The Aachen Memorandum E-Book

Andrew Roberts

• Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 405

Beschreibung

May 2045. England has become a minor region of the European superstate, politically correct but inert, weighed down by bureaucracy and unaware of past glories. With British culture diluted to near extinction by European influence, the nation having lost its Crown and its Parliament, nationalistic pride is liable to land you in prison, or even worse... Oxford don Horatio Lestoq finds the dead body of a prominent politician and is immediately tagged as prime suspect. On the run and desperate to clear his name, can he free himself from the tangled web of an EU government conspiracy, or will he become ensnared like those before him who tried to reveal fiercely guarded hidden truths?

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title Page

PART I

1 09.22 Sunday 2 May 2045

2 09.12 Saturday 1 May

3 10.25 Saturday 1 May

4 08.10 Sunday 2 May

5 10.40 Sunday 2 May

PART II

6 09.35 Friday 30 April

7 13.20 Friday 30 April

8 22.10 Friday 30 April

9 13.20 Sunday 2 May

10 13.23 Sunday 2 May

11 03.00 Monday 3 May

12 09.00 Monday 3 May

13 15.08 Monday 3 May

14 20.25 Monday 3 May

15 07.00 Tuesday 4 May

16 11.33 Tuesday 4 May

PART III

17 12.05 Tuesday 4 May

18 12.25 Tuesday 4 May

19 12.45 Tuesday 4 May

20 07.46 Wednesday 5 May

21 09.10 Wednesday 5 May

PART IV

22 10.53 Wednesday 5 May

23 14.24 Wednesday 5 May

24 16.00 Friday 7 May

25 09.40 Saturday 8 May

26 10.44 Saturday 8 May

27 10.55 Saturday 8 May

28 11.02 Saturday 8 May

29 11.12 Saturday 8 May

30 11.22 Saturday 8 May

The Times Monday 10 May 2045 9 p.m. update

Copyright

PART I

CHAPTER 1

09.22 SUNDAY 2 MAY 2045

The first thing Horatio saw on entering the drawing room was the Admiral’s corpse lying prostrate on the sofa. He dared to hope death had come naturally, but an indefinable something about the room suggested murder.

As in every crisis of his life, Horatio’s first instinct was to panic and run as fast and as far as his asthma would let him. This time, however, he sat down on a chair beside the nearby escritoire and breathed deeply five or six times. He took a suck on his Salbutamol inhaler as his huge brain kick-started itself into life.

He was tempted just to retrace his steps and leave by the front door. It took something approaching a full minute of cogitation before he leant over to the phone on the desk and dialled 112. If he was being set up for this, he reasoned, that at least might work in his favour.

‘Hello? Police? Hello. Listen, I’ve just found a dead body.’

‘Who’s speaking please?’

‘Horatio Lestoq.’ For once there was no snigger at the absurdity of his name. ‘That’s L-E-S-T-O-Q.’

‘Please switch on your vid.’ It was a woman’s voice. Efficient. In control. Altogether irritating.

‘There doesn’t seem to be a screen – it’s one of those old-fashioned phones.’

‘Postcode or g-mail address?’

‘Sorry?’

‘What is the postcode there?’

‘Look,’ he answered, clearly and slowly, trying hard to suppress a sense of mounting hysteria, ‘I have just found a dead body, I’m not trying to send a sodding parcel!’

‘Please be calm. We need to know where you are.’

‘No idea of the postcode, I don’t live here. But it’s a rectory in …’

Then he saw writing paper standing in a rack on the desk.

‘Hang on. Yes … yes, here it is. RG2 4RW – Hampshire.’

There was a pause.

‘The Rectory, Ibworth, near Basingstoke?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘Police and paramedics will arrive soon. Right now, though, I need some more details.’ Horatio took another long suck from his inhaler. He hoped he’d brought a refill.

‘Name of deceased?’

‘I’m fairly sure he’s Admiral Michael Ratcliffe.’

‘You’re not certain?’

‘I’ve never met him before. But it’s his house.’

‘Spelt?’

‘R-A-T-C-L-I-F-F-E.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Don’t know. He’s just lying there. Heart attack?’ The moment he said it he knew it was not.

‘I.D. number?’ Her cool, impersonal tone had definitely got on his nerves now. Perhaps it was also the way she kept omitting the definite article.

‘How should I know? I’m not going anywhere near it, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

‘Not his. Yours.’

‘Oh, I see. All right, yes, it’s 478 A 34QW.’ She tapped it onto her modem.

‘Checking – 478 A 34QW.’

‘Yes.’ There was a millisecond’s pause.

‘How long has deceased been dead?’

‘No idea.’

‘According to this you’re a doctor.’

‘I’m not that kind of doctor.’

‘What first aid have you administered?’

‘None. The man’s dead for God’s sake!’

‘Are you sure?’

Horatio forced himself to look across at the body. White-haired and crumpled, it hadn’t moved a millimetre since he entered the room.

‘Yes. Pretty much … Yes.’

‘OK. Stay where you are. Touch nothing. Police will be with you momentarily.’

The police … In a moment, thought Horatio. He later prided himself on having been pedantic even in that crisis.

They arrived far sooner than he’d expected, the sirens audible through the half-open French windows almost immediately after he had replaced the receiver. He glanced around the room, trying to avoid the body, but failing. There was no sign of blood. He thanked God for that. As a child any sight of it, let alone his own, had always made him retch. Coming face to face with it now would put him off his food for months. And that would never do.

