Watchman

Thirteen

He detested avocado dip, always had, always would. The very color was an insult to him, and so many parties these days seemed to find a bowl of such sludge de rigueur. What else was there? The smiling minion who had thrust a plate and a napkin (paper) into his hand hovered behind the table, awaiting his selection. The plate, he noted, had one of those plastic rings clipped onto its rim. He was supposed to keep his glass of vile white wine in this venerated halo, and didn’t all the guests look such complete pricks as they did so, not trusting the dreaded ring enough not to leave one hand hovering close to it? This meant that they had no free hand anyway, and so the ring did not fulfill its one and only function. Bloody thing. Sizewell ripped his from the plate and threw it, with a plop, into the avocado dip, where it sank majestically. The waitress, the only observer of this, looked at Sizewell in horror while he smiled at her, happy with life once more, and asked her quite politely for a piece of the spinach quiche and a vol-au-vent or three.

He was ravenous, having just come from a lengthy and painstaking sitting of the committee, where just about all they had thrashed out were their legitimate and non-legitimate claims for expenses incurred thus far. But the Smythsons’ party had promised lots of food, and so he had not bothered to eat beforehand. For his sin, he was consigned to function on a stomach half full of pastry.

‘Harry, old boy.’

‘Tanya!’

‘Good to see you.’

‘Tanya, how are you?’

‘Can’t complain, you know.’

No, she couldn’t complain. Only those landed with her interminable company could complain. Tanya Smythson, the unmarried (and unmarriable) elder daughter of the family, had a way of seeking Sizewell out and carving a territory between the rest of the world and them so that no one interrupted and no one came to save Sizewell from his misery.

Tanya, formidable, buxom Tanya. To be honest, he had taken quite a shine to her on their first meeting. She had seemed game for anything, but now, of course, he knew why: men were her game, and she was becoming frantic as the years progressed and they would not let her into their magic circle. One quick session, he thought, one session with a young thoroughbred would see you straight, would rearrange your metabolism and make you a calmer, less formidable figure. But where was the young man who would give Tanya what she wanted from life? He was nowhere. Certainly he was not Harry Sizewell.

But now, and to Sizewell’s astonishment, someone was coming toward them, holding out a hand of friendship, smiling.

‘Hello, Mr. Sizewell.’

‘Mr. Partridge, how very good to see you. Tanya, meet Mr. Partridge, one of the Home Office mandarins.’

Tanya looked ready to breathe fire and brimstone. Nevertheless, she produced a smile from somewhere deep within her.

‘Tanya,’ began Partridge winningly, ‘would you excuse us for just one minute, please? I have to discuss something with Mr. Sizewell.’

As Tanya moved off, peering into Sizewell’s soul to try to fathom just how put out he was by this interruption, he shrugged his shoulders and promised to see her again later.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ he whispered from one side of his mouth. ‘You’ve made an old man very happy.’

‘Well,’ said Partridge, his face soft but his voice as hard as steel, ‘I did want to have a word actually.’

‘Oh?’

‘How’s the committee progressing?’

‘Slowly, of course, how else would a committee progress?’ Sizewell bit into the spinach quiche, feeling it drip water onto his plate. Defrosted then, rather than fresh. He should have known.

‘Good, good. And that other matter?’

‘Hmm? Oh, the threats. Well, he’s been fairly quiet.’

But Partridge’s attention had already been diverted. ‘That man over there, do you know him?’

‘The bulbous chap? Seen him around. Why?’

‘Well, before I came to your rescue, I couldn’t help noticing that he was keeping an eye on you.’

‘Or on Tanya?’

‘I shouldn’t think so, would you? No, our man was definitely keeping an eye on you. Do you have a name?’

‘A name?’

‘For him. The bulbous man. Does he have a name?’

‘Probably, but I’m damned if I know what it is.’ Sizewell seemed already to have forgotten that he was speaking to the man who had saved him from the agonies of Tanya Smythson. He was irritated by Partridge’s forceful questions. One just did not treat an MP that way, and he would say so.

‘Look here—’

But Partridge stopped him cold.

‘How can we protect you from threats if you don’t tell us everything there is to know?’

‘You mean about that chap over there? I know nothing at all about him.’

‘I mean about this mysterious committee of yours.’

‘Oh.’ The spinach lost whatever flavor it had possessed, and Sizewell seemed to be remembering the slap he had been given by Partridge.

‘I mean,’ continued Partridge, ‘I hear your committee isn’t just looking into defense spending, but into security spending, and, moreover, into security links between the NATO countries and their possible strengthening.’

‘How the devil do you know that?’

‘We must know everything, or else how can we protect you? If we don’t know who your enemies are, we can’t hope to act against them. Bear that in mind.’

Partridge moved off, slowly, elegantly, and Sizewell felt suddenly obese and clumsy, sweat shining on his forehead and nose, hair sleek and unfashionable. He was deciding to leave the party then and there when the squat man began trundling toward him, a hand shooting out before him like a spear.

‘The Honorable Harold Sizewell?’ asked the man, shaking Sizewell’s hand as a candidate in a safe seat would shake that of a skeptical voter.

‘Yes,’ said Sizewell, ‘Mr....?’

‘Andrew Gray,’ said the man. ‘A friend of mine is one of your constituents. He thinks you’re doing a good job, just thought you’d like to know. His name’s Monmouth. Do you know him?’

‘No, I don’t, but thank you.’

‘Not at all, not at all. I know how hard you people work for so little recompense. The public thinks of politicians as leading rich, glamorous lives, but we know better, don’t we?’

‘I agree entirely, Mr. Gray. Are you involved in politics yourself?’

‘Only as an interested outsider. I deal in futures.’

‘I see. And how is the market behaving?’

‘Couldn’t be better. Everyone wants a future after all, don’t they?’

Sizewell joined in the man’s laughter, and Gray patted him on the shoulder as he moved away, back into the throng. Sizewell’s laughter stopped as soon as the man had disappeared, and in panic he looked around for Partridge, but he had disappeared too. Damn and blast, and just when Harry Sizewell needed him.

For he was sure that the squat and pugnacious man had owned the same voice that had, with anonymous conviction, been threatening him over the telephone these past weeks.

While Mad Phil slept, Miles kept an eye on the Harvest home. It was late. He should have wakened Phil to swap the watch, but he found that he didn’t need much sleep these days and nights, and besides, Phil looked so peaceful, almost childlike, in his sleeping bag.

The house across the way was quiet: everything was asleep except the city’s nightlife. Foxes, hedgehogs, and cats on the prowl, all the night creatures who hid from the city’s daytime chaos. Miles, too, was in hiding. Nobody had minded when he had moved his things into the house. He had a little room of his own, with a sleeping bag, radio and pocket-size television, and a camping stove. He had bought a couple of cheap pots and a kettle. The house had running water and even a supply of electricity. What more could he want? He felt like a boy again, embarked upon an adventure.

A week had passed since his meeting with Billy. It was cold at nights now, but he kept warm in his sleeping bag, and did not think of Sheila too often. He became immersed in Harvest, reading and re-reading the case notes, and watching, day and night, watching.

Forest Hill was a far cry from St. John’s Wood, but there were two good cafés along with a late-opening liquor store. What more did he need? He would drink a can or two of beer while watching the tiny television screen. Late at night he watched talk shows, but during the day he preferred the children’s cartoons. There was one he liked in particular: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man. Jack had been an omnivorous reader of comics, and Miles, having taken an interest in his son’s reading, still remembered Spider-Man, a meek college student who, bitten by a radioactive spider, found himself with phenomenal powers.

More than the TV, however, he was interested in Harvest. The woman interested him most. She was a clean and tidy-minded twenty-eight-year-old, with short dark hair and the pinched 1930s look of so many Irishwomen.

He had a good view of her bedroom. He had watched her walk past her window in a terry cloth robe, brushing her hair with short, vicious strokes, entering the bathroom, and, through the obscured glass, had watched her drop the robe onto the floor and step into her bath. He had watched one of the men, the mechanic, interrupt her in her room, bringing her cups of tea, trying to charm his way into her bed. Miles hoped that the mechanic was cold at night in his narrow bed, as cold as Miles was himself.

In the guise of a television repairman, one of the firm’s electricians had gained access to the deserted living room and had planted a couple of neat bugs. It had been a beautiful operation. A jamming device had ensured that one of the men called the TV rental company to complain, and the company notified the electrician, who went in and did the job. But little had been learned from the devices. There had not even been a hint of political dialogue in the house. It was as clean as could be.

If it were a cell, then it was the best Miles had ever seen. But it could still be a cell. They were highly trained these days, trained more or less to forget about their ultimate meaning. Certainly, a mechanic and an electrician would be of incalculable use to a terrorist cell, as might someone with access to a building site (where detonators and even dynamite would be available). But what about the man who worked steadfastly and somberly as a groundskeeper? Could he be some kind of screen, putting the watchmen off the scent? Could he be hiding some specialization? Or might they be planning such a crude bombing that the matériel they would need was weedkiller?

