Political Suicide Read online

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  Contents

  Chapter 1: Dead Member

  Chapter 2: Private Member

  Chapter 3: A Process of Selection

  Chapter 4: Home from Home

  Chapter 5: Prying

  Chapter 6: Campaigning (I)

  Chapter 7: Country Cottage

  Chapter 8: Manor Court

  Chapter 9: Campaigning (II)

  Chapter 10: Dear Old Granny

  Chapter 11: Party Agent

  Chapter 12: Meetings

  Chapter 13: The Alliance Candidate

  Chapter 14: Tory Hopeful

  Chapter 15: Tory Helpfuls

  Chapter 16: Declaration

  Chapter 17: Inquests

  Chapter 1

  Dead Member

  It was a quiet Friday morning in Downing Street. The Prime Minister was stewing over a draft bill to privatize the armed forces, many of the aides and secretaries who normally cluttered the place were already off for the weekend, and in the kitchens the cook was preparing a light lunch of staggering ordinariness.

  At 10:40 the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary tapped on the study door and poked his head in.

  “Oh, Prime Minister—just heard on the wires: Jim Partridge is dead.”

  The Prime Minister looked up from the paper-strewn desk.

  “Ask the Chairman when would be the best time for a by-election. I’d have said before the Budget, wouldn’t you? And make sure the usual messages are sent—deepest sympathy, and all that.”

  And the prime-ministerial head bent down over the papers again.

  • • •

  The death of James Partridge, MP for Bootham East, made slightly more stir elsewhere in the country.

  “Dead?” said Harold Fawcett, his party agent, warming his backside against the imitation-coal gas fire in his Bootham living-room, and speaking into the telephone on his mantelpiece. “Dead, Chairman? But I can’t believe it, I saw him—what?—two weeks ago. No, I lie, three. He looked perfectly all right then. He was what? Fished out of the Thames? . . . But that’s incred . . . Was he what? Having an affair? If he was, he wasn’t having it in Bootham. Well, he wouldn’t be, to be perfectly frank. We’re not exactly his type, no disrespect to his memory. And to be honest, I never heard anything like that about him . . . No, certainly I never saw him drunk . . . Before the Budget? But is that wise? It will look like a rush job, and it will be a rush job . . . Naturally we’ve no candidate lined up. Partridge was a man of forty-two—we thought he’d be here for decades yet. And if there’s going to be flak from his death, I’d have thought it would be very unwise to . . . Oh, the PM . . . the PM wants it . . . Right. I’ll get on to the Committee at once . . . I’ll be back to you, Chairman.”

  • • •

  As the day wore on, telephone wires up and down the country began to buzz. Young stockbrokers, gentlemen farmers, bored and ambitious solicitors, research workers at Central Office—all ringing up their friends, their political contacts, each other. Had you heard? Are you interested? What was the majority? The phone at Harold Fawcett’s hardly stopped ringing all day: “I say, I’ve just heard . . . Terrible tragedy, quite appalling . . . at his age . . . Look, old chap, I know it’s early days yet, but I was wondering . . .”

  So busy was the Bootham Agent’s line that when the Party Chairman tried to ring him again from London later in the day, it was forty minutes before he could get through.

  “Ah—you’ve got things well in train? . . . Final selection meeting tentatively set for January 10th. Quite—we’ve got Christmas intervening, haven’t we? Awful nuisance, Christmas” (said the Chairman, a gentleman of impeccable Christian credentials). “Well, if everything goes smoothly then—and I’m sure you’ll see that it does—then perhaps we could pencil in, even more tentatively, say Thursday, February 27th, as a pretty good date. That’s well before the Budget, and before the Chancellor starts flying kites for the Budget . . . Yes, he is inclined to do that. In fact last time he gave practically the whole thing away in advance . . . Oh yes, and there’s one more thing, Harold—I may call you Harold? We’ll probably be seeing a fair bit of each other in the near future. Well, I think you should know that the PM will probably want the candidate to be One of Us. Entirely up to you, the choice, of course, but do make it One of Us. Right? I don’t have to spell it out, do I? Good! I can see we’re going to get on famously.”

