To Play the King

PART THREE

The ringing of the telephone startled him, intruding into the quiet of the apartment. It was late, well after ten, and Kenny had already retired to leave Mycroft working on some last-minute arrangements for the King's tour. Kenny was on stand-by; Mycroft wondered whether the telephone was summoning him to fill a last-minute vacancy on some flight crew, but surely not at this time of night?

Kenny appeared at the bedroom door, rubbing wearily at his eyes. 'It's for you.' 'For me? But who…?' 'Dunno.' Kenny was still half asleep.

With considerable trepidation Mycroft lifted the extension. 'Hello.' 'David Mycroft?' the voice enquired. 'Who's speaking?'

'David, this is Ken Rochester from the Mirror. I'm sorry to bother you so late. It's not too inconvenient, is it, David?'

Mycroft had never heard of the man before. His nasal tones were unpleasant, his informality insolent and unwelcome, his concern patently insincere. Mycroft made no reply.

'It's something of an emergency; my editor's asked if I can come on the tour tomorrow, along with our Royal correspondent. I'm a special features writer myself. You moved, have you, David? Not your old number, this.'

'How did you get this number?' Mycroft asked, forcing out every word through suddenly leaden lips.

'It is David Mycroft, isn't it? From the Palace? I'd feel a total fool talking about this to anyone else. David?' 'How did you get this number?' he asked again, the constriction in his throat drying his words. He had supplied it to the Palace switchboard for use only in an emergency.

'Oh, we usually get whatever we want, David. So I'll turn up tomorrow to join the rest of the reptiles, if you'll make the necessary arrangements. My editor would be furious if I couldn't find some way of persuading you. Was that your son I spoke to on the phone? Sorry, silly question. Your son's at university, isn't he, David?' Mycroft's throat was now desiccated, unable to pass any words.

'Or a colleague, perhaps? One of your high-flyers? Sounded as if I'd woken him from bed. Sorry to have disturbed you both so very late at night, but you know how editors are. My apologies to your wife…'

The journalist prattled on with his confection of innuendo and enquiry. Slowly Mycroft withdrew the telephone from his ear and dropped it back into its cradle. So they knew where he was. And they would know who he was with, and why. After the visit of the Vice Squad he had known it would happen sooner or later. He'd prayed it would be much later. And he knew the press. They wouldn't be satisfied with just himself. They'd go for Kenny, too, his job, his family, his private life, his friends, everybody and anybody he'd ever known, even through his dustbins in search of all the mistakes he had ever made. And who hadn't made mistakes? They would be remorseless, unstinting, uncompromising, unspeakable. Mycroft wasn't sure he could take that sort of pressure; he was even less sure he had the right to ask Kenny to take it. He wandered over to the window and glanced up and down the darkened street, searching the shadows for any hint of prying eyes. There was nothing, nothing that he could sec at least, but it wouldn't be long, maybe as soon as tomorrow.

Kenny had fallen asleep again, innocent and unaware, his body twisted in the sheets as only young people can manage. All they had wanted was to be left alone, yet it was only a matter of time before others came to tear them apart. As he lay beside Kenny, trying to share his warmth, he shivered, already feeling the exposure. The real world no longer lay beyond Kenny's doorstep, it was forcing itself right inside the room. Urquhart had arrived back late from the diplomatic reception to find Sally waiting for him, chatting over a plastic cup of coffee with a couple of Protection Squad officers in what passed as their office: a cramped closet-sized room just off the entrance hall. She was perched on the corner of their desk, supported by her long and elegant legs, which the seated detectives were admiring with little sign of reticence.

'My apologies for disturbing you at your work, gentlemen,' he muttered tetchily. He realized he was jealous, but felt better as the detectives sprang to their feet in evident confusion, one of them spilling the coffee in his haste.

'Good evening, Prime Minister.' Her smile was broad, warm, showing no after-effects of their previous meeting's misunderstanding.

'Ah, Miss Quine. I was forgetting. More opinion polls?' He attempted an air of distraction.

'Who do you think you're kidding?' Sally muttered from the corner of her mouth as they made their way from the room. He arched an eyebrow.

'If they thought you'd really forgotten about a late-night meeting with a woman who had a figure like mine, they'd send for the men in white coats.'

