A Perfect Spy (69 page)

“On his way to see Tom. After the funeral.”

“How did he do that then?”

“Drove out here. Sat with you. Chatted about old times. He was pleased he came. He told young Tom afterwards. ‘I had a lovely talk with Syd,' he said. ‘It was just like old times.' He wanted everyone to know.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“He told Tom.”

“Didn't tell you though. Or you wouldn't need to come here. I always reasoned that. I was never wrong. ‘If the bogies ask, it's because they don't know. So don't tell them. If they ask and they do know, they're trying to catch you out. So don't tell'em either.' I used to say the same to Rickie but he wouldn't listen. It was being a Mason partly. It made him feel immune if he talked enough. That's how they got him, nine times out of ten. He talked himself into it.” He barely paused. “Listen, squire. I'll do a deal with you. You tell me what you want and I'll tell you to piss off. How's that?”

A long silence followed but Brotherhood's patient smile did not tire. “Tell me something. What's that Union Jack doing out there?” he suggested. “Does it have a meaning at all, or is it just a big flower for the garden?”

“It's a scarecrow for keeping off foreigners and bogies.”

As if he were producing a photograph of his family, Brotherhood drew out his green card, the one he had shown to Sefton Boyd. Syd drew a pair of spectacles from his pocket and read it back and front. A train thundered past but he appeared not to hear it.

“Is this a con?” he asked.

“I'm in the same business as that flag,” Brotherhood said. “If that's a con.”

“Could be. Everything could be.”

“You were Eighth Army, weren't you? I understand you picked up a small medal at Alamein as well. Was that a con, too?”

“Could have been.”

“Magnus Pym is in a little bit of trouble,” said Brotherhood. “To be perfectly honest with you, which I always am with people, he seems to have temporarily disappeared.”

Syd's small face had tightened. His breathing became harsh and quick. “Who's disappeared him, then? You? He hasn't been messing with Muspole's boys, has he?”

“Who's Muspole?”

“Friend of Rickie's. He knew people.”

“He may have been lifted, he may have gone into hiding. He was playing a dangerous game with some very bad foreigners.”

“Foreigners eh? Well he had the parley-voo, didn't he?”

“He was working under cover. For his country. And for me.”

“Well he's a silly little bugger then,” said Syd angrily and, hauling a perfectly ironed handkerchief from his pocket, dusted his shiny face. “I've no patience with him. Meg saw it. ‘He'll go to the bad,' she said. ‘There's a copper in that boy, you mark my words. He's a natural grass. Born to it.'”

“This wasn't grassing, this was risking his neck,” said Brotherhood.

“That's what you say. That's what you think perhaps. Well you're wrong. Never satisfied, that boy wasn't. God wasn't half good enough for him. Ask Meg. You can't. She's gone. She was a wise one, Meg was. She was a woman, but she had more sense in one eye than you and me and half the world together. He's been playing both ends against the middle,
I
know. Meg always said he would.”

“How did he look when he came and saw you?”

“Healthy. Everyone does. Roses in his nasty little cheeks. I always know when he wants something. He's charming, like his dad. I said, ‘A bit more mourning would become you by the look of you.' He wouldn't hear of it. ‘It was a beautiful service, Syd,' he says. ‘You'd have loved it.' Well, that was smoke up my arse for a start. ‘They was packed together like sardines and there still wasn't room for them in the church.' ‘Moonshine,' I said. ‘They was in the square outside, they were queuing down the street, Syd. There must have been a thousand people there. If the Irish had let a bomb off, they'd have deprived this country of its finest brains.' ‘Was Philip there?' I said. ‘Course he was.' Well, I mean he couldn't have been, could he, or they'd have had it in the papers and the telly. Well, I suppose he could have gone incognito. I'm told they do that a lot these days, thanks to the Irish. He had a friend once. Kenny Boyd. His mum was a lady. Rick had a how d'you do with his aunt. Maybe he went to young Kenny. He might.”

Brotherhood shook his head.

“Belinda? She was straight, always, although he bilked her. He could go to Belinda any time.”

Brotherhood shook it again.