  So what it came down to was that a good seventy per cent of those telephone wires vibrating with life up and down the country represented so much wasted money thrown into the national coffers. All unknowing, the gentlemen farmers, the solicitors in Leeds, the local councillors and the retired army men were basing their hopes on a chimera. They were not One of Us. The more sensible among them, though, were aware of the odds against them, and were far from building castles, or seats, in the air. Those who were One of Us, similarly (young economists of a certain stamp, men in PR, men who’d made their first million by the time they were twenty-five), they knew that the odds were stacked in their favour, and they were chuckling with delight.

  “Derek?” said Antony Craybourne-Fisk, on the phone to Derek Manders, the Member for Crawley South, “Have you heard? Jim Partridge has died.”

  “So I heard,” said Manders, surveying the length of an elegantly-trousered leg as he sat in the study of his Mayfair home, bought with a large part of that first million. “But I haven’t heard any of the details. What was it?”

  “Suicide, so the whisper goes, but I don’t think anybody really knows. Dredged up out of the Thames.”

  “Really? Something of a surprise, isn’t it? I hadn’t heard any rumours. What was it? Business difficulties?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, would you? Not Jim Partridge. Straight old Jim. Wouldn’t have thought it could be sex either, but you never know. It usually is with us. I hope they manage to hush things up—for the good of the by-election. Oh, and on that subject—”

  “I thought that might be why you were ringing, Antony. How big was his majority?”

  “According to The Times Guide to the House of Commons—not that you can trust that—it was close on six thousand.”

  “Hmmm. Results at the last election were a bit misleading. What was his majority in ’79? Something quite small, I fancy. After all, Bootham is hardly natural Tory country, is it? Got any connections in that part of the world?”

  “None. Wait a bit though—I think my grandmother was born in Yorkshire.”

  “Any chance of wheeling her out?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she’s in a home for decayed Rep actresses in Southsea. For all I know she might be best kept under wraps—senile dementia, or DTs, or something like that. Still, I suppose she could be mentioned . . .”

  “Quite.”

  “What I was thinking, Derek, is that you have the ear of the Chairman . . .”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “And the PM, if you would but use it. And I thought that if you were to mention my name . . . in passing . . .”

  • • •

  It was not only in the middle and upper echelons of the ruling party that the death of James Partridge was beginning to cause ripples. Ex-Labour MPs—far from an endangered species at the period we are dealing with—were up and down the country ringing each other up: who had been the candidate last time, did they know? Was he firmly ensconced there still, or was there a
chance for anybody else? “Of course, if you were interested, old man, I wouldn’t think of sticking my oar in,” several of them said, not meaning to be believed, and not being. And at Labour Party Headquarters, two members of the National Executive discussed the inevitable by-election over two thick cups of thick tea.

  “We’ve got to put up a good showing there,” said one. “It’ll be seen as a test of the new party leader.”

  “The new leader’s had a fair number of tests by now.”

  “Quite. Some he’s come through with flying colours. Others . . .”

  “Exactly. Who’s the candidate there?”

  “Sam Quimby. He was MP for one of the Manchester seats, you remember. Lost it in ’79. Fought Bootham East in ’83—put up quite a good fight. Might have won it, if it hadn’t been for that damned Alliance. He’ll be a good candidate. We’ll back him up to the hilt. Leader, Deputy Leader, Tony Benn, the whole caboodle. It could be a very promising show, for us.”

  But unknown to them the matter was in danger of slipping out of the control of the National Executive (as so many matters did). At the very moment they were speaking, a phone call was in progress between the Hampstead branch secretary of Workers for Revolutionary Action and that movement’s Deputy Chairperson in Deptford. Both were members of the Labour Party of some three years’ standing.

  “Have you heard, Sid? Jim Partridge’s chucked himself off some bridge or other.”

  “Who’s he when he’s at home?”

  “MP for Bootham East. Right? Get me?”

  “Get you, Frank. Interesting. We’ve put in a fair bit of work there, I know. Who’s the candidate?”

  “Sam Quimby.”

