John Carré - A Delicate Truth

But the younger ones only glowered at their screens.

The mahogany door was closed, but don’t trust anything: Quinn may have snuck in early or, for all Toby knew, been in there all night, hunkered down with Jay Crispin, Roy Stormont-Taylor and Mr Music Brad.

He banged on the door, called ‘Minister?’ – banged again. No answer.

He strode to his desk, yanked open the bottom drawer and to his horror saw a pin-light burning. Christ Almighty: if anybody had spotted it!

He wound back the tape, coaxed it from its housing, returned switch and timer to their previous settings. With the tape wedged under his armpit he set out on his return journey, not forgetting a wave of ‘Cheerio’ to the older guard and a ‘fuck you’ nod of authority to the younger ones.

It is only minutes later, but already a calm of sleep has descended over Toby, and for a while he is standing still and everything is passing him by. When he wakes, he is in the Tottenham Court Road, eying the windows of second-hand electronics dealers and trying to decide which of them is the least likely to remember a thirty-something bloke in a baggy black jacket and chinos who wanted to buy a clapped-out second-hand family-sized tape recorder for cash.

And somewhere along the way he must have stopped at a cashpoint, bought himself a copy of the day’s Observer , and also a carrier bag with a Union Jack on it, because the tape is nestling inside the bag between the pages of the newspaper.

And probably he has already dropped in on two or three shops before he lucked out with Aziz, who has this brother in Hamburg whose line of business is shipping scrap electronic equipment to Lagos by the container load. Old fridges, computers, radios and clapped-out giant tape recorders: this brother can’t get enough of them, which is how Aziz comes to be keeping this pile of old stuff in his back room for his brother to collect.

And it is also how Toby, by a miracle of luck and persistence, becomes the owner of a replica of the Cold War-era tape recorder in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk, except that this version was coloured a sleek pearl-grey and came in its original box which, as Aziz regretfully explained, made it a collector’s item and therefore ten quid more, plus I’m afraid it’s got to be another sixteen for the adaptor if you’re going to wire it up to anything.

Manhandling his booty into the street, Toby was accosted by a sad old woman who had mislaid her bus pass. Discovering he had no loose change, he astonished her with a five-pound note.

Entering his flat, he was brought to a dead halt by Isabel’s scent. The bedroom door was ajar. Nervously he pushed it open, then the door to the bathroom.

It’s all right. It’s just her scent. Jesus. You never know.

He tried wiring up the tape recorder on the kitchen table but the flex was too short. He uncoupled an extension lead from the living room and attached it.

Grunting and whimpering, the great Hebbelian Wheel of Life began to turn.

You know what you are, don’t you? You’re a bloody little drama queen.

No titles, no credits. No soothing introductory music. Just the minister’s unopposed, complacent assertion, delivered to the beat of his bespoke suede boots by Lobb at a thousand pounds a foot, as he advances across the Private Office, presumably to his desk.

You’re a drama queen, you understand? D’you even know what a drama queen is? You don’t. Well, that’s because you’re pig-ignorant, isn’t it?

Who the hell’s he talking to? Did I come in too late? Did I set the timer wrong?

Or is Quinn addressing his Jack Russell bitch Pippa, an election accessory that he sometimes brings in to amuse the girls?

Or has he paused in front of the gilt-framed looking-glass and he’s giving himself the New Labour mirror test, and soliloquizing while he does it?

Preparatory honking of ministerial throat. It’s Quinn’s habit to clear his throat before a meeting, then wash his mouth with Listerine with his loo door open. Evidently, the drama queen – whoever he or she is – is being berated in absentia , and probably in the mirror.

Squeak of leather as he lowers himself into his executive throne, ordered from Harrods on the same day he took office, along with new blue carpet and a clutch of encrypted phones.

Unidentified scratching sounds from desk area. Probably tinkering with the four empty red ministerial despatch boxes he insists on keeping at his elbow, as opposed to the full ones Toby isn’t allowed to open.

Yes. Well. Good of you to come, anyway. Sorry to fuck up your weekend. Sorry you fucked up mine as a matter of fact, but you don’t give a shit about that, do you? How’ve you been? Lady wife in good form? Glad to hear it. And the little brats all well? Give them a kick up the arse from me.

Footsteps approaching, faint but getting louder. Party the first is arriving.

The footsteps have passed through the unmanned, unlocked side entrance, traversed unmonitored corridors, scaled staircases, without pausing to pee: all just as Toby did yesterday in his role of ministerial guinea pig. The footsteps approaching the anteroom. One pair only. Hard soles. Leisured, nothing stealthy. These are not young feet.

And they’re not Crispin’s feet either. Crispin marches as to war. These are peaceful feet. They are feet that take their time, they’re a man’s and – why does Toby think he knows this, but he does – they’re a stranger’s. They belong to someone he hasn’t met.

At the door to the anteroom they hesitate but don’t knock. These feet have been instructed not to knock. They cross the anteroom, passing – oh, mother! – within two feet of Toby’s desk and the recorder grinding away inside it with its pin-light on.

Will the feet hear it? Apparently they won’t. Or if they do, they make nothing of it.

The feet advance. The feet enter the presence without knocking, presumably because that too is what they’ve been told to do. Toby waits for the squeak of the ministerial chair, doesn’t hear it. He is briefly assailed by a dreadful thought: what if the visitor, like cultural attaché Hester, has brought his own music?

Heart in mouth, he waits. No music, just Quinn’s offhand voice:

‘You weren’t stopped? Nobody questioned you? Bothered you?’

It’s minister to inferior, and they already know each other. It’s minister to Toby on an off day.

‘At no stage was I bothered or in any way molested, Minister. Everything went like clockwork, I’m glad to say. Another fault-free round.’

Another? When was the last fault-free round? And what’s with the equestrian reference? Toby has no time to linger.

‘Sorry about screwing up your weekend,’ Quinn is saying, in a familiar refrain. ‘Not of my doing, I can assure you. Case of first-night wobblies on the part of our intrepid friend.’

‘It’s of no consequence whatever, Minister, I assure you. I had no plans beyond clearing out my attic, a promise I am only too happy to defer.’

Humour. Not appreciated.

‘You saw Elliot, then. That went off all right. He filled you in. Yes?’

‘Insofar as Elliot was able to fill me in, Minister, I’m sure he did.’

‘It’s called need-to-know. What did you make of him?’ – not waiting for an answer. ‘Good bloke on a dark night, they tell me.’

‘I shall be happy to take your word for it.’

Elliot , Toby is remembering, Albanian-Greek renegade … ex-South African Special Forces … killed some chap in a bar … came to Europe for his health .

But by now the scenting British animal in Toby has parsed the visitor’s voice, and hence its owner. It is self-assured, middle to upper class, literate and non-combative. But what surprises him is its cheeriness. It’s the notion that its owner is having fun.