some scrappy bit of France during the Second World War. Thereafter, Urquhart had lived in his dead brother's shadow. He had not only to fulfil his own substantial potential but, in the eyes of his mourning mother, to fulfil that of the lost first-born, whom time and grief had imbued with almost mythical powers. When Francis passed exams, his mother reminded him that Alistair had been Captain of the school. Where Francis became one of the fastest-travelling dons of his age, in his mother's eyes Alistair would already have arrived. As a small boy he would climb into his mother's bed, for comfort and warmth, but all he found were silent tears trickling down her cheeks. He could remember only the feeling of rejection, of being somehow inadequate. In later life he could never completely expel from his mind his mother's look of misery and incomprehension, which seemed to haunt any bedroom he entered. While a teenager he had never taken a girl to bed, it only served to remind him that for his mother he had always been second-born and second-best. There had been girls, of course, but never in bed - on floors, in tents, standing up against the walls of a deserted country house. And, eventually, on Chesterfields, during tutorials. Like this one.
'Thank you,' he said softly, breaking the moment and his lurid reminiscence by swirling the whisky around in his glass and downing it in a gulp. 'But I must deal with this speech.' He took a sheaf of papers from a coffee table and waved them at her. 'Head him off at the pass, or whatever it is you say.'
'Drafting speeches isn't exactly my line, Francis.'
'But it is mine. And I shall treat it with the greatest respect. Like a surgeon. It will remain a fine and upstanding text, full of high sentiment and ringing phrases. It simply won't have any balls left when I send it back . . .'
December: The Third Week
The Detective Constable squirmed in his seat as he tried to regain some of the feeling he had lost in his lower limbs. He'd been stuck in the car for four hours, the drizzle prevented him from taking a walk around the car, and his mouth felt like a mouse nest from sucking at the cigarettes. He'd give the weed up. Again. Tomorrow, he vowed, just as he always did. Mariana. He reached for a fresh thermos of coffee and poured a cup for himself and the driver beside him.
They sat gazing at the small house in the exotically named Adam and Eve Mews. It stood behind one of London's most fashionable shopping thoroughfares, but the mews was well protected from the capital's bustle and stood quiet, secluded and, for onlookers, unremittingly dull.
'Christ, I should think her Italian's perfect by now,' the driver muttered mindlessly. They had exchanged similar sentiments on all five trips to the mews over the last fortnight, and the Special Branch DC and driver found their conversation going round in circles.
The DC broke wind in response. The tide of coffee was getting to him and he desperately wanted to take a leak. His basic training had provided instruction in how to take an unobtrusive leak beside the car while pretending to make running repairs so that he never left his vehicle and its radio, but he would get soaked in the steady drizzle. Anyway, last time he'd tried it the driver had driven off, leaving him kneeling in full flow in the middle of the bloody street. Funny bastard.
He had been enthusiastic when they offered him a job as a Protection Officer in Downing Street. They hadn't told him it would be for Elizabeth Urquhart and her endless round of shopping, entertaining, socializing. And Italian lessons. He lit another cigarette and
cracked the window to allow in some fresh air, coughing as it hit his lungs. 'Naw,' he offered in reply. 'I reckon we've got weeks of this. I bet her teacher's one of the really slow, methodical types.'
They sat gazing at the mews house with the leafless ivy clinging to its walls, the dustbin in its neat little alcove and in the front window a miniature Christmas tree, complete with lights and decorations, £44.95 from Harrods. Inside, behind the drawn curtains, Elizabeth Urquhart was lying on a bed, naked and sweating, taking yet another slow, methodical lesson from her Italian opera star with the beautiful tenor voice.
It was still dark when Mycroft woke, stirred by the clatter of