Later, Lamb will host one of his occasional departmental meetings, its main purpose to ensure the ongoing discontent of all involved, but for now Slough House is what passes for peaceful, the grousing and grumbling of its denizens remaining mainly internal. The clocks that each of the crew separately watches dawdle through their paces on Slough House time, this being slower by some fifty per cent than in most other places, while, like the O.B. in distant Berkshire, the day catnaps the afternoon away.
Elsewhere, mind, it’s scurrying around like a demented gremlin.
THERE WAS A STORY doing the rounds that the list of questions traditionally asked of head injury victims, to check for concussion – what’s the date, where do you live, who’s the Prime Minister? – had had to be amended in light of the current incumbent’s tenure, as the widespread disbelief that he was still in office was producing a rash of false positives. Which might explain, thought Claude Whelan, why he insisted on being addressed as PM.
But like all his ilk the man was dangerous when cornered, and one thing politics was never short of was corners.
‘You know the biggest threat Parliament faces?’ he asked Whelan now.
‘A cyber—’
‘No, that’s the biggest threat the country faces. The biggest threat Parliament faces is democracy. It’s been a necessary evil for centuries, and for the most part we’ve been able to use it to our advantage. But one fucking referendum later and it’s like someone gave a loaded gun to a drunk toddler.’ He was holding a newspaper, folded open to Dodie Gimball’s column. ‘Read this yet?’
Whelan had.
The PM quoted from it anyway: ‘“Who are we to turn to for protection? Yes, we have our security services, but they are ‘services’ only in the sense that a bull ‘services’ a cow. In other words, dear readers, a cock-up of the first magnitude.”’
Whelan said, ‘I’m not entirely sure that works. She goes from plural to—’
‘Yes yes yes, we’ll get the grammar police onto her first thing. Do they have actual powers of arrest, do you think? Or will they just hang her from the nearest participle?’
Whelan nodded his appreciation. He was a short man with a high forehead and a pleasant manner, the latter a surprise given his years among the intelligence service’s back-room boys, a fraternity not known for its social skills. His ascent to the top rank had been unexpected, and largely due to his not having been involved in the crimes and misdemeanours which had resulted in the desk being vacant in the first place. Having clean hands was an unusual criterion for the role, but his predecessor’s shenanigans had ensured that, on this occasion at least, it was politic.
It did mean, though, that his experience of actual politics was on the thin side. His required learning curve, as Second Desk Diana Taverner had pointed out, was steeper than a West End bar bill.
Now he said, ‘Twelve people died. However indelicately she phrases it, it comes under the heading fair comment.’
‘Fair comment would be laying the blame with the homicidal cretins who committed the murders. No, Gimball has her own agenda. You’re aware of who she is?’
‘I know who her husband is.’
‘Well then,’ said the PM. ‘Well then,’ and slapped the newspaper against his thigh, or tried to. There wasn’t really room for the manoeuvre.
They were in what was best described as a cubbyhole, though was informally known as an incubator. Number 10 was a warren, as if an architect had been collecting corridors and decided to use them all up at once. Offices of state aside, every room in the building seemed an excuse to include a bit of extra space between itself and the next one along, in most of which, at any given time, a plot was being hatched. Hence ‘incubator’. They were ideal for the purpose, as they were only really big enough for two people at a time and thus reduced the amount of political fear that could be generated, political fear being the fear that the blame for something bad might fall on someone present.
The meeting they’d just come from, discussing the events in Derbyshire, had triggered an awful lot of this.
‘And the bastard wants my job,’ the PM continued.
‘He certainly gives every indication that he’d enjoy running the country,’ Whelan agreed. ‘But, Prime Minister, with all due respect, he’s his party’s sole MP. What possible threat could he represent?’
‘He’s indicated that he might be willing to rejoin
‘… Ah.’
‘Yes, bloody