What was it about the room which alerted him to the possibility of murder? There were the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the inevitable naval prints, several silver photograph frames on the piano by the French windows. All very twentieth-century decor. The photos were mostly of a much younger man, presumably Ratcliffe himself, in naval uniform on decks, but there were a couple of a small child and one wedding shot. The groom was also wearing naval uniform, but Horatio did not think it was Ratcliffe. They were arranged carefully in rows, with three gaps. Had some been removed?

Try as he might to avoid it, Horatio’s gaze kept swivelling back to the body, which was dressed in the sort of clothes someone might have worn a century ago. Tweeds, cavalry twills, an old cardigan, even the frayed end of an M.C.C. tie was visible. One of the sofa cushions lay over and partly covered what Horatio could see was a well-polished pair of vintage, dark brown brogues.

Looking away again, Horatio’s eyes rested upon an even stranger anachronism. On the desk there was a sheet of white blotting paper, set in dark green leather. Otherwise virgin, it was stained at the very bottom by some thin ink marks.

Police autos were speeding up the drive around the other side of the house. He could hear gravel flying. On an impulse, unusual in someone who thought of himself as a congenital coward, Horatio tore off the marked piece of blotting paper – about three centimetres by ten – and crossed the room to the large mirror above the mantelpiece to read what was reflected.

‘Mrs Robson,’ he saw, and, underneath, ‘your roving godfather,’ and below that, ‘Michael.’ The investigative hack in him got the better of the law-abiding citizen. He folded it in half, put it in his mouth and salivated hard.

‘Here!’ he shouted, chewing, as the police got to the front door, ‘first on the left!’

Two armed men burst in. Horatio swallowed.

The first – the one pointing the N-series machine gun – showed no gratitude for Horatio’s directions. ‘On the floor!’ he yelled. ‘Face down! Hands and legs apart!’

Horatio did as he was told. The second man came forward to frisk and then handcuff him. In the police auto he was told that by law he was required to speak and that everything he said would be videoed for certain use against him. He was then driven the four miles to Basingstoke police station, where he was asked to hand over all sharp objects. His cash, pager, watch-phone, I.D. card and belt were also taken, after which he was led away to what they termed the ‘custody suites’.

Horatio did not protest. He decided, for the thousandth time in his twenty-nine years, that discretion would probably be the better part of valour.

Once in the cell he lay on the bed, fingers interlaced behind his head. It was his deep-thought mode. Ignoring the camera in the ceiling, the graffiti and Inmates’ Charter on the walls, the all-pervasive stench of urine and the likelihood of catching scabies off the filthy mattress, he put to use the one sharp implement the police could not confiscate.

His brain.

He hadn’t got a double-starred first in the logic paper of his Finals for nothing, he told himself. He presumed this would not be a case London would let the local force keep. Assuming C.I.D. used the M3 special lane, and allowing for the fact that police autos were not fitted with speed governors, he probably had an hour. In that time he must work out for himself exactly what was going on.

And for that, he must go back to the beginning.

CHAPTER 2

09.12 SATURDAY 1 MAY

The moment he opened his eyes that Saturday morning, Horatio wished he hadn’t. He was lying on his side facing the wall, curled up in the foetal position against the coming onslaught. The hangover reminded him of the bombardments in old black-and-white films of the First Nationalist War. Constant, rolling, heavy, booming thuds. Here an H.E. shell, there a landmine. Once again he told himself he really could not go on drinking like an undergraduate.

The bedroom wall was about two metres away. It kept coming in and out of focus. The print of All Souls had fallen down over a month ago but he still had not got round to putting it back up. It had been a rather unimaginative present from his mother to celebrate his Prize Fellowship seven years ago. Pretty much the only present she had ever given him, he thought self-pityingly. Then there was the empty space where Leila’s photo had been. Not filling it was a kind of tribute to her. Stupid, really. The other gap was where his Paul Johnson watercolour had hung. He’d bought it at Sotheby’s in the days when he was flush. That had gone to pay last month’s Atlantic Gas bill. His life, he thought, was better summed up by what was missing from that wall than what was on it.

The capacity for recall returned only very gradually. He had the kind of hangover they had used to call a ‘stonker’ at Oxford. He was almost proud of it.

It had been May Day Eve. Marty had given the traditional bash at his flat. Horatio must have put away more units last night than the latest Alcohol Consumption Directive prescribed for a month.

Someone had brought along a case of contraband bourbon. He remembered peeling off one of the ‘Produce of the United States of Europe’ labels on the back of a bottle to read ‘Made in Kentucky’ stamped underneath. Had it been the two Excise men? It wouldn’t have surprised him. Especially the sort Marty would know.

That was definitely when disaster had struck. One could hardly turn down genuine American whisky when some brave and enterprising soul had gone to all the trouble of smuggling it over for you.

What had happened though, other than the boozing? He’d been very popular, he thought. And he’d been kissed during a power cut.

By whom?

He remembered chatting up two girls, both pretty glamorous. An American blonde and …

Horatio suddenly remembered the rest. He turned over.

She was lying on her side. Head resting in her palm. Looking at him. Smiling. Not the Yank. The other one.

He smiled back, fumbling for the name. Unusual. Ancient world. Bathsheba? Aspasia? Some show-offy name like that anyhow.

