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Whoever had slaughtered Charlie was there after me, and when the police had finished taking my description from the whimpering woman on the stairs, they’d be after me, too. Dalby’s organization was the only contact with enough power to help me.
At Cambridge Circus I jumped on a bus as it came past. I got off at Piccadilly, hailed a cab to the Ritz, and then walked east up Piccadilly. No car could follow without causing a traffic sensation by an illegal right turn. Just to be on the safe side, I hailed another cab on the far side of the road, outside Whites, in case anyone had done that turn, and now sped in the opposite direction to anyone who could have followed me. I gave the cabbie the address of a car hire company in Knightsbridge. It was still only 5.25.
Not without difficulty, I hired a blue Austin 7, the only car they had with a radio. I used Charlie’s driving licence, and some envelopes I’d found in his wallet ‘proved’ my identity. I cursed my foolishness in not having taken a driving licence from the safe deposit. I was taking a long chance on Charlie’s name not being released to the Press before the various Intelligence departments had a look in, but I tuned in to the 6 o’clock news just the same. Algeria, and another dock strike. The dockers didn’t like something again. Perhaps it was each other. No murders. An antique Austin 7 in front of me signalled a right turn. The driver had shaved under the arms. I drove on through Putney and along the side of the common. It was green and fresh and a sudden burst of sunshine made the wet trees sparkle, and turned the spray from speeding tyres into showers of pearls. Rich stockbrokers in white Jaguars and dark-green Bentleys played tag and wondered why I’d intruded into their private fun.
‘Waaa Waaa Waaa Waaa – you’re driving me crazy,’ sang the radio as I changed down to negotiate Wimbledon Hill, and outside, the nightmare world of killers, policemen and soldiers happily brushed shoulders. I gazed out on it from the entirely imaginary security of the little car. How long was it to be before every one of the crowds on Wimbledon High Street were going to become suddenly interested in Charlie Cavendish and interested even more in finding me. The pianist at the ‘Tin-Tack Club’; I suddenly remembered that I still owed him thirty shillings. Would he give my description to the police? How to get out of this mess? I looked at the grim rows of houses on either side of me and imagined them all to be full of Mr Keatings. How I wished I lived in one – a quiet, uneventful, predictable existence.
Now I was back on the Kingston by-pass at Bushey Road. At the ‘Ace of Spades’ the road curves directly into the setting sunlight, and the little car leapt forward in response to a slight touch of the foot.
Two trucks were driving neck and neck ahead of me. Each one was doing twenty-eight mph, each grimly intent on proving he could do twenty-nine! I passed them eventually and fell in behind a man in a rust-coloured pullover and Robin-Hood hat who had been to BRIGHTON, BOGNOR REGIS, EXETER, HARLECH, SOUTHEND, RYDE, SOUTHAMPTON, YEOVIL and ROCHESTER, and who, because of this, could not now see through his rear window.
At Esher I put on the lights, and well before Guildford the gentle smack of raindrops began to hit the windscreen. The heater purred happily, and I kept the radio tuned to the Light for the 6.30 bulletin. Godalming was pretty well closed except for a couple of tobacconists, and at Milford I slowed up to make sure I took the right route. Not the Hindhead or Haslemere road, but the 283 to Chiddingfold. A hundred yards before I reached the big low Tudor-fronted inn I flashed the headlights and got an answering signal from the brake-actuated red rear lights of a parked vehicle there. I glimpsed the car, a black Ford Anglia with a spotlight fixed to the roof. I watched the rear-view mirror as Mr Waterman pulled his car on to the road just behind me.
I’d been to Dalby’s home once before, but that was in daylight, and now it was quite dark. He lived in a small stone house lying well back from the road. I backed, just off the road, up a small driveway. Waterman parked on the far side of the road. The rain continued, but wasn’t getting any worse. I left the car unlocked with the keys on the floor under the seat. Waterman stayed in his car and I didn’t blame him. It was 6.59, so I listened to the 7 o’clock news bulletin. There was still no mention of Charlie, so I set off up the path to the house.
