Old Flames (61 page)

‘And I’m not. And first and foremost I don’t believe you.’

‘I’m sure you don’t, but now we’ve had the what and the why and the irony, if you’ve reached the end of your little speech perhaps we can get down to brass tacks
and do business. Ten out of ten for detection, but Tosca, after all, is why we’re here. There’s got to be a way out for both of us. We can still horse trade, but we can’t leave
things as they are.’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean—“no”?’

‘No. No deals. Not while you’re still lying to me.’

‘Freddie, I’m not lying.’

‘You said you’d no idea the Russians would kill Cockerell. Maybe you’re trying to spare me, I don’t know, but Cockerell was dead when the Russians got him. Cobb killed
him.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Because you told him to. Because Cockerell knew too much for you ever to let the Russians take him alive. They told you to send him out to them, but they didn’t say dead or alive,
so Cobb sapped the poor fool across the back of the head, and dumped him in the water in full frogman’s gear for the Russians to find. They sent a couple of frogmen out from one of the escort
ships as they steamed up the Solent. Whatever they were expecting, Cobb gave them a body—and he only just made it back to Portsmouth in time. He was sweating like a pig and he was frazzled. I
was there. I saw him. He was on edge, and I put it down to his temperament. He was someone who got high on power, but it was more than that—he’d just killed a man, and the adrenaline
was still ripping through his veins like a shot of heroin.’

‘Speculation, Freddie. That’s all.’

‘No—fact. If Cockerell was alive until the Tuesday when the Russian captain put in his complaint, there’d have been no evidence of his last meal in Portsmouth still in his
stomach—he died within an hour of finishing his blasted kedgeree. For all I know the Russians stuck him in the fridge for six days, but he was dead when they got him. And he was dead because
you couldn’t take the risk of him telling them the truth about your network. I’ve read Cockerell’s insurance policy, Charlie. His last will and testament. He only wrote it because
he didn’t trust you. He knew it couldn’t stop him being killed; it could only make life hell for you and Cobb afterwards. He names seven agents on your payroll. Some bloke in GCHQ, an
old don at Cambridge to spot likely undergraduates, a couple of minor civil servants at the War Office, whom you appear to be blackmailing, two MPs and a dotty lord. Now, how many have you told the
Russians you’ve got? Twelve? Twenty? Because you’re pushing more money through Cockerell’s books than you could ever spend on that threadbare list of would-be traitors. And where
does the rest of the money go?’

Troy paused, but Charlie volunteered nothing.

‘Do you remember when you last borrowed money from me? I do. It was the summer of 1951. You paid me back the same year—in cash, and you never asked for money again. You and Cobb are
skimming like a pair of cheap croupiers. You pocket the money that the Russians think is going to your list of phoney agents.’

‘It wasn’t my idea, Freddie. Give me some credit. I believe in what I’m doing. It was Cobb. And I didn’t tell Cobb to kill Cockerell. He acted on his own.’

‘I don’t believe you. “They’re so damn greedy. A greedy man is a weak man.”’

‘Eh?’

‘That’s what you said ten minutes ago. You were describing Cobb, but I think it sums you up rather well too. You’ve always been profligate, Charlie. That’s the next thing
to being greedy.’

‘Freddie. I did not kill Cockerell. Cobb killed him off his own bat. Just like he killed Jessel and Madeleine Kerr.’

‘Was it his idea to kill Johnny Fermanagh and snatch Tosca too?’

‘What?’

‘Was it his idea to beat Johnny Fermanagh to death and snatch Tosca?’

It seemed to Troy that this must be the make or break question. There they were, each on the edge of their
seats, shouting in each other’s faces. But, it should somehow make a difference to the inevitable end of their friendship if Charlie would answer ‘yes’.

The question seemed to halt Charlie in his anger. He looked baffled and his mouth opened soundlessly. Troy never got an answer. Cobb lumbered round the corner from the front of the house, as
Troy always knew he would, aiming for them in huge strides, an errant sunbeam breaking the clouds to pick him out like limelight, big feet thudding down like shire hooves, all that grim
determination screwed up into an ugly scowl.

Charlie got to his feet.

‘No, Norman. No!’

But Cobb was not listening.

‘I’ve had enough of this bloody farce.’