'They are not paid to think but to do as I tell them,' he responded waspishly. He sounded as if he meant every word, and Sally felt alarmed. She decided to change the subject.

'Talking of opinion polls, you're six points ahead. But before you start congratulating yourself, I have to tell you that the King's tour will blow that lead right out of the water. It's going to be one heck of a circus – lots of hand-wringing and talk of compassion. Frankly, not a game where your side fields a strong team.'

'I'm afraid His Majesty is going to have distractions of his own before the week is out.' 'Meaning?' 'His press officer and close friend, Mycroft, is a homosexual. Shacked up with an air steward.' 'So what? It's no crime.' 'But sadly the story is just dribbling out to the press, and in their usual disreputable fashion they will be bound to make him wish he were a simple criminal. There's not only the deceit of his family – apparently his poor wife has been forced to leave the marital home after more than twenty years of marriage in disgust at what he's been up to. There's also the security angle. A man who has access to all sorts of sensitive information, state secrets, at the heart of our Royal Family, has lied his way right through the regular vetting procedures. Laid himself wide open to blackmail and pressure.' Urquhart was leaning on the wall button which would summon the private lift to the top-floor apartment. 'And then, most serious of all, is deceit of the King. A lifelong friend, whom he has betrayed. Unless, of course, you wish to be uncharitable and conclude that the King knew all along and has been covering up to help an old friend. Messy.' 'You're not implying that the King, too-'

'I imply nothing. That's the job of the press,' he responded, 'who, I confidently predict, by the end of the week will be wading in it.'

The lift doors were open, beckoning. 'Then why wait, Francis? Why not strike now, before the King sets off and does all that damage?'

'Because Mycroft is no more than a dunghill. The King needs to be pushed not from a dunghill but from a mountain top, and by the end of his tour he will have climbed about as high as he's going to get. I can wait.'

They stepped into the lift, a small, insalubrious affair which had been squeezed into a recess of the old house during refurbishment earlier in the century. The narrowness of its bare metal walls forced them together and, as the doors closed, she could see the way his eyes lit up, sense the confidence, arrogance even, like a lion in his lair. She could be either his prey, or his lioness; she had to keep pace with him or find herself devoured.

'Some things you shouldn't wait for, Francis.' Match him step for step, hold on to him, even as he slithered towards his own mountain top. She leaned across him to the control panel, and as her groping fingers found the key the lift stopped quietly between floors. Already her blouse was unbuttoned and he was kneading the firm flesh of her breasts. She winced, he was getting rougher, more bruising, his thrust for domination more insistent. He still had on his overcoat. She had to allow it, to encourage and indulge him. He was changing, no longer bothering with self-restraint, perhaps no longer able. But as she wedged herself uncomfortably in the corner of the lift, bracing her legs against the walls, feeling cold metal on her buttocks, she knew she had to go with him as far as she could and as far as he wanted to go; it was the type of opportunity that would not present itself again. It was once in a lifetime and she had to grab it, whether or not he any longer said please.

It was four a.m. and pitch dark when Mycroft crept slowly from the bedroom and began to dress quietly outside. Kenny still slept, his body innocently engaged in a tumbling match with the bed linen, an arm wrapped around a toy bear. Mycroft felt more father than lover, driven by a deep and innate sense of protectiveness towards the younger man. He had to believe that what he was doing was right.

When he had finished dressing he sat down at the table and switched on a small lamp. He needed light to write the note. He made several hopeless attempts, all of which he tore into small pieces and placed atop a mounting pile beside him. How could he explain that he was fractured between his feelings of love and duty towards two men, the King and Kenny, both of whom were now threatened through him? That he was running away because that is what he had done all his life and he knew no other answer? That he would continue running as soon as the King's tour was over-for surely he had three days left before disaster struck?

The pile of torn paper mounted, and in the end he was left with nothing more than: 'I love you, believe me. I'm sorry.' It sounded so pathetic, so insufficient.

