A Sentimental Traitor (19 page)

‘Sorry, Harry. I truly am. I take full responsibility. It’s my fault.’

‘What is?’

‘The screw-up over St Mary’s.’

Harry groaned, struggling to recollect an early philosophy lesson that had suggested the world was imagination and might cease to exist if you kept your eyes closed. He tried it; didn’t
work. ‘School or hospital?’

‘Both.’

There had been a point where St Mary’s had boasted both a school and a hospital, but both had fallen casualty to the campaign of cuts. Inevitable. No easy solution. Inherited problem. All
the usual clichés had been marched before the public and put on parade, but very few had saluted. Even statistics that showed you had a considerably better chance of surviving any number of
medical emergencies in the new, larger but more distant hospital hadn’t won the day; the hospital and school had served the community for generations, and if they had been good enough for
fathers and grandfathers, they should be there for grandsons, too. So Harry had made the argument, ducked, and moved on. The adjacent sites had now been cleared and made ready for the construction
of a new business park, the sorry matter forgotten – or so he had hoped.

Yet, according to an uncharacteristically subdued and hesitant Oscar, the front page of the local newspaper that was about to flood the streets of the constituency was dominated by a photograph
of Ms Bagshot, standing in the middle of the building site, her arms outstretched in the preacher position, beneath a headline that screamed: ‘Harry’s Howler.’

‘It was the press pack, you see.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Harry replied bluntly.

‘We put together a press pack for the campaign. Usual stuff, to brief any visiting journalist about the wonders of the constituency. Look, Harry, I truly am sorry . . .’

‘Oscar, wait. Slow down. What the bloody hell are you talking about?’

‘Emily, she did the draft. Very well, we all thought. Updating the one we put out at the last election.’

‘When we still had St Mary’s,’ Harry sighed, coming to enlightenment.

‘I proofread it, but . . . Harry, you know how many distractions there are, particularly with the Prime Minister getting his tail in such a tangle.’

‘You’re telling me that the press pack went out—’

‘Proclaiming the virtues of the community hospital and school.’

A hospital and school that had been bulldozed two years ago only after picket lines had been pushed aside by the local constabulary.

‘She’s being very unfair, your opponent,’ Oscar continued, blustering, not even wanting to use her name. ‘She’s said you are not only an absentee landlord but in
danger of sounding like the village idiot.’

It was a mixed metaphor, but Harry could see where she was coming from.

‘What’s to be done?’ Oscar pleaded. ‘I’ll resign, if it helps. Blame me.’

‘No, Oscar, thanks but . . . I’ll put out an apology.’ He sighed, stretched, ached. ‘And we’ll just have to work twice as hard.’

Which was precisely what he proceeded to do when he travelled to his constituency the next day, Friday. Tramping the streets with his band of volunteers, knocking on doors, handing out leaflets,
getting fingers squashed in letterboxes like bear traps, listening, explaining, trying to assess the state of play. It was gone seven and darkness had fallen before they stopped. Harry invited them
all for a pub supper, fifteen in all, and while they were eating he toured the bars, chatting to old friends, hoping to make some that were new, and braving the inevitable ribbing about
‘Harry’s Howler’.

The bill came to nearly three hundred pounds. His card didn’t work. The reader refused to accept it. The landlord tried a second time. Same result.

‘You drowned it in cheap red wine or something?’ Harry asked.

‘Been working fine all day,’ the landlord replied, perplexed.

Harry tried a different card, and two others. They were all declined.

‘Some screw-up,’ Harry muttered, his mouth growing dry with embarrassment. He looked into his wallet, but he didn’t have that much cash. ‘I’ll go to a machine, be
back in a few minutes.’

‘No worries, Harry, next time you’re in,’ the landlord said. ‘Pity’s sake, after all these years, I know you’re good for it.’

But when eventually he shoved his cards into an ATM, once more every one of them was rejected. Insufficient funds. And when he tried yet again, the machine retained the card and instructed him
to refer to his bank. But how could he? It was Friday evening. Late. Miserable. And dark. He wouldn’t be able to scream at anyone until Monday morning. He intended to do exactly that, but in
the meantime, as an interim measure, he pounded the console in frustration. Useless bloody thing. The machine was telling him he was broke.

If he hadn’t had enough cash in his wallet to pay for petrol, Harry wasn’t sure how he would have made it back home on Sunday evening. He felt lonely and lifeless
as he kicked across the stack of mail that had accumulated inside his front door. He swept it up, intending to sort it into piles of varying urgency, when he was silly enough to switch on his
laptop. There were more than a hundred and fifty new e-mail messages waiting for him, quite apart from the backlog. He cursed, switched it off and threw the post into a pile in the corner. He
wished Jemma had been waiting for him, but she was spending the weekend with her parents. So instead he picked up the whisky bottle. It had been a bloody awful week. He had never expected a life in
politics to be an easy touch, but right now he’d have swapped it to be back under fire from Saddam’s Revolutionary Guard on the outskirts of Baghdad. That had left him with a bullet
hole through his shoulder and, right now, that seemed like a better choice from a safer world.

He slept badly, rose early, impatient, but no one at the bank was going to answer before ten o’clock. He made sure his was the first call.

‘Tom? This is Harry Jones.’

‘I was wondering when you’d contact us,’ the private client manager said.

‘So you’ve spotted the screw-up in my accounts, too, have you? What the bloody hell’s going on?’

