House of Cards (56 page)

The usual,' she responded grimly, lots of questions, too few answers, and the pieces I do have don't make sense. Somehow I know it has to be tied in with the leadership election, but I simply don't know how.'

Tell me about it.'

She brought him up to date, how she could with more or less certainty hang most of the identifiable bits of the puzzle around O'Neill's neck.

‘H
e almost certainly leaked the poll to me, he as good as admits he opened the accommodation address in Paddington, he caused the hospitals fiasco by leaking the promotional plans to Kendrick, and I'm sure he altered the
headquarters' computer file to in
crirninate Charles Collingridge. Which means he's mixed up in some way with the share purchase and the bank account as well. But why ?'

To get rid of Collingridge,' prompted Krajewski.

'But what good does that do him? He's not going to take over the Party. Wha
t motive does he have for underm
ining Collingridge?'

He offered no suggestion, but gazed along the gallery at the grand oil portraits of Victorian statesmen to whom conspiracy and cunning had come as second nature, wondering what they would have thought. Mattie could not share his wry amusement.

'He must be acting together with someone else who does have something to gain - someone more important, more powerful, who could benefit from the change of leadership. There has to be another figure in there somewhere, pulling O'Neill's strings.'

'So you are looking for a mystery man with the means and the motive. Well, he has to be in a position to control O'Neill, and have access to sensitive political information. It would also help if he had been engaged in a much publicised and bitter battle with the Prime Minister. Surely you don't have to look too far for candidates.'
‘

'Give me one.'

He took a deep breath and savoured the dark, conspiratorial atmosphere of the evening air.

It's easy. Teddy Williams.'

It was late that evening when Urquhart returned to his room in the Commons. The celebrations and congratulations had followed
him
all the way from his office to the Harcourt Room beneath the House of Lords where he had dined, being interrupted frequently by colleagues eager to shake him by the hand and wish him well. He had proceeded on to the Members' Smoking Room, a private place much loved by MPs who gather there away from the prying eyes of the press not so much to smoke as to exchange views and gossip and to twist a few arms. The Whips know the Smoking Room well, and Urquhart had used his hour there to good effect before once more climbing the twisting stairs to his office.

His secretary had emptied the ashtrays, cleared the glasses and straightened the cushions, and his room was once again quiet and welcoming. He closed the door behind him, locking it carefully. He crossed to the four-drawer
filing
cabinet with its stout security bar an
d combination-
lock which the Government provide for all Ministers to secure their confidential papers while out of their departmental offices. He twirled the combination four times, until there was a gentle click and the security bar fell away into his hands. He removed it and bent down to open the bottom drawer.

The drawer creaked as it came open. It was stuffed full of files and papers, each one with the name of a different MP on it, each one (containing the personal and incriminating material he had carefully winnowed out of the safe in the Whips Office where all the best kept parliamentary secrets are stored to await Judgement Day, or some other parliamentary emergency. It had taken him nearly three years to amass this material, and he knew it was more valuable than a drawer crammed full with gold bars.

He knelt down and sorted carefully through the files. He quickly found what he was looking for, a padded envelope, already addressed and sealed. After extracting it he closed the drawer and secured the filing cabinet, testing as he always did to make sure the lock and security bar had caught properly.

It was nearly midnight as he drove out of the entrance gates to the House of Commons, a police officer stopping the late night traffic around Parliament Square to enable him to ease out into the busy road and speed on his way. However, he did not head the car in the direction of his Pimlico home. He first drove to one of the twenty-four-hour motorcycle messenger services which flourish amongst the seedier basements of Soho, where he dropped the envelope off and paid in cash for delivery early the following morning. It would have been easier to post it in the House of Commons, where they have one of the most efficient post offices in the country. But he did not want a House of Commons postmark on this envelope.

WEDNESDAY 24
th
NOVEMBER

The letters and newspapers arrived almost simultaneously with a dull thud on Woolton's Chelsea doormat early the following morning. Hearing the clatter, he came downstairs and gathered them up, spreading the newspapers out on the kitchen table while he left the post on a small bench in the hallway for his wife. He received over 300 letters a week from his constituents and other correspondents, and he had long since given up trying to read them all. So he left them for his wife, who was also his constituency secretary and for whom he got a generous secretarial allowance from the parliamentary authorities to supplement his Cabinet Minister's stipend.

The newspapers were dominated by news and analysis of the leadership election. The headlines all seemed to have been written by moonlighting journalists from the
Sporting Life,
and phrases such as 'Neck And Neck', 'Three Horse Race' or 'Photo Finish' dominated the front pages. Inside, the more sanguine commentaries explained that it was difficult to predict which of the three leading contenders was now better placed, while most concluded that, in spite of his first place, Samuel was probably the most disappointed of the contestants since he had failed to live up to his early promise.

'The Party is now presented with a clear choice
’
intoned the
Guardian.

Michael Samuel is by far the most popular and polished of the three, with a clear record of being able to combine a political career with the retention of a well defined social conscience. The fact that he has been attacked by some elements of the Party as being 'too liberal by half' is a badge he should wear with considerable pride. He would undoubtedly provide a firm lead for the Party and would continue to confront the leading social issues head on - a laudable characteristic which has, however, not always commended itself to his colleagues.

