The Human Factor (30 page)

He went back to the kitchen and gave Buller a plate of biscuits – perhaps it would be a long time before he would be able to eat again. The clock in the kitchen had a noisy tick which seemed to make time go more slowly. If there was really a friend in the Toyota he was taking a long time to appear.

4

Colonel Daintry pulled into the yard of the King's Arms. There was only one car in the yard, and he sat for a while at the wheel, wondering whether to telephone now and what to say if he did. He had been shaken with a secret anger during his lunch at the Reform with C and Doctor Percival. There were moments when he had wanted to push his plate of smoked trout aside and say, ‘I resign. I don't want to have any more to do with your bloody firm.' He was tired to death of secrecy and of errors which had to be covered up and not admitted. A man came across the yard from the outside lavatory whistling a tuneless tune, buttoning his flies in the security of the dark, and went on into the bar. Daintry thought, They killed my marriage with their secrets. During the war there had been a simple cause – much simpler than the one his father knew. The Kaiser had not been a Hitler, but in the cold war they were now fighting it was possible, as in the Kaiser's war, to argue right and wrong. There was nothing clear enough in the cause to justify murder by mistake. Again he found himself in the bleak house of his childhood, crossing the hall, entering the room where his father and his mother sat hand in hand. ‘God knows best,' his father said, remembering Jutland and Admiral Jellicoe. His mother said, ‘My dear, at your age, it's difficult to find another job.' He turned off his lights and moved through the slow heavy rainfall into the bar. He thought: My wife has enough money, my daughter is married, I could live – somehow – on my pension.

On this cold wet night there was only one man in the bar – he was drinking a pint of bitter. He said, ‘Good evening, sir' as though they were well acquainted.

‘Good evening. A double whisky,' Daintry ordered.

‘If you can call it that,' the man said as the barman turned away to hold a glass below a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

‘Call what?'

‘The evening, I meant, sir. Though this weather's only to be expected, I suppose, in November.'

‘Can I use your telephone?' Daintry asked the barman.

The barman pushed the whisky across with an air of rejection. He nodded in the direction of a box. He was clearly a man of few words: he was here to listen to what customers chose to say but not to communicate himself more than was strictly necessary, until – no doubt with pleasure – he would pronounce the phrase, ‘Time, Gentlemen.'

Daintry dialled Doctor Percival's number and while he listened to the engaged tone, he tried to rehearse the words he wished to use. ‘I've seen Castle . . . He's alone in the house . . . He's had a quarrel with his wife . . . There's nothing more to report . . .' He would slam down the receiver as he slammed it down now – then he went back to the bar and his whisky and the man who insisted on talking.

‘Uh,' the barman said, ‘uh' and once, ‘That's right.'

The customer turned to Daintry and included him in his conversation. ‘They don't even teach simple arithmetic these days. I said to my nephew – he's nine – what's four times seven, and do you think he could tell me?'

Daintry drank his whisky with his eye on the telephone box, still trying to make up his mind what words to use.

‘I can see you agree with me,' the man said to Daintry. ‘And you?' he asked the barman. ‘Your business would go to pot, wouldn't it, if you couldn't say what four times seven was?'

The barman wiped some spilled beer off the bar and said, ‘Uh.'

‘Now you, sir, I can guess very easily what profession you follow. Don't ask me how. It's a hunch I have. Comes from studying faces, I suppose, and human nature. That's how I came to be talking about arithmetic while you were on the telephone. That's a subject, I said to Mr Barker here, about which the gentleman will have strong opinions. Weren't those my very words?'

‘Uh,' Mr Barker said.

‘I'll have another pint if you don't mind.'

Mr Barker filled his glass.

‘My friends sometimes ask me for an exhibition. They even have a little bet on it now and then. He's a schoolmaster, I say, about someone in the tube, or he's a chemist, and then I enquire politely – they don't take offence when I explain to them – and nine times out of ten, I'm right. Mr Barker has seen me at it in here, haven't you, Mr Barker?'

