Our Kind of Traitor

grip. She has a gracious smile and the royal, forward-leaning totter that only Englishwomen of a certain birth and class acquire. And she looks, to Luke’s unsparing eye, ineffably stupid. At her side hover her two pre-pubescent daughters in party frocks.

‘She’s his new one, right?’ Matlock the unabashed Labour supporter suddenly sang out, with improbable vigour, as the screen went blank at Hector’s touch, and the overhead light came on. ‘The one he married when he decided to fast-lane himself into politics without doing any of the dirty work. Some Labourite Aubrey Longrigg is, I will say! Old or new!’

* * *

Why was Matlock so jovial again? – and this time for real? The last thing Luke had expected of him was outright laughter, which in Matlock was at the best of times a rare commodity. Yet his big, tweedy torso was heaving with silent mirth. Was it because Longrigg and Matlock had for years been famously at daggers drawn? That to enjoy the favour of the one had been to attract the hostility of the other? That Longrigg had come to be known as the Chief’s brain, and Matlock, unkindly, as his brawn? That with Longrigg’s departure, office wits had likened their feud to a decade-long bullfight in which the bull had put in la puntilla?

‘Yes, well, always a high-flyer, Aubrey was,’ he was remarking, like a man remembering the dead. ‘Quite the financial wizard too, as I recall. Not in your league, Hector, I’m pleased to say, but getting up there. Operational funds were never a problem, that’s for sure, not while Aubrey was at the helm. I mean, how did he ever come to be on that boat to begin with?’ – asked the same Matlock who only minutes ago had asserted that a man couldn’t be condemned for being on someone’s boat. ‘Plus consorting with a former secret source after departing the Service, which the rule book has some very firm things to say about, particularly if said source is a slippery customer like – whatever he calls himself these days.’

‘Emilio dell Oro,’ Hector put in helpfully. ‘One to remember, actually, Billy.’

‘You’d think he’d know better, Aubrey would, after what we taught him, consorting with Emilio dell Oro, then. You’d think a man of Aubrey’s somewhat serpentine skills would be more circumspect in his choice of friend. How come he happened to be there? Perhaps he had a good reason. We shouldn’t prejudge him.’

‘One of those happy strokes of luck, Billy,’ Hector explained. ‘Aubrey and his newest wife and her daughters were enjoying a camping holiday up in the hills above the Adriatic Coast. A London banking chum of Aubrey’s called him up, name unknown, told him the Tatiana was anchored near by and there was a party going on, so hurry on down and join the fun.’

‘Under canvas? Aubrey? Tell me another.’

‘Roughing it in a campsite. The populist life of New Labour Aubrey, man of the people.’

‘Do you go on camping holidays, Luke?’

‘Yes, but Eloise hates British campsites. She’s French,’ he replied, sounding idiotic to himself.

‘And when you go on your camping holidays, Luke – taking care, as you do, to avoid British campsites – do you as a rule take your dinner jacket with you?’

‘No.’

‘And Eloise, does she take her diamonds with her?’

‘She hasn’t got any, actually.’

Matlock thought about this. ‘I suppose you bumped into Aubrey quite a lot, did you, Hector, while you were cutting your lucrative swathe in the City, and others of us went on doing our duty? Had the odd jar together now and then, did you, you and Aubrey? The way City folk do?’

Hector gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Bumped into each other now and then. Haven’t got a lot of time for naked ambition, to be honest. Bores me.’

At which Luke, to whom dissembling these days did not come quite as easily as it used to, had to restrain himself from grasping the arms of his chair.

* * *

Bumped into each other? Dear Heaven, they had fought each other to a standstill – and then gone on fighting. Of all the vulture capitalists, asset- strippers, dawn-raiders and carpet-buggers that ever stepped – according to Hector – Aubrey Longrigg was the most two-faced, devious, backsliding, dishonest and well-connected.

It was Aubrey Longrigg lurking in the wings who had led the assault on Hector’s family grain firm. It was Longrigg who, through a dubious but cleverly assembled network of cut-outs, had cajoled Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs into storming Hector’s warehouses at dead of night, slashing open hundreds of sacks, smashing down doors and terrifying the night shift.

It was Longrigg’s insidious network of Whitehall contacts that had unleashed Health & Safety, the Inland Revenue, the Fire Department and the Immigration Service to harass and intimidate the family employees, ransack their desks, seize their account books and challenge their tax returns.

But Aubrey Longrigg was not mere enemy in Hector’s eyes – that would have been too easy altogether – he was an archetype; a classic symptom of the canker that was devouring not just the City, but our most precious institutions of government.

Hector was at war not with Longrigg personally. Probably he was speaking the truth when he told Matlock that Longrigg bored him, for it was an essential pillar of his thesis that the men and women he was pursuing were by definition bores: mediocre, banal, insensitive, lacklustre, to be distinguished from other bores only by their covert support for one another, and their insatiable greed.

* * *

Hector’s commentary has become perfunctory. Like a magician who doesn’t want you to look too closely at any one card, he is shuffling swiftly through the pack of international rogues that Yvonne has put together for him.

Glimpse a tubby, imperious, very small man loading up his plate from the buffet:

‘Known in German circles as Karl der Kleine,’ Hector says dismissively. ‘Half a Wittelsbach – which half eludes me. Bavarian, pitch-black Catholic as they say down there; close ties with the Vatican. Closer still with the Kremlin. Indirectly elected member of the Bundestag – and non-executive director of a clutch of Russian oil companies, big chum of Emilio dell Oro’s. Skied with him last year in St Moritz, took his Spanish boyfriend along. The Saudis love him. Next lovely.’

Cut too quickly to a bearded beautiful boy in a glittering magenta cape making lavish conversation with two bejewelled matrons:

‘Karl der Kleine’s latest pet,’ Hector announces. ‘Sentenced to three years’ hard labour by a Madrid court last year for aggravated assault, got off on a technicality, thanks to Karl. Recently appointed non-executive director of the Arena group of companies, same lot that own the Prince’s yacht – ah, now here’s one to watch’ – flick of the console – ‘Doctor Evelyn Popham of Mount Street, Mayfair; Bunny to his friends. Studied law in Neuchatel and Manchester. Licensed to practise in Switzerland, courtier and pimp to the Surrey oligarchs, sole partner of his own flourishing West End law firm. Internationalist, bon viveur, bloody good lawyer. Bent as a hairpin. Where’s his website? Hold on. Find it in a moment. Leave me alone, Luke. There you are. Got it.’

On the plasma screen, while Hector fumbles and mutters, Dr (Bunny-to-his-friends) Popham continues to beam patiently down on his audience. He is a rotund, jolly gentleman with chubby cheeks and side-whiskers, drawn straight from the pages of Beatrix Potter. Improbably he sports tennis whites and is clutching, in addition to his racquet, a comely female tennis partner.

The home page of The Dr Popham & No Partners website, when it finally appears, is mastered by the same cheerful face, smiling over the top of a quasi-royal coat of arms featuring the scales of justice. Beneath him runs his Mission Statement:     My expert team’s professional experience includes:–   successfully protecting the rights of leading individuals in the international entrepreneurial banking sphere against Serious Fraud Office investigations–   successfully representing key international clients in matters regarding offshore jurisdiction, and their right to silence at international and UK tribunals of inquiry–   successfully responding to importunate regulatory inquiries and tax investigations and charges of improper or illegal payments to influence-makers.

‘And the buggers can’t stop playing tennis,’ Hector complains as his rogues’ gallery recovers at its former spanking pace.

* * *