Part One Hundred and Twelve
"Sir Ian," Came Lawrence James's harsh voice, abruptly disturbing Sir Ian's mental deliberations. "Have you seen the news in today's Times? I think you ought to read it."
The first sign of Sir Ian's displeasure of being interrupted showed when he squinted in the direction of the unusually flustered man as he tried to switch the train of his thoughts. In the meantime, Lawrence James placed the large newspaper on his desk, over the top of his paperwork, and noisily rustled it open to the relevant page. It was the way he glared at Lawrence James that showed the full impact of the unseemly disturbance by this alien intrusion into Sir Ian's neat and ordered world as symbolised by his desk.
"There, sir, at the bottom of column four," He gesticulated eagerly.
"Thank you, I can read," Came the acid reply.
His eyes flitted their way along the neat columns and right in the bottom right hand corner was the item.
"Prison officer found dead in suspicious circumstances."
Following the discovery yesterday of the murder of James Fenner, Principle Officer at Larkhall Prison, the police are investigating all possible leads as to who was in the vicinity of Epping Forest where his body was found, who may have noticed anything unusual, and who may have seen him. They are also tracing his last known movements on that day and are appealing to anyone to come forward with information."
"Did you see anything about this on the news yesterday, Lawrence?" Sir Ian asked sharply.
"No sir. I took my wife and son out to her parents and we were busy all day. Didn't you notice anything yourself, Sir?" Lawrence James asked anxiously.
Damn the man for asking such a fatuous question. If he had known, he would have said.
"What does this mean for the Department?" he said.
Sir Ian was trying to get his head round this one. At the back of his mind he was aware that a court case was brewing of which he was privy to advance information. He wondered in retrospect what had made him unaccountably diverge from his habitual instinct to pour oil over troubled waters, to sideline all troublemakers and to reward the compliant. He knew that sooner or later, the name of Larkhall Prison would be bandied about in the corridors of power but that there was no need for him to publicly admit knowledge until it became official. Handling information that came to his ears was a large part of the skills that he had acquired over the years. Open government was a contradiction in terms.
And now the man was dead. He felt nothing about the man personally as he had only seen him from a distance when he sat at the back of the Old Bailey and he testified in court in the Atkins/Pilkinton trial. He had that strange sensation that all normal processes, the way he expected himself to conduct his business in this matter were suddenly cut short, his highly developed instinct to prepare for trouble found the source of trouble suddenly removed. It was as if a man, whose leg had been amputated in an operation, still felt the familiar nerve endings and the sensations in his ankle and toes and the feel of the shoe on his foot. He was mentally flinching for no real reason. He was experiencing that very rare feeling of disorientation more than anything because his uncharacteristic refusal to act had somehow removed the problem. This went against all his long experience in the Civil Service.
"For the moment, nothing," Sir Ian said decisively. "There will be the police investigation which may or may not apprehend the criminal. We don't know if some tabloid rag will divulge any scandal against the man's past life."
Sir Ian hesitated a second as the thought struck him that this man's life was wholly in the past, no present or future for him.
"The whole thrust of the civil case will come to nothing as there is nothing more that can be done to the man," He finished.
"We cannot be sure that we are out of the woods, sir," Lawrence James said anxiously.
Sir Ian shut his eyes. That was not the most fortunate choice of words to have been made as it recalled James Fenner's fate. He had to admit to himself that the whole matter was distasteful and unpleasant and the whole matter of the buried body had a sinister flavour about it. He did not want to dwell on it too much as his sudden sense of Man's mortality was quite enough for him to deal with.
"Tomorrow is another day, Lawrence. We have other work to do," Sir Ian said as he carefully folded the newspaper and placed it on the remotest corner of his desk. These words cued in the smoothly operating machinery of power clicking into gear and another normal day unfolding.
