A Scandalous Man

‘That barbed tribute from one of his contemporaries. Butwhen we asked the current Conservative leader MichaelHoward to give his reaction today, it was not forthcoming.’

There were pictures of Howard smiling vacantly in a crowd of Tory supporters in some south of England market town, ignoring shouted questions.

‘What do you think of Robin Burnett’s apparent suicideattempt, Mr Howard?’

Grin, grin. Shake, shake.

‘Are you worried it reminds voters how the party lost itsway under Mrs Thatcher?’

Grin, grin. Shake, shake.

‘About the Sleaze Factor?’

The Art of Political Zen. For Michael Howard, if he pretended it wasn’t really happening, then it wasn’t really happening. But it was happening. More voice-over.

‘A Conservative party spokeswoman said Michael Howardwas too busy focusing on the current election campaign to bebothered by what she called “a figure from the distant past.”The spokeswoman then read out a single-line tribute.’

The TV report cut to a picture of a young Tory woman in a blue suit reading in a dull voice from a piece of paper. She must have been about Harry’s age, too young to remember who his father really was.

‘Our sympathies go out to the Burnett family at this difficulttime. We intend to respect their right to privacy.’

That was it. She folded the paper and walked away. The voice-over picked up again.

‘Twenty words – just twenty words in tribute to one of theintellectual fathers of the modern Conservative party. All thisshows that Burnett’s mixed legacy is not forgotten, though somewish that it were. The Conservatives are desperate to distancethemselves from everything the Burnett scandal symbolized.Political amnesia – you might say – is today’s ailment of choice.’

The report then cut to old footage of Harry’s father brushing back luxuriant black hair with his left hand, grinning broadly as if at a great joke and pounding the rostrum at a party rally. Harry noted the date. It was less than a month before he was born. A strap across the pictures said April 1979. His father was speaking.

‘Our mission is to get government off the backs of theBritish people.’ The deep baritone was resonant with conviction, almost as if he were in the room. It made Harry shiver. On the TV screen his father pointed at the audience, as if at each person individually. It was a clever trick.

‘To the people of Britain I say this. We intend to turn youloose – you – and you – and you – each and every one of you– to do what you can do for yourselves and for your familiesand for your country. Our mission is to take the dead hand ofgovernment out of your pockets, out of your wallets, off yourbacks – to lift the burden of the state from the British peopleand to set the people free!’

The audience took up the refrain.

‘Set the people free! Set the British people free!’

Harry sipped the whisky. He knew what was coming, and he felt for the TV remote control. There were more shots of Robin Burnett, this time canvassing in his Gloucestershire constituency. He was thin and angular, handsome in a way, with a glow of certainty about himself and his message. The commentator was saying something about Burnett’s personal closeness to Mrs Thatcher, to the Americans, his charisma, his intellectual background as an economist.

‘Some tipped Robin Burnett as a future Prime Minister. Butthat all fell apart in the late eighties in a scandal which seemedto symbolize the rottenness and arrogance at the core of …’

A newspaper picture of a young woman appeared. She was wearing a striped bikini and high heels.

‘… a woman called Carla Carter who …’

The woman’s backside was stuck out towards the camera, and she looked over her shoulder while her tongue licked her red lips. Her hair was big and wavy. Harry hit the off button. He did not need to hear any more. Ever. He drained the whisky and decided to try another.

‘And why not?’ he said aloud to his father’s image in the photograph with Leila Rajar. ‘Funny, isn’t it? If they had got a sniff of you and the delicious Leila, that would have perked up the obituary, yes? That would have given them a very different kind of scandal. I wonder how much I’d get for this picture now, eh?’

The alcohol was doing its work. His hand felt for the Macallan.

‘And while we are on the subject of totty, should we invite the delish Leila to your funeral? Or your hospital bed? Does she even know you are close to death? Maybe someone should tell her? Maybe it should be me?’

Harry picked up the whisky glass and began to mooch around the rooms one more time. He was drawn back to the study. On the desk under the window facing the heath there was a silver grey Sony Vaio laptop computer connected to a laser printer and to a broadband router. Harry switched on the printer but it required a password. He switched it off again. He had never considered his father might be surrounded by so many modern gadgets, but then he supposed that he hadn’t really considered his father much at all. The bookshelves bore a number of biographies and political books, many of them by former colleagues, some with friendly inscriptions.

‘To Robin. In memory of better days. Nigel.’

‘To Robin, the man who made it all possible! Best wishes,Margaret.’

‘To Robin. The man who got out at the right time!!! Pitythe rest of us!!! Norman.’

‘The Bastards!!! Don’t let them grind you down!!! Best,always, J. H.’

