A Delicate Truth (41 page)

He read no further. Jamming the note to the
back of the document, he avidly scanned the top page:

By now his heart was racing so fast, his
breathing so uneven, he wondered whether, after all, he was about to die. Perhaps Emily
was wondering too, because she had dropped on her knees beside him.

‘You opened the door.
Then
what?’ he stammered out, frantically leafing through the pages.

‘I opened the door’ – gently
now, to humour him – ‘he stood there. He seemed surprised to see me and asked if
you were in. He said he was a former colleague and friend of yours, and he had this
parcel for you.’

‘And
you
said?’

‘I said yes, you
were
in. But
you were unwell, and I was your doctor attending you. And I didn’t think you
should be disturbed, and could I help?’

‘And
he
said? – go
on!’

‘He asked what you were suffering
from. I said I was sorry, I wasn’t allowed to tell him that without your
permission but you were as comfortable as could be expected pending further examination.
And I was about to call an ambulance, which I am. Are you hearing me, Toby?’

He was hearing her, but he was also churning
his way through the photocopied pages.

‘
Then
what?’

‘He seemed a bit thrown, started to
say something, looked at me again – a bit beadily, I thought – and then he said might he
know my name?’

‘Give me his words. His actual
words.’

‘
Jesus
, Toby.’ But she
gave them anyway: ‘“Would I be impertinent if I were to ask you your
name?” How’s that?’

‘And you told him your name. You said
Probyn?’

‘Doctor Probyn. What do you expect me
to say?’ – catching Toby’s stare. ‘Doctors are
open
, Toby.
Real doctors give their names. Their
real
names.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘“Then kindly tell him that I
admire his taste in medical advisors,” which I thought was a bit fresh of him.
Then he handed me the package. For you.’

‘
Me?
How did he describe
me?’

‘“For
Toby
!” How
the fuck d’you think he described you?’

Fumbling for the note that he had shoved to
the back of the photocopied pages, he read the rest of its message:

… you will not be surprised to
learn that I have decided that a corporate life does not, after all, agree with
me, and I have accordingly awarded myself a lengthy posting to distant
parts.

Yours as ever,

Giles Oakley.

PS. I enclose a memory stick
containing the same material. Perhaps you will add it to the one I suspect you
already have. G.O.

PPS. May I also suggest that
whatever you propose to do, it is done swiftly since there is every sign that
others may act before you? G.O.

PPPS. I shall refrain from our
cherished diplomatic custom of renewing my assurances of the highest esteem,
since I know they would fall on deaf ears. G.O.

And in a transparent plastic capsule pasted
to the top of the page, sure enough: a memory stick neatly marked
SAME
DOCUMENT
.

He was standing at the kitchen window,
uncertain how he had got there, craning his neck to look down into the street. Emily
stood at his side, one hand to his arm to hold him steady. But of Giles Oakley, the
diplomat who does everything by halves and had finally gone the whole hog, there was no
sign. But what was the Kwik-Fit van doing, parked just thirty yards away on the
opposite side of the street? And why did it take three burly men to
change the front wheel of a Peugeot car?

‘Emily, please. Do something for
me.’

‘After I’ve taken you to
hospital.’

‘Rummage in the bottom drawer of that
chest over there, and find the memory stick of my graduation party at Bristol
University. Please.’

While she rummaged, he punted himself along
the wall until he came to his desk. With his undamaged hand he switched on the computer
and nothing happened. He checked the cable, the mains switch, tried to reboot. Still
nothing.

Meanwhile, Emily’s rummaging was
rewarded. She had found the memory stick, and was holding it aloft.

‘I’ve got to go out,’ he
said, ungraciously seizing it from her.

His heart was racing again. He felt
nauseous, but clear-headed and precise.

‘Listen to me, please. There’s a
shop called Mimi’s in the Caledonian Road. Opposite a tattoo parlour called Divine
Canvas and an Ethiopian restaurant.’ Why was everything so clear to him? Was he
dying? From the way she was staring at him, he might as well be.

‘What if there is?’ she asked
him. But his eyes had gone back to the street.

‘Tell me first if they’re still
out there. Three workers talking to each other about bugger all.’

‘People in the street talk about
nothing all the time. What about Mimi’s? Who’s Mimi?’

‘An Internet café. I need shoes.
They’ve crashed my computer. And my BlackBerry for the addresses. Top-left drawer
of my desk. And socks. I’ll need socks. Then see if the men are still
there.’

She had found his anorak, which was crumpled
but otherwise intact, and put his BlackBerry into the left side pocket. She
had helped him put on his socks and shoes, and she had checked to see
whether the men were still there. They were. She had given up saying ‘You
can’t do this, Toby’ and was helping him to shuffle along the corridor.

‘Are you sure Mimi will be receiving
at this hour?’ she asked, in an effort to be light-hearted.

‘Just get me down the stairs. Then go.
You’ve done everything. You’ve been great. Sorry about the mess.’

The staircase might have been less of a
nightmare if they could have agreed where Emily should place herself: above him to help
guide his footsteps, or below to catch him if he plunged? Toby’s view was that
below him was just bloody silly, she could never support his weight and they’d
finish up in the hall on top of each other. Emily riposted that, if he started to fall,
yelling in his ear from behind wasn’t going to stop him.

