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.They believed they were the engine of their own achievements, and that the era, location and political climate were incidental, a painted landscape in the background of their magnificent portrait.In truth they were merely actors.There were roles that needed to be played, but it was up to men like himself to decide who should play them.“The part of the arch-conservative media tycoon will tonight be performed by a stand-in, as Mr Roland Voss is indisposed.”It was we who had made him, thought Alastair Dalgleish bitterly, still smarting from the stinging gauntlet-lash of betrayal.He winced at the fiery taste as he sipped at his whisky and stood, staring from the window of his study, the chair at his desk uncomfortable during such moments of agitated reflection.The brown liquid glinted tauntingly in the crystal glass, its volume militantly refusing to deplete itself no matter how many drops he braced himself to swallow.And it was nothing to do with it being early morning; the stuff was undrinkable night and day.Damn the image-makers.He longed for the soothing cool of a nice, long G&T.We made him.There was a limited amount of success to go round.A finite number of major roles.Voss didn’t take, Voss didn’t demand, Voss didn’t earn.Voss was given.Voss was allowed.They didn’t need him, they just needed someone to fill the role, perform a function.Someone.Anyone.Voss thought that his editorial support of the Conservatives was what ensured him special consideration, allowed him to expand his media interests so unhindered.What he failed to understand was that those newspapers were going to be saying very much what the Party wanted them to, whoever owned them, as that was always going to be a condition of being green-lighted to buy them.What Voss’s monstrous ego had obscured from his view was simply that if it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else.The arrogance of the man.That was what had really upset them.If it had simply been greed it would have been different.Wanting an even bigger slice of the pie when you’ve already vomited from over-eating was ideologically understandable.Perhaps a compromise could have been reached, some sop to acknowledge that the rattle of Voss’s sabre had been heard and duly noted.But it hadn’t been about money, business or politics.It had been about power.Voss had known exactly the consequences of what he was asking them to do; not only for themselves, but for the party.For the two of them it was electoral poison – in the highly unlikely event that their constituency branches didn’t deselect them anyway.And far worse, the poison would be all the more bitter as the lethal draught was transmuted from the elixir that was ready to revive the party in the polls.If they did not comply, Voss would destroy them anyway.His revelations would demand their resignations from the cabinet, amid a scandal that would be the coup de grace for the government’s scarred and wounded credibility.Damage limitation was a negligible concept; even a repeat of the Scott spin tactics would be futile.“They acted in good faith” wasn’t going to cut it on this one.And there would be no finite period of penitence on the backbenches before rising phoenix-like into the cabinet again.They would not be forgiven for the devastation caused.Things had changed since the glorious Thatcher era.The free-spirited philosophy of “anything goes” that came with a massive majority was but a cherished and distant memory.And it was nothing to do with Nolan.In the Conservative Party in the Nineties, there was only one rule on “standards in public life”: don’t get caught.Consequently, they couldn’t even tell the boss about the threat.Voss didn’t really need what he was asking from them.The Dutchman wasn’t the only one well-placed to carve out a share of the new market, and Dalgleish had wondered what impact it might have on the reputation of his newspaper group, given that its sales pitch was from a prominent kiosk on the moral high ground.Dalgleish of all people knew that Voss had always kept that aspect of his European interests conspicuously quiet.So what had enraged him was the realisation that Voss might not particularly want what he was demanding of them.The realisation that that wasn’t the issue.He just wanted the satisfaction of exercising power.Of arbitrarily deciding to destroy a career or bring down a government, as if they were gladiators whose life or death depended upon the whim that turned Caesar’s thumb up or down.Voss was merely amusing himself by playing a game, and the game was called God.He cared nothing for the real people whose lives were affected by his power-mongering and political masturbation.People like Michael Swan.People like Alastair Dalgleish.So what did he think, that they were impotent little pawns on his board? That they were his creatures, to do with as he pleased?Yes, indeed, it was about power.And by God they had shown him the true meaning of the word.It was rather a shame about the wife, of course, but the embarrassing little Eurotrash trollop did insist on following him around, always managing to make several hundred thousand pounds’ worth of clothing look like mismatched items from a particularly insalubrious jumble sale.Unfortunately they didn’t have a lot of time to play with, and there simply hadn’t been an opportunity to get the bugger alone.The bodyguards he felt no remorse about whatsoever.Bloody gorillas, the pair of them
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