A song in the morning

** *

The funeral of James Sandham, held by coincidence that same Monday morning, was an altogether grander affair.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office saw to the arrangements. The Personnel Department had booked a chapel of rest, and the official fleet of cars, and the crematorium, and enough flowers to make Sandham seem to have been a loved and respected colleague.

His former wife had married again, and successfully, and was able to afford a clinging black frock that set her off well against the men from the F.C.O. She was allocated the front row in the crematorium chapel, never whimpered, never produced a handkerchief. The P.U.S. was behind her, and sitting alongside him was Peter Furneaux, head of the late Jimmy Sandham's section.

They didn't speak, the P.U.S. and Peter Furneaux, until after the curtains had closed on the coffin, and the taped organ music had come to a stop. As the mourners scraped to their feet and followed the former Mrs Sandham to the door and into a light shower of rain, Furneaux said, "I wonder if I could have a word with you, sir."

"I've lunch out of town, I am afraid, then the Cabinet Office, so I haven't a lot of time."

"It's quite pressing, sir."

"Let's walk a bit."

There was a garden around the crematorium, trimmed lawns with staked trees and ordered borders.

"Well, Peter, let's have it."

"This fellow, Carew, sir, that's going to hang in South Africa.. . "

"Thursday, right?"

"I know that Carew is an alias. I know that his true name is Curwen… "

"Classified, Peter, in the interests of national security."

"Shortly before James Sandham died, a young man came to F.C.O. His name was Jack Curwen. He said that James Carew was his father. I saw him, and Jimmy Sandham was with me… "

"Was he now?" the P.U.S. mouthed softly.

"Then Sandham disappeared, then he was dead. So we move on… I have regular reports coming in from Pretoria, the run of the mill embassy material, and I have a note on Carew. Last Friday I get a confirmation that Carew will definitely hang this Thursday. No more speculation. Finish.

He's going to hang… This Jack Curwen, he was a stroppy fellow but he was decent. He told me to my face that I was washing my hands of his father and I wasn't pleased at being told that, but in his position I reckon I'd have said the same, so I thought he deserved a call. He'd left his numbers. On Friday evening I rang the home number

… "

Furneaux saw a thoughtful, concerned face, he saw a gathering frown. Behind them the cars were pulling away.

Another line of vehicles waited at the gates for the next cremation.

"I rang the home number. I think the phone was answered by Curwen's mother, who was first married to Carew. I told her what I knew, delicately, and then asked for her son. She put the phone down on me. I wanted to speak to the boy himself so this morning, before coming down here, I rang the office number that he'd left with us. He wasn't there.

Young Curwen had taken abrupt leave. I spoke to his employer, I was told it was a very sudden departure."

"You're taking, Peter, a long time getting to the point."

"I asked the nature of young Curwen's employment.

The firm he works for is called Demolition and Clearance.

Curwen drums up business for the sort of work that required demolition by explosives… "

"The point, please, Peter."

"It's conjecture, of c o u r s e… I would hazard that Curwen has flown to South Africa. That blast at police headquarters in Johannesburg, our people report that the rumour in security circles is that a White with an English accent planted the bomb. I would further hazard that Curwen, having launched one attack, is going to make something of a noise at around the time his father hangs… "

"Thank you, Peter. You're going by train, I'll drop you at the station."

They walked to the P.U.S.'s official car, the doors were opened for them by the chauffeur.

"There wasn't anything strange about Sandham's death, was there, sir?"

"What sort of strange, Peter?"

"He'd no more go mountain climbing than I would, sir."

"You never can tell, can you, with people?"

The P.U.S. asked the chauffeur to find the nearest underground station. They drove away.

"It's my duty to tell you, sir… " Furneaux was muttering, difficult ground. "… there's been a fair amount of disquiet on the desk. So far out of character that he should be mountain climbing. He spoke to no one about taking leave. It's caused quite a bit of anxiety on the desk, and I thought you should know that, sir."

"As head of department, you'll want to discourage idle speculation."

"Yes, sir."

Lighting a cigarette, the P.U.S. said, "Thank you, Peter, for your guessing game about Carew's boy. If it needs to be taken further I'll handle it. You don't have to concern yourself with the matter. By the by, Peter, you probably heard that there's going to be a gap in Nairobi. Needs a most responsible and sensitive man to fill it. Quite a posting for a youngish man, don't you think, eh, Peter?"

