The Loyal Servant
Authors: Eva Hudson
Tags: #Westminster, #scandal, #Murder, #DfES, #Government, #academies scandal, #British political thriller, #academies programme, #labour, #crime fiction, #DfE, #Thriller, #Department for Education, #whistleblower, #prime minister, #Evening News, #Catford, #tories, #academy, #London, #DCSF, #Education
About the book
It’s late. The Department for Education is dark and deserted. Low-ranking civil servant and harassed mother of three, Caroline Barber, picks up a cryptic phone message from the minister for schools. When she visits his office in search of an explanation, she discovers him slumped over his desk. Dead. All the evidence seems to point to suicide, but Caroline is convinced Martin Fox has been killed. Unable to trust the information coming from the police, the press or her superiors, she embarks on a dangerous crusade to uncover the real reason he had to die.
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time turns Caroline’s world on its head, all the things she was sure about before are thrown into doubt. The line between right and wrong, good and bad and honesty and deception starts to blur. An ordinary woman forced into extraordinary circumstances, she finds herself doing things she would never have imagined possible.
The scandal she discovers could be powerful enough to bring down the government. But will she get the chance to blow the whistle before her enemies silence her permanently?
The Loyal Servant is the first book in the Six Degrees of Separation series.
THE LOYAL SERVANT
Eva Hudson
Contents
For FC
4 May 1979
A sweet burning smell hit him at the door. He peered into the gloom.
‘Are you in here?’ he said.
He moved slowly into the room, the wooden floorboards cool under his bare feet.
‘Hello?’
He stood very still and listened. He could hear someone breathing.
‘Who’s there?’ he said.
He held out a hand and edged forward.
‘Why’ve you closed all the shutters? What’s going on?’
The sweet smell thickened.
‘Is Stevie in here with you?’
No reply.
‘Stevie?’
His toes bumped against the edge of the thick Persian rug, he continued to move slowly, tracing the edge of the rug with his feet until his eyes adjusted to the dim light. Two wing-back armchairs on the far side of the room had been moved from their normal position either side of the fireplace and turned so that the backs were facing the door. Above them a pall of smoke reached up to the ceiling.
‘Have you seen Stevie?’ he said.
He stopped, not wanting to get any closer to the cloying sweetness.
‘Are you still pissed?’ A voice drifted towards him from the other side of the room.
His head and stomach were heavy with a combination of brandy and champagne from the night before. ‘No.’ He blinked. ‘Have you seen Stevie?’
‘Stevie?’
‘You were with him out at the pool.’ Immediately he regretted mentioning it.
‘Have you been spying on us?’ A woman’s voice. ‘What did you see?’ Her tone was accusatory, anxious. Maybe she always sounded that way. He didn’t really know her. ‘Well?’ she said.
He clenched his fists and screwed up his face. ‘Nothing… I didn’t see anything. I just wondered if you—’
‘We don’t know where he is. Maybe he’s left already.’
‘I was going to share a cab back into town with him,’ he said.
‘Looks like he’s gone without you, then, doesn’t it?’
He started to back out of the room. ‘If you do see him, tell him I’ve—’
‘I wouldn’t bother. I don’t think he was that interested.’
He turned and retraced his steps, moving faster now than on the way in, and stumbled over a corner of the rug. He stretched out his arms, but there was nothing to grab. He slammed hard against the floor.
‘Are you still here?’ the woman said.
He scrambled to his feet and finally reached the door. He crossed the hall and ran into the long drawing room, tripping over the trailing ends of the dustsheets covering the furniture. He flung open the French doors leading onto the veranda and gulped as much air into his lungs as he could. The early morning mist clung to his bare skin. He turned, dragged a sheet from the nearest chair and wrapped it around his shoulders.
He walked slowly down the half dozen stone steps leading to the swimming pool and passed through the gap in the tall yew hedge, wrapping the dustsheet closer to his chest.
Twenty yards from the marble edge of the pool, he saw it.
A pale suspended mass. Perfectly still.
He threw off the sheet and ran across the strip of lawn, hurdling over upturned sun loungers. He launched himself from the poolside, floating in the air for a moment before crashing through the glassy surface of the water. He thrashed his arms and legs until he was close enough to reach out his hand and touch a pink-white shoulder.