The first thing he noticed was that she had shaven armpits, in defiance of the prevailing federal fashion. Great. The second was that she was easily the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Was that just the hangover talking? No. He double-checked. She was pitilessly beautiful.

Mid to late twenties? He was no good at estimating age. Sin-black hair. Aquiline nose. Tanned complexion. The lips were a feature, as well, although he couldn’t quite describe them just then. He could devise plans for them though.

‘Hello,’ she said.

Were those tinted contact lenses, or were her eyes really that shade of green? Turquoise, really. Shipping could get lost in them.

‘Hello.’

‘How do you feel?’ Definitely a Queen’s rather than an Estuary-Grunge accent. That was better news than the armpits; Horatio had long since given up pretending he wasn’t a rampant snob.

‘Terrible. Terrible.’

‘Same here.’

She didn’t look it. Too corny to say that though.

‘What’s the time?’ She checked her watch-phone.

‘Twenty past.’

‘Past what?’

‘Nine hundred.’ He groaned.

‘What time did it end?’

‘It probably hasn’t,’ she answered, ‘it was still going strong when we left.’

‘When was that?’

‘About oh-three hundred. Maybe a bit later.’

‘I’m reminded of a line in Lucky Jim. Do you know it? By a twentieth-century writer called Kingsley Amis.’

‘He’s banned, isn’t he?’ Horatio thought quickly.

‘Well, more discouraged.’ Christ, how idiotic of him. She worked with Marty, and was thus probably a spook of some kind. Yet there he was, blithely about to quote from a discouraged writer. Worse still, one who was Dead, White, Anglo-Saxon and Male. Better backtrack. ‘I read him at school, before the Directive. Anyhow it’s a funny line, not sexist or ageist or anything-ist.’

‘I couldn’t mind less if it were. Tell me.’

They couldn’t be contact lenses, she’d only woken up. They really were that colour you only see in seas, and then only in travel brochures on the Caribbean, and then only when a tint has been slipped over the camera lens. Her complexion, which last night he’d assumed had been made up, was, on closer inspection, just silky healthiness.

‘Well, the hero wakes up with an award-winning hangover and Amis describes him as “spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning”. Then there’s something about his mouth having been “used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum”.’ She laughed.

Hallelujah!

Getting into his stride now, Horatio continued: ‘He also felt like “he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then had been expertly beaten up by secret police”.’ He was proud of his quoting ability. That particular one was something of a morning-after favourite. Not that he’d had many girls to try it out on. And certainly none like this.

‘Well, that’s rather what did happen, didn’t it?’ She smiled. ‘I work in P.I.D., which I suppose means I’m about as close to a secret policeperson as you can get. And although it was nothing masochistic like a cross-country run, we did get quite … physical last night.’

The way she said ‘physical’ had his guts – and there were plenty of them – trying to leap into his throat. Stay calm, he told himself. This must not be allowed to degenerate into a one-night stand.

Her unexpected forwardness broke any remaining ice. He’d begun to worry that the way they had made love the night before had – so far as he could remember – contravened about six provisions of the Sexual Hygiene Directive. It had been so long since anyone had come back with him that he’d forgotten where he’d put the diggle forms. So she hadn’t signed any, which, as it was his flat, was his responsibility. On both the Health & Hygiene and the Harassment Protection fronts, therefore, he was vulnerable. If this girl – it started with a ‘C’, he remembered: Cassandra? Clytemnestra? – put in an official complaint it could cause him real trouble professionally, even as a freelance.

‘I can’t remember much about the party,’ she said, still lying there, looking at him. ‘What was it like?’

‘Dreadful. No wonder I drank so much. Full of H.R.G.s.’ She looked quizzical. ‘It’s an acronym Marty and I use sometimes. Stands for Hunky-Regular-Guys-At-Ease-With-Their-Own-Bodies. You know the type. The enemy for someone like me. Rugger friends of Marty’s.’

‘But Marty’s a bit hunky and regular himself, isn’t he?’

‘Physically, yes. But in personality he’s a million kilometres away from a true one.’

‘Such as who, then?’

‘Oh, I don’t know … Alex Tallboys, say.’ The name seemed to register with her.

‘The tall blond with the blue eyes?’

‘That’s it.’

‘You don’t think much of him?’

‘No, I don’t. Classic H.R.G. material. Did you see him last night? Telling notoriously old anecdotes. I mean some truly ancient chestnuts. So old they should be listed by the Culture Commission. What’s worse, he was telling them really badly, and then he started pretending they’d all happened to him. It was cringe-making.’

‘How do you know him?’

Alex Tallboys was one of those who had bullied and taunted Horatio at Oxford into what Robert Virgil and another doctor had both diagnosed as something approaching a nervous breakdown. He wasn’t going to tell her that though.

‘University. He was in the year above. God knows why Marty keeps inviting him. Must be because they work together.’

‘Have you met his wife?’

‘No.’ It was his turn to look puzzled, by the infinitely sad look on her face. ‘I’m sorry? Are they friends of yours? I suppose you must work with him too. I’m sorry if I’ve put my foot in it. He might be really nice now for all I know.’ He was backtracking fast, but could tell it was nothing like fast enough.

‘He’s not. You’re right about him. That’s why I’m getting a forty-eight-hour quickie divorce from him next week.’

Horatio turned over to bury his face in the pillow. It muffled a heartfelt ‘Oh shit!’ Quite apart from the gaffe itself, he now remembered Tallboys’ jealous stares across the room last night. He’d just managed to cuckold a double blue! Rugby and karate, he remembered, with a shudder.