DI Sullivan and Ds Greer's white police car drew up outside the front gates of Larkhall Prison. He remembered coming to this dump before and hoped that he would have a more successful outcome this time. They checked in at the gatelodge and were ready to turn the place over. They were part of an enquiry team thrown like a dragnet across several police areas and their chief constable had briefed them that this was a high profile case and to dig up any possible leads and no excuses.
"Can you remember this James Fenner when we were here last time?" DS Greer asked DI Sullivan.
"Not to my knowledge. The only prison officer that I remember was that know all Karen Betts who was Wing Governor," Came the reply in a hard Scottish accent and an edge of anger. He had not forgotten or forgiven the way he was made a fool of when some con died of an allergy due to an overdose of nuts instead of his theory that it was poison and that spiky haired kid was the one in the frame, Shaz Wiley. He had a gut instinct for the criminal type and went at it like a terrier until he got results.
"Miss Betts, I believe we've met before," Came his greeting to a woman who looked slightly ill at ease and nervous and not the very hard, sarcastic dominant woman whom he had remembered.
"We have a room set up for you, the same one as when you came last time," She said with a slightly distracted air.
"Can we have a word with you first in half an hour as we want to question you about the deceased man."
"Sure," Came the reply which betrayed a flicker of unease in her voice. In reality, it was the reference to the way that Jim Fenner was referred to that disturbed her. Added to that, she had her own troubles which the police were not to know of.
"I'll come to the point," DI Sullivan said, stretching himself comfortably in his chair. "We've got the statement alleging that he'd raped you. You're not going to say that you're sorry that he's out of the way, are you?" In his best sarcastic tone underpinned by the need for a bit of personal payback, he started the process of flushing out information to narrow down the possibilities and to apprehend the criminal. Larkhall was on his patch and this was a promising place for his team to start.
"I've locked up criminals for a living for more than eleven years. I'm not about to start to become one at my time of life," Came her stinging reply.
"Just asking. We have to explore all possibilities, don't we DS Greer?"
"Quite," Came Karen's tight smile and her reply that recalled to her a favourite John Deed line that he employed to the likes of Brian Cantwell.
"Do you have any theories as to who might be the killer? After all, you are the Wing Governor."
"Jim Fenner was a long serving prison officer and, inevitably, he came across prisoners over the course of time who took exception to him. More than that, I can't say."
Damn the woman, DI Sullivan thought angrily and he curtly finished the first interview.
"Mr Fenner?" Julie S exclaimed, looking wide eyed. "It was a real shame the way he got done in. Lost our favourite screw, I mean prison officer, haven't we, Ju."
"I remember the time we saw it on the news saying that Larkhall will be a very different place without him. Those were my very words, weren't they, Ju."
This was the prelude to a very frustrating tour of Larkhall where every prisoner had graduated with flying colours from the criminal female finishing school at the art of obfuscating, at suddenly going off the point with irrelevant details and making his brain ache with the effort required to skim through the verbal outpourings for that one chance remark which might give him something to go on. Give him a male prisoner to sink his teeth into and he would be a happier man. DS Greer came to the fore, more and more, in the endless questioning to give him a break.
The prison officers weren't much better with that clodhopping Mrs Hollamby telling the same story as that Miss Barker with her wide open slightly vacant eyes. They might as well have rehearsed their scripts in advance.
"So you are saying that the deceased man…"
"Jim Fenner you are talking about," Mrs Hollamby sniffily interrupted.
"…..Jim Fenner was a pillar of this establishment and that he had absolutely no enemies, either inmates past or present or fellow officers?"
"Of course, there have been some murdering psychopaths who have moved on. Larkhall has a better class of prisoners these days, none of whom have the slightest grudge against him. And all the prison officers have to stand together. You have to as Joe Public doesn't understand as you know from your job," Bodybag finished with a curious mixture of venom and blandishment and an ingratiating smile on her face while her eyes looked in every direction but his.
"You make Larkhall Prison sound like a four star hotel," DI Sullivan replied sarcastically.