  “Sam Quimby! He’s practically a Tory!” said Sid, in a voice of practised and patently theatrical outrage that was not meant to be taken seriously. Sam Quimby was a mildly distinguished ex-MP of impeccably anti-nuclear, anti-American and anti-Common Market credentials.

  “Exactly. A point we shall be making as forcibly as we know how over the next few weeks.” Frank chuckled happily. “Old Sam’s a gentleman, you know. He’ll splutter, but he’ll go without a fight. And put out a statement of support for our candidate. Getting rid of him will be a piece of cake.”

  “And we’re strong there?”

  “Couldn’t be stronger. Our men and their supporters virtually took over the party a couple of months ago. Sam would have been out on his little pink ear by spring in any case.”

  “And who’ll be the new Labour candidate, then?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you who we’ve got in mind. Jerry Snaithe.”

  “The GLC man?”

  “The very one. Chairman of the Arts and Leisure Activities Committee of the Greater London Council. Had lots of publicity over some of his handouts. And rock-solid from our point of view.”

  “Bootham’s in Lancashire, though.”

  “Yorkshire.”

  “Same difference. Will they want a Londoner foisted on them? They tend to resent that kind of thing.”

  “Ah—BUT! Trump Card! Our Jerry just happened to go to school in Yorkshire.”

  “I didn’t know that. That alters things. Where?”

  “Amplehurst, actually.”

  “Isn’t that a public school? RC or something?”

  “Right. Jerry’s dad was a diplomat, and a Holy Roman to boot.”

  “Well, our Jerry’s certainly lived that down, hasn’t he?”

  “Hasn’t he just! And of course all we say in the election address is ‘went to school in Yorkshire.’ Or even ‘grew up in Yorkshire.’ The Tory gutter press never dug it up for the GLC elections, so there’s no reason why they should now.”

  “I’d say it was beginning to look promising.”

  “I’d say it was looking very promising indeed.”

  “Would he win the seat, do you think?”

  “Oh—winning. I don’t know about that. But that’s not really the point, is it?”

  • • •

  The leader of the Social Democratic wing of the Alliance was talking to the leader of the Liberal wing of the Alliance, during a regular Friday date that was aimed at keeping the Alliance green.

  “They’re pushing ahead with the by-election at Bootham, you notice.”

  “So I gather. One of yours at the last election.”

  “At this one, too.”

  “Oh, of course. We wouldn’t think of interfering. Got anything in mind?”

  “Well, there’s a perfectly respectable candidate left over from last time, I believe. I campaigned for him, but I can’t remember much about him. Local man—councillor, social worker, or teacher, or something. Very worthy. Question is, should we try and draft in one of our senior people. One of our ex-MPs, perhaps.”

  “Plenty of those.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. What I’d like to know is: would it do more harm than good? In these Northern constituencies it’s often the really local man who goes down best. Westminster’s another country to them. Then there’s the question of whether one of the candidates at least shouldn’t be a woman. The Tories won’t pick one, they never do, and Labour’s got Sam Quimby from the last election. It makes Parliament look like a male club.”

  “Which it is. Were you thinking of Shirley?”

  “I don’t know that she wants to get back in yet. Thinks she’s beginning to look like a political yo-yo. But there are others. The main thing is, not to give the appearance of dithering.”

  “Quite.”

  “Take a decision, and stick to it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I wish I had a clearer picture of what grass-roots opinion in the constituency is likely to be . . .”

  And so, determined to give an appearance of not dithering, they dithered.

  • • •

  The day had waned, and the watery half-light of a December dusk had given way to a chill and rainy darkness. The democratic processes which were to determine what choice was to be presented to the electors of Bootham were now so well under way that no one any longer bothered to mention the name of James Partridge, or to pretend that it was much too early to think about the by-election. The Prime Minister had long ago forgotten the death of this back-bencher, and was giving an evening reception for a trade delegation from an obscure and unsavoury Sultanate in the Persian Gulf. But half a mile from Downing Street, in the shabby anonymity of the concrete and glass tower that is New Scotland Yard, Jim Partridge was still a live issue.

