party's biggest contributors. Loyally and discreetly over many years.'
'So what's the problem?'
'Having come to our aid whenever we asked for it, he now expects us to come equally loyally to his. To pull a few strings with the Director of Public Prosecutions. Which of course we can't, but he refuses to understand that.'
'There's more, I know there's more . . .'
'And he insists that if the case comes to trial he will have to reveal his substantial party donations.' 'So?'
'Which were paid all in cash. Delivered in suitcases.' 'Oh, shit.'
'Enough of it to give us all acute haemorrhoids. He not only gave to the central Party but supported the constituency election campaigns of almost every member of the Cabinet.'
'Don't tell me. All spent on things which weren't reported as election expenses.'
'In my case everything was recorded religiously and will bear full public scrutiny. In other cases . . .' He arched an eyebrow. 'I'm told the Trade Secretary, later this afternoon to reinforce our glorious backbenches, used the money to pay off a troublesome mistress who was threatening to release certain compromising letters. It was made over to her, and Harrod still has the cancelled cheque.'
Stamper pushed his chair back from the table until it was balancing on its rear legs, as if trying to distance himself from such absurdity. 'Christ, Francis, we've got all this crap about to hit us at a hundred miles an hour and you want me to be Party Chairman? If it's all the same to you, I'd rather seek asylum in Libya. By Easter, you say? It'll take more than a bloody resurrection to save anybody caught in the middle of that lot.'
His waved his arms forlornly, drained of energy and resistance, but Urquhart was straining forward in great earnest, tension stiffening his body.
'By Easter. Precisely. Which means we have to move before then, Tim. Use the honeymoon period, beat up the Opposition, get in ahead of the recession and get a majority which will last until all the flak has been left well behind us.'
Stamper's voice was breathless. 'An election, you mean?'
'By the middle of March. Which gives us exactly fourteen weeks, only ten weeks before I have to announce it, and in that time I want you as Party Chairman getting the election machine as tight as it can be. There are plans to be made, money to be raised, opponents to be embarrassed. And all without anyone having the slightest idea what we're about to spring on them.'
Stamper's chair rocked back with a clatter as he endeavoured to recover his wits. 'Bloody Party Chairman.'
'Don't worry. It's only for fourteen weeks. If all goes well you can have the pick of any Government department you want. And if not . . . Well, neither of us will have to worry about a political job ever again.'
'This is truly appalling.' Elizabeth Urquhart screwed up her nose with considerable violence as she surveyed the room. It had been several days since the Collingridges removed the last of their personal effects from the small apartment above 10 Downing Street reserved for the use of Prime Ministers, and the sitting room now had the ambience of a three star hotel. It lacked any individual character, that had already been transported in the packing cases, and what was left was in good order but carried the aesthetic touch of a British Rail waiting room. 'Simply revolting. It won't do,' she repeated, gazing at the wallpaper, where she half expected to find the faded impressions of a row of flying china ducks. She was momentarily distracted as she passed by a long wall mirror, surreptitiously checking the conspicuous red tint her hairdresser had applied earlier in the week as she had wailed for the final leadership ballot. A celebratory highlight, the stylist had called it, but no one could any longer mistake it for a natural hue and it had left her constantly fiddling with the colour balance on the remote control, wondering whether it was time to change the television or her hair salon.
'What extraordinary people they must have been,' she muttered, brushing some imagined speck of dust from the front of her Chanel suit while her husband's House of Commons secretary, who was accompanying her on the tour of inspection, buried herself in her notebook. She thought she rather liked the Collingridges; she was more definite in her views of Elizabeth Urquhart, whose cold eyes gave her a predatory look and whose constant diets to fend