‘Don’t you remember?’ she continued. ‘You told me that you were surprised I hadn’t laughed at your name, and I said I was hardly in a position to, glorying in that of Cleopatra Tallboys.’ It all raced back. He nodded. He must have been well away last night to suffer this sort of memory lapse. Horatio put on his apology voice, the one he’d perfected at prep school. Fringe flopping over spanielly eyes. It never failed.

‘I’m so sorry. Of course he’s not that bad. For one thing, he’s certainly very’ – he racked his brains for something credible – ‘good-looking.’

‘Listen,’ she said, with a flash of irritation, ‘I’d hardly be here if I loved or respected him, would I? It’s all right, we’ve separated. And as I’ve already said, you’re right about him. So who else was there last night?’

Horatio felt like asking for her maiden name in case he accidentally slandered any other family member. Was that why she had gone home with him? To spite her husband? Or, after years of being married to a Neanderthal, had she wanted an Oxford don out of some kind of intellectual snobbery? Horatio had heard some of the Fellows boast about the phenomenon at High Table. ‘The Monroe/Miller Syndrome’ they called it. The beauty parades the brainbox around to impress her friends, hoping his cleverness might ooze into her through some kind of psychic osmosis. He’d always assumed his colleagues had been teasing him, or just fantasising, but perhaps not.

‘Who else was there? Now you’re sounding like a police … person. Well, there was Peter Riley, the red-headed guy. He was sent down from Magdalen at the end of my first year.’

‘Really? What for?’

‘He proposed the Loyal Toast during some boaty dinner.’

‘How absurd.’

‘Well, Oxford always was supposed to be the home of lost causes.’

‘No, not him. Them. How ludicrous for the college authorities to overreact like that. They ought just to have laughed it off. Sending him down is precisely how to make a Carlist for life out of him. Sometimes those dons can be pathetically conformist. The Mountbatten-Windsors probably left before Riley was even born. Now he’s probably toasting The King Over The Water every lunchtime.’

She put out her hand to brush back some of his hair which he had made fall over his eyes when he was apologising. ‘We have to keep tabs on the Carlists at work. Once they were romantic, but with these riots and everything, they’re getting far more dangerous. Some of them are still rather sweet though.’

The way she said ‘romantic’ made Horatio wish that she would say that about him one day. He again wondered why, despite all the macho Hunky Regulars at the party, this goddess had wound up going back with a hundred-and-ten kilo, one-metre-sixty-something, drunken old hack? He couldn’t even remember whether he had been particularly witty or charming last night, although he felt fairly confident he’d been both.

The full-scale bombardment had receded somewhat, but there was still a sustained mortar and small-arms skirmish being fought in the no-man’s-land between his forehead and his right temple.

‘Any chance of some coffee?’ she asked. ‘Some real stuff?’ Horatio grinned. The blatant reference to black market Brazilian surely meant she was no nark.

‘You’re not sounding very police-ish,’ he teased.

‘I hope I wasn’t last night either.’ Once again that open, easy, natural reference to their love-making. It was so Twenty-First Century Cosmo Modern Womanish.

‘When you’re engaged in tracking down the enemies of the state, young man,’ she continued, in a passable Morningside schoolmarm accent, ‘your boss doesn’t much care if your lover’s coffee comes from the American Free Trading Area or some industrial processor in Hamburg.’

‘Lover’ made him blush. He blushed deeper when he got out of bed to waddle to the kitchen in search of a coffee cup free of pin mould. He hated her watching his generous buttocks as they disappeared down the corridor. They were like the jowls on a bloodhound. Tallboys’ were probably tight, pert and small as a man’s clenched fists.

Or had she meant ‘lovers’ in the plural? Everything was so complicated already.

‘Mmm … this coffee’s really federal,’ she said appreciatively. That ludicrous slang again.

Once safely back in bed he blurted out: ‘You’re really lovely, you know. Just sort of … you know, perfect.’ He felt an idiot the moment he’d said it.

‘Thank you,’ she smiled, looking down in embarrassment.

‘God that sounded spas – sorry, I mean pathetic – but you are.’

‘It didn’t and I’m not. I’m really not.’ She looked at him for just a fraction of a second. As if she meant what she said and was giving him a warning. A last chance.

‘“I always tend to talk crap when I’m nervous.” That’s a line from Martin Amis. The Rachel Papers.’ Another D.W.A.-S. Male writer.

‘Quotations from Amis père et fils! What a morning.’ The way she said it, it somehow didn’t sound too sarcastic. ‘Martin was made compulsory at my school at about the same time they “discouraged” Kingsley,’ she said. ‘Oh, and by the way, I think you’re lovely too.’

At that sublime moment Horatio’s bedside vid-phone rang. He flicked it on, regretting it as soon as he had.

‘Hi Horrid, it’s Roddy. Hey! What have we here?!’ Horatio realised Roderick Weaning could see Cleo. He quickly switched off the vid link. Cleo seemed utterly unfazed by the fact that she’d been spotted in Horatio’s bed by a total stranger.

‘Whatever happened to privacy?’ complained Horatio.

‘I’m a newsperson. Don’t believe in it. More to the point, Horrid, whatever happened to your Aachen piece?’ Horatio turned around to Cleo and mouthed ‘The Boss’ to her.

