Читать книгу: «The Woodcutter»

Wolf
i

Once upon a time I was living happily ever after.

That’s right. Like in a fairy tale.

How else to describe my life up till that bright autumn morning back in 2008?

I was the lowly woodcutter who fell in love with a beautiful princess glimpsed dancing on the castle lawn, knew she was so far above him that even his fantasies could get his head chopped off, nonetheless when three seemingly impossible tasks were set as the price of her hand in marriage threw his cap into the ring and after many perilous adventures returned triumphant to claim his heart’s desire.

Here began the happily ever after, the precise extent of which is nowhere defined in fairy literature. In my case it lasted fourteen years.

During this time I acquired a fortune of several millions, a private jet, residences in Holland Park, Devon, New York, Barbados and Umbria, my lovely daughter, Ginny, and a knighthood for services to commerce.

Over the same period my wife Imogen turned from a fragrant young princess into an elegant, sophisticated woman. She ran our social life with easy efficiency, made no demands on me that I could not afford, and always had an appropriate welcome waiting in whichever of our homes I returned to after my often extensive business trips.

Sometimes I looked at her and found it hard to understand how I could deserve such beauty, such happiness. She was my piece of perfection, my heart’s desire, and whenever the stresses and strains of my hugely active life began to make themselves felt, I just had to think of my princess to know that, whatever fate brought me, I was the most blessed of men.

Then on that autumn day – by one of those coincidences that only a wicked fairy can contrive, our wedding anniversary – everything changed.

At half past six in the morning we were woken in our Holland Park house by an extended ringing of the doorbell. I got up and went to the window. My first thought when I saw the police uniforms was that some joker had sent us an anniversary stripaubade. But they didn’t look as if they were about to rip off their uniforms and burst into song, and suddenly my heart contracted at the thought that something could have happened to Ginny. She was away at school – not by my choice, but when the lowly woodcutter marries the princess, there are some ancestral customs he meekly goes along with.

Then it occurred to me they’d hardly need a whole posse of plods to convey such a message.

Nor would they bring a bunch of press photographers and a TV crew.

Imogen was sitting up in bed by this time. Even in these fraught circumstances I was distracted by sight of her perfect breasts.

She said, ‘Wolf, what is it?’ in her usual calm manner.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and see.’

She said, ‘Perhaps you should put some clothes on.’

I grabbed my dressing gown and was still pulling it round my shoulders as I started down the stairs. I could hear voices below. Among them I recognized the Cockney accent of Mrs Roper, our housekeeper. She was crying out in protest and I saw why as I reached the half landing. She must have opened the front door and policemen were thrusting past her without ceremony. Jogging up the stairs towards me was a short fleshy man in a creased blue suit flanked by two uniformed constables.

He came to a halt a couple of steps below me and said breathlessly, ‘Wolf Hadda? Sorry. Sir Wilfred Hadda. Detective Inspector Medler. I have a warrant to search these premises.’

He reached up to hand me a sheet of paper. Below I could hear people moving, doors opening and shutting, Mrs Roper still protesting.

I said, ‘What the hell’s going on?’

His gaze went down to my crotch. His lips twitched. Then his eyes ran up my body and focused beyond me.

He said, ‘Maybe you should make yourself decent, unless you fancy posing for Page Three.’

I turned to see what he was looking at. Through the half-landing window overlooking the garden, I could see the old rowan tree I’d transplanted from Cumbria when I bought the house. It was incandescent with berries at this time of year, and I was incandescent with rage at the sight of a paparazzo clinging to its branches, pointing a camera at me. Even at this distance I could see the damage caused by his ascent.

I turned back to Medler.

‘How did he get there? What are the press doing here anyway? Did you bring them?’

‘Now why on earth should I do that, sir?’ he said. ‘Maybe they just happened to be passing.’

He didn’t even bother to try to sound convincing.

He had an insinuating voice and one of those mouths which looks as if it’s holding back a knowing sneer. I’ve always had a short fuse. At six thirty in the morning, confronted by a bunch of heavy-handed plods tearing my home to pieces and a paparazzo desecrating my lovely rowan, it was very short indeed. I punched the little bastard right in his smug mouth and he went backwards down the stairs, taking one of his constables with him. The other produced his baton and whacked me on the leg. The pain was excruciating and I collapsed in a heap on the landing.

After that things got confused. As I was half dragged, half carried out of the house, I screamed at Imogen, who’d appeared fully dressed on the stairs, ‘Ring Toby!’

