John Carré - A Delicate Truth

But Toby isn’t, so he waits for more:

‘Licensed, of course. That was half the trouble. Licensed to rip off the Exchequer, bribe officials, offer them all the girls they can eat, holidays in Bali. Licensed to go private, go public, go any way they like, long as they’ve got a ministerial pass, which they all have.’

‘And Quinn had his snout in the trough with the rest of them, you’re saying?’

‘I’m not saying any bloody thing,’ Matti retorts sharply.

‘I know that. And I’m not hearing anything either. So Quinn stole. Is that it? All right, not exactly stole, perhaps, but diverted funds to certain projects in which he had an interest. Or his wife did. Or his cousin did. Or his aunt did. Is that it? Got caught, paid back the money, said he was awfully sorry, and the whole thing was swept under the carpet. Am I warm?’

A nubile girl bellyflops into the water to shrieks of laughter.

‘There’s a creep around called Crispin,’ Matti murmurs under the clamour. ‘Ever heard of him?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I haven’t either, so I’ll thank you to remember that. Crispin. Dodgy bastard. Avoid.’

‘Any reason given?’

‘Not specific. Our lot used him for a couple of jobs, then dropped him like a hot brick. Supposed to have led your man by the nose while he was Defence. All I know. Could be crap. Now get off my back.’

And with this Matti resumes his brooding contemplation of the pretty girls.

And as is often the way of life, from the moment Matti lets the name Crispin out of the box, it seems unable to let Toby go.

At a Cabinet Office wine and cheese party, two mandarins talk head to head: ‘ Whatever happened to that shit Crispin, by the by? ’ ‘ Saw him hanging around the Lords the other day, don’t know how he has the gall .’ But on Toby’s approach the topic of their conversation turns abruptly to cricket.

At the close of an interministerial conference on intelligence with frenemy liaisons, as the current buzzword has it, the name acquires its own initial: well, let’s just hope you people don’t do another J. Crispin on us , snaps a Home Office director at her hated opposite number in Defence.

But is it really just a J? Or is it Jay like Jay Gatsby?

After half a night’s googling while Isabel sulks in the bedroom, Toby is none the wiser.

He will try Laura.

Laura is a Treasury boffin, fifty years old, sometime Fellow of All Souls, boisterous, brilliant, vast and overflowing with good cheer. When she descended unannounced on the British Embassy in Berlin as leader of a surprise audit team, Giles Oakley had commanded Toby to ‘take her out to dinner and charm the knickers off her’. This he had duly done, if not literally; and to such effect that their occasional dinners had continued without Oakley’s guidance ever since.

By good fortune, it’s Toby’s turn. He selects Laura’s favourite restaurant off the King’s Road. As usual, she has dressed with panache for the event, in a huge, flowing kaftan hung with beads and bangles and a cameo brooch the size of a saucer. Laura loves fish. Toby orders a sea bass baked in salt to share and an expensive Meursault to go with it. In her excitement Laura seizes his hands across the table and shakes them like a child dancing to music.

‘ Marvellous , Toby, darling,’ she blurts, ‘and high time too,’ in a voice that rolls like cannon fire across the restaurant; and then blushes at her own loudness and drops her voice to a genteel murmur.

‘So how was Cairo? Did the natives storm the embassy and demand your head on a pike? I’d have been utterly terrified. Tell all.’

And after Cairo, she must hear about Isabel, because as ever she insists on her rights as Toby’s agony aunt:

‘ Very sweet, very beautiful, and a ninny,’ she rules when she has heard him out. ‘Only a ninny marries a painter. As for you , you never could tell the difference between brains and beauty, and I suppose that still applies. I’m sure the two of you are perfectly suited,’ she concludes, with another hoot of laughter.

‘And the secret pulse of our great nation, Laura?’ Toby enquires lightly in return, since Laura has no known love life of her own that may be spoken of. ‘How are things in the oh-so-hallowed halls of the Treasury these days?’

Laura’s generous face lapses into despair, and her voice with it:

‘Grim, darling, just appalling. We’re clever and nice, but we’re understaffed and underpaid and we want the best for our country, which is old-fashioned of us. New Labour loves Big Greed, and Big Greed has armies of amoral lawyers and accountants on the make and pays them the earth to make rings round us. We can’t compete; they’re too big to fail and too big to fight. Now I’ve depressed you. Good. I’m depressed too,’ she says, taking a merry pull at her Meursault.

The fish arrives. Reverent quiet while the waiter takes it off the bone and divides it.

‘Darling, what a thrill,’ breathes Laura.

They tuck in. If Toby is to chance his arm, this is his moment.

‘Laura.’

‘Darling.’

‘Who precisely is J. Crispin when he’s at home? And J standing for what? There was some scandal at Defence while Quinn was there. Crispin was mixed up in it. I hear his name all over town, I’m being kept out of the loop and it frightens me. Somebody even described him as Quinn’s Svengali.’

Laura studies him with her very bright eyes, looks away, then takes a second look, as if she isn’t comfortable with what she’s seen there.

‘Is this why you asked me to dinner, Toby?’

‘Partly.’

‘Wholly,’ she corrects him, drawing a breath that is nearly a sigh. ‘And I think you could have had the decency to tell me that was your fell purpose.’

A pause while they both collect themselves. Laura resumes:

‘You’re out of the loop for the very good reason that you’re not supposed to be in it. Fergus Quinn has been given a fresh start. You’re part of it.’

‘I’m also his keeper,’ he replies defiantly, recovering his courage.

Another deep breath, a hard look, before the eyes turn downward and stay there.

‘I’ll tell you bits,’ she decides finally. ‘Not all, but more than I should.’

She sits upright and, like a child in disgrace, talks to her plate.

Quinn walked into a quagmire, she says. Defence was in a state of corporate rot long before he came on the scene. Perhaps Toby knows that already? Toby does. Half its officials didn’t know whether they were working for the Queen or the arms industry, and didn’t give a hoot as long as their bread was buttered. Perhaps Toby knows that, too? Toby does. He has heard it from Matti, but doesn’t let on. She’s not making excuses for Fergus. She’s saying Crispin was there ahead of him and saw him coming.

Reluctantly, she once more helps herself to Toby’s hand, and this time taps it sternly on the table to the rhythm of her words as she scolds him:

‘And I’ll tell you what you did , you evil man’ – as if Toby himself is Crispin now – ‘you set up your own spy shop . Right there inside the ministry. While everyone round you was flogging arms , you were peddling raw intelligence : straight from the shelf, direct to buyer , no stops between. Un spun, un tested, un pasteurized and above all untouched by bureaucratic hands. Which was music to Fergie’s ears. Does he still play music in his office?’

‘Mostly Bach.’

‘And you’re Jay like the bird,’ she adds, in a flurried answer to his earlier question.