Goodfellowe MP

And then it got worse. Just as all the froth and fizz was leaking away from the newspaper market the Government had announced, at the insistence of its masters in the European Commission, that it would introduce a new Press (Diversity of Ownership) Bill designed to break the stranglehold which in the view of Monsieur Bourgeois, the Commissioner, was enjoyed and abused by the largest newspaper groups. ‘Competition, not cartel!’ Monsieur B had declared with Gallic fervour and the British Government, almost alone in Europe, had taken him seriously. So the legislative knee was bent. Observers, unused to the inverted logic that a Government should push around the media, predicted conflagration. Having lit the blue touch paper, the Government would now be expected to retire.

But the expected open warfare failed to materialize. The biggest players, already frustrated by the diminishing returns on their investments in newspapers, were growing increasingly distracted by new adventures. ‘I’ve packed my rucksack,’ one of Corsa’s fellow moguls had muttered over lunch in the Savoy Grill, explaining his decision to desert the rock face of Fleet Street for the fertile ground of cable television. ‘This ledge on which we press barons live has given us a great view, but it’s grown too damned draughty for my comfort. Time to find a new perch.’

They’d had their fun and now the big boys seemed almost content to dump a few titles – to the advantage of the second-rank players like Corsa. Or so it seemed. During the first week of the announcement he’d vociferously supported the new Bill and the opportunities it represented to pick up still more titles and move into the big time. By the second week, however, the prospective sales had served only to drag down share prices across the sector, including the price of Granite shares. Shares that Corsa had used to guarantee his huge bank borrowings. Whoops.

The bankers. Let me die alongside my bankers! That way I’ll be sure to take the bastards with me … They’d called a meeting for next week, wanted to discuss the covenants he’d given them for the most recent thirty million pounds. No problem. Not yet at least. He’d get through that one as he’d got through all the discussions with his bankers over the last eighteen months. Encourage them with praise, confuse them with inflated prospects, weigh them down with paper, above all allow them to be deceived by their own voracious appetites and ambitions. Corsa had added so many new companies and newspaper titles to the Granite chain that there had never been two consecutive balance sheets that were comparable. Assets, valuations, hypothecations and depreciations, he’d moved them all around the financial chess board with a speed that left his opponents, and occasionally even himself, bemused. No one knew that so much of the bottom line of the Granite accounts which he proudly proclaimed as profit existed only on paper. No one knew, not yet. But they would. In those silent moments at the very end of day, when sleep eluded him and darkness allowed ghouls and hobgoblins to prey, he knew his time was running out.

They were passing the statue of King Charles I which stood at the end of Whitehall looking down towards the parliament buildings. The Killing Field, where they had taken the King one freezing January morning, paraded him before the crowd and chopped off his head. Where so many others had found their ambitions and abilities dragged in the dust behind the baying mob. The men of the media were kings now. But here of all places he knew that even kings could fall. Torn to pieces and hurled onto the rocks which lay below the crumbling cliff face. He needed a lifeline. And in a hurry. He glanced at his watch. Already he was late.

‘Downing Street,’ he prompted his driver impatiently.

By the time Goodfellowe had parked his bike in the rack at the front of Speaker’s Court he was out of breath and the third toe on his left foot was developing a blister. It was almost seven o’clock, a series of votes lay ahead of him stretching into the night, and he knew he was in danger of being late. He couldn’t remember what they were voting about but there would be trouble if he didn’t make it to the division lobby in time, so he was trying to hurry. Even on a good day the Government’s majority stretched only to nine and there had been few good days recently. Two colleagues on the Government backbenches were recovering from heart attacks, another had had an attack of conscience after his constituency association failed to reselect him, while a fourth was under attack from the tabloids for multiple philandering. She hadn’t been seen in Westminster since the last issue of the Sunday People, hoping in vain that colleagues and correspondents would lose interest in her reported non-culinary uses of lo-fat banana yoghurt. It was at times like these that Whips lost their sense of humour. He wondered whether in another life Madame Tang had been a Whip. Or merely a cat castrator. He’d better hurry.

Then the phone started warbling again. It was getting to be a dangerous distraction. He should switch it off. Would switch it off. Next time.

‘Goodfellowe,’ he panted.

