Horse Under Water (13 page)

I picked up my key and began to ascend the stairs. ‘Ya,’ I heard him say again.

I went up to the third. The light was on in my room. I switched off the hall light, put my ear to the door and heard nothing. I put the key in the door and turned it quickly. I flung the door open wide and moved through it stooped.

A man can go through his whole life making sure there is no light behind him when he enters a darkened room, unscrewing the base plate of a strange phone before using it, and checking the wiring before conducting a confidential conversation. All his life he can do these things and then on one occasion it is all worth while. However, this was not to be that occasion for me.

Spread-eagled full length on the rose-patterned Terylene bedspread was the seventeen-stone weight of ‘Tinkle Bell’. A large and not clean grey felt hat was parked over his face.

‘It’s only me.’ The words came muffled by the crown of the hat and the sentence ended in a chesty cough. All Tinkle Bell’s sentences ended in a cough. A hand removed the hat from his face and an atomic cloud of smoke rose to the ceiling.

I straightened up, feeling a little foolish.

‘What did you do to the doorman?’ I asked.

‘I showed him an old warrant card I hung on to from the war years.’ Tinkle Bell stood up and produced a half-bottle of Teachers from his coat pocket. He poured a drink, using the two plastic glasses from the sink.

‘Mud in your eye,’ said Tinkle.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

By ingenious articulation of the finger joints he was able to smoke and drink virtually simultaneously. He coughed, smoked and drank for a few minutes.

‘Surprised I found you?’ he coughed. ‘Astute, eh?’ Some more coughing. ‘Not really, y’know.
Albufeira phoned this morning with a message. It wasn’t difficult to sort through the plane passenger lists. You’ve used Craske once before, about a year ago.’ He coughed again. ‘Perhaps you’re getting a bit old for this game.’

‘We all are, Tinkle,’ I said, ‘we all are.’ Tinkle nodded and continued to cough and drink.

‘The old man would like to see you tomorrow morning, “10 a.m. if possible”, he said.’

‘Yes, he’s always polite, you must give him that,’ I said.

‘He’s all right, Dawlish,’ said Tinkle, and poured us both another. ‘Oh yes, and I’m to tell you that Jean is awaiting instructions. Perhaps you would phone her as soon as you can.’

He picked up his hat and downed his drink in one smooth motion.

‘Anything I can do for you?’ he said. ‘I’m going back to the office.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘mail interception.’ I gave him Ivor Butcher’s name and address.

‘And phone?’ asked Tinkle.

‘Yes,’ I said, and smiled at the thought, ‘let’s tap his phone.’

‘Right, see you later,’ he said, and I heard him coughing his way down the creaky stairs and out into the street as I began packing my bag again. Before I saw Dawlish at 10 a.m. I hoped to have something up my sleeve.

I got back to my flat about five thirty. I fixed coffee and started a large coal fire. Outside, lines of mud-spattered cars moved southward out of the city through a gauze of diesel fumes. The weather forecaster was worried about snow and I’ll bet the six o’clock news didn’t relax him any.

I erected a card table in the bedroom, dusted off the Nikon F and clipped it into the holder after loading it with fine resolution film. Over the baseboard four photoflood holders were directed downwards. I flipped the switch and a glare of tungsten light splashed around the walls. I left the bedroom and locked the door behind me.

I was drinking a second cup of Blue Mountain as Jean arrived. Her mouth was cold. We touched noses and exchanged hellos and ‘isn’t-it-turning-colds’ and ‘snow-before-Christmas-I-wouldn’t-be-surpriseds’, then I put her into the Ivor Butcher picture. Jean said, ‘Buy it’, but I didn’t want to do that. If I showed any interest it would reveal more
than I wanted to reveal, especially to Ivor Butcher. Jean said I was a paranoiac, but she hadn’t been in the business long enough to develop that sixth sense that I was always telling myself I had.

Ivor Butcher sat in his blue Jag across the road for some time before coming to the front door. It was very professionally done. I took his coat and poured him a drink. We hung around waiting for my fictional man from the F.O. for twenty minutes. Ivor Butcher had the diary in a sealed manilla envelope. When the tension had built up a little I asked him if I could look at it. He passed the envelope across my desk and I tore the top off quickly and extracted a leather diary with gold-edged pages. The surface was scuffed and it didn’t look any too new. Ivor Butcher was about to open his mouth to protest, but I kept the diary tightly shut and he kept his mouth the same way. I put it back into the envelope.