She looked very calm, very much in control. Princesses don’t panic. The thought was a comfort to me.

Cameras clicked and journalists yelled inanities as I was thrust into a car. As it sped away, I twisted round to look back. Cops were already coming down the steps carrying loaded bin bags that they tossed into the back of a van. The house, gleaming in the morning sunlight, seemed to look down on them with disdain. Then we turned a corner and it vanished from sight.

I did not realize – how could I? – that I was never to enter it again.

ii

My arrival at the police station seemed to take them by surprise. My arrest at that stage can’t have been anticipated. Once the pain in my leg subsided and my brain started functioning again, I’d worked out that I must be the subject of a Fraud Office investigation. Personal equity companies rise on the back of other companies’ failures and Woodcutter Enterprises had left a lot of unhappy people in its wake. Also the atmosphere on the markets was full of foreboding and when nerves are on edge, malicious tongues soon start wagging.

So being banged up was my own fault. If I hadn’t lost my temper, I would probably be sitting in my own drawing room, refusing to answer any of Medler’s impertinent questions till Toby Estover, my solicitor, arrived. I would have liked to see Medler’s expression when he heard the name. Mr Itsover his colleagues call him, because that’s what the prosecution says when they hear Toby’s acting for the defence. Barristers may get the glory but there are many dodgy characters walking free because they were wise enough and rich enough to hire Toby Estover when the law came calling.

I was treated courteously – I even thought I detected the ghost of a smile on the custody sergeant’s lips when told I’d been arrested for thumping Medler – then put in a cell. Pretty minimalist, but stick a couple of Vettriano prints on the wall and it could have passed for a standard single in a lot of boutique hotels.

I don’t know how long I sat there. I hadn’t been wearing my watch when they arrested me. In fact I hadn’t been wearing anything but my dressing gown. They’d taken that and given me an off-white cotton overall and a pair of plastic flip-flops.

I was just wondering whether to start banging on the door and making a fuss when it opened and Toby came in. It was good to see him, in every sense. As well as having one of the smartest minds I’ve ever known, he dresses to match. Same age as me but slim and elegant. Me, I can make a Savile Row three-piece look like a boiler suit in twenty minutes; Toby would look good in army fatigues. In his Henry Poole threads and John Lobb shoes he looked smooth enough to talk Jesus off the Cross which, had he been in Jerusalem at the time, I daresay he would have done.

I said, ‘Toby, thank God. Have you brought me some clothes?’

He looked surprised and said, ‘No, sorry, old boy. Never crossed my mind.’

‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I thought Imo might have chucked a few things together.’

‘I think she may have other things to occupy her,’ he observed. ‘Let’s sit down and have a chat.’

‘Here?’ I said.

‘Here,’ he said firmly, sitting on the narrow bed. ‘Less chance of being overheard than in an interview room.’

The idea that the police might try to eavesdrop on a client/lawyer conversation troubled me less than the implication that it could contain something damaging to me.

I said, ‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn what they hear. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

‘It’s certainly true that by now you’re unlikely to have anything you think may be hidden,’ he said sardonically. ‘I understand they are still searching the house. But it’s your computers we need to concentrate on. Wolf, we won’t have much time so let’s cut to the chase. I’ve had a word with DI Medler…is it true you hit him, by the way?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said with some satisfaction. ‘You’ll probably see the picture in the tabloids. I’d like to buy the negative and have it blown up for my office wall, if you can fix that. Did Imogen tell you the media were all over the place? There must have been a tip-off from the police. I want you to chase that up vigorously, Toby. There’s been far too much of that kind of thing recently and no one’s ever called to account…’

‘Wolf, for fuck’s sake, shut up.’

I stopped talking. Toby was normally the most courteous of men. OK, he’d heard me on one of my favourite hobby horses before, but there was an urgency in his tone that went far beyond mere exasperation. For the first time I started to feel worried.

I said, ‘Toby, what’s going on? What are the bastards looking for? For God’s sake, I may have cut a few corners in my time, but the business is sound, believe me. Does Johnny Nutbrown know about this? I think we ought to give him a call…’

Nutbrown was my closest friend and finance director at Woodcutter. He was mathematically eidetic. If Johnny and a computer calculation differed, I’d back Johnny every time.

Toby said, ‘Johnny’s not going to be any use here. Medler’s not Fraud. He’s on what used to be called the Vice Squad. Specifically his area is paedophilia. Kiddy porn.’