Cobb reached into his jacket with his right hand, to grasp the Browning sleeping snugly in its leather holster in the armpit of his generously tailored suit. A double-breasted suit may flatter
the bigger man, may smooth out the bulge of a concealed weapon, but it adds precious fractions of a second to the action Cobb attempted. Before his hand could clear his lapel once more Troy had
shot him five times through the heart.

He had not been wholly sure he could do it.

The Mauser had nestled under the cushion of his chair most of the afternoon, and he had slipped it into his waistband as he sat down. He had taken it off its wooden pegs that morning, felt its
weight and wondered. There was ammunition, years old but sound, in the bottom drawer of the old man’s desk. Troy had loaded the gun and found it heavier, longer than any gun he had ever
wielded. Worse, his father had been right-handed, and Troy was left-handed, and whilst this mattered not a damn with ninety-nine guns in a hundred, the Mauser, as his wife had so vividly
demonstrated, was designed as a cavalry weapon to be cocked by a roll on the thigh as the arm came upwards from a saddle holster. Hence there were models with the hammer on the left, for
right-handed people, and, rarely, models with the hammer on the right for left-handed people. He could not draw the gun in any conventional way. He had settled on sticking it in his waistband, in
the small of his back with the butt facing to the left. With a little practice he could draw the gun left-handed, cock it almost on the hip as he pulled it up and under and shoot with it held
sideways, hammer uppermost, sights to the right—and he found he could do it quickly. But, he had wondered, how quickly would he have to do it?

Every rook in every tree squawked skyward. Cobb fell like an oak struck by lightning—he did not crumple or cry out, but keeled over backwards, with a crash that shook the ground. His hand
flew clear of his jacket, the arm extended at right angles to his torso, still clutching the Browning.

Troy had not anticipated the effects of recoil. He had squeezed the trigger and half the magazine had discharged, and the force of it had knocked him off his feet and onto his knees. He put his
weight on his right hand. Cobb was still. Stretched out cruciform. He looked to Charlie and found that he, too, was on his knees only a yard away, his face buried in his hands, and a sodden whisper
of ‘Jesus, Jesus’ seeking through the mask he had made for himself.

Troy levelled the gun on him, saw an eye open and peep between the fingers like a child pretending to be invisible.

Cobb rattled as his last breath escaped his throat. Troy kept his eyes on Charlie, whipped the gun sideways, shot Cobb once through the forehead, and put the gun back on Charlie.

‘Look at me, Charlie,’ Troy said.

Charlie took his hands from his face, still whispering ‘Jesus, Jesus’ to himself like a fragment of half-remembered prayer, the magic word to undo all he had seen. His cheeks were
glazed with tears.

‘Look at me, Charlie.’

Charlie looked up at Troy, then glanced at Cobb as though confirming the worst, then looked back at Troy, still propped up on his right arm, still aiming the gun at him.

‘In case you’re wondering,’ Troy said breathily, ‘it’s an 1896 Mauser Conehammer semi-automatic machine pistol. It holds ten. I rather think I just put six into the
late Cobb. Whatever you’re carrying, take it out and throw it on the lawn.’

‘Carrying?’ Charlie’s voice was shrilly incredulous. ‘You mean you think I have a gun? Why on earth would I have a gun?’

‘Of course—you had Cobb. You don’t need a gun. But I’m not going to take that risk. Stand up and take off your jacket.’

Charlie did as he was told. Got shakily to his feet. Held the jacket out and shook it.

‘Please believe me, Freddie. I didn’t know Cobb was going to do that. Really I didn’t. I told him to stay in the car. The last thing I said to him was, “Stay in the
car.”

‘Turn around, drop the jacket, roll up your trouser legs.’

When Charlie stood with his back to him, calves bared like a ludicrous freemason, looking wry-necked over one shoulder, Troy eased himself off the grass and back into the chair, let the gun hang
loosely at his side, and waved Charlie down into his chair with his free hand. The move cost him dearly, knocked the breath from his lungs, and he and Charlie faced each other in a crackling,
electric silence until Troy found the energy to speak once more.