‘Uh.'

‘Now you, sir, if you'll excuse me playing my little game just to amuse Mr Barker here on a cold wet evening – you are in Government service. Am I right, sir?'

‘Yes,' Daintry said. He finished his whisky and put down his glass. It was time to try the telephone again.

‘So we're getting warm, eh?' The customer fixed him with beady eyes. ‘A sort of confidential position. You know a lot more about things than the rest of us.'

‘I have to telephone,' Daintry said.

‘Just a moment, sir. I just want to show Mr Barker . . .' He wiped a little beer from his mouth with a handkerchief and thrust his face close to Daintry's. ‘You deal in figures,' he said. ‘You are in the Inland Revenue.'

Daintry moved to the telephone box.

‘You see,' the customer said, ‘touchy fellow. They don't like to be recognized. An inspector probably.'

This time Daintry got the ringing tone and soon he heard Doctor Percival's voice, bland and reassuring as though he had kept his bedside manner long after he had abandoned bedsides. ‘Yes? Doctor Percival here. Who is that?'

‘Daintry.'

‘Good evening, my dear fellow. Any news? Where are you?'

‘I'm at Berkhamsted. I've seen Castle.'

‘Yes. What's your impression?'

Anger took the words he meant to speak and tore them in pieces like a letter one decides not to send. ‘My impression is that you've murdered the wrong man.'

‘Not murdered,' Doctor Percival said gently, ‘an error in the prescription. The stuff hadn't been tried before on a human being. But what makes you think that Castle . . .?'

‘Because he's certain that Davis was innocent.'

‘He said that – in so many words?'

‘Yes.'

‘What's he up to?'

‘He's waiting.'

‘Waiting for what?'

‘Something to happen. His wife's left him with the child. He says they've quarrelled.'

‘We've already circulated a warning,' Doctor Percival said, ‘to the airports – and the sea ports too of course. If he makes a run for it, we'll have
prima facie
evidence – but we'll still need the hard stuff.'

‘You didn't wait for the hard stuff with Davis.'

‘C insists on it this time. What are you doing now?'

‘Going home.'

‘You asked him about Muller's notes?'

‘No.'

‘Why?'

‘It wasn't necessary.'

‘You've done an excellent job, Daintry. But why do you suppose he came clean like that to you?'

Daintry put the receiver down without answering and left the box. The customer said, ‘I was right, wasn't I? You are an inspector of the Inland Revenue.'

‘Yes.'

‘You see, Mr Barker. I've scored again.'

Colonel Daintry went slowly out to his car. For a while he sat in it with the engine running and watched the drops of rain pursue each other down the windscreen. Then he drove out of the yard and turned in the direction of Boxmoor and London and the flat in St James's Street where yesterday's Camembert was awaiting him. He drove slowly. The November drizzle had turned into real rain and there was a hint of hail. He thought, Well, I did what they would call my duty, but though he was on the road towards home and the table where he would sit beside the Camembert to write his letter, he was in no hurry to arrive. In his mind the act of resignation had already been accomplished. He told himself he was a free man, that he had no duties any longer and no obligations, but he had never felt such an extreme solitude as he felt now.

5

The bell rang. Castle had been waiting for it a long time and yet he hesitated to go to the door; it seemed to him now that he had been absurdly optimistic. By this time young Halliday would surely have talked, the Toyota was one of a thousand Toyotas, the Special Branch had probably been waiting for him to be alone, and he knew how absurdly indiscreet he had been with Daintry. A second time the bell rang and then a third; there was nothing he could do but open. He went to the door with his hand on the revolver in his pocket, but it was of no more value than a rabbit's foot. He couldn't shoot his way out of an island. Buller gave him a spurious support, growling heavily, but he knew, when the door opened, Buller would fawn on whoever was there. He couldn't see through the stained glass which ran with the rain. Even when he opened the door he saw nothing distinctly – only a hunched figure.