It was a small converted farm-house with a décor that writers in women’s magazines think is contemporary. Outside the mauve front door there was a wheelbarrow with flowers growing in it. Fixed to the wall was a coach lamp converted to electricity, not as yet lit. I knocked at the door with, need I say it, a brass lion’s-head knocker. I looked back. Waterman had doused his lights, and gave me no sign of recognition. Perhaps he was smarter than I thought. Dalby opened the door and tried to register surprise on his bland egg-like public school face.
‘Is it still raining?’ he said. ‘Come in.’
I sank into the big soft sofa that had Go, Queen and Tatler scattered across it. In the fireplace two fruit-tree logs sent an aroma of smoky perfume through the room. I watched Dalby with a certain amount of suspicion. He walked towards a huge bookcase – the aged spines of good editions of Balzac, Irving and Hugo glinted in the fire-light.
‘A drink?’ he said. I nodded, and Dalby opened the ‘bookcase’ which proved to be an artful disguise for doors of a cocktail cabinet. The huge glass and mirror box reflected a myriad of labels, everything from Charrington to Chartreuse – this was the gracious living I had read about in the newspapers.
‘Tio Pepe or Teachers?’ asked Dalby, and after handing me the clear glass of sherry added, ‘I’ll have someone fix you a sandwich. I know that having a sherry means you are hungry.’ I protested, but he disappeared anyway. This wasn’t going at all the way I planned. I didn’t want Dalby to have time to think, nor did I intend that he should leave the room. He could phone – get a gun … As I was thinking this, he reappeared with a plate of cold ham. I remembered how hungry I was. I began to eat the ham and drink my sherry, and I became angry as I realized how easily Dalby had put me at a disadvantage.
‘I’ve been bloody well incarcerated,’ I finally told him.
‘You’re telling me,’ he agreed cheerfully.
‘You know?’ I asked.
‘It was Jay. He’s been trying to sell you back to us.’
‘Why didn’t you grab him?’
‘Well, you know Jay, he’s difficult to get hold of, and anyway, we didn’t want to risk them “bumping you off” did we?’ Dalby used expressions like ‘bumping off’ when he spoke to me. He thought it helped me to understand him.
I said nothing.
‘He wanted £40,000 for you. We think he may have Chico, too. Someone in the USMD
(#ulink_3ebae2af-3f4b-5779-8a4b-bbde3337d925) works for him. That’s how he got you from Tokwe. It could be serious.’
‘Could be?’ I said. ‘They damn’ nearly killed me.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t worried about you. They were unlikely to kill the goose and all that.’
‘Oh, weren’t you? Well you weren’t there to get worried and all that.’
‘You didn’t see Chico there?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘That was the only alleviating feature of the whole affair.’
‘Another drink?’ Dalby was the perfect host.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I must be getting along. I want the keys to the office.’ His face didn’t flicker. Those English public schools are worth every penny.
‘I insist that you join us for dinner,’ said Dalby.
I declined and we batted polite talk back and forth. I wasn’t out of the wood yet. Charlie was dead, and Dalby either didn’t know or didn’t want to talk about it. As I was about to tell him Dalby produced from an abstract painting that concealed a wall safe, a couple of files about payments to agents working in the South American countries.
(#ulink_b01fadd5-6ccf-5dcd-a466-1ea0f5f260a8) Dalby gave me both files, and the keys, and I promised to figure out something for him by ten o’clock the next morning at Charlotte Street. I looked at my watch. It was 7.50 P.M. I was pretty anxious to leave because Waterman’s instructions were to come at the run after one hour exactly. From his performance so far it seemed unwise to count on him being tardy. I took my leave, still without the name of Charlie Cavendish being mentioned. I decided to leave it until we were in the office.
Half-way down the driveway I realized that between now and tomorrow morning was ample time to get myself arrested on a murder charge. Perhaps I should go back and say, ‘Oh, there’s one other thing. I’m wanted for murder.’
