘But why are you here?’
I am not sure how much to tell him, though sometimes I think he knows me better than I know myself.
‘I had a strange experience last night. I was at a party and I suddenly became drowsy. In fact I almost lost consciousness. Believe it or not, I fell in a lake.’
He gives me the same ‘foolish boy’ look he would routinely give me when Mum brought me in to patch me up after the latest of my schoolboy scrapes – which was normally a head injury caused by my hyperactive fidgeting and tipping back on chairs.
‘Oh dear,’ he says.
He asks me to unbutton my shirt, and he listens to my lungs and heart. Then he wraps the blood-pressure cuff around my arm. ‘All tickety-boo, though your blood pressure is a little higher than is ideal for someone of your age. I suspect you may be working too hard.’ There’s a twinkle in his eye as he speaks.
‘There’s a lot going on.’
‘Try not to overdo it. Even at your age, there is such a thing as taking on too much.’
He takes out his pad and scribbles something, presumably that I am a classic Jewish hypochondriac.
‘But what about last night? Do you think I could have been drugged?’ I ask.
‘It’s possible. But why on earth would anyone do that?’
I am not sure what to tell him.
‘I don’t know. It’s just that I felt so terrible, so fast.’
‘I’ll ask the nurse to do a blood test. Maybe something will show up. She’ll also give you a tetanus booster, as a precaution.’
I get up to go. ‘Do me a favour, Gil. Don’t fall in any more ponds. And maybe keep out of the tabloids.’ I wince. ‘Try not to give your parents tsuris. I’ve known your family for the best part of half a century and they’ve had enough heartache.’
His implicit reference to the death of my sister overwhelms me with adolescent insecurity. ‘I’ll do my best,’ is all I can muster.
‘If I see anything to the contrary, you will be hearing from me.’
‘Thank you Dr Hyde.’
*
A cab takes me to TVC, where I explain to the BBC’s tech woman what happened to the Nokia. She laughs. ‘Gil, you really take the biscuit.’
She extracts the SIM from the waterlogged phone and slots it into an identical one. A buzzing queue of missed texts is instantaneously unlocked.
‘The BlackBerries are due to arrive tomorrow,’ she reassures me.
Thank goodness. I feel like an alcoholic who has just been told he can swim in a lake of single malt.
‘Can I ask a favour?’ I say. ‘Would you have a small digital camera I could borrow? And a voice recorder?’
‘Only if you don’t take them into the swimming pool with you.’
I take the gadgets to my office and read the backlog of phone messages. Elliott’s is designed to wind me up: Sorry you got damp. Mind how you go with the Sazeracs next time.
I mustn’t let him think he controls the narrative. I text back: I’ve consulted a lawyer, and I am suing you for inadequate health and safety precautions at your party. :-)
When I delete his message, one drops from Charles, the husband of my late sister, Luke’s dad.
I need to see you as soon as possible.
*
I unfold my Brompton and pedal east in a frenzy. After ignoring my seventh or eighth red light, and travelling the wrong way down a one-way street where Kentish Town elides into Chalk Farm, a policeman waves me down. I grovel an apology, and plead a family emergency. ‘You’ll be no use to your family in A&E,’ he lectures.
I wheel the bike till I am out of his sight, and then resume my law-breaking dash. After forty minutes, I arrive sweaty and expectant. Charles opens the door. He is biting on his lower lip, and his face is drawn. We go into the front room, and sit in armchairs facing the mantelpiece. We’re watched by my nephews, Mum and Dad, Clare, all in wood and gilt frames, lined up on the marble top. There are also photos of Charles with Yasmin, his Iranian new wife, and their toddler twins. It took Charles five years to start dating and then marry again. I’ve admired how he helped my nephews Luke and Sam adjust to the new family set-up. The eldest, Sam, has just gone to Cambridge, to study economics, like his mum.
On the glass coffee table between us are Marilyn’s diaries.
‘No Luke?’ I say.
‘He’s upstairs doing his homework. I needed to talk to you alone.’
I have a feeling I have wounded Charles. It would not be the first time. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
He squeezes the end of his nose. ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean it. I assume you didn’t know what was in those diaries. But it wasn’t appropriate to give them to Luke, given the risk there would be references to his mum.’