He placed the scraps of paper back inside his briefcase, snapping the locks as quietly as he was able, and put on his overcoat. He glanced out of the window to check the street, which he found silent and cold, as he felt inside. As carefully as he could he crept back to place the note on the table where Kenny would find it. As he placed it against the vase of flowers, he saw Kenny sitting up in bed, staring at the case, the overcoat, the note, understanding flooding into his sleep-filled eyes.

'Why, David? Why?' he whispered. He raised no shout, shed no tears, he had seen too many departures in his life and with his job, but accusation filled every syllable.

Mycroft had no answer. He had nothing but a sense of imminent despair from which he wanted to save all those he loved. He fled, away from the sight of Kenny clutching a favourite bear to his chest as he sat forlornly amidst his throne of sheets, he ran out of the apartment and back into the real world, into the dark, past the empty milk bottles, his footsteps on the pavement stones echoing down the empty street. And as he ran, for the first time in his adult life Mycroft discovered he was crying.

Later that day there were tears elsewhere. Tears that hung in the damp night air of winter, that dripped down the mould-covered walls and into the overflowing gullies of the concrete underpass, and clung around the eyes of the old derelict as he stared into the face of his King. The dirt of weeks beneath his finger nails he no longer noticed and the stench of stale urine he no longer smelled, but the King had been aware from several yards away and even more so as he knelt beside the sum of all the old man's possessions – a hand grip tied with sisal, a torn and stain-covered sleeping bag, and a large cardboard box stuffed with newspapers, which would probably be gone by the time he returned the following night.

'How on earth did he get like this?' the King enquired of a charity worker at his elbow.

'Ask him,' suggested the charity worker, who over the years had lost patience with the high and mighty who came bearing their hearts on their sleeves, to express their deeply felt concerns yet who always, without exception, did so in front of accompanying cameramen, who treated the down-and-outs as impersonal objects rather than as people, who peered and passed on.

The King flushed. At least he had the decency to recognize his own crassness. He knelt on one knee, ignoring the damp and the debris which seemed to be everywhere, to listen and to attempt understanding. And in the distance, at the end of the underpass where they had been shepherded by Mycroft, the cameras turned and recorded the image of a sad, tearful man, bent low amidst the filth, listening to the tale of a tramp.

It was said later by those accompanying members of the media that never had a royal press aide worked more tirelessly and imaginatively to give them the stories and pictures they needed. Without interfering with the King or intruding too savagely on the pathetic scenes of personal misery and deprivation, they were faced with abundance. Mycroft listened, understood, cajoled, wheeled and dealed, encouraged, advised and facilitated. At one point he intervened to delay the King a moment while a camera crew found their ideal position and changed their tape, at another he whispered in the Royal ear and got the King to repeat a scene, steam rising from the drains and beautifully backlit for effect by a street light, with a mother cradling a young baby. He argued with police and remonstrated with local officials who tried to insinuate themselves into the picture. This was not to be a caravan of officialdom who would pass by on the other side as soon as the obligatory photographs were taken; this was a man, out discovering his Kingdom, alone with a few derelicts and his conscience. Or so Mycroft explained, and was believed. If during those three days the King slept fitfully, then Mycroft slept not at all. But whereas the King's cheeks became more sallow and his eyes more sunken and full of remorse as the tour passed from day to night and back to freezing day, Mycroft's blazed with the fire of a conqueror who saw justification in every scene of deprivation and triumph in every click of the shutter.

As the King stooped beside the derelict's cardboard hovel to listen, he knew his suit was being ruined by the damp slime which covered everything, but he did not move. He was only kneeling in it, the old man lived in it. He forced himself to stay, to ignore the odours and the chill wind, to nod and smile encouragement as the old man, through the bubbling of his lungs, told his tale, of university degrees, of a faithless marriage which shattered his career and confidence, of dropping out, only to find no way back. Not without the basic respectability of an address. It was no one's fault, there was no blame, no complaints, except for the cold. He had once lived in the sewers, it was drier and warmer down there and no hassle from policemen, but the Water Board had found out and put a lock on the entrance. It took a moment to take in. They had locked this man out of the sewers…

The derelict stretched out his arm, revealing a bandage through which some bodily fluid had escaped and solidified. The bandage was filthy, and the King felt his flesh crawl. The old man drew closer, the misshapen fingers trembling and blackened with filth, thick and broken finger nails like talons, a hand not fit even for the sewers. The King held it very tightly and very long.

