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To get rid of Collingridge,' prompted Krajewski.
'But what good does that do him? He's not going to take over the Party. What motive does he have for undermining Collingridge?'
He offered no suggestion, but gazed along the gallery at the grand oil portraits of Victorian statesmen to whom conspiracy and cunning had come as second nature, wondering what they would have thought. Mattie could not share his wry amusement.
'He must be acting together with someone else who does have something to gain - someone more important, more powerful, who could benefit from the change of leadership. There has to be another figure in there somewhere, pulling O'Neill's strings.'
'So you are looking for a mystery man with the means and the motive. Well, he has to be in a position to control O'Neill, and have access to sensitive political information. It would also help if he had been engaged in a much publicised and bitter battle with the Prime Minister. Surely you don't have to look too far for candidates.' '
'Give me one.'
He took a deep breath and savoured the dark, conspiratorial atmosphere of the evening air.
It's easy. Teddy Williams.'
It was late that evening when Urquhart returned to his room in the Commons. The celebrations and congratulations had followed him all the way from his office to the Harcourt Room beneath the House of Lords where he had dined, being interrupted frequently by colleagues eager to shake him by the hand and wish him well. He had proceeded on to the Members' Smoking Room, a private place much loved by MPs who gather there away from the prying eyes of the press not so much to smoke as to exchange views and gossip and to twist a few arms. The Whips know the Smoking Room well, and Urquhart had used his hour there to good effect before once more climbing the twisting stairs to his office.
His secretary had emptied the ashtrays, cleared the glasses and straightened the cushions, and his room was once again quiet and welcoming. He closed the door behind him, locking it carefully. He crossed to the four-drawer filing cabinet with its stout security bar and combination-lock which the Government provide for all Ministers to secure their confidential papers while out of their departmental offices. He twirled the combination four times, until there was a gentle click and the security bar fell away into his hands. He removed it and bent down to open the bottom drawer.
The drawer creaked as it came open. It was stuffed full of files and papers, each one with the name of a different MP on it, each one (containing the personal and incriminating material he had carefully winnowed out of the safe in the Whips Office where all the best kept parliamentary secrets are stored to await Judgement Day, or some other parliamentary emergency. It had taken him nearly three years to amass this material, and he knew it was more valuable than a drawer crammed full with gold bars.
He knelt down and sorted carefully through the files. He quickly found what he was looking for, a padded envelope, already addressed and sealed. After extracting it he closed the drawer and secured the filing cabinet, testing as he always did to make sure the lock and security bar had caught properly.
It was nearly midnight as he drove out of the entrance gates to the House of Commons, a police officer stopping the late night traffic around Parliament Square to enable him to ease out into the busy road and speed on his way. However, he did not head the car in the direction of his Pimlico home. He first drove to one of the twenty-four-hour motorcycle messenger services which flourish amongst the seedier basements of Soho, where he dropped the envelope off and paid in cash for delivery early the following morning. It would have been easier to post it in the House of Commons, where they have one of the most efficient post offices in the country. But he did not want a House of Commons postmark on this envelope.
WEDNESDAY 24th NOVEMBER
The letters and newspapers arrived almost simultaneously with a dull thud on Woolton's Chelsea doormat early the following morning. Hearing the clatter, he came downstairs and gathered them up, spreading the newspapers out on the kitchen table while he left the post on a small bench in the hallway for his wife. He received over 300 letters a week from his constituents and other correspondents, and he had long since given up trying to read them all. So he left them for his wife, who was also his constituency secretary and for whom he got a generous secretarial allowance from the parliamentary authorities to supplement his Cabinet Minister's stipend.
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