Happy Days (38 page)

On the Thursday, after a merciful lull, things went from bad to worse. Secretary of State for Industry Lord Mandelson was extensively photographed waltzing with a woman in pink in the Blackpool Tower ballroom. The news coverage caused a flurry of excitement across the nation, and it was Gill Reynolds’ idea to stage
Pompey First
’s very own photo shoot at Hilsea Lido’s
Blue Lagoon. That afternoon they were staging a Festival of Jive. Reynolds, who happened to be a talented jiver, offered to partner Bazza and guaranteed coverage in the
News
. The candidate himself was less than keen, but a couple of TV crews also turned up and he did his best. The black eye had gone by now but even Reynolds’ twirls couldn’t mask Bazza’s clumsiness. The results, beamed into thousands of homes across the city, proved beyond doubt that Bazza Mackenzie had two left feet, and although he won a sizeable sympathy vote for his gameness, it did nothing for either his self-esteem or his marriage.

That evening, after watching
Meridian Tonight
, Marie threw him out and had the locks changed. She’d never much liked politics and she’d certainly had enough of this kind of public humiliation. Bazza, who viewed this development in his private life as a temporary blip, moved into one of the nicer bedrooms on the Trafalgar’s second floor, often with Gill Reynolds in attendance. That night, pissed, he tried – and failed – to shag her. This was a situation he’d never encountered before. She was as dexterous and inventive as ever, but nothing she did for him seemed to work. Early next morning, to his growing alarm, he drew another blank. She gave him a massage. She ran a bath. She tried to cup him between her breasts and told him he was the best fuck she’d ever had. He didn’t believe her. And nothing happened.

By now Bazza suspected she was getting a better offer from Andy Makins.
Pompey First
’s IT wizard was out of hospital now, and it was no secret that Gill Reynolds was popping round to his flat most afternoons to make sure he was OK. Makins, to Bazza’s disgust, wasn’t keen on hurrying back to front-line electoral duties, a situation Leo Kinder put down to post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD, according to Kinder, could incapacitate someone as sensitive as Makins for months.

Bazza, who had no time for fancy excuses like these, issued Makins with an ultimatum. Either he resume work for
Pompey
First
or he was off the payroll. Makins, to his credit, did his best, but by midway through week three it was obvious that his heart wasn’t in it. The ceaseless flow of ideas had dried up. He stopped monitoring the various Internet forums he’d fathered. Messages from Bazza demanding a response went unanswered. From the room he was using as an office, Makins seemed to spend half the day checking the street outside for possible threats. And when the time came to go home, he either blagged a lift from Gill Reynolds or insisted on a taxi.

From Bazza’s point of view this was a sinister development. He’d never trusted anyone else with a woman he happened to be shagging. Gill Reynolds managed to coax a performance or two, but Bazza was increasingly haunted by what she’d once told him about Andy Makins. The guy had the knack. The guy knew what a woman really needed. The guy took her places she’d never been before. Again and again and again. Bazza was honest enough to know that he simply wasn’t in this league. He could make a woman laugh. He could spend money on her. He could make her feel like the princess of her dreams. But when it came to bed, he rarely wasted the kind of time and attentiveness she seemed to crave. The sex was OK. It did the business. But he was uncomfortably aware that it didn’t hold a candle to what she’d come to expect from Mr Makins.

And so, as the campaign gathered pace, Bazza began to flag. The Future-Proofing Conference, so carefully prepared, was a huge disappointment. Half the speakers didn’t turn up and neither did the media. In the days that followed, Mackenzie seemed to lose it. His speeches lacked that buccaneering spark that had lit a bonfire under the Pompey hustings. Crowds once numbered in hundreds began to thin. He started muddling important statistics, handing his opponents a series of open goals. Postings on various group sites registered disappointment, then hostility, then derision. Even Leo Kinder, who Bazza had always regarded as rock-solid, began to show signs of losing his nerve.

