The Crash, page 27
Around ten minutes later, his in-house PR rings back. ‘Harvey is up for it, when would suit?’
‘This afternoon?’
‘He’s in meetings. Tomorrow?’
‘That should work.’
I go straight to the producers’ desk to brief Emma. ‘Aren’t we all a bit bored with NewGate?’ is her reaction.
‘Talk to the Ten, please. I bet they’ll bite your hand off.’
Jackson is always an easy sell to editors, and sure enough the one rostered for the Ten O’Clock News tomorrow says yes. ‘If we can get him to slag off Tudor, it’ll lead the programme,’ Emma says.
*
From TVC, I cycle to Sion Evans’s studio, an old commercial property in Tabard Street just off Borough High Street. Sion owns the whole building: one floor is his studio, and he lives in the rest. The living area is open-plan, with industrial lighting and big windows. The walls are covered with photographs of celebrities: Princess Diana covering her face coming out of that Chelsea gym, Michael Jackson looking wistful in front of his personal funfair at Neverland, Johnny Todd grinning from ear to ear on the Southbank on the night Modern Labour won the landslide in 1997.
Sion’s young assistant asks me to wait and offers me tea. ‘Sion won’t be long. He’s shooting Pete Doherty, for GQ. It’s chaotic.’
While I wait, I rehearse my patter. When Sion arrives, twenty minutes later, I tell him I am preparing short films on the party leaders and their senior colleagues, to run whenever the general election is called.
‘You’ve probably noticed that the people at the top of both main parties are the vintage of Oxford graduates you chronicled. Stella Barnsbury, Munis, David Cameron, the Milibands. I love that series you shot in the eighties and I wondered if it would be possible to flick through them.’
Sion is wearing a white Jermyn Street shirt, top two buttons undone, narrow-leg blue jeans and brown suede loafers. He flops on a scuffed brown leather armchair.
‘I’m not sure whether I want them on telly,’ he says. He has a South Wales accent that is as soft as chamois. ‘But you’re welcome to take a peek.’
The assistant retrieves two cardboard box files, one marked 1985, the other 1986. They contain contact sheets and enlargements. I turn them slowly, making appreciative noises about the composition and marvelling at the spectacularly poor choices of hairstyle. It turns out that back in the day, most of our future leaders were wannabe members of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.
‘It was quite the scene for a poor boy from the Valleys,’ says Sion.
He watches me for a bit, then nips out for ‘a quick wee’. As soon as he’s disappeared, I race through the boxes. It’s halfway down the second container. I haven’t time to examine in detail – the imperative is to copy it before he returns – so I take out the digital camera and photograph it, along with a contact sheet, which I capture in four quarters.
I hear the loo flush and slip the camera back in my pocket.
‘Do you remember Stella, Munis and the rest?’ I ask Sion on his return. ‘I’d love to interview you for the film.’
He shakes his head. ‘I wasn’t in any sense part of their group. I was a scholarship boy from the Rhondda who couldn’t believe how the other 0.1% lives and wanted to record it. They were so in love with themselves, they were flattered and let me follow them. I had this idea that one day they could be running this place.’
‘You were right.’ God help us. ‘What do you think about publishing the pictures now?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He straightens the photos so that none poke out and closes the file. ‘There’s a lot to think about. These are powerful people. I am not sure if the photos are more useful to me published or unpublished.’
Sion is nobody’s fool.
*
Home again, I connect the camera to my laptop and download the images. I text Jess that I am about to email them to her. One of them is dynamite.
The snap that grabbed me is from the same set as the one on Elliott’s piano. In it, Elliott is crouched over, apparently with a cushion up the back of his jacket. Maybe he is paying tribute to Richard III, the royal crookback. But the leer is a hackneyed version of Charles Laughton, in the role he played in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quasimodo.
I also spot a pink-faced, boyish Patrick Munis, and Frankie Crowther, the ex-City editor of the Telegraph, now making a mint in private equity. He’s glassy-eyed.
‘Cocaine Crowther,’ I whisper to myself.
