‘There might be truth in that,’ Old Miles conceded. ‘Though up till now, I’ve considered survival one of my talents.’ He nodded in the direction of the door to his left. ‘Would you like to go upstairs?’
‘You’re not my type.’
‘There’s drink. A gathering of like-minded friends.’ He leaned closer. ‘You’ve been in the game, haven’t you? I can usually tell.’ He pulled back. ‘Call it a wake.’
‘I’m not the sentimental kind.’
‘But you look like a drinker.’
The fat man produced a cigarette from nowhere. It looked like one of those that Old Miles had just sold him – the tobacco nearly black; the tube loose in its filter – but he couldn’t have freed it with his hand in his pocket, surely. He slotted it into his mouth. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll pop my head in. See if I recognise any old faces.’
‘And if any of them recognise yours,’ said Old Miles, ‘what name would they attach to it?’
‘Christ knows,’ said Jackson Lamb, and disappeared through the door the shopkeeper had indicated.
The speciality of the house was red meat.
If you didn’t believe the menu, just look at the diners.
Diana Taverner ran the obvious numbers: if you subtracted the serving staff she’d be the only woman here, which was fine by her. Equality meant nothing if it didn’t involve earning your place at the table; a table, in this instance, occupying the private upstairs room of a pub, but one of those pubs reviewed in the Sunday supplements, with a named chef. He’d moved among them earlier, introducing himself, explaining the cuts he was intending to serve, and had come this close to asking if they wanted to meet the damn cow. Diana enjoyed her food, but the rituals involved could be tiresome.
A fork met a glass, repeatedly. The company fell silent.
‘Thank you all.’
It was Peter Judd who’d rung for quiet, and Judd who spoke now. He’d put on weight: for a man who’d never minded being photographed jogging, he reliably resembled the ‘before’ slot in a set of before-and-after photos. But those paparazzi days were behind him, she supposed, even allowing for the fact that they might turn out to be ahead of him also: writing off the career of a politician whose greed for power was so naked it required a parental advisory sticker frequently turned out to be a little previous, as the barrow-boy slang had it. And barrow-boy slang was just one of the vernaculars Judd was fluent in. Another was corporate bonhomie, which, for this evening, he’d turned up to eleven.
‘I’d just like to say how delightful it is to see you all here on what I’m sure will be the first of many –
There were those who’d said of Peter Judd, during his years as a contender for the highest office in the land, that his clowning masked a laser-like focus on his own best interests, but it was a mistake to assume that the theatrical flourishes were nothing more than showmanship. The truth was, he enjoyed the ringmaster role too much to abjure it, while another, truer truth was, it had the added benefit of inducing even close associates to underestimate him. This, Diana knew, was a key component of his interpersonal skill set. Judd had long made a study of loyalty – the ties that bind, and how we answer to their bondage – without ever suffering its strictures himself.
