The Purple Contract (3 page)

'Did you give him the twenty K?'

'Did I fuck. Do I look as if my head zips up the back?'

Kevin had heard the rumours too: somebody was laundering money through one of Manson’s clubs in Edinburgh. And a certain American currently residing in Dundee had been fingered. It was well known that the Yank needed funds, doubtless for illegal purposes. It was less clear why he had identified Ralph Manson as a likely banker. Kevin thought the twenty thousand dollars would probably have been money well spent; the American had proved useful in the past and it was a piddling sum anyway. But then this other thing had started up, and the Law had been sniffing around far too much of late. You couldn't allow folk to take liberties.

'Okay, I'll drive over first thing in the morning.’

Peter Barron stood in front of his office window with his hands in his trouser pockets, watching the Edinburgh traffic flow past the Parliament building. He was a tall man with a hard, angular face, still in the peak of life at forty one. A successful and cynical man who had always found it difficult to express, even to himself, how much he loved this beautiful and extrovert country. A nation which he truly believed would never be able to achieve it's full potential while it was tied to the Europe-loving UK and it's discredited and tottering monarchy. He cringed with embarrassment every time he saw that woman, as he habitually referred to the Queen, parading around the remnants of the once-proud Commonwealth.

'Mr Harrison to see you, sir.'

Barron stepped over to the desk and touched the intercom button. 'Send him through, Susan.' He strode over to the door to greet his visitor. 'How are you, Len?'

Although in his late fifties, Harrison was a picture of health and vitality. Physically small, but with an upright bearing that spoke of a military past. His handshake was dry and firm to the point of making Barron wince. 'Never been better, have you seen the polls today?'

'Oh, yes. I can't say I'm surprised under the circumstances.' They settled in the leather chairs tight alongside the crowded bookcase. Office space in the Scottish Parliament was at a premium and anything bigger than a rabbit hutch a subject for jealousy and backstabbing. On the wall above them hung a large framed colour photograph of Scotland from space. Taken on board one of the Space Shuttle flights by an astronaut with highland connections.

'He will not be a very happy man right now and that's a fact.' Grunted Len Harrison, referring to the First Minister, who had already been on breakfast TV fielding awkward questions about the Prince’s broadcast. As one of Scotland’s leading businessmen, not to mention being one of the richest men in the country, Harrison had ears everywhere. A quiet word on the phone early this morning with one of his contacts had elicited the news that the PM’s office was “seriously concerned”.

'The word is that privately he’s extremely worried,’ Harrison went on, ‘that the more he tries to put Westminster down the stronger it seems to become. I hear his wife has been nagging him about biting his nails!'

Barron grinned widely, showing expensively capped teeth. For several years now popular opinion, as expressed regularly in the media, had been steadily swinging behind the concept of an independent Scotland. The people wanted Scotland separate and divorced from the UK. 'Downing Street has been twitchy this last year or more. When I saw how much negative campaigning they went in for at the last election I knew we were finally making an impression. And when that result came in I think the laundry down there was working overtime’

The long-established tactic of negative campaigning originated in the United States, where it had been honed to a fine edge by the abrasive American political system: rubbish the opposition at every opportunity and dodge every question on what
your
policies were. The practice had been widely copied and politics around the world had changed as a result. Not for the better.

In Britain the problem was that the electorate had sussed them out long ago, and no longer believed a word the government said about their political opponents. The boy who cried Wolf! It was as inevitable as night following day––except to a politician! The Prime Minister, behind his shiny door in Downing Street, was rightly a worried man.

'I know what you mean,' Harrison nodded. 'But things have changed very radically now.' The smile was still there, but the light blue eyes had taken on a chill. 'After last night.'

'Bloody right. So much for their cynical promises! God knows they’ve even been trying to backtrack on the devolved powers we already have, far less give us more.’

'Are you surprised?’ Harrison waved a dismissive hand in the air. ‘What do any of them care for all the years you and many others have spent working towards giving Scotland its rightful place in the world.’