When at last he rose to move on, there was foul smear on the leg of his suit and his eyes were damp. From the bite of the wind, probably, because his jaw was set firm and angry, but from tears of compassion the press would say. 'King of Conscience' the headlines would shout. The King walked slowly and stained out of the dripping underpass and onto the front page of every newspaper in the country.

Gordon McKillin's advisers had argued the matter through for a full day. The original idea had been to call a press conference, the full works, and deliver as strong a message as possible to ensure that no journalist left with any question unanswered. But the Opposition Leader had his doubts. If the purpose of the exercise was to identify himself as closely as possible with the King's tour, shouldn't he match it in style? Wouldn't a formalized press conference seem too heavy, too intrusive, as if he were trying to hijack the King for party political purposes? His doubt grew into a flood of uncertainty and the plans were changed. The word was circulated. McKillin would be found on his doorstep immediately after breakfast time, bidding his wife farewell in a touching family scene which complemented the informal fashion of the King's tour, and if any cameras or press men happened to be passing…

The scrum outside the front door in Chapel Street was appalling and it took several minutes before McKillin's communications adviser nodded that the multitude of cameras was in position and organized. It had to be right; after all. Breakfast TV was carrying it live.

'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,' he began as his wife hovered shyly in the background. 'I'm delighted to see you all, for what I assume is an early look at our forthcoming announcements on transport policy.' 'Not unless it includes the abolition of the Royal Trains.' 'Hardly.'

'Mr McKillin, do you think the King is right to take such a high-profile tour?' The questioner was young, blonde, aggressive, thrusting a microphone at him as though it were a weapon. Which, of course, it was.

'The King is high profile, in that he has no choice. Of course he is right to see for himself how the underprivileged live. I believe what he is doing is admirable and I applaud it.'

'But Downing Street is said to be very upset; they say that such matters should be left to the politicians,' another voice chimed in.

'When did Mr Urquhart last visit such places himself, for goodness sake? Just because he doesn't have the nerve' – in his Highland tongue the word sounded like a military drum roll calling troops to the advance – 'to face the victims of his policies, that is no reason why others should also run away.' 'You wouldn't criticize the King's tour in any respect?'

McKillin paused. Keep the vultures waiting, guessing, anticipating. His chin came up to make him look more statesmanlike, less fleshy around the jowls, as he had rehearsed a thousand times. 'I identify myself entirely with what the King has done. I've always been a firm supporter of the Royal Family, and I believe we should be thanking fortune we have a King who is as concerned and involved as he is.' 'So you're one hundred per cent behind him?' The voice was slow, emphatic, very dour. 'One hundred per cent.' 'Will you be raising the matter in the House?'

'Och, no. I cannot. The rules of the House of Commons are quite clear in excluding any controversial discussion of the Monarch, but, even if the rules permitted, I would not. I believe very firmly that our Royal Family should not be used by politicians for narrow partisan purposes. So I'm not planning to raise the matter or hold any press conferences. I will go no further than simply expressing my view that the King has every right to do what he is doing, and I join in his concern for the underprivileged, who form such a large part of modern Britain…'

The communications man was waving his hands about his head, drawing one arm across his throat. Time to wrap up. Enough said to grab a headline, not enough to be accused of exploiting the situation. Always keep the vultures underfed, wanting more.

McKillin was making his final self-deprecating plea to the cameras when from the street came the noisy rapping of a car horn. He looked up to see a green Range-Rover shuffling past. Wretched man! It was a Liberal MP, a neighbour from farther down Chapel Street who took delight whenever he could in disrupting the Opposition Leader's doorstep interviews. The more McKillin protested about fair play, the louder and more sustained became his neighbour's efforts. He knew it would mark the end of interest in the interview from the Breakfast TV producer, he had perhaps only a second or two of live television left. McKillin's eyes lit up with pleasure, he offered a broad smile and cast an extravagant wave in the direction of the retreating Range-Rover. Eight million viewers saw a politician at his best, for all the world as if he were responding graciously and enthusiastically to the unexpected greeting of one of his most ardent supporters. Serve the bugger right. McKillin wasn't going to allow anything to spoil what was turning out to be an excellent day.