I laughed in relief. I really did.

I said, ‘In that case, the only reason I’m banged up here is because I hit the smarmy bastard. They’ve had plenty of time to realize they’ve made a huge booboo, and they’re just hoping the media will get tired and go away before I emerge. No chance! I’ll have my say if I’ve got to rent space on TV!’

I stopped talking again, not because of anything Toby said to me but because of the way he was looking at me. Assessingly. That was the word for it. Like a man looking for reassurance and not being convinced he’d found it.

He said, ‘From what Medler said, they feel they have enough evidence to proceed.’

I shook my head in exasperation.

I said, ‘But they’ll have squeezed my hard drive dry by now. What’s the problem? Some encryptions they haven’t been able to break? God, I’m happy to let them in for a quick glance at anything, so long as I’m there…’

Toby said, ‘He spoke as if they’d found…stuff.’

That stopped me in my tracks.

‘Stuff?’ I echoed. ‘You mean kiddy porn? Impossible!’

He just looked at me for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice had taken on its forensic colouring.

‘Wolf, I need to be clear so that I know how to proceed. You are assuring me there is nothing of this nature, no images involving paedophilia, to be found on any computer belonging to you?’

I felt a surge of anger but quickly controlled it. A friend wouldn’t have needed to ask, but Toby was more than my friend, he was my solicitor, and that was how I had to regard him now, in the same way that he was clearly looking at me purely as a client.

I said, ‘Nothing.’

He said, ‘OK,’ stood up and went to the door.

‘So let’s go and see what DI Medler has to say,’ he said.

So hell begins.

iii

I’ll say this for Medler, he didn’t mess around.

He showed me some credit-card statements covering the past year, asked me to confirm they were mine. I said that as they had my name and a selection of my addresses on them, I supposed they must be. He asked me to check them more closely. I glanced over them, identified a couple of large items on each – hotel bills, that kind of thing – and said yes, they were definitely mine. He then drew my attention to a series of payments – mainly to an Internet company called InArcadia – and asked me if I could recall what these were for. I said I couldn’t offhand, which wasn’t surprising as I paid for just about everything in my extremely busy life by one of the vast selection of cards I’d managed to accumulate, but no doubt if I sat down with my secretary we could work out exactly what each and every payment covered.

He shuffled the statements together, put them in a folder, and smiled. His split lip must have hurt but it didn’t stop his smile from being as slyly insinuating as ever.

‘Don’t think we’ll need to involve your secretary, Sir Wilfred,’ he said. ‘We can give your memory a jog by showing you some of the stuff you were paying for.’

Then he opened a laptop resting on the table between us, pressed a key and turned it towards me.

There were stills to start with, then some snatches of video. All involved girls on the cusp of puberty, some displaying themselves provocatively, some being assaulted by men. Years later those images still haunt me.

Thirty seconds was enough. I slammed the laptop lid shut. For a moment I couldn’t speak. I looked towards Toby. Our gazes met. Then he looked away.

I said, ‘Toby, for God’s sake, you don’t think…’

Then I pulled myself together. Whatever was going off here, getting into a public and recorded row with my solicitor wasn’t going to help things.

I said to Medler, ‘Why the hell are you showing me this filth?’

He said, ‘Because we found it on a computer belonging to you, Sir Wilfred. On a computer protected by your password, in an encrypted program accessed by entering a twenty-five digit code and answering three personal questions. Personal to you, I mean. Also, the images in question, and many more, both still and moving, were acquired from the Internet company InArcadia and paid for with various of your credit cards, details of which you have just confirmed.’

The rest of the interview was brief and farcical. Medler made no effort to be subtle. Perhaps the little bastard disliked me so much he didn’t want me to cooperate! He simply fired a fusillade of increasingly offensive questions at me – How long had I been doing this? How deeply involved was I with the people behind InArcadia? Had I ever personally taken part in any of the video sessions? and so on, and so on – never paying the slightest heed to my increasingly vehement denials.

Toby sat there silent as a statue during all this and in the end I forgot my resolve not to have a public row and screamed, ‘For fuck’s sake, man, say something! What the hell do you think I’m paying you for?’

He didn’t reply. I saw him glance at Medler. Maybe I was so wrought up I started imagining things but it seemed to me Toby was looking almost apologetic as if to say, I really don’t want to be here doing this, and Medler gave him a little sympathetic smile as if to reply, yes, I can see how tough it must be for you.

