Иэн Рэнкин - Watchman

‘Look, it’s quite simple. All I’m asking—’

‘How long?’

Sizewell glanced toward him, then away. He crossed to the window and stared out through the heavy net curtain. The curtaining came with the job. It was bomb-resistant, there to catch shards of glass and trap them. But he was not bomb-resistant. He turned.

‘Look, Partridge, I happen to be friendly with the PM, and—’

Partridge had already risen to his feet and was approaching the telephone. He bent down toward the wall socket and pulled out the connector.

‘Satisfied?’ he asked with a smile.

Sizewell strode over toward him. ‘No, I’m bloody not, and if that’s your attitude—’

Harry Sizewell’s cheeks were a strong color of red already, partly natural, partly from anger and frustration. They grew even redder when Partridge, seeming hardly to move at all, struck him with first the palm and then the back of his hand. Sizewell’s mouth opened, and his eyes grew foggy like a botched piece of double glazing.

‘You’re acting like a child,’ Partridge said. ‘For God’s sake, that’s no way for someone in your position to behave. We all have to deal with these sorts of thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more pressing matters.’

‘I’ll report this, Partridge, don’t think that I won’t!’

But the door was already closing. Sizewell touched his face with his fingers, feeling the soft red of the slap and behind it the fierce burning of humiliation.

‘Don’t think I won’t,’ he muttered, reconnecting the telephone.

King’s Cross on a Monday morning had the scowling face of a spoiled child. Partridge liked railway stations for their human- interest value. Low-life scoundrels rubbed shoulders with haughty businessmen, while Pavlovian clusters of travelers sipped gray tea and watched the flickering departures board.

A ragged creature shuffled his feet to a tune played on the harmonica, while his free hand jostled for money from the restless commuters. He was not having much luck, and moved along quickly with a sideways, crablike motion, while the conspiracy to ignore his existence held fast.

While Partridge watched this circus, the old boy watched the trains themselves. It was a hobby he had held dear for over forty years. He was standing at the very farthest tip of the platform, beside two other spotters, one a teenager, unhandsome and dressed in the perennial duffel coat, the other a man in his thirties, who looked like an off-shift station employee. The director seemed to know this man, for they had swapped notes at one point, while Partridge, halfway down the platform and looking for all the world like a civil servant, watched. Partridge had taken up train spotting only after having discovered that it was the one real passion in his superior’s life. He checked his sleek watch now. It was ten-seventeen.

‘Miles,’ Partridge said affably, ‘good of you to come. The old boy would like a word.’

The dung beetle comes of a very good family, Scarabeidae , among which sits on high the sacred scarab. The ancient Egyptians worshipped it like some deity. Silent, black, the scarab seemed to hold within itself the power and the meaning of the universe.

And for this reason, Miles liked to think of his most superior officer as the sacred scarab, most honored of all the beetles.

‘Good morning, sir.’

Miles’s greeting went unanswered as the director busied himself jotting down an engine number.

‘I only collect the engine numbers, you know,’ he said at last, as the train pulled to a stop. ‘Some enthusiasts collect carriage numbers, too. But there’s such a thing as being over-enthusiastic, don’t you agree?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Some spotters, well, they always need to know more. Their curiosity can never be satisfied. Then there are others like me, like Mr. Partridge here, who are interested in only the one part of the hobby, and we stick to that. Do you see?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Miles, not seeing at all.

‘Miles, I’m not famous for circumlocution. You’ve been doing some hunting within the department. I want to know why.’

‘Well...’ began Miles.

A woman was having trouble opening the door of her carriage, and Partridge rushed forward to help her. She seemed impressed, and glanced back at him as she walked up the platform, a heavy bag hanging from one arm. Partridge came to rejoin them, seeming pleased with himself. More than ever he reminded Miles of Platyrhopalopsi s melyi. Mel , Latin for honey. Partridge’s smile oozed from his face.

‘Well, sir,’ Miles began again, ‘I was just a little worried by the Latchkey business, that’s all.’

‘Worried?’ said Partridge.

‘Yes. You see, there was something about that operation which struck a wrong chord.’

‘Your own bungling, perhaps?’

‘All right, I fell for a very old trick, but it’s more than that. I’m not just trying to cover up my mistakes.’

‘Then just what exactly are you trying to do?’ asked Partridge.

‘I merely wanted to be sure that my own mistake had been the only one made.’

‘And that involved checking on Mr. Partridge and myself?’ The old boy was fingering his dog-eared notebook. It looked for all the world like a coded series, all those columns of numbers.

‘It was routine, sir. I was looking at everyone.’

‘We know that,’ snapped the director. ‘You’d be surprised what we know. But you have to admit that your investigation has been anything but “routine.” You must realize that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Now let’s get some tea and talk about cynegetics.’

‘You were a classics man, weren’t you, Flint?’

Miles watched the Earl Grey being poured, while Partridge stared from the window of the hotel’s morning room. A few turnings had lifted them out of the immediate squalor of King’s Cross and dropped them in this backwater of tranquility. Miles felt that this would be where the interrogation really started.

‘I was, yes.’

‘Then you’ve probably heard the word “cynegetic”?’

‘I know that kynegetes means hunter.’

‘Quite so. There is, and this is for your ears only, a very small unit within the department. Someone somewhere decided to call it the Cynegetic Section. Someone with a classics degree, perhaps.’ The director smiled to himself. ‘Anyway, Cynegetics is involved with the rooting out of, well, let’s just say of anyone who might be acting in a suspicious manner. Especially, it is interested in those who appear to be hunting within the department.’

‘I see.’

‘As you were doing,’ added Partridge, turning from the window to add just a touch of milk to his tea, stirring it slowly. ‘Very ably, I might add.’

‘And,’ said the director, ‘as others seem to be doing. You met with Richard Mowbray recently?’

‘I’ve been assigned to the same case.’

‘Yes, but before that. He followed you to a record shop. Cynegetics were following him .’

‘I’ve got nothing to do with Mowbray, sir.’

‘We’re aware of that,’ answered Partridge. God, thought Miles, what a double-act they make. Such timing.

‘But it does seem rather a large coincidence,’ the old boy said on cue. ‘Doesn’t it?’

Miles decided not to answer. Through the morning-room doors he could see a whispered commotion in the lobby. A suitcase had been left unattended, and the staff didn’t want to touch it.

‘Miles,’ began the director solicitously, ‘I’m retiring soon. Perhaps as soon as the end of this year. And I don’t want to find, as some of my predecessors have found, any blemish staining the last days of my public career, or of my ensuing retirement, come to that. You understand? A fairly substantial honor is not too far away.’