"Well we do our best. Don't we?" Came the vacuous reply which prompted the police to move to the next interview.
"Come on, Di," Bodybag said out of earshot. "We've got to report to Her Majesty what we've said to the police. I bet she's delighted that Jim Fenner is no longer around her any more. She's a funny woman, that one, and she never really appreciated him. He'll be a great loss to Larkhall. It seems like the end of an era," She finished reflectively as she couldn't banish from her mind's eye the visual imprint of the tall dark man and his place in the PO's room and his voice echoing in her mind with his wise words of jailcraft which she took to heart many years ago.
The last PO, whose full name he didn't remember, a bad sign for his thought processes, but he could vaguely remember as Selena, spoke in a cool voice, almost too controlled.
"I'm fairly new here and I really didn't know Jim Fenner very well at all. I'm sorry I can't be of more help."
She smiled to herself as she went out the door as it meant that the man whom she'd swiftly figured out as a sexual predator was no longer around and that her sexual tastes which ran in an entirely different direction could be safely concealed behind a glamorous exterior. After all, all lesbians wore trousers, didn't they? She was on the wing that evening and she heard the cheers from the TV room when the news broke but she wasn't saying anything. It meant that her love life was all the safer from the likes of that sleasy man..
After the interview, DI Sullivan slumped in his chair and ran his hands upwards through his hair, a pounding headache temporarily blocking his thought processes.
"We're getting nowhere here, are we?" Came DS Greer's statement of the blindingly obvious.
"We'll have a talk with the Governing Governor, Mr Neil Grayling and then we'll shoot off to the pub. Might as well make up on our subsistence payments and get something out of our investigations."
To begin with, Grayling was as infuriating as the rest of the inhabitants of Larkhall and he came out with the sort of management bullshit that was as infuriating as the lies and excuses of the rest of the inhabitants of Larkhall, both sides of the prison bars.
"Of course, you will know about the recent trial of Tracy Pilkinton better known as Snowball Merriman and her boyfriend Ritchie Atkins who conspired together to blow up the library, me included, as cover for her attempted escape. Ms Pilkinton was an inmate of this establishment and, after the trial, in which Jim Fenner gave evidence for the prosecution, both committed suicide. She has no known family but Ritchie Atkins has family on the outside. Apparently, the Atkins family have a certain notoriety."
At last, the lead they were looking for. DI Sullivan shook Grayling's hand warmly and made their way out of the prison. His instinct in his investigations had been to place more trust in going to the bottom of the organisation with more chance of worming out the truth and leave the boss to the last. After all, his Chief Constable knew sod all about how he did his job but this time, the least likely chance had turned up trumps.
Neil had not slept well for the past week since he had tried to get George on side only to be frustrated by her strange unaccountable desire to make some irrational crusade. He'd had a run of nights where the vision of being interrogated by the man from whom all his power and self esteem flowed, and his cold blue eyes and the scowl on his face banishing him into exile. That worried him as he put everything into his career and, if that were ruined, as Joe Channing had threatened him with, who was he. Everything had changed on that Sunday evening when, in a moment of boredom, he put the television on to distract him from his thoughts.
Neil Houghton arrived at work on Monday with a spring in his step. He had watched the news the night before and the sober sounding BBC presenter announcing James Fenner's death caused an evil smile to wrap itself round his face. He could do without listening to the sympathetic details as the man was not a constituent of his. It was someone else's problem and not his. He stayed glued to the television clicking onto the latest news from all channels with the delicious feeling welling up inside him. So much for George Channing's would be crusade, was the thought that went round and round in his mind. He reached to the drinks cupboard and poured himself a large measure of whisky and let the alcohol and the feeling of being politically saved warm what passed for his soul.