“I mean, a thousand mourners,” Syd objected.
“Creditors,
if you like. Not mourners. You don't mourn Rick. Not really. You heave a bit of a sigh of relief, to be frank. Then you look in your wallet and thank old Meg there's still a bit left over for yourself. I didn't tell Titch that. It wouldn't have been appropriate.... Did Philip go? Did
you
hear anything about Philip going?”

“It was a lie,” said Brotherhood.

Syd was shocked. “Ah now, that's a bit hard, that is. That's copper's talk. Magnus was conning me, put it that way, same as his dad did.”

“Why?” said Brotherhood.

Syd didn't hear.

“What did he want?” said Brotherhood. “Why would he take so much trouble to con you?”

Syd was overacting. He frowned. He pursed his lips. He dusted the tip of his brown nose. “Wanted to see me right, didn't he?” he said too brightly. “Flannel me along. I'll go and chat up old Syd. Make him feel nice.' Oh we was always friends. Great friends. A father to him I was, quite often. And Meg was a truly incredible mother.” Perhaps with old age he had lost the liar's art. Or perhaps he had never quite had it in the first place. “He just wanted a social, that's all. Comfort, that's what it comes down to. I'll comfort you, you comfort me. He was always fond of Meg, you see. Even when she saw through him. Loyal. I'll say that.”

“Who's Wentworth?” Brotherhood said.

Syd's face had slammed tight as a prison door. “Who's who, old boy?”

“Wentworth.”

“No. No, I don't think so. I don't think I know a Wentworth. More a place. Why, is a Wentworth giving him trouble then?”

“Sabina. Did he ever mention a Sabina?”

“That's a racehorse, isn't it? Wasn't there a Princess Sabina who was fancied for the Gold Cup last year?”

“Who's Poppy?”

“Here. Is Magnus playing the Lovelies again? Mind you, he wouldn't be his dad's son if he didn't.”

“What did he come here for?”

“I told you. Comfort.” Then, by a kind of cruel magnetism, Syd's gaze slid to the spot where a piece of furniture had stood, before returning, too brazenly, to Brotherhood.

“Well then,” said Syd.

“Tell us something, do you mind?” said Brotherhood. “What was in that corner there?”

“Where?”

“There.”

“Nothing.”

“Furniture? Keepsakes?”

“Nothing.”

“Something of your wife's you've sold?”

“Meg's? I wouldn't sell anything of Meg's if I was starving.”

“What made those lines then?”

“What lines?”

“Where I'm pointing. In the carpet. What made them?”

“Fairies. What's it to do with you?”

“What's it to do with Magnus?”

“Nothing. I told you. Don't repeat things. It annoys me.”

“Where is it?”

“Gone. It isn't anything. It's nothing.”

Leaving Syd sitting in his chair, Brotherhood ran up the narrow stairs two at a time. The bathroom was ahead of him. He looked inside then stepped to the main bedroom left. A frilly pink divan filled most of the room. He looked under it
,
felt beneath the pillows, looked under them. He pulled open the wardrobe and swept aside rows of camel-hair coats and costly women's dresses. Nothing. A second bedroom lay across the landing but it contained no piece of heavy furniture two feet by two, just heaps of very beautiful white hide suitcases. Returning to the ground floor he inspected the dining-room and kitchen and, from the rear window, the tiny garden leading to the embankment. There was no hut, no garage. He returned to the parlour. Another train was passing. He waited for the sound of it to fade before he spoke. Syd was sitting hard forward in his chair. His hands were clasped over the handle of his blackthorn, his chin rested passively upon them.

“And the tyre marks in your drive,” said Brotherhood. “Did the fairies make them too?”

Then Syd spoke. His lips were tight and the words seemed to hurt him. “Do you swear to me, Scout's honour, copper, that this is for his country?”

“Yes.”

“Is what he done, which I don't believe and don't want to know, unpatriotic or could be?”

“It could be. The most important thing for all of us is to find him.”

“And may you rot if you're lying to me?”

“And may I rot.”

“You will, copper. Because I love that boy but I never did wrong by my country. He come here to con me, that's true. He wanted the filing cabinet. Old green filing cabinet Rick gave me to look after when he went off on his travels. ‘Now Rick's dead, you can release his papers. It's all right,' he says. ‘It's legal. They're mine. I'm his heir, aren't I?'”

