‘So we can stick our heads up our arses and pretend it’s not happening, like you suggest,’ Lamb continued, ‘or we can walk back the cat and see who we’re really up against. Ideally before they move on to the next stage in their schedule.’
Welles looked round the room. Everyone was staring at him, except Coe and Shirley Dander, the former of whom was focused on his shoes and the latter peering hard into the gloomier corners of the room, possibly trying to locate the missing Haribo.
He sighed and said, ‘So just what is the next stage?’
Everyone turned to J. K. Coe.
Who said, without looking up, ‘Seize control of the media.’
Shirley made a scoffing noise. ‘Yeah, like
‘They’re right on schedule so far,’ Louisa said.
‘So what, they’re gonna hijack the BBC?’
‘Well, it worked for Graham Norton.’
‘If you’ve finished amusing yourselves,’ Welles said, ‘do you have an actual suggestion to make?’
Lamb shifted his weight from one buttock to another, and everyone in the room bar Welles flinched. But when he spoke it was without intestinal accompaniment. ‘Yeah, I suggest you put your thinking cap on. You need to come up with a story.’
‘For what?’
‘For getting me into the Park,’ Lamb said. ‘For some reason, they don’t much like me over there.’
DARKNESS HAD FALLEN OVER Regent’s Park when news of Dennis Gimball’s death broke: the darkness would roll away in time, but news once broken remains forever unfixed. Claude Whelan was heading out the door: a fresh shirt, dinner with Claire; neither seemed a lot to ask. But all he had time for was a brief dalliance on the steps; a few deep breaths holding the summery tang of leaves from the park opposite. Heading back in, summoned by his beeper, he encountered, inevitably, Diana Taverner, also on her way to the hub. Despite the hour and the punishing past few days she looked alert and fresh. There were rumours she had a room on one of the upper floors where she enjoyed blood transfusions, or perhaps sacrificed virgins, always supposing any made it past security. Her chestnut brown hair, naturally curly, was worn short of late. Whelan wondered whether the colour used help. Lady Di would see grey hairs as a sign of impending weakness.
‘It’s Gimball,’ were her opening words.
Whelan groaned. ‘Don’t tell me – he’s making his speech.’
‘No, but that would be headline news,’ Lady Di conceded. ‘Given his current state. He’s dead, Claude.’
‘He’s
‘Dead. In an alley in Slough. Someone damn near took his head off.’
‘They took his … Oh, Jesus! What with, a machete?’
‘A tin of paint. Don’t look at me like that, reports are confused. But it’s definitely him, he’s definitely dead, and there are no current sightings of any hostiles. Which is … strange.’
‘Someone murdered Dennis Gimball with a can of paint,’ Whelan said faintly, ‘and there’s something you’re finding strange?’
‘It’s not the usual pattern. Terror bots don’t hit their target and fade away, they score as many victims as possible and go out in a blaze of glory. All we’ve got is an anonymous sighting of a black male with a face tattoo, and given the general level of eyewitness reliability, this’ll probably turn out to be a teenage girl with a birthmark. If it’s not a smokescreen to start with.’
‘Let’s move out of the hall, shall we?’ They headed for the stairs, and on the first landing down Whelan stopped her and said, ‘I spoke to him this afternoon.’
‘To Gimball?’
‘Before he set off for Slough.’
‘I see. To warn him off flaming Zafar Jaffrey in public, I presume.’
He said, ‘It would have upset a few apple carts.’
‘The PM,’ said Lady Di.
‘For these purposes, yes, he’s an apple cart. It’s an open secret Gimball was announcing his return to the fold this evening, and the odds are good he was also going to break whatever story his wife had up her sleeve. I was … advising him against such a course.’
‘You were doing the PM’s dirty work.’
‘In the national interest.’
‘Are we sure about that?’
‘I don’t much care for your tone, and this isn’t the time for a strategy review. What’s done is done. We now need to make sure that whoever’s responsible for this appalling act is identified as swiftly as possible.’
‘Before anybody speculates that it might have been us, you mean.’
‘That would be a ridiculous assumption.’
‘Of course it would, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be made,’ Taverner said. ‘Gimball was your – I mean our – fiercest critic. If you were coming the heavy with him the afternoon he was killed, well. It’s not going to look pretty.’ She reached out and removed a speck of lint from his lapel. ‘To be blunt, Claude, it’s going to look like we had something to do with it.’
A horrible possibility was forming, like a cloud taking shape, in Whelan’s mind. ‘And did we?’
‘Now you’ve lost me.’
‘You’re Ops, Di. Did we have anything to do with this?’
She said, ‘The small print’s a pain to trawl through, but if you look at the T&Cs carefully, you’ll notice I’m not allowed to have serving MPs whacked. With or without your knowledge.’
‘That’s a comfort.’