"Dead men don't talk," He said to himself, as he toasted the unknown murderer who had very conveniently buried a political embarrassment in the safest place that he knew, the grave. The man was an ordinary run of the mill minor functionary in the Prison service and, so long as any 'kiss and tell' stories surfaced in rags like the "News of the World" from some money hungry enemy with a grudge, then he could draw a line under…… Whatever irregularities he may have been guilty of in his lifetime would fade into the past as who reads yesterday's papers? There would be no civil case against area, no tabloid exposure as George had predicted. Everyone holding the reins of power, himself included, could sleep a little more soundly in their beds at night and get on with running the country.
The Cabinet meeting was an unusually pleasant affair. Today's items on the agenda included a 'hot spots and good news' item which caused the less successful ministers to become nervous and apologetic and the more successful to brag of the accomplishments of 'their ministries' in terms that their personal achievements. What was intended to raise concerns before they blew up into major crises operated as an exhibition of self-aggrandisement or alternatively, as a tortuous, verbose exercise in face saving. Each minister looked intently as it came close to his or her turn.
"There is a continuing concern in the matter of the potential bad press due to the scare stories of mobile phones causing brain tumours. Our Department is continuing to collate the latest scientific research and will be available for the mobile phone companies so that they aren't caught short as One way PLC were. The Attorney General tells me that there are no court cases on the horizon but we do not intend to be complacent. On the good side is the 4% increase in the last three months seasonally adjusted figures for arms sales overseas. Now that Robin Cook's so called 'ethical policies' have been discredited." And here Neil broke into a wide smile which others round the table joined in. "Our country is in the position of being one step ahead of the competition."
"Well done, Neil," Came the smile of approval from the head of the table before his cold blue eyes turned to the next in line. "That's what I like to hear. A run of good news……."
Much later, when they touched on the main press stories, the cabinet agreed that the front-page criticisms of the modernisation of the public services demanded a robust rebuttal and for a dedicated team to be set up specifically to influence the press. And the copy of the story on Page 4 of the Times that was left in the Cabinet room was quietly folded up and left for anyone to pick up and read in an idle moment, probably the cleaner.
"Sir Ian," Came Lawrence James's harsh voice, abruptly disturbing Sir Ian's mental deliberations. "Have you seen the news in today's Times? I think you ought to read it."
The first sign of Sir Ian's displeasure of being interrupted showed when he squinted in the direction of the unusually flustered man as he tried to switch the train of his thoughts. In the meantime, Lawrence James placed the large newspaper on his desk, over the top of his paperwork, and noisily rustled it open to the relevant page. It was the way he glared at Lawrence James that showed the full impact of the unseemly disturbance by this alien intrusion into Sir Ian's neat and ordered world as symbolised by his desk.
"There, sir, at the bottom of column four," He gesticulated eagerly.
"Thank you, I can read," Came the acid reply.
His eyes flitted their way along the neat columns and right in the bottom right hand corner was the item.
"Prison officer found dead in suspicious circumstances."
Following the discovery yesterday of the murder of James Fenner, Principle Officer at Larkhall Prison, the police are investigating all possible leads as to who was in the vicinity of Epping Forest where his body was found, who may have noticed anything unusual, and who may have seen him. They are also tracing his last known movements on that day and are appealing to anyone to come forward with information."
"Did you see anything about this on the news yesterday, Lawrence?" Sir Ian asked sharply.
"No sir. I took my wife and son out to her parents and we were busy all day. Didn't you notice anything yourself, Sir?" Lawrence James asked anxiously.
Damn the man for asking such a fatuous question. If he had known, he would have said.
"What does this mean for the Department?" he said.
Sir Ian was trying to get his head round this one. At the back of his mind he was aware that a court case was brewing of which he was privy to advance information. He wondered in retrospect what had made him unaccountably diverge from his habitual instinct to pour oil over troubled waters, to sideline all troublemakers and to reward the compliant. He knew that sooner or later, the name of Larkhall Prison would be bandied about in the corridors of power but that there was no need for him to publicly admit knowledge until it became official. Handling information that came to his ears was a large part of the skills that he had acquired over the years. Open government was a contradiction in terms.
