The Ministry of Love Read online

  THE MINISTRY OF LOVE

  Jason O’Mahony

  Contents

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  EPILOGUE

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedicated to my parents, who taught me to love learning, and to Karina, who simply taught me to love.

  CHAPTER 1

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  HEADLESS CORPSE LEADS LIB DEMS IN POLL - Daily Mail

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  “We’re running second to a dead chap?” the Prime Minister asked, a displeased but not entirely disbelieving frown hanging on by tired fingers to his hangdog face.

  Bill Triscuit, his chief of staff, peered over his half-moon spectacles and nodded.

  “How dead are we talking, exactly? Are we talking a coma? What are we dealing with here?” the PM asked.

  “Our opponent in that particular constituency is cranially challenged.”

  One of the younger advisors suggested that nugget in an attempt to be helpful. Judging by the Prime Minister’s glare, it wasn’t.

  “He has no head. Well, they can’t find it. Boating accident. The police are sure it will turn up. It is a question of currents, apparently,” said Triscuit.

  The PM let out a long deep sigh. He was doing that a lot recently.

  “Our candidate in what should be a pretty safe constituency for us is running a distant second to a fellow with no head. In other words, this government is now so unpopular that people are willing to give a cadaver, a corpse, a crack at governing over our candidate?”

  “Well, I do think distant second is over egging the pudding a bit, so to speak. We’re only, what, 15% behind in the constituency?” the young aide replied, glancing at some polling data.

  “You don’t think that counts as a distant second?” the Prime Minister asked his young aide.

  “God no! It’s practically neck and neck, so to speak, compared to some other constituencies. The Chancellor is in single digits in his.” The young aide sounded surprisingly cheerful at this news. Triscuit knew the news was been taken by the Prime Minister in a different way.

  • • •

  Alexander Fairfax MP had never wanted to be Prime Minister, which was why so many people had supported him for the job. The family had been in groceries, owning a small chain of supermarkets in the West Country, and he had taken over from his father as managing director in his mid twenties, having studied retail management in a small university that was churning out the Sainsbury regional managers of the future. As managing director he’d been a thoughtful and compassionate employer who had quickly won a fierce loyalty from his staff, not for him the slashing of staff numbers to boost profits, but instead treating his staff with dignity in return for a fair day’s work. He enjoyed nothing more than getting stuck in on the shop floor, talking to customers, helping them pack their bags and even on one noted occasion beating up a scanning machine with a hammer when it refused to be reasonable with a woman who merely wanted to scan a tin of beans.

  Alexander Fairfax made sure to work every job in the chain, listening to his staff and fixing those little problems that make life just that little bit more difficult. The company became a model employer, nicely profitable without getting vulgar, and making him into a minor regional celebrity. When the Liberal Democrats approached him to stand as their candidate in the Bath constituency, it was the enthusiastic response from his employees that convinced him it might be worth having a go. He was easily elected.

  He’d hoped to play a modest role in Westminster, helping small businesses by trimming away the sillier aspects of health and safety legislation, but when he was asked, at the last minute, to fill in for another Lib Dem MP on Newsnight, his performance catapulted him into the public consciousness. Not by his brilliance, which just did not exist, but by his genial good nature and willingness to admit his faults. When Jeremy Paxman challenged him on a key aspect of party policy, Alexander Fairfax admitted that he hadn’t a clue about it. It was so honest and so unpolished that, although he was savaged by the Westminster Village, the public took a shine to him. In later media appearances, he was always sincere, never attacked his opponents even when they attacked him, and was always willing to admit when his own party policy “might need another looking at, you know”.

  Within two years of entering parliament, opinion polls started showing that Alexander Fairfax was the most popular politician in the country. When the leader of the Liberal Democrats announced he was stepping down, the party faithful immediately demanded that Fairfax be drafted. He refused, genuinely horrified at the idea. But every interview and every denial where he listed out all his flaws only compounded his appeal. Reluctantly after a marathon meeting with his parliamentary colleagues, he agreed to let his name go ahead as a stop gap until after the election when the party could elect, “a proper leader, you know, one of those brainy chaps.” He was elected unopposed.

  This was now the time of the ‘Fairfax Fairwind’, where the party started to soar into the 40s in the polls, almost all as a result of the election of Fairfax as leader.

  In the televised prime ministerial debate, that communications stalwart of a general election, he was the least polished of the three party leaders — clumsy and at times agreeing with his opponents — much to their annoyance. Their attacks on him backfired terribly as he agreed with some of their points and never attacked back which had the unfortunate double effect of making them look like pricks while making the public think that having a Prime Minister who had not spent his whole life plotting to get there was maybe not a bad thing.

  As the ballot boxes were opened, both the country and Alexander Fairfax were left open mouthed at the news that he was going to 10 Downing Street as the first Liberal Prime Minister since Lloyd George, finally ejecting the Conservative administration that had held power for a decade.

