Poison At The Pueblo (28 page)

The Prime Minister managed to convey the impression that Bognor had come down from his mountain top and that it was he, not the PM, who was making a sacrifice. This was a conceit bordering on a falsehood but it had its effect, which was to wrong-foot Sir Simon even though he knew that he was right. The Prime Minister poured coffee for his visitor and for the Balliol knight. This too was a calculated touch. He reminded Bognor of the sort of school prefect that he had once hated: teacher's pet, too smooth by half, and, despite protestations to the contrary, one of life's toadies.

‘So,' said the PM, taking a sip of his black coffee and then rubbing his hands together, in what he intended to seem an ingratiating manner. Bognor was reminded of an undertaker in a bad movie. Like Uriah Heap, the Prime Minister was so very 'umble. Only, like the Dickensian character, he wasn't really. ‘So . . . what can I do for you?'

Ask not, thought Bognor, and then thought better of it. The PM was PM because he had learned to say the reverse of what he meant, to appear oleaginous to all men, and to turn the tables even when this was not strictly speaking necessary. Bognor, however, had an old-fashioned belief that spades were spades and best described as such. This was why he was just another civil servant. He had not learnt diplomacy, bluff, or tact and simply rampaged about like a headless chicken whose heart was in the right place.

‘It's about Trubshawe.'

‘Ah,' said the Prime Minister.

‘And the mushrooms.'

‘And the mushrooms,' repeated the Prime Minister, sounding more and more like royalty on a good day.

‘The fatal fungi,' said Bognor. ‘The mushrooms that killed him. That were infiltrated on to his plate by the intelligence services.'

‘Alas, poor Trubshawe!' said the Prime Minister.

‘I think what the Prime Minister is saying; what he means to say, is . . . er, well . . . What the Prime Minister is really saying is . . . oh, well . . . nothing. Sorry I spoke.'

‘Not at all,' said Bognor. ‘Nothing to apologize for. And many a true word. The PM wants to say nothing in the nicest possible way. It's what he does naturally. It's why he is at the top of the greasy pole and I'm not.'

‘Come, come,' said the Prime Minister, no longer rubbing his hands but wringing them rather, thought Bognor, in the manner of Pontius Pilate. He was washing his hands of Trubshawe and the mushrooms, and would much rather they had not been mentioned. ‘The intelligence services are not secret for nothing. Nor are they described as intelligent for no reason. For both reasons I prefer to leave them alone to do their own thing in their own way. It allows me to have what the previous administration called “an ethical foreign policy”.'

‘I see,' said Bognor, who, not for the first time, didn't.

‘I'm really sorry about Trubshawe. Really sorry. But there's absolutely nothing I can do.'

‘Nothing,' said Edward, nodding with what he obviously thought was sagacity. ‘Absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. To be absolutely honest, and I wouldn't want this to go beyond these four walls, we knew nothing at all about Trubshawe until it was, er, too late.'

‘Nothing,' said the PM. ‘Absolutely nothing.'

‘But,' said the head of Special Investigations, Board of Trade, remembering who he was and not wishing to be seen to roll over, ‘but, I mean . . .'

‘We've set up an enquiry,' said Edward. ‘Least we could do. It will take time. These things always do. Heads may roll, but it won't bring poor Trubshawe back.'

‘Bloody mushrooms,' said the PM, ‘bloody Spaniards. Absolute bloody shambles if you ask me, but even if heads do roll, and I sincerely hope they will, nothing is going to bring back the deceased.' He rubbed his hands and replenished cups. ‘Alas, poor Trubshawe,' he repeated, echoing His Master's Voice like a well-oiled record, which, in a sense, was what he was. Never had an original thought in his life, thought Bognor, malevolently, but a past master at voicing other people's. What's more, he possessed the old politician's trademark of making the most banal utterance sound original and pertinent. He was an old ham, but then so were most successful politicians.

‘And how,' asked the PM, as if a tiny local unpleasantness had been voiced and cleared, so that they could now get down to real business, ‘is the dear old Board of Trade?'

He had never been near the Board in his life. Bognor knew this for a fact. On the other hand, he had been briefed. At length. Obviously.