Then, with election day barely a week away,
Pompey First
hit the buffers. Since the incident under the pier there’d been no sign of the kids Bazza had insulted in his haste to grab the law-and-order vote. Glaziers had restored the hotel restaurant to its former glory. Bazza had waived the bill run up by the party of diners who’d been on the receiving end of the third rock. And when the
News
phoned the following day, enquiring about an incident at the Royal Trafalgar, he’d told them they were imagining things. Life was sweet. Business was good. Find yourself a headline somewhere else. This smokescreen of denials seemed to work, and within days the only real casualty of the incident was Andy Makins.

But the kids hadn’t gone away. Towards the end of the month Bazza arrived in the Guildhall Square to make a speech about political funding. How the Tories were simply frontmen for big business. How the Labour lot were putty in the hands of the trade unions. How the only candidates worth voting for were the guys with clean hands and a clear conscience. Like Bazza Mackenzie. He’d touched on elements of this issue before, but Leo Kinder had worked deep into the night and produced something really punchy he thought might reboot the
Pompey First
campaign. He’d also been on his knees to various media contacts and managed to secure a decent turnout. TV was there, and radio, and a couple of print journalists.

Their very presence attracted the beginnings of a respectable crowd, and Bazza was deep into his speech, giving it plenty of welly, before he noticed the kids at the back. He’d last glimpsed these faces in the half-darkness under the pier. A lot of them were carrying posters. The posters were crude – hand-scrawled black capital letters – but they all spelled the same message:
Pompey Last
.

Bazza did his best to ignore them. He talked about the fat cats in the city. He had a rant about dinosaur trade union leaders. He even made a half-decent joke about political cross-dressing, accusing Lord Mandelson of cosying up to Russian
oligarchs. All this was good political knockabout, exactly as Kinder had intended, and Bazza knew the crowd was on his side, but the moment the kids arrived he felt the momentum slipping away. They were chanting – they’d obviously been rehearsing – ‘Loser … loser … loser …’

Bazza started to shout. Then he lost his thread. The chanting got louder. Finally he’d had enough. Appealing directly to the nearest camera, he pointed out the faces at the back of the crowd. ‘That’s the scrote vote,’ he yelled. ‘Take a good look, because that’s the future of this fucking country.’

The quote, discreetly bleeped, made the national news. Within hours it was on the front page of the London
Evening Standard
. The Pompey
News
devoted two inside pages to the story: instant rebuttal from the kids themselves, from angry parents, from shocked teachers, from despairing social workers. Who was Bazza Mackenzie to condemn an entire generation? Who, indeed?

And it got worse. Over the next two days, no matter how carefully Bazza and Kinder tried to outfox them, the scrote vote was always waiting at the next campaign stop. More posters. More chants. Increasingly desperate, Kinder began to reschedule, insisting on indoor venues and putting 6.57 security on the door. The tactic was a disaster. Intimidated by a bunch of middle-aged thugs, the audiences got smaller and smaller while the scrote vote picketed the road outside, drawing the kind of crowds
Pompey First
could only dream of. But these people had come for a ruck. They were the kind of gawkers who slow down on motorways when they see a tangle of wreckage and a couple of winking blue lights.
Pompey First
, it was widely agreed, had become a car crash.

Winter consented to attend a
Gehenna
meet at the end of that last full week of campaigning. He drove to the safe house in Winchester and found himself confronted by the entire management team: half a dozen faces around the table, all of
them eager to find out what was really happening at the heart of the
Pompey First
electoral machine.

‘It’s all turned to rat shit,’ Winter was smiling. ‘As I told you it would.’

Willard, who’d been fed the media coverage by Parsons, wanted to know about the kids with the placards, the
Pompey Last
lot. How come they’d turned out to be so politically savvy? And how come they were always one step ahead?

Winter was happy to explain. He described the night the kids had turned up outside the hotel and what happened afterwards. Makins, he said, had been hospitalised for a couple of days. Returning to his Southsea flat, he’d found a note pushed under his door. Liam and Billy were the kids who’d put the boot in under the pier. And now they wanted a little chat.

‘How did they know where to find him?’ This from Parsons.

‘I told them.’

‘You traced these kids?’

‘Of course I did. We had the news footage from the law-and-order thing. I printed out some faces. Showed them around.’ He smiled. ‘The way you do.’

Willard wanted to know what happened next.

‘Liam and Billy went round to see Makins. Makins was bricking himself, but all they wanted was advice.’