I started up the Austin, and moved easily down the road towards the big pub. It was about a quarter of a mile down the road before Waterman switched on his lights. He kept going up in my estimation. When we got to the car park of the ‘Glowering Owl’, I walked across to Waterman and gave him the money in cash.
‘It went off all right then. I’m glad of that,’ he said, his nicotine-stained moustache following his mouth as it smiled. I thanked him, and he put his car into gear, then said, ‘I thought we were in for a right barny when the big Chink feller came out to look at you through the window.’
Big rain clouds raced across the moon, and an arty-looking couple came out of the Saloon Bar, arguing violently. They walked across the car park.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, my hand on the edge of the wet car window. ‘Chink? A Chinese? Are you sure?’
‘Am I sure? Listen, friend. I had five years in the New Territories; I should know what a Chink looks like.’
I got into the car seat beside him, and asked him to go through it in slow motion. He did so, but he needn’t have done for all the extra information it gave me.
‘We are going back up there right away,’ I told him.
‘Not me, friend, I did the job I was hired for.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll pay you again.’
‘Look friend, you’ve been there, you’ve had your say – let things be.’
‘No, I must go back up there whether you come or not. I might only glance in through the window,’ I coaxed.
‘This is nothing to do with your wife, friend. You’re up to some no-good. I can tell. I could tell you weren’t a divorce case from the first minute I saw you.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘but my money’s OK isn’t it?’ I didn’t pause, as I considered his disagreement on this score very unlikely. ‘I’m from Brighton – Special Branch,’ I improvised, and showed him my forged warrant card. It passed in the poor light inside the car, but I’d hate to depend upon it in daylight.
‘You a copper! You never are, friend.’
I persisted that I was, and he half-believed me. He said, ‘I know that some of the new coppers you can hardly tell nowadays. Real mixture they are.’
‘This is an important case,’ I told him. ‘And I want your assistance now.’
The squeelch and buzz of the windscreen wipers continued steadily as he made up his mind. Why did I want him? I thought; but somewhere I had a hunch it would be a good eight guineas’ worth. It wasn’t one of my best hunches.
‘Why didn’t you bring one of your own constables?’ he suddenly asked.
‘It wasn’t possible,’ I said, hesitating. ‘It’s out of our area. I’m acting on special authority.’
‘It’s not monkey business, friend, is it? I couldn’t be mixed up in anything funny.’
At last. At last I was getting it across to him that I was a policeman negotiating a high-class bribe. As he got used to it, he came to quite like the idea of a well-placed friend on the force, but he added, ‘It will cost you another twelve guineas.’
We settled on the fee and set off up the road again, this time both in his car. I didn’t want Dalby to see the blue Austin 7 coming back again. The files were the problem. I didn’t know what to tell Waterman to do with them if anything happened, so I put them on the back seat and hoped that nothing would.
(#ulink_8ad3a2fb-16fa-555c-92bf-807a37ea5690) United States Medical Department.
(#ulink_84d1a719-27aa-51fd-adec-197ba9e295e7) It was a difficult problem which before the Castro régime had always been handled by a small private bank in Havana, which we more or less owned. Castro, however, had nationalized it, luckily not before the local police had tipped them off, so the documentation was at present intact at Saratoga Springs. Dalby asked me to submit a report about it. This was the sort of situation that I was always called in to help with. Not that I’m any sort of accountant, goodness knows; I can make two and two into something different every time I put those particularly unreliable digits together, but I had done a lot of work with the Swiss bank for Ross. By the time I came to Dalby’s department, I had enough good solid contacts there to trace any secret account, given enough time. As well as this I had learned every legal and illegal way of moving money about the globe. Money is to espionage what petrol is to a motor-car, and it was because I had kept the wraps on my contacts there that I had been so insubordinate to so many for so long.