As the producer brought the programme back to the studio, Elizabeth Urquhart dragged her attention away from the flickering screen to look at her husband. He was playing with pieces of blackened toast, and he was smiling.

The coach taking the party of journalists from the Gorbals to the airport on the outskirts of Glasgow swayed as it turned the sharp corner into the car park. Mycroft, standing in the aisle, clung tightly as he surveyed the results of his handiwork. Throughout most of the coach sat journalists who were exhausted but content, their work having dominated the front pages for three full days, their expenses justified for at least another month. Plaudits were offered in abundance to Mycroft for his Herculean efforts on their behalf. Goodwill expressed itself in face after face, genuine and wholehearted, until his eyes reached the back rows of the coach. There, like truculent schoolboys, sat Ken Rochester and his photographer, alongside another pair from a rival newspaper who had also joined the tour at the last minute. They weren't accredited Royal correspondents but sailed under a flag of journalistic convenience which described them as feature writers. The attention they had been paying him, and the cameras that had been turned in his direction when they should have been pointed at the King, left Mycroft in no doubt as to whom they intended to feature in their next reports. The word was clearly spreading, the vultures were circling overhead, and the presence of competitors would make them all the more anxious to pounce. He had less time than he had realized.

His thoughts returned to the words which had inspired him and others over the last few days, words he had taken directly from the King. Words about the need to find himself, to respond to those things he felt deep inside, to see whether he was up to the task not just of doing his job, but of being a man. The need to stop running. He thought of Kenny. They wouldn't leave him alone, he was sure of that, the Rochesters of this world weren't the type. Even if Mycroft never saw Kenny again, they would treat Kenny as fuel to feed the pyre, destroy Kenny in order to get at him, destroying him in order to get at the King. He felt no anger, there was no point. That was the way the system worked. Defend the free press and damn the weak. He felt numb, almost clinical, distanced even from his own plight, as if he had stepped outside himself and could regard this other man with the objective detachment of a professional. After all, that's what he was.

At the rear of the coach Rochester was talking conspiratorially in the ear of his photographer, who proceeded to squeeze off yet another series of shots as Mycroft stood above the heads of the journalists, like an actor before his audience playing out some great drama of the doomed. By the weekend, Mycroft reasoned. That was all the time he had left. Such a pity it was excrement like Rochester who would get the credit for the story rather than the court correspondents he had worked with and grown to respect over all these years. As the camera shutter clicked away, he began to find his calmness being steadily eaten away by his acid dislike of Rochester with his curled lip and ingratiating whine. He could feel himself beginning to tremble and he held on more tightly. Don't lose control, he shouted at himself, or the Rochesters will win, tear you to pieces. For God's sake be professional, go out on your own terms!

They were well inside the car park now, heading for the bustle of the departures building. Through his lens, Rochester's photographer saw Mycroft tap the driver on the shoulder and say something which caused the coach to turn aside and park in a quiet lay-by some considerable distance from the terminal. As the coach stopped, Mycroft squeezed out a tight smile for the throng around him. He was right in their midst.

'Before you finish this tour, there's one part of the story you haven't yet got. It might surprise you. It might even surprise the King…'

Urquhart sat on the Government Front Bench, shielded only in part by the Dispatch Box, surveying the army of waving hands and wagging tongues before him. George Washington? He felt more like General Custer. The restraint of Opposition shown on McKillin's doorstep had gone as the backbench hounds scented blood. It needed nerve, this job, to withstand the slings and arrows and all the vile taunts of which a parliamentary enemy could think. He had to believe in himself, utterly, to force out any room for doubt which his enemies might exploit. Perfect, absolute, uncompromising certainty in his cause. They were a rabble, not only lacking in principle but also in imagination; he wouldn't be surprised if in their new-found royalist fervour they descended to singing the national anthem, right here and now, in the Chamber of the House of Commons, the one place in all the Kingdom to which the Monarch was denied entry. His eyes lit on The Beast and he smiled grimly. The Beast was, after all, a man true to himself. While others around him roared and waved and stirred themselves to heights of manufactured passion, The Beast sat there looking simply embarrassed. The cause was, to him, more important than victory. He wouldn't cast it aside simply to grasp the opportunity of humiliating his opponent. Bloody idiot.