Roderick Weaning was one part joviality, two parts cynicism, one part pure aggression. Deputy editor of The Times, he was the man who paid the freelance Horatio’s mortgage. And knew it.

‘Look, Roddy, can I call you back? As you’ve seen I’m with someone at the moment. You gave me till Monday. I’ll file by noon.’

‘Sunday night it’s due in by. And we’re hyping it on the masthead, so it must be. Your first two pieces were really federal. They’ve set the scene very well, so we want something just as good this time. But that’s not why I called. I need you to come round. Now. I need to discuss something important.’ He put just enough emphasis on ‘important’ for it to sound simultaneously enticing and threatening.

‘Can’t we talk over the phone?’

‘No, sorry.’

Horatio looked at Cleo lying naked in his bed. How could he possibly leave her?

‘You’re a tough hack, Roddy.’

‘Northcliffe, Rothermere, Beaverbrook, Black, Weaning. That’s what they say. Be here by ten-thirty. Oh, and say goodbye to your friend from me!’ He clicked off with a laugh.

‘Sounds like my time’s up,’ said Cleo. Lying on her back now, her hands behind her head, she didn’t seem to notice that the sheet had fallen back to reveal her breasts. Horatio, as immature sexually as he was sophisticated intellectually, found it took all his self-control not to stare at them, salivate or even make a half-hearted attempt to grab. For once, he told himself, he must play it cool. He must try to act as though women like her who could model for the front cover of Chic Alors! were the regular occupants of his smelly old scratcher of a bed.

Why did Weaning have to call on this of all days? When would he be in a position to be able to tell people like Roddy where they could go?

He showered and dressed, took Cleo’s pager number and told her where the coffee was. She was the first girl he’d left in his flat since Leila, but he instinctively knew it was all right.

An observer of their lingering goodbye kiss might have been forgiven for assuming Horatio was about to cross the Arabian Empty Quarter on foot, rather than just take a tram to the eastern end of the Strand.

The worst thing about being a semi-detached academic, thought Horatio as he made his way down Collingham Place, was having to be at the beck and call of nargs like Weaning in order to earn a living. Prize Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, sounded grand, but it didn’t provide him with much more than a seat in college and occasional dining rights. Journalism was how he tried to earn what his bank manager kept telling him, less and less politely, wasn’t quite a living any more.

The tram journey from his flat in Brittan Court – Earls Court before Whitehall had over-zealously interpreted the new Classlessness legislation – took half an hour. Horatio used the time to read his messages and the news off his pager. The usual stuff. Some junk-mail. An invitation to the Brasenose Gaudy. His mother wanting to know if he was coming down for the weekend. Why? Probably for a reconciliation with his stepbrother and stepsister. Marty was asking how he had done with Cleo, couched in his usual uncouth vernacular. An outraged rant from a reader about the first of his Times articles on the Aachen Referendum. Why, he wondered, do nutters always use italics, underlinings and multiple exclamation marks? A couple of bills, including a message from the Atlantic Gas people saying that as of 1 July his supply would be cut off and his ration reallocated owing to non-payment. He looked out of the tram window at the bright May morning. Summer was on its way, he shouldn’t need Atgas for a while now anyhow. He wondered for a moment whether his aversion to paying them had anything to do with his father’s death, but decided it was probably just poverty.

He g-mailed his mother to ask who else would be down next Saturday, and decided to let Marty stew. He would tell that cow Penelope Aldritt ‘for the last bloody time’ not to give his private pager number to readers. They could write to his home modem if they had to.

The news was more interesting. He preferred reading the splash headlines on other passengers’ tabloid newssheets rather than The Times stuff off his own pager, NAT RIOTS IN SHEFFIELD AND DONCASTER. Poor old North England Region. When was there last any good news from up there? SPACE AGENCY SLEAZE: TWELVE INDICTED, announced the European Eye, THATCHER ASSASSINATION: NEW EVIDENCE, cried The Mail. Yet more indications that it had not been the I.R.A. after all. This was getting to be the twenty-first-century equivalent of J.F.K.! He considered whether the market could take yet another book on the subject. He might be able to get a good advance for himself, but what would they say in college? Did he really care any longer?

The Sun led with tenth MAY GROUP PLOT TO LASER ENTENTE BRIDGE. The other story in all the papers was about how the last of the Cornish trawlers had been arrested by Spanish Region frigates for fishing in the Irish Box. It finally spelt the end of the industry. The Indy, which liked to specialise in stories about the ex-Royals, carried the news that King William of New Zealand had finally been granted a visa to visit London over the coming week. U.S.E. AND A-P.E.Z. AGREE ON WILLY’S VISA, ran the headline. The long-running diplomatic row between the United States of Europe and the Asia-Pacific Economic Zone had at last been resolved. It would be the first Royal visit since the Family left in 2017, and all the papers carried speculative pieces about the warmth of the welcome he could expect from the people, if not from the authorities.

Horatio briefly wondered whether the Commission decision to try to beat both the American Free Trading Area and The Asia-Pacific Economic Zone to Mars might be ruined by the amazing degree of corruption at the Euro-Space Agency, extraordinary even by Union standards.

The story he followed up in The Times, though, once he found the relevant column in his pager, was the one about the Tenth of May Group. The paramilitary wing of the English Resistance Movement had been hitting what they termed ‘legitimate targets’ for over a quarter of a century now. It would be a major departure from their established modus operandi to attack a public utility like the Channel Bridge.

