Feeling suddenly light on his feet, Vernon went to the bar for another round. Clearly it was time he started listening to his junior staff, time he brought them on. Back at the table, Frank lit a cigarette and politely turned in his chair to blow his smoke out of the booth. He accepted the drink and continued. Of course, he hadn’t seen the pictures, but he knew it must be right to run them. He wanted to give Vernon his support, and more than that. He wanted to be of use, which was why it wouldn’t be right for him to be openly identified as the editor’s ally. He excused himself and went to the food counter to order sausage and mash, and Vernon imagined a bed-sit or studio flat and no one there, no girl waiting for the deputy foreign editor to come home.

When Frank sat down again, he said in a rush, “I could keep you in touch. I could let you know what they’re saying. I could find out where your real support is. But I’d have to look uninvolved, neutral. Would you mind that?”

Vernon did not commit himself. He had been around too long to let himself sign up an office spy without knowing more. He turned the conversation toward Garmony’s politics, and the two passed an agreeable half-hour exploring a shared contempt. But three days later, when Vernon was beginning to run the corridors, startled by the frenzy of opposition and starting—but just slightly—to waver, he returned with Dibben to the same pub, to exactly the same booth, and showed him the photographs. The effect was heartening. Frank gazed at each one at length, without comment, simply shaking his head. Then he put them back in the envelope and said quietly, “Incredible. The hypocrisy of the man.”

They sat in thoughtful silence a moment, then he added, “You have to do it. You mustn’t let them stop you. It’ll wreck his chances for PM. It’ll finish him completely. Vernon, I really want to help.”

The support among the younger staff was never quite as identifiable as Frank had claimed, but during the days it took to bring the Judge as a whole to quiescence, it was invaluable to know which arguments were hitting the mark. Through his rendezvous behind the jukebox, Vernon learned when and why the opposition was beginning to divide and when to press home his points. During the planning and execution of the buildup, he knew exactly whom to isolate and work on among the grammarians. He was able to bounce ideas for the buildup off Frank, who came up with some good suggestions of his own. Most of all, Vernon had someone to talk to, someone who shared his sense of historical mission and excitement and instinctively understood the momentous nature of the affair, and who offered encouragement when everyone else was so critical.

With the managing director on board and the buildups and trails written, with circulation rising and a muted but unforgiving excitement trickling through the staff, the meetings with Frank had no longer been necessary. But Vernon was looking to reward his loyalty and had it in mind to put him up for Lettice’s job, features editor. Her foot-dragging over the Siamese twins had put her on probation. The chess supplement had been her death warrant.

Now, this Thursday morning, last day before publication, Vernon and his lieutenant rose together to the fourth floor in an ancient lift that seemed to have the jitters. Vernon was taken back to his undergraduate acting days, the final rehearsal, the sticky palms and swooping gut and loose bowels. By the time the morning conference ended, all the senior editorial staff, all the senior journalists, and quite a few more besides would have seen the photographs. The first edition went to press at five-fifteen, but not until nine-thirty, the late edition, would Garmony’s image, his frock and his soulful gaze, be a furious blur on the steel rollers at the new Croydon plant. The idea was to deny the competition any chance of running a spoiler for their own late editions. The distribution lorries would be on the road by eleven. Then it would be too late to recall the deed.

“You saw the press,” Vernon said.

“Pure bliss.”

Today all the papers, broadsheets and all, had been obliged to run related features. You could see the reluctance and the envy in every caption, in every busily researched fresh angle. The Independent had come up with a tired piece on privacy laws in ten different countries. The Telegraph had a psychologist theorizing pompously on cross-dressing, and the Guardian had given over a double-page spread, dominated by a picture of J. Edgar Hoover in a cocktail dress, to a sneering, wised-up piece on transvestites in public life. None of these papers could bring itself to mention the Judge. The Mirror and the Sun had concentrated on Garmony at his farm in Wiltshire. Both papers displayed similar grainy long-lens photos of the foreign secretary and his son disappearing into the darkness of a barn. The huge doors gaped wide, and the way the light fell across Garmony’s shoulders but not his arms suggested a man about to be swallowed up by obscurity.

Between the second and third floors Frank punched a button to brake the winching mechanism and stopped the lift with a horrible jolt that clutched at Vernon’s heart. The ornate brass and mahogany box creaked as it swayed above the shaft. They had held a couple of quick conferences like this before. The editor felt obliged to conceal his terror and appear nonchalant.

“Just briefly,” Frank said. “McDonald will be giving a little speech at conference. Not quite saying they were wrong, not quite forgiving you either. But you know, congratulations all round and since we’re going ahead, let’s pull together.”

“Fine,” Vernon said. It would be exquisite, listening to the deputy editor apologize without appearing to do so.

“Thing is, others might chime in, there might even be some applause, that sort of thing. If it’s all right with you, I think I should hang back, not show my hand at this stage.”

Vernon felt a faint, brief inner disturbance, like the tightening of some neglected reflexive muscle. He was touched by curiosity as much as distrust, but it was too late to do anything now, so he said, “Sure. I need you in place. The next few days could be crucial.”

Frank hit the button and for a moment nothing happened. Then the lift plummeted a few inches before lurching upward.

As usual, Jean was on the other side of the concertina gates with her bundle of letters, faxes, and briefing notes.

“They’re waiting for you in room six.”

The first meeting was with the advertising manager and his team, who felt this was the moment to hike the rates. Vernon wanted to wait. As they hurried along the corridor-red-carpeted, as in his dreams—he noticed Frank peeling away just as two others joined them, people from layout. There was pressure to crop the front-page picture to make way for a longer standfirst, but Vernon had already made up his mind about the copy he wanted. The obituaries editor, Manny Skelton, scuttled sideways out of his cupboard-sized office and pushed a few pages of typescript into Vernon’s hand as he strode by. This would be the piece they had commissioned in case Garmony offed himself.

The letters editor joined the throng, hoping for a word before the first meeting began. He was anticipating a deluge and was fighting for a whole page. Now, as he paced toward room six, Vernon was himself again, large, benign, ruthless, and good. Where others would have felt a weight upon their shoulders, he felt an enabling lightness, or indeed a light, a glow, of competence and well-being, for his sure hands were about to cut away a cancer from the organs of the body politic; this was the image he intended to use in the leader that would follow Garmony’s resignation. Hypocrisy would be exposed, the country would stay in Europe, capital punishment and compulsory conscription would remain a crank’s dream, social welfare would survive in some form or other, the global environment would get a decent chance, and Vernon was on the point of breaking into song.