Call for the Dead (4 page)

fragments, then nothing. Nothing but the warmth of his own blood as it ran over his face into the cinders, and far away the beating of the stonebreakers. But not here. Far away.

VII

MR. SCARE'S STORY

Mendel looked at him and wondered whether he was dead. He emptied the pockets of his own overcoat and laid it gently over Smiley's shoulders, then he ran, ran like a madman towards the hospital, crashed through the swing-doors of the out-patients' department into the bright, twenty-four hour interior of the hospital. A young coloured doctor was on duty. Mendel showed him his card, shouted something to him, took him by the arm, tried to lead him down the road. The doctor smiled patiently, shook his head and telephoned for an ambulance. Mendel ran back down the road and waited. A few minutes later the ambulance arrived and skilful men gathered Smiley up and took him away. "Bury him," thought Mendel; "I'll make the bastard pay." He stood there for a moment, staring down at the wet patch of mud and cinders where Smiley had fallen; the red glow of the car's rear lights showed him nothing. The ground had been hopelessly churned by the feet of the ambulance men and a few inhabitants from the prefabs who had come and gone like shadowy vultures. Trouble was about. They didn't like trouble. "Bastard," Mendel hissed, and walked slowly back towards the pub. The saloon bar was filling up. Scarr was ordering another drink. Mendel took him by the arm. Scarr turned and said: "Hello, friend, back again. Have a little of what killed Auntie." "Shut up," said Mendel; "I want another word with you. Come outside." Mr. Scarr shook his head and sucked his teeth sympathetically. "Can't be done, friend, can't be done. Company." He indicated with his head an eighteen-year-old blonde with off-white hpstick and an improbable bosom, who sat quite motionless at a corner table. Her painted eyes had a permanently startled look. "Listen," whispered Mendel; "in just two seconds I'll tear your bloody ears off, you lying sod." Scarr consigned his drinks to the care of the landlord and made a slow, dignified exit. He didn't look at the girl. Mendel led him across the street towards the prefabs. The side lights of Smiley's car shone towards them eighty yards down the road. They turned into the yard. The MG was still there. Mendel had Scarr firmly by the arm, ready if necessary to force the forearm back and upwards, breaking or dislocating the shoulder joint. "Well, well," cried Scarr with apparent delight; "She's returned to the bosom of her ancestors." "Stolen, was it?" said Mendel. "Stolen by a tall Scotsman with a walking stick and an address in Ealing. Decent of him to bring it back, wasn't it. Friendly gesture, after all this time. You've mistaken your bloody market, Scarr." Mendel was shaking with anger. "And why are the side lights on? Open the door." He searched quickly but thoroughly. Glove tray, seats, floor, rear window-ledge: nothing. He slipped his hand inside the map pocket on the passenger door, and drew out a map and an envelope. The envelope was long and flat, grey-blue in colour with a linen finish. Continental, thought Mendel. There was no writing on it. He tore it open. There were ten used five-pound notes inside and a piece of plain postcard. Mendel held it to the light and read the message printed on it with a ball-point pen: "FINISHED NOW. SELL IT." There was no signature. He got out of the car, and seized Scarr by the elbows. Scarr stepped back quickly. "What's your problem, friend?" he asked. Mendel spoke softly. "It's not my problem, Scarr, it's yours. The biggest bloody problem you ever had. Conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, offences under the Official Secrets Act. And you can add to that contravention of the Road Traffic Act, conspiracy to defraud the Inland Revenue and about fifteen other charges that will occur to me while you nurse your problem on a cell bed." "Just a minute, copper, let's not go over the moon. What's the story? Who the hell's talking about murder?" "Listen, Scarr, you're a little man, come in on the fringe of the big spenders, aren't you. Well now you're the big