Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘A bomb?’ Gaunt suggested.

‘In a medical bag? Too conspicuous.’ Wiseman’s moustache twitched with amusement. ‘Imagine — Hinsch on the train — an old lady in need of assistance — if you can’t save her, my friend, why are you dressed for the part?’ He leant forward, planting his elbows on the desk, his fingertips together. ‘Is he a doctor?’ he asked, pressing them to his lips. ‘And why Laurel? German American, you say, Wolff. Might have been travelling on false papers. But we need the names of everyone the Navy brought ashore at Ramsgate…’ He raised his chin enquiringly.

‘Last week of May,’ Wolff replied. ‘Travelling first class.’

‘Check them all. London to organise,’ Wiseman was directing his gaze to Thwaites. ‘Coffee, anybody? Think your chap can organise some, Norman?’

‘Managed it in a Turkish trench,’ Thwaites remarked laconically.

Wolff stood up and walked to the window, shielding his body with the curtain. He’d summoned them to the Consulate because it was more discreet than the safe apartment in the early hours.

‘They clock on at eight,’ Thwaites called from the door.

‘Same funny little chap,’ Wiseman added. ‘Only does a day shift.’

There was a taxicab at the recruiting office; further up the street, a delivery at the Custom House, and a few early business birds were striding out from the South Ferry subway, tightly buttoned-up in their grey overcoats from Brooks Brothers.

‘There’s something you should know,’ Wolff declared, his voice rising to command their attention. ‘The German spy I killed…’ he paused, reluctant to admit his mistake: too late. ‘The thing is… he was a police spy, not a German one, I’m afraid.’

Wiseman picked up a pen and began turning it in his right hand, his gaze fixed on his desk blotter, and Thwaites was contemplating his shoes. ‘Christ,’ Gaunt exclaimed under his breath. ‘Christ,’ he intoned again, plangently this time, craning forward as if he was scrutinising a dangerous creature. ‘You can’t distinguish friend from foe, can you?’

‘Can anyone in this business?’ Wolff remarked provocatively. For once, Gaunt’s anger would be welcome — but he was struggling to articulate it: ‘After the ship, it’s the damnedest thing…’

‘Ah, coffee,’ interjected Wiseman in a ‘not in front of the servants’ voice. ‘Well done, White. Over there, please, expect you know how everyone likes it.’ The silence was filled by the polite tinkle of china cups as Thwaites’ man placed the tray on a table between the windows. ‘Plenty of sugar for the lieutenant,’ Wiseman suggested, with an impish glint in his eye. Does he know about the police spy? Wolff wondered, or is it simply that he doesn’t care?

‘There may be repercussions with the police but we haven’t time to worry about them,’ Wiseman observed the instant the valet closed the door. ‘Delmar. We have his scent — let’s get after him. We’ve got the Czechs in Baltimore, haven’t we? Well, tell them to wake up. Better still, go there, Norman — see to things. What’s Hinsch got in his medical bag? What’s he planning? Captain Gaunt and I will inform London.’

‘You asked, “Why Laurel?”’ Wolff placed his cup on the desk. ‘That’s undrinkable.’

‘You know?’

‘A guess. The station’s halfway between Baltimore and Washington. I think they’ve used it before — they seemed to know the geography of the place.’

‘So you think he’s in the Washington area. Let’s see if London comes back with a name for us.’ Wiseman contemplated Wolff over his fingertips for a few seconds, then said: ‘And Hinsch — do you think he’ll see de Witt again? — only if it’s necessary, of course?’

Wolff shrugged: ‘It’s possible. He doesn’t trust anyone who was part of the von Rintelen operation — but I have a reputation.’

When they’d said what they wanted to, Wolff went to his apartment, poured a breakfast whisky, then another, and fell asleep on the couch. He woke in the middle of the afternoon but lay under a blanket, gazing at the shadows on his ceiling. ‘Don’t worry about the police,’ Thwaites had said to him after the meeting at the Consulate. ‘We’ll manage it.’ It was plain enough from his voice that he had known for some time. ‘Sir William doesn’t want to deflect you,’ he explained. ‘These things happen. You were protecting yourself.’

These things happen was the kitchen philosophy of his mother when a treasured object splintered into a thousand pieces on her flagged floor. It wasn’t an adequate explanation for six inches of steel in a man’s chest or the astonishment he’d left frozen on his face.

It was dusk and the shadows had gone when Wolff was roused from his couch by the telephone. His hand hovered over the earpiece, in two minds whether to answer.

‘So you are home.’ She sounded piqued and pleased.

‘It’s been a couple of days — that’s all,’ he teased her.

‘But there are things I wish to discuss with you — I have no engagements this evening,’ she said sheepishly; ‘I know it isn’t ladylike to say so.’

He laughed. ‘But you’re free of that sort of idle convention, aren’t you?’

He felt guilty in the taxicab to Laura’s apartment but not enough to dampen his anticipation of pleasure in her company. She looked very much a lady in a finely pleated ivory gown. Her aunt fussed over her like an old priestess at a sacrifice. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

‘She means well,’ Laura said as he escorted her to the waiting motor car. ‘It’s just that sometimes she treats me as if I were a village girl in Ireland,’ she paused, colouring a little, ‘in need of a match.’

‘I see,’ he smiled affectionately at her. ‘But she’s right, you look very beautiful.’

She blushed deeper, like the pink of a wild hedge rose, turning her face from him but not before he caught the suggestion of a smile.

They chatted and laughed as she described her last suffrage meeting in a rough neighbourhood on the Lower East Side. An Italian mama had taken exception to the barrage of insults her son was directing at the platform and chased him from the hall.

They were to dine at Sherry’s, one of the best and dearest restaurants in town. Why? she asked. For the hell of it, and in honour of St Valentine, to celebrate his birthday in a fortnight’s time, but mostly for the enjoyment of her company, he said. He didn’t need to pay Sherry’s prices for that, she assured him.

A perfectly supercilious French waiter showed them to their table.

‘Parisian,’ Wolff observed.

‘Have you been to Paris?’ she asked. ‘I want to travel, I feel so uneducated — I haven’t left these shores. My father says not while the war’s on — not after the Lusitania. ’

‘And you always obey your father?’ he teased.

‘No. But I don’t like to trouble him unnecessarily,’ she said defensively. ‘He’s very patient with me, but protective.’

‘And he’s right to be careful,’ Wolff remarked, conscious of the irony.

He ordered oysters — Blue Points — then English pheasant, and she requested the consommé and chicken fricassee, accompanied by wine that wouldn’t embarrass the waiter. For a time they spoke of Europe, the cities Laura hoped to visit when the world was at peace, and his memories of them before the war. ‘We always speak of the future and how things should be, never — or hardly ever — of the past,’ she observed. ‘I know so little about your life — your childhood in Holland and England, and South Africa, that’s all, and yet it’s as if we’ve been friends for ever.’ Embarrassed perhaps that her voice betrayed too much warmth, she began to concentrate on her plate.