‘Looks O.K.,’ I said. Ivor Butcher nodded. I turned the envelope slowly around, passing it between fingers and thumbs. His eyes watched the envelope. I got up, walked across to him. I folded the torn envelope top and pushed it into the pocket of his shiny, synthetic fibre suit. He smiled sheepishly. ‘I’ll phone the F.O. man’s office,’ I said, and went to the extension phone in the bedroom.

It had been simple to drop the diary out of the torn end of the envelope into my lap and not too difficult to substitute an object of approximately the correct shape and size. Luckily Ivor Butcher’s
description of the dimensions had been fairly accurate, but I had two variations handy had it not been.

I clipped it on to the baseboard and switched on the bright lights. I pushed the shutter.
Kerlick –
the roller blind moved gently across the film. I turned the page and photoed the next one. Now everything depended upon Jean keeping Ivor Butcher occupied. She could reasonably ask him not to come within earshot of a conversation between me and the F.O., but if he got that envelope out of his pocket and found six coupons that would get him a bar of Fairy Soap fourpence cheaper, my photography was liable to be interrupted.

By 12.45 the last print was off the dryer and Ivor Butcher had long since departed, with his diary back once more in his pocket. I went into the lounge; Jean had slipped her shoes off and was dozing in front of the dying coal fire. I leaned over the back of the big leather chair and kissed her funny upside-down face. She awoke with a start.

‘You were snoring,’ I said.

‘I don’t snore.’ She looked at me in the mirror.

‘And you told me I was the only man in London in a position to know.’ Jean ran her long fingers through her hair, dragging it high above her head.

‘Do you think I should wear my hair up like this?’

‘Don’t wear any at all,’ I said.

We were looking at each other in the mirror. She said, ‘You are getting terribly fat. What are you going to do about it?’

‘Not a thing,’ I said, ‘let’s …’

At that moment the phone rang. Jean laughed, and although I let it ring for some time I finally went to get it.

‘It’s probably your Mr Butcher who has decided to come down to nine hundred,’ said Jean. ‘Poor Mr Butcher.’

‘Thieves must learn to cry,’ I said.

I answered the phone. It was Alice, who wasted not a word.

‘Mr Dawlish says get along here right away, something urgent has turned up.’

‘O.K., Alice,’ I said.

Sleet was falling as we arrived at Charlotte Street. A man in a shiny car threw a handful of sparks on to the wet road as he sped by us. We went up to Dawlish’s office on the top floor. Things were hectic: Dawlish had taken his jacket off.

‘Take that tea tray off the chair and sit down,’ he said, and Alice poked her head round the door because she couldn’t remember how many sugars I took.

‘Terrible night,’ said Dawlish. ‘Sorry to drag you into this fracas. I’ve missed my Tuesday bridge game for the first time in nearly two years.’

‘We must all make sacrifices,’ I said.

‘Yes, when our masters bid us jump,’ said Dawlish.

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t my evening for playing anything, I’m afraid.’ Jean shot me a glance.

‘Strutton Plan, so it’s all your doing,’ said Dawlish in mock admonition. ‘We now have
permission to set up an Advisory Board’ – he looked at the papers on his desk and read off the words – ‘Strutton Plan Advisory Board’. He looked up and beamed. Behind the beam was a worried face.

‘Subtle titling,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Dawlish doubtfully, and then he was away into the administration: this is what he was so good at – the tactics of bureaucracy – and don’t ever imagine it’s not important. ‘The Board will appoint four specialized committees: Communications, Finance, Training, and a Control Structure Committee. Now we won’t be able to control all of those, so what we do is this. Let the Ministry people grab anything they want, in fact we’ll nominate a few of them, lavish compliments on their suitability. Incidentally,’ Dawlish blew his nose loudly on a big handkerchief, ‘don’t overdo the compliments; they’re beginning to suspect you of sarcasm over the other side.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Dawlish. ‘Now; when they are committed up to the armpits you will suggest a fifth committee: a Compatibility Committee – for co-ordination …’

‘Very neat,’ I said, ‘just as you did on the Dundee Report – you ended up in control – I’ve often wondered how you did it.’

‘Mum’s the word, old boy,’ said Dawlish. ‘I’d like to do it again before they tumble to it.’

‘O.K.,’ I said, ‘but when does all this begin?’

‘Well, you will be on the Board and I don’t see who they can possibly suggest as Chairman of the Finance if it isn’t you.’

‘I follow you all right,’ I said, ‘between the two of us we’ll have the situation well in hand; but what I meant was, when does it begin?’

