John Lawton - Riptide

A thump-thuddy-thump brought him back to the present world, the present continent. It was coming from his outer office. He pulled the door open and looked out. Corporal Tosca was bouncing a half-size basketball off the wall and occasionally dropping it into a half-size net tacked up above the President’s photograph. She bounced with it, breasts rising as she stood on tiptoe and pitched. It was all but impossible to balance well. Her next throw went wild, the ball roared back over her head and Cal caught it neatly. She turned to him. Snatched the ball back.

‘You can’t play,’ she said through a mouthful of gum. ‘You’re taller’n me.’

Most people were, Cal thought.

‘Where’s Janis?’ he said.

‘Who’s Jams?’

‘My regular woman.’

‘You have a regular woman?’

‘I mean… I meant… my regular assistant.’

‘Oh. Her. She flew home. Pregnant. [Pause.] Wasn’t you, was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t!’

‘Guess not. You don’t look the type. Still, she’s gone now. I’m your regular woman.’

‘You are?’

‘You bet.’ She chewed vigorously and bounced the ball off the floor with the flat of her hand. She dribbled better than she threw. ‘Tell you what, you can play if you take a handicap.’

‘Handicap?’

‘You have to stand on one leg.’

Cal was a lousy player, but even standing on one leg he beat her five times out of five. Every time he dropped the ball through the net she chewed furiously on her gum. At six out of six, he said, ‘I have to go to England.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘I hesitate to say this, but if you’re my clerk you’ll be in charge of the office while I’m gone.’

‘Okey-dokey. I’ll dust your spook files and darn your spy’s outfit and knit little covers for your tommy guns.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Cal. ‘Is nothing serious?’

Tosca stopped chewing, blew out a bubble of pink goo to the size of a cue ball and then burst it with her teeth.

‘Not much,’ she said.

It was a pity they could not run to a two-way mirror. Stilton had never seen a two-way mirror. The FBI had them in the flicks. A two-way mirror would really make him feel like a spy rather than just a policeman. Not that he was not utterly proud to be an officer of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch-it just lacked a whisper of romance, that dark hint of adventure.

He sat in the next room with the lights out. Watching Thesiger and his quarry through the inch-open door. Thesiger was talking to a Dutchman-Jeroen Smulders. It was the third time he’d had him in since he was picked up in a dinghy off the coast of Essex. He was Dutch-Stilton was satisfied of that-and neither he nor Squadron Leader Thesiger had been able to find a codebook among his effects-a Dutch/English pocket dictionary, a Lutheran bible, a collection of half a dozen worn, well-thumbed love letters-but he was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a German spy. Thesiger had had the man checked out by the M.O. ‘Just for your own sake-no communicable diseases, that sort of thing.’ And the M.O. had confirmed everything Stilton had suggested. Smulders was nearer thirty than the forty his papers claimed-his hair had been taken up at the roots over the frontal lobes to age him-his sideburns treated with peroxide-two teeth pulled recently-and fifteen pounds of flab added by stuffing himself over a matter of a few weeks to disguise a hard core of underlying muscle. He could take it off as easily as he had put it on with a dash of will-power. Smulders was young, fit and probably trained.

‘Trained what?’ was the question Stilton had put to himself. Your run-of-the-mill spy (was there such a thing?) didn’t need to have the physique of a Spartan warrior. Your run-of-the-mill spy more than likely was a forty-two year old Dutch printer, hotfoot from Delft, telling you he was fleeing the enemy. The Germans had gone to a lot of trouble with this man. But too quickly, the new body, the new persona, sat atop the old too loosely.

Stilton saw the two men rise. Saw Thesiger shaking hands with Smulders, wishing him good luck. Smulders gathering up his papers, walking out into his new life, safe in Britain, an island haven in an occupied Europe.

Thesiger lit up a fag. Stilton took his hat and his mackintosh off the back of the door and pulled it wide. Thesiger perched on a corner of his desk, the epitome of calm. He was not one of those officers for whom ‘on duty’ required a stiff upper lip and a ramrod backbone, any more than it seemed to require a regulation uniform. Thesiger was frequently to be found in corduroy trousers or a rough woollen pullover or with a tatty old cravat tucked around his neck-the blue battledress with its insignia of rank the only concession he made. Most of the time he was to be found with his feet up-and on cold days this winter he’d sat with his feet in the bottom drawer of his desk for warmth, until the day a Wren came in without knocking and he’d stood too sharply in the presence of a lady and shot through the bottom of the drawer.

‘Have you got a few minutes?’ he said.

‘O’ course. He gets a lift to the station. One of my blokes gets on the London train with him. Another picks him up at Fenchurch Street. Routine stuff. Doesn’t need a Chief Inspector.’

Thesiger held out a packet of Craven A.

‘No thanks, sir. I’ve given up. Strictly a pipe man from now on.’

‘Given up?’ Thesiger could not keep the astonishment out of his voice. People didn’t give up cigarettes. They either smoked or they didn’t. ‘Ah well… tell me, Chief Inspector. Do I detect a sour note in your use of the word “routine”?’

‘All I meant was that anyone could do it. I meant no offence.’

‘And I took none. But it does seem to me that you think all this is a bit beneath you.’

‘Not exactly. But it’s hardly using me to the full, is it? When I was seconded to the unit I thought it was because I’d fluent German, because I knew Germans… and I’ve picked up more than a smattering of Polish and Czech in the last four years.’

‘Anyone could do what you do?’

‘Doesn’t take what I know to tail a few blokes around London.’

‘Then we must see if we can’t make better use of your talents.’

‘It was the kind of remark Stilton had become used to from the toff’s. Three years a serving Tommy and almost thirty as a copper had rubbed in the deferential nature of the Forces. Merit had little or nothing to do with it. You were born to lead or you weren’t. And Stilton wasn’t. It all came down to class. Age-he was fifteen or more years older than Thesiger-and experience-he’d been in the last war, when Theisger was still a schoolboy-counted for little. It was the sort of thing that took a war to change. The first year of Walter Stilton’s war had been routine. The second year, since Dunkirk, had been one of the best of his life-working for Thesiger as a ‘spycatcher’. He and Thesiger got on very well. He’d rarely met a toff less strait-jacketed by his class. They understood one another very well. Thesiger could drop the upper crust habitual allusions and ellipses of speech to talk plainly when he had to. And still it left Stilton frustrated. Thesiger’s generosity of spirit was sincere, as sincere as his material generosity (he was the sort of bloke who’d share his flask and sandwiches with you), but it was unlikely to be followed up by any action. He’d interrogate Jerry-Stilton and blokes like Stilton would traipse after them in the pouring rain noting their movements in little black notebooks.

Thesiger sat down again-stretched out his legs, heels resting on the edge of his desk, talked through a puff of smoke, the cigarette waggling in his lips as he did so.