The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (66 page)

Urquhart swung his legs down from the sofa. “What do they have on Mycroft?”

“Not a lot. Just his name and the fact that Marples was tangling with him at some gay club on New Year’s Eve. Who knows where that could lead? But they haven’t interviewed him.”

“Maybe they should.”

“They can’t, Francis. If they go after Mycroft they’ve got to do for Marples as well, which in turn will do for us all. Anyway, if spending time at a gay club were a crime we’d have to lock up half the House of Lords.”

“Listen to me, Tim. They can have Marples kebabed on a rusty skewer for all I care. But he wouldn’t be charged for weeks, not until after the election, by which time it won’t matter a bent farthing. Yet if they can put pressure on Mycroft now, it may be just the insurance policy we need. Don’t you see? Pieces for position. Capture the low ground today, in exchange for giving up a player later, when it no longer matters. I think they call it a queen sacrifice.”

“I think I need another drink. Problems like that, so close to the heart of the Palace. If this were to come out…”

“How long’s Mycroft been with the King?”

“Known each other since they were both spotty youths. One of his longest-serving aides. And closest friends.”

“Sounds distressingly serious. It would be awful if the King knew.”

“And were covering up for Mycroft, in spite of the sensitivity of the work he does. Must know half the nation’s secrets in his job.”

“Be even worse if His Majesty didn’t know. Fooled, bamboozled, defrauded for thirty years by one of his closest friends, a man he has put into a position of trust.”

“A knave or a fool. A monarch who didn’t fulfill his responsibilities, or couldn’t. What will the press make of all this, if it gets out?”

“Terrible news, Tim. This is terrible.”

“Worst I’ve heard in ages.”

There was a long moment of silence. Then, coming from inside the Prime Minister’s room, the private secretary heard a sustained, almost uncontrollable bout of gut-wrenching laughter.

***

“Damn them! Damn them all, David! How could they be so cretinous?” The King hurled one newspaper after another into the air as Mycroft watched the pages flutter down to lay strewn across the floor. “I didn’t want the Civil List increase, but now I’m attacked for greed. And how can it be that only a few days after informing the Prime Minister that I wished the Royal Family to pay full taxes on our income, they report it as if it’s his idea?”

“Downing Street’s unattributable briefing…” Mycroft muttered feebly.

“Of course it is!” snapped the King as if talking with a backward pupil. “They even suggest I’m caving in to pressure in agreeing to pay tax, that I’ve been forced into it by the hostile press coverage. That man Urquhart is abominable! He can’t help but twist everything to his advantage. If he even stumbled by accident upon the truth he would pick himself up and carry on as if nothing had happened. It’s preposterous!”

A copy of
The
Times
was hurled to the farthest corner of the room, settling like huge flakes of snow.

“Did any of them bother to inquire after the facts?”

Mycroft coughed awkwardly. “The
Chronicle
. Their story is fair…”

The King snatched the paper from among the pile, scanning its columns. He seemed to calm a little. “Urquhart is trying to humiliate me, David. To cut me to ribbons, piece by piece, without even a chance to explain myself.” He’d had the dream again last night. From the pages of every newspaper he could see staring at him the wide, expectant eyes of the grubby boy with the dribble of crumbs on his chin. It terrified him. “I will not let them drag me like a lamb to the slaughter, David. I must not permit that. I’ve been thinking: I must find some way of explaining my views. Get my point across without Urquhart getting in the way. I shall give an interview.”

“But Kings don’t give newspaper interviews,” Mycroft protested weakly.

“Not before they haven’t. But this is the age of the new, open Monarchy. I’m going to do it, David. With the
Chronicle
, I think. An exclusive.”

Mycroft wanted to protest that if an interview were a bad idea, an exclusive could be even worse, giving all the other newspapers something to shoot at. But he didn’t have the strength to argue. He hadn’t been able to think clearly all day, ever since he had answered a knock at the door early in the morning to discover a DC and Inspector from the Vice Squad standing on his front step.

Thirty-Four

The free press talks of its principles like the accused talks about his alibi.

