The Crash, page 35
‘And if I don’t cooperate?’
‘We’ll publish everything anyway. But we will include your name in every article, every chapter, every broadcast. Which is not hard, because you were in the thick of it – turning a blind eye, stupidly negligent, actively working against justice.’
Jansen stops and turns to Jess. ‘You must believe me that I had no idea they were going to take Amy.’
I laugh, which is completely inappropriate, but she sounds just like the bankers. We had no idea what we were doing was toxic. We pocketed our bonuses in good faith. No one was supposed to get hurt.
‘It’s easy not to know something if you don’t want to,’ I tell her. ‘The question is, are you going to take responsibility?’
*
A week later, I am back in Rainham, on that vast icy plain, and walking past row after row of Star-of-David- and menorah-inscribed headstones. I’ve never known a week like it. Two days after we saw Jansen, and after extensive negotiations with Janice Oldham and the DG, the BBC and the FC pressed the button on what we called the Marilyn Files. It’s the biggest story of our careers. Jansen kept her word and launched a police enquiry. There are at least three investigations by parliamentary select committees, and the prime minister is under pressure from the Tories to launch a judge-led public enquiry. Alex Elliott’s reputation and tactics are under scrutiny, at last. It turns out there are a lot of celebrities who have stories to tell about the way he sold them out to the tabloids, now that they don’t fear retribution. I’ve had one text from him, which I intend to treasure forever. A single word: cunt.
Down the long gravel path, in the biting wind, I retrace my steps to Dad’s grave, which will not get its headstone for another nine months. I’m alone. There are no mourners or gardeners or caretakers anywhere in view. I wouldn’t have cared if there were. I am not self-conscious. I don’t care who witnesses me. All that matters is that I do and say the right thing.
‘Hi, Dad. I didn’t hear you when you needed me. No excuse. I was too up my own backside to understand, as usual. I know now you always believed in me, even though I used to think Clare was your favourite and I was the big disappointment. But if you hadn’t believed in me, I would never have been able to secure justice for Clare. I would have lacked the courage.
‘Did you notice, Dad? They underestimated me. It was useful that they didn’t have my measure, as you said it would be. I didn’t get mad. I got even.’
I pause. If he was here, alive, there’s so much more I would tell him, the truth of what men like Elliott and Todd and Ravel do. Dad always told me the system stinks. I only half believed him and made too many compromises for too long. I’ve repented.
I know that he knows. But, there’s one thing I need to tell him, which used to be impossible to say. ‘I love you, Dad.’
I take out a tatty sheet of A4. I’ve been carrying it around for days, trying to memorise it. It’s a Kaddish prayer, written out phonetically. I am aware it’s blasphemy at worst, and pretty useless at best, because there’s no minyan, no caucus of adult Jews with me. But Dad will get it. And as I sing, I try to channel the cantors who – Mum says – were my forebears.
Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam u-l’almei almaya.
‘May God’s great name be praised throughout all eternity.’
Oseh shalom bi-m’romav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu v’al kol yisrael, v’imru amen.
‘May the One who brings peace to the universe bring peace to us and to all the people of Israel. And let us say: Amen.’
Then I place a pebble at the end of the marble tomb. I love you Dad, I love you Dad, I love you Dad.
It starts to rain. Of course. It’s Rainham.
Who cares? I certainly don’t. I’m going home. To Amy and Jess.
About the Author
Robert Peston is ITV’s political editor, presenter of the politics show Peston, founder of the education charity, Speakers for Schools (www.speakers4schools.org), and vice president of Hospice UK. He has written four critically acclaimed non-fiction books, How Do We Fix This Mess?, Who Runs Britain?, Brown’s Britain and his latest, WTF?, which was described by the Financial Times as ‘mandatory reading’ for anyone seeking to understand Brexit, Trump and the collapse of confidence in western liberalism. His first thriller, The Whistleblower, published by Zaffre, was ‘brilliant’ according to the Guardian and called ‘a rollicking read’ by the Evening Standard. The Crash is its sequel.
For a decade until the end of 2015, he was at the BBC, as economics editor and business editor, and in the 1990s he was at the Financial Times, as political editor, financial editor and head of investigations. At the BBC he played a prominent role in exposing the causes and consequences of the credit crunch, banking crisis and Great Recession. Peston has won more than thirty awards for his journalism, including Journalist of the Year and Scoop of the Year (twice) from the Royal Television Society.
Find him on his blog at itv.com/robertpeston, on Facebook at facebook.com/pestonITV, and on Twitter @peston. He hosts a podcast with Steph McGovern, The Rest is Money.
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Hello!
Thank you for getting hold of The Crash. I hope it’s as much fun to read as it was to write. The Crash is the sequel to The Whistleblower, my thriller about the politics and business skullduggery of the late 1990s. A decade later, in the autumn of 2007, the hero, or perhaps anti-hero, Gil Peck has moved out of newspapers and is now a broadcaster. He is delivering the bad news to the nation that it’s on the brink of economic collapse, because of the greed and recklessness of banks, when his lover – who works at the Bank of England – is found hanged. His ensuing obsessive pursuit of the truth of what happened to her, and his determination to bring her persecutors to justice, takes place against the backdrop of high politics, base greed and the extreme profligacy of that era’s party culture. It’s a parable of the big economic and political shifts in the form of edge-of-the seat entertainment. Or at least that was my plan.
What I’ve tried to do with this book, as I did with The Whistleblower, is to draw on my personal experience of big events to create a plausible alternative reality, that informs as much as it should give pleasure. Every character is both a figment of my imagination and an amalgam of people I’ve encountered and know. Every event is invented but – I hope – plausible, albeit often at the extreme edge of plausibility.
If you would like to hear more about my books, you can visit geni.us/PestonReadersClub where you can become part of the Robert Peston Readers’ Club. It only takes a few moments to sign up, there are no catches or costs. Bonnier Books UK will keep your data private and confidential, and it will never be passed on to a third party. We won’t spam you with loads of emails, just get in touch now and again with news about my books, and you can unsubscribe any time you want. And if you would like to get involved in a wider conversation about my books, please do review The Crash on Amazon, on GoodReads, on any other e-store, on your own blog and social media accounts, or talk about it with friends, family or reader groups! Sharing your thoughts helps other readers, and I always enjoy hearing about what people experience from my writing. Thank you again for reading The Crash.
Best wishes
Robert Peston
Don’t miss out on Gil Peck’s first case . . .
1997. A desperate government clings to power; a hungry opposition will do anything to win. And journalist Gil Peck watches from the sidelines, a respected commentator on the sport of power politics. He thinks he knows how things work. He thinks he knows the rules.
But when Gil’s estranged sister Clare dies in a hit-and-run, he begins to believe it was no accident. Clare knew some of the most sensitive secrets in government. One of them might have got her killed.
As election day approaches, Gil follows the story into the dark web of interests that link politics, finance and the media. And the deeper he goes, the more he realises how wrong he has been.
Power isn’t sport: it’s war. And if Gil doesn’t stop digging, he might be the next casualty.
AVAILABLE NOW
First published in the UK in 2023 by Zaffre
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Robert Peston, The Crash