But these exchanges came and went in flashes
amid the business of manhandling him downstairs and into the street, then speculating –
both of them now – why there was a uniformed policeman loitering at the corner of
Cloudesley Road, because, these days, whoever saw a lone copper standing on a street
corner, looking benign? And – Toby this time – why had the supposed Kwik-Fit team
still
not changed that bloody wheel? But whatever the explanation, he
needed Emily out of sight and sound, clear of it all, for her own sake, please, because
the last thing on earth he wanted to do was make her into an accomplice, which he
explained to her very clearly and at length.

So it surprised him to discover, as he
prepared to launch himself into Copenhagen Street for the downhill sprint, that she had
not only remained at his side but was actually steering him, and probably holding him up
as well, with one hand gripping
his forearm with unladylike strength,
and her other arm fastened like iron around his upper back, but somehow avoiding the
bruising, which reminded him that by now she knew the geography of his body pretty
well.

They were at the junction when he stopped
dead.

‘Shit.’

‘What’s shit?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Can’t remember
what
,
for goodness’ sake?’

‘Whether Mimi’s is left or
right.’

‘Wait here for me.’

She propped him on a bench and he waited
dizzily for her while she made a hasty reconnaissance and returned with the news that
Mimi’s was a stone’s throw away to the left.

But she needed his promise first:

‘We get you to hospital as soon as
this is done. Deal?
Now
what’s the matter?’

‘I’ve got no bloody
money.’

‘Well, I have. Plenty.’

We’re arguing like an old married
couple, he thought, and we haven’t even kissed each other on the cheek. Perhaps he
said it aloud, because she was smiling as she pushed open the door to a minuscule but
scrupulously clean shop with a big plywood counter as you entered and nobody behind it
and a bar at the far end selling coffee and refreshments and, on the wall, a poster
offering to upgrade your PC, health-check it, recover lost data and remove any
unfriendly virus. And beneath this poster, six computer booths and six customers perched
upright before them, four black men and two blonde women. No booth free, so find
somewhere to sit and wait.

So he sat at a table and waited while Emily
fetched two teas and spoke to the manager. Then she came and sat down opposite Toby,
holding both his hands across the table – not entirely,
he wanted to
believe, for medical reasons – until one of the men dismounted from his bar stool,
leaving a booth free.

Toby’s head was reeling and the
fingers of his right hand were in bad shape, so it was Emily in the end who was pushing
home the memory sticks while he called up the addresses for her from his BlackBerry:
Guardian
,
The New York Times
,
Private Eye
, Reprieve,
Channel 4 News, BBC News, ITN, and finally – not quite as a joke – the Press and
Information Department of Her Majesty’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

‘And one for my father,’ she
said, and typed in Kit’s email address from memory, and pressed
‘send’, and included a copy to her mother in case Kit was still sulking in
his tent and not opening his emails. Then, belatedly, Toby remembered the photographs
that Brigid had let him copy into his BlackBerry, so he insisted Emily send them
too.

And Emily was still doing this when Toby
heard a siren wailing and thought at first it was the ambulance coming for him, and that
Emily must somehow have managed to call for one when he wasn’t listening, maybe
back at the flat when she was outside his door talking to Oakley.

Then he decided that she couldn’t
possibly have done that without telling him, because if one thing was certain about
Emily, it was that she didn’t have an ounce of guile in her bones. If Emily said,
‘I’ll call for an ambulance when we’ve done our work at
Mimi’s,’ then that’s when she’d be calling for an ambulance and
not a second before.

Next he thought: it’s Giles
they’re coming for, Giles has thrown himself under a bus; because when a man like
Giles, in his fractured state of mind, tells you he’s about to award himself a
posting to distant parts, you’re entitled to take it any way you want.

Then it began to cross his mind that, by
activating his BlackBerry in order to obtain the email addresses and dispatch
Brigid’s photographs, he had sent up a signal that anyone with
the necessary equipment could home on – he is briefly Beirut Man again – and if the
spirit takes them, direct a rocket down the beam and blow the head off the unlucky
user.

The sirens multiplied and acquired a more
emphatic, bullying tone. At first, they seemed to be approaching from one direction
only. But as the chorus grew to a howl, and the car brakes screamed in the street
outside, Toby couldn’t be certain any more – nobody could be certain, even Emily –
which direction they were coming from.

My thanks to Danny, Jessica and Callum for
enlivening my researches in Gibraltar; to Drs Jane Crispin, Amy Frost and John Eustace
for advice on medical matters; to the journalist and writer Mark Urban for giving so
freely of his military expertise; to writer, activist and founder of openDemocracy,
Anthony Barnett, for educating me in the manners of New Labour in its dying days; and to
Clare Algar and her colleagues at the legal charity Reprieve, for instructing me in the
British Government’s latest assaults on our liberty, whether implemented or
planned.

Most of all I must thank Carne Ross, former
British foreign servant and founder and director of the not-for-profit Independent
Diplomat, who by his example demonstrated the perils of speaking a delicate truth to
power. Without Carne’s example before me, and his pithy advice in my ear, this
book would have been the poorer.