‘Fancy a beer, Miles?’

Mowbray handed him a can, pulling one open for himself.

‘Thanks,’ said Miles.

‘You’re welcome. How’s things?’

‘Fine. They’re all watching television.’

‘I meant regarding your own situation.’

‘Oh.’

Mowbray, like the others, had been very circumspect about Miles’s sudden occupation of the house. ‘I’m sure we all understand,’ he had said. Miles had wondered.

‘What’s the word back at HQ, Richard?’

Mowbray shrugged his shoulders. The one thing Miles missed about Billy Monmouth was his vast knowledge of office gossip. It had occurred to Miles recently, though, that Billy knew just a little too much. He was like a huge filter for drips from every level.

‘Not much,’ said Mowbray. ‘Jeff Phillips is off on some kind of course.’

‘Oh?’

‘Without a word to me.’

‘What else?’

‘Well, you asked about Peter Saville, but I can’t find out a thing. He seems to have been transferred. I think someone called it a “lateral promotion.”’

‘Who did? Who said that?’

‘Hell, I can’t remember, Miles.’

‘Was it Billy Monmouth?’

‘Of course not. He and I are barely on speaking terms. There was one thing, though. You know Tony Sinclair, don’t you?’

‘He worked on Latchkey with me. He was on probation.’

‘He’s out, gone. Resigned.’

Now this was news, and Miles narrowed his eyes as he tried to focus on its meaning.

‘Tony Sinclair?’

‘Mmm. It seems he wasn’t enjoying the work. What was he like?’

‘He loved the work. That’s what he was like.’

Jeff Phillips transferred, Tony Sinclair ‘resigned,’ Peter Saville vanished. Curiouser and curiouser. Did it have something to do with the Israeli? It seemed like that. Anyone who had anything to do with the Latchkey case and its aftermath was being moved on.

‘Bit of activity over there,’ said Mowbray, peering out of the window.

The groundskeeper and the electrician were leaving for the pub, which left the randy mechanic alone in the house with the secretary. Miles made a note of the time and the circumstance. A couple of the lads downstairs would keep tabs on the pub-goers.

‘What are you reading, Richard?’

‘Graham Greene.’ Mowbray studied the cover of his book. ‘Quite credible really. Only cost me a quid, but it’s falling to pieces.’

‘It’s a spy novel, right?’

‘Sort of. Not our stuff though. The other place: cloak-and-dagger games with the Russkies.’

Miles, nodding in shadow, wondered what sort of games the mechanic was playing tonight, and thought back to his early days with Sheila. He remembered a drunken friend making repeated passes at her during a noisy all-night party and the way he had brawled with his friend in the middle of the dance floor. In those days he had fought to keep Sheila. And now...?

The lights went out in the living room, then came on simultaneously in the bathroom and the woman’s bedroom. She walked to her window and stared up at the sky, asking herself questions perhaps, or just dreaming. She played with her hair, twirling it so that she looked ruffled and feminine. The light went off in the bathroom, and, as Miles and Mowbray held their breath, the mechanic appeared in the doorway behind the girl and sought her permission to enter. She heard him, but kept on staring out of the window. Her face alone gave away her intent. With slow deliberation, she closed the curtains, and her silhouette was approached by the man’s, until they merged and moved back into the room, out of sight.

‘Lucky swine,’ muttered Mowbray, returning to his book. Then, a little later, ‘Would you believe it? There are two pages missing. Two pages.’ And he threw the book into a corner in disgust, where more pages fell away.

‘I should think that’s us for the evening, Miles.’

‘Yes,’ said Miles, ‘I should think so.’ He felt lonely all of a sudden, and chilled to the bone.

Fourteen

THE HELL-RAISER OF FLEET STREET!

Stevens, at his desk, stared at the clipping for the thousandth time. There was the photograph, the two sentences of journalese beneath it, and the bloody headline. They had been looking for some action, and, finding none, had caught sight of Stevens and a photogenic young lady. Bets had been laid, and the manager, who had promised them all a photograph and a story, had attempted his seduction. Everyone got an early night; they had their picture and their bare words of captioning.

THE HELL-RAISER OF FLEET STREET!

They’d be laughing their heads off back in Edinburgh. Look at what happened to our golden boy, they’d be saying. Sons of...

He picked up the ringing telephone.

‘Hello?’ he said. And heard the same measured voice, a poetry-recital voice, the kind of voice people paid money for. But was it the same voice? He would puzzle the day away thinking that one over, once he had heard the message. Straight off, however, he prepared himself for a few more words of wisdom from ‘Deep Throat,’ ready to tell the man that he needed more to go on... But his thoughts short-circuited when he heard what the voice had to say.

‘That’s for starters,’ it said. ‘Lay off Sizewell, or there’ll be more, much more. See you, hell-raiser.’

And with that the telephone went as dead as Jim Stevens’s tooth.

‘Jim!’

It was Macfarlane, his editor, calling from the inner sanctum. Rising from his chair, numb with shock from the call, Stevens had little time to wonder how many times he had walked this walk from his desk to an editor’s office.

‘What can I do for you, Terry?’

‘Close the door for a start.’

Stevens did so, muffling the sounds of the outside office.

‘This isn’t a social call then?’ he asked.

Macfarlane, seated behind his ancient desk, relic of the newspaper’s earliest years, pushed back his thinning hair. ‘Jim, I’m going to tell you what they told me — lay off.’

‘Lay off what?’

‘I don’t know. They said you’d know.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Too important for names, Jim. Over my head.’

Jim Stevens sat down.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘who gave you the message?’

‘Do you really want to know? God gave me the message. God himself, calling from one of his half-dozen country houses. Your boss, my boss, this paper’s boss.’

‘I’m impressed.’

‘You better be, or you can type your job out, stick it in an envelope, and post it to the moon.’

‘Over and out, eh?’

Macfarlane rubbed at the flesh on either side of his nose. He looked not only tired — he always looked tired — but somehow beaten into submission by life.

‘Look, Jim, I’m loath to say this. I’m a reporter too, remember. I don’t like it when someone pulls the blinders over my eyes and then leads me through a field full of shit. But the world works that way sometimes. There are jockeys riding us, and sometimes when you peep out from behind the blinders you see what’s better left alone. End of story.’

‘That’s very nice imagery, Terry, but it doesn’t add up to much.’

‘Then let me take it a stage further. You, Jim, are one step away from the glue factory.’

Stevens rose from his chair.

‘Thanks for the warning. I haven’t a clue what it’s a warning about, but I’ll keep on my toes, Terry.’ He opened the door. ‘You might even say I’ll keep on trotting.’

He closed the door behind him, but softly, and walked back to his desk. What was that all about? Sizewell was the obvious answer. He hated arguing with Macfarlane. It was rumored that the guy had something seriously wrong with him, that he worked through a lot of pain. Didn’t we all? He recalled their last falling-out. He had been sent to cover a suicide. Some bank employee had jumped from his sixth-floor office, leaving behind a young wife. Stevens had filed the story, only to be growled at by Macfarlane: what about the wife? Was she attractive? No, not especially. Well, why not say so anyway? The story’s too dull, almost dead. So you want lies? Jim Stevens had asked. And Macfarlane had nodded. Go for the sordid jugular, then alter the facts by cosmetic surgery. Why bother? he had thought. Why try to tell the truth when the truth isn’t wanted anymore?

Journalism these days meant stakeouts, infrared lenses, false identities, bugs. It was all change, desperate change. These days, news was twisted around into a corkscrew with which to extract the twenty or thirty pence from each punter’s pocket. He should have listened more patiently to Sinclair aka Hickey, should have gone by the old rules, but he had grown weary of trying to turn babbled stories into good copy.

The telephone rang again. Despite himself, he answered it.

‘Crime desk, I suppose.’

‘Mr. Stevens?’

Recognizing the voice, he brightened up.

‘Hello, Mr. Hickey. It is Mr. Tim Hickey, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Listen, I’m glad you called. In fact, I was just thinking about you. I’m sorry about our last meeting. I had a raging toothache, not in the best of moods, sorry. But I’d like us to meet again.’ He was working now, pen in hand. Someone up there had given him a second chance, and he would kick like a mule until Macfarlane’s ‘jockeys’ had all been unseated. ‘I’d like to hear your story. Really I would.’

Miles Flint had spent a rare free morning in the reading room of the British Museum. He had not been given this time off; he had been ordered to take it, ordered by Richard Mowbray, who said that he was worried about Miles’s ability to function after so long on the surveillance. Take some air, Miles. Don’t let us see you for a day. So he had trekked into the city and caught upon some articles about beetles in the recent journals.

Leaving the museum, he bumped into Tony Sinclair.

‘Tony!’

‘Hello, Miles.’ Sinclair seemed surprised, and not very pleased to see him. ‘What are you doing here? Keeping tabs on me?’

