Chapter XXXIX The Third Prophecy

 

I woke up in an ambulance. It was “deja vu”. I had a bandage round my head and a paramedic was crouching over me. He waved some fingers in front of my face and asked me to count them. The swelling on the upper part of the arm was very painful. It transpired that I was being bundled off to the Accident & Emergency Unit at Royal Kerstead Hospital by ambulance a second time. This time again with a police escort. I could hear the siren. When we arrived at the hospital I tried to stand up but was still a little dizzy. I was placed in a wheelchair and led into a reception ward.

Even though I was not attended to immediately I was able to sit back slowly and relax. Out of the corner of my eye I could watch the television news in the waiting room adjoining the ward. I was gratified to see that the Framden meeting was the main news item of the evening on the BBC. There was reference to the “scandal-ridden” Borough of Framden, where a “dramatic” meeting took place of the Planning Committee at which the “controversial development known as the Pinkerton Plaza”, which was substantially the initiative of the “mysterious Russian tycoon Yakov Sheremovsky”, had been rejected “amid scenes of violence” on the casting vote of the Committee Chairman (I was unnamed) “who was himself the victim of a violent physical attack and is now believed to be in hospital.” There followed a reasonable synopsis of the issues from a TV journalist, followed by short quick interviews with the ever effervescent Melanie Sheldrake and a more subdued Noel Graham. Mention was made of the accusations of corruption involving Framden Council Planning Officers and that there was no spokesman for Nafta Ural. At the end the report said that “questions are still being asked about how employees of Nafta Ural and hired thugs were able to infiltrate the meeting, which council officers were supposed to be taking bribes and also about the state of health of missing consultant architect Sir William Tallis and the Chairman of the Planning Committee, Councillor Peter Axtell, who had twice now been subject to physical attacks in the space of 3 days.”

I felt like saying to the people sitting around me, “That’s me, folks, that’s me!” However everyone in the casualty department, nurse or potential patient, was so absorbed in their own activities or problems, that nobody, except for the policemen accompanying me, seemed in the least interested. In my vanity, I felt terribly isolated, as if the world was passing me by just when it should be the moment that I was supposed to be the centre of the world’s attention. My isolation was increased by the fact that I still had no mobile phone. Not since Billy Casey’s stormy visit.

I was allowed to go home at 2 o’clock in the morning after a long wait, a frustrating X-ray which indicated in the end that I had no broken bones or damage to my skull, and a thorough physical check-up, not forgetting a half-hour interrogation by a young doctor who seemed determined to complete a dissertation on the health history of me and my immediate family. He seemed happy enough checking on the bruises and weals  on my arm and my stomach but still found it difficult to come to terms with the lacerations on my penis and the scars on my backside. I had been more successful when I had explained the latter to the doctors who had examined me in the hospital barely two days before. They were then much more understanding. The current junior doctor seemed very sceptical about my explanations and seemed to suspect me of some kind of perversion. The very thought! Obviously, he had not been watching the news!

The police escort had left me when I was first called in by the duty doctor. I was now on my own. I called a cab on the hospital payphone and slinked off home.

I had a restless night. My dreams were just ethereal shards of my nightmare reality of the past week. The pandemonium of the meeting, the tension of the build-up, the menace of Casey and then of Nikolai, Ludmila and her razor, that extraordinary mace attack by Susan. Who was she, really? Reality and the nightmare drums swirled and collided around me.

When I woke up next morning I felt sicker than when I went to the hospital. I had stomach pains now. I was hungry but I didn’t want to eat. I concluded it was indigestion but was taken aback when I suddenly felt sick and had to rush to the loo and vomit the nothing that I had eaten the night before. I rang the office and for the hundredth time had to explain to my secretary that I could not even venture out of doors I felt so ill. Yet she sounded genuinely sympathetic this time, said she would pass on the information to Roger, my senior partner, and said she hoped I would get better.

I tossed the receiver back on the cradle.

I crawled back into bed feeling really miserable and abandoned.

I woke again feeling bad. My clock showed I had been out for nearly 5 hours. I noticed too that my telephone receiver was not set properly on the cradle, so I had been unable to take any calls.

