State Secrets

Book 28: BOB SKINNER

by Quintin Jardine

Genres: General Fiction; City Life; Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Noir; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Former Chief Constable Bob Skinner is long out of the police force but trouble has a habit of following him around. So it is that he finds himself in the Palace of Westminster as a shocking act befalls the nation. Hours before the Prime Minster is due to make a controversial statement, she is discovered in her office with a letter opener driven through her skull. Skinner is swiftly enlisted by the Security Service to lead the investigation. Reunited with Met Police Commander Neil McIlhenney, he has 48 hours to crack the case. There are many in the tangled web of government with cause to act. But the outcome will be one that not even Skinner himself could predict…

Release date: October 19, 2017

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 400

Sample

One

Did I really want to be ennobled? Did I see myself as Baron Skinner of Gullane?

No I didn’t, when the question had been put. Being Chief Constable Skinner gave me a higher profile than I liked, and I’ve been happy to be shot of that title. However, I’d been invited to discuss the possibility, in good faith as far as I knew, so it would have been churlish of me to reject it out of hand . . . even though the invitation had come to me via my ex-wife.

And also, as I said to Sarah, the potential Lady Skinner, while I had been a visitor to the Westminster village several times in the later years of my police career, I had never been in their lordships’ House; the chance to cross that off my bucket list was too good to pass up.

Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have had time to fit it in, not when I was a serving officer, head of Scotland’s largest force before it was replaced by one even larger, the controversial and almost universally unloved Scottish Police Service.

My critics, and there were plenty of them, rounded on me when I decided not to pursue my application for the position of chief constable, but it isn’t a decision I’ve ever regretted. The truth of the matter was, I was well past my ‘best before’ date as a cop when I quit; most of my close colleagues knew that, but none of them ever told me. I like to believe they were too loyal, rather than too fearful, to suggest it.

Any post-career visions or fears I might have entertained of becoming a house parent and scratch golfer were soon blown away, by a couple of private commissions from friends and acquaintances with problems that needed sorting, and another from my older daughter Alex, who is beginning to make a name for herself as a criminal defence lawyer.

They helped me keep my hand in, so to speak, and led me into a couple of situations that got my investigative juices flowing again. One day, chewing the fat with some pals in the golf club, I said I might set up a website and call it ‘Skinner Solutions’; they knew I was joking, but a journalist in the bar overheard me and took me seriously. He ran the story; I might have had the devil’s own job knocking it down, had I not been well placed to do so.

As a bonus, the first of my private investigations led to me being appointed a part-time executive director of an international media group called, appropriately if unimaginatively, InterMedia. That gives me an office in central Edinburgh, and pays me an almost embarrassing salary, for a theoretical one day’s work per week, although in practice I enjoy it so much that I give it much more than that.

Most days you’ll find me there, on the executive floor of the building that houses the Saltire, the group’s Scottish flagship, the only title in the land that maintains its circulation in print form in the face of an all-out assault by digital media.

Not that morning, though, not that fateful morning, as I passed patiently through the detailed but very necessary security process that protects the centre of the British state from the mad, the bad, the fools and the fanatics. It isn’t perfect, though; no system ever will be. For example, it didn’t find the blue plastic Victorinox SwissCard that I had forgotten was tucked away in a pocket of my Filofax.

There isn’t much to it, only a rectangle not much bigger than a credit card, but there are a couple of things in it that should not have evaded the check. I only remembered about it as I was walking into the Central Lobby, but since I had no intention of killing anyone, it didn’t matter.

Being Monday, the parliamentary gathering place was less busy than it had been on my previous visits, for security meetings or, once, to appear before a powerless but self-important select committee of grandstanding backbench MPs. There was still some action, though. It was autumn, the party conference season was over, parliament was back from its extended holidays, and political warfare had been resumed.

A Scots voice floated through the rest and caught my ear. I turned towards it, thinking for a moment that it was my one-woman welcoming committee, but saw instead the BBC’s political editor recording a piece to camera for the midday news.

In the event, Aileen de Marco was late, ten minutes late. I didn’t mind, for I spent the time chatting with a couple of the new breed of Scottish members who recognised me and introduced themselves. Both of them knew all about me, or thought they did. One was my constituency MP, a sharp guy; the other was blunt, and just plain curious. It took him only a couple of minutes to ask me flat out what I was doing there, since I wasn’t a cop any longer.