‘Why should I do that, Tony? No, it’s just my day off. I was doing some research. And you?’

‘Killing time.’

Miles nodded. ‘I heard you’d moved on.’

‘There was no volition in it. I was pushed out. Didn’t you know that?’

Sinclair was eying him warily, glancing at the passersby.

‘No,’ said Miles. ‘This is news to me. I’m a bit out of touch, I’m afraid.’

‘You had nothing to do with it, then?’

Miles shook his head, and Tony Sinclair seemed to relax.

‘I was never even asked for a report on you,’ Miles said.

‘I don’t understand it, Miles, really I don’t.’ Sinclair’s voice was becoming elegiac.

‘Well, neither do I, Tony.’

But Miles had wondered about it, oh yes, he had wondered.

‘Look,’ said Sinclair, checking his watch, ‘I really must be going. I’ve a meeting with someone.’

‘Which way are you headed?’

‘Charing Cross Road.’

‘Fine, I’ll walk there with you.’

There were way too many questions in Miles’s head for any order of importance to be ascertained, and so he ended up asking none. He had wanted to meet Tony Sinclair, yet now that he had, he was reticent, not knowing if he wanted to know any more than he already did. Knowledge was weakness sometimes. He knew that now.

At the corner of Oxford Street they parted. Miles had refrained even from asking for Sinclair’s telephone number. So that was that. He watched him disappear, to be swallowed up by the midday crush, then started along the obstacle course that was Oxford Street. Some workmen were putting in a new window to replace the one which had been blown out. Miles shivered, remembering that day. People had fear in their eyes: any one of these windows might be treacherous. They walked past almost on tiptoe. As he made to move into the road, a hand grabbed his arm.

It was Tony Sinclair, his teeth brightly displayed.

‘Latchkey stinks to high heaven,’ he snarled. ‘You already know that, so why aren’t you doing anything about it? I’m going to do something, that’s a promise. I’m going to find out why.’

And with that he was off again, forcing his way past the protesting office workers, a man beating against the tide.

Well, good for you, thought Miles, good for you, Tony Sinclair. You’ve reminded me of something I was longing to forget.

All the same, the way things were going he did not give Tony much hope of success. He felt a wintry gust, and it was as though he were already in the funeral parlor, staring into the open coffin.

The phone rang and rang but she wasn’t answering. Where the hell was she? Out doing research? In bed with some athlete? Stevens didn’t care. But he needed her help. It had been an unprofitable lunch; Sinclair aka Hickey had known a bit after all. So the Israeli’s assassin had been followed and lost by the spies, and the murder itself had been hushed up by the Israelis. It was front-page news, but Stevens wanted more.

‘Answer, Janine, for Christ’s sake,’ he said into the mouthpiece.

He knew now that he had something, and that his hunch about the murder had been correct. Here was something more for Janine to work on. Well, if she wouldn’t sleep with Harry Sizewell, she’d have to earn her pennies the hard way. He touched at his temporary filling. There was something rotten behind it all. That went for the tooth, too.

‘Hello?’

‘Is that Janine?’

‘Oh, hello, hell-raiser.’

‘Don’t start.’

‘OK, OK, just joking. What’s got into you today?’

‘Where do you want me to begin? The world caving in on me or the terminal disease?’

‘Like that, huh? And I don’t suppose you’re phoning up for sympathy?’

‘I’m phoning because there’s some ferreting I want you to do.’

‘OK, just show me the rabbit hole.’

‘My, we are sharp today, aren’t we?’

‘Is it Sizewell?’

‘Not this time. Different story, same pay.’

‘Pay? Is that those coins you give me every Friday?’

‘You just got demoted to a three-day week.’

‘On parity with you now then, eh? I’ll tell my union about you.’

‘Look, Janine, I yield to your wit, OK? Now, you are a beautiful young woman, intelligent, charming, and you’re going to go places. And the first place you’re going to go is the Israeli embassy in Palace Gardens.’

The order came down by way of Partridge.

‘Mr. Partridge said that?’ asked Mad Phil, a complaint forming within him.

‘Yes,’ said Mowbray, ‘Mr. Partridge said that.’

Harvest had been declared dormant, and Miles would have to seek other accommodation, leaving the unfolding story of the mechanic and the secretary. He knew now how Mowbray had felt on that night when he had discovered the gap in his novel. He supposed a hotel would be the answer now. He knew of a good, cheap place near Russell Square. It had been used by the firm in the past for various purposes, but was now, so far as he knew, dormant, too.

‘You’ll be moving your stuff, won’t you, Miles?’ Mowbray asked, making it sound like the order it was. ‘This place will be going back on the market tomorrow afternoon.’

‘I’ll move out in the morning, if that suits.’

‘Well, the property chaps won’t be along before lunchtime,’ said Mowbray faintly. He was staring out of the window. ‘Three months. For close on three goddamn months we’ve been watching that place, and for what? A great big nothing.’

‘As usual,’ said Phil, not allowing the opportunity for a quick grumble to pass.

‘Yes,’ agreed Mowbray, ‘as usual, eh, Miles?’

There was a long pause while Mowbray realized that Miles’s last case had not exactly ended in a whimper.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘That’s all right, Richard,’ said Miles. ‘It’s nice to have had a quiet mission for a change. Peace and quiet. It’s been a nice break for me.’

And he gave a smile that seemed to unnerve his companions more than it cheered them.

That night, Miles was alone as he watched from the window in the darkness. The house was silent, and he was left to his thoughts. The living-room curtains flickered with blue light from the television set, but there was no listening apparatus now, and an engineer would visit the house tomorrow to retrieve the bugs.

The girl was in the house alone, which was unusual. Miles had passed her in the street and in the local supermarket, had smelled up close the perfume she wore, had heard her voice. He rubbed at his chin, feeling a day’s stubble. His thoughts were nervous companions, flickering like the television. He knew that it was not uncommon for a watchman to come to empathize with his quarry, to feel a bond of something like friendship. But he was a senior, trained to near perfection in his art. He should not be allowing these emotions such free rein.

But he did.

So it was that he found himself in the garden of her house, wandering freely beneath the street’s sodium glare, picking his way toward the living-room window, the flashing blue of the curtains, and her, the woman, somewhere within. The garden was overgrown, but not yet too far gone. He did not make a sound as he moved, the grass underfoot wet and yielding. Some condensation on the windows showed that she was alive, was breathing only feet away from him. He was absorbed, not thinking, hardly daring to breathe himself, just watching.

So he did not notice, in this new scheme of things, when the blue of the television became a sharper, brighter blue, the blue of a police car, which sat outside the house as the two officers approached him slowly and asked him to accompany them to the station for questioning. She stared out from behind her curtains as he was led gently away, and a neighbor across the way shouted out something that, mercifully, he did not catch...

The room had been freshly painted, and he liked its simplicity, the way it said, I am a place of detention, not to be imprinted with the personalities of my occupants.

‘We can’t even get a name out of him,’ he heard someone say.

‘Never mind that. We’ve checked the stuff in his wallet. He’s quite an important fish, as it happens. Something in the Home Office. Somebody’s coming from there to pick him up.’

‘What? At this time of night? He must be important.’

The officers seemed like humanoids made out of nuts and bolts, creaking their way toward the dawn like tired old machines. The station itself was run like a garage. Who would fetch him, Mowbray or Denniston? Had he blown another case? He supposed he had. But why should a bunch of terrorists need a groundskeeper, and why did a groundskeeper let his garden go to weeds?

‘Do you want a cup of tea or something?’

‘Yes, please. Milk and no sugar.’

The young constable had become less frosty upon hearing that Miles was such an ‘important fish.’ The tea was placed before him, a spoon sliding against the rim of the mug. Old stains mottled the circumference, as if the machine that washed the crockery was running down.

‘All right, sir?’ This was a detective, suited and with rather an awkward brown and green tie hanging limply around his neck. He seated himself opposite Miles, spreading sheets of paper before him, paperwork to be checked and filed.

‘You don’t pay your parking fines very often, do you, sir? But then you don’t need to. It’s better than diplomatic immunity what you buggers have got.’

‘I specifically asked for sugar in my tea,’ Miles said calmly. ‘This tea doesn’t have sugar in it.’

‘Constable, fetch our guest here another cup of tea, will you?’

‘But sir, he didn’t—’

‘Just do it, laddie.’

Peeved, the constable picked up the mug and left, much to Miles’s satisfaction. He studied the detective now.

‘Are you Scottish, officer?’

The detective nodded, lighting a cigarette for himself and offering one to Miles, which, after debate, he declined.

‘How did you know? I didn’t think I had much of an accent left.’

‘I’m sure you don’t. It was your use of the word “laddie.”’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I’m Scottish myself. From the east coast.’

‘I’m from the west.’ The detective was growing edgy. The conversation was slipping away from professional matters. He shuffled his papers together and cleared his throat. ‘What were you doing in that garden?’