I was at the end of my admittedly short tether. It was a toss up whether I took a swing at my lawyer or the cop. If I had to rationalize I’d say it made more sense to opt for the latter on the grounds that my relationship with him was clearly beyond hope whereas I was still going to need Toby.

Whatever, I gave Medler a busted nose to add to his split lip.

And that brought the interview to a close.

iv

My second journey to my cell was handled less courteously than the first.

The two cops who dragged me there then followed me inside were experts. I lay on the floor, racked with pain for a good half hour after the door crashed shut behind them. But when I recovered enough to examine my body, I realized there was precious little visual evidence of police brutality.

I banged at the door till a constable appeared and told me to shut up. I demanded to see Toby. He went away and came back a few minutes later to say that Mr Estover had left the station. I then said I wanted to make the phone call I was entitled to. How entitled I was, I’d no idea. Like most people my knowledge of criminal law was garnered mainly from TV and movies. The cop went away again and nothing happened for what felt like an hour. I was just about to launch another assault on the door when it opened to reveal Medler. His nose was swollen and he had a couple of stitches in his lip. In his hand was a grip that I recognized as mine. He tossed it towards me and said, ‘Get yourself dressed, Sir Wilfred.’

I opened the bag to see it contained clothing.

I said, ‘Did my wife bring this? Is she here?’

He said, ‘No. She’s gone to stay with a Mrs Nutbrown at her house, Poynters, is it? Out near Saffron Walden.’

I sat down on the bed. OK, so Johnny Nutbrown’s wife, Pippa, was Imogen’s best friend, but the notion that she was running for cover without even attempting to contact me filled me with dismay. And disappointment.

It must have showed, for Medler said roughly, as though he hated offering me any consolation, ‘She had to go. Your daughter was being taken there. The press would have been sniffing round her school in no time. They’re already camped outside your house.’

‘Yes, and whose fault is that?’ I demanded.

‘Yours, I think,’ he said shortly.

I didn’t argue. What was the point? And if Imo and Ginny needed to seek refuge, there were few better places than Poynters. Johnny had bought the half-timbered Elizabethan mansion a couple of years earlier. It must have cost him a fortune. I recall saying to him at the time, I’m obviously paying you too much! He claimed it had once belonged to the Nutbrowns back in the eighteenth century and he’d always known it would come back. The great thing in the present situation was that it was pretty remote and Pippa, who was a bit of a hi-tech nerd, had installed a state-of-the-art security system.

I tipped the clothes he’d brought on to the bed. The jacket trousers and shirt weren’t a great match, which meant they hadn’t been selected by Imogen. Presumably Medler or one of his minions had flung them together. I ripped off the paper overall.

Medler stood watching me.

‘Looking for bruises?’ I said.

He didn’t reply and I turned my back on him. As I pulled on my underpants, there was a brief flash of light. I looked round to see Medler holding a mobile phone.

‘Did you just take a photo?’ I demanded incredulously.

I got that knowing smirk, then he said, ‘That’s a nasty scar you’ve got on your back, Sir Wilfred.’

‘So I believe,’ I said, controlling my temper again. ‘I don’t see a lot of it.’

A man doesn’t spend much time watching his back. Perhaps he ought to. The scar in question dated from when I was thirteen and running wild in the Cumbrian fells. I slipped on an icy rock on Red Pike and tobogganed three hundred feet down into Mosedale. By the time I came to a halt, my clothing had been ripped to shreds and my spine was clearly visible through the torn flesh on my back. Fortunately my fall was seen and the mountain rescue boys stretchered me out to hospital in a relatively short time.

First assessment of the damage offered little hope I would ever walk again. But gradually as they worked on me over several days, their bulletins grew cautiously more optimistic, till finally, much to their amazement, they declared that, while the damage was serious, I had a fair chance of recovery. Six months later, I was back on the fells with nothing to show for my adventure other than a firm conviction of my personal immortality and a lightning-jag scar from between my shoulder blades to the tip of my coccyx.

Was it legal for Medler to take a photo of my naked body without my permission? I wondered.

Whatever, I was determined not to let him think he had worried me, so I carried on dressing and when I was finished I said, ‘Right, now I’d like to phone my wife.’

‘First things first. Sergeant, bring Sir Wilfred along to the charge room.’

