It all seems like a terrible waste of good food, Miller thought idly. But what did he care? It wasn’t like he would be picking up the tab.
Smearing a slice of white toast with butter and adding a layer of Dundee rough-cut marmalade, Miller took a large bite, before washing it down with a mouthful of coffee. Detecting more than a hint of impatience in Sonia’s eyes, he quickly squashed the rest of the toast into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. Finishing his coffee, he placed the cup back on its saucer and pushed his chair an inch or so away from the table, signalling that the eating part of the proceedings was at an end.
‘Very nice breakfast,’ he smiled, holding in a small burp.
An officious-looking waiter appeared at the table. Sonia Claesens glared at him balefully and he scurried away.
‘Amazing service in this place,’ Shelbourne mused. ‘And always so busy!’ He gestured to the people queuing at the door, waiting for a table to become available. ‘You’d never know that there was a recession on.’
‘And has been for the last six years,’ Claesens added somewhat resentfully.
Miller stared at them blankly. Small talk wasn’t his forte. ‘Mm,’ was all he could manage. Amazingly, he still felt rather hungry. He wondered if he could have some more toast.
‘Of course,’ Shelbourne trilled, ‘I used to come here all the time — before I started working for Sir Chester, that is.’
Before you started having to get your expenses through the Met’s Accounts Department, Miller thought. The Warham would never have been his first choice for this meeting. The Piccadilly cafe-restaurant in the grand European tradition — a former car showroom with lots of Venetian and Florentine influences; pillars, arches and stairways all over the place — was too busy, too noisy and too showy for his own taste. Looking around, it seemed that everyone else was busily checking out their fellow diners; or tapping away on their BlackBerrys and iPads while holding desultory conversations. It was a place to be seen, rather than somewhere for a discreet tete-a-tete. There was no semblance of privacy. A journalist working for Claesens had even been banned for prowling the tables, hassling the great and the good over their food in his relentless search for ‘exclusive’ stories. The venue made the veteran security consultant feel distinctly uncomfortable. It had been chosen by Shelbourne’s PA and Miller belatedly wondered if he should have insisted on somewhere else. By now, the fact that the three of them were breakfasting together was probably already a matter of record on some social networking site.
Fucking Twitter, Miller thought with a sigh. You never had to worry about that kind of shit in my day; you could go about your business in peace. Social media provided a limitless platform for voyeurs, the ego-crazed and the criminal. If his boss, the Prime Minister, had any sense, he would just close the whole internet thing down. Maybe Miller should suggest it once he got back to Downing Street. It wouldn’t be that difficult — or, at least it wasn’t for the Chinese and the bloody Iranians. He poured himself some more coffee. It was too late to worry about the location now, so he would just have to make the best of it. If the meeting ever did become public, perhaps he could hold up the venue as evidence that they were being totally open and transparent. Hiding in plain sight had a lot to recommend it.
Gazing around the room for the hundredth time, Miller picked out various familiar faces, a banker here, a newspaper editor there; a chat-show host complaining to his waiter about something; a couple of actresses looking bored in one corner as a television executive wittered on. No one caught Miller’s eye or returned his gaze. Deciding against extra toast, Miller folded his mauve cotton napkin and placed it on the table. ‘So. .’
‘So. .’ Shelbourne blinked once, twice, before turning to his former boss for help. Encased in a Moschino red tweed boucle jacket buttoned to the neck, Sonia Claesens fixed Miller with a steely glare. She had the pinched features and dead eyes of someone who had spent the last two decades subsisting on half-rations.
‘I think,’ she said solemnly, ‘that we will be able to find an agreement on an intelligent way forward.’
Shelbourne nodded enthusiastically. ‘Absolutely.’
I very much doubt that, thought Miller. He smiled. ‘The PM would welcome that.’
‘Good.’ A well-preserved, forty-something platinum blonde, Claesens was Senior Managing Director at the Zenger Corporation. This role gave her responsibility for the Sunday Witness and other British assets owned by the global new media conglomerate. In such an elevated position, she had become used to sharing a table with prime ministers, rather than slumming it with their minions. Now, however, with Zenger enmeshed in scandal, Sonia’s stock was sinking at an alarming rate. Edgar Carlton, the current PM, had appointed Trevor Miller as Number Ten’s ‘gatekeeper’ on the phone-hacking issue. To her immense chagrin, Claesens found herself in the position of having to mix with the bag carriers.
Dabbing the corners of her mouth with her napkin, she glanced at her Omega Ladymatic. Time, as always, was precious. ‘Broadly speaking, Mr Miller, is Edgar happy about where we are now?’
‘The Prime Minister is in Birmingham today,’ Miller grinned, ‘visiting some widget factory or other and having to mix with the plebs. So, no, I don’t suppose that he is very happy at all.’
Claesens grimaced at the feeble quip.
‘Shouldn’t you be with him then?’ Shelbourne asked. ‘Given that you do his security?’
Miller shook his head. This boy was clearly an idiot. ‘There is a team of more than seventy who cover the PM’s security detail. I’m not one of the guys who stand next to him, wearing an earpiece, ready to take a bullet.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘I’m too old for that.’
‘But you would if you had to,’ Shelbourne persisted. ‘Take a bullet, I mean?’
Not in a million years. ‘Of course,’ Miller said. ‘If the situation arose, I would definitely step in.’
Shelbourne removed his spectacles and began cleaning the lenses with a napkin. ‘You were previously in the police, weren’t you?’
Miller stiffened. The less people enquired about his past, the better. ‘A long time ago.’
‘In the Met?’
‘Yes. I was born here in London. I started out in the mineworkers’ strike up north in the eighties.’ He gave the little scrote a dismissive look. ‘I guess that was before you were born.’
‘Almost,’ Shelbourne said, steadfastly not taking any offence. ‘But we did it at school. Or at least, I remember seeing something about it on the telly. So I know a bit about it. The whole thing looked pretty brutal — the “enemy within” and all that. Good to know that you were there, standing up for law and order.’
‘We cracked a few heads,’ Miller replied, smiling at the memory.
‘But it’s rather a long way from the coal mines to Downing Street. How did you end up as the Prime Minister’s Security Adviser?’
‘It just happened,’ Miller shrugged. ‘After leaving the Met, I set up my own consultancy. .’ He suddenly remembered his Downing Street media training and a pre-prepared soundbite popped into his head. ‘Edgar Carlton is the best leader we’ve had in a long time — certainly the best since Margaret Thatcher put the country back on track. I am very lucky to have had the chance to work for him.’
Shelbourne smiled wanly. As an ex-journalist, he knew when he was being spun a line. So did Sonia Claesens, who looked like she was in pain.
‘And I also have a very interesting job,’ Miller continued, ‘taking an overall view of different issues. . general situations and specific threats, trying to neutralize them before they become active.’ God alone knew what that guff meant, but it was a well-rehearsed explanation. He regularly used it around Westminster, where the lame-brained politicians always lapped it up.