mere image of him flashing up on the screen made my stomach tighten. Though he’d moved to England in his thirties, his white-blond hair accentuated a classic American face: fantastic cheekbones, wide jaw, good teeth and eyes that showed hyena-like cunning mixed with the blank dumbness of a circling shark. Sometimes in a certain light, it looked like there was nothing going on behind those startling peepers. Like the man had long said goodbye to his soul.
Yet none of this did anything to detract from the overall effect; even his most vociferous opponents had to admit that Robert Cutt was a very handsome devil indeed. Regrettably the well-groomed exterior and contrived panache concealed a business savvy that was ruthless and pretty unethical in its hunger for power.
I couldn’t help thinking, as I watched the sixty-something politician brushing away the cameras, that despite the egging he looked rather pleased with himself. It was gross: there was something about the man that really creeped me out. It wasn’t just the fact that, a few months ago, he’d been coaxed into revealing in a rather probing and frank interview that he believed that men were infinitely better adapted to leadership than the female of the species. Following on from that another documentary had revealed his friendship with TV evangelist, Pat Robertson.
I knew about Mr Robertson before I had ever heard of Cutt: a friend once bought me a joke present for my birthday. It was a mug that had one of Mr Robertson’s quotes printed on it. It read: ‘The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practise witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.’
Bless his little cotton socks.
After that documentary Cutt did a fair bit of political manoeuvring to put a respectable distance between their camps. Even so, there were similarities; both advocated a stable family should have a mother and father (one of each sex). And there was an insidious suggestion that women should remain within the home, though it wasn’t stated explicitly. Nor was it their conviction that human nature was ever nurtured. It was more about genetics and nature. But that was easy for him to say, coming as he did, from a line of pilgrim Baptists back in the good old US of A. Mr Cutt made a big deal of those roots and set himself up as something of a paragon of ancestral virtue.
God knows how he came to be a political contender in the UK.
And yet, it was none of that that had me reflexing into gag response when I saw his nauseatingly beautiful face. No. It was something about his eyes. The hard grey circles reminded me of someone.
I’d just never been able to put my finger on who.
I almost convulsed with repulsion as the screen showed him ushered by bodyguards into a black BMW: just before he got in, he waved a two-fingered victory sign at reporters.
The scene had dulled my mood, leaving me with a restlessness that I couldn’t counter. I switched channels trying to find some comedy. Unfortunately the smarmy mogul had dampened me, so I cut my losses and retired to bed.
I was just sinking into a light slumber when I heard that noise again: a scratching followed by a creaking of sorts. When I strained my ears, I could tell it was right above me, in the loft.
I groaned and buried my head under the duvet, underlining my mental note to call pest control in the morning.
But it got louder.
I pulled the duvet down from my face and stared at the ceiling. ‘Shut up,’ I yelled at it.
Magically, the shuffling stopped.
Chapter Six
The offices of Portillion Publishing were on level six of the larger umbrella company’s head office. The sleek glassy building had won several architectural awards for innovation and was set in the financial heart of London. I use the term ‘heart’ loosely: it was at the centre of the complex of roads and warrens that calls itself the City of London. I’d never felt comfortable about being in that place, with all those bankers. The lack of vegetation, the inhuman scale of the buildings, the overriding predominance of grey, the uniform of suits, the set pace of walking, all combined to give the impression that when you got off the train at Fenchurch Street, you entered a mechanised world set up purely to produce money. Don’t get me wrong, I