spender. I reckon it'll cost you fifteen years." "Look, shut up, will you." Scarr walked slowly round to the other side of the car. "Get in, copper," he said. Mendel sat in the driving seat and unlocked the passenger door from the inside. Scarr sat himself beside him. They didn't put the light on. "I'm in a nice way of business round here," said Scarr quietly, "and the pickings is small but regular. Or was till this bloke come along." "What bloke?" "Bit by bit, copper, don't rush me. That was four years ago. I didn't believe in Father Christmas till I met him. Dutch, he said he was, in the diamond business. I'm not pretending I thought he was straight, see, because you're not barmy and nor am I. I never asked what he done and he never told me, but I guessed it was smuggling. Money to burn he had, came off him like leaves in autumn. 'Scarr,' he said; 'you're a man of business. I don't like publicity, never did and I hears we're birds of a feather. I want a car. Not to keep, but to borrow.' He didn't put it quite like that because of the lingo, but that's the sense of it. "What's your proposition?' I says. 'Let's have a proposition.' " 'Well,' he says; 'I'm shy. I want a car that no one can ever get on to, supposing I had an accident. Buy a car for me, Scarr, a nice old car with something under the bonnet. Buy it in your own name,' he says, 'and keep it wrapped up for me. There's five hundred quid for a start, and twenty quid a month for garaging. And there's a bonus, Scarr, for every day I take it out. But I'm shy, see, and you don't know me. That's what the money's for,' he says. 'It's for not knowing me.' Mr. Scarr drew breath, and let it out again with an air of comic resignation. "And there he was, standing over me like my own conscience, showering old singles on me like used tote tickets." "What did he look like?" asked Mendel. "Quite young he was. Tall, fair chap. But cool--cool as charity. I never saw him after that day. He sent me letters posted in London and typed on plain paper. Just 'Be ready Monday night,' 'Be ready Thursday night,' and so on. We had it all arranged. I left the car out in the yard, full of petrol and teed up. He never said when he'd be back. Just ran it in about closing time or later, leaving the lights on and the doors locked. He'd put a couple of quid in the map pocket for each day he'd been away." "What happened if anything went wrong, if you got pinched for something else?" "We had a telephone number. He told me to ring and ask for a name." "What name?" "He told me to choose one. I chose Blondis. He didn't think that was very funny but we stuck to it. Primrose 0098." "Did you ever use it?" "Yes, a couple of years ago I took a bint to Margate for ten days. I thought I'd better let him know. A girl answered the 'phone--Dutch too, by the sound of her. She said Blondie was in Holland, and she'd take a message. But after that I didn't borner." "Why not?" "I began to notice, see. He came regular once a fortnight, the first and third Tuesdays except January and February. This was the first January he come. He brought the car back Thursday usually. Odd him coming back tonight. But this is the end of him, isn't it?" Scarr held in his enormous hand the piece of postcard he had taken from Mendel. "Did he miss at all? Away long periods?" "Winters he kept away more. January he never come, nor February. Like I said." Mendel still had the '50 in his hand. He tossed them into Scarr's lap. "Don't think you're lucky. I wouldn't be in your shoes for ten times that lot. I'll be back." Mr. Scarr seemed worried. "I wouldn't have peached," he said; "but I don't want to be mixed up in nothing, see. Not if the old country's going to suffer, eh, squire?" "Oh, shut up," said Mendel. He was tired. He took the postcard back, got out of the car and walked away towards the hospital. There was no news at the hospital. Smiley was still unconscious. The C.I.D. had been informed. Mendel would do better to leave his name and address and go home. The hospital would telephone as soon as they had any news. After a good deal of argument Mendel obtained from the sister the key to Smiley's car. Mitcham, he decided, was a lousy place to live.