How had they got their hands on a laser? That would be a significant advance on their usual terrorist acts. His hack’s nose told him that the story was pretty speculative. The Times’ lack of coverage seemed to confirm that. The E.R.M. had officially denied it, and Horatio suspected the story might have originated in the Information Commission’s dirty tricks department. He made a mental note to ask Marty, who always knew about such things.

After about half an hour the tram pulled up outside the Times building in Fleet Street. It was rare for Weaning to request a face-to-face meeting. Horatio hoped it was nothing bad.

CHAPTER 3

10.25 SATURDAY 1 MAY

The Times building in Printing House Square was a steel and glass cylindrical monstrosity rising high above the rest of Fleet Street. Totally out of sympathy with all the surrounding buildings it had won many prestigious architectural awards. Horatio loathed it with a passion he normally reserved for structures built in the third quarter of the last century, or the van der Rohe-style horror which the Berlin-Brussels Bureau had just commissioned for their new headquarters. He was looking forward to the eightieth anniversary of Le Corbusier’s death this summer, when he would hold his own private celebration.

The electronic frisker on the door swallowed his I.D. card and returned it instantaneously. Then the security guards waved him through with their N-series, and after two minutes on the travelator he was there. Most employees of the daily paper were away for May Day, but some of those working on the Sunday were around. One of the advantages of having been sacked, he mused, was that he now knew precisely who were his real friends on the paper. And, more importantly, his real enemies.

It was almost a year since the Works Council had held the poll. He later found out from a friend in Optic-Fibres how everyone had voted. As a manager Weaning had taken no direct part, but he had seemed keen enough to take Horatio off the payroll the moment the vote had gone against.

Just as he was about to enter Weaning’s office, Horatio saw Penelope Aldritt, the cow who had spoken against him at the meeting. She was rearranging books. A few of her phrases still rankled. She had told the Works Council that he was ‘a suspected tobacco-abuser’, who ‘maintained surplus and antisocial weight levels despite every opportunity to work out’ and who was thus an increased pension and benefits risk and deserved ‘constructive redundancy’ in order to give him more time to ‘get in touch with the real him’.

His supporters had decried her blatant stoutism, but the alternative forms of words suggested to the meeting were no better. He did not want to be called ‘generously-propotioned’, ‘over-nutritioned’ or ‘horizontally-challenged’, let alone ‘a person of size’. Neither did he have an ‘alternative body image’. He was just fat. He didn’t much mind, either, except that it led to his having such little success with women. Until now.

One day, Aldritt, you fully paid-up, card-carrying bitch, he promised himself. One day …

Fortunately her legs resembled those of a Shetland pony. They were shorter, fatter and hairier even than Horatio’s. That, once allied to a vast nose, rendered her satisfyingly unattractive. She was thirty-six, unmarried, and by all accounts getting desperate.

‘Hello, Ms Aldritt,’ he smiled as he passed behind her desk, putting special emphasis on the ‘Ms’. By the time she’d turned round he was already in Weaning’s glass office.

‘Hello, Horror.’ Weaning was also thirty-six but he looked fifty. Overweight, jowly and balding, he had never really got over the regionwide smoking ban. ‘Sorry to get you out of bed.’

‘Not ever half as sorry as I’ll be for the rest of my days for letting you.’

‘It’s important though. We’ve received a complaint from Commissioner Percival’s lawyers that you’ve been harassing him. He wants the Berlin-Brussels Bureau Media Liaison Unit to vet your next Aachen piece before publication. Of course we’ve said no, but the Ed wants to know what’s going on.’

Horatio gave a brief outline of what he’d found in the Federal Records Office the day before. He then played Weaning the pager tape of his conversation with Percival.

‘Have you contacted the Admiral?’

‘No. Not yet.’

‘Well, get on with it then. Do it now. Sounds like a great story. Make sure you record the conversation.’ Horatio raised his eyebrows at this slur on his professionalism. Did Weaning really think him such an amateur?

‘If I gave you my grandmother’s address would you send her a memo on how to suck eggs?’ Weaning acknowledged the rebuke.

‘Sorry. It just sounds very exciting.’ It was, but would Weaning stand by him if this all started to go wrong?

‘How worried are you about Percival?’

‘Very, of course. I’m hardly likely to want to anger the Commission Secretary just for the hell of it. But if it hangs together …’ Weaning smiled. Always a dangerous sign. ‘Anyway, we have great faith in you not to do anything that might get our licence revoked.’

His look said just the opposite. It said: ‘Watch out if you want to keep this job which pays your mortgage, you podgy little egghead. The Editor told me to hire you even though I wanted a truly hardbitten news hack who’d done his time as a reporter on a local paper like me and not some smartarse academic like you who’s just swanned in from Oxbridge where the Editor went but I didn’t.’ Horatio had seen the look a thousand times. Pure, unadulterated chippiness, mixed with a (well-deserved) intellectual inferiority complex. A damn dangerous combination in a boss.

Just as Horatio was about to leave the office, Weaning looked over Horatio’s shoulder through the glass partition.

‘By the way, do you know Gemma Reegan?’

The name clanged a huge gong. Horatio frowned. Trying to remember anything that morning was not easy.

‘OK, be subtle. Take a look behind you at the woman talking to Penelope.’

Yes, that was her. The other woman from last night. The Yank. Tall. Power shoulders. Long straight blonde hair. Never-ending legs.