Things were moving quickly. Too quickly, perhaps. Arrest, questioning, police custody, these were stages a man could come out of with his reputation intact. There were time limits that applied. Eventually that moment so beloved of TV dramatists would arrive when a solicitor says, ‘Either charge my client or let him go, Inspector.’

But Medler was pre-empting all that.

Foolishly when I realized I was being charged with assault on a police officer in the execution of his duty, I felt relieved. I took this to mean they were still uncertain about their child pornography case. I’d passed through disbelief and outrage to indignation. Either the cops had made a huge mistake or someone was trying to drop me in the shit. Either way, I felt certain I could get it sorted. After all, wasn’t I rich and powerful? I could pay for the best investigators, the best advisors, the best lawyers, and once they got on the case I felt confident that all these obscene allegations would quickly be shown for the nonsense they were.

After the formalities were over, I was about to re-assert my right to call Imogen when Medler took the wind out of my sails by saying, ‘Right, Sir Wilfred, let’s get you to a phone.’

He took me to a small windowless room containing a chair and a table with a phone on it.

‘This is linked to a recorder, I take it?’ I said mockingly.

‘Why? Are you going to say something you don’t want us to hear?’ he asked.

He always slipped away from my questions, I realized.

But what did I expect him to say anyway?

I sat down and Medler went out of the door. It took a few seconds for me to recall the Nutbrowns’ Essex number. I dialled. After six or seven rings, a woman’s voice said cautiously, ‘Yes?’

‘Pippa? Is that you? It’s Wolf.’

She didn’t reply but I heard her call, ‘Imo, it’s him.’

A moment later I heard Imogen’s voice saying, ‘Wolf, how are you?’

She sounded so unworried, so normal that my spirits lifted several degrees. This was not the least of her many qualities, the ability to provide an area of calm in the midst of turbulence. She was always at the eye of the storm.

I said, ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry, we’ll soon get this nonsense sorted out. How about you? Is Ginny with you? How is she?’

‘Yes, she’s here. She’s fine. We’re all fine. Pippa’s being marvellous. There’ve been a couple of calls from the papers. I think that once they realized I’d gone, and Ginny had been taken out of school, they started checking out all possible contacts. They really are most assiduous, aren’t they?’

She sounded almost admiring. I was alarmed.

‘Jesus! What did Pippa say?’

‘She was great. Pretended not to have heard anything about the business, then drove them to distraction by asking them endless silly questions till finally they were glad to ring off.’

‘Good. But it means you’ll have to keep your heads down in case they send someone to take a look for themselves. I blame that little shit Medler for this, he obviously alerted the press in the first place…’

She said, ‘Perhaps. But it was Mr Medler who suggested I got Ginny out of school, then helped smuggle me out of the house without the press noticing.’

This got a mixed reaction from me. Naturally I was pleased my family were safe, but I didn’t like having to feel grateful to Medler. Still, I comforted myself, it was good to know that Imogen’s powers of organization included the police.

I said, ‘I’m glad to hear Medler’s got a conscience. And if the media turn up mob-handed at Pippa’s door, we’ll definitely know who to blame, won’t we?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’ll know who to blame. Wolf, I need to ring off now. I’m expecting a call. I rang home to let them know what was going on. I didn’t want them to start hearing things through the media. I spoke to Daddy but Mummy was out. She’s expected back for lunch, so Daddy said he’d get her to ring me then.’

I bet she’ll enjoy that! I thought savagely. My mother-in-law, Lady Kira Ulphingstone, had never been my greatest fan, though things improved slightly after the birth of Ginny. I suspect she vowed to herself that her granddaughter wasn’t going to make the same ghastly mistake as her mother, and she was clever enough to know that pissing me off all the time might put Ginny outside her sphere of influence. So superficially she thawed a little, but underneath I knew it was the same impenetrable permafrost.

My father-in-law, Sir Leon, on the other hand, though he was a Cumbrian landowner of the old school with political views that erred towards the feudal, had demonstrated the pragmatism of his class by making the best of a bad job. Unlike my own father, Fred. He and Sir Leon had been united in absolute opposition to the marriage, the difference being that Fred’s disapproval survived the ceremony. I can’t blame Dad. After putting him through the wringer by vanishing for five years with only the most minimal attempt at contact, I’d returned, and while he was still trying to get his head round that, I had once more set my will in opposition to his. Any hope of getting back to our old relationship had died then and things had never been the same between us since. That had been the highest price I paid for my fairy-tale happy ending. For fourteen years I had judged it a price worth paying. I was wrong. And though I didn’t know it yet, I was never going to get the chance to tell him so.