January: The Fourth Week

Landless had driven himself, simply telling his staff that he would be uncontactable. His secretary hated mysteries; when he presented excuses she always assumed he was off being grubby with some young woman who had a strong back and weak bank balance. She knew what he was like. Some fifteen years earlier she, too, had been young and grubby with Landless, before things like marriage, respectability, and stretch marks had intervened. Such insights into the inner man had helped her become an efficient and outrageously overpaid personal assistant, yet hadn’t stopped her being jealous. And today he had told no one, not even her; he didn’t want the whole world knowing where he was even before he had arrived.

The reception desk was tiny and the waiting room dull, covered in mediocre early Victorian oils of horses and hunting scenes in imitation of Stubbs and Ben Marshall. One of them might have been an authentic John Herring; he couldn’t be positive but he was beginning to develop an eye for such things, after all, he’d bought enough of the genuine article over the past few years. Almost immediately he was being summoned by a young footman in full livery, waisted tails, buckles, and stockings, and ushered into a small but immaculately appointed lift where the mahogany shone as deep as the Palace servant’s shoes. He wished his mother had been here: she would have loved it. She’d been born on the day Queen Alexandra died and had always believed it somehow tied her in, hinting at a mysterious “special link,” and in later life attending gatherings of spiritualists. Just before his dear old mum had taken her own trip to “the other side,” she had stood for three hours to catch a view through the crowd of Princess Di on her wedding day. She’d only seen the back of the coach, and that for no more than a few seconds, but she’d waved her flag and cheered and cried, and come home feeling she had done her bit. For her it was all patriotic pride and commemorative biscuit tins. She would be wetting herself if she were gazing down now.

“Your first time?” the footman inquired.

Landless nodded. Princess Charlotte had telephoned him. An exclusive interview with the
Chronicle
, implying she had set it up herself. Would he be sure to send someone reliable? And allow the Palace to check the article before it was printed? Perhaps they could have lunch again soon? He was being led along a broad corridor with windows overlooking the inner courtyard. The paintings were better here, portraits of long-forgotten Royal scions by masters whose names had endured rather better.

“You address him as ‘Your Majesty’ when you first go in. Afterwards you can simply call him ‘sir,’” the footman muttered as they approached a solid but unpretentious door.

As the door swung quietly open, Landless remembered Charlotte’s other question. Was the idea a good one? He had doubts, serious doubts, about whether an exclusive interview would be good for the King, but he knew it would be bloody marvelous for his newspaper.

***

“Sally? Sorry to telephone so early. You haven’t been in contact for a day or two. Everything all right?”

In fact it had been nearly a week, and although Urquhart had sent along flowers and two major potential clients, he hadn’t found the right moment to call. He shrugged. They’d had a spat, she would get over it. She would have to if she wanted to retain an inside track. In any event, this was urgent.

“How’s the opinion poll coming along? Ready yet?” He tried to judge her mood down the phone. Perhaps a little cool and formal, almost as if he’d woken her up. Anyway this was business. “Something’s come up. Word is His Royal Conscience has given an exclusive interview to the
Chronicle
and they’re hoping to get it cleared for publication in a couple of days. I haven’t any idea what’s in it, Landless is sitting on it as though he were hatching an egg, but I can’t help feeling that in the public interest there should be a bit of balance. Don’t you think? Perhaps an opinion poll, published beforehand, reflecting the growing public disaffection with the Royal Family? To put the interview in context?” He looked out of the window across St. James’s Park, where, beside the pelican pool, two women were struggling in the grubby morning light to pull their squabbling dogs apart. “I suspect some newspapers like
The
Times
might even infer that the King’s interview was a hurried and somewhat desperate attempt to respond to the opinion poll.” He winced as one of the women, her smaller pet lodged firmly between the jaws of a large black mongrel, gave the other dog a firm kick in the testicles. The dogs separated, only for the two owners to begin snarling at each other. “It would be really superb if the poll were ready for release by, say…this afternoon?”

As Sally rolled over to place the phone back in its cradle, she stretched the aches of the night out of her bones. She lay staring at the ceiling for a few moments, allowing the mental instructions to seep from her brain down through her body. Her nose was twitching like a periscope above the sheets, tasting the news she had just received. She sat up in bed, alive and alert, and turned to the form beside her.

“Got to go, lover. Mischief afoot and work to be done.”