I told him I was down on a lobbying mission. It wasn’t a lie; I didn’t say who was being lobbied, that’s all.

He was trying to frame a supplementary question when Aileen arrived, calling out her apologies for the delay. ‘Sorry, Bob, I was collared by the Chief Whip.’

She was the Opposition as far as my new acquaintances were concerned, more so than the sitting government. The nosy guy turned on his heel and walked away. His companion was rather more polite. ‘Ms de Marco,’ he murmured, raising an eyebrow.

She smiled at him; there was no malice in it, only amusement. ‘It’s okay, George,’ she said. ‘My former husband and I do still speak on occasion.’ Then she frowned, switching to business mode. ‘How does your leader intend to react to the defence statement this afternoon?’ she asked.

‘He hasn’t told me. It’ll depend on what’s in it, I suppose. Have you been briefed?’

‘No.’ Her frown deepened. ‘That’s becoming typical of the ruling cabal. They see us as severely wounded and hope to finish us off next time around, so the old courtesies are in abeyance. Have you been given any clue?’

‘No, but we wouldn’t be,’ my constituency member replied. ‘We’re still the hooligans in the eyes of the PM and her hatchet man, the Home Secretary. They think we’d leak it if we were briefed in advance.’ He winked. ‘We bloody would too.’

‘Nobody’s being briefed on this one,’ Aileen complained, ‘not even the political editors. I’m not sure what that means. I called Mickey Satchell . . . the Prime Minister’s pumped-up, self-important little PPS,’ she added, for my benefit, I assumed, ‘and not even she knows . . . or so she assured me.’

‘I tried her too,’ her colleague said. ‘Same result. Yes,’ he chuckled, ‘Mickey is up herself, isn’t she. Boots on the ground in the Middle East was the speculation I heard on Radio Four this morning.’

Aileen shook her head. ‘No. I have a friend on the Army General Staff. They’d know if that was happening and they don’t.’

‘In that case we’ll have killed another terrorist with a drone missile. That’s my best guess.’ He glanced up at me. ‘What do you think, Bob?’

‘More likely they’ve killed civilians by mistake,’ I suggested, ‘but that would probably have been leaked by the victim’s side by now. Seems to me it’s either something very big or something very small. If you like, I could call the Saltire news desk and find out what they’re speculating . . . if anything.’

My new friend pointed across the Central Lobby. ‘I’ll save you a phone call,’ he said. ‘I’ll just walk across and ask its political editor; whatever their reply is, it’d be coming from him.’

‘Collared by the Chief Whip, eh?’ I murmured as he left us. ‘Parliamentary language never ceases to amuse me.’

‘You could be a whip yourself if you come on board in the other place,’ she countered.

‘If,’ I repeated. ‘I still don’t get this, Aileen; this invitation out of the blue. You know I didn’t vote for your lot, don’t you?’

‘I’ve always assumed you didn’t,’ she admitted. ‘But you fell out with the SNP as well over the national police force. So I figured that you were at best neutral.’

‘And at worst, Tory?’ I countered, smiling.

‘I never thought that for a second. Have that lot offered you a peerage?’ she asked.

‘I was offered a knighthood,’ I replied, ‘which I turned down, twice; a peerage, no.’

‘The K is routine for your police rank, regardless of politics, and you know it. If you were a Tory you’d have been offered a seat in the Lords by now.’

I had to challenge her assumption, right or wrong. ‘Hold on a minute; you know very well that through all my police career I was politically neutral. A senior cop has to be.’

‘Of course I know that, but we were married, Bob. We got drunk together and you let your real self out, more than once.’ She tapped her chest. ‘In there you’re left of centre. Not very far left, I’ll admit, but it’s there.’

‘Privately, yes,’ I conceded, ‘but I always steered clear of public politics . . .’ I stopped myself, just in time, from adding, ‘. . . until I married you.’ That would have taken the encounter in a direction that I wanted to avoid.

Aileen sensed it and nodded. ‘But you voted. You said more than once that it’s your duty as a citizen.’

‘Yes I voted,’ I agreed, ‘until last time, the last Scottish parliament elections. Then, I gave myself a day off, because none of the parties were saying anything that I wanted to hear.’