I said, ‘Well, we can’t have Mummy getting the engaged signal, can we? But if the journalists start bothering them up there, do try to stop Leon setting the dogs on them. Listen, you couldn’t give Fred a ring, could you? The bastards are likely to have him in their sights too. I’d do it myself soon as I get out of here, but I’m not sure how long that will take.’

‘I asked Daddy to make sure Fred knows,’ she said.

God, she was efficient, I thought admiringly. Even at moments of crisis, she took care of all the details.

She went on, ‘You’re expecting to be out…when?’

‘I don’t know exactly, but it can’t be long,’ I said confidently. ‘You know Toby. He’s helped get serial killers, billion-dollar fraudsters and al-Qaeda terrorists off. I’m sure he can sort out my bit of bother.’

I was exaggerating a bit, less about Toby’s CV than my confidence in his ability to sort out my problem. I recalled the way he’d looked at me. Perhaps he was just too high powered for something like this.

‘Is he there with you now?’ said Imogen.

‘No, he left after…after my interview.’

I hesitated to tell Imogen that I’d assaulted Medler a second time. She’d find out soon enough, but no need to give her extra worry now.

‘Then I’ll hear from you later,’ she said.

‘Of course. Listen, don’t ring off, I’d like a quick word with Ginny.’

There was a pause then she said, ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea. She’s very bewildered by everything that’s happened, naturally. So I gave her a mild sedative and she’s having a rest now.’

I said, ‘OK. Then give her my love and tell her I’ll see her very soon.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Wolf.’

‘Bye,’ I said. ‘I love you.’

But she’d already rung off.

I put the phone down. The fact that Imogen hadn’t felt it necessary to refer to the monstrous allegations being made against me should have been a comfort. But somehow I didn’t feel comforted.

Medler came into the room a moment later, confirming my suspicion he’d probably been listening in.

I said, ‘Look, I need to get Mr Estover back here so that he can speed up whatever rigmarole you people put me through before my release.’

He said, ‘We’ve kept Mr Estover in the picture. He’ll be waiting at the court.’

I said, ‘The court? Which court?’

He said, ‘The magistrate’s court. The hearing’s in half an hour.’

And again, I was relieved!

Magistrate’s court, assault charge, slap on the wrist, hefty fine,

I could be out in a couple of hours organizing my own super-investigation into what the fuck was going on here.

‘So what are we hanging about for?’ I said. ‘Let’s go!’

v

When we reached West End Magistrates Court, the media were already there in force.

I looked at Medler and said, ‘I expect they were just passing, huh?’

He said wearily, ‘You’d better get used to it. You’re in the system now and the system is accessible. Wherever you’re headed, there’ll always be someone ready to make a quick buck by tipping the mob.’

Curiously, this time I believed him.

Inside I was shown into a small windowless room furnished with two chairs and a table. Toby was waiting there. He quickly disabused me of my notion that I’d be in and out in the time it took to sign a cheque.

He said, ‘You’re being charged with assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty and occasioning actual bodily harm. The magistrate can deal with this himself or decide it’s serious enough to commit you to the Crown Court for a jury trial.’

I said, ‘Which is best for me? I mean, which will get me on my way home quickest?’

He regarded me gloomily and said, ‘There are problems either way. The magistrate has the power to jail you for six months…’

‘Six months for hitting a cop?’ I interrupted. ‘There’s people murder their mothers and get less than that, especially when they’ve got you on a retainer!’

He ignored the flattery and said. ‘If on the other hand the beak decides you’re a Crown Court job, then the question of bail arises. Medler would certainly oppose it.’

‘On what grounds?’ I demanded.

‘On the grounds that you are being investigated on more serious charges and that, with your wealth and international connections, there’s a serious risk you might abscond.’

This incensed me as much as anything I’d heard on this increasingly surreal day.

‘Abscond? Why would I? From what, for God’s sake? From these ludicrous kiddy-porn allegations? Give me twenty-four hours to have those properly investigated and they’ll vanish like snow off a dyke. And how the hell can Medler claim they’re more serious anyhow? You said I could get six months for punching his stupid face. That pop singer they sent down for having child abuse images on his computer only got three months, didn’t he?’

Toby said, ‘There have been developments. I’m far from sure exactly what’s going on, but they’ve raided your offices. Also we’re getting word that simultaneous raids are being carried out on your other premises worldwide, domestic and commercial.’