'The people of this country have made it perfectly clear they support the idea of an independent Scotland. England still likes to refer to itself as the Mother of Parliaments, the mother of democracy. Who the
fuck
do these people think they are?' Barron realized his voice had been louder than he intended. 'Sorry. This has been a bit of a shock.'

Len Harrison leaned forward in his chair and said earnestly. 'There's no need for apologies, Peter. Any true-born Scot who doesn't agree with you should be put on the first plane out, and that's a fact. But let’s face it, they’ve brought out the big guns now; the soon-to-be-king himself. The thing is, what are we going to
do
about it?'

Peter Barron knew his party was finally on the verge of greatness. It had taken a long time, longer than he would have believed possible when he first felt the pull of politics. The free nation he had been obsessed with since he was a boy in the Ayrshire countryside was now just a moment away.

Or was it?

It was what had brought him into politics nearly twenty years before, and what had driven him through the rank and file to a by-election win at his third attempt. He had been surprised, even in those early days, by how the very idea of an independent Scotland could fire the imagination of ordinary working-class folk. You didn’t have to be a company chairman or a banker to understand what it meant to be
Scottish
rather than British.

A Nation again.

'I'm not sure there
is
anything we can actually
do
about it.'

'Perhaps not by ourselves, I agree. Supermen, we are not. But the weight of public opinion has shaken many a government before now.' Len Harrison stopped speaking and sat in silence, his eyes resting on the gray overcast sky outside.

Peter Barron leaned back in his seat, a half smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His lifelong friend had temporarily forgotten his existence. That razor-sharp mind was far away, feeding ideas like a torrent into the cerebral processing centres for analysis, millions of neurons flickering back and forth across the brain's surface at literally the speed of light.

'I have one or two ideas,’ Harrison said after several minutes. ‘Leave it with me for a while. I'll talk to some people, pull in a few favours.' He smiled grimly. 'Somewhere along the way I’m sure a course of action will present itself.’

The dark red Mitsubishi Shogun changed lanes in front of him without signalling and Mike Keane cursed out loud, hitting the brakes and feeling the seat belt tighten across his chest under the deceleration forces.
Bloody lunatic!
He pushed his bare arm out the open window and stabbed a derisory finger skywards.

At the next junction, he pulled off the motorway and joined the stream of traffic trundling downtown through Glasgow's morning rush hour. On the radio the weather forecast was just finishing when he arrived at the Radio 105 studios. He slid the vehicle into his reserved place in the car park and headed for the door.

Mike was looking forward to today's programme; it was guaranteed to be a ratings winner and you couldn’t have too many of those. There hadn't been uproar like this in decades. Even without the tip-off from higher echelons he would have done the show anyway.

Mike K Every Day
was primarily a music and talk show. Airing in the 10.30 to 12 noon slot. Ratings lately had been a little depressed, enough so to provoke some mild comment from his producer. 'We need a kickstart, Mike. The word from on high is to have another phone-in. What do you think?'

The fact was that Mike had been working towards the same conclusion. Having the public phone in live with their views and questions was often thought of as a cop-out in radio terms.
If all else fails, do a phone-in.

It was a common misconception that
y
ou just sat back and let the listeners run their own show. The truth was rather different. A phone-in needed constant attention and a firm hand if it wasn't to get totally out of control. Although raised voices and a bit of passionate table-thumping were all to the good, indeed an essential part of a successful show. There had been little need for discussion as to the subject of course. It had been three days since the Prince of Wales' interview had been broadcast and the Scottish newspaper headlines were still screaming vitriol.

Trudi and Marjory, his two researchers, were shuffling sheets of yellow paper from one plastic tray to another, muttering to themselves and comparing lists of names. Coffee cups and plates of biscuits testified to another wired-up day at the office.

'Morning girls, are we all ready?'

'Jesus, Mike, this is a
bitch
,' complained Trudi. 'Whose idea was it to have a shitty phone-in?'

The telephone warbled.

