OK, she was never going to give him the kind of comforts the two-metre model could provide, but at least she might do the occasional bit of ego-stroking.
He said accusingly, ‘You didn’t warn me Jones was going to be there.’
‘That’s because I didn’t know. He wasn’t in church. In fact, I’m sure I saw Gem Huntley there, but she vanished afterwards. Not feeling well, he said.’
‘Yeah. You believe him?’
‘No.’
She waited to see if he’d follow it up, but he didn’t.
She drove in silence for a while then said casually, ‘That stuff Jones was spouting about wolves from the past biting you, what do you think that was all about?’
He wasn’t surprised she’d latched on to it. She had a very sensitive radar.
He said, ‘How the hell should I know? Probably came along for the free sandwiches. Why does the bastard hate me so much? I never did anything to harm him.’
Maggie let this pass. After a moment she said, ‘Still, it’s strange. And he did give the impression he thought he was on to something.’
‘Part of his trade,’ he said dismissively. ‘The others call him Nine Ten. Knows more about tomorrow than he does about today. And he’s probably rattled his brain to jelly shagging Beanie the Bitch.’
He closed his eyes and pretended to doze for the rest of the journey to his Holborn flat. You should live in the constituency, Maggie had advised. Not fucking likely, he’d replied. Holborn was a concession.
As he got out, Maggie said, ‘Shall I come in? There’s stuff we need to go through for tomorrow.’
‘Later,’ he said. ‘I’m knackered. Think I’ll get my head down.’
Not on Sophie Harbott you won’t, thought Maggie, who’d arrived early enough that morning to see the woman departing in what looked like high dudgeon. It was a liaison Maggie disapproved of more than most of her boss’s adventures. If the tabloids got a sniff he was shagging the wife of the Labour spokesman on religious affairs, they would fall over themselves to top each other’s headline: WHO’S CONVERTING WHO?…CROSS-BENCHING MODERN STYLE…COALITION COITION…the possibilities were endless.
But that was, literally, Gidman’s affair. She’d made it clear that, so far as his love-life was concerned, she wasn’t getting involved in either arrangements or clean-up.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Six thirty? Seven?’
‘Whatever. By the way, did you get hold of the Chuckle Brothers?’
This was the term he used for Kuba and Drugi, the two young Poles who’d done the work on his shower that had completed the cooling of Sophie’s ardour. They had been recommended by Maggie, who said she’d met them when working for ChildSave on immigrant families. Gidman had not been altogether displeased to have been able to complain about an arrangement made by his usually tediously efficient PA.
‘They’ll be there tomorrow,’ she promised.
‘Meanwhile I’ll just have to take a cold shower, I suppose,’ he grumbled.
‘Might do you good,’ she said. ‘See you later.’
David the Third watched her drive away, then went up to his flat. For once he had time on his hands. He could do a bit of work on a speech he was making next week. Or read a book, watch a bit of telly, or even ring Sophie, see if she’d be interested in taking up where they’d left off. Probably not. Anyway, he didn’t feel much interested himself, in that or any of the other options. Jones the Mess had really got to him, he realized. What he needed were answers, and there was only one place to get them.
Ten minutes later he was in his Audi A8 heading north. There are no good times for moving through London outside the small hours, but Sunday afternoon comes close and it wasn’t yet half three when he came to a halt before the high gates of Windrush House.
The camera on the gate column viewed him for a moment then the metal gates swung silently open and he sent the car moving slowly forward up the long drive, careful as always not to provoke his father’s wrath by spraying gravel over the manicured lawns.
As Gidman went up the steps to the front door, it was opened by a young black man dressed in immaculately creased burgundy slacks, a beautifully cut suede jacket and a white shirt so bright it made you blink.
He said, ‘Hello, Mr Gidman, sir. You’re looking well.’
‘Hello, Dean. And you look like you’ve got something really special lined up.’
Dean grinned. He and Dave the Third had identified a common interest in the pursuit of love. He said, ‘Yes, sir. Another hour and I’m off duty, then I’m driving out to Romford to pick up this new gal I met last week, real looker, training to be a hairdresser. We’re heading up West, got a table booked for a nice meal, do a club, then it’s all in the lap of the gods.’
‘The only thing in the lap of the gods is a divine dong,’ said Gidman, smiling. ‘Sounds like yours is ready for action.’
‘Hello there, young Davey!’
He looked round to see another much older black man who suddenly flung a left hook at him which he only just managed to fend off with his right forearm.
‘Nearly got you! You come down the gym after you done your homework, we’ll soon sharpen you up.’
‘I’ll look forward to that, Sling,’ said Gidman.
Milton Slingsby had been part of his life since childhood. As well as the boxing, Sling had always been on hand to play cricket and football with, to drive him to school, to pick him up when he’d been out with his friends in the evening. The precise role he played in Goldie’s affairs had never been quite clear to Dave. He’d heard him described at various times as driver, handyman, even personal trainer. Nowadays he was never far away from Goldie who, if asked, would probably say, ‘He’s my old friend.’ If pressed to explain exactly what he did, Dave had heard his father reply, ‘Any damn thing I ask him to,’ with a laugh to signal a joke, though Dave wasn’t certain he was joking.
Just how much Sling’s treatment of Dave as a schoolboy was a joke and how much down to his mild dementia, Gidman hadn’t worked out. Certainly his mental condition would have been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for Goldie. ‘Your pappy bought my contract,’ Sling often told Dave. ‘And he say to me, “From now on in, no more boxing rings. From now on you fight only for me.”’
By one of the little jokes that time likes to play on its subjects, as Sling’s brain paid the penalty for those early rattlings, his body aged in quite a different way. No flat-nosed, cauliflower-eared, punch-drunk pugilist this; long and lean, with silver-grey hair and an academic stoop, he could have been a retired professor whose occasional abstractions were the mark of a mind voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.
‘Where’s Pappy, Sling?’ asked Dave as he moved into the house.
‘Upstairs with Jimi. You home for the holidays now, young Dave?’
‘That’s right, Sling. Home for the holidays. I wish,’ said Gidman. ‘Dean, have a great night!’
The young man gave him a thumbs-up and went back into the security control room. It sometimes bothered Dave that Sling and Dean were all the household staff there were, but his mother was adamant she didn’t want help cluttering up the place. Goldie acknowledged his wife’s domestic authority with a meekness that would have amazed those who knew him only through business. Couldn’t hire a better cook, he’d say. Which makes it all the worse she got me on a lunchtime diet!
As for security, Dave Gidman knew the alarm system was state of the art.
He ran up the stairs to a darkened first-floor room set up as a home cinema. Here he found his father watching a video of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. It was a taste they didn’t share. Another was the pungent Havana cigars which Flo had decreed could only be smoked in this one room.
Goldie didn’t take his eyes off the screen where the great rocker was deep into ‘Message to Love’, but raised his right hand in the imperious gesture which those around him had learned meant stand still, don’t speak, I’ll get round to you when I’m ready.