And now the man was dead. He felt nothing about the man personally as he had only seen him from a distance when he sat at the back of the Old Bailey and he testified in court in the Atkins/Pilkinton trial. He had that strange sensation that all normal processes, the way he expected himself to conduct his business in this matter were suddenly cut short, his highly developed instinct to prepare for trouble found the source of trouble suddenly removed. It was as if a man, whose leg had been amputated in an operation, still felt the familiar nerve endings and the sensations in his ankle and toes and the feel of the shoe on his foot. He was mentally flinching for no real reason. He was experiencing that very rare feeling of disorientation more than anything because his uncharacteristic refusal to act had somehow removed the problem. This went against all his long experience in the Civil Service.
"For the moment, nothing," Sir Ian said decisively. "There will be the police investigation which may or may not apprehend the criminal. We don't know if some tabloid rag will divulge any scandal against the man's past life."
Sir Ian hesitated a second as the thought struck him that this man's life was wholly in the past, no present or future for him.
"The whole thrust of the civil case will come to nothing as there is nothing more that can be done to the man," He finished.
"We cannot be sure that we are out of the woods, sir," Lawrence James said anxiously.
Sir Ian shut his eyes. That was not the most fortunate choice of words to have been made as it recalled James Fenner's fate. He had to admit to himself that the whole matter was distasteful and unpleasant and the whole matter of the buried body had a sinister flavour about it. He did not want to dwell on it too much as his sudden sense of Man's mortality was quite enough for him to deal with.
"Tomorrow is another day, Lawrence. We have other work to do," Sir Ian said as he carefully folded the newspaper and placed it on the remotest corner of his desk. These words cued in the smoothly operating machinery of power clicking into gear and another normal day unfolding.
DI Sullivan and Ds Greer's white police car drew up outside the front gates of Larkhall Prison. He remembered coming to this dump before and hoped that he would have a more successful outcome this time. They checked in at the gatelodge and were ready to turn the place over. They were part of an enquiry team thrown like a dragnet across several police areas and their chief constable had briefed them that this was a high profile case and to dig up any possible leads and no excuses.
"Can you remember this James Fenner when we were here last time?" DS Greer asked DI Sullivan.
"Not to my knowledge. The only prison officer that I remember was that know all Karen Betts who was Wing Governor," Came the reply in a hard Scottish accent and an edge of anger. He had not forgotten or forgiven the way he was made a fool of when some con died of an allergy due to an overdose of nuts instead of his theory that it was poison and that spiky haired kid was the one in the frame, Shaz Wiley. He had a gut instinct for the criminal type and went at it like a terrier until he got results.
"Miss Betts, I believe we've met before," Came his greeting to a woman who looked slightly ill at ease and nervous and not the very hard, sarcastic dominant woman whom he had remembered.
"We have a room set up for you, the same one as when you came last time," She said with a slightly distracted air.
"Can we have a word with you first in half an hour as we want to question you about the deceased man."
"Sure," Came the reply which betrayed a flicker of unease in her voice. In reality, it was the reference to the way that Jim Fenner was referred to that disturbed her. Added to that, she had her own troubles which the police were not to know of.
"I'll come to the point," DI Sullivan said, stretching himself comfortably in his chair. "We've got the statement alleging that he'd raped you. You're not going to say that you're sorry that he's out of the way, are you?" In his best sarcastic tone underpinned by the need for a bit of personal payback, he started the process of flushing out information to narrow down the possibilities and to apprehend the criminal. Larkhall was on his patch and this was a promising place for his team to start.
"I've locked up criminals for a living for more than eleven years. I'm not about to start to become one at my time of life," Came her stinging reply.
"Just asking. We have to explore all possibilities, don't we DS Greer?"
"Quite," Came Karen's tight smile and her reply that recalled to her a favourite John Deed line that he employed to the likes of Brian Cantwell.