I think that was the moment when I first felt a chill of fear beneath the volcano of anger and indignation that had been simmering inside me since I met Medler coming up my stairs.

I sank heavily on to a chair.

‘Toby,’ I said, ‘what the fuck’s going on?’

Before he could answer, the door opened and Medler’s face appeared.

‘Nearly done, Mr Estover?’ he said.

‘Give us another minute,’ said Toby.

Medler glanced at me. What he saw in my face seemed to please him.

He gave me one of his smug smiles and said, ‘OK. One minute.’

It was the smile that provoked me to my next bit of stupidity. To me it seemed to say, Now you’re starting to realize we’ve really got you by the short and curlies!

I said to Toby, ‘Give me your mobile.’

He said, ‘Why?’

I said, ‘For fuck’s sake, just give it to me!’

In the Observer profile when I got my knighthood, they talked about what they called my in-your-face abrasive manner. When I read the draft, I rang up to request, politely I thought, that this phrase should be modified. After I’d been talking to the feature writer for a few minutes, he said, ‘Hang on. Something I’d like you to listen to.’ And he played me back a tape of what I’d just been saying.

When it finished, I said, ‘Jesus. Print your piece the way it is. And send me a copy of that tape.’

I made a genuine effort to tone down my manner after that, but it wasn’t easy. I paid my employees top dollar and I didn’t expect to have to repeat anything I said to them. That included solicitors, even if they happened to be friends.

I thrust my hand out towards Toby. It took him a second or two, but in the end he put his mobile into my palm.

I thumbed in 999.

When the operator asked, ‘Which service?’ I said, ‘Police.’

Toby’s eyes widened.

When he heard what I said next, it was a wonder they didn’t pop right out of their sockets.

‘The Supreme Council of the People’s Jihad has spoken. There is a bomb in West End Magistrate’s Court. In three and a half minutes all the infidel gathered there will be joining their accursed ancestors in the fires of Hell. Allahu Akbar!’

Toby’s face was grey.

‘For God’s sake, Wolf, you can’t…’

‘Shut up,’ I said, putting the phone in my pocket. ‘Now we’ll see just how efficient all these new anti-terrorist strategies really are.’

They were pretty good, I have to admit.

Within less than a minute I heard the first sounds of activity outside the door.

Toby said, ‘This is madness. We’ve got to tell them…’

I poked him hard in the stomach.

It served a double purpose. It shut him up and when the door opened and Medler said, ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out of here,’ I was able to reply, ‘Mr Estover’s not feeling well. I think we ought to get a doctor.’

‘Not here, outside!’ commanded Medler.

I got one of Toby’s arms over my shoulder and began moving him through the door. I looked appealingly at Medler. He didn’t look happy, but to give him credit he didn’t hesitate. He hooked Toby’s other arm over his shoulder and we joined the flood of people pouring down the corridor towards the exit.

To create urgency without causing panic is no easy task and I think the police and court officers did pretty well. But of course the last people to get the message are very aware that there’s a large crowd between them and safety, and they want it to move a lot faster than it seems to be doing. Two men dragging a third along between them forms a pretty effective bung and all I had to do as the lobby came in sight was to cease resisting the growing pressure behind me and let myself be swept towards the exit on the tide.

I don’t know at what point Medler realized I was no longer with him. I didn’t look back but burst out of the building into the sunlight to be confronted by a uniformed constable who shouted at me. For a second I thought my escape was going to be very short lived. Then I realized that what he was shouting was, ‘Get away from the building! Run!’

I ran. Everyone was running. I felt a surge of exhilaration. It must feel like this to start a marathon, I thought. All those months of training and now the moment was here to put your fitness to the test.

My marathon lasted about a quarter of a mile, firstly because I was now far enough away from the court for a running man to attract attention and secondly because I was knackered. I still tried to keep reasonably fit but clearly the days when I could roam twenty miles across the Cumbrian fells without breaking sweat were long past.

I was beginning to feel anything but exhilarated. My sense of self-congratulation at getting away was being replaced by serious self-doubt. What did I imagine I was going to do with my freedom? Head up to Poynters to see Imogen and Ginny? That would be the first place Medler would set his dogs to watch. Or was my plan to set about proving my innocence like they do all the time in the movies? I’d need professional help to do that and no legitimate investigator was going to risk his licence aiding and abetting a fugitive. OK, the promise of large sums of money might make one or two of them bend the rules a little, but only if they believed I still had easy access to large sums of money.

