Her driver silently efficient, or efficiently silent, Diana Taverner watched London slide past: its shopfronts, its kerb flash, the hubbub on its corners. Being in this vehicle rendered her both unseen and high-status, indicating to the pavement-bound that here was an instrument of government, her importance beyond their comprehension, her identity withheld; the tinted windows announcing that here was a story, but declining to tell it. Famously, it was once suggested that anyone over thirty using a bus could be deemed a failure. A more severe metric might be: Anyone uncushioned by driver and armoured glass was a has-been, or never was. She was approaching Number Ten, outside which, not long ago, ousted members of government had been watched packing their cars for departure. That was the real nature of failure: no longer being one of the ferried. It wasn’t going to happen to her. Her car nosed forward like a fish. It stopped at the gates, and she climbed out without a word.
The madder stories of recent years—the gold-flecked wallpaper, the bring-a-bottle lockdown dos, the incident with the monkey—had been put to bed, but behind the black door was still a warren, the seat of government being an Escher’s nest of leftover spaces, where policies were hammered out in box rooms, diplomatic overtures composed in galley kitchens. Taverner had once attended a meeting in a space designated a walk-in closet. Now she received a nod from the officer on duty, and the door opened for her. She knew where she was going but was guided anyway, one of the PM’s staff doing the honours. Small talk was not attempted. A door was knocked upon. She was welcomed into the PM’s presence.
This did not make her weak at the knees. While it remained true that, viewed through the prism of the recent past, most new Prime Ministers would impress, it was becoming clearer with each passing day that the current office-holder’s great electoral advantage had consisted solely of his not being one of his five immediate predecessors, a hand he’d already overplayed. His government had hit the ground runny, like a jelly that hadn’t quite set; his most talked-about achievement had been the self-completing circle of cutting fuel allowances for the elderly, which would soon enough cut the numbers of elderly requiring fuel, while his much-heralded defence of the NHS amounted so far only to his being very much in favour of free spectacles. If transparency had been his watchword in opposition, in government, it seemed, this meant sporting the emperor’s new clothes. But at least he hadn’t paid for them.
Still, he wasted no time letting her know who he thought was in charge. “I’ve read your summary. One dead, three hospitalised, all with Park connections, and your write-up’s as illuminating as a twenty-watt bulb. Quote, ‘an attempt at extorting moneys from the Park has been quashed, and those responsible apprehended.’ What, precisely, does that mean?”
She said, “It means, Prime Minister, that one of First Desk’s responsibilities is to shield this office from embarrassment.”
“Really? First I’ve heard of it. And speaking of embarrassment, what’s Peter Judd’s role? Are you suggesting he was involved in this alleged extortion scheme?”
“Judd is an active mischief-maker, and—”
“I have a twelve-year-old who’s an active mischief-maker, but I’ve never proposed we use state machinery to keep him in line. Are you telling me Judd is an actual bad actor?”
“I’m telling you he has deep-rooted connections to bad actors.”
“He was a career politician, Diana. That’s a job description.”
The chief difficulty, she thought, was his voice. As with most chief difficulties, if it were ever resolved, even satisfactorily, another would rise to take its place, but until then it was a nasal irritation—like a recalcitrant bogey—that made hearing him a chore. No, the PM’s voice was not one to deliver good news in. Luckily for them both, nothing he currently had to say was intended to raise her spirits.
“One of those hospitalised was from your Dogs section, yes? I gather he went through a window. That’s not a great advert for your Service’s ability to police itself.”
“He wasn’t there in an official capacity.”
“Let me take a moment while I work out whether that makes it better or worse. No, not getting anywhere.”
She’d had worse meetings. Incoming PMs were always a problem, imagining, having moved into Number Ten, that they were Number One. Talking them down to a more reasonable self-assessment could, depending on the ego involved, prove an uphill struggle—the last half decade had been Sisyphean. How long it would take the current example to absorb the first rule of political mathematics, by which all whole numbers gravitate towards zero, remained to be seen. On the evidence so far, a few months at most. But long before then, she was going to have to take charge.