‘But you’re prepared to hear what we’ve got to say to you today?’

‘Out of politeness, yes, and a bit of curiosity too. Who am I meeting? You and who else?’

‘Not me,’ she said, quickly. ‘Not for the business discussion. I’m just the honey trap they used to get you down here. You’ll be met in the other place by Baroness Mercer, our leader in the Lords, and by Lord Pilmar, the senior Scottish peer. Do you know either of them?’

‘I’ve heard of her, but that’s all. Paddy Pilmar I know quite well from his days as an MP in Edinburgh. What’s the lady like?’

‘Academic,’ Aileen replied, ‘with a journalistic background. She was economics editor on one of the broadsheets . . . I can never remember which . . . then had a chair at a red-brick university in the north-west. Intellectually she’s top drawer; she’s capable on her feet in the chamber, but she’s remote from her troops. Her main job is to keep the party on message in the Lords and to keep Merlin’s feet on the ground in the shadow Cabinet.’

‘That’ll be a task,’ I observed. Merlin Brady, the leader of the Labour Party, known inevitably as The Magician by the media, had emerged from the drama that had followed his predecessor’s incapacitation by a malignant stomach tumour, having been persuaded to stand as a compromise candidate, acceptable to both warring wings of his party. He had been regarded until then as a career back-bench loyalist devoid of personal ambition, but he was rumoured to be settling into the job.

‘Whose idea was it to approach me?’ I asked her, bluntly.

‘It was a joint suggestion really,’ Aileen admitted. ‘There was a sense coming out of the Lords that we’re not being forceful enough. The government pretty much ignore us. Lord Pilmar and I were tasked by Merlin’s office with finding a strong man to go in there and exercise a bit of discipline, without undermining Georgia Mercer.

‘We kicked some names around, but couldn’t find anyone who suited the job description. Paddy suggested Sir Andrew Martin, now that he’s no longer head of the Scottish Police Service, but with his tongue in his cheek. We laughed at that, then went quiet, both of us thinking the same thought, until he spoke it.

‘I said you’d never do it, but Paddy was fired up by the idea. He persuaded me that there would be no harm in asking, so we took your name back to the leader’s office.

‘Merlin didn’t know anything about you, but when I told him you’d had a big fallout with Clive Graham, that made him sit up. Anyone who’s an enemy of the Scottish First Minister is a friend of his.’

‘Clive and I aren’t enemies,’ I protested. ‘I like the man, on a personal level. He’s okay as a politician too, but when it came to putting pennies before public protection, there we went our separate ways.’

She smiled. Aileen has a very attractive smile when she isn’t thinking about running whatever country she happens to be in at the time. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very often. ‘I know that,’ she chuckled, ‘but I wasn’t going to tell Merlin.’

‘Do I get to meet him?’

‘Depends on how you get on next door,’ she replied, then glanced at her wrist. I noticed that her watch was one I’d given her as an anniversary present . . . not that we had many of those. I wondered if she wore it often or had dug it out for the occasion. ‘Speaking of which, it’s time you were getting along there.’

I stared at her. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

She shook her head. ‘We MPs aren’t welcome next door,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ll take you along to meet Lord Pilmar at the Peers’ Entrance, then you’re on your own.’

We walked out of the great building, past security and past Westminster Hall. I paused and looked at the impressive space, trying to put myself in the midst of the great events that have happened there, and the history that was made, over the centuries. I’m not a romantic by nature, but that place does get to me.

Aileen knows me well enough to understand that; she was smiling as we moved out into the street and turned left, heading for the House of Lords.

‘How’s Sarah?’ she asked, out of the blue . . . or maybe it was the red, given her politics. I searched for anything in her tone beyond a sincere enquiry, but couldn’t detect it.

‘She’s fine, thanks. She’s started her maternity leave. How’s Joey?’

It was her turn to throw me a sideways look. Joey Morocco is the Scottish film actor with whom Aileen had a relationship before and during our marriage. It became all too public when a paparazzo took a very revealing photograph of her in his house and sold it to the tabloids.

‘Joey’s fine,’ she said, cautiously, ‘as far as I know. He and I were never going to be a permanent thing. Why do you ask? Is he still on your hit list?’

