Reginald Hill - Midnight Fugue

He thumbed in Novello’s number.

‘Ivor, here’s the name and address. Alun Watkins, 39 Loudwater Villas. Listen, see what you can find out, but softly softly, OK? Good girl. No, no need to get back to me. Unless something really important comes up, it’ll keep till the morning. Enjoy thasel!’

He suddenly felt very relaxed. Maybe it was the fact that he’d sunk two bottles of lovely Italian plonk, but relaxing here in the sun looking out over a garden where the glories of summer were enhanced rather than threatened by the first touch of autumn, with that pleasantly mazy music drifting up from the gazebo while behind him, impatient (he hoped) for his return, sat a golden-haired damsel begging him to ease her distress, he found he’d shed all the doubts and concerns that had beset him since his return to work.

And there was still pudding to come!

Once more master of his soul and captain of his fate, he could do anything he wanted.

Except maybe drive home.

But sufficient be the evil…

He turned round and realized Gina Wolfe had risen too and was standing close behind him. Close enough to have overheard? Mebbe. But it didn’t matter. He’d said nowt that suggested the calls had anything to do with her.

She said, ‘This is a lovely spot, isn’t it? It seems somehow, I don’t know, ungrateful to be unhappy in such a place on such a day.’

‘Then let’s try not to be unhappy,’ he said, leading her back to the table and pouring an inch of golden wine into her glass and filling his own to the brim. ‘Let’s have a toast. To a bright future, eh?’

‘No,’ she said seriously. ‘Don’t tempt fate by bringing in the future.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Wise man sticks to here and now. So, let’s see. Here’s to Iti wine, English weather, and a little chance music out of doors. Cheers!’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ she said, smiling.

David Gidman the Third stepped up to the microphone and acknowledged the applause.

Pinchbeck had been right. Again. The crowd at the opening was at least fifty per cent larger than the church congregation. The bloody woman had probably also been right to run interference when that dishy deaconess had tried to top up his glass on the vicarage lawn. The notion of pleasuring a woman in canonicals was strangely appealing.

He shook the thought from his mind and concentrated on carrying his audience back to 1948 and the arrival in England of the Empire Windrush, bringing with it David Gidman the First and his young son, not yet known as Goldie.

Maggie listened critically as he outlined his grandfather’s early days in the East End, his emergence as a community leader, his rise from railway cleaner to guard on the Flying Scotsman. She had to acknowledge he was good. More convincing than Cameron, beefier than Brown, less lachrymose than Blair, he had it all. In the right hands he could really go far.

He made the transition from his grandfather to his father with consummate ease, projecting Goldie as a hard-working, self-made entrepreneur who’d used the opportunities offered by a benevolent state to get an education and make a fortune.

‘There was one other thing my dad shared with his dad as well as a capacity for hard work,’ he declared. ‘Neither of them ever forgot where they came from. They always gave something back and the more they earned the more they gave.

‘Now here am I, the third generation of the UK Gidmans. By their standards, I’ve had it easy. Not for me the long journey across a wide ocean to a new land, a new life. Not for me the long journey from the back streets of the East End to the boardrooms of the City. No, I stand before you, benefiting from the advantages of going to a first-rate school and a first-rate university.

‘Yet I do not feel any need to apologize for these advantages. They’ve been paid for, and paid for with interest, by the love and the devotion and the damned hard work of my father and his father.

‘But I’m always aware that, if I’m to show myself worthy of their efforts, their love, their sacrifice, then I too have payments to make.

‘I’m proud of my pappy and of my granpappy, and I want to make them proud of me. It’s people like you standing here before me today who will tell me by your comments and your votes if I succeed.

‘But I won’t be doing my political career much good if I keep you any longer from the refreshments waiting inside! So without further ado, I would like to declare the David Gidman the First Memorial Community Centre well and truly open.’

He took the scissors that Maggie handed him and flourished them for the cameras, making sure his head was inclined slightly to the right. Both profiles were good, but the left was slightly better. Silently he counted up to three, then he snipped the white silk ribbon stretched across the open double door of the ultra-modern reflective glass and white concrete building squatting like a crash-landed space cruiser within world record javelin-throwing distance of the no man’s land that was allegedly going to blossom into the London Olympic village.

He acknowledged the applause, then stood aside and waved the public in towards the promised refreshments.

First to the barricades, last to the refreshments, that’s the way to win hearts and minds, Maggie said. He looked for her now, and saw her making sure that the Centre manager had taken control of the official civic party so that she could give her full attention to the much more important posse of journalists.

She’d vetoed Dave’s suggestion of a formal press conference.

‘That would make it look like it’s all about you,’ she said.

‘But it is,’ he objected. ‘That’s why Pappy said he’d stay away.’

‘Yes, but we don’t want it to look like that. It’s OK, you’ll get the coverage.’

To this end, she stage managed a series of semi-private conversations as they trailed in the wake of the civic party. All PAs like to claim they can deal with the press. Maggie was one of the few who actually could. So unobtrusive you never knew she was there till you stepped out of line, she was gaining a reputation for never failing to deliver on a promise, or a threat.

First up was the Independent. Not their top political man; you needed something a bit meatier than an upwardly mobile young politician opening a community centre to get him off his wife’s Norfolk estate on a Sunday. No, this was a pleasant enough young fellow called…he needed Maggie’s whisper this time.

‘Hello, Piers. Good to see you.’

‘Thank you, Mr Gidman. Your father must be disappointed he couldn’t be here today. How’s he keeping?’

‘He’s fine. Just a touch of cold. Thanks for asking.’

‘Hope he shakes it off soon. But we don’t seem to have seen a lot of him recently anyway. Not leaving the field clear so you can shine, is he?’

‘No one shines brighter than Goldie Gidman, isn’t that what they say? No, he just likes the quiet life nowadays.’

‘Quiet? I understand he’s in and out of Millbank all the time, helping the shadow chancellor get his sums right in the current crisis.’

‘He’s always available when his country needs him, but today he really is treating himself to a day of rest.’

‘Unlike you, eh? Busy busy, in and out of the House. Where do you get the energy? Your friends must be worried you’re taking too much on.’

‘You know what they say-if you want something done, ask a busy man.’

‘I’m sure the PM agrees with you. There’s a rumour going around that there may be something for you in the next reshuffle. Any comment?’

‘I am at my Party’s and my country’s disposal.’

‘And the rumour…?’