  He decided to put together a coalition made up of enthusiastic and reforming Liberal Democrats and what was left of New Labour, which was an unruly mob of media-obsessed former parliamentary advisors fighting over the shattered remains of a once great party with all the gusto of tramps fighting over a newly discovered left shoe. Quickly distracting the Labour people by appointing them to very modest but long-named ministries with ‘Creative’ and ‘Opportunity’ in the title, Fairfax had settled down to leading a calm and measured response to decades of spin and media manipulation. Logic over passion had been the unwritten rule and he promised an era of quiet, thoughtful centrist government. Problems would be solved not through ideology but pragmatism and common sense and it had pretty much worked. The economy rumbled along nicely, unemployment and inflation were manageable, crime was kept under control, poverty was reduced, corruption was rooted out and the country was at peace with the British army not acting as target drones for US forces. He was what British people always told pollsters what they wanted from a Prime Minister. It also proved that they were lying bastards.

  He didn’t do spin. He dressed quite conservatively in a slightly Edwardian stiff collar kind of way, and was a bit portly because he liked a roast beef and Yorkshire pud on a Sunday. He didn’t know who Amy Winehouse was and didn’t watch reality TV. It seemed that Alec Fairfax was about to become the first political victim of the Dumbed Down Generation, slain by the perfect media creation that was Sebastian Spence.

  • • •

  The PM shook his head, got out of his seat with a groan and began staring out the window into the garden. Some of the pretty girls who worked in the Cabinet
Office below were having a picnic for lunch. One of them waved giddily at him and he returned the wave awkwardly. He liked pretty girls. Not in a Bill Clinton way — he was happily married to Maryanne — but he liked having them just to look at. Sometimes he pondered just jacking it all in and heading down the country with Maryanne and a nice packed picnic. Just him and Maryanne. And the 43 gun-toting goons from CI5 who would have to travel with them. That caused another sigh.

  It was a necessity of office, travelling everywhere with a battalion of armed-to-the-teeth special agents, mostly to stop extreme Muslims from blowing him up for not letting them blow up synagogues and gay nightclubs. Or the BNP nutters for not letting them blow up mosques and gay nightclubs. At least the gays didn’t want to blow him up, he thought. They just thought he was too fat.

  It all seemed so unfair. By all rational measures of progress, he was a good Prime Minister. Most people were better off and healthier than ever. He’d made a real effort in his five years in Downing Street to try and help the very poor as well but it was infuriating. You vote through billions in extra money to help parents feed and clothe their kids properly. They spend the money on £200 trainers, which they never use to actually train in, he noticed. Their kids then get diabetes from a diet of deep fried Mars Bars, Monster Munch and Coke. Then they blame him as if he was creeping around council estates at night pushing bacon double cheeseburgers through the letterbox.

  And then Sebastian Spence came along.

  Sebastian Spence made Jude Law look like a big fat bloke eating a kebab in a very small t-shirt. Tall, boyish, golden blonde and with a body that would have made Adonis feel kind of sensitive, Spence had swept through the Opposition benches, seizing the leadership within two years of entering parliament.

  Spence was the perfect candidate for the celebrity age. He looked mouth wateringly good and spoke with a deep passable Richard Burton voice. His family background was a level of wealth where his butler had an investment portfolio, and the public just loved him. Britain wanted Fairfax out and Spence to be their Prime Minister. Fact.

  Spence was also an egotistical prick and tool of every evil interest that Fairfax had ever slighted. Fact. Yet try and communicate that to the public. Try and explain to them that the EU Social Charter, which Fairfax ratified, protected the most vulnerable in the workplace. Not a chance. They’re too busy looking at pictures of Spence coming out of the sea in well-packed shorts looking like a moist, political Daniel Craig. They don’t even know that Spence is going to scrap most employment protection legislation for his big business puppet masters. Try and tell them, and their eyes glaze over and they turn over the page to look at Jordan sitting on the toilet with her knickers around her ankles.

  “Ever hear of Robert Riley?” the PM asked. The young aides looked at each other. Triscuit knew the story and settled back into his seat. This was going to be a long one.

  “Governor of Alabama. A right-wing, Christian, tax-cutting Republican. When he was elected he discovered that Alabama’s tax system was set up in such a way that the rich could write off their federal income tax against their state income tax. So basically, the poor paid all the income tax in Alabama. Riley came out and said that as a Christian, it was wrong to put all the burden on the poor and called a referendum to change the system so that everyone would pay a fairer share. The rich mobilized against him and he lost the vote. Funny thing was, the areas that voted most against him were the poorest areas who would have gained the most. Because the voters were not actually capable of determining their own interest and were bamboozled by a well funded media campaign.”

  Fairfax turned away from the window and faced the room.

  “The next Hitler won’t wear a brown shirt and a moustache. He’ll look like Sebastian Spence. And even when he’s stepping on the throats of the poor they’ll be delighted because a celebrity is stepping on them and telling them it’s all Brussels’ fault. Or the Muslims. Or the immigrants. And they’ll be too ignorant to know any better. A well-informed electorate, my eye. We have delivered on health, employment, crime and poverty. What more can we do?”

  “Short of delivering love, very little,” one of the aides mumbled.