‘That’s classified,’ said Miles.

There was nothing for him to fear, nothing save the grilling he would receive from his own people. But he could invent excuses enough for the purpose. He had seen something suspicious, and, having no contact with base, had decided to move in closer. Arrested by mistake. It had happened to watchmen before.

‘Classified?’

‘Under a Home Office directive.’ But of course they knew who he was anyway: it’s better than diplomatic immunity what you buggers have got.

‘I see,’ said the detective.

‘There’s a phone number I can write down. You could pass it to Special Branch.’

The detective nodded, seeming bored all of a sudden. He shuffled his papers again. They were playing a little game now, weren’t they, a waiting game, of no consequence.

Just then the door opened. There was someone outside. The detective seemed relieved, smiling at Miles as he left the room. The door closed again and Miles was alone with himself. He felt mildly drunk, as though coming out of a heavy session. He knew that he had messed things up. Something had snapped inside him in that empty house. He had become feral.

He had slipped up.

Again.

It was not lost on him that this might be just what the old boy needed in order, politely of course, to get rid of him. He was becoming a thorn in the old boy’s side, and a public one at that.

The door opened again. Billy Monmouth was standing in the doorway.

‘Come on, Miles,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Let’s go.’

Fifteen

It was one of the firm’s cars, another Rover, or perhaps the same one that had taken Jeff Phillips and him to the Doric. Billy seemed preoccupied with the perils of night driving in London. Unmarked police cars jockeyed for position in outside and inside lanes, trying to intuit the villains and the drunks. Security bells rang out all around like old-fashioned alarm clocks.

‘There’s been another bombing,’ said Billy finally.

‘Oh? Where?’

‘In an underground car park. We think they were trying to hit a knight of the realm.’

‘I see. I didn’t get you out of bed, did I?’

‘I was in the office when the message came through. I asked to be the fetcher.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not sure now. It seemed like predestination.’ He laughed a quick, haunted laugh, a reconnaissance into the no-man’s-land between them. ‘How are you, Miles?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, just dandy, thank you for asking.’

‘Sheila and I haven’t met, you know, not since... Well, it’s all over. But listen, Miles, nothing happened between us. All she wanted was someone who would listen to her. I was the listener. That was all. Oh, I daresay that in time we might have...’ Seeing the look on Miles’s face, Billy shut his mouth. Miles had noticed that his speech was a bit stiff, as though the blow from the exhibition catalog had done some lasting damage.

‘But you told her?’

‘I telephoned. Cowardly, don’t you think? I telephoned that night and told her.’

All she wanted was a listener. Sure, but why Billy Monmouth?

‘We’re going to a small hotel near King’s Cross,’ Billy said at last.

‘I think I know the one,’ said Miles. ‘For debriefing?’

‘It’s routine in cases of arrest or identification. Do you want to tell me what happened?’

‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ asked Miles, sensing Billy flinch from the question. A palpable hit.

‘Miles, what do you want me to say?’

‘I don’t know. What do you want me to say?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Miles!’

A car flashed past them, pursued by a brilliant orange and white police car, its blue flashing light reminding Miles of the garden and the soft voices of the policemen coming to him from far away.

He had experienced a short, sharp night of the soul, but he had come out of the other side in one piece, hadn’t he? He did not want to drill a hole in Billy’s head, and he did not particularly want to hit him. He was torn between wanting to understand and wanting simply to put the whole thing behind him and make a ‘new’ start.

‘Who’ll be debriefing me?’

‘I’ve no idea. It may even be wonder boy Phillips.’

‘I thought he was Cynegetics?’

‘The title covers a multitude of sins.’

The car turned into Bloomsbury. Office cleaners were waiting to gain entry to their buildings, and a few scattered souls had begun to queue at bus stops. Another dawn, another dolor. The sky was gray like a dead face, the city’s flesh caught in its final posture.

‘There hasn’t been much happening,’ Billy said. He was parking the car outside the same hotel in which Miles, Partridge, and the old boy had taken tea, and in which Miles had encountered Felicity. Ah, he had forgotten about her, forgotten, too, that she had confirmed his suspicions about Latchkey. He had to remember that. He had to. It seemed curious, though, that she should be allowed to operate in one of the firm’s hotels. They were usually so circumspect about things like that...

‘Billy,’ Miles began, ‘you’re not by any chance a double agent, are you?’

He watched Billy’s reaction. The car was parked now, and he was taking the key from the ignition. His face was flushed, but his eyes met Miles’s, and what Miles saw was not panic, but a mixture of emotions not the least of which was surprise.

Billy opened the car door and placed one expensively shod foot on the road before turning back toward Miles.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We can talk inside.’

‘We can talk here,’ said Miles, not moving. ‘No fear of little interlopers here, after all.’

‘I’m not a mole, Miles,’ said Billy, smiling his most sincere smile and making his exit.

‘Drink?’

‘It’s a bit early for me,’ said Miles, checking his watch.

‘Yes,’ agreed Billy, ‘I try not to drink before breakfast, but when one has been awake all night...’

‘Of course.’

Billy poured himself a whiskey from his hip flask and added a drop of water from the sink tap.

‘Cheers then,’ he said, tipping the cup back as though it contained doctor’s orders. He examined himself in the mirror.

‘I’m no spring chicken,’ he said, still peering into the mirror. Then he turned and gave Miles a scolded schoolboy’s smile. But Miles was busy trying to perceive Billy from a woman’s point of view. He saw skin that was beginning to sag irremediably, hair that was thinning, keen eyes that seemed to hint at a force of intelligence trapped within its cell of a body bag.

‘Neither of us is,’ he said. He was seated on one of the room’s twin beds. It gave luxuriously beneath his weight.

‘So, what can I tell you?’ Billy sat down on the other bed.

‘You mean about Latchkey?’

‘Latchkey?’ Billy seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘No, I meant about Sheila and me.’

‘Oh.’

‘I mean, I can tell you about the first day we met, purely by accident at a Hayward exhibition. About how we talked, and how we met once or twice more, also to talk. It’s not a very exciting tale, Miles. What’s so ironic is that we were on the point of calling it a day anyway. I went to the house only that once, and then only because Sheila was upset about Jack.’

‘Upset?’

‘Well, he’d just left, and there was still a gulf between them, wasn’t there? She was just trying to understand.’

‘And she needed you for that?’ Miles remembered the warm bed and thought no, I can’t believe any of this.

‘Miles, blame me. I was attracted to Sheila, not her to me. I pushed our relationship. She thought our second meeting was chance, too, but it wasn’t. I’d set it up.’

‘All that time we lunched together, drank, gossiped, parted with a handshake and a smile, and all the time, all those months, you were... you...’

And then it happened, not at all the way he had wanted things to happen. He wanted venom or icy, muted snubs; anything except this stupid blockage in his throat, full of weakness and sentiment. He began to cry, his body jerking in little spasms. And, daring to look up, he saw that Billy, old Billy Monmouth, with a skin like that of a swamp alligator, was crying too, his body as still as marble.

‘Jesus Christ, Miles,’ Billy said softly. ‘I’m sorry, sorrier than I can say.’

Miles was blowing his nose when the door flew open.

‘Good God,’ rasped Colonel Denniston. ‘What’s been going on here?’

Stevens was doing it by the book. It was just that no one had bothered to write this particular book. Janine found him the man he needed at the embassy, a fairly expensive go-between who was able to substantiate — on tape, though he did not know it — that the assassinated man had been a private trader; in other words, was his own operator for most of the time, but did odd jobs for the security service. There was Hickey’s word for it that MI5 had bungled their surveillance operation and so had allowed the assassin onto the streets. But the Israelis seemed not to know this. So, lowly Jim Stevens had his lever with which to crack open the spies. He knew something they wouldn’t want the Israelis to know.

What else did he have? He had something only Janine’s charm and looks could have inveigled from a parliamentary official: the Honorable Harold Sizewell MP was sitting on a hush-hush committee investigating the funding of the secret services and international cooperation between the various intelligence communities.

The dirt was there, he was sure of it. And the spade he needed with which to do his digging was Sinclair aka Hickey. Jim Stevens had his story.

He told Janine he’d buy her lunch, but hadn’t let on that they would be eating at her favorite restaurant. He had arranged to meet Macfarlane there, too, and over a long afternoon he would tell his editor the story, with Janine’s help. Macfarlane couldn’t turn this one away. The blinders were off.

‘Jim! I’m not dressed for this place.’ Janine had stopped at the door and was refusing to cross the threshold.

‘OK,’ said Stevens chirpily, ‘take off what you’re wearing and we’ll go in.’

She slapped his chest.

‘Pig,’ she said, smiling, as they entered the restaurant.

Stevens had found a tie in his wardrobe — unused for years — that was absolutely stainless. Hardly able to believe his luck, he had put it on, only realizing later, upon meeting Janine and her horrified gaze, that the pink tie was hardly a match for his light brown shirt.

