Kompromat

She noticed a crumpled piece of paper on the kitchen table. Maybe Harriet had left her a note.

It wasn’t actually a piece of paper. More like one of those cards they stick up in the newsagent. Yes, that was exactly what it was. Another of those notices about a missing three-legged black cat. ‘Three-legged black cat found’ the notice said. ‘Ring 077238954978’.

On a whim, Christine Meadows rang the number. There was a strange screeching noise at the other end of the line. Then an automated voice said. ‘This number has been disconnected.’

Odd, Christine thought. Very odd indeed. What on earth was going on?

CHAPTER THIRTY

With one week to go before polling day, Barnard took the day off. He spent the morning on farm chores, went for a ride after lunch (his bay mare, Jemima, though getting on in years, was still good for a day’s outing with the local hunt), then worked on his papers at the table in the drawing room.

The French windows opened out onto the terrace. In the middle distance, beyond the water meadows, the gentle hills of the Wiltshire Downs glowed in the afternoon sunshine.

What a lucky man he was, Barnard thought. When all this was over, he could spend a bit more time at Coleman Court: dam a chalk stream, make a pond, build a folly. That kind of thing.

His musings were interrupted by his wife, Melissa, carrying a tray of goodies.

‘Scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam,’ Melissa proclaimed. ‘Only seven more days left. Let’s celebrate.’

‘Let’s wait at least till tomorrow before we open the champagne,’ Barnard cautioned. ‘I may fall flat on my face tonight.’

‘I’m sure you won’t, darling.’

Truth to tell, Edward Barnard, who was usually as unflappable as they come, was just the tiniest bit nervous about the event in which he would be participating that evening. Not since 1933 when the Oxford Union had considered the motion ‘this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country’ had an occasion been so widely heralded.

Back then, the whole country had awaited the outcome with bated breath, and when the Oxford Union decisively approved the motion, waves of anger and disgust had risen across the land. The Daily Express trumpeted: ‘DISLOYALTY AT OXFORD: GESTURE TOWARDS THE REDS’. Cambridge University threatened to pull out of the annual boat race. Winston Churchill made a tub-thumping speech calling the result ‘That abject, squalid, shameless avowal’.

There was every chance, Barnard thought, that the evening’s debate in the Oxford Union, more than eighty years later, would prove equally if not more controversial. The Referendum was rapidly descending into a free-for-all knockout contest with Marquess of Queensberry rules suspended for the duration.

Melissa Barnard was just clearing the tea things away when she heard the sound of tyres crunching on gravel. She looked up to see a black four-wheel drive Range Rover with tinted windows enter the courtyard. She put the tray down and went outside.

Jerry Goodman, thirty-four years old, ex-Royal Marines and now a member of the Met’s Special Security Squad, got out of the vehicle.

‘Good evening, Ma’am,’ he greeted Melissa.

‘Hello, Jerry,’ she said, Then, as two other plain-clothes officers emerged from the vehicle, she added, ‘Hello, Tom; hello, Anna. Come in and have some tea. We’ll be ready in a jiffy.’

She took them into the kitchen and left them there, cradling mugs of tea in their hands, while she went upstairs. Barnard had already put his dinner jacket on.

‘The team’s here,’ she said. Strange, wasn’t it, she thought, how quickly they had got used to having ‘security’ around.

The Barnards had a Range Rover too. They left in convoy.

‘You go first,’ Jerry said. ‘You may as well head straight for the Union. They’ve got parking spaces for us there.’

‘That’s something,’ Barnard said. ‘Last time I made a speech at the Union in Oxford, I spent half-an-hour looking for a place to park.’

Barnard studied the order paper while his wife drove. The terms of the motion, he observed, deliberately echoed that famous ‘King and Country’ debate so many years ago. It stated ‘that this House will in no circumstances vote to leave the European Union’.

The motion was due to be proposed by Lord Middlebank. It was to be seconded by none other than the current chancellor of the exchequer, Tom Milbourne. The first speech for the opposition was to be made by Andromeda Ledbury, one of the rising stars of the Leave campaign, with Barnard himself scheduled to fire the last salvo against the motion before the floor debate and the final vote.

‘Do you know what you’re going to say tonight?’ Melissa asked as they turned off the A34 into Oxford. ‘The whole debate’s going to be televised apparently. Have you got some notes at least?’

Edward Barnard laughed. ‘If I can’t make a speech about Europe without notes, after months of campaigning, it’s time I headed for the knackers’ yard.’