And now I came to think about it, I didn’t even have access to small sums of money. In fact, I had absolutely nothing in my pockets except for Toby’s phone. I was an idiot. I should have made him hand over his wallet as well!

My horizons had shrunk. Without money I wasn’t going anywhere I couldn’t reach on my own two feet. The obvious places to lay my hands on cash – home in Holland Park, my offices in the City – were out because they were so obvious.

Well, as my Great Aunt Carrie was fond of saying, if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. Probably saying that would get you stuck on the pointed end of a fatwa nowadays. But Carrie lived all her life in Cumberland where they knew a lot about the intractability of mountains and bugger all about the intractability of Islam.

I took out Toby’s phone and rang Johnny Nutbrown on his mobile.

When he answered I said, ‘Johnny, it’s me. Meet me in twenty minutes at the Black Widow.’

I thought I was being clever when I said that. No reason why anybody should be listening in to Johnny, but even if they were, unless the Met was recruiting Smart Young Things, even less reason for them to know this was how habitués referred to The Victoria pub in Chelsea. Not that I was ever a Smart Young Thing, but Johnny had taken me there once and been greeted as an old chum by the swarming Dysons, i.e. vacuums so empty they don’t even contain a bag. I’d committed the place to my memory as somewhere I’d no intention of visiting again.

Circumstances change cases. It’s being nimble on your feet that keeps you ahead of the game in business and in life.

I soon realized that I was going to need to be exceedingly nimble on my feet if I was going to make the Widow in twenty minutes. Being chauffeured around in an S-class Merc tends to make you insensitive to distances. Might have done it if I’d started running again but neither my legs nor my need for discretion permitted that. Not that it mattered. Johnny would wait. In fact, come to think of it, he too would be hard pushed to make it through the lunchtime traffic in much under half an hour.

I took thirty-five minutes. As I entered the crowded bar my first thought was that we were going to have to find somewhere a lot quieter to have a chat. I couldn’t see Johnny. At six feet seven, he was usually pretty easy to spot, even in a crowd, but I pushed a little further into the room just to make sure.

No sign, but I did notice a man at the bar, not because he was tall, though he was; nor because he had the kind of face that defies you to make it smile, though he did. No, it was just that somehow he looked out of place. That is, he looked like an ordinary guy who’d just dropped in for a quick half in his lunch break. Except that this was the kind of bar that ordinary guys in search of a quick half reversed out of at speed. He was raising a bottle of Pils to his mouth. As he did so his gaze met mine for a moment and registered…something. Maybe he’d just realized how much he’d had to pay for the Pils. He drank, lowered his head, and I saw his lips move. Nowadays everyone knows what men speaking into their lapels are doing.

I didn’t turn back to the main door. If I’d got it right, the guys he was talking to would be coming in through there pretty quickly. Instead I followed a sign reading Toilets and found myself in a deadend corridor. I peered into the Gents. Windowless. I pushed open the door of the Ladies. That looked better. A frosted-glass pane about eighteen inches square. There was a bin for the receipt of towels. I stood on it and examined the catch. It didn’t look as if it had been opened in years and the frame was firmly painted in place. I stepped down, picked up the bin and hit the glass hard. Cheap stuff, it shattered easily. Behind me I heard a door open. I swung round but it was only a woman coming out of one of the cubicles. I’ll say this for the Dysons, they don’t do swoons or hysterics.

She said, ‘About time they aired this place out.’

I rattled the bin around the frame to dislodge the residual shards, put the bin on the floor once more, stood on it and launched myself through the window. As I did so, I heard another door open and male voices shouting.

I felt my trousers tear, then my leg, so my clear-up technique hadn’t been all that successful. I hit the ground awkwardly, doing something to my shoulder. I was dazed but able to see that I was in a narrow alley. One way it ran into a brick wall, the other on to a busy street. I staggered towards the street.

Behind me, voices. Ahead, a crowded pavement. I could vanish into the crowd, I told myself. I glanced back. Two men coming very quick. I commanded my legs to move faster and the old in-your-face-abrasive technique worked.

I erupted on to the pavement at a fair rate of knots, decided that turning left or right would slow me down, so kept on going.

The thing about London buses is you can wait forever when you want one in a hurry, but if you don’t want one…

I saw it coming, even saw the driver’s shocked face, almost saw the number…

Then I saw no more.