Dawlish looked at his desk diary. ‘Convened for Thursday at 3.30 p.m., Storey’s Gate, for the first meeting anyway.’

‘No, but look, I can’t hang around here till next Thursday. The Albufeira situation is far too flexible.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Dawlish. ‘I want to speak to you about that.’ Dawlish walked across to the I.B.M. machine that correlated all his data. He fidgeted around with the controls. ‘I want you to complete the report as soon as possible.’ He kept his back towards me. I knew that this was what he really wanted to talk about, that the Strutton Report panic was a smokescreen. Dawlish came back to the desk and flipped a switch on his desk intercom. Alice answered; he said, ‘Code name for the Albufeira operation?’ Alice’s voice squeezed through the tiny loudspeaker, ‘Alforreca,’ she said.

‘Very erudite,’ I said to Dawlish. It was the Portuguese name for the sea animal we call the ‘Portuguese Man of War’. Dawlish smiled and flipped the key to tell Alice what I had said, then turned back to me.

‘We’re winding up “Alforreca”,’ he said. ‘I’ll need your report for the Minister in the morning. Special Cabinet instruction.’

‘No dice,’ I said.

‘I don’t think I follow you,’ said Dawlish.

‘I’m not through yet,’ I said, ‘I’ve a lot more to do.’

Dawlish was huffed. ‘Possibly, but you won’t be required to continue, completeness is just a state of mind.’

‘So is high-level interference a state of mind; I’ll go back there in my own time, I’ll take my leave there.’

‘Be reasonable,’ said Dawlish. ‘What’s wrong?’

I brought the wad of photos from my pocket. Twenty-three pages from Mr Smith’s private diary. Most of it used the uncrackable cipher of busy men – bad writing. There were cryptic lunch appointments and meticulous compilations of tax-deductible expenses. The reference to V.N.V. concerned sales of undefined goods and numerical nomenclature of Swiss bank accounts.

One page, however, contained something more specific. ‘Tell K’ he’d written,

BOARDABLE EXPAXIAL SASHERIES SUIST

COVERTLY BARONESS ZAYAT HORNPOCK

It was signed ‘
XYST
’.

It wouldn’t have meant a thing to me either if I hadn’t noticed the words ‘Moreing & Neal’ on another page.

I had the research boys look up the Moreing & Neal commercial code while I put the prints on the dryer. Now I told Dawlish about it.

‘It means “erection of chemical works”, then “goods have been shipped”, then “value of £7,100” and “deliver documents”. The word
BARONESS
means “beware of” and
HORNPOCK
means “don’t mention”.
ZAYAT
and
XYST
are spare code-words for private use.
XYST
is obviously Smith’s signature.’

I waited while Dawlish got the full import. He was swinging his tobacco pouch like a lariat.

I went on, ‘It means Smith has sent K (that must be Kondit) seven thousand pounds’ worth of laboratory gear (to do ice-melting experiments, I’d guess). “The documents” refers to the sovereign die (there is no closer codeword) and
ZAYAT
is me. Smith says to beware of me.’

‘I know just how he feels,’ said Dawlish. Solemnly he removed his spectacles, dabbed at his face with a huge white handkerchief, replaced his spectacles and read the whole thing through again. ‘Alice,’ he finally said into the squawk-box, ‘you’d better come in right away.’

As Dawlish said, it
was
all a bit circumstantial. It didn’t fit very neatly together. Why
would
Smith finance a laboratory in such an out-of-the-way place when it would be far less conspicuous in London? And Dawlish thought I was bending it a bit to interpret ‘documents’ as ‘die’.

Dawlish’s department was responsible directly to the Cabinet; you could see why the old man was
so reluctant to cross a member of the Cabinet, a very powerful member of the Cabinet.

Finally, four Nescafés later, Dawlish leaned well back in his chair and said, ‘I’m convinced that you are quite wrong.’ The old man was staring at a corner of the ceiling. ‘Convinced,’ he said again. Alice caught my eye. ‘And therefore it is only …’ he paused, ‘… ethical, to continue the investigation to protect Smith’s name.’

That’s what Dawlish said to the ceiling, and while he said it I lowered an eyelid slowly at Alice; and, do you know, she moved the corners of her mouth an eighth of an inch upward.

I got to my feet. ‘Don’t take advantage,’ Dawlish said anxiously, ‘I can only delay things a little while.’ He turned back to the Strutton Plan papers. ‘You’ll overreach yourself one day,’ I heard him grumbling to the filing cabinet as I left. I suppose he was fed up with talking to the ceiling.