They shook hands, the P.U.S. smiled a watery smile.

Furneaux went down into the underground and bought a ticket. He shrugged. Every man had a price. And he was not much of a mountaineer himself.

•**

The Director General scraped with a match at the mess in the stem of his pipe, and listened.

"Let me give you a scenario. Young Curwen has gone to South Africa, unconfirmed, but possible, and you will check it at once. Through his work he is familiar with explosives, that we know. A bomb goes off in Johannesburg and is rumoured to have been planted by a White. For the sake of our scenario let us assume that James Carew is to hang on Thursday, at the moment intending to take his secret to his grave, and let us assume that young Curwen is arrested in the hours remaining before the execution. What chance then, if they put the screws on him, so to say, that Carew would remain silent?"

The P.U.S. had cut short his lunch and driven to Century House for the meeting. Still the Director General said nothing.

"Or the related scenario: Carew hangs and Curwen is subsequently arrested. How much does the boy know? He met Sandham; Sandham knew only so much and probably hadn't told him. Would the boy talk?"

"Probably."

"I believe it is back to Downing Street, Director General."

"For what earthly reason?"

The Director General filled his pipe. It was a mechanical action. His eyes were never on the bowl, but none of the tobacco fibres fell to the polished surface of his desk.

"I don't intend to finish my career in an expose on the front page of Sunday's newspapers. Never forget, Director General, our job is to advise and to execute. The politicians are paid to make decisions, whatever a ham-fisted job they make of it. Keep this one in the dark and I reckon we'll get swamped by home-flying chickens. Lay it all before them and we safeguard ourselves and possibly them too. I'll fix an appointment for early evening."

"If the Prime Minister's schedule permits."

"No problem. Any Prime Minister I've worked with would meet one in a dressing gown at four in the morning if the matter under consideration involves an intelligence foul-up."

When the P.U.S. had gone, the Director General called in his personal assistant and named a man who was to be called to his office immediately.

•**

Major Swart read the telex.

They'd had to stop once at a service station on the way back to London. Heavy stuff, English beer. He read the telex, then went back to his private lavatory, and back again to the telex.

Shit, and he was half cut. He was never at his best after he had drunk at lunchtime.

He knew the name of Curwen. Checked it out, hadn't he, days before. Checked and found that Mrs Hilda Perry had been married to a James Curwen. Thought he'd cracked the connection between James Carew and Hilda Perry. Had it all sewn up until he had taken the photograph of James Carew to the village in Hampshire and been told four times that the photograph was not that of James Curwen. From Somerset House he knew there was a son of the marriage between Hilda Perry and James Curwen, he knew from those same records that the son had been christened Jack.

Johannesburg wanted information on a Jack Curwen.

They wanted background, and they wanted confirmation of a photo-fit likeness.

Major Swart could have sent off an answer straight away

… But he wanted to piss again… He reckoned he could have established the link between Jack Curwen and Hilda Perry and a letter written from Pretoria Central by James Carew.

With too much beer inside him, and a foul temper still from the encounter at the funeral, he chose a different course.

He would first stitch the matter, then he would send his message.

He would stitch it so tight that there were no call backs, no demands for follow up information.

He rang Erik. Yes, the bloody man had replaced his bloody television set. Yes, Erik would be at the embassy within forty-five minutes. He shouted down the corridor to Piet that if he had plans, life or death, for the late evening then he should bloody well forget them.

And then hastily back to his private lavatory, fumbling with his private key, to leak.

•**

He came heavily down the staircase. A beautiful staircase, oak, probably Jacobean, he thought.

The hostility swarmed from the short, slight woman. The hostility was in the wrinkle lines at her throat, and in the flash of her eyes, and the curl of a tired mouth.

"I hope you're satisfied. I hope you understand why he couldn't come to London to see you."

Mrs Fordham had told the Director General over the telephone that the colonel was ill and could not take a train to London. He hadn't believed her.

They stood in the panelled hallway. He thought the house and its interior were magnificent. Perhaps she read him.

"It was all my money, my family's money. The colonel wasn't interested in material reward, all he cared about was the Service. The Service was his life. And how did the Service repay his dedication? There wasn't even a party for him. More than two decades of work and the Service simply discarded him. We've had just one visit from the Service since he was thrown out, and that was some grubby little man who came here to see that there weren't any classified documents in the house."

The Director General was still shaken by the sight of the shell of the man he had just seen in the large bedroom.