‘Mr Goodfellowe MP. Help. Help. Help!’ The voice was thin, perceptibly stretched by tension. ‘I am arrested. This is Jya-Yu. You know, Zhu’s niece. In prison. Help me. Please!’

The phone was handed to someone else. ‘Detective Constable Ferrit here at Charing Cross. Is there any chance that I’m talking to Mr Thomas Goodfellowe MP?’ The policeman sounded deeply sceptical. When he’d offered the prisoner the one phone call, he hadn’t expected a Chinese girl whose anxiety had reduced her command of English to little more than gabble to suggest that she would phone a politician rather than a solicitor. She didn’t know any solicitors, she had struggled to explain.

‘What’s going on, constable?’

‘Lady here’s been arrested. Had your number and says she wants your help. I can always call a duty solicitor if it’s a pain, sir. Do you know the lady?’

‘Sort of. Her uncle’s herbal shop provides me with fresh tea. Gave her my number because I’m expecting a new supply to arrive. What’s the problem?’

‘Soliciting and being in possession of a controlled substance, sir.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘And we might throw in a charge of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. Actual bodily harm unless his nose stops bleeding in five minutes.’

‘She’s only – what – eighteen?’

‘Old enough, sir. You coming or not?’

‘Ple-e-e-ase Minister Goodfellowe.’ Jya-Yu’s fear was all too evident.

The bells of Big Ben directly above him were already announcing the hour and the first vote. He’d miss it unless he started for the division lobby now, and his vote might make all the difference. Yet she was sobbing. He was wondering if he could find an excuse that might satisfy the Whips, rather like when he had failed to sign his last Inland Revenue cheque, but that hadn’t worked either. Perhaps if he hurried to the police station he might miss only the first couple of divisions, be back for the rest almost before anyone had noticed. Yet this was a running three-liner, a summons by the Whips which only death might excuse, and even then it had to be certified. There again, why should he bother with her? He scarcely knew her, no more than a passing smile and a request that she call when the tea came in.

‘They lock me up!’ she was wailing.

He knew what it was like to be locked up. Arrested. To know the stench of fear and humiliation. That’s why he was riding a bloody bike rather than driving a car. You didn’t need a licence for a bike. He’d only been a little bit over the limit but it was during the pre-Christmas purge and whereas twenty years ago they might have made an exception for a Member of Parliament, nowadays they made examples of them. All over that Christmas his constituency had been plastered with the Government’s drink-drive posters – ‘Don’t Be An Idiot’, the posters had warned. ‘And Don’t Vote For One Next Time!’ his opponents had added in huge yellow graffiti across every single one.

He had to go.

‘I’ll be there in fifteen.’

His arrival at Charing Cross police station in Agar Street turned out to be less than authoritative.

‘You’re an MP?’ the reception constable had asked dubiously. The intervening fifteen minutes between phone call and arrival had not been kind to Goodfellowe. A sudden spring shower had ambushed him as he passed Downing Street; as though the Chief Whip were using his occult powers to give him one last chance to change his mind and turn. He had arrived at the police station red in cheek, dripping slightly, with his suit crumpled and his trousers still tucked inside his socks.

‘You sure you’re an MP?’ the constable repeated.

‘Used to be a Minister. Home Office,’ Goodfellowe responded, but this only served to make his appearance all the more unconvincing. His suits, even when dry, seemed to suggest faded elegance, memories of better times and evidence of several dry cleanings too far. His age lay somewhere in the late forties, that point in a man’s life which is neither young nor yet old, when ambition’s flame has begun to flicker if not yet die, when many a man grows preoccupied with the stretching of his waistline rather than his intellect. But not Goodfellowe. The hair at his temples was beginning to show grey in a manner which could seem distinguished when not frizzing in the rain, although it normally looked as if he had just been roused from a nap on the sofa – unruly, a little battered, much like Goodfellowe himself. But nothing about him suggested either sleepiness or indolence. He was a man of enthusiasms, sometimes excessively so, with a mind so open to possibilities that it worked best only when it was almost too late. A mind that had not always commended itself to party managers who preferred discipline and routine. They compared him to a great tanker, very difficult to turn or manoeuvre once set on his course, often in bad weather refusing to answer the helm, and as he glanced at the station clock which showed twenty past and the first two votes missed, he knew there would be more rough sailing ahead. But it was in his eyes that the depths of Goodfellowe were revealed. They were dark, almost blue-black like the night sky. Sometimes they would sparkle as though filled with a thousand stars and captivate all who were allowed close enough to see, yet at other times they would darken as though great clouds were passing and threaten the most violent of storms.

