BMW pulling in across the road.
No one got out. The side windows were tinted.
I adjusted my rear mirror to get a better view. Then, I shivered. I didn’t know why at the time.
An older man in a light-coloured suit got out of the back. He had a trilby pulled over down over his ears so I couldn’t see his face. He sauntered a couple of yards to the post box and posted something through the slot.
I thought it might have been the big man with the leather jacket, but was glad it wasn’t. Silly of me to assume that. Let’s face it, there were thousands of black BMWs on the road these days.
I locked my car, took my stuff up to the flat and got on with the rest of my day.
Before I went to bed I fixed myself another sandwich, tuned into the news channel and half-stifled a groan. Robert Cutt had been at it again. This time there were allegations of bribery; something to do with access to a list of potential mayoral candidates. Cutt was coming out of it all right though – there was a fall guy, Gerald Harp, some executive way way down in the Cutt hierarchy, testifying that Cutt had known nothing about the alleged misdemeanour. Yeah right.
Photos showed Harp was on the puny side: very fair with see-through eyelashes and matching hair. The last photo on the TV coverage had him in a geeky white blazer, at some sporting event.
After a few minutes of commentary outside the House of Commons they went to a shot of Cutt leaving a meeting. Reporters jostled with each other to get into a prime position. His bodyguards managed to whack a few out of the way, but one determined newshound got their mic right under his nose.
‘Do you have any comment to make on this latest allegation, Mr Cutt?’
A bodyguard shoved the camera, which tilted to the floor, showing Cutt’s strangely effeminate pale blue suede shoes. The reporter herself was undeterred. ‘Mr Cutt, do you have anything to say about this revelation?’ The camera was back up, trained on Cutt’s face. He stopped and offered his good side to the camera. He didn’t give a toss about the fall guy, you could tell. The operator clumsily zoomed in and Cutt’s broad high-cheeked visage filled the screen: ‘My family and I have always lived a moral and correct life. Despite these slurs, that will continue.’ The light American accent still lingered in his voice.
‘Amen,’ said a bystander and a couple of nearby nutters applauded. Why? He wasn’t an out and out Christian but he did have that American thing about brandishing his genealogy. The more he did it, the more popular he got.
God, he was smug.
He gave the camera one last devilish smile, then left the frame. The crew attempted to follow him but were hemmed in by men in suits.
Some of us could see what Cutt was doing – using every possible media opportunity to promote his wholesome credentials in order to get that power seat in the cabinet. That wholesome image was a well-thought-out strategy. Right on the money, if you forgive the pun. I could almost applaud its engineer: we were up to our ears in secular unrest right now – what with the riots, the Eurozone, the bankers, foreign mafia infiltrating our shores. Never before had a return to some kind of thinly couched Christian ‘Back to Basics’ ethic been so well received by the press. People wanted a quick fix and Cutt was positioning himself as the answer to it all.
It made me seethe.
Arrogant git.
Not all of his family could have lived a good life. There must be someone somewhere who had been a bastard and spawned this crook.
‘Well, let’s just see about that, shall we,’ I said to myself, ramming the last piece of sandwich into my mouth. I fetched my laptop, put his name into Google and sat back. The search brought up hundreds of hits.
A quick tour through the labyrinth led me to Cutt’s own website where his family tree was displayed proudly for all to see.
It was true – though his parents were working-class people from Wyoming, their roots, through his father, went back to Jediah Curwen-Dunmow of Massachusetts who died in the late seventeenth century.
Curwen-Dunmow was, according to a mini biog, a fine upright elder. He fathered a son, Certain (who dropped the ‘Curwen’ and kept only ‘Dunmow’), very late in life. Although Curwen-Dunmow himself had no certificates