Midnight Fugue

The thought made him smile as he took his seat alongside the mayor and mayoress, giving them a friendly nod, before leaning forward in the attitude of prayer.

Maggie would be in the seat reserved for her directly behind him. He did not doubt that if he hesitated for a moment when the time came for him to read the lesson, he would hear her dry cough or even feel a gentle prod between the shoulder blades.

He thought nostalgically of Maggie’s predecessor, Nikki. She’d been a perfect example of what he thought of as the two-metre model of PA: one metre of leg and another of bust, with shampoo-ad hair, pouting lips and a vibrator tongue. Unhappily, her tongue had been put to uses other than assisting him to the acme of pleasure. He’d been taken aback when she’d suddenly quit her job the previous year, and devastated when he started hearing rumours that she was negotiating a deal with the Daily Messenger for her steamy reminiscences of life under, and on top of, the Tory Golden Boy.

Dave didn’t turn to his father for help immediately. A strange mixture of love and resentment kept him away. He loved and admired Goldie and had every confidence he could fix things, but at the same time he wanted to affirm his own independence.

Put another way, he was a big boy now and big boys fought their own fights.

Except, he was eventually forced to admit, when they were up against the Daily Messenger, which specialized in chopping big boys down to size.

Goldie listened in silence. But he wasn’t silent two days later when he summoned his son to tell him the crisis was over.

Dave the Third, the Great Off-white Hope of the Tory Party and the next prime minister but one, had to stand before his father like an errant schoolboy and listen to a long analysis of all his shortcomings without right of reply.

‘Best thing for you, boy,’ Goldie had concluded, ‘is to get yourself a wife, someone like your mammy: loyal, home-loving, hardworking. But till you do that, if you can’t keep your dick in your pants, don’t stick it into anyone who doesn’t have at least as much to lose as you do if word gets out. And one last thing. When you advertise for a new PA, I’ll draw up the shortlist.’

That had been a year ago. The shortlist had consisted of three young men whom he’d dismissed out of hand and three singularly unattractive women, of whom Maggie Pinchbeck was undoubtedly the worst.

He recalled his first sight of her at interview, a small, mousey-haired creature who for all the clues her face, figure or even her drab trouser suit provided, could have been male or female; and undesirable in either gender. Her present job was as a senior PR officer at ChildSave, one of the big international child-protection charities. She looked the type who should be out in the desert digging latrines for fuzzy-wuzzies, he thought. This wouldn’t take long.

He’d been forced to admit she interviewed well, answering every question he asked with intelligence and economy. But he still hadn’t the slightest notion of employing her, a feeling reinforced when in conclusion he asked if she had any questions of her own.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘From time to time doubts have been expressed about the way your father acquired his fortune. In what degree do you share these doubts?’

Jesus! he thought. You take no prisoners.

He said, ‘I take it you’re referring to the scandal sheets in general and the Messenger in particular? Naturally those sad wankers would like to put a spoke in my wheel, and as I haven’t offered much ammunition, they reckon that smearing my father will serve their purpose just as well. I should point out that whenever these muckrakers have dared move beyond innuendo, my pa’s lawyers have made them pay heavily.’

‘You haven’t answered my question, Mr Gidman. Do you yourself have any doubts about the methods used by your father in establishing the basis of his fortune?’

He was tempted to tell her to sod off back to kiddy-land, then he had a better idea.

‘Tell you what, why don’t you ask him yourself?’

This had seemed an amusing way of getting back at Pappy. He’d brought together this gang of inadequates, let him see for himself the kind of creature his efforts had dug up. At the same time it would be a fitting punishment for this epicene dwarf’s insolence. Questioning his early career always put Goldie in a bad mood. He would chew her up and spit her out!

He put the woman in his Audi A8 and watched her covertly as he drove north. To his disappointment she showed neither alarm nor surprise when he didn’t head for the Gresham Street offices of Gidman Enterprises, and they had proceeded in silence till a couple of miles before Waltham Abbey he turned off on to a narrow country road. A few minutes later they pulled up before a set of imposing gates, one column of which bore the name Windrush House, while on the other a CCTV camera tilted down towards them.

