Rotten Apples (6 page)

‘That's impossible.'

“We'll see,” Willow echoed with childish satisfaction as she left.

Willow reached the House of Commons half an hour later, having walked slowly along the Embankment, enjoying the warm evening light over the Thames, stopping outside the Tate for a moment to check the posters for any new exhibitions she or Tom might want to see.

One of the bluebottles at the door of the Palace of Westminster took her name, matched it with some secret list and then directed her to the terrace. Willow, who had visited ministers at the House often before, was surprised. In the past she had always been received in their offices.

She knew her way and, having nodded her thanks to the policeman, walked off in the direction of the terrace. She could never be sure whether she was more amused or irritated by the building's church-like gothickery. Considering the sleazy deals, the bullying of reluctant back-benchers, and the sometimes mind-numbing hypocrisy that were generally accepted there, the pretentions of its architecture seemed absurd.

Reaching the terrace, she breathed in the scent of the river, which came through the wafts of cigar smoke, aftershave, alcohol, sweat, and petrol from a passing motor launch, and thought how much had changed during her years in London. When she had first arrived in the capital nearly twenty years earlier, the Thames had been a disgusting mixture of animal, vegetable and mineral waste, and it had smelled of all of them.

Recently, she had heard, salmon had been seen not far from London, and otters were beginning to return to the upper reaches of the river. But the colour of the water was still the same shade of dull, thick
café au lait
it had been when she had stood beside it as a raw, aggressively self-sufficient mathematician from Newcastle.

There's a moral in that somewhere, she told herself piously, and then added with more familiar self-mockery, but I can't imagine what it might be.

‘Ah, Minister,' she called, seeing George Profett waving to her from the edge of the terrace. She made her way to his side, adding, ‘How pleasant it is out here.'

‘Not at all. It's good of you to make the time. By the way, do you know Malcolm Penholt?' The minister turned to smile at the man beside him, adding, ‘Malcolm, this is Willow King. She's a civil servant, loosely attached to my department at the moment.'

‘Ah, yes,' said the other man, who was much more like the politicians to whom Willow was accustomed. Despite his smoothness and his carefully chosen clothes, Penholt looked as though he might be very good company. He had round dark eyes that seemed full of light in his broad, tanned face, and his wry smile was attractive. His well-controlled dark curly hair was only just beginning to recede and grow grey at the temples. He looked as though he must have been in his later forties.

‘You did excellent work a year or two ago on education in prisons for the Home Office,' he said. When Willow did not react, he frowned, adding with a delightful hint of amused anxiety, ‘I'm not making a fool of myself, am I? That report was one of yours, wasn't it?'

‘Actually it was John Misterton's,' said Willow, smiling at his technique as well as his knowledge of her past, ‘but in a way you're right; I was Secretary to the Commission. How do you do?'

She assumed that the minister had introduced them because Penholt had been Fiona Fydgett's MP, and waited for one of them to say something about her. No one said anything at all until the minister handed Willow a drink.

‘Thank you,' she said, adding, in an attempt to get the conversation going, ‘It's awful of me, but my memory's much worse than yours, Mr Penholt. I'm not sure which constituency you represent.'

Both men laughed.

‘Fulham and Chelsea,' said Penholt casually. ‘One of the few that remained staunchly Tory at last year's débâcle.'

‘Oh, of course,' said Willow, remembering a little just in time. ‘You were the only Conservative MP to increase his majority. How could I have forgotten?'

‘Merely the civil servant's obligatory blindness to politics, I suspect,' Profett said wryly. ‘Well, it was good to talk, Malcolm. We'll speak in due course. I'll keep you posted.'

‘Good, George,' said the Conservative obediently. ‘Good to see you. Thanks for the drink. Pleasure to meet you, Miss King.'

‘All mine, Mr Penholt.'

He raised a hand in an elegantly casual wave and disappeared into the throng.

‘So he was Doctor Fydgett's MP?' said Willow.

