Martin crosses his legs, taking great care to lift the crease of each trouser leg in the pinch of his thumb and his index finger as he does so. Richard finds this air of studied nonchalance – so at odds with the sheaf of papers he has been confronted with – irritating.
‘You seem remarkably unconcerned,’ Richard says, heat rising. ‘I don’t know what seedy little game you’re trying to play with me, but I’m not a fool. I can see when I’m being used as a …’ He searches for the word. He knows he knows it but for some reason he can only think of sushi and prawns. It’s not a prawn. He’s not being used as a prawn but …
‘I’m not using you as a pawn.’
‘That’s it!’ Richard exclaims, relieved in spite of himself.
‘If I seem unruffled, I suppose it’s because I’ve known what Ben Fitzmaurice and Andrew Jarvis are capable of for years.’
‘I don’t see how Ben’s involved. I mean, clearly his poor sister was the victim of this awful attack and I’m sure he’s still grieving her death, which was a terrible thing. Just terrible.’ Richard gets lost, momentarily, in his own expressions of sympathy. ‘But surely this is all Jarvis? I mean, what a bastard.’ He is working himself up now, thinking of Hannah. ‘Spiking her drink and raping her? When she was already in such a bad way? Disgusting. I knew I didn’t like him. Knew it. You know, Martin, I’m a pretty good judge of character. Always have been.’
There is no time to examine the truth of this (if he did, he would find it wanting) because he’s interrupted by a woman in a black trouser suit, wearing a lanyard around her neck and carrying a pot of heated dumplings.
‘Anyone sitting here?’ She points to the empty stool next to Richard who, reflexively, shakes his head.
‘No, please,’ he says, gesturing to the seat.
Just as the woman begins to sit down, Martin says, ‘Actually, would you mind giving us some space?’
He says it calmly but in a way that makes it clear there is only one acceptable answer. The woman, sensing this, moves away and Richard understands that Martin’s lack of emotion, his inability to read social cues or experience normal levels of embarrassment is what gives him a curious kind of power. After all, you can’t win a game against someone who ignores the rules, or who isn’t aware of them in the first place.
‘It’s not just Jarvis,’ Martin says, lowering his voice. ‘It’s Ben who covered it up.’
Richard opens his mouth to speak but finds he has nothing to say. Martin reaches across the table to retrieve the folder. He flicks through the pieces of paper, then retrieves a scribbled sheet of foolscap and passes it back over to Richard.
‘You’ll see here’ – Martin points at the relevant passage – ‘a memo written by a very senior member of the Metropolitan Police, detailing a meeting he had with the Rt Hon Ben Fitzmaurice in which he was told to hush things up.’
‘But why would he write a memo?’
‘One can only assume the officer in question had a crisis of conscience. As much as I despise the police, I suppose it can occasionally be the case that there is a good apple in the barrel of rotten ones.’
‘And how did you get this?’
‘That’s not important.’
‘Sorry, but it is. I barely know you, Martin. If I’m meant to trust you on this, I need to be told where it’s from.’
Martin sighs, then glances around quickly to check he’s not being overheard.
‘A contact of mine knows an undercover police officer who has access at the highest levels. I’ve checked it all out. It’s real. If you use this – and I highly recommend that you do, given your own political ambitions – it has the capacity to destroy them; Ben, Jarvis, the lot of them.’
‘My political ambitions?’
‘Well, I assume you want to be PM? All politicians do.’
Richard is taken aback. Does he want to be prime minister? He used to. But when he got to Parliament and saw how it was run like a fusty Oxbridge college, he began to understand the impossibility of it for someone like him, who didn’t have the right kind of connections or scratch the right kind of backs. The British wanted to believe their democracy was meritocratic in the same way children wanted to believe Father Christmas was real.
Richard picks at a hangnail. A thin line of red appears at his cuticle as it starts to bleed. He wipes it with one of the paper napkins.
‘I don’t understand,’ he says. ‘I thought you and Ben were friends. Why would you want to do this?’
‘“Friends” is a loose term when it comes to Ben,’ Martin says. ‘I’ve known where I stand with the Fitzmaurices for a long time. They think I don’t see it, but I do. I know they laugh at me. I know they think I’m a pliant little lapdog, but I despise them as much as they despise the rest of us for not being them.’
Richard thinks back to all those occasions when Ben and Jarvis said something cruel or demeaning or arrogant. The time Jarvis called by-election voters in Staffordshire ‘flat-capped wankers’ or the timeBen laughed at an elderly woman for her Cockney accent when she stopped and asked him for a selfie. He thinks of the casualness with which Ben and Jarvis assume power is theirs for the taking, and the sadness he feels when he realises they’re correct. He thinks of his grammar school and how hard he worked and how his history teacher gave him extra tuition for his Oxford interview because ‘the poshos have it all sewn up otherwise’. He thinks of Durham University and the rugby crowd who once forced him to drink down a pint of urine and vomit simply because he wore the wrong kind of tie. He thinks of the Houses of Parliament, designed to resemble the stately homes and public schools and Oxbridge colleges of those chosen to rule from birth. He thinks of hereditary peerages and Masonic handshakes and private members clubs. He thinks of being left out of all the important campaign decisions and of Ben and Jarvis talking over him as if he were mere furniture.
‘Why are you giving this to me?’ Richard asks. ‘You don’t even like me.’
‘I don’t know you enough to like you. But I see some similarities between us, in our backgrounds, our outlook, the way we’re treated. We’re both outsiders, aren’t we? I’d rather have you in power than Ben. And Jarvis belongs behind bars. Quite frankly, they both do.’