***

Guardian, Page One, January 27

NEW STORM HITS KING

“IS HE A CHRISTIAN?”

• • •

A new storm of controversy surrounded the Royal Family last night when the Bishop of Durham, from the pulpit of his cathedral, questioned the King’s religious motives. Quoting the King’s much-criticized newspaper interview earlier this week in which he revealed a deep interest in Eastern religions and did not discount the possibility of physical resurrection, the fundamentalist Bishop attacked such “fashionable dalliance with mysticism.”

“The King is the Defender of the Faith and anointed head of our Church of England. But is he a Christian?”

Buckingham Palace indicated last night that the King had simply been trying to emphasize, as King of a country with a large number of racial and religious minorities, that he felt it his duty not to take a narrow and restrictive view of his religious role. But the Bishop’s attack seems set to fuel further controversy in the wake of the recent critical opinion poll that showed dramatically falling support for some members of the Royal Family such as Princess Charlotte, and a growing demand to restrict the number of members of the Royal Family who receive their income from the Civil List.

Supporters of the King rallied to his defense last night. “We shouldn’t be enticed into a constitutional supermarket, shopping around for the cheapest form of government,” Viscount Quillington said.

In contrast, critics were quick to point out that the King, in spite of his own personal popularity, was failing to set a clear lead in many areas. “The Crown should stand for the highest standards of public morality,” one senior Government backbencher said, “but his leadership of his own family leaves much to be desired. They are letting down both him and us. They are overpaid, overtanned, underworked, and overly numerous.”

“The Royal oak is being shaken,” said another critic. “It would do no harm if one or two members of the Family were to fall out of the branches…”

Thirty-Five

Beware the king whose ambition is to be a Man of the People. The Unelected in pursuit of the Unwashed.

News began trickling through shortly before four in the afternoon, and by the time it was confirmed the short winter’s day had finished and all London was dark. It was a wretched day; a warm front had passed across the capital, bringing in its wake a deluge of relentless rain that would continue well into the night. It was a day for staying home.

Staying home had been the mistake, fatally so, of three women and their children who called 14 Queensgate Crescent, a tenement block in the middle of Notting Hill, home. It was the heart of old slumland, which in the sixties had housed streetwalkers and tides of immigrants under the stern eye of racketeers. “Rachmanism” they had called it then, after the most notorious of the landlord racketeers. “Bed and breakfast” it was called in the modern parlance, where the local council housed one-parent and problem families while they searched around listlessly for somewhere or someone else to take over the responsibility. Much of the temporary accommodation provided in Number 14 had changed little in the thirty-odd years since it had been a brothel. Single rooms, shared bathrooms, inadequate heating, noise, rotting woodwork, and unremitting depression. When it rained, they would watch the windowsills trickle and the damp brown stains creep even lower as the wallpaper peeled from the walls. But it was better than sitting in the middle of the downpour outside, or so they had thought.

Institutional housing breeds indifference, and no one had bothered to report the smell of gas that had been lingering for days. That was up to the caretaker, and so what if he only turned up when he felt like it. It was somebody else’s problem. Or so they had thought.

As dusk had gathered the automatic timer had turned another gear and switched on the light in the communal hallways. They were only sixty-watt bulbs, one per landing, scarcely adequate, but the small spark caused by the electrical contact had been sufficient to ignite the gas and blow the five-story building right out of the ground, taking much of the neighboring building with it. Fortunately there had been no one in next door, it was derelict, but remnants of five families were inside Number 14 and of the twenty-one women, children, and babies only eight would be pulled out of the rubble alive. By the time His Majesty reached the scene it consisted of little more than a huge pile of bricks, fractured doorframes, and twisted fragments of furniture over which firemen crawled beneath harsh arc lights. There were still doubts about the final toll; several persons were unaccounted for and rumored to be inside. A double bed teetered precariously on a ledge of splintered wood many feet above the heads of the rescuers, its sheets flapping in the squally wind. It should have been pulled down before it had a chance to fall on those below, but the mobile crane was having trouble getting through the rain and rush hour traffic and they couldn’t afford to wait. Someone thought they had heard a noise from the rubble directly beneath and although the infrared image enhancer showed nothing, many willing hands were tearing at the ruins, lashed by the rain and the fear they would be too late.