  “Accident is a physical impossibility,” said Chief Superintendent Sutcliffe, stirring a cup of coffee and looking thoughtfully at Inspector Wendell, an old friend, and his own generation of CID man. “He was five foot eight, and the parapet on Vauxhall Bridge would be well above his waistline. He’d have had to be sitting on it to fall off accidentally, and the doc says he definitely wasn’t drunk.”

  He sat there, still stirring, forgetting to drink. He was fifty-seven, and ten weeks off his retirement date: he had a sad, grey moustache and kindly, tired eyes. His wife was dead, his two daughters grown up and married. He looked forward to his retirement with a strange mixture of hope and dread—would it be a liberation, or a death?

  “We shan’t get a proper post mortem report till tomorrow,” he said, “but on the face of it the obvious conclusion has to be that it was suicide.”

  “Is there any reason why it shouldn’t be?”

  Sutcliffe shrugged, an uneasy shrug.

  “None why it shouldn’t, and none why it should, so far. I’ve only spoken briefly to the wife on the phone, but she said she knew of none. Perhaps she would say that. All they can suggest over at Conservative Headquarters is that he was over-conscientious, and that he’s been snowed under with work connected with some private member’s bill he was piloting through the House. It doesn’t seem much of a reason for suicide.”

  “I believe they are a hell of a lot of work, when you haven’t got the government machine behind you.”

  “Granted. But you don’t ha
ve to take on a private member’s bill if you don’t want to. I’ll just have to dig a bit deeper if I’m to come up with something that will satisfy the inquest.”

  “Careful. It could be a hot potato. Keep the Old Man informed.”

  “Oh, I will, naturally. Powerful Interests, as they call them, will be having their say. One thing about a political thing like this: I’ll have to get it right, or I’ll certainly be shot at from one side or the other. On the other hand, the worst thing you can do with something political is to try and sweep all the dirt under the carpet.”

  He was quite wrong, of course. Before long it was being made clear to him from all sides that the one thing they wished more than any other was that he had swept all the dirt under the carpet. But by then it was too late.

  Chapter 2

  Private Member

  Penelope Partridge was tall and elegant—no trace of disarray on this her second morning of widowhood. Her face was long and handsome, and all suggestion of the horse was kept at bay by skilful make-up. The eyes were dry but slightly reddened, almost (thought Sutcliffe, but kicking himself at the same time for the inbred cynicism of policemen) as if she had deliberately rubbed them before his visit, but not too much. Was she a good MP’s wife? he wondered. He couldn’t see her going down well in Bootham—not with that cool, reserved, condescending manner. Already he was being given the idea that being interviewed by a policeman, whatever his rank and whatever the circumstances, was something very much beneath her dignity. She was trying to make him feel like an upper servant.

  “Of course, looking back,” she was saying, with an upper-class drawl that emphasized unlikely words, “one can see that his problem was that he was too conscientious—he let things prey on him, took them too much to heart.”

  “Personal things, you mean?”

  Sutcliffe was surprised to see a flicker of apprehension flash through her eyes, but it was not allowed to change the expression on her face, and she retrieved herself immediately.

  “Oh no—no-o-o,” She glanced around the drawing-room of their elegant Chelsea house, as if to say: who, having this, could have personal problems? “I meant political problems, of course. Governmental problems. He was a junior health minister, you know, for three years—dropped in the reshuffle after the last election. Dropped, just like that.” A trace of bitterness invaded her tone, but again she shook it off immediately. “I have a feeling the PM likes people who can take things a bit more in their stride; don’t go around with the burdens of the world on their shoulders the whole time. That was James’s problem: he worried, couldn’t leave a thing alone if it was on his mind. I remember when he was having some troubles in the Department—you know, nurses’ pay and suchlike—” she waved a long-fingernailed hand—“and he went to open some hospital or other, and there was a big demonstration—you know the kind of show they put on. They heckled him, and threw things—quite nasty, but of course if you’re a minister these days, with current standards of behaviour, you have to get used to that sort of thing. But you know, for a week afterwards he could talk about nothing else—their case, pay guidelines, violence—until I could have screamed! Really, in politics these days one has got to be a bit more—insouciant. Happy-go-lucky,” she added, for Sutcliffe’s benefit.