His articulation of my stupidity and insensitivity is an almighty blow. ‘Oh no. What did they say?’
‘Luke has been translating the one for 1997. 1997, Gil.’
The year of Clare’s murder. The year she was impregnated by Johnny Todd.
‘There’s stuff Luke should never have been exposed to.’
Shit shit shit. I was so obsessed with how the diaries could help me, it never occurred to me they could harm Luke. I am such an arsehole.
‘I should have thought it through.’ I resist the temptation to explain how much pressure I’ve been under. ‘I’m afraid to ask what he read.’
‘In June, there’s a long letter to you, that Marilyn never sent, I assume. It’s an apology for misleading you about Clare. She admits she knew that man was having an affair with Clare. She doesn’t quite say so, but she hints that she suspects he was behind her death.’
Charles cannot say the name of the former prime minister.
‘Is it proof of what happened?’
‘No. She wanted to believe he’s innocent.’
I am processing the full horror of what I’ve done: I immersed Luke in the nightmare of his mum betraying his dad.
‘I just wanted to give Luke the opportunity to make some cash.’ As I say it, I realise how pathetic I am being. ‘There’s no excuse. This is the worst thing I’ve ever done. I am an idiot.’
Charles looks hard at me.
‘Don’t overdramatise and make it about you.’ He softens. ‘He had to know one day; I just would have liked to have controlled the timing. The good thing is Luke and I have now had an important conversation. But that’s not everything.’
Charles hands me a sheaf of A4 paper that Luke used for decoding the diaries.
‘Read that while I make some tea.’
He goes into the kitchen and I start. The 1997 and 1998 diaries are Marilyn’s descent into self-loathing and self-harm after her initial break-up with me. She drank too much, snorted too much coke, started experimenting with heroin. She talks about her fling with Alex Elliott, who had recently left his post as director of communications at Media Corp. She writes about how damaged he is, but that she went along with his destructive games: sleeping with his friends, male and female, while he watched; being beaten up by him during sex. It is a chronicle of abuse.
Charles returns with two mugs of tea.
‘Have you had a chance to speak to Luke about how abnormal and fucked up all this is?’ I ask.
‘I have,’ he adds dryly, ‘Maybe it’s good he learns that such disturbed people exist.’
The translation ends when Marilyn meets me again, at one of Elliott’s parties, and we end up in bed, having what by Elliott’s standards would be classed as conventional sex. Reconnecting with me seemed to give her the strength to break things off with Elliott, and start to repair her life. It is a small consolation. I could and should have done so much more to help her. I feel ashamed that I wasn’t faithful, that I colluded in the convenient fiction of the open relationship.
‘Do you want me to talk to Luke about any of this?’ I offer.
‘Maybe one day. Not now. But please get the fucking things out of my house.’
*
I stuff the diaries into my rucksack and leave. I have a too-familiar feeling of shame. Why do I always get it so wrong with my family?
I’m standing outside the house with my bike when Jess rings.
‘I’ve had a reply from Athena,’ she says, before I can fill her in. ‘It’s confusing. I’ll send it to you.’
‘I haven’t got my BlackBerries back yet,’ I remind her. ‘Can you read it?’
‘The message itself is just a standard brush-off. The director of public affairs says Athena has a policy of not speaking to the media, but if that changes, he’ll be in touch. What’s weird is that he’s added a stroppy sentence at the end to say he’s already explained all this to me before.’
‘Have you ever contacted them in connection with anything else?’
‘No. Unless . . .’ I hear the tap of keys in the background. ‘Actually, you remember I told you the paper’s done a couple of stories on Athena? They’re by our defence editor. She’s another Jess. Jess Upton.’
‘You think they could have confused you?’
‘Come to the office. I’ll see if I can get hold of her.’
*
The FC ’s offices are a 1990s steel and glass cuboid on the south side of the Thames, just along from the post-war converted power station that houses Tate Modern. Jess’s office is on the tenth floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows that offer a panorama of South London. She’s waiting for me there with a woman in a pinstriped trouser suit whose short hair is fire red. She thrusts a powerful hand. ‘Jessica Upton,’ she says, in rhythm to a confident shake. We sit like supplicants opposite Jess, who is on the other side of her desk.