While I was retching a second time in the loo, I heard the phone ring. There was no way I could answer. I heard a message from an anxious Carlo from Whispering Trees asking how I was feeling.

I felt unwell for at least another half hour. When I eventually gathered up enough strength to phone back a young man answered the phone and explained apologetically that Carlo had just gone out for a reception. “He won’t be back today.”

A strange memory impinged itself on my mind just at that moment. The confrontation with Nikolai behind the town hall stage. The puzzle of Susan Sweetman’s welcome but unexpected intervention. What was Susan Sweetman doing there? No longer with any connection to the Framden Council and yet accompanying Andy Trosser to the Planning meeting? That sweet sexually voracious innocent who seduced two councillors, was an excellent professional press officer and carried mace. What was that all about?

“Sir?” I could hear the polite young man’s voice on the line, “may I leave a message for Carlo to say that you called? Can I get your name, Sir?”

“What about your new member of staff, Miss Susan Sweetman?”

“Oh, Susan,” said the voice. “She’s at the Embassy reception with her uncle.”

????

“Her uncle?”

“Sir,” explained the young man patiently, “Carlo Gambetti is Susan’s uncle. They have gone together to a diplomatic reception at the Russian Embassy.”

It took me time to recover from my total astonishment. But the young man helpfully explained that Susan had worked for her uncle for several years. Then in January of this year, she had been seconded to the Borough of Framden as a Press Officer and worked there until a couple of weeks ago.

My voice was very subdued, but I think that the young man sensed the anger and the agitation, when I said, “I want an explanation from Mr. Gambetti and I want it now!!!”

“Yes, Councillor Axtell. Of course, Sir. I will pass on your message.”

I fell on the bed exhausted. My stomach hurt like hell. I felt duped and stunned and I also just wanted to die.

Barely a few minutes later the outside door opened followed by a gentle knocking to my bedroom door. I was too sick to even check who had come in. It was Meena.

She rushed forward and gave me a big hug.

“Peter! Where have you been? The whole world is looking for you. The press wants you, the Chief Executive wants you, the TV cameras want you, and the Deputy Prime Minister wants you. Nobody knows where you are. Have you switched your phone off again?”

She brought in a bundle of newspapers and placed them on my bed. “Do you want breakfast?”

“I just want a weak tea, with plenty of milk. Tell you what. I’ll just have the milk. Yes, warm milk please.”

There was no fresh milk, it transpired. I had not been home for 3 days, except for yesterday’s fleeting visit. All the milk had gone off. Meena offered to get me some fresh milk and bread rolls and told me to switch on the television news, read the newspapers, switch the phone reception back on and bask in my own glory, while she was out.

Well if I ever wanted to be famous, then this was the way to do it! Ten minutes before I was wallowing in my own misery and vomit; now I was wallowing in fame and my abdominal pain seemed to evaporate completely. I was front page news in 3 of the redtop dailies and three of the broadsheets, although in one of them I had to share the limelight for some inexplicable reason with a famous model’s big tits. The most dramatic front picture showed me backing away from Nikolai as he was swinging his big black bat under the heading “Free Speech in Framden?”. My favourite consisted of 3 separate pictures on the front cover showing me, then Melanie Sheldrake and then Noel Graham with the headline “Faces of the New Framden”.

I watched the 6 o’clock news on TV just to relive my own glory yet again. There was dramatic TV footage of the demonstrators outside the Civic Centre before the meeting, of speeches by Noel, Melanie and the photogenic young Phil Marchmont. Then there were the pictures of the “clowns” – McClintock in his robes, Grayson’s intervention, and a picture of the worried undecided Gurcharan Khan. This was followed by subtle commentary about the supposed “villains”. We had general journalistic comments on possible corruption in general overlaying pictures of Chris Finneston, Lord Smallbridge and Yakov Sheremovsky. I was still sipping my warm milk when Meena checked my e-mails and switched on the telephone answering machine to note down the list of my earlier callers. It would have needed an army of secretaries to take on this horde of calls from people desperate either to capitalize on my fame by seeking to ply me with further questions or to share in my enjoyment of it by sharing these moments of exaltation. The events confirmed one thing to me – I really was a fame junky, and so far it had been chocolate and cream all the way!