He had once, until four years ago, been part of the constellation himself, one of the brightest and most rapidly promoted politicians of his time. A junior Minister who, although he did not hide his ambition, had sufficient sense to wear it with a smile and was regarded by an increasing number of colleagues as good Cabinet material and possibly, one day, even more. But at that time he had had a wife and a son, as well as Sammy. There had also been a driving licence and a Government driver too – all the trappings of success which, piece by piece, had fallen away, leaving him in a rain-sodden suit with his trousers tucked inside his socks standing in Charing Cross nick.

He reached into his pocket for his wallet. He didn’t have his House of Commons pass on him, couldn’t remember where he had left it, but his credit card had become one of his closest allies in his battle against misfortune, never leaving his side. ‘Thomas Goodfellowe MP’ it announced, and the constable at last seemed satisfied.

‘We have to be careful, you understand,’ he offered by way of apology, opening the heavily secured door that allowed Goodfellowe into the heart of the police station.

‘I understand all too well, Constable,’ he replied, bending down to release his trouser cuffs from captivity.

He was led downstairs to the Charge Room, which resembled the ticket counter of a bus station, except that the boards behind the reception desk carried duty rosters and charge sheets instead of timetables. It seemed to be rush hour.

‘Sarge, I’ve got one for the Chinese girl,’ the constable announced.

‘You her solicitor?’ the custody sergeant enquired, continuing to give his attention to a large batch of forms in front of him.

‘A Member of Parliament.’

‘Ah, you must be Mr Goodfellowe.’ The sergeant looked up. ‘She a constituent, sir?’

‘No. A friend, I suppose.’

‘Your … friend’ – the policeman tested the term cautiously – ‘is in a spot of real trouble, Mr Goodfellowe. Soliciting. Possession. Punching an officer. We’re all going to have to be rather careful about this, if you take my meaning.’ Goodfellowe took it to be a friendly warning. ‘We tried to get her to call a solicitor but she insisted it should be you. I can still call the duty solicitor, if you want. If you’re too busy. Got more important things to do.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant. Might as well see her while I’m here, don’t you think?’

‘Up to you. Entirely up to you,’ the sergeant pronounced, washing his hands of any further advice. Rush hour was well underway, the Charge Room was getting backed up and it was going to be a long night.

‘Are you going to charge her, Sergeant?’

‘Depends. Haven’t got her side of the story yet, she’s having trouble explaining herself. And we’re running a check through Clubs & Vice and through the Immigration Service to see if they’ve a handle on Miss Pan … Chou-you. That her real name?’

‘Zsha-yu,’ Goodfellowe pronounced phonetically. ‘I think so.’

‘Know the young lady well, do you, sir?’

‘Not really.’

‘I see.’

‘I doubt very much whether you do, Sergeant,’ Goodfellowe responded, more than aware of what was swirling through the policeman’s excessively stimulated mind. ‘I think perhaps I’d better see her now.’

All this time Jya-Yu had been sitting in a detention room. Less than ninety minutes beforehand she had been a carefree, bright-eyed eighteen-year-old looking forward to a night out with friends. Now she was rigid with terror, sitting on a plastic mattress on a concrete bunk in a cell whose painted brick walls were covered in crude graffiti and scratchings which seemed like the claw marks of animals. The room had been designed so that prisoners could do no harm to themselves, yet Jya-Yu, simply by sitting here, felt more harmed and in more pain than at any time in her short life. The scuffle, her arrest, the ride with head bowed in the back of a police wagon to a basement car park, with policemen and women shouting at her (or so it seemed), thrown amidst all the dregs that collected in a busy Charge Room. And then the strip search, the violation, to her the most profound humiliation of her life, almost as Madame Tang had described it to her, as though the Kuomintang army had marched right up Charing Cross Road and started to lay waste. When she was led from the cell and into an interview room to discover at last a familiar face, the emotions she had kept caged within at last escaped her control. She stood to attention, hands by her side, head bowed, and began to sob inconsolably. Instinctively Goodfellowe crossed to her and placed his arms defensively around her, trying to bury the tears in his embrace. The constable smirked.

