Corridors of Death Read online

  ‘Nixon would normally have attended IGGY, but he had a whole weekend of constituency appointments—in Glasgow, remember. It was some local party anniversary or other, and he had been advised by Sir Nicholas that another minister could attend this meeting since it was unlikely to be controversial. He left the office early last Friday evening intending not to return until mid-morning on Monday. He had asked his Private Secretary specifically to put in his despatch box only the most urgent papers. On some pretext Sir Nicholas borrowed the IGGY papers from Nixon’s office, saying the minister wouldn’t be needing them. The relevant Minister of State—that’s the next level down, remember—was away, so Wells, the PUSS, was going to stand in for Nixon. He was cock-a-hoop at the prospect of performing in front of the Chancellor and attracting more attention in twenty minutes than he could normally have hoped for in two years’ hard work. He had spent days demanding more and more briefing for the meeting, at which he was to present for discussion a paper on department policy on paper recycling. His introductory speech was drafted by a civil servant, savaged, rewritten, denounced, rewritten and then finally touched up by Wells himself on Friday. He also disappeared in the early evening, papers in hand, smirk on face, leaving a train of cursing officials in his wake hoping that he would over-reach himself and come a cropper on Monday.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Sir Nicholas fixed it so Nixon had to turn up to IGGY unbriefed. But how?’

  ‘He used his rank and traded on the trust any politician or civil servant puts in the integrity and reliability of a Permanent Secretary. He rang up his opposite number in the Treasury and conveyed the worrying news that the TUC were going to mount a major protest against some hitherto uncontroversial aspect of the paper. Mightn’t the Chancellor feel in the circumstances that the Secretary of State should be there rather than an inexperienced junior of juniors? It wouldn’t look too good at the Press Conference, would it? “Christ, no,” said his opposite number, haring in to the Chancellor, starting a panic and getting back to Sir Nicholas to say “retrieve your man at all costs and cancel the PUSS”. “Don’t worry, my dear chap,” says Judas. “I’ll see to all that.” Exit Treasury-man with a sigh of relief, leaving to his old reliable friend the job of passing on the news.’

  ‘What did he do?’ asked Milton in fascination. ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Better than that. He rang Nixon on Sunday night, catching him in the middle of a constituency dinner in Glasgow and about to make a major speech. He told him he had to be on parade at IGGY at 10.00 next morning. God knows what excuses he made for the delay in letting him know—blamed it on the Private Secretary, probably. Nixon flaps. No way of getting back to London more than half an hour before the meeting starts. No briefing. “Tsch, tsch,” says Sir Nicholas, “how surprising that you haven’t got the papers. But the Chancellor was most insistent that you should be there. Don’t worry. I’ll meet your plane in the morning with all the bumf and you’ll have time to scan the brief and the speech and discuss them with me before we arrive at the meeting.”’

  ‘And I suppose he didn’t turn up.’

  ‘Right. Although he did send Nixon’s Private Secretary with the briefing and a speech. They weren’t to know that it was the wrong speech, which Sir Nicholas had manufactured himself. It was about paper recycling, yes. But it was redolent with misunderstandings of the issues, mis-statements of what was in the paper to be discussed, wrong statistics, bits of Greek and French—neither of which Nixon can pronounce. By the time Nixon had got to his car, what-the-helled his secretary, looked despairingly at the huge pile of paper which he was supposed to be able to discuss intelligently, he had time, one assumes, only to give the most cursory glance at the speech. It was the first item on the IGGY agenda and the poor bastard never had a chance. He made a shambles of reading the speech and then went completely to pieces when the few present who knew something about the subject started to question him on the mis-statements and wrong facts in it.’

  ‘But surely he could have explained what had happened?’