The face was submerged, as if something had caught Stevie’s attention on the tiled floor beneath. He heaved at the bony back and managed to turn him over.
Blank eyes stared up at him, the mouth gaping.
He cupped a hand under Stevie’s chin and windmilled his free arm through the water, kicking his legs frantically until he’d dragged the body to the shallow end. He tried to call out, but there was no breath left in his lungs. He sucked in more air, gazing at Stevie’s long golden hair fanning out around his head.
‘Help!’ The sound came out as a whimper.
He tried again.
‘Help! Someone help me get him out of here!’
Today
1
Caroline Barber heard the distant warble of a phone just as she was soaping her hands. She grabbed a paper towel and rushed into the fourth floor lobby of the Department for Education.
Please don’t hang up
.
She skidded across the marble tiles, neatly sidestepped the hat stand she’d left propping open a set of double doors, and barrelled into the unlit office.
In the gloom she weaved expertly through an obstacle course of filing cabinets, finally reaching her desk just as her landline stopped ringing.
Bloody bugger.
She scooped up the handset, pressing it hard against her ear, in the forlorn hope the caller was somehow still connected. All she heard was a perforated dialling tone.
A voicemail message.
Already?
She punched in the numbers to retrieve it and sank heavily onto her chair.
At 3.30pm that afternoon her opposite number in the Sheffield office had promised faithfully he would get back to her by the end of the day. She’d been waiting for his call ever since. She rubbed a thumb and forefinger across her eyebrows and closed her eyes. The automated voice at the other end of the line informed her that the message had been left at 6.47pm. She checked her watch: 8.15pm. How had she missed the earlier call?
‘Hello Caroline, it’s me.’
Not the voice she was expecting at all. Caroline braced herself, anticipating a long list of extra chores.
‘I hope you don’t mind. I just wanted to say…’ Martin Fox’s voice wavered, uncertain. ‘That is, what I mean…’
There was a pause.
Caroline sat up a little straighter, curious to hear what was so important the schools minister couldn’t have left it until the morning. The line seemed to go dead. A crackle of static then nothing. She was just about to hang up when she heard a sharp intake of breath.
‘I want to explain. You deserve an explanation.’ Another pause. ‘I thought speaking to your answerphone would make it easier, and still I can’t seem to find the right words…’ He swallowed. ‘Things are likely to get a little… fraught in the department over the next few days. I just thought I should warn you.’
Caroline heard him inhale and exhale slowly.
‘I want you to know I have complete confidence in you and I know that even in the midst of all the… upheaval, you’ll do the right thing.’ He paused again. ‘You’re the only one here I feel I can trust.’
There was another pause, a short one, before the dialling tone returned, a steady continuous purr in her ear. Caroline blinked hard, and noticed for the first time her heart was pounding against the walls of her chest. She took a deep breath and tried to make sense of what she’d just heard.
Explanation
? He hadn’t explained anything.
An email alert pinged from her computer and made her jump. Automatically, she grabbed her mouse and clicked on the box that had appeared at the bottom of her monitor. She skimmed through half the message before realising it was identical to two she’d already received – an incoming email was being held overnight. Twenty-three years in the civil service and still everything came in triplicate.
She returned the handset to its cradle and replayed Martin Fox’s message in her head. She’d never heard the schools minister sound like that before. So strange. So… strained. What was it he’d said about the department? She snatched up the receiver and dialled for voicemail again. This time she listened more carefully, concentrating on every syllable, searching for meaning in the spaces between the words. At the long pause in the middle she was suddenly aware of heavier breathing than she’d heard the first time round. Then she felt a hot blast of air against her cheek. She jolted out of her seat.
‘For God’s sake!’
‘Anything interesting, was it?’ The face of Caroline’s least favourite security guard loomed into hers.
‘Why must you always creep up on me like that?’
‘The threat level is still
substantial
. We need to remain vigilant at all times. I’m just keeping you on your toes.’
Caroline replaced the receiver and let go of the breath she’d been holding.
‘Well?’ He pointed a nail-bitten finger at the phone.
‘Personal,’ she said, as abruptly as she could.