‘It's a shocking night,' a voice he recognized complained to him out of the dark.

‘Mr Halliday – I wasn't expecting you.'

Castle thought: He's come to ask me to help his son, but what can I do?

‘Good boy. Good boy,' the almost invisible Mr Halliday said nervously to Buller.

‘Come in,' Castle assured him. ‘He's quite harmless.'

‘I can see he's a very fine dog.'

Mr Halliday entered cautiously, hugging the wall, and Buller wagged what he had of a tail and dribbled.

‘You can see, Mr Halliday, he's a friend of all the world. Take off your coat. Come and have a whisky.'

‘I'm not much of a drinking man, but I won't say No.'

‘I was sorry to hear on the radio about your son. You must be very anxious.'

Mr Halliday followed Castle into the living-room. He said, ‘He had it coming to him, sir, perhaps it will teach him a lesson. The police have been carting a lot of stuff out of his shop. The inspector showed me one or two of the things and really disgusting they were. But as I said to the inspector I don't suppose he read the stuff himself.'

‘I hope the police have not been bothering you?'

‘Oh no. As I told you, sir, I think they feel quite sorry for me. They know I keep a very different kind of shop.'

‘Did you have a chance to give him my letter?'

‘Ah, there sir, I thought it wiser not. Under the circumstances. But don't you worry. I passed the message on where it truly belongs.'

He raised a book which Castle had been trying to read and looked at the title.

‘What on earth do you mean?'

‘Well, sir, you've always been, I think, under a bit of a misunderstanding. My son never concerned himself with things in your way of business. But
they
thought it just as well – in case of trouble – that
you
believed . . .' He bent and warmed his hands in front of the gas fire, and his eyes looked up with a sly amusement. ‘Well, sir, things being as they are, we've got to get you out of here pretty quick.'

It came as a shock to Castle to realize how little he had been trusted even by those who had the most reason to trust.

‘If you'll forgive my asking, sir, where exactly are your wife and your boy? I've orders . . .'

‘This morning, when I heard the news about your son, I sent them away. To my mother. She believes we've had a quarrel.'

‘Ah, that's one difficulty out of the way.'

Old Mr Halliday, after warming his hands sufficiently, began to move around the room: he cast his eye over the bookshelves. He said, ‘I'll give as good a price for those as any other bookseller. Twenty-five pounds down – it's all you are allowed to take out of the country. I've got the notes on me. They fit my stock. All these World's Classics and Everyman's. They are not reprinted as they should be, and when they do reprint, what a price!'

‘I thought,' Castle said, ‘we were in a bit of a hurry.'

‘There's one thing I've learned,' Mr Halliday said, ‘in the last fifty years is to take things easy. Once start being hurried and you are sure to make mistakes. If you've got half an hour to spare always pretend to yourself you've got three hours. You did say something, sir, about a whisky?'

‘If we can spare the time . . .' Castle poured out two glasses.

‘We've got the time. I expect you have a bag packed with all the needful?'

‘Yes.'

‘What are you going to do about the dog?'

‘Leave him behind, I suppose. I hadn't thought . . . Perhaps you could take him to a vet.'

‘Not wise, sir. A connection between you and me – it wouldn't do – if they went searching for him. All the same we've got to keep him quiet for the next few hours. Is he a barker when he's left alone?'

‘I don't know. He's not used to being alone.'

‘What I have in mind is the neighbours complaining. One of them could easily ring the police, and we don't want them finding an empty house.'

‘They'll find one soon enough anyway.'

‘It won't matter when you're safe abroad. It's a pity your wife didn't take the dog with her.'

‘She couldn't. My mother has a cat. Buller kills cats at sight.'

‘Yes, they're naughty ones, those boxers, where cats are concerned. I have a cat myself.' Mr Halliday pulled at Buller's ears and Buller fawned on him. ‘It's what I said. If you are in a hurry you forget things. Like the dog. Have you a cellar?'