I laughed at her question. ‘He never was, not really; you can tell him that if you want. If I’d encountered him when it happened, and nobody had been around, I might have clipped him round the ear, but that would have been hypocritical. Joey, you, me: we’ve all taken a pretty relaxed view of the sanctity of marriage in our time.’

‘So why did you and Sarah remarry, after saying you weren’t going to?’

‘It was the right thing to do for the baby’s sake. We’re both old fashioned that way. Also, I’ve changed. I’ve had a second chance and I’m not going to blow that.’ I glanced at her, raising an eyebrow. ‘How about you? If not Joey, who? Your friend on the Army General Staff?’

She grinned. ‘That would be a she, and I haven’t switched sides yet. I’m unattached and not looking around either. I’m number two in the shadow defence team and I hope to be number one after Merlin’s next reshuffle. I can’t afford any casual relationships.’ Then she smiled again, the Aileen smile that I like. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘Joey passes through London every so often.’

She walked me up to a police box that was guarding an enclosed forecourt; it was manned by two officers, older cops, the kind whose service had earned them what was probably a nice easy station, most of the time. She spoke to them, quietly, then turned back to me.

‘I’ve told them you’re meeting Lord Pilmar,’ she said. ‘That’s the Peers’ Entrance over there.’ She pointed at a small arched doorway on the other side of the courtyard.

‘Not very grand, is it?’ I observed.

‘We don’t have signs over the door in this place. Good luck. I hope it goes well. Please, Bob, give it some serious thought. We’re not joking about this.’

‘I’ll listen,’ I promised. I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then headed for the House of Lords.

Baron Pilmar of Powderhall was indeed waiting for me; he didn’t look noble at all, just a cheery wee man with a ruddy complexion. I knew that he was seventy-three years old because I’d done a refresher check on him in preparation for the meeting, but he didn’t look it.

‘Bob,’ he exclaimed, as I came through the double doors, ‘good to see you. Come on in and let these lads fit you up with a badge.’

He led me to two more security guards; they were in uniform, but civilians rather than police. There was a security gateway but I couldn’t pass through because of my cardiac pacemaker. Instead they gave me a wave down with a hand-held detector, and took my briefcase to put it through an X-ray machine. I told them about the Victorinox card, but they weren’t bothered about it.

Once I was official and wearing my badge, Paddy Pilmar returned to take me into his charge. ‘Good journey?’ he asked, as I hung my overcoat on a vacant peg on one of the racks that filled most of the area. Search all these for illegal substances, I thought, and what would you find?

‘Fine,’ I assured him. Rather than risk delay and to avoid the remarkable crowds that can gather in Edinburgh airport departures for early morning flights, I had taken the train down the day before and had booked myself into a hotel. With time on my hands after breakfast I had put yet another tick on my rapidly shrinking bucket list by visiting the Cabinet War Rooms, and making a mental note to take my boys there, on a long-promised visit to London.

‘Let’s go for a coffee,’ my custodian said. ‘Georgia’s in a committee, but she’ll join us as soon as she can get out.’

He led me out of the entrance area and up a wide stone staircase. Halfway up, he paused and pointed at a series of coats of arms that decorated the walls. ‘Chiefs of the Defence Staff,’ he informed me. ‘They all wind up here after they retire and lately they’ve let them put their heraldic crests on this stair.’ He frowned. ‘I’m no’ really sure why.’

I knew Lord Pilmar pretty well; he had always struck me as one of nature’s doubters rather than the full-blooded cynic that a thirty-year police career had made me. He had taken an unusual route to the top. He had been a clerk on the old Edinburgh Corporation, before any of the reforms of local government that led to Scotland’s present system, but had switched from servant to master by being elected as councillor for a ward in Leith, combining his public duties with a job as a trade union official, created, I assumed, to give him a salary.

Paddy had made his mark on the council, becoming a committee chairman in his twenties, and was earmarked as a future Labour group leader and political head of the Corporation . . . the Lord Provost having the title and the chain of office, but not the power . . . but he had walked away from that in the mid-seventies to contest and win a Westminster seat.

A popular and active MP, he had spent most of his parliamentary career on the Opposition benches. The highlight had been a brief stint as shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, but when his party’s outlook and tone had changed with the creation of New Labour, he had been moved aside and eventually out, with a peerage as a reward.