Of the others, one is also an MP, another a FTSE-100 chief executive. There are a couple of sneering young men I don’t recognise. Of the two women, the one in a slit skirt, St Trinian’s tart chic, is familiar, but I can’t place her. She is draping herself on a pouting boy who has a fabulous mullet and is wearing velvet slippers. Jackson.
Jess rings. ‘Do you think the club has some kind of role in the lives of its members after they leave Oxford?’ she asks.
‘It does for Elliott. He’s still the hunchback.’
‘He’s such a wanker.’
‘It’s the connection with Jackson that we need to look into. Let’s make the assumption that once a Crookback, always a Crookback. That they look after each other. Even now. If that were the case, Jackson would not be buying Athena to spite Elliott and Ravel. He would be doing it for them, as a front for the Saudis?’
‘Is that plausible?’
‘To an extent. Jackson would provide the ideal cover. There’d be a stink if Athena and its precious intellectual property was sold abroad, especially to interests linked to an Arab government. That would change the balance of power in the region. MPs on both sides of the house would go mad, and the Israelis would hit the roof. I don’t think any British government could allow it.’
Jess pursues up the logical thread. ‘MHH is seen as a model UK business,’ she says. ‘Jackson is a modern-day saint. And the corporate structure of MHH is so opaque that it would probably be easy to make it look as though Athena was remaining in British hands, when in fact control was being passed to Saudi.’
I have to do something to shatter the public’s love of Jackson. When I have time.
‘There is one aspect that doesn’t quite add up,’ I say. ‘If Jackson is buying Athena for the Saudis, he’s facilitating the Saudi rescue of PTBG. Which means he’s helping Chris Ravel, even after Ravel in effect blew up his takeover of NewGate. I can’t see how that works.’
I stare at the picture on my computer screen again. ‘Elliott, Munis and Jackson are so powerful today, and they’ve been mates for so long. They run Britain, or in the case of Munis are close to doing so, and they’ve been getting pissed together for more than twenty years.’
‘Was Ravel part of the club?’
‘Nah. He was too left-wing and pious for any of that.’
‘We should put this picture in the public domain,’ says Jess. ‘Did you ask his permission?’
‘I copied it while Sion went for a wee.’
She sighs. ‘That’s basically theft. Neither of us can publish it.’
‘But couldn’t we just pass it to a mate? Public interest, and all that. The Sentinel would love it.’
‘Maybe,’ she prevaricates. ‘But it feels wrong. Sion Evans isn’t a bad man, and they’re his property. Can we sleep on it?’
‘OK.’ I very much doubt I will think differently in the morning.
I am still staring at the picture when I retrieve the missing file in my brain. ‘Look at the girl on the right.’
‘I am.’
‘Don’t you recognise her?’
‘No.’
The girl in question was clearly going through a Goth phase at the time. Her hair is cut asymmetrically, punky and spiky short on the right, long and covering an eye on the left. It’s dyed jet black in the picture, though now it’s reverted to a more natural brunette. There’s a dog collar around her neck, and a pair of handcuffs dangling from her belt.
Maybe it’s the handcuffs that connected the relevant neural pathways.
‘It’s our friend the Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner. Kim Jansen.’
‘Shit.’ I think Jess is actually shocked, for once. ‘We’ve got politics, public relations, big money and the law all in the same student picture. These are the pillars of the modern state.’
‘They’re also linked to Marilyn’s death. Elliott blackmailed her. And Kim Jansen investigated.’
‘What are you implying?’ Jess says. ‘There was no murder for Jansen to cover up. We know Marilyn committed suicide.’
‘Yes. But blackmail is a crime in itself. Especially when the blackmail victim kills herself. Elliott would never want that coming out, would he? Having Kim on the case was very convenient.’
‘The night we went to Marilyn’s flat,’ Jess recalls, ‘you’d spoken to Kim and asked her if she’d found the diaries. And when we got there, those men turned up.’
I suddenly feel sick. ‘I thought Primakov sent them.’ I see myself in the billionaire’s Bentley. You ask me because I am the Russian thug, and therefore obviously I must be the villain. It wasn’t the oligarch, it was a very British mafia, the alumni of an absurd Oxford club.
‘Where are the diaries now?’ Jess asks.
‘I got them back from Luke.’ I tell her about my excruciating encounter with my brother-in-law. ‘I need to decipher them.’