Marjory reached across, lifted the receiver, pressed her finger on the contact to break the connection and laid the handset on the desk. Mike raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to protest.

'Whoever it was, Mike, we don't have time for it right now.' Trudi handed him a sheaf of names, telephone numbers and times. 'There are enough people there to keep the programme going until Christmas. We're trying to finish the backup list in case of call-offs, although we’re never going to need it. We can't possibly use any more.'

Marjory nodded agreement. 'The damned phone has been going non-stop since we got here three hours ago.' She looked disapprovingly at her newly-arrived boss and pushed the hair back behind her ears. 'I've never seen anything like this before.'

Mike was delighted to hear it. But a quick scan through the papers in his hand prompted a question: 'These are all “anti”. Where's the ”pro” list?'

Trudy sighed. ‘There isn't one,' she told him shortly.

'What?'

'There isn't a pro list. Every caller so far has been foaming at the mouth.' She looked up at him over the top of her spectacles. 'Every single one !'

'Christ, we can't get a balanced programme out of
this!
' Mike was aghast. The station manager would go ballistic. Again.

'Can't be helped. We'll just have to hope we get some supportive calls during the show.'

Mike swallowed nervously, suddenly he had a bad feeling about this one. 'Put the phone back on the hook, Marjory. If I have to, I'll make up some counterbalancing stuff without attributing it to anyone in particular.' Mike dumped the papers on the desk and turned for the door. 'Answer the phone, girls, and hope someone has a good word to say about you-know-who. I'd better tell the boss the good news.'

'And the best of luck,' muttered Trudi after the door had closed.

Ralph Manson was not a happy man.

Having his sleep disturbed in the early hours was bad enough. But listening to some asshole tell him that his lousy boat had sprung a leak and he had returned to Norway, with a quarter of a million bucks worth of cocaine still aboard, had
really
spoiled his day.

Still, he had the satisfaction of completely destroying Kevin Clerke's plans for a weekend of debauchery with whatever-her-name-was. Having dealt with the Dundee business, without actually putting anyone in the hospital for a change, he had been told in no uncertain terms to get his body on the first plane to Trondheim. It had been “suggested” he didn’t come back until he had sorted out the mess.

Now there was no choice but to do the rounds of the more unsavoury areas of Glasgow himself. One of the penalties of his line of business …

As Clerke's plane was lifting off the runway and spearing for the soggy cloudbank, Len Harrison was driving across Edinburgh for another meeting with Peter Barron. Despite giving the matter considerable thought, including pacing his study floor through most of the previous night–– an unheard of occurrence––he had been unable to come up with anything terribly positive.

The favours had been duly called in and his contacts were mulling over the ensuing, rather one-sided, conversations. But nothing very encouraging had so far resulted.

The traffic was backing up behind two slow moving trucks and finally halted altogether at traffic lights. Harrison sighed in frustration and switched on the radio, already set on the Radio 105 frequency; his favourite station. Mike Keane was in the middle of remonstrating with someone phoning into his show and Harrison settled back into the leather seats of the white Jaguar, letting the argument flow around him while the keen analytical mind picked and picked at the problem.

'For Gawd's sake, Mike, we can't let these bloody Englishmen kick the us around like this!'

Mike Keane acknowledged the producer's signal through the double-glazed window between the studio and the control room.
Move on
was the instruction. 'Okay, Derek, I take your point, thanks for calling. Marion Troughton, good morning you're live with Mike K.'

'Hello Mike, I can't believe this is really happening. Are we really going to let one over-privileged individual treat us with total contempt? The man doesn't live in the same
world
as the rest of us … '

'Don't you think we should keep a sense of proportion here?' put in Mike, trying to play Devils Advocate.

'Proportion?
He's insulted the entire country of Scotland and he doesn’t seem to care! I think it's a disgrace.'

'Okay, thanks Marion. Back after this.' Mike keyed the number two CD player and flipped his microphone off. 'Jesus', he muttered. ‘Another hour of this and I'll be climbing the walls.'