It wasn’t one of the better tables, but what the hell. And it was a bit more pricy than Stevens’s credit card had bargained for, but it was a special occasion. They ordered aperitifs, and Stevens wondered where Macfarlane had got to. A waiter brought a telephone to the table.

‘For you, Mr. Stevens.’

‘Hello?’

‘Jim, it’s Terry. Listen, sorry I can’t make it. Can you come in this afternoon? I’ve got some bad news.’

‘Oh yes?’ For Janine’s sake — radiant, youthful Janine — Stevens tried to sound calm.

‘You’re fired,’ said Macfarlane. ‘None of my doing. The official line is that it’s to do with the hell-raiser photograph.’

‘And unofficially?’

‘No comment,’ said Macfarlane. ‘Sorry, Jim. Hope I didn’t spoil your lunch. Bye.’

‘Lobster bisque, I think,’ Janine was saying, ‘and an entrecôte for afters. Must watch my figure, mustn’t I? Jim? Is everything OK?’

‘Fine, Janine. Everything’s just dandy.’

He was determined, hardened more than ever now. Sod them all. He’d break this story if it was the last thing he did. Somebody would publish it, somebody must. He’d show them all. There came a time when the truth had to push its way up through the mire. Didn’t there?

Sixteen

When they finally did make love it was in glorious Technicolor to the music of the Beatles, Miles Davis guesting on trumpet. He felt the luxury of the mattress and the alcoholic glow in which they were both swimming. Everything was all right now, and though he couldn’t be sure who his partner was, whether Sheila or Billy or the Irishwoman, he knew that he was home at last and that he would never stray again.

The voice close to his ear told him that it was fine and always would be. Did it matter that some uninvited guest watched from behind the shutter of a peep-show booth, smirking? No, not really.

‘Miles?’ The voice seemed to come from the booth, where the eyes had grown feverish. ‘Miles?’

‘Miles!’

He opened his eyes. Those of Richard Mowbray were on him, and a hand rested on his shoulder.

‘Wakey, wakey, old chap.’

‘Richard, I must have dozed off.’

‘I admire that in a man, Miles, the ability to stay calm when all around are clinging to the wreckage.’

‘I had no sleep last night.’ He glanced around his office, having for a moment expected to find himself in the hotel room.

‘I came to sympathize,’ said Mowbray. ‘Is it true?’

‘Is what true?’

‘That you saw something suspicious and went over there to investigate?’

Well, that was the story which Denniston, listening like an attentive tiger beetle, had soaked up. Miles had added some nice touches, like the living-room light being turned off and then on again. Denniston had snatched at that one with his mandibles.

‘A signal!’

‘That’s what I suspected, sir.’

And Denniston had sat back, pleased with himself.

‘Yes, I saw something, Richard,’ Miles said now, scratching at his face.

‘Uh-huh.’ Mowbray seemed unconvinced, and Miles remembered that it was Mowbray who had come closest to witnessing his dark ebb and flow of the previous night, and of all other nights. Tact was needed.

‘It seems strange,’ he said, ‘that the very day we move out, something like that happens.’

Mowbray thumped the desk with his fist.

‘That’s just what I was thinking, Miles. It’s as though they knew the operation had been wrapped up.’

‘Of course, it could be coincidence.’

‘If I have to make the choice between coincidence and conspiracy, I’ll plump for conspiracy every time.’

Miles thought of Billy Monmouth, conspiring against him and against Sheila.

‘You’re probably right, Richard. But then what stops us from ripping our lives apart looking for the watchmen who are watching us?’

‘Come on, Miles. What about your act with the restaurant cutlery and the way you check your car? I know all about your little rituals. Would you call them paranoia?’

Miles was suddenly aware of having humored Mowbray a little too much, and it had led to this, his own discomfort. Did everyone know everything about him? Sheila could hear him at the living-room door. Mowbray was telling him that his little restaurant game was common knowledge. It was a sobering thought. How many people laughed at him behind his back? Everywhere he turned these days he bumped into people who knew too much about him, and all the time it was he who was supposed to be on the watch, on the hunt.

Hunting what?

Hunting his own fantasy of a goliath beetle, a double agent? What kind of beetle was Richard Mowbray anyway? To his enemies in the firm he would be a Colorado beetle. The Colorado beetle had led a harmless existence until settlers took the potato to North America. The beetle loved the new crop, became mesmerized by that first forbidden taste. Yes, that was Mowbray, safe within the firm until he had begun to investigate it for himself, and then coming to enjoy that investigation so much that he wanted to taste more deeply.

But Mowbray would never find a single double agent, for the simple reason that he was wandering aimlessly and in all the wrong directions.

‘If there’s any paranoia to be found around here, Miles, it isn’t in your head, and it certainly isn’t in mine.’

Mowbray’s eyes were like candles, but Miles knew that he was fumbling in the dark.

In the film that evening, John Wayne played a policeman sent across to London to take charge of a criminal wanted in the United States. The film’s real entertainment came from the sight of the Hollywood legend stalking the streets of the dull old city. It was nice to watch one of the good old boys in action.

Miles was thinking back to his unheroic undergraduate days, days spent following Sheila, mooning outside her digs, wondering if she had any secret lovers or secret life. He would make a scene if he saw her speaking to other men, and she would laugh at him. God, he had been quick-tempered in those days. The firm had calmed him down.

‘Hello.’

The voice was just about empty of emotion, but hesitant.

‘Hello,’ he answered.

This was it, then. She had entered the living room, was removing her coat. He kept his eyes on the television.

‘I’m just going to make myself a coffee. Would you like some?’

‘Yes, please,’ he lied, not wishing to sound intractable.

‘Fine.’

And she left the room again, while the film played to a score of gunshots and screeching wheels. Miles took a deep breath. Only seconds of this fragile peace remained. He sat up straight in the chair and clasped his hands, the way he had seen actors do when they were supposed to be anxious for resolution. He was no hero, but he could act as well as anyone.

Was it as easy as that, then? No, of course not. But they made some kind of effort at a beginning, sitting together on the settee, sharing a bottle of wine, watching television.

Or rather using the flickering pictures as a partial means of escape, so that the conversation never really had a chance to become too volatile, too involved. The television acted like the third party to an argument; neither Miles nor Sheila wanted to make too much fuss in front of it.

And although it was dark, they left the curtains open, to remind themselves how tiny their drama would seem against the perspective of the world. The programs on TV grew softer as the night progressed, and so did the conversation. Everything conspired, so it seemed, to make their own dialogue easier. The old marriage was over, on that they were agreed. Did they want a new one to begin, or were they content to see the old one perish and go their separate ways?

‘What about you?’

‘I asked first.’

And both smiled, wishing to try the former path.

‘But there has to be give, Miles.’

‘Agreed.’

Sheila was rubbing at her forehead, her eyes moist, and Miles examined her closely. She was the same woman to whom he had lost his virginity, the same woman he had married. Love overwhelmed him, and he put an arm around her, pulling her in toward him. She hugged him silently, her hands sliding over his back. He felt an almost adolescent excitement. Love was a strange and a timeless gift; one never lost the knack.

Over a supper of microwaved pizza and another bottle of Rioja, they spoke softly together, as though afraid of waking their parents in an upstairs room. They giggled together, too, thinking back on the good times, acting like old friends. Perhaps it was important at this fragile stage not to act as husband and wife. Miles mentioned that he had read a lot of Sheila’s books.

‘You never told me that.’

He shrugged his shoulders. So then they talked about books for a while. Sheila applauded silently.

‘You have been a bookworm, haven’t you?’ She was smiling. ‘But, Miles, if you’d told me, we could have had such good discussions, couldn’t we?’ He agreed that this was true. ‘Miles, let’s go to the theater sometime together. Let’s make it soon.’

Miles felt the life flooding back into him. It seemed that the firm, over the years, had sucked the life out of him and replaced it with little coils and bolts of mistrust and fear. But he could change, couldn’t he? Starting now, with Sheila giggling and looking so very young, and he trying to impress her and make her laugh. Yes, the life was there again.

They had not mentioned Billy Monmouth yet. Leave the pain to some other time, their eyes said. Everything can be faced in time.

Sheila felt confused, though she tried smiling her most open and encouraging smile. Was this what she had wanted all along? Was this what the fling with Billy had always been leading toward? And had it been a ‘fling’ anyway? She didn’t know, not yet. Perhaps if Miles had not found out about Billy, she would have told him herself. Yes, she tried telling herself that she had been using Billy, nothing more. No, nothing more than that. Oh God, she had worried away the past few nights by herself, wondering where Miles was, even going so far as telephoning Jack in Edinburgh, swallowing her embarrassment and asking if his father was there. But not there, and now here, his arms feeling more muscular than she remembered, his back thicker, but having lost weight from his paunch. And it felt so good lying here, without questions, without answers to those questions.