And then at the end of the afternoon news bulletin, there was the announcement of “late breaking news” from Russia. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs had confirmed that 2 days before it had arrested Mr Yakov Sheremovsky on the grounds of corruption, tax evasion and conspiracy to murder carried out allegedly by his company in Eastern Siberia and Moscow. The assets of Nafta Ural had been confiscated by the Russian state. This had happened as soon as his private jet had landed in Bykovo Airport following his return from London. I realized with a certain sense of irony and a profound feeling of satisfaction that his menacing comments to me while I was being handcuffed and tortured by Ludmila Kulchik was possibly his last telephone conversation as a free man. This also meant that any punitive or revenge contracts against any person in the Pinkerton Plaza debacle would now be completely null and void. Effectively the danger of retaliation was over and people like Elizabeth Graham and Angela Craven could breathe freely again. This was extraordinarily good news! The best yet!

One niggling problem remained. What was this whole masquerade involving Susan Sweetman and Whispering Trees? I described my conversation to Meena. She was as mystified and as angry as I was. We both felt badly betrayed. When I thought of Susan’s innocent eyes and her air of helplessness, I felt that we had both been duped by two confidence tricksters. But why? And what did they gain out of it? Was it for the illicit photos they took on the Love Boat? Including one of me, I remembered! Oh no. Not more potential blackmail!

On Thursday Roger Clements came round to my flat, firstly to give me a big thank you for my cooperation and to check that I was feeling well after my ordeal. He explained that the House of Shame had effectively been closed down the previous day and most of the residents, including Wendy, the Chinese housekeeper, who had been a failed asylum seeker, were in a detention centre facing deportation. Nikolai was facing charges for assault and grievous bodily harm, as were three other Russians arrested on Tuesday evening. The Inland Revenue had instigated a special investigation of Nafta Ural (UK), the Volga Education Trust and Colorbis Travel. His outfit was looking at the legal possibility of deporting Kolovetsky as well.

Needless to say the three Ulstermen would be charged with assault, extortion and attempted grievous bodily harm as soon as Angela Craven, Elizabeth Graham and myself would identify them in a parade of suspects.

Ludmila was a different kettle of fish. Roger asked me discreetly what I thought of her. I had to admit that she was fascinating person, a peasant sex machine with a university diploma, who, like Valentina and their two colleagues, had been morally depraved by the brutal and shameless regime at Lefortovo barracks. Even though she had apparently seemed ready to torture me I was still sufficiently under her spell to wish her no ill will. “After all,” I pointed out, “she had not actually physically damaged me; it was more a matter of threats. Her aim was probably to get me to confess early to prevent me being tortured by Casey.”

Roger smiled. It was possible, he explained, that she may temporarily remain in England. She was a Ukrainian national and the political and economic situation in Ukraine was getting increasingly volatile. Russia was seeking to take over the country with the connivance of the present government which had become increasingly repressive towards their enemies. The opposition leader had recently been poisoned and although he had managed to survive his face was badly disfigured. An opposition journalist had had his head cut off. Revolution was in the air in the western and central provinces and there was a danger that the country could even split. Ludmila, although of Russian origin, was very critical of Sheremovsky and apparently of Russia too. Roger explained that she had readily spilt the beans on the Nafta Ural shenanigans. Roger basically wanted to use her, firstly in England, as an informer in the Ukrainian community, gauging the amount of pro-Russian influence here, and later in the eastern Russian-speaking provinces of Ukraine. He had just arranged that same day to get her a temporary job as a barmaid in the Ukrainian club in Holland Park.

Now that the planning application had been formally rejected and the Russian money behind the project frozen by the Russian Government, the fate of the local corrupt public administration figures like Finneston was no longer his concern. That was now a matter for the police and for the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office which was responsible for local administration.

However Special Branch had every intention of following up on the names of at least 20 figures in public life who had been revealed by documents found in the House of Shame, as ready to serve the interests of a foreign billionaire like Sheremovsky to the detriment of their own country’s interests and in a way that was in conflict with the office in which they served. This included at least 3 MPs (including Owen Draycott), some senior civil servants, a BBC Worldwide director, several members of government advisory bodies, a University Chancellor, a QC, a Lord Justice of Appeal, a member of the Prison Service Management Board, a member of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, an influential retired admiral, a C. of E. bishop and occasional Lords. It was his intention to isolate them from positions of authority as ruthlessly and as quietly as possible. The most active of these would be Lord Smallbridge who had been immersed so deeply in the Sheremovsky enterprise that Roger’s superiors were determined to make an example of him in order to impress on others that such temptations should be resisted. It was their intention to make Lord Smallbridge spend at least a few years behind bars. Roger encouraged me to step forward and give evidence against him. I promised to consider the matter.