Harry found a ready-made pizza in the freezer and stuck it in the oven. He tried to imagine his father eating a frozen pizza, but that was impossible. A lot of what he was seeing simply did not add up. While he waited for the pizza to cook he freshened up the whisky and searched through his father’s DVD collection. Old Bogart movies. Brief Encounter. ReservoirDogs. Pulp Fiction. Blue Velvet, the complete edition of TwinPeaks, and Mulholland Drive. The Player.

‘Tarantino and David Lynch? Robert Altman? Jesus. Pizza? Plus Leila Rajar? Who knew, eh, dad? Who knew?’

Harry ate the pizza, more confused about his father than ever before. He lay back on the sofa in the main room, determined to get raging drunk. He turned the volume down on the television and fell asleep where he lay. It was a deep, undisturbed, whisky sleep.

When Harry woke, it was with a start. It was hours later, his tongue was furred and his mouth tasted of sour alcohol. The middle of the night. Harry tried to check his watch but his eyes were sleepy.

Something about the room felt strange, like a chill. He shivered. He sensed someone watching him and shook himself awake. Then he caught sight of a blur. It was a woman. A young woman with a small rucksack and spiky brown hair. Harry shook himself again as the woman broke into a run and burst through the room towards the front door. She was carrying the Sony Vaio laptop from the study under her arm plus papers and files and the silver-framed photograph of his father with Leila Rajar. Harry sat upright, startled, and then leaped after her. The young woman ran as Harry stumbled. It was as if he were trapped in a pot of thick oil, unable to move, while she ran from the room like a faun leaving behind a whiff of her scent, a perfume without a name, flicked open the front door and was gone. Harry broke into a run, then paused to make sure he had the front door key so he would not lock himself out. He swore at his slowness as he burst into the hallway and raced down the blue carpet, following the tease of her scent. He ran towards the elevators, but they were silent. Nothing moved. The emergency stairs, he decided. She must have used the emergency stairs. But where were they? Where was the fire escape? Where was the sign?

He ran to the other end of the hall, his bare feet pounding on the trampoline of a carpet. The fire escape was marked and he pulled at the door. He could make out the sound of footsteps below and ran after them, the balls of his bare feet thumping on the concrete of the fire stairs. He hit the jade coloured floor of the main entrance hall as the front door clicked shut. The young woman was running down the hill towards the heath. The faun had escaped into the woodland. Gone. Barefoot in the dark Harry had no chance of catching her. He stood panting in the hallway and checked his watch. It was three o’clock in the morning.

‘Jesus,’ he hissed under his breath. He wondered why he had not heard the girl breaking in, but then immediately understood. She had used keys. She had crept past him, and had almost managed to leave without rousing him. She knew exactly where she was going. She had been there before. Harry pressed the elevator button and returned to the apartment. He checked the front door. As he had guessed, there was no sign of forced entry. He went from room to room trying to decide what had gone missing. His own wallet was lying undisturbed on the table. But the computer was definitely gone. And the photograph of his father with Leila. Some papers. Nothing else, he decided. He thought about calling the police immediately, then he hesitated. Finally he decided to leave it until daybreak. The girl was long gone. There was nothing the police could do for him, except give him a long, sleepless night. After a while he wondered whether he had dreamed about the burglary, whether it had really happened.

He rubbed his face in his hands and then tried to decide whether the real dream was the love he had seen in his father’s eyes for someone called Leila Rajar, in a photograph which had now disappeared, and which, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, had never existed.

The two Metropolitan Police detectives finally arrived at the Hampstead apartment at eleven in the morning, an hour late, or a day late, depending on how you calculated it. Sidney Pearl told them to go up to the flat, and he then called Harry to warn him they were on their way.

‘The traffic,’ one of the detectives apologized, as he shook Harry’s hand and stepped through the door of the apartment. ‘Plus the election. And we had a terror alert. And then a couple of shootings in south London. Busy day yesterday, all in all.’

The detective was a few years older than Harry, in his early thirties, white, fleshy, rubicund. He introduced himself as Detective Constable Steven Harpenden.

‘Even this morning, took us an hour to get five miles from Scotland Yard. We were going to blue light it, but thought we’d sit through it. Nothing works in London except the traffic lights.’

‘And us,’ his colleague interrupted. ‘We work, yes?’

Harry looked at the second detective. He was around 40, black, skin the colour of milky coffee, slim, in a well cut brown suit.

‘Detective Sergeant Donald Sylvester,’ he said, shaking hands. ‘We talked on the telephone yesterday. I’m so very sorry we’re a day late.’

‘Not a problem,’ Harry said. ‘I was here anyway. I just thought what with it being an attempted murder inquiry, you’d be here last night.’

DS Sylvester eyed him closely.

‘Who told you it’s an attempted murder inquiry?’

‘I just thought …’