A Delicate Truth A Novel

only in his imagination, mouse droppings?
    A Cold War-era, pre-digital, industrial-sized tape recorder – an apparatus so ancient and lumbering, so redundant in our age of miniaturized technology as to be an offence to the contemporary soul: for which reason, if for no other, Toby has repeatedly requested its removal on the grounds that if any minister wished for a secret recording of a conversation in his Private Office, the devices available to him were so discreet and varied that he would be spoiled for choice.
    But thus far – providentially or otherwise – his pleas have gone unanswered.
    And the switch that operates this monster? Pull out the drawer above, hunt around with your right hand, and there it is: a sharp, hostile nipple mounted on a brown Bakelite half-cup, up for off, down for record.
     
    *
     
    0850 hours. Nothing from Oakley.
    Toby likes a good breakfast but this Saturday morning doesn’t feel peckish. Isabel is an actress and therefore doesn’t touch breakfast, but she is in conciliatory mode and wishes tosit with him for friendship and watch him eat his boiled egg. Rather than precipitate another row, he boils one and eats it for her. He finds her mood suspect. On any past Saturday morning when he has announced he must pop into the office to clear up a bit of work, she has remained demonstratively in bed. This morning – although by rights they should be enjoying their weekend, sampling the delights of Dublin – she is all sweetness and understanding.
    The day is sunny so he thinks he will leave early and walk it. Isabel says a walk is just what he needs. For the first time ever, she accompanies him to the front door, where she bestows a fond kiss on him, then stands watching him down the stairs. Is she telling him she loves him, or waiting till the coast is clear?
     
    *
     
    0952 hours. Still nothing from Oakley.
    Having maintained a vigil over his BlackBerry while marching at exaggerated speed through the sparsely populated London streets, Toby starts his countdown to Birdcage Walk by way of The Mall and, adjusting his pace to that of the sightseers, advances on the green side door with metal bars in front of it.
    He tests the handle. The green door yields.
    He turns his back on the door and with studied casualness takes in Horse Guards, the London Eye, a group of wordless Japanese schoolchildren and – in a last, desperate appeal – the spreading London plane tree from whose shade he had yesterday dispatched the first of his unanswered messages to Oakley.
    A last forlorn glance at his BlackBerry tells him that his appeal remains unheeded. He switches it off and consigns it to the darkness of an inner pocket.
     
    *
     
    Having performed the ludicrous manoeuvres required of him by his minister, Toby arrives in the anteroom to the Private Office and confirms by internal telephone with the bemused security guards that he has successfully escaped their attention.
    ‘You were solid glass, Mr Bell, sir. I saw straight through you. Have a nice weekend.’
    ‘You too, and thanks a bundle.’
    Poised over his desk, he is emboldened by a surge of indignation. Giles, you’re forcing me to do this.
    The desk is supposedly prestigious: a kneehole-style reproduction antique with a tooled-leather worktop.
    Seating himself in the chair before it, he leans forward and eases open the voluminous bottom right-hand drawer.
    If there is a part of him that is still praying that his requests of Works Department have miraculously been answered during the night, let it pray no more. Like a rusting engine of war on a forgotten battlefield, the ancient tape recorder lies where she has lain for decades, waiting for the call that will never come: except that today it has. In place of voice activation, she boasts a timing device similar to the one on the microwave in his flat. Her aged spools are bare. But two giant tapes in dust-caked cellophane packets lie ready for duty on the shelf above her.
    Up for off. Down for record.
    And wait for tomorrow when I come and get you, if I’m not already in prison.
     
    *
     
    And tomorrow had finally come, and Isabel had gone. It was today, an unseasonably sunny spring Sunday, and church bells were summoning the sinners of Soho to repentance, and Toby Bell, bachelor of three hours’ standing, was still seated at his pavement table over his third – or was it fifth? – coffee of the morning, steeling himself to commit the irrevocable act offelony that he had been