29 (#ulink_50930fec-bd72-5347-ba04-26892fcd8288)
It all worked quite smoothly: approach without lights, parking, and the walk to the house. It was quite dark now, but gaps in the curtains let some light fall across the flower beds. Perhaps those were the chinks Waterman saw, I thought. I was getting quite skilled at negotiating growing plants on foot at night. Without making too much noise on the gravel I got close to the window of the room in which I had spoken with Dalby. It was a bit shattering to find Dalby was very close to the window on the other side; like a picture on a 21-inch screen. He wasn’t, however, concerned with prowlers in his garden; he was pouring a drink from that damn’ cabinet. On the sofa sat Murray listening to Dalby as he poured and talked. They were talking to someone else outside my range of vision; he must have asked what they wanted to drink because the third party walked across to the drinks cabinet. I watched them only three feet away from me. I could catch an occasional word of conversation even through the double glass. My hunch was right; there was no other face like K.K.’s, and every feature was inscribed on my retina. He was Waterman’s ‘Chink’. K.K. and Dalby. I had seen enough and was about to go – but Dalby and K.K. were both looking across the room speaking to another. It wasn’t Murray, I’d seen him go into the kitchen. And then into my line of vision – like the bad fairy at the princess’s christening – walked Jay.
I almost fell backwards into the Convallaria. After all those hours of screenings, there could be no mistake. The elusive Jay. Few members of the department had ever seen him, and yet I was always coming across him – in Led’s, in the street, in theatre clubs, and now – finally the prince of evil is chatting with the head of the department. How can I tell you the impact this made on me? It was like seeing Mr Macmillan drop a CP
(#ulink_fa11b3d4-b8e6-5f4d-adab-34b917254946) card out of his wallet; it was like discovering that Edgar Hoover was Lucky Luciano in disguise. I was watching the scene like a small boy in a lollipop factory. Goodness knows how long I stood petrified with surprise. K.K.’s presence shattered me, but Jay’s made me forget K.K.! ‘We are moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion,’ Dalby had once told me. How wrong can you get? I remembered the two men I had seen from the Terrazza Restaurant window. Undoubtedly they were Jay and Dalby.
Waterman had followed me up the path, and I reached out my hand to help him avoid the lily of the valley. After staring wide-eyed into the bright room, the darkness was a baffling blanket of void, out of which a hand smelling of toilet soap clamped across my mouth, and something very sharp penetrated the ‘one-piece back’ of my jacket. I stiffened and held very still.
‘It’s Murray, sir,’ a voice in my ear said, and I thought, ‘Sir? This is a nice time for formalities.’
I remembered Raven who we’d kidnapped near the Syrian border, and how puzzled I’d been to hear Dalby say, ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ when he injected him. Perhaps ‘Sir’ was something they always say when they – what were Dalby’s words – ‘bumped you off’.
‘I’m taking my hand away now, sir. Don’t shout or we’ve both had it.’ I nodded my head but Murray mistook it for an attempt to escape, and he instinctively twisted my arm and held my mouth even tighter. Where the hell was Waterman? Come and earn your twelve guineas I kept thinking – but there was no sign of him. Murray eased me quietly away from the house, and finally let go of me altogether. He was the first to speak.
‘You were walking all over the infra-red alarms.’
‘I might have guessed it wasn’t as wide open as it looks,’ I said.
‘I’ve got to get back to the house now, but …’ he hesitated. There was plenty I wanted to know. I was in no position to extract a confession, but I leaned towards him and said, ‘Listen, Murray, whatever screwy damn’ thing is going on, you know that all the people in that house are actionable under the Treason Act. You will act on my orders and mine only as of this moment, or you will become an enemy of HMG.’
(#ulink_1d24ae11-5005-534b-8628-db31251a1363) Murray was silent. ‘Can’t you see, man? Dalby has sold out, or perhaps he’s been a double agent for years. My task was to verify that information. I have five provost platoons in Haslemere – whatever happens the whole show is over. I’m giving you a chance, Murray, because I know you are not in as deeply as the others. Come with me now and help me assemble my data. The whole crowd of them are done for.’ I stopped; my invention had flagged: I was on the verge of saying the game’s up.
‘My name’s Harriman,’ said Murray. ‘And I’m a lieutenant-colonel in Special Field Intelligence, and it’s you who must be temporarily subject to my orders.’ His voice was different to that of the Sergeant Murray I had known. He went on. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad time, but you must get out of here now. We are not out of the proverbial wood by any means. To get Dalby is nothing …’ That was the moment when Waterman hit him with the spanner.
