James Long - Sixth Column

‘Do you have a phone number?’

‘Oh, they’re not on the phone yet. They sent me a card last week. They’re doing up some tatty old place, living in a caravan. Here it is. I’ve got it.’

‘Perhaps you could give me the address.’

‘It doesn’t say. I am sorry. It just says they’ll send me all the details when they finally move in.’

‘Do you know her husband’s name?’

‘Oh no. Something French I think.’

‘What about parents, relations, any other way we could contact her?’

‘Now let me see. I know her mother married again and she lives in Australia, or was it New Zealand? That’s all I can remember.’

It seemed to be a dead end. ‘Is there a postmark on the card she sent?’

There was a doubtful silence. ‘It’s all squodgy. I think it starts with an E. Oh hang on, there’s a bit here. Shall I read it to you?’

‘Please do.’

‘Oh, yes, this might help. She says, “Life at La Maison Ruineuse is full of dust and dry rot. I’ll be glad to get to Cherbourg.” That sounds like the name of the house. Does that help?’

‘I think it’s probably just a joke name,’ he said tactfully. ‘But what was that about Cherbourg?’

‘Er, where is it… “I’ll be glad to get to Cherbourg for some fresh air. I’m going to a conference on the weekend of the twentieth. I’ll gaze across the Channel and give you a wave.”’

He thanked her and hung up. The twentieth was twelve days away. It took only one call to the Cherbourg Syndicat d’Initiatif to locate a hotel staging a medical conference. With three hundred delegates on their list, the hotel couldn’t help him find one whose surname he didn’t know. There was no Beevor so she was using her married name whatever that might be, but at least he had made some progress. He thought of phoning Heather, realized it would seem suspiciously soon and that anyway she might well be asleep after her night shift then fell into a reverie imagining a simpler world in which he could spend as much time as he wanted with whoever he wanted.

Ivor Sibley, who liked to know how his money was being spent, had a little bit of software that gave him an activity check on all the office phones as well as the computer network. A quick glance told him that someone was down in the office below, hitting the phones and a further check told him who was phoning and where.

By the time the clock reached ten, Ivor Sibley had been kept waiting for over an hour. Mossiman’s Belfry was a wonderful place to spend an evening, but only if you were eating there, which Sibley had rather hoped he was going to be. Cruelly, there was a menu on the table and he’d made the mistake of looking at it when he had thought food was going to be on the agenda. Then the waiter had returned.

‘Sir Greville says, will you have a drink while you wait and will you join them for coffee in a little while.’

Bastard. There wasn’t much he could do. He wasn’t a member, although he was increasingly inclined to think it was well worth the substantial subscription to have the advantages of private dining amongst tables protected by the discreet screening of money.

Sitting in the side room, making his second gin and tonic last, he knew he was being made to feel like a tradesman and tried to restrain his rising resentment. He had assumed Sir Greville must be dining important guests but when the waiter finally appeared with the summons to the table it was clear that he and Lady Viola had been the only ones there all along and Sibley fumed privately a little more.

‘What have you got, Sibley?’ demanded Lady Viola.

‘Good evening,’ he said with exaggerated politeness to both of them.

‘Good evening, Sibley,’ said Sir Greville. ‘I understand young Johnny’s efforts in Yorkshire have been productive?’

Lady Viola just reached out a hand in Sibley’s direction and snapped her fingers. He took two copies of Johnny’s report from his inside pocket and gave them one each. It was less than a page long and took them very little time to read.

‘Those numbers at the top,’ said Sibley. ‘We were hoping they might mean something to you.’

Sir Greville peered at them with raised eyebrows and the expression of someone examining a slightly smelly oyster.

‘They do,’ he said, ‘one of them anyway. The 4836 number, that’s the secure fax in my PA’s office. Don’t know about the rest.’

Lady Viola was still looking at the report. ‘Silly boy doesn’t say where he got it. Just some tosh about “an associate” of these dreadful women.’

Because he wanted to shake her for making him wait, though afterwards he rationalized it to himself as being because she and her husband were after all paying his bill, Sibley said very slowly and deliberately, ‘He got it from Sir Michael Parry.’

He couldn’t have hoped for a better effect.

‘From Michael?’ she said. ‘Don’t be absurd, you stupid man. How on earth could he have got anything from Michael?’ She clearly thought he had made a simple mistake.

‘He did, I assure you. He stayed with Sir Michael Parry last night in Yorkshire and found out that Parry has been helping these women. It sounds as though they came to him with the papers and Parry advised them to send them to the Hurst Inquiry.’

‘Michael Parry? Yorkshire?’ was all she could say.

Sir Greville gave her a concerned look and leaned towards Sibley. ‘But Johnny doesn’t know Parry. Never met him. We’ve kept it that way. Bit of a family thing, you see. There’s a past connection.’

‘Really? Well, he’s met him now. Of course, Johnny was there under a different name. Parry wouldn’t have known who he was.’

Lady Viola was belatedly coming to the boil and Sibley didn’t like the look in her eyes.

‘All my life,’ she said, ‘I have done everything I could to keep my son away from that man. Years of struggle. We employ you to do a job and you’ve managed to screw it up just like that.’

‘I beg your pardon, Lady Viola,’ Sibley said slowly, ‘I had no idea the man was involved. Even if I had known, I’m afraid I had also been given no information to suggest there would be any sensitivity in that direction.’

‘You should have known!’ she snapped. ‘What else don’t you know? You’re in the knowing business, for God’s sake. You’re paid to know.’

Her colour was rising, turning the deep tan to the colour of bloody battlefield mud. Her eyes had a glassy, wild stare in them. Sir Greville took one appalled look and changed the subject. Sibley’s relief was quickly demolished when he found what the new subject was.

‘This Quill character,’ said Sir Greville, ‘he’s still around.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid the first phase of our deterrent programme was nullified because he received a substantial inheritance. He turned down the job offer.’

‘I know that.’

‘We then took certain other steps to persuade him it would be in his interests to leave. One of my staff made the point to him in a rather direct way.’

‘And?’

‘He still appears obdurate. He did pay a visit to the local police to complain but we were able to pre-empt that by placing information in the system that indicated he had a somewhat unreliable personal history.’

‘Which leaves us where exactly?’

‘Which leaves us with the need to take a more firm approach still if you will sanction such a step.’

Sir Greville looked away and waved a dismissive hand. ‘I pay you to get results, Sibley. It’s no business of mine how you get them. I know you’ll stay within the law, of course.’

Always careful, thought Sibley. Perhaps he thinks I’m recording him. If so, he’s right.

Lady Viola hadn’t been listening. She had been sitting stiffly upright, staring with her eyes open unnaturally wide at the wall, drumming her fingers on the table. Now she turned abruptly back to Sibley.