Иэн Рэнкин - Watchman

Somewhere behind him, in the early-evening twilight, came the sound of an explosion.

Miles stopped outside the Cordelia, a popular nouveau riche hotel off Hyde Park. The receptionist was listening to her pocket radio.

‘Has there been a news flash?’ he asked.

‘Yes, isn’t it awful? Another bomb.’

Miles nodded and headed for the lifts. The lift was mirrored, and riding it alone to the fifth floor, he tried not to catch a glimpse of himself. Another bomb. There had been one last week, in a car parked in Knightsbridge, and another had been defused just in time. London had taken on a siege mentality, and the security services were running around like so many ants in a glass case. Miles could feel a headache coming on. He knew that by the time he reached home, he would be ready for a confrontation. It was not a good sign, and that was part of the reason for this short break in his journey. He also wanted to make a few phone calls on the firm’s bill. Every little bit helped.

He knocked twice on the door of room 514, and it was opened by Jeff Phillips, looking tired, his tie hanging undone around his neck.

‘Hello, Miles,’ he said, surprised. ‘What’s up?’

Inside the room, Tony Sinclair was busy listening to something on a headset. The headset was attached to a tape recorder and a small receiver. He nodded in greeting at Miles, seeming interested in the conversation on which he was eavesdropping.

‘Nothing,’ said Miles. ‘I just wanted to check, that’s all. There’s been another bomb.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. I heard it go off as I was driving here. Somewhere near Piccadilly.’

Jeff Phillips shook his head. He poured some coffee from a thermos, gesturing with the cup toward his superior, but Miles waved away the offer.

He flicked through his tiny notebook, which was filled with telephone numbers and initials, nothing more. Yes, he did have a couple of calls to make, but they were not that important. He realized now that his reason for coming here was simply to defer his going home. There did not seem to be any good nights at home now, and mostly, he supposed, that was his fault. He would be irritable, persnickety, finding fault with small, unimportant things, and would store up his irritation deep within himself like the larva of a dung beetle, warm and quickening within its womb of dung. Jack had given him a year’s adoption of a dung beetle at London Zoo as a birthday present, and Miles had never received a more handsome gift in his life. He had visited the glass case, deep in the subdued light and warmth of the insect house, and had watched the beetle for a long time, marveling at the simplicity of its life.

What his colleagues did not know was that Miles Flint had found counterparts for them all in the beetle world.

He felt the pulse of the headache within him. A few whiskeys often did that. So why did he drink them? Well, he was a Scot after all. He was supposed to drink whiskey.

‘Do you have any aspirin, Jeff?’

‘Afraid not. Been on the bottle, have we?’

‘I’ve had a couple, yes.’

‘Thought I could smell it.’ Phillips sipped his tepid coffee.

Miles was thinking of James Bond, who was a Scot but drank martinis. Not very realistic, that. The resemblance between Miles and James Bond, as Miles was only too aware, stopped at their country of origin. Bond was a comic book hero, a superman, while he, Miles Flint, was flesh and blood and nerves.

And headache.

‘It’s been quiet here,’ said Phillips. ‘A few phone calls to his embassy, made in Arabic, just asking about the situation back home and if they had any of this week’s newspapers, and a call to Harrods, made in English, to ask what time they close. He went out for an hour and a half. Bought the Telegraph , would you believe, and a dirty magazine. Tony knows the name of it. I don’t go in for them myself. He also purchased two packets of Dunhill’s and one bottle of three-star brandy. That’s about it. Came back to his room. Telephoned to the States, to one of those recorded pornographic message services. Again Tony has the details. You can listen to the recording we made if you like. Tony reckons our man got the number from the magazine he bought.’

‘Who’s he speaking to just now?’

Phillips went across to check the notepad that lay on Tony Sinclair’s knees.

‘To Jermyn Street. Arranging a fitting. These people.’ Phillips shook his head in ironic disbelief.

Miles knew what he meant. The watchmen seemed to spend half their lives trailing men and women who did little more than buy expensive clothes and gifts for their families back home.

‘He’s making another call,’ said Tony Sinclair, the section’s most recent recruit. Miles was watching him for any signs of weakness, of hesitation or misjudgment. Tony was still on probation.

‘Speaking Arabic again,’ he said now, switching on the tape recorder. As he began to scribble furiously with his ballpoint pen, Jeff Phillips went to his shoulder to watch.

‘He’s arranging a meeting,’ Phillips murmured. ‘This looks a little more promising.’

Miles Flint, attuned to such things, doubted it, but it gave him a good excuse not to go home just yet. He would phone Sheila and tell her.

‘Mind if I come along on this one?’ he asked. Phillips shrugged his shoulders.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Your Arabic is as good as mine, I’m sure. But isn’t this supposed to be your night off?’

‘I’d like to stick with this one,’ lied Miles. ‘I’ll just make a quick call home.’

‘Fine,’ said Phillips. ‘I’ll go downstairs and fetch the car.’

Having put his car into the hotel’s basement garage, Miles began to unwind in the firm’s gleaming Rover.

Miles Flint was a watchman. It was his job to look and to listen, and then report back to his section chief, nothing more. He did not mind such a passive role in life, but was aware that others did not share his meticulous pleasure in sifting through the daily affairs of those he was sent to watch. Once or twice, to his certain knowledge, Billy Monmouth had tried to induce his promotion laterally through a word in the right ear. Miles did not want promotion. It suited him to be a watchman.

Billy and he had been invited to join the firm back in 1966, when it was just beginning to recover from a devastating few years of defection, rumor, and counter-rumor. It was said that a super-mole had confessed to wartime subversion, but was being kept under wraps, and that a more dangerous double agent had been active, too, in later years. Much soul-searching and navel-gazing had been taking place back then, and really, that sense of suspicion had never blown away, like rotting leaves left too long in a garden.

And now there were new scandals, new stories to be foisted on the same old public. One could choose to ignore it all, of course, and get on with life. Nevertheless, Billy and he had talked about these things over lunch.

The more Miles thought about Billy, the more it struck him how odd he had seemed at the club. He had laughed, but not with his usual timbre. Billy had been worried about something, but could not bring himself to speak of it. He was a longhorn beetle, the self-sufficient predator of the family. Miles wasn’t so sure about his own classification: most of the time he settled for the quiet life of the museum beetle. Jeff Phillips, on the other hand, driving the car with effortless grace, belonged to Buprestidae , the splendor beetles. They loved warmth and sunshine, were brightly colored, and spent their days sipping pollen and nectar. Ah yes, that was Jeff Phillips, with his silk ties and his noisy Italian shoes. Looking across at Phillips now, Miles remembered that despite the splendor beetle’s airs and graces, its young fed upon rotten wood and old vegetables. For some reason, the thought cheered him up immensely.