Dead Letter Drop

18

Arthur offered me a lift home and I accepted gratefully. The rented car could stay in the police pound; it wasn’t my headache. I wondered what condition my mews house in Holland Park would be in, since invariably when I go away for any length of time my cleaning lady falls sick and doesn’t turn up, and the fridge, loaded with meat and milk, always breaks down the day after I’ve left.

There was something Arthur wanted to say to me, to tell me — I more than sensed it, I was sure of it; yet as we left, in the express elevator which took us up to the back of the police car pound, he just made small talk. I climbed sleepily into his bright green Cortina; it smelt of dogs, as I had imagined it might.

I gave him plenty of opportunities to say what he wanted on the way to Holland Park but he just continued with the small talk. I asked him to drop me a couple of blocks from the mews; I felt like some fresh air and I wanted to check the immediate vicinity of the house for any prowlers. I arranged to see Arthur the following afternoon and thanked him for his time.

I walked on down Notting Hill Gate and turned into Holland Street. The past hours with Arthur had given me plenty more to chew on; but whilst the pieces seemed to fit, the puzzle was only getting larger. Fifeshire, I was certain, had told me the truth; but if he hadn’t received Orchnev’s first letter then it must have been someone in the same department who had intercepted it. Maybe Arthur knew who it was that had prevented the information getting into Wotan; maybe that is what he was trying to bring himself to tell me — a lot of maybes at the moment. Arthur did, for sure, want to tell me something; I had no doubt that one way or another I’d be finding out what before too long.

I turned the corner into the dark. From a house at the end with several cars parked outside and light streaking from behind the curtains, music blared out, punctuated by odd snatches of laughter; it was evidently a good party. There were no other lights on in the rest of the mews.

I turned the key in the lock; it should have been double-locked, but the door opened at the first turn of the key. I pulled out my gun, slipped the safety catch, and went in, snapping on the hall light as I did so, then falling headlong, with my foot trapped in something.

The carpet and floorboards had been removed; I lay there, blinking in amazement at the dust-covered foundations and the timber joists; it was between two joists that I had caught my foot. I picked myself up and started to look around. No cleaning lady would have stood a chance. The place was literally destroyed: every inch of fabric — curtains, carpets, sofa covering, chair coverings — had been systematically torn into strips. The furniture had been dismantled and hacked into little pieces. Light bulbs had been broken open, the plumbing disconnected and all the pipes — water, drainage, sewage, the lot — ripped from out of the bowels of the house and laid on the floors. The walls had been stripped, not only of their paint and wallpaper but also their plaster; even the round brass door handles had been hack-sawed out.

Whoever had been here must have been pretty damn sure there was something hidden, or pretty mad at me. The only thing that had been left reasonably intact was the actual shell of the building; other than that, with the exception of a couple of lights, there was nothing that had not been destroyed. Fortunately I’m not too sentimental.

I cleared myself a few feet of space, assembled a pile of shredded fabrics, lay down and slept through until morning. I awoke at about half six, feeling cold, stiff and in need of a night’s sleep. I couldn’t even make myself a cup of coffee, since someone had been to work on the kettle with a can opener and the stove looked like a child’s attempt at building a Meccano battleship.

I’d had a good look round before getting to the house and hadn’t seen any sign of either a tail or anyone surveilling the house, but I wanted to remain out of sight and decided not to take any chances. I left via the bathroom skylight and into a garden behind. A short distance away my own car was in a garage, having gone in for a long-overdue service and respray while I was away. The garage would be opening in about an hour’s time. I walked down the road to a cafe and had some breakfast. The beard on my face was now into its third day and I was starting to smell horrible. I knew, because I noticed it myself.

I got to the garage at five past eight and a mechanic was just unlocking. He greeted me cheerfully, not appearing to notice my condition, and pointed to my XK 120 Jaguar tucked away in the rear corner of the garage, surrounded by a tightly packed bunch of sick-looking vehicles. ‘Lucky yer didn’t get back sooner, guv, only dropped th’engine back yisserday. We wozn’t expecting yer frannuvver week. She’s goin’ like a jewel, but don’t take ’er more’n three-five in iny gear for a few hunnerd miles — after that she’ll be good for any ling yer want. Or’ll jus git these out th’away for yir.’

He cleared the space in front of her remarkably quickly, and I walked up to examine her. His grasp of the Queen’s English wasn’t too hot, but he was God’s gift to motor cars. The paint job was superb, and the midnight blue gleamed even in this dimly lit garage. The house and furniture I hadn’t ever cared about that much, but if anyone had so much as laid a finger on her I would have been one hell of a lot madder.

When I bought her nearly ten years back, she had been sitting in a barn on an old farm; the farmer had acquired her for his wife in 1953 but after driving her only a couple of times had abandoned the car because it wasn’t any good at crossing fields. Fortunately the barn had been dry and it had taken little effort to get her going. The two of us had struck up an immediate and lasting friendship.

I eased myself into the seat now, and put my hands on the black four-spoked steering wheel, stared down the long bonnet, and at the tops of the wheel arches rising on either side. I turned the key and immediately the ignition light came on, the gauges sprang into life, the fuel gauge needle darting across the dial, the ammeter needle flickering nervously in the centre of its dial. I pulled the choke and pushed the starter button, and the starter motor turned the engine slowly, lazily, quietly, like it always did; then with a muffled boom, followed by a sucking sound from the air intakes, then a crackling burble from the exhaust the long needle of the large rev counter heaved itself up from its rest at zero and, after sweeping unsteadily backwards and forwards past the thousand mark, settled firmly at 1,500; the speedometer needle jumped up and down a little on its rest in apparent anticipation; I blipped the accelerator and the rev counter needle swung up to 2,500 beautifully smoothly, then swung back down again to 1,500. I dropped my left hand onto the slim knob of the gear lever and pushed her into first; I tugged the fly-off handbrake and it fell limply down onto the carpeted floor. My foot came up off the clutch as I pressed the accelerator again, and we surged gently forward, out of the garage and into the street; for a few glorious moments all my problems were a million miles away.

The road was clear; I turned the wheel and accelerated off. She was being beautifully responsive, eager for her run, and sounding sweeter than I had ever remembered. The bonnet in front of me, through the split windscreen, loped through the building traffic, effortlessly pulling the rest of the car along behind it.

The going was easy as we were driving against the flow of the rush hour; we went down Notting Hill Gate, round White City roundabout, down towards Hammersmith, then down over Putney Bridge, through Putney, and out onto the A3. We hooked left at the Robin Hood roundabout, then I opened her up to the maximum 3,500 rev limit the mechanic had advised, and in half a minute was thundering along at a rock steady 90 on the clock. I pushed the side screen open a short distance and the bitter December air thrashed in; I let it continue for several seconds until I was shaking with the cold, and then closed it again. It made me feel a lot better still.

I drove to Guildford, where I bought a battery razor, a sports jacket, trousers, shirt, tie and underclothing, then washed and shaved in a public lavatory under the hawk-eye of an uncommonly wretched attendant who was convinced I was going to try to steal the soap.

I had a couple more cups of coffee in a cafe and actually began to feel like any normal human being once more. It wasn’t such a bad feeling.