‘The Board of Trade is in good shape,' he replied. ‘Very. Which is more than can be said for Trubshawe. He's dead. Extremely. What's more I have reason to believe that he was killed by what is euphemistically described as “friendly fire”. By our own people, in other words.'

‘I wouldn't say Trubshawe was “one of us”,' said the PM.

‘Mushrooms,' said the Balliol knight, ‘unfriendly mushrooms. Unfriendly to the late deceased. Which is why we have set up this enquiry. Where there is doubt, we need to ask questions. They must have taught you that at Apocrypha?'

The Master and His Voice spoke simultaneously. The effect was not productive. They drowned each other out and were, in so far as one was able to decipher the message, talking at cross-purposes.

Bognor was floundering, which was part of the intention.

‘And Lady Bognor?' The Prime Minister put an undue amount of stress on the word ‘lady', thus drawing attention to it, and managing to imply that Monica's social elevation was down to him and intentional. Neither of which, as they all knew, was true.

‘She's fine too. But Trubshawe isn't. He's dead. And my view is that it's our fault.'

‘I do wish you wouldn't keep going on about Trubshawe,' said the Prime Minister. ‘We've instigated an investigation into the whole sorry business, and I have to say that until he passed away I simply wasn't aware of him. What more do you expect?'

‘I think,' said Edward, ‘that what the Prime Minister means is that the late Trubshawe did not loom large on his horizon. The Prime Minister is a very busy man. He can not concern himself with minutiae. If you like, he is dealing with the broad sweep of history. Oils, not watercolours. Big brushes, not fiddly nonsense.'

‘With respect,' said Simon, dropping into the code, which meant more or less the opposite of what was exactly said, ‘Trubshawe was not any sort of minutiae. He was a human being, a subject of Her Majesty and as such he did not deserve to be brushed under a carpet. Much less murdered.'

‘But,' said Edward, ‘he is not being brushed under a carpet. An investigation has been launched. In the highest possible circles. No stone will be left unturned in the search for the culprit, if culprit there was.'

‘Quite,' echoed the notional boss. ‘Bloody lucky to get an enquiry. Not many people get a full-blown enquiry.'

‘And certainly not if they're still alive. Unlike poor Trubshawe.' Bognor spoke with feeling. ‘He's dead.'

‘I understand he was a pretty nasty piece of work,' said Edward, fastidiously.

‘That makes absolutely no difference,' said Bognor. ‘He was a human being.'

‘Only up to a point,' said Edward.

‘Not human in the accepted sense,' said the Prime Minister, as if he were discussing a menu or an agenda. In other words, in a bloodless, polite small talk sort of way. It would have played well at an embassy party.

‘The trouble with you people,' said Bognor, regretting his words as soon as he uttered them, ‘is that you have no respect for life.'

‘On the contrary,' said Edward, ‘it is only by having an apparent disregard for the small, that one is able to devote one's attention to the larger picture. Trubshawes are expendable. In fact, you could say that if we are to progress then we have to lose a few Trubshawes along the way. His is an essential sacrifice.'

‘Absolutely,' said the PM. ‘Couldn't have put it better myself.'

But Bognor had had enough. ‘That's what Hitler said,' he exploded. And then, gathering his up thoughts and his carefully arranged trouser legs, he said, ‘I'll see myself out.'

Which he did, with protestations about meaningful enquiries ringing meaninglessly in his ears.

THIRTY

H
ow did it go?' asked Monica breathlessly. She was always breathless when genuinely interested. Despite being of a certain age this made her seem sexy and husky. ‘With the Prime Minister.' Despite everything she was still impressed with the title and the office, if not with the holder.

Bognor, still seething, poured them both a stiffish Bells and said only, ‘I thought we might eat out this evening. There's a new bistro which got goodish reviews the other day. I could do with an absolutely straightforward steak and frites and some decent Côtes du Rhône.'

Monica, who had already spent a small fortune on rump for two, did not demur. She knew her spouse too well. All had, obviously, not gone well.

‘So . . .' she said at length, sipping amber liquid thoughtfully, ‘tell me about it.'

‘He's a shit,' said Bognor, ‘and so is that gorilla who keeps him in check. Edward something or other. Even more of a shit. Supershits the pair of them.'

‘Ah,' said Monica. She was more thoughtful than ever. ‘We knew that already.'