There was a silence before the other man spoke, and when he did, his voice was measured, almost over-controlled, as if he was trying to calm a wild cat. ‘Harry, I can’t talk to you.
You know I can’t.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘The letters we’ve sent.’

‘What letters?’ Harry said, eyeing the pile in the corner. He hadn’t opened a bank statement in months, as was the privilege of the super-wealthy, particularly when they were
spectacularly busy.

‘We’ve sent you e-mails’ – the laptop glowered at Harry from near at hand – ‘I’ve even left messages asking you to call.’

‘Those? Tom, I thought you were phoning to arrange lunch.’

A silence of confusion filled the space between them.

‘Tom, I’ve been banking with you for how many years? I haven’t got a squashed gnat’s idea what the bloody hell you’re talking about.’

When he spoke again, the bank man’s voice was more contrite. ‘Harry, your account has been handed up the line to head office. Recoveries Department. I can’t touch it or help
you any more. Look, you know what it’s been like since the Crash, everything is run by machines and mindless codes of conduct. I hate it, truly I do.’

But Harry knew Tom wasn’t going to pack it in, and why should he, at the age of forty-seven with three kids and a subsidized mortgage?

‘If only you’d been in touch earlier I might have been able to help you with your problem,’ the bank man continued.

‘Problem? I have a problem?’

‘You really don’t know?’

Harry had never taken money for granted; you didn’t, not when you’d pushed yourself through uni on a diet of stale burger buns. Yet since his father had died, fortune had flowed upon
Harry like snow in Santa’s grotto. He had enough, more than enough. He could take a hit. ‘Tell me I’m down to my last couple of million.’

The bank man sounded wretched. ‘Harry, you’re bust.’

‘I can’t be. Don’t be preposterous.’

‘I’m so very sorry, Harry.’

He was left speechless, scrabbling to understand. ‘This is asinine, some ludicrous practical joke.’

Silence.

‘A mistake. Has to be. For pity’s sake, Tom, what the hell are you trying to tell me – that I’m in the shit?’

‘Harry, you are in it so deep you disappeared several weeks ago.’

It might have been handled better, and perhaps would have been, but for the Crash. It had left the banks owing so many billions that they could have filled every crater on the
moon, and as far as most people knew, that’s precisely where all the money had gone. It had destroyed the banks’ reputation, and along with it their patience, despite the fact that it
was taxpayers’ money that had saved them. You can drag the bankers out of the shit, but as for dragging the shit out of the bankers, that was one miracle that had yet to be performed.

The Shengtzu Investment Fund had gone down, taking Sloppy with it. And, in turn, Sloppy had taken Harry with him. One of the letters Harry had signed over alcohol gave Sloppy access to his
accounts, but that was only half of it – even the better half. One of the other letters made Harry a partner in the business, and in law that made him liable for all its losses. And the
losses of the Shengtzu Investment Fund were enormous. The banks were going to retrieve their money from wherever they could. Grab first, ask questions later. Much later.

It was fraud, of course. But that was a matter between Harry and Sloppy. So far as the banks were concerned, they had Harry’s legitimate signature and until some court told them otherwise
they regarded his money as their own. They had tried to inform him of this fact, and it wasn’t their fault that he hadn’t opened his wretched letters or responded. Harry had gone down
for millions, all of them.

And, inevitably, Sloppy wasn’t answering his phone.

‘Order! ORDER!’ The Speaker’s voice rose, but his task was impossible. The chamber of the House of Commons was packed to oppression, even the Prime Minister
had stumbled over outstretched legs as he had tried to negotiate his way to his seat by the Dispatch Box. It was the last Prime Minister’s Question Time before Parliament was sent packing for
the election. By the end of the week these men and women would legally cease to be MPs, and judging by the rising slipperiness of the electoral slope, a large number of them wouldn’t be
making it back.

‘Order!’ the Speaker shouted once more, jumping to his feet, a sign that all others must sit and desist, which they did but grudgingly. The Minister for Justice was proving a
particular mouthy pain, making the Speaker wonder whether he’d already started upon his end-of-term party despite the fact that it wasn’t yet lunchtime. The Speaker, who was old school,
groaned in despair. ‘The Right Honourable Gentleman must restrain himself,’ he insisted – preferably by the neck, he thought, as he received another outburst in reply. When he had
first been elected Speaker he had, in the traditional manner, been dragged to his chair while feigning reluctance. There was no pretence now, the lack of enthusiasm entirely genuine. Thank God this
was the final week. The South of France beckoned, where only waiters and taxi drivers would shout at him.

‘Mr David Murray,’ the Speaker nodded, indicating that the Leader of the Opposition should resume his efforts to be heard.

‘Thank you, Mr Speaker.’ Murray looked around the oak-and-leather chamber, keeping them waiting. He had deliberately started the row, now he intended to finish it. Speedbird 235. It
was still a criminal investigation, of course, many aspects of it
sub judice
or simply secret, but none of that constrained his democratic duty to give the government a deeply unpleasant
kicking. ‘Mr Speaker, I would like to help the Prime Minister.’ He smiled across the Dispatch Box, his eyes suggesting that it would be about as helpful as positioning a rectal
thermometer with a hammer. ‘Help him realize the magnitude of his failure so that he might consider it in his retirement, which I hope will be happy. And soon.’ The troops behind him
loved that, and so did the sketch writers scribbling away in the gallery above his head. He held up his arms, like a conductor demanding the attention of his orchestra, and the crowd fell silent
once more.