Go away, Ed
.
‘Don’t mind me.’ He straightened to a round-shouldered stoop and tucked a loose corner of shirt into his trousers. Caroline couldn’t help noticing the button straining on his waistband. Automatically she pulled in her stomach and sat up straighter. Ed Wallis was probably the same age as Caroline, give or take a couple of years, certainly no more than 45, yet he always reminded her of someone her dad might have met in the Legion for a pint.
He sucked his teeth and glanced round the office. ‘Still working in the dark, I see. I don’t understand you.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not as if it’s your electric.’
Please, just go away.
‘Ah – looks like you missed one.’ He nodded to the glassed-walled room at the other end of the office. An anglepoise lamp was burning a bright halo onto her boss’s desk. She was sure she’d turned it off.
‘Fancy a cuppa?’ Ed peered into her face. ‘I’ve worked up a serious thirst.’ He held up a hand. ‘Don’t get up – I can pop the kettle on.’
‘Bit busy actually.’ Caroline pointed at her watch. ‘Got to get on.’
‘Oh. Shame.’ He didn’t move. ‘What about a drink then, when I’ve finished my shift?’
‘And what would your wife say about that?’
He tapped the side of his cauliflower nose with a stubby finger and winked at her. ‘What the eye doesn’t see.’
Good grief.
‘It’s criminal – lovely looking woman like you…’ His gaze lingered on the scooped neckline of her jumper. ‘Spending your evenings cooped up in this place. You should be out somewhere enjoying yourself.’
Caroline grabbed the first folder that came to hand and stood up quickly. ‘Actually, I need to get this to the minister,’ she said.
‘Minister? You’ll be lucky – they won’t still be here. That lot’ll be propping up the House of Commons bar by now.’
‘Not all MPs are the same.’
He raised his eyebrows, his gaze anchored to the small amount of cleavage visible above the file she was clutching. ‘I can take that up to the seventh floor. Which minister is it for?’
He made a sudden lunge towards the file and Caroline reared backwards, desperate not to let his sweaty hands get anywhere near her, and sent her chair crashing into the desk behind.
‘All right!’ he said, palms aloft. ‘I’m only trying to help.’
‘I need to speak to Mr Fox anyway.’ She walked in a wide circle around Ed and hurried towards the exit.
‘So, maybe see you in The Feathers later for a quick one?’ he called after her.
In my nightmares.
Caroline stepped out of the lift on the seventh floor and walked slowly across the lobby, taking a moment to compose herself. She stopped and looked out at the central atrium beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass wall – a rainforest of palm trees and ferns. All the floors except this one and the one she’d just left were blazing in fluorescent light, even though the building was practically empty. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered switching off lights and powering down computers, no one else seemed to care.
Except Martin Fox. He still gave a damn.
She glanced at the folder she was clutching like a shield and loosened her grip, only then realising it was empty. Probably Ed had noticed. He never missed a trick. She shuddered at the thought of his lunging hands and turned sharply towards the double doors leading to the ministerial offices.
She edged forward in the dark, tracing a hand along tall cabinets as she went, all the while wondering what it was the minister had wanted to explain in his phone message.
Outside his office she hesitated. She looked down at the wrinkles in her jumper and tried to smooth them out. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, sucked in a deep breath and tapped lightly on the door.
No response.
She knocked again, more forcefully. ‘Minister?’
Still no reply.
Light leaked through the gap beneath the door. She knocked again and levered down the handle.
‘Martin?’
She pushed open the door and stepped inside. The file fell from her hands. Her heart lurched into her throat.
Martin Fox was slumped over his desk, one arm hanging limp by his side. His head was turned towards her, glasses pressing painfully into his nose, his eyes closed. Caroline ran to him and reached out a hand. Then she froze. Inches away from his face, her hand started to tremble. All the colour had drained away from his flesh, his lips had turned a bluish pink.
She stepped closer and forced herself to place two fingers on his neck. She couldn’t feel a pulse, but his skin felt warm beneath her fingertips. She shifted her fingers, pressed deeper into his flesh.
There was no pulse.
She withdrew her hand and backed away. There was nothing she could do.
Martin Fox was dead.