And when the telephone rang, they lay still for a moment in the bed, both with a strong desire to ignore its magnetic plea. But both failed, and there was a giggling race to be first downstairs. Sheila won, and her arm, stretching toward the telephone, pushed it inadvertently onto the floor.

‘Whoops,’ she said, and then, scooping up the receiver, ‘hello?’

‘Can I speak to Miles, please?’

She handed over the telephone in resignation, sticking out her tongue. Miles grabbed the receiver gleefully, breathing heavily.

‘Hello?’

‘Miles, it’s Richard here. Listen, there was a terrible clunking sound when you answered. Be careful. I think you may be bugged.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Miles gravely, smiling and winking at Sheila, who had settled beside him on the parquet floor. ‘Well, I’ll certainly be careful, Richard.’ Sheila began to ask silently who was calling, but Miles only tapped his nose with his finger, and so she pushed him and caused him to topple. He dropped the telephone, then, having pushed himself back up off the floor, picked it up again.

‘There, did you hear it?’ asked Mowbray excitedly.

‘Yes, I did, Richard, most certainly I did.’

‘Good God. I wonder who’s bugging you, Miles?’

Miles knew exactly who was bugging him at that moment.

‘I don’t know, Richard. Was there something you wanted to say?’

‘Yes, I’ve got a message. But I’m not sure I should deliver it over such a nonsecure line.’

‘Well, give it to me anyway, as discreetly as you like.’ Miles watched Sheila rise to her feet and pad toward the kitchen. She had mimed the drinking of coffee, to which he had nodded eagerly. Watching her retreat, he smiled.

‘There’s a meeting this evening.’

‘This evening?’

‘A bummer, I agree. Mr. P wants to see us. Something to do with an offshoot of our recent harvesting activities.’

‘A sort of a seedling, eh?’

The humor was lost on Mowbray, who spoke past it as though explaining to an idiot the principles of addition and subtraction.

‘To do with our recent harvesting, Miles. This evening. Six-thirty at the office of Mr. P.’

‘Yes, Richard, of course, Richard. I’ll try to be there.’

‘Try? You’d better do more than that, Miles. You’re not exactly the favorite nephew at the moment, if you get my drift.’

‘Like a snowstorm, Richard.’

‘Where have you been today, for example? Not in your office.’

Miles watched Sheila coming back into his line of vision. She wore only her thin satin bedrobe.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’ve been around, Richard, believe me, I’ve been around.’

Seventeen

He had to brush late autumn leaves off the bonnet and the windscreen of the Jag. It had lain dormant for some time. The front bumper had been dented slightly, perhaps by some car trying to squeeze out of its tight parking space. No one, however, had put a brick through the front window, and no one had strapped a radio-controlled nasty to the wheel arches or the underbelly.

The drive, however, was not enjoyable, and this thought sent Miles jolting away from one particular set of traffic lights. He had always enjoyed driving his car, always. But something about the relationship seemed to have changed. Oh no, not you too, he wanted to say. The sounds of the engine, the change of the gears, the fascia, the leather that supported him, all seemed involved in a conspiracy of estrangement. He was just not right for the car anymore. ‘Divorce’ was the word that came to mind. He would sell the car and buy something more austere, or — why not? — would travel everywhere by public transport. Too often he had used his car as if it were a womb or a protective shelter of some kind. Well, he was ready to face the world now.

And he was ready, too, to face whatever awaited him in Partridge’s office. The car behind was too close. If he braked at all it would bump him. Why did anyone risk that kind of accident? Maybe the driver was Italian. The car wasn’t: it was German, a Mercedes. And it had been behind him for some time.

‘Pass me if you want,’ he said to himself, waving one hand out of the window. But the car slowed to keep with him, and Miles, his heart suddenly beating faster, took a good look in his rearview mirror at the driver. Maybe foreign; hard to tell behind those unseasonable sunglasses. Oh Jesus, it’s a tail. Of course it was a tail. What was happening to him? Slow, Miles, far too slow.

He pushed the car up to thirty-five, forty, forty-five, passed a couple of vehicles with an inch or two to spare, heard them sounding their horns, but his concentration was on the mirror and the Mercedes. It was like a shark after its prey: content to sit on his tail, to ride with him until he grew tired or panicked himself into the wrong action. Fifty, fifty-five: near suicide on these central city roads. He took a roundabout too quickly, and suddenly there was another car in the chase, its headlights on full, siren blaring. Miles didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The Merc signaled and turned into a side street, leaving the police car to do its duty. Miles signaled and pulled into the pavement. The car wedged itself in front of him and stopped.

Never mind. He had the telephone number ready.

A gun pointed at him through the window, ordering him to come out slowly. Four of them, none uniformed, all with handguns. Miles opened the door as though it were a surgical operation. He stepped out slowly, turned and placed his hands on the roof of the car. He didn’t want them to make a mistake and pull a trigger.

‘Is this your car?’

‘Yes.’

‘We have a report that this car has been seen in the vicinity of a bomb explosion.’

‘That’s ludicrous. I haven’t used the car for two weeks. It’s been sitting outside my house in St. John’s Wood all that time.’

‘I’m sure we can sort it all out, sir. Driver’s license?’

‘Look, officer,’ said Miles, thinking, this is a clever one, whoever’s behind it, ‘just do yourself and me one favor.’

‘What would that be?’

‘Just telephone Special Branch. I’ll give you the number. I’ve been set up, God knows why. Please, telephone Special Branch.’

The gun was still aimed at his head, still only needing a squeeze of the trigger. This would be a bad way to die, a wrong way to die. Miles willed the man into dropping the gun.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We’ll do it your way.’

Complete confidentiality, that was what Jim Stevens had promised Tim Hickey. From now on, only code names could be used, for Stevens was beginning to work his way deeper and deeper into the case. He told Hickey that the story was so big he had gone freelance, that he had a ready buyer. Hickey looked nervous. He didn’t like change. But Stevens was his only horse, so he nodded agreement.

An ex-colleague, one of the few left whom Stevens had not bad-mouthed out of existence on his final afternoon in the office, set up a watch on the comings and goings of the hush-hush Sizewell committee. It met twice a month in an anonymous building just off St. James’s Street. The location was curious in itself, but then the committee was engaged in difficult and interesting work: work that would interest many separate parties, not all of them scrupulous about waiting in line with everyone else to hear the ultimate findings.

The other members of the committee were checked out. All were experienced, none came from the security services themselves. Stevens could imagine that MIs 5 and 6 would dearly love to know what was being decided behind the heavy and ornately carved doors of the committee room. The room itself was ultra-safe, swept each and every day for naughty little devices. This much the newspaper’s parliamentary correspondent, an alcoholic but hardworking pro of forty years’ standing, was able to substantiate.

On the assassination side, things were slower, almost to the point of dead stop. Janine had done her bit, but the Israelis were cagey operators (with good reason) at the best of times, and this was hardly the best of times. Stevens’s mysterious telephone caller had rung him at home twice and seemed pleased at the direction the investigation was taking.

‘Yeah, well, we’d be going a whole lot faster, mate, if you’d pull the finger out of your posterior and come across with some facts — hard facts.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as the connection between S. and a certain murder, a garrotting I believe, in London recently.’

The voice had exhaled noisily.

‘You’re progressing, Mr. Stevens, believe me,’ it had said before ringing off.

The next time, Stevens was planning to threaten that he would pull the plug on the whole thing if he were not given some help. He had worked hard on cases before, of course, but this one was like drawing teeth. It was an apposite image: his back tooth had given up the ghost.

He prodded his mouth now. He had wormed some names out of Tim Hickey, too. Cryptonyms, most of them, but there was one which Stevens felt confident about. When someone had been screwed around, they were usually ripe for the confessional. This man must be ripe.

And there couldn’t be too many Miles Flints around. Even if he were ex-directory, there would be rates to pay, bank accounts, taxes. Stevens would find this guy Flint and he would speak with him. It seemed they might have quite a lot in common.

‘As you are aware, of course, Harvest was always merely part of a much larger operation, which has been sustained for over a year now.’

‘A sort of seedling, eh?’ said Richard Mowbray, smiling at his superior, while Miles sat in injured silence, his mouth straight as a glinting needle. He was still shaking from his run-in with the police, though they had been polite and sympathetic after checking his credentials.

Partridge did not smile either. He sat behind his desk, hands on the flat surface in front of him, as though talking to a television camera, perhaps to advise his countrymen that they were now at war.

‘The director would have been here himself to tell you this, but he has a prior and more important engagement.’ Partridge paused, making it sound as though their boss had been summoned to Buck House, but Miles was in no doubt that King’s Cross was a more likely bet. Here was proof of the gradual handing on of responsibility. Partridge looked and acted every inch a director. It was his calling and his destiny. ‘From other segments of the operation — overall code name Circe — several sources of potential irritation have been pinpointed.’

Cough it up, man, thought Miles.