‘It’ll be quicker if we work on them together,’ Jess says.
‘Shall I come over?’
‘Hang on a second.’ She shouts ‘Amy,’ and I hear her asking her daughter if she wants to see me. ‘Tell the big fat stinky to be as fast as he can,’ I hear Amy say.
Jess comes back on the line: ‘I assume you heard that.’
I shut the laptop, put out fresh food for Dog, and place the diaries with some overnight things into my rucksack. I’m about to leave the flat when the Nokia rings. I’m tempted to ignore it – I already have so much to process – but habit wins.
‘This is Dr Hyde’s surgery. Do you have a moment to speak to him?’
It’s after eight: what can be that urgent?
‘Gilbert,’ says Dr Hyde. ‘How are you feeling?’
Is that a leading question? ‘Fine, I think.’
‘Delighted to hear it.’ He sounds flustered, which is not reassuring.
‘Is everything OK?’ I ask.
He takes a deep breath. ‘Look, when you told me about how you suddenly felt so woozy at the party last night, I asked the lab to test your blood for a variety of substances. It turns out there was enough Rohypnol in you to tranquillise a bull elephant.’ He lets it sink in. ‘You know what Rohypnol is?’
‘The date-rape drug.’ No wonder I passed out and fell in the lake.
‘Exactly. It makes the user almost entirely passive, and afterwards they struggle to remember what happened. I take it you didn’t self-administer it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘It’s one of those drugs that flushes out really fast, leaving no trace,’ he adds. ‘If you hadn’t come to see me when you did, no one would ever have known.’
Chapter 23
‘T
HAT FUCKER ELLIOTT DRUGGED ME, and then he had his girl push me in the lake.’
I’m in Jess’s kitchen. I barely remember cycling here, my head being so full of shock and fury. She pours me a glass of wine. Did Elliott put the Rohypnol in the Sazerac, or did he know I’d go for the vintage claret? It must have been the cocktail, because I would have noticed it in the wine. I assume.
‘He’s a psycho,’ I rage. ‘If I’d died he’d have had a second party to celebrate my life, and found it fucking hilarious.’
‘Not so loud,’ says Jess. ‘Amy’s asleep.’
‘No I’m not.’ Amy is at the kitchen door.
‘Oh God. I shouldn’t have sworn. Sorry Jess. Sorry Amy.’
Amy sees her opening. ‘Will you read me a story?’
I look at Jess who nods. ‘I’d love to. Which one?’
‘Hobbit.’
I look at Jess. ‘Just a few pages, Amy.’
The few are around thirty. Tolkien’s soporific virtues don’t take hold till ten. I creep back, whispering, ‘Night Bilbo, night Amy.’
There’s a faint whisper from the bed. ‘Night stinky.’
A short stay in Middle Earth has been a restorative, and I feel much calmer when I’m back in the kitchen.
‘I’ll have that glass of wine now,’ I say, retrieving it from the kitchen worktop. ‘Let’s get on with the diaries.’
We settle down at the kitchen table with them, and start with the pages that are still in the Filofax for the months leading up to Marilyn’s suicide. Jess and I agree a system. Despite our best endeavours, it’s laborious and slow. I translate each letter, shout it out, and Jess writes it down. Every time something feels relevant, Jess stops me and reads aloud.
She tells me that in February, Marilyn writes, ‘AE reminded me he has the photos.’
‘AE? Oh yes, Alex Elliott,’ I say.
Deciphering the code feels like important work. We were stupid not to do this days ago. It’s also a distraction from the dangers we face. Once again, I am grateful for my superhuman ability to compartmentalise.
‘Interesting he reminded her about the photos as early as February,’ I add. ‘That was a long time before NewGate was in trouble. Presumably he was pre-emptively reminding her, because in her position at the Bank of England she could be useful to him in so many different ways.’
‘The stress on her must have been unbearable.’
I continue calling out letters. There’s a lot to process. As we move through the months, familiar names crop up. Marilyn records a tip-off to the Bank of England from Palatine, the quintessentially establishment corporate broker. Palatine told Marilyn that Jackson and MHH are sitting on massive losses made from investments in CDOs. Jackson tried to maximise his returns by using borrowed money to buy the CDOs, what’s known as leveraging up, and he now has £5 billion of debt due for repayment in eighteen months.
