Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

Tonight was notable because one of the local MPs from an area crossed by the new road had turned out to support the campaign. His presence on the platform had attracted a good crowd, included a sprinkling of press.

There was nothing like a high-profile personality to attract publicity to a cause. And the MP, Lindley Simpson, was as high-profile as you could get in this part of Staffordshire. He was a rising star in the New Labour government, one of Tony Blair’s generation, who’d already become a junior minister in the Department of Agriculture. How much he knew about road schemes and transport policy remained to be seen, but at least he was there. An MP for a constituency in the vast, sprawling West Midlands conurbation around Birmingham, he might have been expected to be in favour of the new road, so his support was regarded as a coup for the Alliance. But maybe it was just a public relations stunt.

The MP sat at a table on the platform, alongside councillors. He was in his early forties, well-groomed, with short fair hair, and he was wearing a smart dark suit and a bright red tie. His manner was a little too slick for me, his smile exaggeratedly sincere. He behaved as if he was entirely at home in the spotlight, undoubtedly a man who’d been trained how to behave in the public eye. Lindley Simpson wouldn’t open his mouth and say the wrong thing, or be caught off-guard. He was a media-friendly politician. In a few years’ time, if he managed to keep his nose clean, he’d be a man of power and influence.

I took a seat at the side of the hall and spent some time studying the audience. To me, they were more interesting than the platform party, because they were a whole mixture of types. You could see the journalists, keeping their distance from the crowd, and the council officers clustering together as if afraid that they might find themselves taking the blame for something if they ever became isolated.

At the end of the front row was a group I couldn’t quite place. There were a couple of men and a woman with black hair. They were behaving in a quiet, self-effacing manner, speaking to no one around them. They certainly weren’t drawing attention to themselves. Yet it was that air about the little group that made me notice them.

After a while, I realised that they were exchanging glances with Lindley Simpson. Whenever the discussion moved on to another topic, the MP would glance to this little corner, like an actor looking for his prompt. Maybe he was getting secret signals about what his views ought to be. Were these people what the tabloid newspapers referred to as ‘spin doctors’? Special advisors, press officers and the like? It seemed that every government minister had them these days.

When the meeting was over, Andrew Hadfield wandered over towards me. He was with another Trust committee member, Phil Glover, one of the organisation’s real experts, an experienced civil engineer who’d masterminded the plans for the restoration. He’d drawn up a new line for the canal in places where the original route had been built over. In one section, a bridge had been lost in the middle of a concrete works, and he’d proposed a replacement route thrust-bored under a railway embankment some way to the south. Like me, most of the Trust members would never even have heard of thrust-boring. So Phil was a man whose brain I picked shamelessly for his technical knowledge.

They both greeted me like an old friend. They were useful to me, and in my business, that constitutes a friendship.

‘What do you think, Chris? Is the Right Honourable minister on our side, is it just a load of politician’s bullshit?’ Andrew jerked his thumb at the front of the hall, where the platform party were conferring together in a self-congratulatory way.

‘Lindley Simpson? It’s a bit difficult to say, isn’t it?’ I glanced at my notebook. ‘I’d guess there was nothing he said that couldn’t be interpreted to mean whatever you want it to mean.’

‘That’s about the size of it, isn’t it? All words and no action. The action’s left to people like us.’

Phil smiled sardonically. I wondered what was going through his mind when he looked at Andrew. But all he said was: ‘I suppose we need every kind of support we can get.’

The councillors on the stage were splitting up now as the hall emptied. Simpson trotted down the steps to join his support team. One of the men half-rose from his chair to shake hands with him. I could see that he was quite a small man, maybe five foot six, with heavy shoulders and a barrel chest like a wrestler’s, straining the seams of his jacket.

‘Which reminds me,’ said Andrew, ‘how did you get on with the old man?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Phil. ‘Old Mr Longden.’

I frowned. Did everyone know my business?

‘There’s something he wants me to help him with,’ I said. ‘Some kind of research project.’

‘And are you going to?’

‘I don’t think so, Andrew.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘Oh, he’s very vague and mysterious about it. I found him a bit irritating, to be honest. Slightly unstable. I still don’t know what his project is exactly, but my gut feeling is that it’ll be more trouble than it’s worth. He’s not somebody I want to get involved with.’

‘Are you sure? Are you really going to turn down old Samuel?’

I shrugged, watching the politician’s group walking down the hall. ‘Yes, I think I am. I’ve got better things to do with my time. More interesting things to think about.’

Andrew followed my gaze. ‘Such as our tame MP?’

I didn’t answer. My eyes had been moving from the tall, elegant Simpson, to the short, dark, muscular man at his side, and then to the other two people with them. It was the woman who attracted my attention now. From behind, all I’d seen was a curtain of black hair. But now, as they walked towards me, I was struck by her looks. Her eyes were almost as dark as her hair and set in a pale face with high cheek bones. She was taller than the thickset man beside her, and she moved with the grace he lacked. She had an expression on her face like someone who’d accidentally walked into the wrong bar and found herself among a bunch of drunken labourers. Her eyes were fixed on the exit, and she completely failed to see me.

As the group passed, the thickset man was saying something to Simpson that I couldn’t make out. But the MP was turned half towards me when he replied, and I heard his words clearly.

‘Yes. But it cuts both ways, Leo,’ he said.

Rachel was lurking in the window of her half of Maybank when I arrived home. It was hardly unusual. But I hadn’t been inside my house more than a few minutes when she was knocking on the door. She appeared to be in a state of excitement.

‘Somebody’s been to see you, Chris.’

‘Oh?’

‘An old gentleman. He came in a taxi.’

Immediately, my heart sank. There was only one old gentleman it could be, and I’d already made my mind up that I didn’t want him coming to Stowe Pool Lane.

Rachel saw the look on my face and hurried on. ‘He said he knows you very well. He just wanted to drop off a few things you’d need.’

‘What things?’

‘I don’t know what they are. He didn’t say. Since you weren’t here, he left them with me. I hope that’s all right,’ she added, watching me with a bright eye and a cautious smile.

‘Did this old gentleman give his name?’

‘Mr Longden. He was very nice, I thought. Very polite. He had old-fashioned manners that you don’t see very often these days. He said he was a—’

‘—a friend of the family?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So where is it, then? All this stuff he left for me?’

‘Oh, it’s still in my hallway. I think you’ll have to help me bring it all round. There’s rather a lot of it to carry, you see. The taxi driver had to bring it in for him.’