They were such petty, unworthy specimens. They called themselves politicians, leaders, but none of them understood power. He would show them. And his mother. Show her that he was better than Alistair, had always been better, would always be better than them all. No doubts.

As the first backbencher was called, Urquhart knew what he would say, regardless of the question. But they always asked such predictable questions. It would be the King. And Madam Speaker would object, but he would answer it anyway. Emphasize the principle of keeping the Monarch out of politics. Deprecate their ill-concealed attempt to drag him into partisan warfare. Insinuate that any damned fool could identify problems, the responsible looked for solutions. Encourage them to make as much noise as possible, even if it meant an afternoon of prime ministerial humiliation, to tie themselves as tightly as they could to the King so that they could never unravel the knots. Then, and only then, would it be time to push His Majesty off the mountain top.

'Damn! Damn! Damn!!!' The expletives ricocheted off the walls as Stamper gave vent to his fury, for a moment drowning the television commentary.

Sally and Urquhart were not alone. Stamper sat in one of the large leather armchairs of the Prime Minister's study, agitatedly devouring the news report and his finger nails. For the first time since their relationship had started, she was being shared with someone else. Perhaps Urquhart wanted others to know, maybe she had become a status symbol, another prop for his virility and ego. Or maybe he had simply wanted an audience to witness another of his triumphs. If so, he must be sorely chagrined at the scenes unfolding in front of their eyes. 'In an astonishing finale to the Royal tour this afternoon, the King's press secretary, David Mycroft, announced his resignation,' the reporter intoned.

'I am a homosexual.' The pictures of Mycroft were not particularly clear, there was too much backlighting coming from the windows of the coach, but they were good enough. Surrounded by seated colleagues, sharing news with them as he had done for many years, a player plucking at his audience. This was no fugitive with shifting eyes and sweaty brow, cornered, back to the wall. This was a man in control.

'I had hoped that my private life would remain just that, and not interfere with my responsibilities to the King, but I can no longer be sure of this. So I am resigning.'

"What was the King's response?' a reporter was heard to challenge.

'I don't know. I haven't told him. When last I asked to resign, he refused my resignation. As you all know, he is a man of the utmost compassion and understanding. But the task of the Monarch is more important than any one man, particularly a press aide, and so I have taken it upon myself to relieve him of any responsibility by announcing my resignation publicly, to you. I only hope that His Majesty will understand.' 'But why on earth is being a homosexual a bar to your job?'

Mycroft bent his face into an expression of wry amusement. 'You ask me that question?' He laughed as if someone had made a modestly good joke. No animosity, no snarl of an animal at bay. God, it was a fine performance. 'A press officer is meant to be a channel for news, not the target of it. Speculation about my private life would have made my professional duties impossible.'

'Why have you hidden it all these years?' It was Rochester from the back of the bus.

'Hidden it? I haven't. My marriage broke up recently after many years. I was always faithful to my wife, and I am deeply grateful to her for the years of happiness we spent together. But with that break-up came a new understanding and possibly a final opportunity, to be the man that perhaps I always wanted to be. I have made that choice. I have no regrets.' With apparent utter frankness he had turned the attack. Anyway, most of the people here were old colleagues, friends, nothing could disguise the atmosphere of sympathy and goodwill. Mycroft had chosen his moment, and his interrogators, well.

Urquhart turned off as the TV reporter continued the saga of the Royal aide, whom he described as 'much respected and well liked', against a background of footage from the just-completed tour. 'Selfish bastard,' Stamper muttered. 'I thought you wanted him out,' Sally interjected.

'We wanted him hung, not walking into the sunset with the applause of the crowd ringing in his ears,' snapped Stamper. Sally suspected he was irritated by her presence in what had formerly been an all-male preserve.

'Don't fret, Tim,' Urquhart responded. 'Our target was not Mycroft, but the King. And even as he surveys his realm from the mountain top, the ground beneath his feet is beginning to crumble. Almost time to give him a helping hand. In the small of the back, I think.'

'But you only have a week before… Those images of the tour are killing you, Francis,' she said softly, marvelling at his composure.

