Peter Mandelson blotted his copybook over a house loan and got the chop at Trade and Industry…”"Jack! These people haven’t disappeared! They’re still around!”"What’s Jack Cunningham doing these days?”The Commissioner opened his mouth and closed it He couldn’t remember. “Don’t see anything of him these days.”"Oh, come on, Jack!” said the Commissioner. “A couple of political sackings and you see a murder mystery!”"It’s not a murder mystery,” said Jack, “it’s just that…” He paused. Going places, and then she blotted her copybook somehow and got the chop.”"And now?”The Commissioner shrugged “No idea Never see her any more.”"Precisely,” said Jack. “Now, what about Frank Field?”"Frank Field? Social policies, wasn’t he? Up and coming, very promising…”"…Then blotted his copybook and got the chop,” completed Jack. Do you remember Harriet Harman?” he asked.The Police Commissioner screwed up his eyes and went through the motions of trying to remember.”Always on Question Time, wasn’t she? Bright new babe of the Blair team Got a post after the election.
Nobody laughed.”It’s about all these missing cabinet ministers.”The commissioner looked startled.”What missing cabinet ministers? I hadn’t heard about anyone going missing.”"It’s not so much that, more a pattern which I can’t quite put my finger on… They should sell tickets for it.”"Who do you think will win?”"Well, there’s a joke going round that Ken Livingstone is bound to win, because he’s the only candidate who’s got a London borough named after him.”"Livingstone?” said the Police Commissioner. “I thought that was a new town near Edinburgh?”"Not Livingstone, sir South Ken.”Silence. “What is it, Jack? Something to do with this wretched mayor of London business?”
Head Chief Top Superintendent Jack Wentworth shook his head.”No, not that That’s not a worry That’s just a long-running pantomime.
Today – a complete modern police thriller novel, totally unabridged!
“THERE’S SOMETHING on your mind, isn’t there?” said the Chief Police Commissioner to his Head of Operations (London ). I don’t know what a live-in companion’s official duties comprise, but making sure that your elderly employer does not go out to a charity lunch with nine long white whiskers sprouting from her chin must surely be one.Better starve than dine with whiskers, say I.. If she had been I’d have had a word with that Miss Rutherford. She was the granddaughter of General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, and a formidable force herself in the charity field.”My live-in companion, Miss Rutherford, drove me up from the country,” explained Miss Booth “But unfortunately she wasn’t invited to the lunch.” Pity.
“Can you find the table I’m supposed to be sitting at?” Her name, she said, was Catherine Bramwell Booth, and of course I knew it. In the foyer I noticed a small, frail, white-haired old lady, looking slightly lost. She had been unceremoniously dumped there by a younger woman with a red face and gumboots I went up to the little old lady and asked if I could help “Oh please, yes,” she said. She said she was fed up with having to spend three hours in the bathroom every morning just to make herself function as a proper human being. She wrote to hospitals offering herself as a guinea-pig for medical research, without success.