Jess reads: ‘“Jackson is bust. There’s no chance he’ll be able to roll over his debts. He’s frantically searching for ways to hide his losses. I need to inform my colleagues, but AE says if I do it will be the end of me.”’
She turns to me. ‘We have to assume Jackson is still in dire straits. So on your theory that he’s now helping Ravel with the Athena takeover, maybe Ravel has offered to help him avoid collapse in some way.’
‘That could square the circle,’ I say. But it’s Elliott’s threats and the unbearable stress that Marilyn must have been under that haunts me. ‘Why didn’t Marilyn tell me about any of this?’ I blurt. ‘I could have helped.’
Jess gives me a sceptical look. ‘What would you have done? Doing the right thing would have destroyed her reputation and her career.’
‘I would have told her that careers aren’t that important. She could have rebuilt.’
‘Says the work addict.’
*
As midnight approaches, Marilyn tells us that Jackson identified NewGate as the solution to his looming crisis. If he could get hold of it, he could channel its depositors’ cash to repay his own creditors and hide his subprime losses. That would have been illegal. But within the corporate labyrinth of MHH, the flows of funds could have been moved through assorted shell companies, relabelled and disguised. Marilyn notes that Todd is extracting huge fees from Jackson to put pressure on the Bank and the PM to wave the deal through. ‘Classic Johnny,’ she writes.
Jess reads a line that exposes how Elliott thought he had trapped Marilyn. ‘AE says if the deal goes through he’ll shred the pictures.’
Jess puts down her pen and stares at me, biting her lip. I look right back. ‘You don’t have to say it, Jess. When I exposed NewGate’s insolvency, when I blew up the MHH rescue, I destroyed her one chance of escape.’
We look at the pages in stunned silence for what feels an eternity – until Jess sits up sharply. ‘That’s narcissism, and bollocks. Marilyn, if she was thinking straight, when she was thinking straight, knew that. There’s no way Elliott would have surrendered his hold on her. His need to control was pathological. He was lying when he said he’d destroy the photographs.’
I want to believe Jess is right. The idea that my scoop exploded Marilyn’s tunnel to freedom is unbearable.
‘Stop making this all about you,’ she reinforces. ‘What’s important here is that the blackmail was on behalf of Jackson, and presumably Primakov too. Our theory that she was being punished by Ravel, or someone who wanted the takeover to fail, was wrong.’
‘My instinct is to believe Primakov when he says he didn’t know about it. But who knows?’
I try to force myself to carry on with the transcription. I can’t focus; the grids blur in front of my eyes. I am falling into a pit of self-loathing and blame.
Jess reads my mind. ‘You can blame yourself if you want. But that would be self-indulgent. You would be letting the culprits off the hook. I assume Ravel instructed Muller to give you the NewGate story. Do you think there is any chance he would have kept quiet if you hadn’t put it out? If you’d gone mad and not told the world what was happening, he’d have made sure the information was given to another journalist.’
‘You’re right. It’s just I can’t forgive myself for having so little inkling of the agony Marilyn was going through.’ I suppress an urge to cry.
Jess tries to distract me: ‘I don’t understand what Elliott thought he was doing. He was working for Jackson and for Ravel, who wanted totally different outcomes for NewGate. What’s that all about?’
Having known Elliott for years, this is the least complicated part of the puzzle, for me. ‘Alex has no loyalty to anyone, except himself, and to the next huge fee. In elections to the Oxford Union, he sold his own vote to every candidate, and even persuaded two of them he was working to bring in more votes for each of them. Somehow he got away with it. He gets his kicks from pulling everyone’s strings, being the puppet master.’
‘But why didn’t Ravel and Jackson see through his double dealing?’
‘Elliott would have convinced Jackson he was working for him. Which in fact he was. And Ravel couldn’t have cared less. Remember Ravel is always thinking three steps ahead of everyone else. He’ll have seen what Jackson and Elliott were doing, and would have been confident he could blow them up at any point. Which indeed he did. I feel a bit sorry for Jackson.’