Before he left, I could not resist asking Roger if he knew who Carlo Gambetti was. Without hesitation he replied that he was a director of a PR company, whose chief customer was the Russian Embassy. I was astonished. I had known Carlo quite intimately, as well as professionally, for more than a year but I never even dreamed that he was connected to the Russian Embassy.

“Is he some kind of dangerous agent?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, yes and no,” Roger replied. “He seems to be a genuine PR adviser, albeit in a very sensitive post. His father had been an Italian Communist apparently. But he is surrounded by spooks and agents and some of it undoubtedly rubs off on him. We are convinced some of the company employees do clandestine work for the Russian FGB. Why do you ask?”

I finally revealed to Roger the truth behind the Emil Kapacek affair and the participation of Susan Sweetman.

He laughed, “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? We all know who Miss Sweetman is. Italian mother living in Russia (sister incidentally to Mr Gambetti); grandfather was a British defector who escaped to Moscow more than 30 years ago. He died just a couple of years ago as I remember. She worked in TASS, the old Soviet news agency, and then came to England some five years ago. We can’t deport her because she has British citizenship.” Suddenly his face lit up. “Of course! She went quiet this year, but now we know why. If that scheming little operator was involved then the whole thing with your colleague was a set up. It was no accident, believe me.”

“But why??” I asked incredulously.

“Think, Peter, why? The Russian government feared Sheremovsky’s ambition. They had curtailed him in Russia; they wanted to stop his expansion abroad. They were as opposed to this development as we were, but they are as ruthless as Sheremovsky. So your friend Kapacek had to go. Others presumably were marked for destruction for the same reason. I think they were instrumental in setting up the meeting at which Owen Draycott was caught. In a way they were our allies on this occasion. Just think about it. If I had not told you the facts about that development and you had continued to support that scheme, they could have marked you down for destruction too. So we saved you!”

 He left chuckling.

 Certain details now fell into place. Susan’s undoubted PR skills, her seduction first of Andy Trosser, and then of Emil Kapacek who turned out to be closer to the action, her deal with Andy to let her leave the Council unscathed, her awareness of the downfall of Owen Draycott within seconds of the news being announced, the speed with which Carlo took her (back) into his company, and arranged for her to have an invitation to the Love Boat. Now I remembered other tell-tale details. Like the photo shots Carlo was taking of passengers in the Love Boat or the time Andy kept us waiting in his house after we told him about the Russian plot to undermine the Council. Presumably he had gone to telephone Carlo or Susan. And all that time Susan was acting the wide-eyed innocent, so eternally grateful and condescending, so submissive and shy, sucking up to Meena and me and letting us believe we had done her a great favour. They had both abused my friendship and made a laughing stock out of me. And Meena. They served without remorse a master even more ruthless and powerful than Sheremovsky. Bastards! Even if Susan had saved me from Nikolai, I still felt betrayed..

 The next couple of days were just a swirl of events and discussion meetings to repair the shattered world of Framden civics. The Chief Executive promised to appoint an internal inquiry into corruption in the Planning Department and invited members of the public to submit representations of their experience of treatment by Planning Officers. Chris Finneston and his two closest colleagues had been suspended without pay and we advertised for a new Chief Planning Officer who would be selected and ultimately appointed by Noel, Melanie and myself.  In fact three days later Chris Finneston was actually arrested and charged with corruption offences connected with the battle over the former Claybury Industrial Park.

I had to rake over the tatters of my party’s hammered reputation following the indictment on corruption charges of Ted Grayson, Bill Kitson, Donald McClintock and Ahmed Kausar. Andy Trosser and other senior figures in the party suggested that I take on the role of acting leader. I said that theoretically I could do it but, firstly, I was not very adept at Council finances and the recent events had disrupted my knowledge of what the Council had gone through. Secondly, I pointed out that it would only be a temporary appointment because of the possibility of my winning the nomination for the Framden South parliamentary seat. I urged that our elderly Finance Panel Chair, Madhav Desai becomes the acting leader, but he declined.