Our paths had crossed a few times, occasionally at formal social events, the kind where police and politicians had to be seen, but more often professionally, when my work took me into his constituency. We had been useful to each other over the years. I won’t say that he was an informant, but he was as firmly on the side of law and order as was I, and there were occasions when he had access to information that my officers and I did not. In other words, people trusted him to keep their names out of it, when they did not trust us.

While he had helped us, he had also been a thorn in my side. If he ever felt that one of his people had been given an undeservedly hard time by the police, I was his ‘go to’ man when it came to sorting it out. It had led to a couple of confrontations, but mostly I had found it as useful as he had. Paddy had marked my card about quite a few officers who were disasters waiting to happen, letting me correct their attitude or when necessary take them out of the picture altogether, by transfer or, in extreme cases, dismissal.

I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years when we met that Monday morning. He hadn’t aged at all; if anything he looked younger and his bright little eyes had an added twinkle.

At the top of the stairs we turned into a long corridor. It was busy, but Paddy nodded to everybody we passed and stopped to talk to a couple of them, introducing me as ‘a visitor from Scotland’. One had been a member of the ‘Gang of Four’ back in the eighties; meeting him threw me for a couple of seconds as I had genuinely believed him to be dead.

The little baron must have sensed and understood my confusion. ‘I know,’ he chuckled quietly. ‘This place is like an animated Madame Tussaud’s, isn’t it?’

Our destination was a large room, a bar, but only coffee and tea were being consumed at that time of day. I hadn’t gone there to people-watch, but I recognised several of the faces: a former justice secretary in a rejected government, an ennobled television personality, and a female Conservative Cabinet minister from the nineties. Lord Pilmar greeted each of them with a smile, a word or a nod.

The room in which we sat was opulent. Looking at the wallpaper I remembered the scandal when a lord chancellor was pilloried for the cost of refurbishing his accommodation, and found myself sympathising with him. Opulence was the standard set when the palace was built; faking it with a cheap copy would have been wrong.

‘What’s your thinking, Bob?’ Paddy said, bluntly, after our coffee had been served by a breezy lady who reminded me very much of the queen of the senior officers’ dining room in the old Edinburgh police headquarters.

‘It starts with a question,’ I replied. ‘Why me? Have I ever given you any hint that I’m of your political persuasion?’

He shot me a sly grin. ‘Apart from setting up house wi’ our leader in Scotland, you mean?’

‘An alliance which was dissolved,’ I countered. ‘Come on, answer me.’

‘No,’ he admitted, ‘you haven’t. But there have been a few folk joined our party, and others, on the same day they were appointed to this place. We’ve never discussed politics, you and I, but I know what you are: you’re apolitical.’

His forehead twitched, into a small frown. ‘You’re like me,’ he continued. ‘First and foremost, we’re public servants; my branch of the service called for party membership for me to make progress. As an MP I worked on a short-term contract that was renewed at the pleasure of my masters; they were the party, and ultimately the electors. Your warrant card was your entry to the public service; your progress depended on the quality of the service you gave. Latterly you worked on a fixed-term contract too, that was renewable at the pleasure of your masters, the Police Authority. We’re the same animal, you and me.’

‘The policeman and politician argument?’ I suggested. ‘The notion that the two words mean exactly the same thing? Often cited, but not actually true; they have different roots.’

‘Never mind that; it’s no’ what I meant. You’re a man who gets things done, and you’re a leader; folk like you are needed in this place.’

‘Nice of you to say so, Paddy,’ I conceded, ‘but there must be lots of people like me who are actually members of the Labour Party!’

‘Bob, don’t be self-deprecating; Christ, there’s a big word for a boy from Powderhall . . . by the way, I added that to hint that I actually know what “self-deprecating” means. There are not lots of people like you, period. As for being a Labour Party member, that counts for fuck all now.’

Realising that he might have been overheard, he leaned closer to me. ‘I’m going to assume,’ he continued, ‘that to prepare for this meeting you’ve read our last manifesto.’

I nodded.

‘How much of it do you agree with?’

‘Quite a lot, but I could say the same about all the manifestos. But I also read Merlin Brady’s policy statement when he ran for leader, and I disagree with practically every line of that.’

‘Eighty per cent of the parliamentary party have issues with him one way or another,’ a female voice interjected, ‘which is why it won’t become official policy.’