I looked down at Murray or Harriman or whoever he was and I knew quite clearly what I must do. I must get out of here. What Dalby & Co would do when they found their unconscious friend with his head in the petunias was anyone’s guess. Waterman, that soul of simplicity, was now bound to me by complicity in my actions. ‘Did I do right, Super?’ he said about three times. I told him that he was sensational, but it was difficult to sound enthusiastic. It was something though, that he was prepared to do as I told him. We dragged Murray’s body into the taller flowers.
I was prepared to have to sit in Waterman’s car for a couple of hours, but within ten minutes we saw the front door open and car headlights switched on. It was a large car, and as it came steadily down the drive the headlights skimmed across the prostrate Murray. We both held our breath, but I suppose we saw it only because we knew it was there. Dalby went inside, and the big Rolls turned on to the road and headed towards London.
‘Catch that up,’ I told Waterman. ‘I want to see the driver.’
At Milford the street lighting gave me a chance to take a look at the car. It was a black Rolls Phantom IV, a straight-eight that Messrs Rolls-Royce will only sell to Royalty and Heads of State. How typical that Jay should have one. Waterman flipped open the glove compartment and produced a pair of prismatics. With them I could see Jay as he leaned back on fine West of England upholstery and sipped a drink from the cocktail cabinet. Now and again I could glimpse the chauffeur’s face in the green-tinted mirrors. We had settled down to a steady forty-five now. Waterman was a driver in a million. He handled his car with a curious ‘finger-tip’ feeling that was alien to him, because out of the car he was a clumsy, heavy-handed clod of a fellow. It was important that the Rolls didn’t know it had a tail, and Waterman hit upon the rather subtle ruse of trying to race it, but always losing out. The Rolls didn’t take advantage of its superior power to race ahead as at first I feared it might. Not that it would have shaken us off. Waterman’s little modified double-carburettor car was his pride and joy. It had dozens of instruments, temperature gauges, revolution counters, clocks and reading lights. But we kept going at forty-five all the way to London. Jay seemed to be in no sort of hurry.
(#ulink_06f9abf0-28a7-54d1-9130-ae07b56712e1)Communist Party.
(#ulink_343f75be-53e3-5a0b-a0e8-1012b70cfff8)Her Majesty’s Government.
30 (#ulink_a15a7207-96db-5581-98c0-4ca8e1842567)
[Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) A good week for your hobbies and romance, but you can expect some difficulties with evening arrangements. Forthright talking may clear the air.]
Jay’s Rolls purred along the Cromwell Road until it turned off near the Brompton Oratory. Those gaunt Victorian houses, built at the time of the 1851 Exhibition, stared down at us. Cars were parked densely along the pavements, sports cars and snob cars and cars wrapped in silvery sheets of material. We turned off the road when Jay rolled to a standstill outside a big conversion. We closed the doors quietly and moved quickly enough to see the portly form of Jay entering the front door. It was a ‘tasteful’ piece of contemporary; natural wood-finish doors, stainless-steel windows and venetian blinds everywhere. Waterman and I peered at the list of names and bell pushes.
‘You may as well go in,’ said a tall, bespectacled city gent behind us, opening the door with a key. We went in, partly because it was convenient for us, partly because there were two more city gents behind us, and partly because they were all holding small 9mm Italian Mod 34 Beretta automatic pistols.
The man who had spoken pushed the top bell and spoke into the small metal microphone. ‘Yes. There’s two of them. One of them could be a policeman,’ he said. They had been tailing us, and to add insult to injury had been discussing us over car to car radio-phones.
I then heard Jay’s voice, ‘Put the gentlemen on the detector and bring them in, Maurice.’ I looked at Waterman – the edges of his stained moustache turned down: we’d been a couple of right ninnies. Followed all the way! I should have guessed that Jay meeting Dalby would take some ‘beef’ with him. I wondered if Dalby had phoned Jay about Murray: found unconscious in his flowers.
