Broken Hearts. Grace Monroe
Chapter Six
Lord Edward Hunter took a deep breath as he stepped inside the front door of 10 Downing Street. He had waited for this moment ever since he had first been called to the bar in 1974.
It did not disappoint.
He was still holding his breath as his eyes took in the entrance hall on which many famous feet before his had trodden. This invitation was only the start, he told himself. As he climbed the grand staircase, the portraits of past prime ministers smiled down at him. The lackey had already advised him that the prime minister, Andrew Lairg, was waiting for him in the study. Lord Edward Hunter was excited to see this room, so full of history and promise. Winston Churchill had slept in it and the present PM had restored the tradition of working there. Hunter had long suspected that he still had a bit of the innocent child about him, and he found enjoyment in the fact that he could continue to be impressed by such environments. The fact that he was part of this world often amazed him, and he hoped it would long continue to do so.
‘I’m glad you could make it, Edward.’ Andrew Lairg smiled and held out his hand. The PM’s grip was firm and dry but not painful. ‘I think you’ve met Connor Wilson, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, Connor and I have met,’ Lord Hunter replied. How could he forget the in-depth grilling the prime minister’s right-hand man had given him in the Garrick only two weeks ago? Lord Hunter sat in the seat that Andrew Lairg had motioned towards and stared into the fire which roared in the white marble Adam fireplace. The prime minister sat opposite him whilst Connor Wilson poured the drinks. He didn’t bother to ask how Edward liked his whisky. They knew everything about him–or they thought they did.
Andrew Lairg looked preoccupied. ‘How’s the family?’ he asked his guest.
‘Its just Mary and me now that the children are off to university,’ Hunter replied, hoping that this small talk would not go on for long.
‘Are you both in good spirits?’ the prime minister asked.
‘Fit as fleas.’ Hunter had already been through a thorough medical check and MI5 would already have given Downing Street a copy of the report.
‘Good, good.’ With those words, the gentle, family-man image of the prime minister vanished, and sitting opposite Lord Hunter was the hard-nosed politician who had steered a Labour government through two general election victories in hard times. ‘The party cannot afford another cock-up like the Weatherby scandal. He sat in that chair and bloody lied to me.’ The prime minister’s eyes were cold and hard. ‘When that reporter from The Sun found her…found his bloody wife…’
Lairg went quiet and started brooding again. He didn’t need to finish. Everyone in the country had seen the pictures of Lady Weatherby and her lover. The scandal was not that she had cuckolded her husband, or the fact that her lover was twenty years her junior. It was the fact that the toy boy was an up-and-coming defence lawyer and she had judged a number of his cases whilst she still sat in the High Court. More worryingly he had always won. These cases were now all subject to appeal. Lady Weatherby had held the post of Lord Chancellor of England, the highest judge in the land, and her actions meant the whole legal system was now facing one of its worst crises in living memory.
‘Is there anything, any fuck-up, no matter how tiny it seems to you, in your past, that can come up and bite us on the arse, Edward?’ The PM was known for his language when stressed. ‘When you were a High Court judge, did you ever take a bribe? Did you ever knock up a secretary? Do you have a cocaine habit?’ These questions were not entirely ridiculous–they were specific rumours that had circulated about the last men to call themselves Lord Chancellor. The reason they were still referred to only as rumours was entirely due to the machinations of Connor Wilson.
‘I can wash my dirty laundry in public, Prime Minister.’ Lord Edward Hunter held the prime minister’s eye as he spoke. ‘And I can assure you there will be no bombshells. Although I rather suspect you know all of this already.’
The hush in the Downing Street study was oppressive. The prime minister finally spoke. ‘You’ve been briefed on why you are here, Edward. If I ask you to be Lord Chancellor, will you accept?’
‘Yes, Prime Minister.’ Lord Hunter could not stop the grin that had spread across his face.
‘Good, then we’ll make the press announcement tomorrow. You’ll be a great Lord Chancellor, an honour to us all.’
‘I am your servant, sir,’ he nodded at the prime minister. His response was rather formal but he felt elated–even if he had known that he would be offered this position long before he stepped over the threshold.
The serotonin continued to pump round his body long into the night. He was unable to sleep. Throwing his legs over the side of the bed he felt his toes dig into the deep carpet; he inched them along the floor until he found his slippers. His wife, Mary, always a light sleeper, tossed and turned beside him. He wandered down to the kitchen and made himself a warm, milky cocoa. He rested his fine bone-china mug on the arm of his Chesterfield chair in the library, blew on the drink and then sipped cautiously. In the small hours of the night, he could be honest with himself. It wasn’t only the excitement of his appointment that prevented sleep. When Lord Hunter had told the prime minister that there were no skeletons in his past he was telling the truth.
But there was a secret.
Few people knew about it, and those who did would not speak. Nonetheless, it bothered him that he’d had to hide it from the man who was fulfilling his ultimate ambition.
Lord Hunter took another sip. The cocoa was having the desired effect and he felt sleepy and relaxed. There was no way he could change the past; the secret had remained hidden for twenty years and the chances that it would surface now were remote. The more sleepy he got, the more he convinced himself of this.
The cocoa grew cold as the new Lord Chancellor fell asleep in the chair.
DI Duncan Bancho rested his head on his cluttered desk and lightly banged his forehead off it until an unpleasant ache made him stop. The pain took longer to come than it had the last time–or the time before that. He knew that he was pathetic; his life was shit, no money, no promotion and no sex. It was the latter that was really bothering him just now. Peggy had been his last serious fling, and that had been disastrous. Actually, disastrous didn’t even come close. The lies and betrayal had cut him deeper than he cared to admit. Well-meaning friends tried to set him up on blind dates, but he wasn’t a man who enjoyed sex with strangers. He missed the dull, domestic routine: sitting in on a Saturday night with a carry-out pizza and a cheap bottle of plonk watching crap telly with someone he liked would be his idea of heaven.
Bancho acknowledged that his current attitude was affecting the team; even the assistant chief constable had pulled him in for a pep talk. Given that the actual words were, ‘Pull your fucking socks up you miserable bastard, you’re getting on everybody’s nerves,’ he wasn’t too sure how helpful it was, but he had to recognize that things were bad. He needed to socialize more, extend the hand of friendship to his colleagues, and all that bollocks. The detective pushed back his chair and wandered out to the operations room to grab a coffee. He put a smile on his face, which he hoped didn’t look as forced as it felt–otherwise it would frighten those of a weak disposition.
The chatter in the operations room didn’t stop when he walked in the door–that was always a good sign. He wasn’t an official weirdo yet. His colleagues were hard at work and looked just as tired as he felt; a few of them even raised their heads and nodded in his direction. Bancho straightened his tie and ran a hand through his hair. PC Tricia Sheehy didn’t look too shabby in this light and, even in his miserable state, he had started to notice that she was the one thing that was keeping him going at work. Sometimes the thought of her even cut a few seconds off his banging-head-on-desk routine. She poured