Gidman waved at it, the gates swung silently open and he drove sedately up a long gravelled drive winding through an avenue of plane trees towards an imposing Victorian mansion in dull red brick that not even bright sunlight could render welcoming.

‘This the family estate then?’ said Maggie. ‘How long has your father had it?’

‘Ten years. And it’s hardly an estate.’

‘Whatever. Must have been quite a change relocating here from the East End.’

‘It’s still in Essex,’ said Gidman, a touch defensively.

‘Stayed true to his roots then,’ she observed blandly.

At the front door a woman in a headscarf and slacks, on her knees to polish the already mirror-like brass letter box, looked up with a toothy smile and said, ‘Dave, my lovely, now this is nice. We wasn’t expecting you.’

Maggie assumed she was a domestic with enough service to give her familiarity rights till Gidman stooped and kissed her and said, ‘Hi, Mom. This is Ms Pinchbeck, who wants to work for me.’

‘Rather you than me, ducks,’ said the woman. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘And you, Mrs Gidman,’ said Maggie.

‘Call me Flo,’ said the woman. ‘In you go. I expect you’re dying for a cup of tea.’

Maggie’s pre-interview researches had told her that Flo had been a sixteen-year-old waitress in a London café when Goldie met her. By all accounts, it had been a marriage few on either side had approved and even fewer had forecast would prosper. Yet here she was, nearly half a century later, a bit plumper but with her old East End accent unrefined. ‘And still doing everything around the house,’ her son proclaimed proudly. ‘She gets some help with the cleaning these days, but she’s in total charge of the kitchen.’

The only live-in staff, Maggie later discovered, were Goldie’s old assistant, Milton Slingsby, and Sling’s nephew, an out-going young man called Dean who controlled the gate and other house security from a hi-tech office just off the entrance hall.

Already at this first visit Maggie was finding her expectations of baronial pretentiousness disappointed.

Goldie Gidman, in his late sixties, was as imposing a figure as his house, but a lot more welcoming. He had aged well, his lean muscular frame was supple rather than sagging, and the contrast between his vigorous white locks and almost black skin was something a lot of women might find very attractive.

To his son he said, ‘Hope you haven’t been spewing gravel over my lawn with that Panzer of yours.’

Maggie Pinchbeck he greeted with grave courtesy and sat there quietly observing her as Flo fussed about with teacups and home-made chocolate sponge.

Satisfied at last, Flo withdrew. She had done her job well, thought her son. If you came to see Goldie with expectations of being confronted by a jumped-up yardie, five minutes of exposure to Flo made you do a rethink.

He sat back to watch the fun.

‘Dave says you got some questions to ask me, Miss Pinchbeck,’ said Goldie.

She didn’t hang about.

‘How did you make your money, Mr Gidman? In the beginning, I mean.’

‘Like most entrepreneurs, started with a little, invested wisely till I’d got a lot.’

‘Were you ever a loan shark?’

‘I did spend time in the personal credit business, yes.’

‘You mean, you were a loan shark?’

‘A loan shark being someone who loans out money to poor people at exorbitant interest rates and terrorizes them if they renege on repayments?’

‘That sounds a reasonable definition.’

‘No, I wasn’t one of them. My father was what is now called a community leader. Back then it just meant his reputation for good sense and honesty led other West Indian immigrants to turn to him for help and advice.’

‘You saying you were a community leader too?’ interrupted Maggie.

Goldie Gidman smiled.

‘Not me. I was the first black yuppie, before there were white yuppies, I make no bones. But I loved my pa and when he told me members of our community found it difficult to get credit through the usual channels, I organized a neighbourhood credit club. Folk could borrow small sums on easy terms for purposes approved by the club’s advisory committee. This way they kept out of the jaws of them loan sharks you talk about.’

‘So where do all the rumours that you were one of the sharks come from?’

Another extremely attractive smile.

‘Back then, Miss Pinchbeck, half a century ago, things were very different in Britain. Black people were expected to know their place. Physically, that place was usually a slum. Professionally it was a low-paid manual job. Sexually it was with their own kind. You saw a black man who complained about living accommodation, a black man who understood how money could be made to work, a black man who married a white girl, what you saw was an uppity nigger who needed to be put back in his place. He makes money, it must be ’cos he’s a crook. He marries out of his race, that’s because like all black men he has this insatiable lust to bang a white woman. As for the white woman in question, everybody knows that she has to be a whore who’s turned on by the thought of his eighteen-inch bone. I hope I don’t shock you, Miss Pinchbeck.’