  ‘Government doesn’t work like that. Haven’t you ever seen press reports about ministers being castigated in the House because they signed a letter with an error in it? It doesn’t matter that every week they sign hundreds of letters they’ve no time to read. The pretence is kept up that they know everything that’s going on. They are responsible if some Clerical Officer they’ve never met cocks up an official statistic. It’s known as ­ministerial accountability. Of course it’s nonsense, but it’s hallowed nonsense. No. He had no option but to soldier on and rely on whatever help he had to hand. In theory his political colleagues would try to protect him in discussion and his civil servants would pass him helpful notes when he didn’t know the answers to questions.’

  ‘Well, didn’t they?’

  ‘They would have. But Sir Nicholas had arranged it so that those present were himself and two others, Parkinson and me, neither of whom knew a blind thing about the subject. Sir Nicholas ignored the signals from Nixon, and at the crucial stage of the discussion left the room for ten minutes. Normally there would be someone there to act as a long-stop, but on this occasion no one was equipped to field the simplest question. By the time Sir Nicholas got back the Chancellor had managed to pass on to the next item with some mumble about pressure of time and Nixon was sitting there deathly pale, having seen himself revealed in front of a key group of his peers and superiors as a bumbling incompetent. And Sir Nicholas looked at him and smiled.’

  Milton ordered another round of drinks. ‘Funny terminology you lot use—long-stops and all that. My sergeant showed me one of the telephone messages he passed on this afternoon—“Hope to be back in office before close of play.”’

  Amiss laughed. ‘You can’t avoid it in the civil service. It’s an integral part of our language, possibly because it’s conveniently vague. “Close of play”, for instance, means some time between 5.30 and 7.00, depending on what time the recipient is likely to knock off. To put a specific time on it is rather frowned on. Gentlemen don’t leave at a regular time; only minions do that. We also talk about straight bats, opening bats, sticky wickets, bouncers and balls going wide.’

  ‘Are you all cricket fanatics?’

  ‘Oh, no. Probably very few of us are. It’s not even consciously figurative any more. There was an attempted revolt by soccer enthusiasts in my office some time ago—memos going round with half-time, full-time, off-side, own goals and so on, but they didn’t catch on. Officials have to cope with political change too often to be prepared to compromise on what they regard as really sacrosanct—language and customs.’

  Milton considered this for a moment. ‘I know the score on that now,’ he said. ‘Let’s leave the gentlemen and get back to the players: where was Wells while Nixon’s balls were being driven to the boundary? Or is that too laboured?’

  ‘A bit. And anyway, Nixon was batting. I suppose you could say Wells was watching from the pavilion, having been shoved out of the team in a humiliating way. He had arrived that morning already bearing his share of personal troubles, also precipitated by Sir Nicholas, who, being always in touch with gossip about ministers’ private lives, had known very well that Wells was spending the weekend with his mistress on the pretext of a departmental conference.’

  ‘You go along with that sort of cover-up?’

  ‘Not directly. But we tell lies about ministerial whereabouts if we have to. We’re servants, remember. We may wear dark suits and talk with posh accents, but our job is to keep our masters happy. We draw the line at pimping for them, but we certainly would be expected to pass on any messages they gave us. Anyway, Sir Nicholas, knowing that, had the happy thought of ringing up Wells’s home, identifying himself and asking to speak to him. When Mrs Wells mentioned the conference, Sir Nicholas apparently denied all knowledge of it, expressed surprise, managed to arouse all her suspicions and rang off. According to his Private Secretary, the earful
Wells got when he rang home just before this morning’s meeting would have left a lesser careerist in bits, but the thought of his triumph to come carried him through. Until, that is, he found himself put out of his seat at the conference table to make way for Nixon. He was condescendingly invited to stay and had a bird’s-eye view of Nixon’s collapse from a seat at the other side of the room. As an observer, he could do nothing at all to retrieve the situation. And remember that in this unjust world his reputation would have taken a dive purely by association with Nixon’s failure.’

  ‘Anything else is going to be an anti-climax after this,’ said Milton faintly. ‘But I suppose you’d better go on to the other motive and a half.’

  Chapter Five

  ‘The next best motive is Archibald Stafford’s.’

  ‘Is this going to be as complicated as the other two?’ asked Milton, miming coffee at the waiter across the room. ‘I’m beginning to hanker after something simple.’