‘Charlie, this is the deal. And it’s the only one you’re getting. I’ve put everything I’ve just told you on paper, and it’s on its way to lawyers in three
different cities, in three different countries, together with copies of Cockerell’s last letter. You’d be well advised to keep me alive, Charlie. If I die they have instructions to send
everything to MI5. But you’re safe—your shabby little network is safe—as long as I never hear from you again. If I, or my wife, or any member of my family is ever troubled by
either side—it doesn’t matter which—I’ll shop you to both. I want to be left alone. And if I’m not, then we’ll find out the hard way just how convincing the
proof is.’

‘The British are gullible, Freddie. Look what mugs Philby made of them. And do you really think you can get anything to the Russians without me knowing?’

‘I’ve already done it.’

‘Eh?’

‘Check the duty log from the watch on the Russian Embassy. You’ll find a man answering my description dropped a letter in their box about 4 a.m. this morning.’

‘You’re being naive. The KGB will—’

‘
Пирожки
,’ said Troy, softly pouting over the first syllable.

‘What?’

‘
Пирожки
.’

For the first time Troy felt that he had really got through to Charlie—with a single word in a language he did not speak.

‘Oh God. Oh my God. Khrushchev gave you an embassy code, didn’t he?’

‘There has to be an end to running. I dropped him a line. Told him where she was, that she will say nothing of what little she knows to anyone and how grateful we would both be to be left
in peace. You could say I gave you a head start. But you’d better pray the First Secretary grants my wish. If he sends the dogs, we’ve both had it.’

‘You’re mad, Freddie. He might do just that.’

‘And then again he might not. And if he doesn’t, the status quo pertains. You and me with a common cause once more—
contra mundum
as you used to say when we were
kids.’

The silence fell on them again. Troy thought he had said it all. He’d had most of the day to rehearse it, but he’d never been able to work out how it should end. There were no famous
last words on the tip of his tongue.

‘I’ll miss you, Charlie.’

Charlie’s eyes flashed. The finality of what Troy had said seemed to sting him.

‘That’s it, eh? Just like that?’

‘We’ve nothing more to say to one another.’

‘You’ve said an awful lot, Freddie, but you haven’t asked me why.’

‘I’m not interested in why. I never much cared for ideologies.’

‘It’s got bugger all to do with ideologies. Isn’t it obvious why?’

Troy said nothing.

‘Hasn’t it been obvious since we were kids at school? Didn’t you swear oaths to kill every last one of the bastards every time they beat us black and blue? Didn’t you ask
a dozen times a day what all that hidebound ritual had to do with you and me? Didn’t it send you screaming into the world hating God and King and Country? And every last damn thing they stood
for? Don’t you still look around and ask what all this has to do with you or me? Don’t you still ask yourself how you can ever belong to all this?’

Charlie’s arm swept out inclusively—the house, the garden, the pig pens, the willows and the river, so English in their deepgreenness and their mild eccentricity, so Russian in the
human choices they represented and the extremes they struggled silently and secretly to reconcile and if not reconcile contain. The irony of this was lost on Charlie—they were simply symbols
close to hand—but hardly on Troy, and Troy knew that he did belong to this, as much as it to him, and knew that he could not explain this to Charlie.

‘We don’t belong, you and I, Freddie. We never did. It was you and me
contra mundum
for so long.’

His voice dropped to a whisper, the darkness of the confessional.

‘And if you don’t belong, you can’t betray.’

It seemed to Troy like the distillation of all that Deborah Keeffe had said to him—her intelligent, heartfelt argument boiled down to a ruthless conclusion, to a licence to kill.

‘We all said things like that. It didn’t mean a thing,’ he said, knowing full well that it did.

‘Oh no—I meant it. I meant I was out to get them. I was fit to kill.’

‘And who did we kill in the end, Charlie? A weaselly, clapped-out ex-frogman, a pissed-out chartered accountant, a gullible, innocent girl—’

‘And Cobb, Freddie. We killed Cobb.’

‘That doesn’t change anything, Charlie. Cobb’s not my responsibility.’

Charlie looked at Cobb’s body. The chest drenched in grume. The forehead pierced by a clean,
bloodless black hole. He looked back at Troy. Whatever it was he was about to say, Troy had heard enough.

‘You can go now, Charlie. We’ve said all we’re ever going to say.’

Charlie stared at Troy, but did not move.

‘I mean it, Charlie. Go now.’

Charlie got to his feet. His lips parted. No words came out. He turned on his heel and began to stride briskly away.