‘No, Mr Gidman, you don’t shock me. So all the rumours about your early career are malicious? But weren’t you investigated by the police?’

‘All the time! Malice don’t dry up. Like floodwater, it can’t find one way of getting under your defences, it looks for another. If it can’t get under, it just mounts up, looking either to come in at you over the top or to break through by sheer pressure alone.’

‘You sound bitter, Mr Gidman.’

‘Not for myself. I’ve fought against it for too long. I’ve got its measure. In fact, I thought I’d won the battle a few years ago. But then my son comes of age and begins to make his mark in the world and suddenly the floodwaters see what looks like a breach. The rumours start again. But I’m not the target now. I’m out of reach. They tried everything they know to blacken my name, but you check the records, Miss Pinchbeck. I have no convictions for anything. Not surprising, as I never got charged with anything. My business accounts have been picked over by people more picky than hens in a coop at feeding time, and none of them ever found a single decimal point out of place.’

‘So why are the rumours so persistent?’

‘Like I say, because of David here. Me they can’t touch because they need proof to touch me. But they don’t need no proof to harm David. Let the rumours grow strong enough and they will do the trick. Look at him, people will say, throwing his money around to buy advantages for himself. And we all know where that dirty money came from. You hear what I’m saying, Miss Pinchbeck?’

‘Yes, I do, Mr Gidman. But I’m wondering why you’re bothering to say it to me.’

Now at last she’d asked a question Dave the Third was interested in. He couldn’t believe that Pappy was letting this chit of a girl get away with her impudence. His father’s answer was even harder to believe.

‘I’ll tell you why. Because my boy needs taking care of. He don’t like me saying that, but he can pull faces all he wants, it’s the truth. I’ve been out there in that world and I know what it’s like. He’ll find out eventually, but I’d like him to find out without too much pain. I haven’t worked hard all these years and put up with all the crap I’ve put up with to sit back and see my son suffer the same. He needs someone like you, Miss Pinchbeck. That’s why I’m talking to you.’

‘I think you are mistaking me for someone else; I’m not a bodyguard!’

‘Bodyguards I can buy ten a penny. You’re the kind of guard he needs the kind of places he goes, the kind of people he meets. I know, I’ve had you checked out. No need to look offended. I bet you’ve spent a bit of time checking me out too–am I right?’

‘I did do a bit of checking, yes.’

‘And you found nothing bad, else you wouldn’t be here. And I found plenty that was good, else you wouldn’t be here either!’

He glanced down at a sheet of paper on the arm of his chair.

Maggie said, ‘That my life story you’ve got there, Mr Gidman?’

‘Not all of it,’ he answered, unperturbed. ‘Just from the age of eighteen. You were doing one of them gap years, working with VSO in Africa, when you got news that your mammy and daddy had been killed in a car accident, right?’

She went very still.

He leaned forward and looked into her eyes.

‘You miss them, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Mr Gidman,’ she said quietly. ‘I miss my parents very much.’

‘I can see that, and I’m truly sorry for your loss. Theirs too, not getting the chance to see what a great job they’d done bringing you up. But what I want to ask is, why, after you done your college course, did you go for an office job at ChildSave rather than heading back out to Africa or somewhere to work on the ground?’

Good question, thought Dave, recalling his own uncharitable thoughts about her suitability for a career of digging latrines for fuzzy-wuzzies.

‘I don’t see that it’s relevant, Mr Gidman,’ she replied, ‘but I looked at my abilities, such as they were, and decided I could do more good by looking after ChildSave’s profile at home than being a general dogsbody in a Third World village.’

‘Good answer, Miss Pinchbeck,’ said Gidman. ‘And by all accounts, you done so well at ChildSave, I bet that soon as they got a notion you were getting restless, they started throwing money at you to try and keep you. Which brings me to my next question. You such a bright girl, knowing your own abilities like you do, why would you want to leave ChildSave and work for my boy? Whatever else he is, he ain’t no charity!’

The pair of them, the dignified old man and the slight, unprepossessing young woman, exchanged a smile.