So reluctantly, in fact very reluctantly, I agreed. As soon as I did so, I realised that the third prophecy from the Russian witches about me becoming leader of the majority party group on the Council had also become true, and in the weirdest of circumstances. I remembered tall Olga making the prediction, and realised that she had now been deported for her pains.

This career move would look good, I reflected, on my electoral leaflets for the parliamentary by-election if I was described as temporary leader of the Council. But I did insist that Noel Graham becomes deputy leader and Meena the Education Cabinet member and this was complied with. Andy Trosser remained the Chief Whip. Even though I could never fully trust him, especially as he had remained in touch with a Russian spy, I stated that our Party needed his experience in restoring party stability and in the delicate matter of staggering the resignations and by-elections to ensure that we retained control of the Council. I understood that whatever he had done had been in the interests of the party as a whole, and as for the skeletons that I had discovered in his cupboard he knew that I would keep quiet...as long as he towed my line.

On Friday I finally came back to the Civic Centre. I met the Chief Executive and the leading officers of the Council, assured them of my confidence in their ability to continue in their current posts but urged them to be ready to consider some form of anti-corruption investigation within their own departments. With the Chief Executive we prepared a programme for recruiting a new Chief Planning Officer and the timetable for by elections to replace the councillors who had or were about to resign. That evening we had a short emergency meeting of our party group. Grayson, Kitson and McClintock had absented themselves voluntarily from the meeting, even though they were still technically Councillors. The nominations for Leader, Deputy Leader and Education Cabinet member were confirmed for practical purposes but we decided against holding an emergency meeting of the whole Council to confirm them officially. We used the excuse that the holiday season had started and that many Councillors of both parties would be away. Melanie would have had a field-day drawing attention to our empty Council seats following the departure of the disgraced members. Also we could retain McClintock officially as Mayor throughout the summer months, opening all those summer fetes and charity events. We agreed not to insist on immediate resignations from all suspects as we could end up potentially losing control of the Council. I suspended my judgement on this for a couple of days. My instinct told me to hold out over the summer with no by-elections, not even for Emil’s seat, if it could be avoided. We could start slowly grooming new candidates for those seats, one of whom could be my old Corindale colleague – Fred Stevens. He deserved another chance. But if we pushed our colleagues out immediately and jumped our fences with the public too soon, we could end up with the opposition party in control in Framden headed by a charismatic leader like Melanie Sheldrake. Then possibly our party would not recover the Borough for as much as a decade.

 My head was buzzing with political initiatives many of which I had been harbouring privately for years. I chaired the cabinet for a brainstorming session. We discussed a new reorganization of our switchboard, perhaps more labour intensive, but which would ensure that the public ringing the Council would never be left talking to an answerphone. I also proposed that we announce a special Framden Charter to protect trees. I wanted a report from officers on the possibility of special household containers to recycle domestic food waste. I urged launching a campaign for next September to urge parents not to drive their children to school if they were over 7 years old and not disabled. I even proposed preparing cartoons ridiculing parents blocking traffic in large four-wheel drive cars and threatening to mow down other children on zebra crossings. Something along the lines of a picture of an angry parent driver with a child passenger shouting to her “You can’t run her over, Mum, she plays Mary in our school nativity play!”

I also wanted to initiate a new corporate policy that would challenge the excessive dependence on risk assessment and health and safety regulations which paralysed the work of all Council departments. This had led in the past to the banning of sand pits and swings in play grounds and restrictions on school adventure holidays such as white water rafting and mountain climbing. On the compensation culture proposals I met resistance. Desai and Trosser were convinced that our Council insurers would not allow us to take this approach.

“Then let’s sack them,” I suggested to incredulous laughter from my colleagues. “Let’s threaten to find an insurance company that will support us in this. After all, we are a big potentially lucrative corporate client for insurers. We put our proposals out to public tender and get insurance companies to compete with providing us with what we want. I am sure it would make our administration popular with the electorate, if not with the big institutions or the unions. Let’s call it our new Safety and Self-Confidence Charter.”

