‘And you have no witness for the soliciting charge,’ Goodfellowe intervened.
‘But we do have a suspicious substance, sir. And the constable’s bloody nose.’
‘That was accident,’ Jya-Yu protested, but the inspector ignored her, continuing to address Goodfellowe.
‘I’m not going to charge the lady at the present time but we’ll release her on bail to return at a time when our lab analysis of the substance is completed. Probably in about six weeks’ time. When we know what it is, then we’ll know what to do.’
‘And in the meantime?’
‘If you’ll let me offer you a word of advice, I should concentrate on running the country, sir. Tears and trouble. That’s all a gentleman like you will get from becoming tied up in a case like this. People have such suspicious minds.’
Corsa was feeling out of sorts. He hated receptions, even in Downing Street. Three hundred people crushed into a couple of steaming drawing rooms where they sipped cheap wine – Spanish this month, Sainsbury’s had a special – and waited for one of the Prime Minister’s funny little speeches. Corsa was used to making dramatic entrances, demanding the attention of all present, not shuffling along in an anonymous line, like his father. In a crowd his lack of physical stature made him feel claustrophobic, insignificant. He hated cheap wine, held disdain for casual acquaintance and had no high regard even for the Prime Minister. How could one take a man seriously whose eyebrows resembled two ferrets locked in coitus?
He turned to take out his frustrations on the Minister for Overseas Development, a man of giggles and girth who wore his suit as though beneath its immense folds it hid a chest of drawers with all the drawers open. ‘Bunny’ Burrowes was also notoriously Catholic and unmarried. And, this evening, he was a target that had moved out into the open. The Herald had recently launched a campaign exposing the high infant-mortality levels in Angola caused by an epidemic of flu believed to have been introduced by European nuns. As his features editor had pointed out to Corsa, the death rates in Angola were no higher than in Iraq or Mongolia but, as Corsa had in turn pointed out to the features editor, there was little public sympathy to be generated by Arabs or Orientals ‘and black babies have such enormous eyes. So appealing.’ Anyway, neither Iraq nor Mongolia had a Royal visit planned for three months’ time. So the Herald in traditional campaigning mood had promised to build them a hospital. Much fanfare, still more moral outrage, and all by Royal appointment. Great publicity. Sadly for the plans and promises, however, the Herald’s campaign had found its readers in a profound state of compassion fatigue. Both heart strings and purse strings remained steadfastly unplucked, and the Herald’s appeal was a quarter of a million short – money which Corsa had neither mood nor means to find from his own resources. So, privately and with great politeness, they had asked the Foreign Office whose officials, still more politely, had said no. Yet here, giggling in the middle of the Green Drawing Room, was the Minister in all his voluminous flesh. Corsa felt a challenge coming on.
‘My dear Minister, what a pleasure.’
Burrowes scowled at the interruption. Unlike some of his colleagues he did not welcome over-familiarity with the press, being neither photogenic nor particularly prudent in his private life. He replied with no more than a nod of his heavily jowled head and was about to pick up his interrupted conversation about costume with the country’s leading male ice skater when, with only perfunctory apologies, Corsa took his arm and led him off to a quieter corner.
‘Not your bloody hospital, Freddy,’ Burrowes started, objecting to the heavy hand upon his sleeve. ‘I’ve seen the papers. It won’t wash. We don’t have the money.’
‘Of course you have the money, Bunny. It’s simply a matter of priorities. But of course I understand your difficulties.’
‘Good,’ responded the Minister, his eyes dancing back to the skater and making to leave, but Corsa kept a firm grip on his sleeve.
‘I merely wanted to make sure that you had been fully briefed on the opportunities.’
‘What opportunities?’
‘The opportunity to get some richly deserved credit. For the Government. For the Foreign Office aid programme. And, when it comes down to it, for you.’
The Minister pulled distractedly at each of his pudgy fingers in turn as though checking that the press man hadn’t stolen any in the crush.
‘Think of the free publicity,’ Corsa continued. ‘The hospital building is all prefabricated. We could load it onto an RAF transport and fly it in together. You and me. Accompanied by a handirpicked selection of reporters and television cameramen, of course. Imagine the reception. The crowds on the runway. Laughing children, weeping doctors, dancing mothers, and as many effusive local dignitaries as their Mercedes can shuttle in. The lot. And you and the Cardinal being greeted like saviours – which is precisely what this hospital project is all about.’
‘The Cardinal?’ enquired the Minister.
‘Yes. I’ve had a word with his office,’ Corsa lied impetuously. ‘They say in principle he’d be delighted to help. Thinks it’s an excellent idea. Sort of absolution for the nuns. We Catholic boys should stick together, Bunny.’
Burrowes’ fingers began dancing across the folds of his damp chin. Even on a good day he was no longer what he could regard as young, and his contemplation of indiscretions both past and proposed had begun to produce in him a growing attachment to his religious roots, and particularly to the understanding and forgiveness those roots might provide. Yes, if the Cardinal was considering giving his personal approval …
‘And the Herald would keep the campaign going. Reports on the children saved, the disasters averted and the good deeds done. Your good deeds, Bunny. Right through the summer.’
Burrowes’ jowls wobbled in growing anticipation. Public duty and personal piety all wrapped up in one endless photo opportunity, right through the summer – and the next reshuffle. The Minister’s eyes grew moist.
‘It’s only a drop in the ocean so far as your budget is concerned but it’s in a damned good cause. Your cause. An excellent cause, don’t you think?’ Corsa continued, and the Minister found himself nodding in agreement. He’d get stick from his officials when he went back to the office, but he could squeeze it out of the disaster fund and pray that Bangladesh wouldn’t disappear beneath flood water again this year. A gentlemen’s agreement forged for God’s work. After all, that was a Minister’s job, to decide. ‘For the greater good,’ he burbled enthusiastically. ‘And sod the civil servants.’
At last Corsa allowed the Minister to return to his ice skater. Two hundred and fifty thousand. Not a bad return on ten minutes’ work and a glass of Sainsbury’s Rioja. It was fine sport and the fool hadn’t even realized, had been so pathetically grateful. How he despised them, the politicians, the would-be rulers with their airs and arrogances, strutting around this tiny world of Westminster like peacocks with their flight feathers plucked.
He found himself wandering away from the general crush, stepping around the White Drawing Room in search of more convivial distraction. He examined a Constable landscape of storm clouds and sodden fields, not one of the painter’s best. Corsa had better in his own boardroom, although in private he preferred more modern works, the sort of things in which it looked as though reality had been taken apart and put back in an entirely different order. Rather like his accounts. On a table by the window stood four china dolls, porcelain figures of former Prime Ministers – Gladstone, Wellington, Disraeli and Palmerston, giants of the Victorian age but all with private lives and peccadilloes which would in the modern era have brought them low long before their time. ‘Publish and be damned!’ Wellington had challenged his mistress when confronted with her all-too-explicit diaries. Nowadays she would, and he would too. Be damned, that is. Cut down to size quicker than a forest of mahogany.
‘The only good politician …?’ a voice beside him suggested.
Corsa turned to find