  ‘Well, I can skip the technicalities if you like, and confine to the basic minimum my account of how Sir Nicholas set out to wreck Stafford’s career.’

  ‘Please do. It’s late already, and since I can’t tell anyone about our deal I’ve the job tomorrow of trying to extract from Nixon and Wells the information you’ve already given me. Bloody awkward, unless they believe in the god-like intuition of the super-sleuth. Not that I’m complaining, of course.’

  ‘I had some understanding of why he hated Nixon and Wells—contempt and ethical revulsion respectively—but why he should have had it in for poor old Stafford is still beyond me. They were at school together, they’ve had regular social contact ever since—lunches and so on—and I would have put them down as relatively close friends.’

  ‘Is Stafford a successful industrialist?’

  ‘It depends on what you call successful.’ And hastily, seeing Milton’s face contort at the prospect of equivocation so late in the evening, Amiss added: ‘That is, he’s risen to the top of a large and prosperous company, and if he isn’t pointed to as one of the country’s top ten management whizz-kids, he’s certainly well liked and respected by the Establishment. Over the years Sir Nicholas brought him on to all sorts of government advisory committees, and he was useful enough on them to be nominated to the great heights of IGGY with a knighthood an almost certain reward. Everything was going well for him until last year, when his company applied in the normal way for a large grant from this department for an expansion and modernization project.’

  ‘And presumably he expected to have Sir Nicholas’s backing?’

  ‘Certainly. Nothing wrong with that. The project would be examined objectively by staff seconded from outside the service, but it could only be a help to know that the Permanent Secretary considered the Executive Chairman to be a dynamic and able leader.’

  ‘Something went wrong?’

  ‘Yes. For Stafford, it couldn’t have gone much worse. It wasn’t until the other day, when the grant was offered, subject to a management shake-up, that I realized that Sir Nicholas must have been gunning for him all the time. A bit of digging confirmed it.’

  ‘What had he done? Dropped reservations about Stafford in the right ears?’

  ‘More than that, I think. As far as I can see he was instrumental in having an iconoclast, Barnes, chosen as project head. Barnes is an efficient enough chap, but obsessed with the virtues of scientific management and violently opposed to any kind of old-fashioned paternalism—however effective. It’s a bit of a joke really, the department employing someone like that when you consider that civil-service interest in management as either an art or a science is zilch. Barnes had a couple of conversations with Sir Nicholas about the case during which, I gather, Barnes was given to understand that much as it pained him to say it, Sir Nicholas thought old Stafford was a good chap but past it. So that was the conclusion Barnes went looking for and that inevitably was what he found. And poor old Stafford, who was well thought of in the department by anyone who had any dealings with him, had complete confidence in his old friend and kept referring Barnes to him as the official who knew most about his management philosophy. Sir Nicholas had indicated to his underlings that he was handling the departmental view on Stafford, so the case for him went by default. By the time Barnes had prepared his report—twenty-four hours before it went to the independent committee which adjudicates on the awarding of grants—it was too late for anybody to retrieve the situation. Plastics Conversion were promised six million pounds in government aid subject to their getting rid of Stafford and a few others.’

  ‘And Stafford isn’t so outstanding that he’s worth the loss of six million to the company?’

  ‘Certainly the shareholders wouldn’t think so.’

  ‘So all that was festering away in Stafford this morning. But he couldn’t have known Sir Nicholas was his enemy?’

  ‘No, not necessarily, but it would be interesting to find out if they had had a conversation since the knife went in. Given the manic mood he seems to have been in over the weekend, I wouldn’t put it past Sir Nicholas to have told him.’

  ‘Three down. Who had the weak motive?’

  ‘Richard Parkinson. I only call it weak because I can’t see why he would have murdered Sir Nicholas now rather than at any other time. He’s had reason enough to hate him for years, from all I gather.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. He’s been trying to ruin his career.’

