A Scandalous Man

Harry finished his biscuits in silence. The man Sidney Pearl had just described was a complete stranger to him.

‘Why don’t you go up to the flat,’ Sidney said. ‘I’ll send the police on, when they arrive. If they ever do turn up. You can’t be certain, can you, with any of the public services nowadays? You get what you pay for.’

Harry thought for a moment and then did as he was told. He wanted to look around the home of a person of character. A big man. A great man. And he wanted to see what a Place of Safety might look like.

The elevator was retro. It had criss-crossed metal doors, glass panels, 1920s art deco in style, but it moved up the shaft to the top floor silently, with twenty-first century efficiency. The doors opened on a marble-white corridor which Harry noticed smelled of disinfectant. The hallway was lit by gleaming chandeliers. The carpet was rich, thick and blue. Everything seemed very clean, especially compared to the grime of the Tube.

‘A Conservative party carpet,’ Harry muttered jovially. ‘Rich, thick and blue.’

He had the sensation that he was bouncing on a trampoline, jumping in the air like a child on Christmas day, as he approached the apartment door.

‘My inheritance,’ he whispered.

There were two locks. Harry twisted the keys and eventually managed to get the door open. A yellowish glow from the sun was falling on the windows. They faced out towards the heath. Harry took a deep breath and walked quickly around. It was bigger than he had imagined. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, three reception rooms, a hall and an enormous modern kitchen, granite and sherry-coloured wood with German appliances. Harry stood for a moment gazing in wonderment. He did not know much about property prices, but the apartment would be worth at least two million pounds, probably more. Three million. Hampstead prices. And it did not look like anything his father would ever buy.

Besides, how could he afford it? Robin Burnett had not earned anything, as far as Harry knew, since the scandal broke. He had resigned immediately from the government and quit as an MP. He had no job. He had written no memoirs. There was no deal with the press. No income. Despite the offers from the newspapers, from Stephen Lovelace and the others – or perhaps because of them – Harry’s father had defiantly refused to write his side of the story. No kiss, no tell, for almost twenty years. Or at least, not by him. The only quote Robin Burnett was known to have given on the scandal was typically opaque. He was challenged by a TV crew on the doorstep of his Pimlico house as he left it for the last time.

‘Those who speak, do not know,’ he said. ‘Those who know, do not speak.’

‘What do you mean by that, Mr Burnett?’ the interviewer shouted.

‘Res ipsa loquitur,’ was all they got by way of explanation. The thing speaks for itself. As far as Harry knew, that was his father’s last public statement to anyone about anything, and typical of his father, it was in Latin.

Immediately in front of Harry in the apartment there was a striking antique mirror, full length, with pitch pine surrounds. Harry had seen a mirror like that before. In another hallway.

In another life, during his childhood in the house in Pimlico. As he stared at it, the memories shaking his bones, the telephone rang. He followed the noise and found the phone in the main room of the apartment, on a table next to a baby grand piano.

‘It’s Sidney Pearl, Harry. The police have just called. They say they do not think they can make it today. Can you believe it? Two shootings of teenagers in South London. Bad traffic. The election being called. Some kind of security alert. Bomb scare. Every excuse in the book except that the dog ate their homework. They wondered would it be convenient to call at the flat tomorrow morning, and meet you then?’

‘Of course, of course,’ Harry responded, wondering why London had become such a city of private wealth and public inadequacy. ‘Give me their number and I’ll …’

‘I’ll call them back if you wish. Save you the trouble. They were suggesting around ten tomorrow morning?’

Harry felt relief. Someone was looking out for him, for the first time in years. A place of safety.

‘Yes, Sidney, around ten. And Sidney …’

‘Yes?’

He hesitated.

‘Thank you for being so kind.’

‘Don’t mention it. It’s all part of the service. The least I could do for Robin Burnett’s family.’

Harry put the phone down, relieved. If the police were not racing across London to meet him, then presumably they did not think Harry himself had anything important to say about whatever had happened to his father. Good. They were right about that, at least. Harry took his shoes and socks off. He walked barefoot through the apartment, taking a quick mental inventory of his inheritance. Walnut dining table. Nice. Three thousand pounds. Plus eight chairs. Five thousand? Baby grand piano. Very nice. Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? He wasn’t sure. He touched the keys. Beautiful tone. Modern flatscreen TV and DVD player. Leather sofa and chairs. Shiny table tops. The master bedroom overlooked the heath. Another bedroom set up as a study. Harry looked out and noticed a bench at the side of the heath facing towards him. A young woman with spiky hair was sitting on the bench, gazing towards the apartment, lost in thought. There was something – he could not think of the right word – cheeky, perhaps, or defiant – about the way that she looked up towards him. Harry pressed his face to the glass.

Suddenly, as if alarmed, the woman snatched at a rucksack on the bench beside her and turned away, moving quickly out of sight behind the trees towards the heath ponds. Harry stepped back, puzzled. He had caught her doing something wrong, this strange spiky woman. She was guilty, though he could not guess the crime. How odd. Harry returned to the main room and spotted a tray of malt whiskies, six or seven good ones. Oban, Bowmore. Glen Moray. Macallan. Plus a couple in the distinctive green-labelled bottles of the Scotch Whisky Society. At last. Signs of his father in residence. Gin. Vodka. A crystal ice bucket. Beside the tray of liquor, a big black and white photograph in a silver frame caught his eye. He snatched it up. It was of the father he remembered, taken in his prime about twenty years ago. Big shouldered, athletic build, tall, with a shock of black hair. Wearing a dinner jacket. But it was his father’s companion who really startled Harry. She was strikingly beautiful. She was younger, in her early thirties. She had thick dark hair, tied in a chignon, and she was bedecked in a glittering ball-gown, her eyes brimful of intelligence. And there was something else. The woman and his father were laughing. The photographer had caught them at precisely the moment their eyes engaged. There was no doubting the expressions on their faces. Harry looked again at the face of the woman, and at his father. Then he called his sister.

‘Leila Rajar?’ Amanda’s voice rose to high pitch.

‘Yes.’

‘You are sure it’s her?’

‘Absolutely. Yes. It’s Leila Rajar.’

‘But how could he be with Leila Rajar?’

Harry did not know.

‘The American TV news woman?’

There was only one Leila Rajar.

‘Yes, the American TV news woman. I’m holding the picture in my hand right now,’ Harry insisted. ‘This is either Leila Rajar or it’s her body double.’

‘But how can you be sure, Aitch?’

Harry grew exasperated.

‘How can I be sure of anything?’

Harry watched Leila Rajar read the news most nights on satellite TV. Leila Rajar had just been signed up by CBS News for a contract reported to be worth $22 million a year, making her the best-paid newsreader in history.

‘How can I be sure I am talking to you? It’s her, Amanda. She’s got darker hair in the photo than she has now, and she must have been about thirty when it was taken. She’d be fifty-something now. But it’s her all right. And she is heart-stoppingly beautiful.’

‘What about him?’

‘He looks as he did in those photographs from after the Falklands War, when he was promoted to Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The cat that got the cream. Except for one thing.’

‘What one thing?’

Harry looked at the picture and tried to sum it up.

‘He is glowing.’

‘Glowing?’ Amanda scoffed. ‘Aitch, have you been drinking?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Then what do you mean by …’

‘I have never seen him look so … happy. Amanda, she is in love with him, and he is quite definitely in love with her. It’s as if there is something warming them both from within.’

Harry took a deep breath. Until he said the words, it had never occurred to him that his father might love anyone other than himself.

‘What?’ She sounded shocked.