‘Not my fault, Eddie,’ Goodfellowe responded. ‘Not this time, at least. Got caught up in a demonstration at Trafalgar Square.’
‘Tom, just listen to yourself. Missed a vote because you got caught up in a mob demonstrating against your own Government? What do you think this is? A kindergarten class?’ The colour drained from Rankin’s voice. Goodfellowe was going to have to earn his whisky the hard way. ‘You’ve spent the last couple of years being about as much help as a nun in a knocking shop. We’ve been patient, sympathetic. Hell, after you lost your son, and Elinor cracked up …’ He paused in sorrow. The ancient leather of the sofa creaked as he leaned forward to refill their glasses. ‘You know as well as anybody that we’re not all prehistoric like Battersby. But we all have to move on, Tom. I’m running a parliamentary party, not a dog pound.’
‘Aren’t we allowed the occasional bark?’
‘I haven’t got time to waste on rounding up stray mongrels,’ Rankin retorted. ‘In your case, some would argue that it was better simply to have you put down. Including, so I’ve heard, some in your own constituency party.’
So, the ripples on the Marshwood pond had reached as far as the Chief Whip’s lair. Goodfellowe ran his finger around the rim of his glass. An average blend, not a single malt. Unmistakable evidence that this was serious rather than social.
‘Look at it from my point of view, Tom. If you were standing in my socks, what would you be saying?’
Goodfellowe stifled a sarcastic response – this wasn’t the moment for cheap lines – and gazed around the panelled room with its dark window and conspiratorial atmosphere. On Rankin’s desk lay a small pile of folders. Personnel files. Files from the safe, the armoury where the Whips stored most of their weapons, those little secrets and shames that were committed to paper and locked away, to be brought out and brandished whenever one of the dogs started barking. (No computer files here, too easy to copy, only the handwritten daily notes torn from the Whips’ Book, along with a few press cuttings and unpaid invoices. Perhaps even a couple of charge sheets, too.)
There were some secrets that even the Whips were unwilling to commit to paper, matters so sensitive they were confined only to that collective memory that bound together the brotherhood. Such as the whereabouts of the Foreign Secretary’s first wife, whom he had inconveniently forgotten to divorce before marrying the second. Her bank account number, too, although a slip of paper recorded details of the regular payments. There was also the identity of the MP’s daughter who fed her drug habit by prostitution and by playing the Stock Market with exceptional good fortune following her occasional visits to a Junior Minister for Industry. Nestling alongside the other secrets was the identity of the Whip, one of their own, who’d had a heart attack in his room, tied to his chair with underwear around his ankles. Women’s underwear. No need for a paper record. They would for ever remember him as Little Miss Naughty, baby pink, extra large. For a moment Goodfellowe wondered whether Rankin had been running through his own file, and what might be in it.
‘If, as you say, I were standing in your socks, Eddie,’ he responded, picking up the Chief Whip’s challenge, ‘I would say here was a mongrel of some talent. Awkward sometimes, to be sure. The sort of dog who waits until you’ve built the kennel around him, driven home the last nail, then jumps over the bloody gate. But a dog who’s looking for a new …’ – he took a deep breath while he hunted for the right word – ‘adventure.’
‘Adventure? I prefer the quiet life. No surprises.’ Yet curiosity drew him on. ‘What sort of adventure?’
‘One that doesn’t require me to cycle in the rain around Westminster and get caught up in the crowd.’
‘You want money?’
‘No, you Scottish teuchter!’ His voice rang unnaturally jocular in his own ear, too loud, trying too hard. He sipped his whisky, finding it difficult to plead. ‘I want to be back with the team, Eddie. It’s a tough game in this place and I’m tired of trying to score goals all on my own.’
‘This is a new Goodfellowe,’ the Whip responded wryly. ‘Why the sudden change?’
‘I’ve got new interests, new friends …’
‘I’d heard.’
‘New enthusiasms,’ Goodfellowe continued, now certain that Rankin had undoubtedly reviewed his file, and that Elizabeth was on it.
‘You want back on the inside of the tent?’
‘It would be more comfortable than staying on the outside. For you, too. I’m so messy when I put my back into it.’
‘So you want in. And you thought the best way to impress me was to balls-up a simple vote?’
‘Think positive. Get me off my bike, Eddie, and you rob an old rebel of his excuse.’
They held each other’s gaze, testing.
‘You pick your moments, Tom,’ Rankin eventually responded. His tone was considered, contemplative. Not dismissive. ‘The tom-toms are beginning to beat from Downing Street. Testing the tune of an early reshuffle. One or two braves to be burnt at the stake, so rumour has it. Somebody will need to take their place.’
‘I’d like it to be me.’ There, he’d said it. No ambiguity, ambition to the fore. It felt good, like favourite shoes.
‘Ah, the appetite returns!’
‘Put it down to menopausal vanity. An insane desire for a higher profile. Before I have to start dying my hair.’
‘And suddenly you’ve become enamoured of our beloved leader?’ There was no hiding the sceptical note. Rankin was a musician, he could recognize a duff score.
‘You know me better than that, Eddie. Y’know Brother Bendall better than that, too. One day there’ll be a great shaking of the ground and he’ll get buried beneath an avalanche of his own bullshit. But while History makes up her mind as to when the burial will be, I can be helpful. I want to be helpful.’
‘And some might say he needs all the help he can get,’ Rankin responded, so softly that it wouldn’t carry as far as the walls.
‘Will you put my name forward?’
‘It’s my duty, now you’ve offered.’
‘But will you recommend it?’
The Chief Whip took a slug of whisky. ‘Recommend you? Bit like recommending jumping as a cure for vertigo. Who knows? You’re such an awkward sod, Goodfellowe …’
The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 banked gently over the sea as it positioned itself for a final approach to the airport at Odessa. The sight that greeted her through the cabin window was remarkable and Elizabeth hoped it would prove to be something of an omen.
Through the window of the Austrian Air flight she could see a fleet of aircraft set out beside the runway, a testament to the might of the infant and independent republic of Ukraine. Bombers, transports, fighter planes, helicopters, MIGs, Tupolevs, Yaks and Sukhois, all ranged in straight rows like the tentacles of a great war machine ready to form a guard of honour.
‘Our air force,’ the male passenger in the seat beside her indicated. ‘Big bloody air force,’ he added. Yuri’s English was not good and was very guttural, like an engine running on its last drop of oil, but somehow throughout the afternoon flight from Vienna he had managed to make his meanings entirely transparent to his unaccompanied