‘What can you tell us about Athena Tech?’ asks Jess.
Jessica grimaces. ‘Not as much as I’d like. They publish almost nothing and are obsessively secretive. It’s clear though that they are a rarity in the UK, a world leader in advanced technology. According to my defence sources, they’ve developed an unmanned remote-controlled aerial vehicle, a UAV, that can scan for booby traps and improvised explosive devices with astonishing accuracy.’
‘Wow. That sounds important,’ I say. Especially for the thousands of soldiers the UK has fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are there in part thanks to choices made by the eponymous founder of the Johnny Todd Institute for Peace and Global Justice.
‘Athena also have missile detection systems,’ Jessica continues. ‘They sell themselves as offering cutting-edge, turnkey defence solutions. I’ve been wanting to get inside the company, to write a serious profile of them, but they won’t cooperate.’
‘Have you contacted them recently?’ Jess asks.
‘Yeah. You know the investment company MHH, Jackson’s thing that’s been rumoured as a bidder for NewGate?’ Jessica glances at me. ‘Believe it or not, I got a tip they’re close to buying Athena, for a colossal sum.’
‘Are you sure?’ says Jess. Her tone is crisp.
‘I’m not going to name my source,’ she says defensively, ‘but it was a banker very plugged in to the defence world. And when I put it to the MoD, they did not deny it. Refused to comment.’
‘That’s fascinating,’ Jess reassures her. ‘If I sounded surprised, it’s only because I thought Jackson had his hands full with the NewGate debacle.’
‘It’s an interesting story,’ I say.
‘An important story,’ Jess picks up. ‘You should write it.’
Jessica looks relieved. ‘Yes, boss.’
When she’s left, Jess and I stare at each other. ‘Is this some kind of weird tit-for-tat between Ravel and Jackson?’ she asks. ‘Ravel tried to kill Jackson on the NewGate deal, now Jackson’s got wind that he’s interested in Athena and is trying to snatch it from under him?’
I spell out the potential ramifications. ‘Athena is part of what the Saudis want in return for rescuing PTBG. If Ravel can’t deliver Athena, and the Saudis withdraw their potential funding, then the government will either have to nationalise PTBG or let it go bust.’
Jess starts to tap her biro on the desk. ‘This is totally nuts,’ she says. ‘PTBG is at the heart of the financial system. If it fails, there’s no bank in the country that could survive. There’d be queues outside every branch on every high street.’
‘Businesses wouldn’t be able to borrow. People’s savings would be wiped out. It would be economic Armageddon.’
‘Worse than the thirties.’
‘They are playing such a dangerous game,’ I say. ‘Ravel, Jackson, Elliott, Blackwell, Todd. Their greed is off the charts. They’ll blow up the whole system to suit their own vanity.’
We sit in silence.
‘What next?’ Jess asks.
I review the options in my mind. From behind the damask curtain, I witnessed Ravel, Blackwell and Elliott working in concert. On the basis that my enemy’s enemy could be a useful source, it is obvious to whom I need to speak. Plus, Harvey Jackson also has the virtue that he hasn’t tried to bump me off.
I think.
*
Outside Television Centre, demonstrators are announcing the End of Days. With the financial system on the brink, it doesn’t seem outlandish. There’s one man in a kilt, wearing a sandwich board whose front panel says: ‘The devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested’. The back declaims: ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end’. He drags a large loudspeaker on wheels, and he’s playing Scottish reels, to which he is doing a surprisingly deft Highland jig. When I walk past he shouts, ‘Gil Peck. You are the prophet. Tell the people that Jesus Christ the shepherd is gathering in his sheep.’
‘You can count on me,’ I say.
I decide not to wait for the unbearably slow elevators. While I walk up the stairs, I text Jackson, asking if he’ll do another interview, now that NewGate’s been privatised. It’s pretty obvious Tudor won’t want to own it for long, if there’s an alternative. Would you be interested in taking it off his hands?
