High society by Ben Elton Read Free Book Online Page A

after Samantha from the moment she had come to work with him. Simply ached. She had clouded his thoughts utterly, his desire for her finding some place to intrude on every single waking moment of his life.
    It was not that he did not love Angela. He did love her, truly. But he wanted Samantha. He was obsessed.
    Nonetheless, Peter Paget had never dreamt that he would end up putting his marriage at risk. He knew that his marriage was safe. Of course it was safe. Why would a beautiful twenty-three year-old woman like Samantha, a woman who turned heads in every corridor that she walked along, be remotely interested in him, a tired, slightly balding man of almost twice her age? It was nonsense. His peace of mind might be utterly ruined, but his marriage at least was safe.
    But Peter Paget had been wrong. Nothing was safe. It turned out that Samantha wanted him just as much as he wanted her. Why, he did not know, but she did, and one day she had told him so.
    ‘The way you’re looking at me, Peter,’ she had said when they were alone together in his office. ‘I think you’re imagining me naked.’
    Peter had been too stunned to reply. He had not needed to.
    ‘You don’t have to imagine, you know…’
    And so had begun this insane affair, which he hated and loved in almost equal proportions. Almost.
    And alongside this extraordinary and unexpected madness had come his great chance. His opportunity to break free from the confines of his unfulfilled career and make the world a better place. He had given a stunning parliamentary performance, he was on the front page of the Evening Standard and no doubt would be on all the other papers in the morning. His ideas were being debated on every radio chat show, his name damned and deified in the space of two callers, and he was having an affair with a beautiful, intelligent young woman who thought him a god and proudly undressed in front of him.
    Peter felt himself reinvented, a man reborn. He returned Samantha’s kisses. Enjoy it. You deserve it.

THE DOG AND DUCK, SOHO
    D etective Sergeant Archer collected the pints of lager from the bar. He had not paid for them — policemen tend not to pay for things when going about their manors, not in Soho, at least. A perk of the job. And why not? What small business owner is going to charge his protector for a sandwich or a pint? Of course the girls in the doorways of Dean and Wardour Street knew that for some policemen gratis entitlement went beyond a lunchtime snack. Some policemen expected sex and money too. The girls in the doorways knew that some policemen ought to be locked up. Detective Sergeants Archer and Sharp were two such policemen, but of late their cosy world of casual corruption had felt a chill wind blowing through its dirty streets. A commander from Dalston, an ex-Drug Squad detective, had been tasked with investigating his old colleagues. He had been very public in his assertion that corruption existed. He seemed to be getting close to naming names.
    ‘The bloke’s dangerous because he’s stupid. And he’s stupid because he thinks it fucking matters that we cream a few bob off here and there. Better we have it than the bastards who push the stuff, eh?’
    ‘He’s got an agenda. This is political. He wants to use us as an example to push his poxy legalization theories that him and his fucking MP have cooked up. He wants to say that if the drug laws are turning the cops bent then they have to change.’
    ‘But that’s just bollocks. There’s always been bent cops. It’s a tradition.’
    Tell me something I don’t know.’ There’s no way he’s going to pull it off, surely?’
    ‘Not in a million years.’
    ‘Well, I don’t know. Even the Home Office are talking about decriminalizing skunk.’
    Toe in the water, window dressing, a sop to the liberals. It’ll pass.’
    ‘I just can’t believe it. A copper, one of our own, trying to legalize drugs. That’s betrayal, that is. That’s turkeys voting for