Partridge, however, was enjoying the sound of his words, and relished having this particular audience captive before him. Perhaps there had been just a touch of melodrama about his wish to see them together. Well, the melodrama was not about to stop there. He had something to say that might just cause them to shift a bit in their seats. He hoped that they would sweat.

‘One of these is about to be dealt with. Special Branch has been controlling things up till now, and it will be Special Branch, along with the RUC, who makes the arrest.’

‘RUC?’ This from Mowbray, his eyebrows raised a little.

‘It stands for Royal Ulster Constabulary,’ said Partridge with exaggerated patience.

‘I know what it means,’ snapped Mowbray, ‘sir.’

Partridge nodded, pausing, taking his time. There was plenty of time.

‘I don’t have to spell it out, do I? An arrest is going to be made in Northern Ireland. Very soon.’

‘And?’ said Miles, suddenly interested.

‘And,’ said Partridge, ‘we need an observer there, just to register our presence, our interest. I thought’ — his eyes sweeping the two men — ‘that one of you would be best suited to the job, having worked on Harvest at this end.’

‘Having worked up a dead end,’ corrected Mowbray.

Partridge just smiled.

‘Circe is a much bigger operation than Harvest. We are here this evening, gentlemen, to decide which one of you should have the honor of representing the firm in the sun-drenched paradise of Belfast. Now, who’s it to be?’

Partridge made them coffee at his own little machine in a corner of the room, which was suddenly filled with the aroma of South America, of wide spaces, sunny plantations, a harvest of beans. The room itself, though, was small and stuffy, and Partridge had opened the window a little to let in some of the chilled evening air and a few droplets of rain from the burgeoning shower.

Miles gulped down the coffee, listening to a siren outside and being reminded of the horror of that gun appearing at his window. His soul had prepared itself for death, and it was still pondering the experience.

Partridge had gone over the details of the mission with them, insisting with a mercenary grin that it was really a sightseeing tour, nothing more. The real work would be done by the RUC’s Mobile Support Unit and the officers of Special Branch.

Special Branch, thought Miles, God bless them.

‘Call it lateral promotion,’ said Partridge, but Miles knew that it was more a case of the last-chance saloon. Both Mowbray and he were thorns in the firm’s side; neither would be lost with regret.

‘It’s just our presence that’s required,’ Partridge continued, talking into the vacuum created by the silence across the table. ‘Otherwise it looks as though we don’t care, looks as though we just sit around in oak-paneled rooms drinking coffee while the others get on with the real laboring. Do you see?’

Miles saw. He saw exactly what Partridge and the old boy were after. They were seeking the resignation of whoever got the job, and they presumed that that man would be Miles Flint. Miles had more ground to make up than did Richard Mowbray. Partridge was guessing now that Miles would feel forced to accept the mission, and then would resign rather than go through with it.

‘How many days?’ he asked.

‘Two or three, certainly no more than three.’

‘Overseeing an arrest?’

‘Nothing more.’

Miles had seen that look on the face of every quiz-show host.

‘This is all bullshit!’ spat Mowbray. ‘We know your game, Partridge. We know you’re after the top job, and you’ll sacrifice any number of us to get it.’

Partridge shrugged his shoulders. He was still smiling at Miles, as if to say, your opponent’s out of the contest, it’s just you now, all it needs is your answer to the golden question.

Two minutes later, and with no applause, no cheering, the prize belonged to Miles.

‘Thank you, sir,’ he said.

‘I don’t believe it!’

And she couldn’t, couldn’t believe that he was going, that there was so little time, that he was leaving her again right now when everything was balanced so finely on the wire of their marriage.

‘It’s the truth.’

‘Are you doing this to spite me, Miles?’

‘Of course not. Why do you say that?’

‘Well, that’s the way it looks to me. One minute we’re talking of rebuilding our whole relationship, and the next you’re off to Northern Ireland. It doesn’t make sense. Why you?’

‘It’s something the office has been working on for a while, a new initiative. I know more about it than most.’

‘You’ve never mentioned it before.’

‘Only a couple of days.’

‘Oh, Miles.’ Sheila came forward and hugged him. ‘Can no one go in your place? Whatever happened to delegation of responsibility? Tell them you’ve got personal problems, tell them anything.’

‘Only a few days,’ he repeated lamely. Sheila drew back from him.

‘Do you trust me for that long?’ she asked. She was thinking, I’ve used Billy Monmouth as a weapon before, I can use him as a threat this time. Miles drew her to him again.

‘I’ll always trust you, Sheila, and you have to trust me.’

‘When do you have to leave?’

‘Tomorrow.’ He felt her stiffen, but held her fast. ‘The sooner I go, the sooner I’m back.’

‘We haven’t even had a chance to talk about Billy yet,’ she said into the fabric of his shirt, her face hot against his shoulder.

‘Say it now. It doesn’t matter what you say. This is something new. But say it if you want.’

Say what? Say that Billy was nothing, merely a cipher for her frustration? Say that he had congratulated her on her dress sense, admired her hair, taken her to the theater? Say that he had been busy using her as she had been busy using him?

‘Be careful, Miles, won’t you?’

Again, Miles wondered how much she really knew of his job. Her eyes were shiny with a liquid that would recede soon. Her cheeks were burning to the touch, a fine down covering them.

‘Be careful,’ she repeated in a whisper.

Yes, he would be careful. He could promise her that.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said.

Eighteen

Billy Monmouth always started the day, if he was awake early enough, with a sauna, swim, and occasionally a massage at his health club. If anybody’s body needed toning, he reasoned, it was his. By arriving early, he missed the majority of the cooing, made-up middle-aged women with their flapping eyelashes and breasts. The pool was unused before breakfast, and he could swim without being embarrassed by his puffing, red-faced splashes.

Lying in the sauna, which had not yet quite revved up to its full fierceness, he let his mind drift back toward sleep. He pretended he was back in his mother’s womb, pretended the interior was blood-hot. Plunging into the icy pool outside could be the trauma of birth.

From the safety of his womb, he could think, too, of poor Miles and poor Sheila, caught in a marriage where incompatibility and love trod the same awkward line, tentatively holding hands. It had been a game to her. He realized that, of course, but had hoped that her feelings might change. Acting as a player in a new game, she had become hooked for a short time. And he too had enjoyed their secret meetings, their passing of messages, the counterfeit trips together. It had made him feel like a spy. The pity was, in the game, Miles was his enemy.

And however hard Billy tried, he could not regret having deceived his friend. He would do it again. For he had played the game a little too intensely this time.

He loved Sheila, God help him.

The door opened, letting in a cool draft of air, breaking Billy’s concentration. The betoweled man sat down, breathing heavily, then poured water onto the coals, releasing a lung-bursting gulp of heat.

‘Good morning, Andrew.’

‘Morning, Billy. How’s tricks?’

Andrew Gray scratched at his chest and his shoulders, then studied his fingernails, seeking grime. He seemed to find some, for he cleaned the offending nail on the edge of a tooth, then spat into the coals.

‘I can’t complain, Andrew. Yourself?’

‘Just fine, Billy, just fine.’ Gray was a heavy man, heavy not with any excess but with a sense of well-being. He exuded a confidence that left Billy looking shy and frail by comparison. He eased himself back onto the wooden spars of the bench, then swiveled and slowly lay back. The breaths he took were big, too, filling the cavern of his chest. Billy closed his eyes again, hoping his day was not about to be spoiled.

‘Who was that woman you were with at lunch, Andrew?’

‘You mean the day you had lunch with your friend Miles? I don’t remember her name. Miles seemed like a nice chap.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, anything happening at work?’

Billy did not reply. To talk to Gray he needed to be in a certain mood, and whatever that mood was — indifference, perhaps, or cynical torpor — Billy did not feel it this morning. His mind, after all, had been on personal things, secret feelings and emotions, things he very seldom revealed to the brutality of the outside world. But Gray had come in on a chill of wind to remind him that the world was always there, waiting, and that there were other games to be played. Lies, damned lies, deceit and the manipulation of history: that was the role of intelligence. Just for a moment, Billy felt real dirt on his skin. Gray would doubtless say that such sentiments were bad for business. Gray himself was hardened. One had only to look at that monstrous rib cage to see that the man was impervious, rock solid, unloved and unlovely. There Billy had the edge on him perhaps. Not that this would have bothered Gray.

Andrew Gray was a businessman whose business was death.

Billy had never plunged into the pool with such relief before, and he wanted to stay submerged forever, his body chilled to everlasting. Instead he showered, the water scalding him, then went to the massage room, where the Organ Grinder, his arms as thick as thighs, was reading the daily tabloid.

‘Mr. Monmouth, sir. Long time no see.’

While the Organ Grinder folded his newspaper, Billy hoisted himself onto the table.

‘Do my back, will you?’ he said.

‘My pleasure, sir.’

The Organ Grinder was already rubbing his hands with preparatory glee.

Under the slow, circulatory pressure of the handstrokes, Billy began to drift again, but by now it was too late: Gray had entered all his dreams. Each scene contained, somewhere in the shadows near the back, waiting to walk on, the malcontent figure of Andrew Gray, his chest expanding and contracting like a machine.

