Free The Edge of Madness by Michael Dobbs

when he arrived at the police reception point at the edge of the estate he was halted only briefly before being waved through. As he drew up in the courtyard of the ancient house, D’Arby was waiting at the front door. The Audi came to a halt on the gravel and, as Harry levered himself from his seat, the Prime Minister advanced to take his hand. The scent of lavender clung to the evening air, fresh mown grass too; from somewhere nearby Harry could hear the gentle chugging of a motor mower. He stretched to retrieve his overnight case from the back seat.
    ‘No, leave it, Harry. You’re not staying.’
    ‘What? I’ve just driven all the way out…’
    ‘I should have said we’re not staying. You and I have more miles to cover tonight.’
    ‘Mark, I’ve got to say you’re confusing me. And whatever help it is you want from me, I can’t give it if I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.’
    ‘Come. Walk with me.’ D’Arby took his guest to the side of the house and through a wrought-iron gate until theycame to a walled garden on the south side. It contained the most dazzling array of roses, long stems of colour that were reaching up to catch the light of the slowing sun. D’Arby led them to the middle point of the garden, through the spreading avenues of low box hedges, as though advancing to the centre of a bullseye. ‘You know, Harry, there might be satellites up there right now gazing down on us.’ He spread his arms and gave a hollow laugh.
    ‘Seen. But not heard,’ Harry concluded.
    ‘It’s important right now that the world believes I’m tucked up here at Chequers.’
    For the moment Harry held back from asking why. The other man was in no hurry.
    ‘You see this rose?’ the Prime Minister said, taking a long stem between two fingers. ‘Floribunda “Marcus D’Arby”. They named a bloody rose after me, Harry. Beautiful, isn’t it?’
    D’Arby cupped it in his hands and Harry bent to smell it.
    ‘As you see it has no fragrance,’ D’Arby pronounced in disappointment. ‘All show, no substance. A politician’s rose. And prone to early wilt, I’m afraid.’ He was mocking himself.
    Harry straightened up. He hadn’t smelt a damn thing, apart from a dash of whisky on D’Arby’s breath. ‘I know bugger-all about roses.’
    ‘Really? But you’re a man of so many talents,’ the Prime Minister said. Suddenly he crushed the rose in his fist and let the mash of petals fall to the ground.‘OK, not roses, then. So tell me, Harry, what you know about that Boeing crash at Heathrow a few years ago–the 777 on its way back from China.’
    ‘The one that lost all its thrust just before landing?’
    ‘That’s right. A miracle that everyone on board walked away from it, but…’
    ‘Something about the fuel-control systems, wasn’t it? I seem to remember they thought it might be any number of things–bird strike, computer failure, pilot error, fuel contamination. But in the end they found some sort of glitch in the control systems.’
    ‘Yes. That’s what they said.’
    ‘You’re telling me—’
    ‘They had to come up with something, Harry. We couldn’t simply explain that the thing just dropped out of the sky for no reason.’
    ‘There’s always a reason, Mark.’
    ‘Most surely, but we never found it. And I say “we” because it ended up on my desk. There was nowhere else for it to go.’ He led them to an old lichen-covered bench where they sat facing out over the garden to the hills beyond before he picked up his story. ‘Yet those control systems were double-and even triple-banked. Fail-safe, or so it was thought. The boffins tore that plane apart, Harry, piece by piece, every nut, every bolt, every rivet, every bit of flap and fuel pipe in her.’ He cursed softly and slowly, and D’Arby didn’t usually swear. He lit another of his cigarettes. ‘Then they stuck her all back together. They spent more than a year at it. And youknow what? At the end of all their