‘Ah, could we be left alone to talk, Constable?’ Goodfellowe enquired when at last Jya-Yu had regained her composure.

‘’Fraid not, sir.’

‘But I thought …’

‘Not a privileged conversation, sir, not unless you’re a solicitor.’

The first battle lost. And so they had talked and Jya-Yu, calmer now and with better control of her English, had tried to explain, and the arresting constable, nose no longer weeping, had come in and recorded a formal interview during which he had displayed a plastic bag containing two twists of silver paper.

‘Are these yours, miss?’ the policeman had enquired, still slightly nasal.

She had nodded.

‘For the record, the prisoner has indicated that the silver packets belong to her. And what is the off-white powder inside them?’

She looked at Goodfellowe, her eyes flushed with confusion and torment, then sat with her head held low and would say no more.

‘Miss Pan Jya-Yu, it seems to me probable that this powder is a controlled substance, cocaine I would guess. Have you got anything to say?’ The constable sounded a little bored and began to make patterns on the table top with the rings left by his plastic coffee cup. ‘OK. For the benefit of the record, the prisoner refuses to answer. And you do understand, don’t you, that your refusal to say anything can be used against you in court?’

‘Yes. I do,’ she whispered.

They were taken back to the Charge Room, now in a state of controlled bedlam, where an inspector appeared. They had run Jya-Yu’s name through their records but had found no sordid past, no vice conviction, she was not an illegal, her presence in the country was entirely in order.

‘And you have no witness for the soliciting charge,’ Goodfellowe intervened.

‘But we do have a suspicious substance, sir. And the constable’s bloody nose.’

‘That was accident,’ Jya-Yu protested, but the inspector ignored her, continuing to address Goodfellowe.

‘I’m not going to charge the lady at the present time but we’ll release her on bail to return at a time when our lab analysis of the substance is completed. Probably in about six weeks’ time. When we know what it is, then we’ll know what to do.’

‘And in the meantime?’

‘If you’ll let me offer you a word of advice, I should concentrate on running the country, sir. Tears and trouble. That’s all a gentleman like you will get from becoming tied up in a case like this. People have such suspicious minds.’

Corsa was feeling out of sorts. He hated receptions, even in Downing Street. Three hundred people crushed into a couple of steaming drawing rooms where they sipped cheap wine – Spanish this month, Sainsbury’s had a special – and waited for one of the Prime Minister’s funny little speeches. Corsa was used to making dramatic entrances, demanding the attention of all present, not shuffling along in an anonymous line, like his father. In a crowd his lack of physical stature made him feel claustrophobic, insignificant. He hated cheap wine, held disdain for casual acquaintance and had no high regard even for the Prime Minister. How could one take a man seriously whose eyebrows resembled two ferrets locked in coitus?

He turned to take out his frustrations on the Minister for Overseas Development, a man of giggles and girth who wore his suit as though beneath its immense folds it hid a chest of drawers with all the drawers open. ‘Bunny’ Burrowes was also notoriously Catholic and unmarried. And, this evening, he was a target that had moved out into the open. The Herald had recently launched a campaign exposing the high infant-mortality levels in Angola caused by an epidemic of flu believed to have been introduced by European nuns. As his features editor had pointed out to Corsa, the death rates in Angola were no higher than in Iraq or Mongolia but, as Corsa had in turn pointed out to the features editor, there was little public sympathy to be generated by Arabs or Orientals ‘and black babies have such enormous eyes. So appealing.’ Anyway, neither Iraq nor Mongolia had a Royal visit planned for three months’ time. So the Herald in traditional campaigning mood had promised to build them a hospital. Much fanfare, still more moral outrage, and all by Royal appointment. Great publicity. Sadly for the plans and promises, however, the Herald’s campaign had found its readers in a profound state of compassion fatigue. Both heart strings and purse strings remained steadfastly unplucked, and the Herald’s appeal was a quarter of a million short – money which Corsa had neither mood nor means to find from his own resources. So, privately and with great politeness, they had asked the Foreign Office whose officials, still more politely, had said no. Yet here, giggling in the middle of the Green Drawing Room, was the Minister in all his voluminous flesh. Corsa felt a challenge coming on.

‘My dear Minister, what a pleasure.’

