Under Orders

without any unpleasant side effects that had been overlooked. Officially they were called the Standing Cabinet Sub-Committee on Legislative Outcomes but they were referred to by the few who knew of their existence as the Crystal Ball Club. Archie tended to label them the Cassandra Committee after the Greek mythological heroine who was both blessed and cursed by the god Apollo with the ability to correctly predict the future whilst no one believed her.

‘Any publicity is good publicity,’ I quipped.

‘Tell that to Gerald Ratner.’

I respected Archie and had grown to like him more and more as, over the past four years, I had become his very private ears and eyes.

Legislation in a democracy is, by its very nature, a compromise, a negotiated settlement somewhere in the middle ground. Whether it be a government-backed initiative or a private member’s bill, there is usually some horse-trading to be done. Some amendments may be accepted, others declined, paragraphs may be removed, word orders may be changed. Laws passed by Parliament are often substantially different from those drafted.

Archie and his Crystal Ball Club tried to look at legislation from the perspective of the end user, the members of the general public who would be affected. History is littered with examples where law makers had grossly misjudged the reaction that their well-intentioned deeds would produce.

After World War I, no less than forty-five of the then forty-eight states of the US voted to amend the American Constitution to prohibit the importation, manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the hope and expectation of reducing crime and corruption. Only the state of Rhode Island voted against. Fourteen murderous years later, during which time the federal prison inmate population increased by more than 350 %, the same state legislators voted another amendment to the Constitution repealing their blunder, again in the hope and expectation of reducing crime and corruption.

In 1990, the United Kingdom Government of the day decided that in order to make local taxes fairer they would introduce a single flat charge, equal for all. What could be fairer, they thought? The Community Charge, as they called it, was soon dubbed the Poll Tax and resulted in violent demonstrations across the country. The law was repealed in 1993 but the damage had been done. The Government’s reputation was terminally wounded. They lost the next election in a landslide.

Archie’s team was set up to try and foresee just such problems. They spent much of their time on private member’s bills, providing their political chiefs with a best guess at the effect that would be produced if a specific bill were to be passed into law. Many such proposed bills were the direct result of single-issue pressure groups that could be very persuasive without necessarily revealing the whole truth behind their argument. The chance of a private member’s bill reaching the statute book was largely dependent on whether the government of the day supported the measure and hence provided the parliamentary time. The grounds for such support were a combination of politics, practicality and expediency. Archie’s job was to advise as to the practicality and expediency. However, political considerations sometimes outweighed everything else.

Over the years, I had quietly and discreetly investigated many pressure groups and their individual members. I tended to look for links to big business or organised crime, or both.

Never mind statistics, there were lies, damn lies and the spouting forth from single-issue pressure groups. Blinkered, fanatical and blind to counter-argument and reason. Facts they didn’t like, they ignored or dismissed as lies. Sometimes they were just the foot soldiers in a bigger game, being used and manipulated by puppet masters working silently in the dark. Some were misguided and wrong. Others were plain crazy. A few had valid points but these were often lost in rhetoric and fury. Ask an animal rights supporter if he would rather have a new cancer drug tested on him first and he will say ‘that’s not the point’. But it’s exactly the point. If his mother were diagnosed with cancer, he would demand treatment to cure her. He’d be the first to blame the government and the health services if it didn’t exist.

‘Are you still there?’ Archie asked.

‘Sorry,’ I replied, ‘miles away.’

‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’

‘About what?’

‘About The Pump.’

‘Oh.’ I paused to think. ‘Nothing. Their lawyers will have made sure they haven’t libelled me, it’s just absurd speculation.’

Laced with loathing, I assumed, but I didn’t like them much either.

‘Why don’t you rant and rave like any normal man?’ Archie asked.

‘You wouldn’t,’ I replied. Archie was one of the most even-tempered men I had ever met. ‘What good would it do? The Pump seem to have it in for me again and complaining will only make it worse.’

I had once shown The Pump to be completely wrong about someone who they claimed to be a saint but who turned out to be a bigger sinner than even I had realised. The Press doesn’t like to be shown to be foolish. Stoking the fire in their belly would do nothing to make it go out.

‘It’s so unfair.’ I rarely heard such anger in Archie’s voice.

‘Look, Archie,’ I said, ‘this is not worth getting upset about. Let it blow over.’ Let the police find the killer, I thought.

‘Can you come and see me tomorrow?’ Archie asked, abruptly changing the subject.

‘At home or in the office?’ I asked.

‘Whichever suits you.’

‘Office, then. Ten?’

‘Fine.’

I didn’t bother to ask him what it was about. Archie was naturally a secretive man and on the telephone he habitually gave an excellent impression of a Trappist monk. He didn’t trust telephones and, as an ex-member of MI5, he should know. Today he had been unusually effusive and was probably regretting it already.

Marina and I decided to walk down to the Goring Hotel for a glass of wine and a sandwich. As a jockey I had never been able to eat a large lunch, even on non-racing Sundays, and the routine of eating only an evening meal had survived the disaster.

We took the lift down and stepped out into the marble-floored lobby. I had chosen this apartment building partly due to the 24-hour manned desk facing the entrance with its bank of CCTV monitors. I had been attacked outside my previous home so I valued the peace of mind provided by the eclectic band of individuals who made up the team of porters/security men.

‘Morning, Derek,’ I said.

‘Afternoon, Mr Halley,’ he corrected.

Reassuring, reliable and discreet, no one set foot in the building without their knowledge and say-so.

Half an hour later, sustained by a shared smoked salmon sandwich and a glass of wine, we hurried back to the flat in watery March sunshine that did little to alleviate the biting northerly wind on our backs.

‘Ah, Mr Halley,’ said Derek as we walked in, ‘guest for you.’

My ‘guest’ was sitting in the lobby and he was having difficulty getting up from a deep armchair. He was in his mid-sixties and was wearing dirty brown corduroy trousers and an old green sweater with a hole in the front. A shock of grey hair protruded from under a well-worn cap.

In his right hand he held a copy of The Pump.

‘Sid Halley!’ His booming voice filled the air with sound and he took two quick steps towards me.

Oh no, not again.

I looked around for reinforcement from Derek but he had decided to stay in relative safety behind the desk.

But instead of trying to hit me, the man thrust the newspaper in my face. ‘Did you kill my son?’ he demanded at maximum decibels.

I nearly laughed but thought better of it.

‘No, I did not.’ Even to my ears it sounded very melodramatic.

‘No, I didn’t really think so.’ His shoulders slumped and he sat down heavily on the arm of the chair. ‘But The Pump seemed so… oh, I don’t know… so believable.’ He spoke with a strong Welsh