Hunter Hunted, Jack Gatland [good story books to read .txt] 📗

I see Caxton and Tyndale, the fathers of printing and I wonder, what would they say if they saw this travesty that sits here before them? Would they, like Doctor Frankenstein, be appalled at the monster they had created?’

The murmuring was building now; an angry rumble, as the people sitting at the tables now realised that this wasn’t a simple after-dinner speech. This was a spanking.

‘I may not be the Secretary of State for the Home Office anymore, but I still read the briefings,’ Charles said. ‘And I’ve seen the rising gang war that is occurring between Birmingham and London, a war that you yourselves have given life to, after your reckless reporting of the murders of Angela Martin and Gabrielle Chapman in the national press. You cannot run unchecked—‘

‘But that was stopped!’ A portly man at one of the closer tables shouted out. ‘It was on the news tonight!’

Charles paused. The man spoke with such conviction that for a moment Charles wondered if he’d been mistaken. Glancing down at his phone, turned over on the table and switched to silent mode so as not to distract him, he picked it up, abandoning his speech for the moment as he turned the phone in his hands and saw the notifications of missed calls and left messages. Reading them, he nodded to himself.

‘My apologies,’ he continued. ‘I was in session directly before this, so I hadn’t seen the news. And yes, it seems that both the Delcourt family and the Byrne family have been taken into custody following a police raid on a Beachampton residence earlier today.’ He straightened his shoulders, giving the appearance of someone proud.

‘I’m happy to say that the unit that solved this case comes from the City; in fact, their offices are less than a mile from here. And the arresting Detective Inspector is the same one that saved my own life several weeks ago. Our police are a credit to us, if woefully understaffed. But that doesn’t stop the fact that this wouldn’t have escalated so fast if there had been some order, some regulatory aspect to your radical news agenda,’ he was back on track now, casting aside the bad news as he pushed forward. ‘And if I ever get the chance to make such a change, I will ensure that all media, be it traditional press or digital, will follow the rule of law. I hereby put you on notice.’

And with that, to a cacophony of complaints from guild members as they rose from their tables, Charles Baker placed his phone into his jacket pocket and, his work done here, turned to leave the table. However, blocking his way was the man who’d introduced him, the Right Reverend Doctor Reginald Walsingham, the current Master of Company.

‘Interesting speech,’ he whispered. ‘If we’d known you were coming to tell us off, we would have called the current Home Secretary to replace you. I mean, we invited you when you still held the role, not when you became nothing more than a backbencher.’

‘I’m far more than a backbencher,’ Charles replied with a smile. ‘You think these articles, these news reports hurt me? Things that I did when I was young and single, that I was never informed about? Follies of youth.’

‘And the reports of Devington Industries working with you on arms contracts? On the rumours of illegal arms trades? Of Rattlestone?’ Reginald raised an eyebrow. Charles laughed at this.

‘Walk into the House of Commons on any Prime Minister’s Question Time and throw a stone,’ he said. ‘I guarantee that whoever you hit on whatever side will have the same industry-related skeleton in their closet. Yes, I have made questionable choices in my career, but I have something better on my side.’

He leaned in.

‘I have public sympathy.’

Reginald stared coldly at Charles for a long moment before speaking.

‘You almost sound like you killed her deliberately to gain the widower vote,’ he said.

‘Old man, that’s a very cynical view of life you have there,’ Charles replied. ‘But rumours are rumours and facts are facts.’ He looked up to the stained window where a Latin phrase was emblazoned under the image of a man arguing with another over a proffered piece of parchment.

‘Verbum Domini Manet In Aeternum’, he said. ‘Interesting motto.’

‘The word of God remains forever,’ Reginald translated. Charles nodded.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m not a pleb. I did Latin at Harrow. I was just considering that you might think about changing it.’

‘To what?’

Charles leaned in.

‘The word of law remains forever,’ he finished before patting the shoulder of the Master of Company, waving to the room of dinner guests and, with his Special Branch guards either side of him, marched determinedly out of the hall, the sound of angry diners rising behind him as he left.

‘Where to, sir?’ His bodyguard asked as Charles climbed into the back of his Ministerial car. He might have been nothing more than a backbencher to the public now, but that was for the masses to believe. He was destined for far greater things, and the party knew this; they had made concessions for him.

‘The George,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘I’m running late.’

The George Inn was a pub off Southwark High Street, just south of the Thames. It was an old medieval coaching inn where Charles Dickens had once drunk, although that debatable claim could probably be given to most of the pubs and taverns in London. A long, white painted, galleried and timber-framed pub, it was mainly a series of interconnected bars with a restaurant and function room upstairs. It was to the latter of these that Charles, now in a thick coat, scarf and hat to disguise his identity, made his way up rickety stairs, opening the door on his left and entering a small, quiet room with windows along one wall.

In the room were four other people, all Members of Parliament. Malcolm Gladwell was the trouble-shooter of the Conservative party, and the MP for some pokey little Berkshire dump that