Burrowes scowled at the interruption. Unlike some of his colleagues he did not welcome over-familiarity with the press, being neither photogenic nor particularly prudent in his private life. He replied with no more than a nod of his heavily jowled head and was about to pick up his interrupted conversation about costume with the country’s leading male ice skater when, with only perfunctory apologies, Corsa took his arm and led him off to a quieter corner.

‘Not your bloody hospital, Freddy,’ Burrowes started, objecting to the heavy hand upon his sleeve. ‘I’ve seen the papers. It won’t wash. We don’t have the money.’

‘Of course you have the money, Bunny. It’s simply a matter of priorities. But of course I understand your difficulties.’

‘Good,’ responded the Minister, his eyes dancing back to the skater and making to leave, but Corsa kept a firm grip on his sleeve.

‘I merely wanted to make sure that you had been fully briefed on the opportunities.’

‘What opportunities?’

‘The opportunity to get some richly deserved credit. For the Government. For the Foreign Office aid programme. And, when it comes down to it, for you.’

The Minister pulled distractedly at each of his pudgy fingers in turn as though checking that the press man hadn’t stolen any in the crush.

‘Think of the free publicity,’ Corsa continued. ‘The hospital building is all prefabricated. We could load it onto an RAF transport and fly it in together. You and me. Accompanied by a handirpicked selection of reporters and television cameramen, of course. Imagine the reception. The crowds on the runway. Laughing children, weeping doctors, dancing mothers, and as many effusive local dignitaries as their Mercedes can shuttle in. The lot. And you and the Cardinal being greeted like saviours – which is precisely what this hospital project is all about.’

‘The Cardinal?’ enquired the Minister.

‘Yes. I’ve had a word with his office,’ Corsa lied impetuously. ‘They say in principle he’d be delighted to help. Thinks it’s an excellent idea. Sort of absolution for the nuns. We Catholic boys should stick together, Bunny.’

Burrowes’ fingers began dancing across the folds of his damp chin. Even on a good day he was no longer what he could regard as young, and his contemplation of indiscretions both past and proposed had begun to produce in him a growing attachment to his religious roots, and particularly to the understanding and forgiveness those roots might provide. Yes, if the Cardinal was considering giving his personal approval …

‘And the Herald would keep the campaign going. Reports on the children saved, the disasters averted and the good deeds done. Your good deeds, Bunny. Right through the summer.’

Burrowes’ jowls wobbled in growing anticipation. Public duty and personal piety all wrapped up in one endless photo opportunity, right through the summer – and the next reshuffle. The Minister’s eyes grew moist.

‘It’s only a drop in the ocean so far as your budget is concerned but it’s in a damned good cause. Your cause. An excellent cause, don’t you think?’ Corsa continued, and the Minister found himself nodding in agreement. He’d get stick from his officials when he went back to the office, but he could squeeze it out of the disaster fund and pray that Bangladesh wouldn’t disappear beneath flood water again this year. A gentlemen’s agreement forged for God’s work. After all, that was a Minister’s job, to decide. ‘For the greater good,’ he burbled enthusiastically. ‘And sod the civil servants.’

At last Corsa allowed the Minister to return to his ice skater. Two hundred and fifty thousand. Not a bad return on ten minutes’ work and a glass of Sainsbury’s Rioja. It was fine sport and the fool hadn’t even realized, had been so pathetically grateful. How he despised them, the politicians, the would-be rulers with their airs and arrogances, strutting around this tiny world of Westminster like peacocks with their flight feathers plucked.

He found himself wandering away from the general crush, stepping around the White Drawing Room in search of more convivial distraction. He examined a Constable landscape of storm clouds and sodden fields, not one of the painter’s best. Corsa had better in his own boardroom, although in private he preferred more modern works, the sort of things in which it looked as though reality had been taken apart and put back in an entirely different order. Rather like his accounts. On a table by the window stood four china dolls, porcelain figures of former Prime Ministers – Gladstone, Wellington, Disraeli and Palmerston, giants of the Victorian age but all with private lives and peccadilloes which would in the modern era have brought them low long before their time. ‘Publish and be damned!’ Wellington had challenged his mistress when confronted with her all-too-explicit diaries. Nowadays she would, and he would too. Be damned, that is. Cut down to size quicker than a forest of mahogany.