‘Thought I’d find you here.’

When Billy opened his eyes, Gray was sitting on the table next to him, swinging his legs, dressed only in the silky bottom half of a tracksuit. He was rubbing at his chest again, scratching occasionally, finding nothing of interest beneath his fingernails.

Billy said nothing, just tried to give himself up to the massage. The Organ Grinder, despite his name, was by far the gentlest man in the room. Billy remembered the crack Miles had given him with that exhibition catalog. Miles had not been gentle then. It had been a time bomb of a swipe, too, not hurting at the time, but requiring treatment afterward. He’d not forget it in a hurry.

‘Mind if I try that?’ asked Gray. ‘It looks interesting.’

Somewhere above Billy, roles were exchanged, a few cursory instructions given — don’t hurt, don’t prod, just go smoothly. And then the Organ Grinder was seated before him on the table, while Andrew Gray’s hands fell upon him, working their way into his flesh.

‘So, nothing’s happening at work, huh?’

‘Andrew, what do you want?’

‘Nothing much.’ Gray had started to finger-slap Billy’s shoulders. ‘It’s just...’ slappety-click... ‘well, just something I heard this morning. A phone call from a friend...’ click- slappety... ‘about your friend Miles Flint.’

Billy sat up, pushing Gray away. He stretched his back, feeling some clicks that should not have been there.

‘Go on,’ said Billy. ‘Tell me about it.’

There was no reply. Damn, damn, damn. Billy went back into the changing room and opened his locker. He would dress quickly, try the number again, then go to the office.

Andrew Gray was manipulating his silk tie into an extravagant knot.

‘You’re sure it was to be today he was leaving?’

‘My source is, as they say, Billy, impeccable.’

‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who your source is?’

‘A little birdie — but not Partridge, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Gray smoothed down his shirt collar and smiled at himself in the mirror.

Billy Monmouth heaved himself into his clothes, not bothering too much whether his tie was askew or his shirt neatly tucked in.

‘Does it all connect, do you suppose?’ mused Gray, making a final examination of himself.

‘What do you think?’ said Billy, panting now as though he had tried too many lengths of the pool.

‘It remains to be seen, I suppose,’ said Gray.

‘Tell that to Miles Flint.’

‘I hope you’re not going to be rash, Billy.’ Gray’s voice was as level and as deceptive as thin ice.

‘I owe him this much,’ said Billy, walking out of the room with his shoelaces undone but his resolve strengthened.

Andrew Gray nodded to himself in the sudden silence. It had always been his most cherished edict: neither a borrower nor a lender be. Barter, sure, buy and sell, certainly. But Billy Monmouth spoke of ‘owing’ something. There were traps aplenty for the unwise borrower and the unwary lender. He would have to speak to Billy about that sometime. Never have friends, that was the golden rule. Never ever have a friend.

It was becoming more bizarre still. Miles read again the note from the old boy, scrawled as though the writer had been in a rush to catch a train or, more likely, to catch the engine numbers of several trains. It appeared that Miles was to have a cover for his trip across the water, an overelaborate cover at that. He was to be a member of a chartered holiday group, flying out of Heathrow with half a dozen others.

‘Why, for God’s sake?’ he asked Partridge over the telephone, while Sheila sped through the house with newly ironed shirts and handkerchiefs. Miles walked with the telephone to the study door and closed it with his foot.

‘Security, Miles. You can’t be too careful. The IRA has rather a good little intelligence operation going for it these days. It covers seaports and airports. They’re always that little bit more wary of individuals who enter the country, just as our people are.’

‘But all these people I’m supposed to travel with...’

‘A seven-day tour of Ireland. Special offer from a national newspaper. Your fellow passengers will be met in Belfast by the rest of the party, who will have traveled by boat or by plane from Glasgow. It’ll be easy enough for you to slip away unnoticed. We’ll see to that.’

‘But they’ll notice I’m missing.’

‘Be anonymous, Miles. The more anonymous you are, the less chance there is of that. Besides, the courier will inform them that Mr. Scott has been taken unwell and may rejoin the tour at a later date.’

‘That’s another thing.’

‘What?’

‘That bloody name.’

‘Walter Scott? I rather think it a nice touch. You are Scottish, after all.’

‘How am I supposed to remain anonymous with a name like that?’

‘Oh, come on, Miles. It’s just some pencil pusher’s joke, that’s all. It’ll only be your name for a couple of hours at most. I think you’re being a bit too serious about the whole thing.’

But that was just his point! It was not Miles who was being serious, but the firm, and this strange brew of the serious and the farcical was making him very nervous indeed.

‘When does your flight leave?’

‘Three hours from now.’

‘We’ll have a driver there to take you to the airport in plenty of time.’

‘Well, my wife thought that she might drive me—’

‘No, no, leave that side of things to us. All the best, Miles. Bring me back a souvenir, won’t you?’

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘A decent showing, no cock-ups. Good-bye.’

Self-righteous bastard, thought Miles as he went upstairs to wash.

When the telephone rang again — in the hall this time — it was Sheila who answered.

‘Hello?’

‘Oh, is that you, Sheila? Can I speak to Miles, please? It’s Billy.’

Sheila stared at the receiver and saw her knuckles bleached white against the red plastic. She was silent, waiting to hear something more. She heard background noise, men’s voices.

‘Hold on, will you?’ she said finally, placing the receiver down gently on the notepad beside the telephone.

Billy Monmouth stared out of his window and into that of another office, where someone else was on the telephone. He wondered if it were a momentary revelation of some parallel universe, a universe where Sheila and he were together. Her voice had unnerved him, and then her silence had pushed him toward rash speeches, pleas, God knows what indiscretions. He had always been afraid of women, but not of Sheila. He missed her. And now Miles was leaving for a few days... And he had telephoned to give him a specific warning... To warn him that he might well be—

‘Hello, Billy, what can I do for you?’

In the parallel universe, the telephone caller put down the receiver and greeted a female colleague who had just entered the room. He was rewarded with a peck on the cheek.

‘Hello, Miles.’ Billy suddenly felt very warm, his face growing hot to the touch. He let his fingers graze his jaw, which was still stiff though no longer painful. ‘I just heard a rumor that you’re being sent to Ulster. Is it true?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘What for? Why you?’

‘I drew the short straw, that’s all.’

‘How many straws were there? Just the one?’

‘No, two. Listen, what’s wrong?’

‘Who arranged it, Miles?’

‘Look, Billy, I’m getting ready. If you have something to say, say it.’

Billy swallowed, his eyes on the window across the way. ‘Be careful, Miles, that’s all.’

‘Look, if you know something I don’t—’

But the phone had gone dead on him. Damn. Why did people do that? It was such an absurd gesture, and rude, too. Damn. What did Billy mean?

‘Have you finished in the bathroom?’ Sheila called from upstairs.

‘Yes, thanks.’

For Billy to call him at home, after what had happened, well, it had to mean something. And Sheila had answered the telephone. What had they said to each other? What was going on? He should be at home saving his marriage, and instead he was flying off to Northern Ireland under the name of Walter Scott. But he had no time to think about it, no time to do anything but act.

Sheila was in the kitchen, preparing herself a sandwich, and Miles was already on the plane, when a ring of the doorbell interrupted her reverie. She peered out through the spy-hole and saw a fairly grubby man standing there, examining the top of the house and the telephone wires that stretched across the street. He looked dangerous. There was a young woman with him. She looked not at all dangerous. Sheila slid the chain onto the door quietly, then opened it two inches.

‘Yes?’

‘Oh, hello, you must be Mrs. Flint?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I was wondering if I could see your husband.’

‘I don’t know. Can you?’

The man laughed a short impatient laugh. ‘It’s a business matter,’ he said.

‘My husband’s not here.’

‘Oh.’

‘He’s gone off for a couple of days.’

The man seemed almost heartbroken. Suddenly he looked more tired than dangerous. He looked as though he might collapse on her doorstep. She was about to offer them coffee when she remembered what Miles had drummed into her: never let in strangers, never, even if they look official — especially if they look official. She stood her ground.

‘A couple of days, you say?’

‘That’s right. Good day.’

And with that she closed the door slowly but firmly on Jim Stevens’s hopes and prayers. Still, a couple of days. It was nothing. He could wait. What choice did he have?

‘Told you so,’ said Janine. ‘I told you he’d left, suitcase and all.’

‘Clever little bugger, aren’t you?’ said Stevens, wondering how the hell he could afford to pay her next month. He had little enough money as it was. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you can buy me lunch.’

‘Around here?’ she cried, flabbergasted. ‘It’d cost a week’s rent for a bacon buttie. There’s a café in Camden, though, dead cheap. I’ll treat you to a salami sandwich.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘Come on, then,’ she said, flitting down the steps. ‘It’s called Sixes and Sevens.’