‘Even so,' said Bognor, ‘it's one thing to know something in theory. Quite another to be confronted with the reality.'

Monica knew better than to argue. Instead, she said. ‘Should we book?'

Bognor nodded and she did so, then said, gently, ‘Tell me what happened.'

‘Nothing, nothing at all. I blew it. Let them run rings round me.'

Monica doubted this, but then she always did. That was one of the reasons Bognor found her so satisfactory. She backed him up, both in public, which was to be expected, and in private, which was not.

‘The PM is a prat,' she said, ‘so is his minder, though not in quite the same way. You may be many things, but a prat you are not.'

‘I was this afternoon.'

‘Tell me.'

And so he did. He embellished a little but not much. Made the PM seem even more of an arrogant bastard than he actually was. Made himself seem even more of an also-ran than he was, too. He exaggerated. She knew this, and he knew this also. It was the way in which he always behaved. He had not, after all, liked Trubshawe, or the idea of Trubshawe any more than the Prime Minister or his alleged lackey. Possibly less. That wasn't important. He, Bognor, did not think anyone was expendable. Be he ever so insignificant or downright unpleasant, Bognor believed they were innocent until proved guilty, and entitled to care and thought and consideration. The PM and his lackey thought otherwise. Such, in his jaundiced view, was life. It sucked. Always did. Always would.

He refuelled their drinks.

‘So you see,' he said, ‘I was useless.'

‘I see nothing of the sort,' she said loyally.

‘Well, you wouldn't,' he said. ‘That's why I love you.'

Both were, in a manner of speaking, true. Theirs was a strange kind of affection, nurtured over the years, oddly endorsed by their lack of children, and solidified, in the end, by a grudging mutual respect. Bognor sometimes said that his wife was the only person he could imagine making a long car journey with and not feeling compelled to say anything for several hours. They were both surprisingly good in a crisis, less so, most of the rest of the time. This was tantamount to a crisis.

‘I hate power,' he said. ‘Give me influence any day.'

‘I know,' she said.

‘Why do the wrong people always have power?' he wanted to know, though he had his answer ready and really only wanted reassurance.

‘The wrong people wield power because achieving a powerful position requires the wrong strategy. In other words, the means by which one gets into a powerful position are precisely the opposite necessary to wield power with precision and fairness.'

‘So random selection is more efficient than competition.'

‘I didn't say that, but, yes, possibly.'

‘Which is an argument for heredity.'

‘If you believe heredity is random,' she agreed. ‘But most breeders would disagree. Primogeniture has its roots in logic. Bloodlines count. Look at Hitler and the Nazis.'

‘You said it.'

‘Touché,' she said. ‘Bad example. But the Prime Minister got where he is by methods which are ghastly when wielded by someone in his position. In other words, the travelling is essential but the accoutrements are worse than useless when one has actually arrived.'

‘You could put it like that.'

She smiled. ‘I just have,' she said. ‘Now drink up. I'm starving. I could murder a steak.'

She could too, and almost did. They both had bavette and chips, and a tolerable Béarnaise in the new bistro, which had red and white check table clothes, accordion music and generally resembled the set of
'Allo 'Allo!
. They split a bottle of Beaujolais Villages (Simon thought the Cotes du Rhône overpriced) and ended with coffee and Calva. Monica had the crème caramel and he, wishing to maintain the alliteration, had a wedge of Camembert. It was all very French in an English sort of way and reasonably priced.

‘The Prime Minister would hate this,' said Bognor, as the squeezebox gave them a Piaf number, ill-disguised but reeking of pastiche.

‘He never pays for himself,' said Monica, ‘and the Azerbaijanis and Kazakhs and the other third division football magnates, with whom he and the Duke of York consort, would only go to the sort of place where they like expense accounts. Big hotels, Gordon Ramsay, Michelin stars, all ponce and no taste.'

‘Always struck me as a shepherd's pie and Bollinger person.'

‘Shepherd's pie is cheap and the champagne would have fallen off the back of a lorry, or be the gift of some third division Kazakh football club owner. Like I said, he has what it takes to get to the top, but when he arrives he doesn't know what to do, so he takes his cue from other newly arrivistes – preferably foreign.'