‘Yes, he was. Naturally he's concerned about what happened to her, but he's a good bloke taken all in all, and he's given me a chance to find out what was going on before he starts to make capital out of it.'

‘That seems remarkably charitable in the circumstances,' said Willow, wondering why the minister was refusing to look at her. She could not decide whether he or Penholt was behaving more oddly in the circumstances. As far as she could see there was nothing to stop an opposition MP making a huge and public fuss about the possible injustice done to his constituent ‘Did he know her well?'

‘Just what are you implying?' he asked, withdrawing his gaze from the far end of the terrace.

‘Nothing at all.' Willow let herself seem puzzled. ‘It was an idle question: making conversation and all that.'

‘Oh, I see. I don't think he knew her particularly well, although they had some friends in common. Now, how are you getting on with them all in the Vauxhall Bridge Road?'

‘I'm not yet,' said Willow carefully. ‘I'm afraid that they're all being pretty obstructive so far.'

‘I suppose that was only to be expected.'

‘No doubt, but if I'm to do a proper job, I shall need more information. The files they've given me have been censored, and I've been denied access to any others. Can you compel them to hand over any information I need?'

‘That may be tricky. Aspects of their work constitute official secrets, or so I understand from my more experienced colleagues.'

‘Well, there's no problem there. I signed the Official Secrets Act years ago, when I joined the civil service. I belong to the same club, even though they can't bring themselves to believe it.' Resentment was oozing into her voice, and she corrected it at once. ‘Will you talk to your relevant colleague and get an instruction through to Little Miss Muffet?'

‘I'll do my best.' The minister smiled at her reference to Kate's nickname. ‘But I'm sure you know what civil servants can be like: need-to-know basis and all that.'

‘Yes, indeed,' said Willow with a smile of her own. ‘But the people who decide who needs to know what are sometimes kept in the dark by the very people who need to know, because they don't want irrelevant people knowing what it is they're doing—and therefore needing to know. Don't you agree?'

‘It sounds a little complicated,' he said with the first glimmer of real humour Willow had seen in him, ‘but I think I get your drift. I'll do what I can. So you've nothing for me so far?'

‘Nothing specially about Fydgett, but I must say that your anxieties about a canteen culture may have been well founded.'

‘Aha. What leads you to that conclusion?'

‘Various conversations I've had that point up the hostility some of them seem to feel towards their “customers”, a conviction that taxpayers are dishonest, and an apparent certainty that any errors made by taxpayers are deliberate, whereas any made by Revenue staff are wholly innocent and always excusable. But I'll put it all into the report.'

‘What's your opinion of Kate Moughette?'

‘I'm not sure yet. She seems efficient, but that may be merely because she speaks so fast. She dresses surprisingly lavishly, but I'm sure that's not the sort of thing that would interest you. I haven't seen or heard enough to form any fair judgment of her competence yet.'

‘Pity.'

Willow stared at him for a moment and saw a faint flush staining his angular face. He had not given her any indication that he had been expecting an assessment of Ms Moughette.

‘Minister, will you tell me something?'

‘If I can.'

‘What is it that you really expect me to find out from this investigation?'

‘I can't imagine what you mean,' he said, gazing at the far end of the terrace again as though he were determined not to catch her eye. She wanted to say that she could not imagine what he might be trying to hide. ‘I've told you that I want to find out whether Doctor Fydgett's death was caused, in any way or to any degree, by the activities of anyone in that tax office. Didn't I make that clear?'

‘Yes you did, but I feel as though I'm being kept in the dark about something that you know or suspect, which could be relevant to the assignment you have given me.'

The minister glanced down at his watch, an expensive-looking, very thin Piaget. It seemed an uncharacteristically luxurious item for such a high-minded, almost ascetic, man.

Don't let your suspicions run away with you, Willow apostrophised herself. It was probably a present from someone or bought in the days before he even entered Parliament. She told herself that she was becoming paranoid and wondered whether she could have been infected by something in the air of the tax office.