I wasn’t facing the door, and so I hadn’t seen Baroness Mercer arrive. I looked up at her intervention, then I stood. If anything she was even shorter than her colleague, but her perfectly cut, wiry, iron-grey hair gave her an added presence. Paddy did the introductions, and we shook hands.

‘We’re the Opposition party,’ she continued, once we were seated, ‘and we’re having our backsides kicked in the Commons on a daily basis. This is the place, the Lords, in which we can make a difference and do most to keep a reckless government in check. The problem is, Mr Skinner, as Ms de Marco and Lord Pilmar may have explained, we need to be better organised, and to be honest, better led.’

Self-deprecation seemed to be the order of the day. ‘That’s a hell of a thing for a leader to say, Lady Mercer,’ I remarked.

‘Maybe, but it’s the truth. My title is Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the House of Lords, but I was given the job because there was nobody else here that Merlin felt he could trust. My predecessor supported his principal rival for the party leadership, and declined to continue in the post. For some reason he turned to me, possibly because he realised that I am emotionally detached from politics. So are you, from what I’ve been told.’

I smiled. ‘Who told you that?’ I asked.

‘Your former wife.’

I think my smile widened. ‘Did she say that I have an instinctive distrust of politicians that borders on outright dislike?’

‘That’s not quite how she put it. But she did say that anyone who had you on their side didn’t need anyone else.’

‘That’s a laugh,’ I retorted. ‘I was on hers, but she did.’

Baroness Mercer seemed to recoil from my bluntness. Bad start there, Bob, I thought.

But Lord Pilmar laughed. ‘You touched a nerve there, Georgia,’ he said.

She recovered her poise. ‘She’s still a strong supporter of yours, nonetheless. She was forceful in recommending you to me as a person with the qualities we need.’

‘Then spell it out for me,’ I challenged. ‘What are those qualities?’

‘We need a fixer, Mr Skinner, a person with authority in any situation, a person who cannot be ignored at any time, someone with command experience.’

‘You want me to be a policeman again?’

‘When necessary, but the role we have in mind is more motivator than enforcer. We’re out of power, Mr Skinner, and our party in the Commons is, to be frank, a shambles. Government is walking all over us, the Scottish Nationalists are showing us up on a weekly basis. But this is a different chamber; here we can be effective.

‘It’s our job to contain where we can the excesses of government and to moderate legislative proposals for which the majority of electors certainly did not vote. We have a chance of doing that, for the Conservative troops in the Lords are far less malleable than those in the Commons, without the pressure of re-election or even deselection, should they step too far out of line.

‘We think that someone like you, operating quietly in the background, could affect the thinking of their wobblier members.’

I was sceptical about that. ‘Look, I don’t know too much about your procedures down here, but I do know what whips are. If I was spreading sedition on the Tory side of the House, theirs would catch on in very short order, surely, and put me on some sort of a blacklist.’

‘Aye,’ Paddy Pilmar murmured, ‘but only if you actually took the Labour whip.’

I frowned. ‘Explain, Noble Lord,’ I commanded.

‘You wouldn’t necessarily be taking our whip,’ he replied.

‘I wouldn’t?’ I exclaimed. ‘Then what the . . .’

‘If you’re reluctant to do that, there is another way.’

‘Do you know what cross-benchers are?’ Baroness Mercer interrupted.

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘they’re neutrals. Members of the House of Lords but with no political allegiance. Much the same as independent members of the House of Commons, or any politically elected chamber.’

‘Do you know how they are appointed?’

‘Frankly, no,’ I admitted.

‘They’re recommended by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. It has seven members; four are non-political, and one each from the three main parties.’

‘That includes the Liberal Democrats, for the moment,’ Paddy Pilmar chipped in, drawing a glance of rebuke from his leader.

‘It has come to our attention,’ she went on, ‘that you are being considered by the commission as a potential “people’s peer”, as cross-benchers are sometimes known. We’re wondering whether, if you were nominated and accepted, you would be sympathetic to our cause.’

‘If I said that I wouldn’t . . . ?’

‘Would we prevent your appointment? I don’t know that we could, but we might well oppose it. If we did, it would come down to a simple vote, and I have no idea how that would go.’

‘How much of this does Aileen know?’

‘Of the cross-bencher thing?’ Lord Pilmar said. ‘Nothing. Merlin’s office asked her