“What papers?”

“His dad's life. All his debts. His secrets, you might say. Rickie always kept them in this special cabinet. What he owed us all. One day he was going to see everybody right, we'd never want for anything again. I said no at first. I'd always said no when Rickie was alive, and I didn't see nothing had changed it. ‘He's dead,' I said. ‘Let him have his peace. Nobody never had a better pal than your old dad and you know it, so just you stop asking questions and get on with your own life,' I says. There's some bad things in that cabinet. Wentworth was one of them. I don't know the other names you said. Maybe they're in there too.”

“Maybe they are.”

“He argued around and so finally I said ‘Take it.' If Meg had been here, he'd never have had it off me, legal heir or not, but she's gone. I couldn't refuse him, that's the truth. I never could, no more than what I could his dad. He was going to write a book. I didn't like that either. ‘Your dad never held with books, Titch,' I said. ‘You know that. He was educated in the university of the world.' He didn't listen. He never would when he wanted something. ‘All right,' I said. ‘Take it. And maybe that'll get him off your back. Shove it in the car and piss off,' I said, ‘I'll get the big Mick from next door to help you lift it.' He wouldn't. ‘The car's not right for it,' he says. ‘It's not going where the cabinet's going.' ‘All right,' I says, ‘then leave it here and shut up.'”

“Did he leave anything else here?”

“No.”

“Was he carrying a briefcase?”

“A black airy-fairy job with the Queen's badge on it and two keyholes.”

“How long did he stay?”

“Long enough to con me. An hour, half an hour, what do I know? Wouldn't even sit down. Couldn't. He walked back and forth all the time in his black tie, smiling. Kept looking out of the window. ‘Here,' I said, ‘which bank have you robbed, then? I'll go and take my money out.' He used to laugh at jokes like that. He didn't, but he was smiling all the time. Well, funerals, they take you in a lot of ways, don't they? I could have done without his smiling all the same.”

“So then he left. With the cabinet?”

“Course he didn't. He sent the lorry, didn't he?”

“Of course he did,” said Brotherhood, cursing himself for his stupidity.

He was seated close to Syd and he had put his whisky beside Syd's on the beaten-brass Indian table that Syd kept polished till it shone like the Eastern sun. Syd was speaking very reluctantly, and his voice had almost died.

“How many?”

“Two blokes.”

“Did you give them a cup of tea?”

“Course I did.”

“See their lorry?”

“Course I did. I was looking out for them, wasn't I? That's a major entertainment, that is, round here, a lorry.”

“What was the firm?”

“I don't know. It wasn't written, was it? It was a plain lorry. More like a hired one.”

“Colour?”

“Green.”

“Hired from who?”

“How should I know?”

“Did you sign anything?”

“Me? You're daft. They had a tea, loaded up, and buggered off.”

“Where were they taking it?”

“The depot, weren't they?”

“Where's the depot?”

“Canterbury.”

“You sure?”

“Course I'm sure. Canterbury. Package for Canterbury. Then they complained about the weight. They always do that, they think it gets them more dropsy.”

“Did they say package for Pym?”

“Canterbury. I told you.”

“Did they have a name at all?”

“Lemon. Call at Lemon's, get the package for Canterbury. I'm Lemon. The answer is a Lemon.”

“Did you see the number of the lorry?”

“Oh yes. Wrote it down. I mean that's my hobby, lorry numbers.”

Brotherhood managed a smile. “Well, can you at least remember what make of lorry it might have been?” he asked. “Distinguishing marks and whatnot?”

It was a harmless enough question, harmlessly put. Brotherhood himself had little expectation of it. It was the kind of question that unasked leaves a gap, but asked produces no dividend: part of the necessary luggage of the interrogator's trade. Yet it was the last that Brotherhood put to Syd on that dying autumn evening, and as a matter of fact it was the last in his short but desperate search for Magnus Pym, because after it he had only answers to concern him. Yet Syd refused point-blank to address himself to it. He started to speak, but then he changed his mind and clapped his mouth shut with a little pop. His chin came off his hands, his head lifted, then by degrees his whole little body lifted too, painfully but strictly from the chair, as if a distant bugle had summoned him to a last parade. His back arched, he held his stick to his side.