‘Yes, I do. She’s an American hack. Writes rubbishy books on the Mountbatten-Windsors. Nice girl though. Sexy, as you can see. I spent rather a long time chatting her up last night.’

‘She wants me to hire her to cover the King’s visit. From the historical angle. What do you think?’

‘I’m sure she’d do it well. Watch her though, as she’s got loads of ludicrous theories.’

‘Such as?’

‘Oh, she’s hit on this clever but completely bogus theme that the Mountbatten-Windsors are all illegitimate.’

Weaning’s frown meant he didn’t understand. He rarely did. For all his drive and ambition, Weaning actually knew very little. Which was partly why the Editor had demanded they hire Horatio.

‘For example, she goes around trying to find the marriage certificates of George IV and Maria Fitzherbert, William IV and Dora Jordan, Edward VII and Lillie Langtry and so on.’

Weaning’s look of incomprehension told Horatio there was little point in persevering, but he did nonetheless.

‘It’s all to prove that William isn’t the rightful King of the Kiwis. It doesn’t stand up for a minute of course, but it goes down very well in A.F.T.A. for some reason. I imagine the Commission approves too. I don’t think she commands much academic credibility over here.’ He thought of the High Table deconstruction of her latest book. ‘In fact, I know she doesn’t. Cracking-looking, though, don’t you think?’

‘Suppose so, yes. And you chatted her up last night? What a lothario you’re becoming. Who did I see on your vid-phone this morning? Is that why you didn’t follow this one up?’

‘No, she’s got a seven-year-old kid. Too much hassle.’ Weaning’s face fell.

‘No wonder this office voted you antisocial. That was a blatantly lone-parentist remark.’ The tone suggested that he was almost saying it for the record, as if his office was bugged. ‘Let’s just talk about her professionally, if you don’t mind?’ Chastened, Horatio repeated that he didn’t think she carried much intellectual credibility.

‘Amongst you Oxbridge types, no doubt, but here at the screen-face it’s different. She’s the sort of person who sells news space. Send her in. Oh, and let me know about what the Admiral says before you go.’

Horatio felt lucky to get away without some chippy lecture about his glaring lack of qualifications from the University of Life. In a way, Weaning was right; had Horatio attended that particular seat of learning, rather than Oxford, the best he could ever have hoped for was a Third. And he’d probably have also wound up on Weaning’s staircase.

Ever the egotist, Horatio rather hoped that Gemma might show a scintilla of pique at his having gone off with Cleo the night before. To his irritation she didn’t. She kissed him twice on each cheek – another new federal fashion Horatio despised – and beamed when he whispered to her that he thought she was about to get hired. As she walked off towards Weaning’s office she looked over her shoulder: ‘Are you ever in the I.H.R.?’

He did half his work in the Institute of Historical Research, but he couldn’t remember seeing her there.

‘Yes, quite a lot.’

‘Might see you there sometime?’

‘How about Monday? Afternoon-ish?’

‘Fine. Yes. Great.’ Rather pleasingly the conversation had taken place right in front of Penelope too. What a great May Day he was having.

Leaning back on the assistant editor’s chair, his feet up on his old desk, Horatio pressed ‘Record’ on his pager and called the Admiral’s number. He got straight through, but no image came up on the screen.

‘Hello, I wonder if I might speak to Admiral Ratcliffe?’

‘This is he.’ Old but clear. Plus he hadn’t taken forever to get to the phone, like some of the nonagenarians he’d interviewed.

‘Oh, hullo sir. My name’s Horatio Lestoq. I write for The Times. I’m presently working on a series of articles on the Aachen Referendum and I was wondering if I might ask you a couple of questions?’

‘Horatio Lestoq did you say?’ Oh dear, not another oh-so-droll remark about his name. Why had he not been christened Simon, George or Reinhard?

‘Yes, apparently it’s naval. I was named after a nineteenth-century sailor.’

‘Well, of course I know all about Nelson. I was a naval officer for forty-two years you know,’ the old boy said testily.

‘I am sorry, yes of course.’ This one would have to be handled carefully. ‘It’s just that we were not taught about him at school. He was taken off the syllabus during Depatriation and I rather assumed …’

‘He was taken off more than that, young man,’ said the Admiral. ‘You know Delors Square?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Uh-oh. Was the old boy senile? How could he not know of London’s most central location?

‘Well. It used to be named after Horatio Nelson’s greatest victory. His statue was up where Schuman is now, on the top of the column.’

So what? Site-renaming had gone on ever since universities in the 1980s had started calling junior common rooms after Nelson Mandela. Horatio knew that Attali House, the headquarters of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development at the other end of the Mall, had once been the palace where the Royal Family had lived. The huge Asia-Pacific Economic Zone headquarters on the south side of the Thames used to house London’s local government. Everyone knew that the vast gothic Westminster Heritage, Amenity and Leisuredrome had been a palace where the British Parliament had sat. It wasn’t too hard to believe that Delors Square had once commemorated a battle against our Union partners and fellow citizens. His mother might even have mentioned it once. Strange, though, that he hadn’t been taught it at school.

‘I was wondering how long you’d take to get in touch, Horatio,’ said Ratcliffe. ‘I’m ninety-one now, so you’ve left it rather late in the day. But it’s good to hear from you at last.’

What on earth could he mean? What amazing vanity to assume that, having only been a minor official in the referendum process, he would be on the call list to be interviewed for this piece. Horatio persevered nonetheless.

