A Delicate Truth A Novel

a lot I can offer you, is there?’ he says moodily. ‘Your man went off the reservation, our lot saved his neck and he hasn’t forgiven us is about the long and short of it – silly bugger.’
    ‘Saved his neck how , for God’s sake?’
    ‘Tried to go it alone, didn’t he?’ says Matti contemptuously.
    ‘Doing what? Who to?’
    Matti scratches his bald head and does another ‘Yes, well. Not my turf, you see. Not my area.’
    ‘I realize that, Matti. I accept it. It’s not my area either. But I’m the bloody man’s minder, aren’t I?’
    ‘All those bent lobbyists and arms salesmen beavering away at the fault lines between the defence industry and procurement,’ Matti complains, as if Toby is familiar with the problem.
    But Toby isn’t, so he waits for more:
    ‘Licensed, of course. That was half the trouble. Licensed to rip off the Exchequer, bribe officials, offer them all the girls they can eat, holidays in Bali. Licensed to go private, go public, goany way they like, long as they’ve got a ministerial pass, which they all have.’
    ‘And Quinn had his snout in the trough with the rest of them, you’re saying?’
    ‘I’m not saying any bloody thing,’ Matti retorts sharply.
    ‘I know that. And I’m not hearing anything either. So Quinn stole. Is that it? All right, not exactly stole, perhaps, but diverted funds to certain projects in which he had an interest. Or his wife did. Or his cousin did. Or his aunt did. Is that it? Got caught, paid back the money, said he was awfully sorry, and the whole thing was swept under the carpet. Am I warm?’
    A nubile girl bellyflops into the water to shrieks of laughter.
    ‘There’s a creep around called Crispin,’ Matti murmurs under the clamour. ‘Ever heard of him?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, I haven’t either, so I’ll thank you to remember that. Crispin. Dodgy bastard. Avoid.’
    ‘Any reason given?’
    ‘Not specific. Our lot used him for a couple of jobs, then dropped him like a hot brick. Supposed to have led your man by the nose while he was Defence. All I know. Could be crap. Now get off my back.’
    And with this Matti resumes his brooding contemplation of the pretty girls.
     
    *
     
    And as is often the way of life, from the moment Matti lets the name Crispin out of the box, it seems unable to let Toby go.
    At a Cabinet Office wine and cheese party, two mandarins talk head to head: ‘ Whatever happened to that shit Crispin, by the by? ’ ‘ Saw him hanging around the Lords the other day, don’t know how he has the gall .’ But on Toby’s approach the topic of their conversation turns abruptly to cricket.
    At the close of an interministerial conference on intelligence with frenemy liaisons, as the current buzzword has it, the name acquires its own initial: well, let’s just hope you people don’t do another J. Crispin on us , snaps a Home Office director at her hated opposite number in Defence.
    But is it really just a J? Or is it Jay like Jay Gatsby?
    After half a night’s googling while Isabel sulks in the bedroom, Toby is none the wiser.
    He will try Laura.
     
    *
     
    Laura is a Treasury boffin, fifty years old, sometime Fellow of All Souls, boisterous, brilliant, vast and overflowing with good cheer. When she descended unannounced on the British Embassy in Berlin as leader of a surprise audit team, Giles Oakley had commanded Toby to ‘take her out to dinner and charm the knickers off her’. This he had duly done, if not literally; and to such effect that their occasional dinners had continued without Oakley’s guidance ever since.
    By good fortune, it’s Toby’s turn. He selects Laura’s favourite restaurant off the King’s Road. As usual, she has dressed with panache for the event, in a huge, flowing kaftan hung with beads and bangles and a cameo brooch the size of a saucer. Laura loves fish. Toby orders a sea bass baked in salt to share and an expensive Meursault to go with it. In her excitement Laura seizes his hands across the table and shakes them like a child dancing to music.
    ‘ Marvellous , Toby, darling,’ she blurts, ‘and high time too,’ in a voice that rolls like cannon fire across the restaurant; and then blushes at her own loudness and drops her voice to a genteel murmur.
    ‘So how was Cairo? Did the natives storm the embassy and demand your head on a pike? I’d have been utterly terrified. Tell all.’
    And after Cairo, she must hear about Isabel, because as ever she insists on her rights as