The Ghost by Robert Harris Page B

doesn’t have any kind of voice.” Lang pulled a face. He clearly didn’t see the problem. “Having said that,” I added quickly, “the work won’t be entirely wasted. We can ransack it for facts and quotations, and I don’t mind the structure, actually—the sixteen chapters—although I’d like to open differently, find something more intimate.”
    The Vietnamese housekeeper brought in our tea. She was dressed entirely in black—black silk trousers and a collarless black shirt. I wanted to introduce myself, but when she handed me my glass, she avoided meeting my gaze.
    “You heard about Mike?” asked Lang.
    “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
    Lang glanced away, toward the darkened window. “We should put something nice about him in the book. His mother would like it.”
    “That should be easy enough.”
    “He was with me a long time. Since before I became prime minister. He came up through the party. I inherited him from my predecessor. You think you know someone pretty well and then—” He shrugged and stared into the night.
    I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. It’s in the nature of my work to act as something of a confessor figure, and I have learned over the years to behave like a shrink—to sit in silence and give the client time. I wondered what he was seeing out there. After about half a minute he appeared to remember I was still in the room.
    “Right. How long do you need from me?”
    “Full time?” I sipped my drink and tried not to wince at the sweet taste. “If we work really hard we should be able to break the back of it in a week.”
    “A week?” Lang performed a little facial mime of alarm.
    I resisted the temptation to point out that ten mllion dollars for a week’s work wasn’t exactly the national minimum wage. “I may need to come back to you to plug any holes, but if you can give me till Friday, I’ll have enough to rewrite most of this draft. The important thing is that we start tomorrow and get the early years out of the way.”
    “Fine. The sooner we get it done the better.” Suddenly Lang was leaning forward, a study in frank intimacy, his elbows on his knees, his glass between his hands. “Ruth’s going stir-crazy out here. I keep telling her to go back to London while I finish the book, see the kids, but she won’t leave me. I love your work, I have to say.”
    I almost choked on my tea. “You’ve read some of it?” I tried to imagine what footballer, or rock star, or magician, or reality game show contestant might have come to the attention of a prime minister.
    “Sure,” he said, without a flicker of doubt. “There was some fellow we were on holiday with—”
    “Christy Costello?”
    “Christy Costello! Brilliant. If you can make sense out of his life, you might even be able to make sense out of mine.” He jumped up and shook my hand. “It’s good to meet you, man. We’ll make a start first thing tomorrow. I’ll get Amelia to fix you a car to take you back to your hotel.” And then he suddenly started singing:
    “Once in a lifetime
    You get to have it all
    But you never knew you had it
    Till you go and lose it all.”
    He pointed at me. “Christy Costello, ‘Once in a Lifetime,’ nineteen seventy”—he wobbled his hand speculatively, his head cocked, his eyes half closed in concentration—“seven?”
    “Eight.”
    “Nineteen seventy-eight! Those were the days! I can feel it all coming back.”
    “Save it for tomorrow,” I said.
     
    “HOW DID IT GO?” inquired Amelia as she showed me to the door.
    “Pretty well, I think. It was all very friendly. He kept calling me ‘man.’”
    “Yes. He always does that when he can’t remember someone’s name.”
    “Tomorrow,” I said, “I’ll need a private room where I can do the interviewing. I’ll need a secretary to transcribe his answers as we go along—every time we break I’ll bring the fresh tapes out to her. I’ll need my own copy of the existing