‘Well, if it’s all right I’d like to ask you a few questions about your role in the Aachen Referendum.’

‘Haven’t you anything else to tell me before that?’

‘I’m sorry, how do you mean?’

‘Don’t you know who I am?’ The vanity again. The classic cry of every pompous sub-Commissioner complaining about his hotel room or Christian Democrat M.U.P. upbraiding the maitre d’ over a table allocation.

‘Yes. You’re Admiral Sir Michael Ratcliffe’ – the oldies usually liked it when he referred to the by their pre-Classlessness titles, ex-peers especially – you were Chief Scrutineer for South-West Region.’

‘And that’s all I am to you?’

‘Yes. As I said, I’m a journalist working for The Times. We haven’t met before, have we?’ Had he ever interviewed Ratcliffe for any piece he’d written?

‘I know all that. I heard you the first time and you needn’t speak slowly. I may be ninety-one but I’m not senile.’ Horatio was unconvinced.

‘What was your mother called?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What was your mother’s maiden name?’

‘I really can’t see what that can possibly have to do with this interview.’ Horatio was regretting the call. He didn’t want to be cruel. He’d just wrap the whole thing up as soon as possible. In the meantime he’d humour the old boy. ‘Her name was Heather Ellis.’ Another long pause.

‘All right, fire away.’ It was as unexpected as it was welcome.

‘Did you ever meet Commission Secretary Gregory Percival at the time of the Referendum to discuss … finance? He was Foreign Commissioner Mackintosh’s special advisor at the time.’ A long silence this time. After about fifteen seconds Horatio feared the Admiral had fainted, fallen asleep, or simply walked off.

‘Hello? Admiral Ratcliffe, sir?’

‘Yes, yes, I’m still here. I heard what you said. Look, I think you’d better come down here. There’s something I must tell you … yes. It’s best that you do. There is something you ought to know … Something that you of all people must know.’

‘Could you tell me now?’

‘No … Certainly not. Not like this. Not over the phone. Come down tomorrow. In the morning. Early as you like. In the meantime I’ll try to get my thoughts down about … everything. How long’s it been?’

‘What? How long has what been?’

‘All the Aachen business.’

‘Thirty years. My article is to commemorate the anniversary on Tuesday.’

‘Well, that’s quite long enough. It needed something like this to happen. And you’re exactly the right person … Yes … To tell everything to. How extraordinary. I’d like to see you too. Do you drive?’

‘No,’ said Horatio, slightly ashamed of himself. Poverty and malcoordination had combined to make him immobile.

‘Listen here then. Take the shuttle from Maastricht Terminus to Basingstoke. Ibworth is three or four miles out of town. Take a taxi from the station. I’m in the Rectory, on the right directly after the Free Fox public house. You go down a drive and you’re there.’ There was another pause. ‘Oh, and Horatio my boy.’

‘Yes?’

‘Be careful and please tell no one about this. About me.’

‘I promise.’

‘I mean it, it really matters.’

‘I promise.’ He would try one last time. ‘Sir? Before you click off. Can you give me any hint at all about what you want to discuss?’

‘None at all over the phone, but I’ll draw up something for you to take away afterwards. A memorandum. Something to make your and your editor’s hair stand on end. I’ll do that right now.’

Mystified but intrigued, Horatio said goodbye.

Should he bother? He had plenty of other work he needed to do. It was Sunday tomorrow. He might be able to spend the day in bed with Cleo reading the Sunday printouts. Drinking champagne. Making love. It was probably only some semisenile meandering. But Horatio held the same view of individuals as of other research material. Direct personal contact and hard graft paid. He’d go.

As he tried to switch off his pager, Horatio’s podgy forefinger pressed the wrong button, and instead called up ‘Last Access’. Not for the first time the Luddite in him rued the new technology. It never was designed with him in mind. It seemed that whenever Horatio ventured out onto the Information Superhighway he got run over. Just as he was about to jab the ‘Off’ button again something caught his eye.

Last access: 03.03 1/5/45.

He couldn’t remember using his pager last night. Not that he could remember much about last night. He was drunkenly following Cleo bedwards, after all. But no one had his PIN number except him, his mother and Registry. How could anyone have accessed his pager? Who would have wanted to?

Seeing Gemma had gone, Horatio went next door to play Weaning the tape. He told him he would go down there the next day, and got approval for his paltry travel expenses. Leaving the office, he again passed Penelope Aldritt’s desk.

‘Very nice material,’ he said, pointing at her dress with the sweetest of smiles. Just as her face lit up at the compliment he added, ‘You really ought to have a dress made out of it.’

‘Lookist,’ she spat.

‘Uglyist in this case, actually,’ he grinned, ‘which I don’t think is quite illegal yet.’

‘A case of the pot calling the kettle coloured, isn’t it?’

‘No, sweetheart, there’s a difference. I’m ugly and proud. It just kills you.’

‘No wonder all the women in this office hated you.’

‘They didn’t, only you did. Farewell, sweet maiden. Don’t let me take you off your,’ – he patted the bookshelf – ‘interesting work.’ He hoped she got the allusion. Probably not. Just to make sure, he tapped the shelf again. ‘I shouldn’t stay on it too long though, if I were you.’

‘Sometimes you can be a right bastard, Lestoq.’

‘Surely it should be parentally-challenged,’ he retorted, with exactly that smug smile which he knew would infuriate her most.