  ‘Trying? He’s done it. Parkinson was a contemporary of Sir Nicholas’s at Oxford, although a scientist rather than a classicist. I think they both used to speak at the Union. When he joined the civil service ten years ago he was a successful industrial scientist who took a considerable drop in salary to come into the public sector.’

  ‘Why should he do a silly thing like that?’

  ‘Well, the rumour is that Sir Nicholas advised him to do so on the grounds that he was of such distinction that he would rise effortlessly to the top.’

  ‘And why didn’t he?’

  ‘Well, again I’m going on rumour. I’ve heard it said that when, a couple of years later, he found himself in a bit of a backwater, he was convinced by Sir Nicholas that he should transfer from the scientific to the administrative side of things, where his various talents would all receive recognition. There was an idea abroad in those days, among reformers, that the administrators needed to be shaken up by the introduction of people who really understood technology. Parkinson’s industrial experience made him look ideal for imbuing the paper-pushers with a consciousness of what the real world was all about.’

  ‘He didn’t succeed, then?’

  ‘He did well enough. From what I’ve heard he would have ended up at least a Deputy Secretary—that’s one from the top—given a break. He didn’t have any of the drawbacks that scientists often suffer from in the service, where literacy and articulacy tend to count for more than other qualities. Anyway, he found himself as an Assistant Secretary working directly to Sir Nicholas, who was then an Under Secretary. There he was, with an almost total lack of administrative experience, suffering perpetual embarrassment at the hands of his old pal, who criticized his handling of policy making, parliamentary questions, advice to ministers—everything he did, in short. Whatever he did was wrong.’

  ‘Hang on a minute. I’m getting hopelessly confused about all these secretaries. So far …’ he consulted his notebook, ‘I have a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State—Wells, a Permanent Secretary—the corpse, an Assistant Secretary—Parkinson, and now you’re dragging in Under and Deputy Secretaries. On top of all that, you’re a Private Secretary. None of you, I presume, does any of the mundane things one normally associates with secretaries, like shorthand and typing.’

  Amiss laughed. ‘Perish the thought that we might do anything so useful. I’m sorry, I should have explained earlier. It’s easy to forget how much difficulty an outsider must ha
ve in grasping our antiquated ranking system. Give me a piece of paper and I’ll draw you a chart. You won’t see any real secretaries on it; they’re called Personal Secretaries and they won’t show up here.’

  ‘Right,’ he said a couple of minutes later. ‘Look at this. That’s our departmental structure roughly. You can see from the pecking-order that Parkinson is a long way down.’

  ‘Where do you fit in? You seem to be out on a limb.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be on the chart at all really. I’ve put myself there at the Permanent Secretary’s right hand to clarify things. I’m two ranks below Parkinson at the moment, more or less. If I’m a good boy I’ll be made a Principal soon and then I’ll be only one below him.’

  Milton looked confused. ‘A Principal sounds much more important that an Assistant Secretary.’

  ‘Not when you know that the title is short for Principal Clerk—though of course it has nothing nowadays to do with clerical work. All these titles go back at least to the last century. Don’t try to understand why we use them—it’s easier just to accept.’

  Milton ran his eye over the sketch and nodded his comprehension. ‘Thanks. I can see that Parkinson hasn’t done too well. Why didn’t he get out?’

  ‘He left it too late. He had got out of touch with scientific advances of all but the most general sort in his anxiety to learn about his new job.’

  ‘Dear God. Yours seems to be a very cruel world.’

  ‘No, not really. It’s often stuffy, often silly, it can be absurdly bureaucratic and it frequently wastes talent by attaching far too much importance to style rather than content. Still, it’s got a lot of intelligent, industrious and amusing people who would not be consciously unkind—just thoughtless. And thoughtlessly they left poor old Parkinson to his fate. More and more people got promoted over his head and Sir Nicholas rose to be Permanent Secretary. With his increase in power he was better placed than ever to shake his head when anyone suggested promoting Parkinson. I’ve heard him referring to Parkinson as a third-rate mind with a second-rate veneer.’