‘I'm afraid I really am going to have to leave you now, Willow. There are things I must do before tonight's main debate. Do stay, if you'd like. I'm sure there must be people you know here.'

‘One or two,' said Willow, looking around. She caught sight of Elsie Trouville, who had been Home Secretary during the last government and whom she had always liked. They waved to each other. ‘But I'm due home for dinner. I ought to get back.'

‘Keep me informed, won't you, and I'll let you know about your powers of search and so on. At your home number?'

‘Yes, please. My housekeeper will answer the telephone if I'm not there, and if she's out too there's an answering machine.'

‘Splendid. I can't thank you enough for the work you're doing,' he said, with what Willow thought was probably his constituent-charming smile. His washed-out blue eyes looked distant again. He ran one hand through his thick, straw-blond hair. ‘Well, good night to you.'

Willow followed him back into the building and made her way through the vaulted stone corridors to the street. Various people nodded to her as she passed, and one civil servant, with whom she had worked years earlier, stopped to chat for a moment.

He seemed surprised to see her but asked no questions. Instead he launched at once into telling her how high he had risen at the Treasury. Bored, but aware that if she continued to postpone her retirement she might find herself working with him again some day, Willow smiled and nodded in all the right places.

‘Nothing's ever wasted that happens to a writer,' her literary agent, Eve Greville, had once said when Willow had confessed to a lowness of spirits that was affecting every aspect of her life. ‘All the worst things come in useful in the end.'

And so do the boring and the trivial, she told herself as she eventually extricated herself from her erstwhile colleague. Reaching the fresher air of Old Palace Yard a few minutes later, she cast a glance up at the statue of Henry V. It looked even more magnificent than usual with the reflections of the evening sun glowing orange on the polished bronze.

She crossed Parliament Square and walked along Birdcage Walk to avoid the noise and bustle of Victoria Street. Cutting up through St. James's Park, enjoying the light on the water of the lake and the mixture of greens in the leaves and grass, she made her way on into Green Park, walking diagonally past the palace.

As she went she rehearsed the events of her day so that she could make up an amusing account of it to entertain Tom when he got home. Strung up from his work dealing with serious crime and wanting distraction, he often needed her to tell him stories before he could relax.

Laughing at some of her own jokes, Willow told them this way and that until she was satisfied, interrupted only by a large man who looked as though he had just come off a building site, who grinned at her and said: ‘You can talk to me, love, if you like.'

Aware that she was blushing, irritated with herself and yet a little amused as well, Willow walked on much more quickly. Quite soon she reached the boundary of the park and stood at the edge of the road, watching the roaring, angry traffic that forced its way round Hyde Park Corner. Contemplating the few crossing points above ground, she decided to save time and use the subway.

The smelly dankness made her wish that she had not given in to impatience, but she hurried on, looking neither right nor left and pretending not to see the beggar who tried to stop her.

Lurching up from his bed of matted blankets, papers and bits of cardboard, he put out both hands and shouted at her that he was starving. The smells of urine, dirt and alcohol that rose from his clothes and bed nauseated her, but they might not have been enough to stop her giving him money if he had not frightened her as well. Ashamed, but excusing herself with the knowledge that she subscribed to several charities for the homeless, she held her breath as she passed him, shaking her head, and did not breathe easily again until she reached the far side of the huge roundabout and was climbing the steps up into the open.

She was soon back in the broader, quieter, more peaceful streets of her familiar neighbourhood, where no beggars ever lay in cardboard boxes, unfed, unwashed, unhappy and frightening.

Willow knew that Mrs Rusham would have left the house twenty minutes earlier and that Tom would be unlikely to return for a while, but that suited her. Despite her complete happiness with him, she cherished the hour or so that she

usually had to herself at the end of each working day. It gave her time to take stock, and, if she had been writing, to return from whatever fantasy world had been engaging her.