Colonel Fordham, curled in a wheelchair near the window, unable to move and unable to speak, had kicked the fight from the Director General.

"It's a great shame, Mrs Fordham, that you didn't feel able to alert us…"

"I wouldn't have had your people in the house."

They moved towards the front door. No way he was going to be offered a cup of tea. Of course they had retired the crass old fool, and years too late at that. A dinosaur, really, who believed the Service was still packing off agents to suborn the Bolshevik revolution or to run around the hillsides of Afghanistan.

"I came to ask for specific information."

"Then you wasted your journey."

"There was one man who was very close to your husband."

"I'm not a part of the Service, and at this time of the afternoon I have to bath Basil."

She dared him to stay. The Director General smiled. He fell back on his rarely used reservoir of charm. Outside his chauffeur and his bodyguard would be waiting for him, enjoying the thermos and a smoke. God, and he'd be glad to be back with them.

"The man who was close to your husband was called James Curwen. I understand he went by the nickname of

'Jeez'. I need your help, Mrs Fordham."

He saw the same short slight woman, but hurt. He saw her fingers make a tight fist, loosen, grip again.

"That's what did it to him," her voice quavered. "It wasn't long after he'd been dismissed."

"He read of the arrest in the papers?"

"He'd read The Times. He didn't finish his breakfast that morning. He walked out into the garden. It was about twenty minutes later that I went looking for him. He'd just collapsed, the dogs were with him. What you've just seen, he's been like that ever since."

"You didn't tell us."

"After what you'd done to him?"

"You knew Curwen?"

She shrugged. "He lived here when he came back from Albania, before he went to South Africa. He was a sort of batman to Basil, and he did jobs in the house and he drove the car and did things outside."

The Director General had to mask his disgust. The man had done ten years in an Albanian prison camp, and had come back to be patronised as a loyal serf. Lost his marriage and lost ten years of his life, but the kindly old colonel and his lady let him drive the car and change the fuses and make a rockery in the garden.

A desperation in her face. "Why haven't you brought Jeez out?"

"I am afraid it may not be in our power to save him."

"But you're trying?"

"Certainly we're trying," the Director General said. "Tell me about him."

"He's a wonderful man. He came back here, after the awfulness of what he'd been through, and he just seemed to put it behind him. I'd known him before, when he was a well built, strong man, and when he came back he was a skeleton, unrecognisable. Never a complaint, not in any way bitter. His attitude seemed to be that since he'd been sent into Albania by the Service his mission must have been justified, that it was simply the rub of the green that he had been caught. He had a marvellous stoicism, I think that kept him going. Sometimes, not often, he would talk about the bad times in the camp, when men from his hut were taken out and shot, when his companions died of malnutrition, when the camp guards were particularly brutal, when it was cold and there was no heating. When he talked about it there was always his humour, very dry. He was honoured to be a part of the Service, just as Basil was. The Service was Jeez's life, just as it was Basil's. Is that what you want to hear?"

"How resolute would he be, in his present situation?"

"You'd want to know whether he'd betray you, to save his neck?"

"That's very bluntly put, Mrs Fordham."

"It is insulting to Jeez that you even think of asking me the question. I just pray to God and thank Him that Basil cannot know what Jeez is going through now."

"It must be a very painful time for you, Mrs Fordham."

"His wife came here… God, I'm going back, more than twenty years ago. We were entertaining, a weekend lunch party. The poor woman came here to try and find out something about where Jeez was, what he'd done. He said afterwards to me that it was one of the worst days of his life, having to lie to her, telling her to put her husband out of her mind. Jeez understood. When he was down here Basil was very frank with him. He had to tell him that the marriage was just a casualty of life with the Service. He told Jeez that his wife had got a divorce and remarried, that it would be wrong of him to disturb her, that he should try not to make contact with his son, however hard that was going to be.

Jeez always did what Basil said. Just before he went to South Africa, Jeez went up to London and he must have gone out to where his wife and his son were living in their new home.

I think he saw her bringing the boy home from school. Jeez was quite bouncy at supper that evening, as if his mind was at rest.

"The Service did all that to the man, and now you're going to let him hang. Now all you care about it is whether he'll talk, whether you'll be sacked as a consequence. You disgust me… "

The Director General turned to the door.

"… I hope he talks. I hope he shouts his head off and destroys the lot of you, just as you destroyed Basil."

He let himself out.

He left her to bath her husband.