Patrick Woolton is an altogether different politician. Immensely proud of his Northern origins, he poses as a man who could unite the two halves of the country. Whether his robust style of politics could unite the two halves of his own Party is altogether more debatable. He plays his politics as if he were still hooking for his old rugby league club, although his recent experience at the Foreign Office has done much to knock some of the sharper edges off his style. Unlike Samuel he would not attempt to lead the Party in any particular philosophical direction, setting great store on a pragmatic approach. But robustness combined with pragmatism has occasionally been an unhappy combination. The Leader of the Opposition has described him as a man wandering the streets of Westminster in search of a fight for any available reason.

Francis Urquhart is more difficult to assess. The least experienced and least well known of the three, nevertheless his performance in the first round ballot was truly remarkable, far outstripping many of his better fancied senior colleagues. Three reasons seem to explain his success. First, as Chief Whip he knows the Parliamentary Party extremely well, and they him. Since it is his colleagues in the Parliamentary Party and not the electorate at large who will decide this election, his low public profile is less of a disadvantage than many perhaps assumed..

Second, he has c
onducted his campaign in a dig
nified style which sets him apart from the verbal fisticuffs and misfortunes of the other contenders. What is known of his politics suggests he holds firm to the traditionalist line, somewhat patrician and authoritarian perhaps, but sufficiently ill-defined for him not to have antagonised either wing of the Party.

Finally, perhaps his greatest asset is that he is neither of the other two. Many MPs have certainly supported
him
in the first round rather than commit themselves to one of the better fancied but more contentious candidates. He is the obvious choice for those who wish to sit on the fence. But it is that which could ultimately derail his campaign, because as the pressure for a clear decision forces Government MPs off the fence, Urquhart is the candidate who could suffer most.

So the choice is clear. Those who wish to air their social consciences will support Samuel. Those who thirst for blood-and-thunder politics will support Woolton. Those who cannot make up their minds have an obvious choice in Urquhart. Whichever way they decide, they will inevitably deserve what they get.

Woolton chuckled as he munched his breakfast toast. He knew it was most unlikely at the end of the day that his colleagues would support a call to conscience - it was so difficult to explain in the pub or over the garden fence, and popular politics shouldn't be too complicated. If Urquhart's support was going to be squeezed, he decided, then the majority of switchers would come to him, and the bleeding hearts could go hang. Margaret Thatcher had shown how it could be done, and she was a woman. Take away her feminine shrillness and the dogmatic inflexibility, he mused, and you had the ideal political leader -Patrick Woolton.

As his wife replenished his tea he debated with himself whether he should rile another prominent rabbi in the next few days just to remind his colleagues of the Jewish issue. He decided against it; it wasn't necessary, the Party's old guard would see to that without his interfering.

'Darling, I have this feeling it is going to be an excellent day,' he proclaimed as he kissed his wife goodbye at their doorstep. A couple of photographers were outside on the pavement, and they asked him to repeat the kiss before he was allowed to get into his official car and drive off for a day's campaigning in the House.

His wife went through her daily routine of clearing the breakfast table before settling down to handle the correspondence. The volume had increased dramatically in the last few years, she noted with a sigh of resignation. Gone were the days when there was any hope of a personal answer to them all; it was now up to the word processor and its carefully programmed series of standard responses. She wondered whether anybody really noticed or cared that most of her husband's constituency letters were written by computer and signed by a little autograph machine he had brought back from the States on a recent trip. The majority of the letters were from lobby groups, professional critics or downright political opponents who weren't the least bit interested in the content of the replies. But they all needed answering nonetheless, she told herself as she began the monotonous daily task of opening the thick bundle of envelopes. She would never risk losing her husband a single vote by failing to offer some form of reply even to the most abusive of letters.

She left the padded brown envelope until last. It had clearly been hand-delivered and was firmly stapled down, and she had to struggle to extract the infuriating metal clips before getting at the contents. As she pulled out the last tenacious staple, a cassette tape fell out into her lap. There was nothing else in the envelope, no letter, no compliments slip, no label on the tape to indicate where it had come from or what it contained.

'Fools. How on earth do they expect me to reply to that!'

She put the tape to one side before switching on the word processor.

It took her three hours of solid work to go through the letters, persuade the word processor to chum out a reply which had some chance of persuading the recipient that they were receiving personalised attention, watch them being signed by machine, then fold and seal them. The tape she left on the desk. Her mouth was gummed up from licking too many envelopes, and she needed a cup of coffee. The silly tape could wait.

It was very much later that evening when she remembered the cassette. Woolton had come back from a hectic day canvassing at the House, and was feeling tired as the adrenalin of the first ballot began to wear off. He had heeded the advice of his close colleagues not to overdo the canvassing, and to get a couple of good nights
7
rest. He was planning later in the week to make three major speeches, and he would need to conserve his energy.

He was sitting in his favourite armchair sketching out some preliminary speech notes when his wife remembered the tape on the desk.

'By the way,
darling,
a tape cassette was dropped off for you today without any form of identification. Do you know what it is? A recording of last weekend's speech or a tape of a recent interview, perhaps?
’

Haven't a clue. Pour me another drink and let's listen to it.' He waved broadly in the direction of the stereo unit.

His wife, dutiful as ever, did as he bade. He was just savouring his freshened gin and tonic when the tape deck ate up the last segment of blank tape and with a burst of red light the playback meter on the equipment began to show that the tape heads were reading something. There was a series of low hisses and crackles, it was clearly not a professional recording, and she turned the volume up.