"Do you have any theories as to who might be the killer? After all, you are the Wing Governor."
"Jim Fenner was a long serving prison officer and, inevitably, he came across prisoners over the course of time who took exception to him. More than that, I can't say."
Damn the woman, DI Sullivan thought angrily and he curtly finished the first interview.
"Mr Fenner?" Julie S exclaimed, looking wide eyed. "It was a real shame the way he got done in. Lost our favourite screw, I mean prison officer, haven't we, Ju."
"I remember the time we saw it on the news saying that Larkhall will be a very different place without him. Those were my very words, weren't they, Ju."
This was the prelude to a very frustrating tour of Larkhall where every prisoner had graduated with flying colours from the criminal female finishing school at the art of obfuscating, at suddenly going off the point with irrelevant details and making his brain ache with the effort required to skim through the verbal outpourings for that one chance remark which might give him something to go on. Give him a male prisoner to sink his teeth into and he would be a happier man. DS Greer came to the fore, more and more, in the endless questioning to give him a break.
The prison officers weren't much better with that clodhopping Mrs Hollamby telling the same story as that Miss Barker with her wide open slightly vacant eyes. They might as well have rehearsed their scripts in advance.
"So you are saying that the deceased man…"
"Jim Fenner you are talking about," Mrs Hollamby sniffily interrupted.
"…..Jim Fenner was a pillar of this establishment and that he had absolutely no enemies, either inmates past or present or fellow officers?"
"Of course, there have been some murdering psychopaths who have moved on. Larkhall has a better class of prisoners these days, none of whom have the slightest grudge against him. And all the prison officers have to stand together. You have to as Joe Public doesn't understand as you know from your job," Bodybag finished with a curious mixture of venom and blandishment and an ingratiating smile on her face while her eyes looked in every direction but his.
"You make Larkhall Prison sound like a four star hotel," DI Sullivan replied sarcastically.
"Well we do our best. Don't we?" Came the vacuous reply which prompted the police to move to the next interview.
"Come on, Di," Bodybag said out of earshot. "We've got to report to Her Majesty what we've said to the police. I bet she's delighted that Jim Fenner is no longer around her any more. She's a funny woman, that one, and she never really appreciated him. He'll be a great loss to Larkhall. It seems like the end of an era," She finished reflectively as she couldn't banish from her mind's eye the visual imprint of the tall dark man and his place in the PO's room and his voice echoing in her mind with his wise words of jailcraft which she took to heart many years ago.
The last PO, whose full name he didn't remember, a bad sign for his thought processes, but he could vaguely remember as Selena, spoke in a cool voice, almost too controlled.
"I'm fairly new here and I really didn't know Jim Fenner very well at all. I'm sorry I can't be of more help."
She smiled to herself as she went out the door as it meant that the man whom she'd swiftly figured out as a sexual predator was no longer around and that her sexual tastes which ran in an entirely different direction could be safely concealed behind a glamorous exterior. After all, all lesbians wore trousers, didn't they? She was on the wing that evening and she heard the cheers from the TV room when the news broke but she wasn't saying anything. It meant that her love life was all the safer from the likes of that sleasy man..
After the interview, DI Sullivan slumped in his chair and ran his hands upwards through his hair, a pounding headache temporarily blocking his thought processes.
"We're getting nowhere here, are we?" Came DS Greer's statement of the blindingly obvious.
"We'll have a talk with the Governing Governor, Mr Neil Grayling and then we'll shoot off to the pub. Might as well make up on our subsistence payments and get something out of our investigations."
To begin with, Grayling was as infuriating as the rest of the inhabitants of Larkhall and he came out with the sort of management bullshit that was as infuriating as the lies and excuses of the rest of the inhabitants of Larkhall, both sides of the prison bars.