  “What was that?” Fairfax asked.

  “Love.” The aide continued, “In all the polling, it’s what comes up. Not that surprising really, in that we have a generation of voters who have been carpet bombed with ads and TV shows telling them that they have to be loved and have the perfect relationship. And yet curiously, loneliness is on the increase.”

  “If we can just focus with the political issues here on Earth,” Triscuit suggested, wanting to move the conversation on, but Fairfax gestured to him with the wave of a hand to let the young man continue. The aide tapped his briefing papers.

  “We haven’t had generations of single people living on their own on this scale since World War 2 and that was because of a serious lack of partners. Now we have male suicide rates at record levels and more and more women living alone, often by choice and for career reasons. Yet many still aspire to the 1950s model of a nice husband, two kids and a day baking. Not all of them obviously but it’s still a remarkably powerful social objective. There’s even a scientist up in Cambridge who wrote an article suggesting that with modern technology it is possible for the state to match people together.”

  “Wasn’t that Hitler’s plan?” Triscuit asked with a heavy dollop of sarcasm, getting annoyed at them wandering down this avenue.

  “I mean, he even reckons that with the National Identity Database, it is now quite possible to actually find Mr. and Mrs. Right.”

  The PM, who had been only half listening, shot his eyebrows up.

  “I’m sorry, say that again?”

  “He reckons it’s possible to use the National Identity Database to help find love. And he’s not a loon, by the way. It’s Dr. Julian Tredestrian. He was actually on the shortlist for Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government.”

  “Matching people together? That’s a bit on the men-in-white-coats side, surely?” the PM asked.

  “He reckons we have the technology to do it now.”

  “Let’s get this Dr. Tredestrian in for a chat,” the PM said.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Triscuit blurted.

  “Bill, humour me. The way things are going, in a while I won’t be able to send for anybody other than the pizza delivery people.”

  Triscuit rolled his eyes. Fairfax winked at the young adviser, who scribbled a note on his PDA.

  • • •

  Everybody remembered Sammii from New Big Brother. At least, that was what she believed. How could they not? All the others had been so fake, not like her, she was the real deal. She was deep, she kept it real and happening and only gave off positive energy, and the fact that she was voted out half way through whilst there were still fat people in the house was a disgrace. It was so obviously fixed.

  She’d done the big exclusive Heat interview and gotten her kit off for Horn! Magazine and then suddenly it was over. She was suddenly a nobody again, expected to go back to Tesco and let Gavin the deputy manager finger her in the refrigerated storage whilst leaning against the family packs of Cornettos.

  Did they not know who she was? She was Sammii, from Big Brother! She was a celebrity!

  It hadn’t been easy. Her friends had filtered away when the money and the minor celebrity gossip ran out (Her bestseller headline was ‘That Dermot from Big Brother is gay. He said no to me in the toilets!’) and even her sisters got tired of listening to her self pitying tirades about how she was better than this and Davina McCall didn’t eat jumbo cod fish fingers for her tea.

  Then she got the phone call.

  He said he was an agent, and was looking at putting together an ad campaign, and had seen her on Big Brother. Would she be interested?

  The money wasn’t great, but it was better than Tesco and anyway, here was someone who knew who she was! He even picked her up in a car, and took her to a warehouse where she spent a h
alf-day reading a script into the camera. Some of the words were foreign, or at least she’d never heard them before, but he helped her with the pronounciation. She was dressed in a funny way too which didn’t bother her as long as she got her baps out. She’d even offered to go without knickers for another £50.

  • • •

  As the son of two Cambridge academics, Dr. Julian Tredestrian had been expected to be smart. But he wasn’t. A child who can speak three languages by three years old, none of which were actually spoken by either parent, is not smart. Nor is being accepted for university at ten years old a sign of mere ‘smartness’ either.

  Julian Tredestrian was special, not so much as in the ‘We’re-very-proud-of-you-in-your-lovely-new-trousers’ sense as much as special in the Ministry of Defence designating him a national strategic asset and assigning a Special Branch officer to protect him from the age of twelve.

  Not surprisingly, Julian grew up seeing the world different from pretty much everyone else, largely because there were almost no mysteries to him. Whether it was quantum physics or Nobel level chemistry or that weird mathematics that the truly gifted see almost as a thing of beauty, like Kelly Brook as a prime number. He just absorbed knowledge in the same way that other people absorbed Vitamin D. By twenty he was quite wealthy from the various patents that he had developed for the pharmaceutical company he started working for on his fifteenth birthday and by twenty seven he was a Cambridge fellow with pretty much a free hand as to what area of research took his fancy.

  Sponsors from Big Technology tended to fall over themselves trying to fund his research because he had a jaw-slacking ability to resolve problems their own research and development people tended to have run into. Such was demand for his services, he actually had an agent.

  On top of his general brilliance, Julian wanted to be useful. The money was obviously appreciated and allowed him to live a very comfortable life, but making a contribution was what mattered to him. So if the contribution of his brain could help those he cared about all the better. That was exactly why he became involved in turning his exceptional mind upon the problem of finding the correct mate.