‘What kind of advice?’

‘Political advice. It turned out they were really pissed off by what Mackenzie had said. They thought it was unfair for starters. Makins explained Bazza had never really meant it – it was just stuff for the cameras – but that just made it worse. These kids hate people taking advantage. And that’s exactly what Mackenzie had done. Big time.’

Makins, he explained, had promised to help them.

‘Why?’ Willard again.

‘Partly because he didn’t want to end up in hospital again and partly because he’s had it with Mackenzie. He thinks the bloke’s off his head, and from where I’m sitting he’s dead right.’

‘So what happened?’

‘He told the kids to wait, to hang on. He knew Mackenzie would never last the course. Then he came up with the
Pompey Last
line and the “Loser” chant. That’s what really did it for the kids in the first place, being labelled losers. They really hate that. Loser’s the worst. So turning it on Mackenzie when his campaign’s going tits up was really sweet. You know what they think of Makins now? They love him to death. And you know why? Because Bazza reacted just the way Makins knew he would. He can’t handle stuff like that. He needs to be in control. Otherwise he starts foaming at the mouth.’

Heads nodded round the table. Winter had always promised that the campaign would take Mackenzie to a very bad place, and that’s exactly what had happened.

‘But how come the kids always know where he’s off to next?’ Suttle asked.

‘Big mystery. Mackenzie’s starting to think it might be a woman called Gill Reynolds. She’s a reporter on the
News
. He’s briefing her every night for some kind of special she’s doing afterwards. This is a woman who can’t wait to be famous. Bazza is her best shot. Another possibility is Andy Makins. He’s got access to the intranet we use, chiefly because he set the thing up. He knows these kids. He knows where to find them. Plus he’s happy to shaft Mackenzie.’

‘Is that wise?’

‘Probably not. But he was shagging Reynolds before Bazza helped himself.’

Winter looked briefly troubled. Mackenzie had tasked him to stop the leaks and bring him a name. Suttle wanted to know if that was a problem.

‘Of course it is.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the leaks are down to me. I bung the kids a schedule every night. They’ve no idea where it comes from but it’s always kosher stuff. They turn up next day and Bazza goes
ape, blames everyone, Reynolds, Makins, even Kinder. No wonder the fucking thing is falling apart.’

A ripple of laughter ran round the table. This was textbook Winter, a masterclass in manipulation. Even Willard looked impressed.

‘So what happens next?’ he said. ‘What’s your recommendation?’

Winter held his gaze. He didn’t much like the word recommendation, but he decided for the time being to live with it. Willard had a great deal of face to save, but in truth
Gehenna
was now in Winter’s hands. He was the spider in the middle of the web. His strategy. His call.

‘Jimmy?’ Winter had turned to Suttle. ‘You’ve talked to Mr Willard?’

‘About?’

‘Me? Misty? Trude?’

‘I have, yes.’

‘And?’

‘It’s OK. In principle.’ Suttle glanced at Willard for confirmation. Willard simply nodded.

Winter wanted to know what ‘in principle’ meant. He was looking at Willard now.

‘It means we’ll meet your demands. Given a satisfactory outcome.’

‘Which is?’

‘Mackenzie in front of a jury. And you in the witness box.’

‘Fair enough. You want to talk about timings? When Misty and her daughter can be ghosted? Exactly when that happens?’

‘No.’ Willard shook his head. ‘We’ll sort that later.’

‘When?’

‘Later. Once we know where this thing is headed.’

Winter studied his hands for a moment. Unlike everyone else around the table he’d brought no paperwork. Everything, every last detail, was where it should be. In his head.

‘Like I say,’ he began, ‘Mackenzie’s in a very bad place. His
missus has washed her hands of him. The money’s running out again. He’s getting calls from the bank. The business could fold any day now.
Pompey First
is a joke. Any one of those factors could push him towards the edge. Put them all together, and he’s looking at oblivion.’

‘Except Bazza doesn’t do oblivion.’ This was Willard.

‘Exactly. You’re right. What Bazza does is tight corners. And what he does best, what he
loves
, is getting out of them. This is the tightest of tight corners. This is a corner so tight that even he thinks it might be a stretch getting out.’