"Of course, you will know about the recent trial of Tracy Pilkinton better known as Snowball Merriman and her boyfriend Ritchie Atkins who conspired together to blow up the library, me included, as cover for her attempted escape. Ms Pilkinton was an inmate of this establishment and, after the trial, in which Jim Fenner gave evidence for the prosecution, both committed suicide. She has no known family but Ritchie Atkins has family on the outside. Apparently, the Atkins family have a certain notoriety."
At last, the lead they were looking for. DI Sullivan shook Grayling's hand warmly and made their way out of the prison. His instinct in his investigations had been to place more trust in going to the bottom of the organisation with more chance of worming out the truth and leave the boss to the last. After all, his Chief Constable knew sod all about how he did his job but this time, the least likely chance had turned up trumps.
Neil had not slept well for the past week since he had tried to get George on side only to be frustrated by her strange unaccountable desire to make some irrational crusade. He'd had a run of nights where the vision of being interrogated by the man from whom all his power and self esteem flowed, and his cold blue eyes and the scowl on his face banishing him into exile. That worried him as he put everything into his career and, if that were ruined, as Joe Channing had threatened him with, who was he. Everything had changed on that Sunday evening when, in a moment of boredom, he put the television on to distract him from his thoughts.
Neil Houghton arrived at work on Monday with a spring in his step. He had watched the news the night before and the sober sounding BBC presenter announcing James Fenner's death caused an evil smile to wrap itself round his face. He could do without listening to the sympathetic details as the man was not a constituent of his. It was someone else's problem and not his. He stayed glued to the television clicking onto the latest news from all channels with the delicious feeling welling up inside him. So much for George Channing's would be crusade, was the thought that went round and round in his mind. He reached to the drinks cupboard and poured himself a large measure of whisky and let the alcohol and the feeling of being politically saved warm what passed for his soul.
"Dead men don't talk," He said to himself, as he toasted the unknown murderer who had very conveniently buried a political embarrassment in the safest place that he knew, the grave. The man was an ordinary run of the mill minor functionary in the Prison service and, so long as any 'kiss and tell' stories surfaced in rags like the "News of the World" from some money hungry enemy with a grudge, then he could draw a line under…… Whatever irregularities he may have been guilty of in his lifetime would fade into the past as who reads yesterday's papers? There would be no civil case against area, no tabloid exposure as George had predicted. Everyone holding the reins of power, himself included, could sleep a little more soundly in their beds at night and get on with running the country.
The Cabinet meeting was an unusually pleasant affair. Today's items on the agenda included a 'hot spots and good news' item which caused the less successful ministers to become nervous and apologetic and the more successful to brag of the accomplishments of 'their ministries' in terms that their personal achievements. What was intended to raise concerns before they blew up into major crises operated as an exhibition of self-aggrandisement or alternatively, as a tortuous, verbose exercise in face saving. Each minister looked intently as it came close to his or her turn.
"There is a continuing concern in the matter of the potential bad press due to the scare stories of mobile phones causing brain tumours. Our Department is continuing to collate the latest scientific research and will be available for the mobile phone companies so that they aren't caught short as One way PLC were. The Attorney General tells me that there are no court cases on the horizon but we do not intend to be complacent. On the good side is the 4% increase in the last three months seasonally adjusted figures for arms sales overseas. Now that Robin Cook's so called 'ethical policies' have been discredited." And here Neil broke into a wide smile which others round the table joined in. "Our country is in the position of being one step ahead of the competition."
"Well done, Neil," Came the smile of approval from the head of the table before his cold blue eyes turned to the next in line. "That's what I like to hear. A run of good news……."
Much later, when they touched on the main press stories, the cabinet agreed that the front-page criticisms of the modernisation of the public services demanded a robust rebuttal and for a dedicated team to be set up specifically to influence the press. And the copy of the story on Page 4 of the Times that was left in the Cabinet room was quietly folded up and left for anyone to pick up and read in an idle moment, probably the cleaner.