VIII

REFLECTIONS IN A HOSPITAL WARD

He hated the bed as a drowning man hates the sea. He hated the sheets that imprisoned him so that he could move neither hand nor foot. And he hated the room because it frightened him. There was a trolley by the door with instruments on it, scissors, bandages and bottles, strange objects that carried the terror of the unknown, swathed in white linen for the last Communion. There were jugs, tall ones half covered with napkins, standing like white eagles waiting to tear at his entrails, little glass ones with rubber tubing coiled inside them like snakes. He hated everything, and he was afraid. He was hot and the sweat ran off him, he was cold and the sweat held him, trickling over his ribs like cold blood. Night and day alternated without recognition from Smiley. He fought a relentless battle against sleep, for when he closed his eyes they seemed to turn inwards on the chaos of his brain; and when sometimes by sheer weight his eyelids drew themselves together he would summon all his strength to tear them apart and stare again at the pale light wavering somewhere above him. So the problem of dying once more became an academic one--a debt he would postpone until he was rich and could pay in his own way. It was a luxurious feeling, almost of purity. His mind was wonderfully lucid, ranging like Prometheus over his whole world; where had he heard that: "the mind becomes separated from the body, rules a paper kingdom..."? He was bored by the light above him, and wished there was more to look at. He was bored by the grapes, the smell of honeycomb and flowers, the chocolates. He wanted books, and literary journals; how could he keep up with his reading if they gave him no books? There was so little research done on his period as it was, so little creative criticism on the seventeenth century. It was three weeks before Mendel was allowed to see him. He walked in holding a new hat and carrying a book about bees. He put his hat on the end of the bed and the book on the bedside table. He was grinning. "I bought you a book," he said; "about bees. They're clever little beggars. Might interest you." He sat on the edge of the bed. "I got a new hat. Daft really. Celebrate my retirement." "Oh yes, I forgot. You're on the shelf too." They both laughed, and were silent again. Smiley blinked. "I'm afraid you're not very distinct at the moment. I'm not allowed to wear my old glasses. They're getting me some new ones." He paused. "You don't know who did this to me, do you?" "May do. Depends. Got a lead, I think. I don't know enough, that's the trouble. About your job, I mean. Does the East German Steel Mission mean anything to you?" "Yes, I think so. It came here four years ago to try and get a foot in the Board of Trade." "When did they go?" "3rd January. Same day as Fennan was murdered." He looked at Smiley quizzically. Smiley thought for a minute and said: "Get hold of Peter Guillam at the Ministry of Defence and bring him here tomorrow. By the scruff of the neck." Mendel picked up his hat and walked to the door. "Goodbye," said Smiley; "thank you for the book." "See you tomorrow," said Mendel, and left. Smiley lay back in bed. His head was aching. Damn, he thought, I never thanked him for the honey. It had come from Fortnums, too. Why the early morning call? That was what puzzled him more than anything. It was silly, really, Smiley supposed, but of all the unaccountables in the case, that worried him most. Had Eisa Fennan, in her panic, taken upon herself the mantle of her husband? Or the motive of her husband? Had Fennan asked for the call to remind him of something, and had Eisa borrowed the motive? Then what did Fennan need to be reminded of--and what did his wife so strenuously wish to conceal? Samuel Fennan. The new world and the old met in him. The eternal Jew, cultured, cosmopolitan, self-determinate, industrious and perceptive: to Smiley, immensely attractive. The child of his century; persecuted, like Eisa, and driven from his adopted Germany to University in England. By the sheer weight of his ability he had pushed aside disadvantage and prejudice, finally to enter the Foreign Office. It had been a remarkable achievement, owed to nothing but his own brilliance. And if he was a little conceited, a little disinclined to bide the decision of minds more pedestrian than his own, who could blame him? There had been some embarrassment when Fennan pronounced himself in favour of a divided Germany, but it had all blown over, he had been transferred to an Asian desk and the affair was forgotten. For the rest, he had been generous to a fault, and popular both in Whitehall and in Surrey, where he devoted several hours each week-end to charity work. His great love was skiing. Every year he took all his leave at once and spent six weeks in Switzerland or Austria. He had visited Germany only once, Smiley remembered--with his wife about four years ago. Smiley could imagine Fennan in those days--volatile and earnest, no doubt bringing to his companions the experience of real suffering, a veteran among cadets. His parents had died--his father had been a banker with the foresight to keep a small account in Switzer--land. There had not been much, but enough to see him through Oxford, and protect him from the cold wind of poverty. Smiley remembered so well that interview