‘No, he’s not,’ said Maggie. ‘But from what I read, your son could end up having more power to do good than all the UK charities put together, if he’s steered right. And I’d like to be around to help with the steering. So, pure self-interest, Mr Gidman.’

‘Hey, you two, I am still here,’ protested Dave the Third, feeling excluded.

‘We know that, boy,’ said his father. ‘And if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll be about to offer this young lady the job. If she doesn’t like the salary, up it and I’ll pay the difference, OK?’

‘I’m not worried about the money, Mr Gidman,’ said Maggie.

‘Maybe you’re not, but how you value yourself is one thing, how other folk value you is something else. If I thought you could be bought, I wouldn’t waste a penny on you. So why don’t you go and have a think while I talk to my boy? You got some deciding to do. Either you believe all them rumours, in which case I’m sorry. Or you think they’re crap and you’d like the job. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you. You’ll find Flo in the kitchen. With luck she’ll be doing apple turnovers. Try one. You won’t have tasted better. So remember this before you decide. Work for my son, and you’ll never be further than a phone call from them turnovers!’

Maggie left the room, looking slightly shell-shocked.

Dave, always keen to learn, said, ‘Why’d you tell her to see Mom before we left?’

“Cos after ten minutes talking to your mother, sometimes I find myself believing I can’t be all that bad! You hire her, boy. She’s what you need. Bright as a button and she’ll work for you ‘cos she believes in you.’

And so it had proved. And now she was indispensable.

But like the song says, sometimes the honesty’s too much. Having someone to keep you straight’s fine. But straight can get boring; occasionally a man needs to stray.

Once, early on in her employment, he’d asked her to factor a diversion into a Continental trip so that he could contrive an assignation with the wife of a British Embassy official. She had simply refused, leaving it up to him to react as he would.

If she’d preached about the dangers of such activities, he’d have carried on regardless. But she said nothing. After that he didn’t try to involve her in his private life.

He’d come to see what his father had spotted at once. Maggie Pinchbeck had all the qualifications. Super efficient, very bright, a smoother of paths, a sniffer of perils, an organizer sans pareil, she knew all the tricks common to PR and politics–the spinning, the wheeling and dealing, the compromising, the short-cutting. But she was only willing to play those ambiguous games if and when she believed the end was just. That was the quality that Goldie had spotted. You couldn’t buy that.

But sometimes he still found himself fantasizing about those two-metre models…

As now, when that dry cough, which others probably never noticed but which rang out to him like the Lutine Bell, warned him he’d spent long enough in prayer. Any longer and people would be wondering what he had to pray about.

He straightened up. As if this were a signal, the organ boomed, and the congregation rose as the vicar and the choir made their way up the aisle singing the processional hymn, ‘Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices’.

David Gidman the Third joined in lustily, aware that he had much to be thankful for. Already blessed through birth with countless gifts of love, wealth and opportunity, he could not doubt that it was his destiny to enjoy many more wondrous things.

Truly his future shone so bright it took the eye of an eagle to look into it.

Bring it on!

10.55–11.20

As soon as Andy Dalziel entered his living room, he knew something was wrong.

He stood in the doorway and tried to isolate it. But his mind, though building up to its old speeds, was not quite there yet. He moved from intuition to examination. By the time he’d checked everything off and found nothing missing, nothing moved, nothing open that had been shut, or shut that had been open, no muddy footprints on the carpet, no greasy fingerprints on the door handle, he had to admit that everything was exactly as he’d left it, which meant that his sense of something not right was a load of bollocks, just another example of the continuing fragility of his mental processes.

‘Oh well, Rome weren’t rebuilt in a fortnight,’ he reassured himself, and sat down next to the answer machine with the intention of listening to Mick Purdy’s message.

But as his finger hovered over the playback button, it came to him.

Yes, everything was exactly as he’d left it, but it shouldn’t have been!

He’d heard the start of Purdy’s message as he made for the front door. When Purdy rang off, the presence of a new message on the machine should have been registered by a red light around the play button.

There was no light, meaning someone had played the message.

Or maybe the red bulb had simply failed.

He pressed the button and found himself listening not to Purdy but to a message Cap had left six days ago, reminding him to eat a casserole she’d put in his fridge.

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