That would help us steal a march on Melanie’s lot in the popularity stakes, I thought.

Not that Melanie did not have her own problems with her party. At least two opposition councillors, former leader Algernon Batchelor and businessman David Richards, were also under investigation for the Pinkerton Plaza project. Not everyone took kindly to her form of leadership. She tended to be rash in her judgements often making one off inspirational decisions and missing out on the wider consultations with her fellow Councillors and their colleagues in the local Chamber of Commerce and Masonic lodges.

Our experiences over the last 3 weeks had given Melanie and me the chance to take each other’s measure and to be more aware of each other’s weaknesses. We decided to have a secret conclave shared just by the two of us, but with Meena Chakravatty present as a moderator. Because of my illness after the Committee meeting, we put off the private summit for a few days, until the following Saturday in fact, the day before my Mother’s return from her Mediterranean cruise.

In the meantime, Meena effectively moved in for a few days to see me through my illness and assist me with all the correspondence from well-wishers, colleagues and door stopping journalists. She still made it clear that she was resentful of my behaviour on the night I was beaten but she gulped down her resentment and helped to organize my press interviews, which included a couple of TV spots, a radio interview with Radio 4 and in-depth studies with the “Framden Journal” (Penelope Wyndham, who else?), the “Evening Standard” and “The Independent”. She took me to my doctors’ clinic where it transpired that I had developed a peptic ulcer partly through the junk food I had been consuming in my mother’s absence and partly as a result of the sheer mental and emotional stress of the last week. I did not like to think of the illness as being psychosomatic, but Meena said that it was nothing to be ashamed of and a good cure would be a larger consumption of fresh vegetables, small regular meals including plenty of milk and a stress-free environment with no crisps and alcohol for a few days.

On Friday night after the emergency group meeting which I had described above, Meena stayed at my flat overnight. My abdominal pains had gone now and I felt more relaxed and ready to party. I let her into my website as well as my bed. She checked my e-mails, deleting the chaff from the concrete messages and gave me relief in other ways. She made a long list of the congratulatory texts and showed me the list for my approval. I was determined to reply but she told me to leave it for a day until I had recovered my strength.

However, to one of the congratulatory e-mails I had to respond. It was from Emil Kapacek. I had not heard from him for so long now. I suddenly realized how much I missed him. I dragged myself out of bed, and despite Meena’s protests I reached my computer and managed to send him an e-mail message: “Emil, you old dog, thanks! How are you? Get your arse out of Prague and come back to Framden. We need you here. I need a good adviser.”

“Why on earth do you want him back?” complained Meena.

“Because he’s my friend. Because I owe him. Because I value his advice. Because I trust him. And because it turns out that he fell victim to a Russian government agent provocateur. Satisfied?”

“Please yourself,” she muttered. I remembered that she never really liked him.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her, “I’m sure he’ll be less bumptious in the future. The times have changed and I’m sure he will return a chastened man.”

She continued muttering to herself but I ignored her. I suddenly felt very tired after this outburst. I got back to bed. Meena spoon-fed me with a couple of lightly boiled eggs, with butter floating in the hot yoke.  I felt like a little child. It was a wonderful feeling. I really was ready to go to sleep. All I needed was for Meena to sing me a lullaby and attend to my physical needs.

The following day we went on a shopping spree to the nearest supermarket to fill up the fridge and freezer before my Mother returned the following evening. We settled down to watch the news. One surprising news item from Russia was that democrats in Russia were treating Sheremovsky as a prisoner of conscience, incarcerated and impoverished supposedly because of his wealth and his opposition to the Putin government. There were demonstrations in the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg. A letter of protest over his incarceration had come from Amnesty International in London.

The news flash made me think of all the harm this man had done to so many. In my mind it conjured up the picture of Sheremovsky sodomizing Valentina and Ludmila in order to effect his diamond smuggling operation into England. I remembered his arrogant fleeting appearance at the site meeting. Above all I remembered the sinister voice at the other end of the telephone as I lay handcuffed at the mercy of his torturers. Now this monster had been imprisoned by another monster and become a Prisoner of Conscience. What a strange world!