with Fennan; one among many, yet different. Different because of the language. Fennan was so articulate, so quick, so sure. "Their greatest day," he had said, "was when the miners came. They came from the Rhondda, you know, and to the comrades it seemed the spirit of Freedom had come down with them from the hills. It was a hunger march. It never seemed to occur to the Group that the marchers might actually be hungry, but it occurred to me. We hired a truck and the girls made stew--tons of it. We got the meat cheap from a sympathetic butcher in the market. We drove the truck out to meet them. They ate the stew and marched on. They didn't like us really you know, didn't trust us." He laughed. "They were so small--that's what I remember best--small and dark like elves. We hoped they'd sing and they did. But not for us--for themselves. That was the first time I had met Welshmen. "It made me understand my own race better, I think--I'm a Jew, you know." Smiley had nodded. Smiley wanted to ask him how Fennan himself had felt, but Fennan was talking again. He had shared nothing with them, he had come to realise that. They were not men, but children, who dreamed of freedom-fires, gipsy music and one world tomorrow, who rode on white horses across the Bay of Biscay or with a child's pleasure bought beer for starving elves from Wales; children who had no power to resist the Eastern sun, and obediently turned their tousled heads towards it. They loved each other and believed they loved mankind, they fought each other and believed they fought the world. Soon he found them comic and touching. To him, they might as well have knitted socks for soldiers. The disproportion between the dream and reality drove him to a close examination of both; he put all his energy into philosophical and historical reading, and found, to his surprise, comfort and peace in the intellectual purity of Marxism. He feasted on its intellectual ruthlessness, was thrilled by its fearlessness, its academic reversal of traditional values. In the end it was this and not the Party that gave him strength in his solitude, a philosophy which exacted total sacrifice to an unassailable formula, which humiliated and inspired him; and when he finally found success, prosperity and integration, he turned his back sadly upon it as a treasure he had outgrown and must leave at Oxford with the days of his youth. Was there any factual connection between the incident in Bywater Street and Fennan's death? Smiley reproached himself for being carried away. Seen in perspective, there was nothing but the sequence of events to suggest that Fennan and Smiley were part of a single problem. The sequence of events, that is, and the weight of Smiley's intuition, experience or what you will--the extra sense that had told him to ring the bell and not use his key, the sense that did not, however, warn him that a murderer stood in the night with a piece of lead piping. The interview had been informal, that was true. The walk in the park reminded him more of Oxford than of Whitehall. The walk in the park, the caf'n Mill-bank--yes, there had been a procedural difference too, but what did it amount to? An official of the Foreign Office walking in the park, talking earnestly with an anonymous little man... Unless the little man was not anonymous! Smiley took a paper-back book and began to write in pencil on the fly-leaf: "Let us assume what is by no means proven: that the murder of Fennan and the attempted murder of Smiley are related. What circumstances connected Smiley with Fennan before Fennan's death? 1. Before the interview on Monday, 2nd January, I had never met Fennan. I read his file at the De-. partaient and I had certain preliminary enquiries made. 3. The interview fell into two parts; the first at the F.O., when people wandered through the room and took no notice of us at all, the second outside when anyone could have seen us." What followed? Nothing, unless... Yes, that was the only possible conclusion: unless whoever saw them together recognised not only Fennan but Smiley as well, and was violently opposed to their association. Why? In what way was Smiley dangerous? His eyes suddenly opened very wide. Of course--in one way, in one way only--as a security officer. He put down his pencil. And so whoever killed Sam Fennan was anxious that he should not talk to a security officer. Someone in the Foreign Office, perhaps. But essentially someone who knew Smiley too. Someone Fennan had known at Oxford, known as a communist, someone who feared exposure, who thought that Fennan would talk, had talked already, perhaps? And if he had talked already then of course Smiley would have to be killed--killed quickly before he could put in his report. That would explain the murder of Fennan and the assault on Smiley. It made some sense, but not much. He had built a card-house as high as it would go, and he still had cards in his hand. What about Eisa, her lies, her complicity, her fear? What about the car and the 8.30 call? What about the anonymous letter? If the murderer was frightened of contact between Smiley and Fennan, he would scarcely call attention to Fennan by denouncing him. Who then? Who? He lay back and closed his eyes. His head was throbbing again. Perhaps Peter Guillam could help. He was the only hope. His head was going round. It hurt terribly.