On the unseasonably fine evening of September the 23rd, Vince and Louie had an argument that started because Vince showed his friend photocopies of the speeches Sebastian had authored, and Louie got on his high horse and virtually accused him of collaborating with Nazis.
'You have to confront him now that you know all this,' said Louie. 'He advocates forced repatriation, for Christ's sake!'
'I thought you were in favour of quote lying till you're blue in the face unquote,' Vince explained.
'Yeah, but I changed my mind. He's a racist, and he has the money to back up his views with action.'
The more Louie shouted, the more Vince opposed him. Sebastian had plenty of good points. He behaved with more maturity than this nitwit spouting agitprop at him in his own flat, a decently-kept place, unlike Louie's bug-infested rubbish dump in Chalk Farm.
So they argued and got drunk and argued some more, and Vince explained that he would end the interviews with Sebastian when he was damned well good and ready and not a moment before, and Louie could tell him that he chain-sawed the heads off babies and ate them for all he cared, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
'Fine,' shouted Louie, 'but while your fascist pal acts as an errand boy for the far right, filling his speeches with Victorian rhetoric, stuff about shining shields of truth and honour and duty, he operates in the kind of corrupt port-and-stilton circles designed to keep wealth and privilege where it belongs – in the hands of the rich.'
'You're sounding like a really naff angry student, Louie,' he pointed out. 'Why don't you go and bury your rage in an unusual haircut? Go and have your nose pierced again.'
'I have no argument with you, man -'
'Or me with him. I could easily find something else to write about.'
'You're not very convincing,' Louie replied. 'I think he interests you because part of you secretly wants to be like him. Only you don't even realise it. Now, you have to decide whether you're gonna do the right thing.'
He knew Louie was right. The deadline for delivery of his manuscript was December the 10th, and he had most of the information he was likely to get from Sebastian.
'Esther's given me the telephone number of this guy she knows, a Doctor Harold Masters,' he explained. 'He lectures at the college. A couple of years ago he had a run-in with Mr Wells and his pals. Esther had a word with him and he said he'd be happy to talk to me. Besides, there's some other stuff I need to dig out.'
Guardian July 1996
… As the son of a lord who has long refused to declare his reputedly conflicting business interests, Sebastian Wells found himself ideally suited for withstanding interrogation by the police recently, when he was held in custody over his suspected involvement in a brutal murder upon a young black concertgoer. Upon being cleared of suspicion, Wells promptly sued the police for wrongful arrest and now looks set to win his case. – Jeremy Tyler
New Statesman February 1994
'… Traditional clubs don't follow through on the liberal trends set by university societies,' explained Dr Harold Masters, in his annual Edinburgh address. 'While it is not surprising to find a lack of ethnic diversity in such very British institutions, it is more disturbing to note the return of wealth and class restrictions.'
Societies like the hyper-secretive League of Prometheus remain so well protected by the silence of their members that it is impossible to gauge the club's influence on the city's financial institutions. Indeed, Prometheans make Freemasons look like chatterboxes. Yet for years this supposedly philanthropic institution has been dogged by rumours of its members' violent behaviour, its links to the world of organised crime and illegal government-sanctioned sales of arms. All press enquiries are met with curt dismissal. Arrogance and secrecy, it seems, are but two weapons in the league's power arsenal. – Jeremy Tyler
Guardian August 7th 1996
… Privately, though, questions are still being asked about how investigative journalist Jeremy Tyler came to be found dead at the foot of the Westminster Bridge steps after apparently slipping on them during a drunken altercation. The outspoken Tyler had recently conducted a series of acrimonious interviews with members of a society known as the League of Prometheus, and was seen in the presence of several league members on the night of his death.
The league's chairperson, the Hon. Sebastian Wells, insisted that none of his members were still in contact with Tyler, and the police chose to accept his statement at face value. No investigation ensued in the wake of Tyler's death, and no evidence of the journalist's recorded conversations with league members was found in his personal belongings.
With apparent ease Tyler's life's work has been erased – but perhaps this is merely the symptom of a larger public malaise.
With apathy so endemic in our nation, it is hard not to speculate that the dying century's conservatism has created a fertile new home for the spectre of Nazism to once more take root. The message is clear; messing with the Far Right's brash new boys can be hazardous to your health.
Vince noted that there was no author to the final piece. Given the fate of Jeremy Tyler, perhaps it was just as well.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
'ARE YOU Vincent Reynolds?' the boy at the cafeteria counter called across to him. 'There's a phone call for you.'
'I thought I'd find you in there,' said Sebastian. 'I tried you at the entertainment place and they said you'd gone for the day. Listen, I can't make our appointment on Friday, but I can do lunch tomorrow. Would that be convenient?'
Say no, the voice inside his head hissed, if you see him in person you're bound to say something dumb and give the game away. You know too much about him now, and you're a crap liar. Say no. But it would be the last time they would hang out together, and his growling stomach got the best of him. It wasn't as if Sebastian was a convicted murderer or anything. Vince was really going to miss the lavish meals of the past month.
'That would be good,' he heard himself saying.
They dined in a busy Cal-Ital restaurant in a Kensington backstreet. Meeting in a crowded area seemed the safest thing to do. Recently Sebastian had taken him to a very old dining club just off Threadneedle Street where he was treated like a visiting member of the royal family, and Vince – after he had been fitted with a stained club tie – was pointedly ignored. The experience had left him feeling very strange, like a paid escort getting caught out in a smart hotel.
This place was full of young media-types with switched-off mobile phones beside their wineglasses. Everyone looked the same: smart and confident, Gap-advertisement bland. As the waiter showed him to the table he had a fleeting fantasy, that all these diners were friends of Sebastian's, all members of his secret club, and that they were simply awaiting a prearranged signal to fall upon his gratingly common companion like a pack of starving vampires.
Sebastian arrived wearing his usual immaculate black suit, white shirt and crimson tie. He looked like a wealthy man dabbling in the stock market because it amused him. Vince watched warily as they ate. It seemed bizarre that Sebastian had not stopped talking since they'd met, and yet he had revealed less about himself than could be gleaned from a single newspaper article. It was impossible to find anything in his appearance or his gestures that indicated the kind of man he really was.
Vince, on the other hand, had proven to be an open book, describing his disastrous engagement at the age of nineteen, his brushes with the law over a missing van and some stolen computer software, his parents' endless arguments and his father's unexpected death. He now felt uncomfortable about having been so forthcoming.