The entrance hall was all black mirrors, fresh flowers and genuine cut-glass chandeliers. We were stood up before the full-length mirror. There was a small buzzing noise and I was deprived of my gun by Maurice who stood well clear of his colleague’s line of fire. Maurice was very professional. If you could afford a Phantom IV you could afford the best in hoodlums. We were taken upstairs.
The forty-foot living-room was ankle deep in cream-coloured long-tufted carpeting. The white walls were punctuated with large abstract paintings: Rothko, Motherwell and Hitchens. At the far end of the room a circular black-marble table of knee height, surrounded by low black-leather armchairs with high wing backs, made a cosy corner round the gigantic hi-fi unit, and TV that was telling us that ‘Trill makes budgies bounce with health’ over and over again.
At ‘our’ end of the room Jay’s voice, a rather rich detergent-advertising voice, floated through the open doorway. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
The three city gents withdrew like the Beverley Sisters taking a curtain, but we all knew they were no farther than the thickness of the door away.
‘This is Mr Waterman,’ I said loudly to the invisible Jay, ‘of Waterman’s Detective Agency. I hired him this afternoon.’ There was only silence so I spoke again even more loudly, clearly enunciating my words as one would speak to a rich deaf uncle. ‘I don’t think there is anything further from Mr Waterman. He may as well go home now.’
There was silence, then Jay’s voice, ‘Do you owe Mr Waterman any money?’
‘Fifteen guineas,’ I said, ‘but I thought you would want to fix it.’
Jay must have pressed a button for I heard a soft buzzer. The door opened so quickly that Maurice must have been standing with his hand on the handle.
‘What kept you, Maurice?’ I said. I hated Maurice; he was so polite and restrained. He stood there without speaking. His spectacles were clean and efficient – the glass emphasized the deadly little eyes through which he dispassionately viewed his world, of which I was, for the time being, a part. Again came Jay’s instruction. ‘Maurice, you will let Mr Waterman here have a cheque for fifteen guineas. The number three account, Maurice. Then you will show Mr Waterman to the door.’ Maurice nodded even though Jay couldn’t see him.
Mr Waterman was pinching large sections of his nicotine-stained little moustache between index finger and thumb, and twisting it until it pained him. Mr Waterman also nodded. Mr Waterman must go. Mr Waterman was feeling a little out of place. Money is money but even at fifteen guineas a time he felt he must go. ‘Good-bye Mr Waterman,’ I said, and Mr Waterman left us.
I wanted to see what Jay was doing in the little annexe without a door. I could hear him moving around. I knew these big Kensington houses; visitors just never participate. I walked across to the doorway. I don’t know what I expected to see Jay doing. Sitting in front of bubbling test tubes like a Bela Lugosi movie. Watching ‘This is your Life’, or perhaps cultivating hot-house orchids.
‘You are interested in cooking?’ Jay looked much older than I remembered him, and against the white cook’s apron, strapped over one shoulder in the French manner, his complexion was rubicund as is a heavy drinker’s. In his hand he held a three-pound lobster. The kitchen was illuminated by merciless daylight tubes. Copper, stainless steel and sharp knives were distributed with the careful forethought of an operating theatre. A kitchen with such a maze of scientific aids that would make Cape Canaveral look like a rectangular wheel. Jay put the fresh mottled black and verdigris lobster down on the white counter and picked a bottle of Moet & Chandon out of the ice bucket with a happy tinkle. He poured two generous glasses full.
‘I could get interested,’ I said.
‘That’s right,’ said Jay, and I began to drink the cool clear bubbling drink.
I said, ‘Didn’t Lao-Tze say something like “Govern the Empire as you would cook a little fish”?’
Jay warmed to me. A smile peeped around his giant moustache. ‘Montaigne said, “Great men pride themselves on knowing how to prepare a fish for table,”’ he answered.
‘But did he mean it as a compliment?’ I asked.
Jay didn’t answer; he was driving a long metal rod through the lobster. I sipped the cold champagne.