He looked at her with narrowed, hard eyes, as if scolding her for lacking faith. 'But there are images, dear Sally, and there are images.' A dark smile split his face but his eyes remained like rock. He crossed to his desk, extracting a small key from his wallet before slowly unlocking a top drawer. He extracted a large manila envelope and spilled its contents across the desk. Every action was meticulous, like a craftsman jeweller displaying his most precious stones. There were photographs, perhaps a dozen of them, all in colour, which he sorted through to select two, holding them up so that Sally and Stamper could clearly see. 'What do you think of them?'

She was uncertain whether he meant the photographs or the pair of breasts they prominently displayed. The two photographs, as all the others, revealed the uninhibited charms of Princess Charlotte. The only variation on the central theme was the precise position of her body and the contortions of the young man with her. 'Oh, I say,' breathed Stamper.

'One of the more onerous burdens of being Prime Minister is that one is entrusted with a variety of secrets. Stories that are never told. Such as the tale of a young military equerry to the Princess who, fearing that his favoured position at the side and on top of the Princess was in jeopardy, took out an insurance policy in the form of these photographs.'

'Oh, I say,' Stamper said once more as he rifled through the other shots.

'It was the equerry's bad luck,' Urquhart continued, 'that he should try to encash the policy with the wrong man, an investigative journalist who also happens to be a former operative for the security services. And so the photographs finished up in my drawer while the unfortunate lovesick boy has been told in no uncertain terms that his testicles will be ripped from his body should any copies find their way around Fleet Street.' He took back the photographs, which Stamper had been clinging to perhaps a moment too long. 'Something tells me, Timothy, that I wouldn't wish to be in his predicament in a few days' time.'

The two men laughed bawdily, but Urquhart noticed that Sally seemed not to be enjoying the moment. 'Something bothering you, Sally?' 'It doesn't feel right. It's the King who is doing the damage to you, not Mycroft or the Princess.' 'The limbs first…' 'But she's done nothing. She's not involved.' 'Bloody soon will be,' snorted Stamper.

'Call it an occupational hazard,' Urquhart added. His smile was stretching more thinly.

'I can't help thinking of her family. The effect on her children.' An edge of stubbornness was beginning to creep into her voice and her full, expressive lips pouted in defiance.

His response was slow and stonily firm. 'War breeds misery. There are many unfortunate victims.'

'Her only sin, Francis, is to be saddled with a healthy sex drive and an inbred English wimp for a husband.' 'Her sin is getting caught.' 'Only because she's a woman!'

'Spare me the collective feminism,' Urquhart snapped in exasperation. 'She's spent a lifetime living off the fat served at the Royal table, and the time has come for her to pay the bill.'

She was about to respond but she saw his eyes flare and pulled herself back. She wasn't going to win this argument and, in pursuing it, she might lose much more. She told herself not to be so naive. Hadn't she always known that a woman's sex was no more than a tool, a weapon, which as often as not fell into the hands of men? She turned away, conceding.

'Tim, make sure these get a good airing, will you? Just a couple for the moment. Leave the rest.'

Stamper nodded and took the opportunity to bend over the desk and rifle once more through the photographs. 'Now, Tim. There's a good fellow.'

Stamper's head came up sharply, his eyes flickering as he looked first at Urquhart, then at Sally, then back to Urquhart. The ember of understanding began to glow in his eyes, and with it rivalry. She was muscling in on his relationship with the boss, and had an advantage not even Stamper with all his guile and gamescraft could match.

'I'll get right to it, Francis.' He gathered up two of the images and looked sharply at Sally. 'Night, one and all.' Then he was gone.

Neither of them spoke for some time. Urquhart tried to appear nonchalant, taking great care to adjust the razor-sharp creases of his trousers, but the softness of the words when eventually they came belied their menace. 'Don't go coy on me now, O Gypsy.' 'She's going to get a very raw deal out of this one.' 'It's them or me.' 'I know.' 'Still on side?'

In answer, she crossed slowly to him and kissed him passionately, forcing her body up against his and her tongue into his mouth. Within seconds his hands were fondling, bruising. She knew his instincts were angry, animal. Roughly he bent her forward across his desk, sweeping his pen tray and telephone to one side and knocking over a framed photograph of his wife. Her skirt was lifted over her back and he was at her, tearing at her underwear, forcing himself inside, kneading the flesh of her buttocks with such intensity that she winced at the bite of his nails. She was prostrate across the desk, her nose and cheek forced flat into the leather top. And she remembered. As a young girl of perhaps thirteen she had taken a short cut through the back alleys of Dorchester on her way to the cinema and there had come face to face with a woman, bent low across the hood of a car. She was black, with bright crimson lips and gaudy eyes which were hard, impatient, bored. The man behind her was fat and white and had sworn at Sally, foul, disgusting words, but he had not stopped. The memory crowded back in all its chilling clarity, as Urquhart's nails dug ever more deeply into her skin and her face was pressed painfully into the scattering of photographs across the desktop. She felt like crying, not in ecstasy but in pain and degradation. Instead, she simply bit her lip.

Mycroft found him on the moors above Balmoral, where he often went when troubled and wanting to be alone, even in the middle of winter with snow on the ground and an easterly wind which had found nothing to obstruct or deflect it since it had gathered strength in the shadows of the Urals two thousand miles away. There were ageless spirits up there, he had once said, which lurked in the crannies of the granite outcrops and sang as they ran with the wind through the rough heather, long after the deer had sought the shelter of lower pastures. The King had seen him coming, but had not offered any greeting. 'I had no choice. We had no choice.'

'We? Since when was I consulted?' The regal tone betrayed a sense of insult and personal hurt. The anger – or was it solely the wind? – brought a bucolic flush to his cheeks and his words came slowly. 'I would have stuck by you.'

'You think I didn't realize that?' It was Mycroft's turn for exasperation. 'That's why I had to take the decision out of your hands. It's time to start following your head rather than your heart.' 'You have committed no offence, David, broken no law.' 'Since when did such things matter? I would have become a monumental distraction. Instead of listening to you they would have been sniggering behind their hands at me. You've taken such personal risks to carry your message across without interference and I would simply have got in the way, another excuse for them to sidetrack and confuse. Don't you see? I didn't resign in spite of you. I resigned because of you.' He paused, searching the mists which clung to the moorland around them and burying himself deeper inside the borrowed ski jacket. 'And, of course, there's someone else. I had to think of him, too. Protect him.' 'I feel almost jealous.'

'That I could love two men in such different ways I never thought possible.' Mycroft's hand reached out to touch the other man on the arm, an unforgivable action between man and Monarch, but the words and the freezing wind seemed to have stripped the formality away. 'What's his name?' 'Kenny.' 'He will always be welcome. With you. At the Palace.'

The King placed his hand to cover that of Mycroft, who lowered his head, weighed down by gratitude and emotion.

'Ours was a very private matter, not something for headlines and the baying of hounds, of having his private life turned inside out,' Mycroft explained.

'Such plants rarely grow when showered in innuendo and the manure of publicity.'

'I'm very much afraid this may all have been too much for him. But thank you.'

The wind sighed through the heather, a low, mournful sound as the light began to fade, like demons of the night come to reclaim their land. 'It has all been such an unhappy accident, David.' 'Funny, but I feel almost relieved, released. No regrets. But no accident, either.' 'Meaning?' 'I'm not a great believer in coincidence. It was timed to detract from your tour, meant to damage you as much as me.' 'By whom?'

'By whoever had a motive to get at you. And by whoever had the opportunity. By someone who knows the Member for Dagenham and who has the resources to track down a private phone number.' 'It would require someone who could sink very low.' 'The lowest. And he will continue his pursuit of you, have no doubts. There will be more.' 'Then I hope I can find your courage.'

'You already have. All you need is the courage to face up to yourself, that's what you said. To play the man – your own words. Facing up to others holds fewer torments, believe me. But I think you already know that.'

'I shall need your advice, David, more than ever if, as you say, it is all to get worse.'

Slowly at first, then with gathering force, drops of cold-hardened rain began to fall across the two lonely figures. Darkness was encroaching fast.

'Then the best advice I have for you, Sir, is for us to get off this bloody moor before we both freeze to death and save Francis Urquhart the bother.'