John le Carre: Our kind of traitor

*

In defeat, Dima's bearing is embarrassingly fulsome. He's not merely gracious, he's moved to tears of admiration and gratitude. First he must press Perry into his great chest, which Perry swears is made of horn, for the three-times Russian embrace. The tears meanwhile are rolling down his cheeks, and consequently Perry's neck.

'You're a goddam fair-play English, hear me, Professor? You're a goddam English gentleman like in books. I love you, hear me? Gail, come over here.' For Gail the embrace is even more reverent – and cautious, for which she is grateful. 'You take care this stupid fuck, hear me? He can't play tennis no good, but I swear to God he's some kinda goddam gentleman. He's the Professor of fair play, hear me?' – repeating the mantra as if he has just invented it.

He swings away to bark irritably into a mobile that the baby-faced bodyguard is holding out to him.

*

The spectators file slowly out of the court. The little girls need hugs from Gail. Gail is happy to oblige. One of Dima's sons drawls 'cool play, man' in American English as he stalks past Perry on his way to his lesson, his cheek still scarlet from the slap. The beautiful Natasha attaches herself to the procession, leatherbound tome in hand. Her thumb marks the place where her reading was disturbed. Bringing up the rear comes Tamara on Dima's arm, her bishop-grade Orthodox cross glinting in the risen sunshine. In the aftermath of the game, Dima's limp is more pronounced. As he walks, he leans back, chin thrust forward, shoulders squared to the enemy. The bodyguards shepherd the group down the winding stone path. Three black-windowed people carriers wait behind the hotel to take them home. Mark the pro is last to leave.

'Great play, sir!' – clapping Perry on the shoulder. 'Fine court craft. A little ragged on the backhands there, if I may make so bold. Maybe we should do a little work on them?'

Side by side, Gail and Perry watch speechless as the cortege bumps its way along the potholed spine road and vanishes into the cedar trees that shelter the house called Three Chimneys from prying eyes.

*

Luke looks up from the notes he has been taking. As if to order, Yvonne does the same. Both are smiling. Gail is trying to avoid Luke's eye, but Luke is staring straight at her so she can't.

'So, Gail,' he says briskly. 'Your turn again, if we may. Mark was a pest. All the same, he does seem to have been quite a mine of information. What extra nuggets can you offer us about the Dima household?' – then gives a flick of both little hands at once, as if urging his horse on to greater things.

Gail glances at Perry, she is not sure what for. Perry does not return her glance.

'He was just so snaky,' she complains, using Mark, rather than Luke, as the object of her disfavour, and wrinkles up her face to show how the bad taste lingers.

*

Mark had barely sat beside her on the bottom bench, she began, before he started banging on about what an important millionaire his Russian friend Dima was. According to Mark, Three Chimneys was only one of his several properties. He'd got another in Madeira, another in Sochi on the Black Sea.

'And a house outside Berne,' she went on, 'where his business is based. But he's peripatetic. Part of the year he's in Paris, part Rome, part Moscow, according to Mark' – and watched as Yvonne made another note. 'But home, as far as the kids are concerned, is Switzerland and school is some millionaire internat establishment in the mountains. 'He talks about the company. Mark assumes he owns it. There's a company registered in Cyprus. And banks. Several banks. Banking's the big one. That was what brought him to the island in the first place. Antigua currently boasts four Russian banks, by Mark's count, plus one Ukrainian. They're just brass plates in shopping malls and a phone on some lawyer's desk. Dima's one of the brass plates. When he bought Three Chimneys, that was for cash too. Not suitcases of it but laundry baskets, somewhat ominously, lent to him by the hotel, according to Mark. And twenty-dollar bills, not fifties. Fifties are too dicey. He bought the house, and a run-down sugar mill, and the peninsula they stand on.'

'Did Mark mention a figure?' – Luke is back.

'Six million US. And the tennis wasn't pure pleasure either. Or not to begin with,' she continued, surprised by how much she remembered of the awful Mark's monologue. 'Tennis in Russia is a major status symbol. If a Russian tells you he plays tennis, he's telling you he's stinking rich. Thanks to Mark's brilliant tuition, Dima went back to Moscow and won a cup and everybody gasped. But Mark isn't allowed to tell that story, because Dima prides himself on being self-made. It was only because Mark trusted me so completely that he felt able to make an exception. And if I'd like to pop round to his shop some time, he had a dandy little room upstairs where we could continue our conversation.'

Luke and Yvonne offered sympathetic smiles. Perry offered no smile at all.

'And Tamara?' Luke asked.

'God-smacked he called her. And barking mad with it, according to the islanders. Doesn't swim, doesn't go down to the beach, doesn't play tennis, doesn't talk to her own children except about God, ignores Natasha completely, barely talks to the natives except for Elspeth, wife of Ambrose, front-of-house manager. Elspeth works in a travel agency, but if the family's around she drops everything and helps out. Apparently one of the maids borrowed some of Tamara's jewellery for a dance not long ago. Tamara caught her before she could put it back and bit her hand so hard she had to have twelve stitches in it. Mark said if it had been him he'd have had an injection for rabies as well.'

'So now tell us about the little girls who came and sat beside you, please, Gail,' Luke suggested.

*

Yvonne was leading the case for the prosecution, Luke was playing her junior, and Gail was in the box trying to keep her temper, which was what she told her witnesses to do on pain of excommunication.

'So were the girls already ensconced up there, Gail, or did they come skipping up to you the moment they saw the pretty lady all on her own?' Yvonne asked, putting her pencil to her mouth while she studied her notes.

'They walked up the steps and sat one either side of me. And they didn't skip. They walked.'

'Smiling? Laughing? Being scamps?'

'Not a smile between them. Not a half of one.'

'Had the girls, in your opinion, been dispatched to you by whoever was looking after them?'

'They came strictly of their own accord. In my opinion.'

'You're sure of that?' – becoming more Scottish and persistent.

'I saw the whole thing happen. Mark had made a pass at me that I didn't need, so I stomped up to the top bench to get as far away from him as I could. Nobody on the top bench except me.'

'So where were the wee girls located at this point? Below you? Along the row from you? Where, please?'

Gail took a breath to control herself, then spoke with deliberation:

'The wee girls were sitting on the second tier, with Elspeth. The older one turned round and looked up at me, then she spoke to Elspeth. And no, I didn't hear what she said. Elspeth turned and looked at me, and nodded yes to the older girl. The two girls had a consultation, stood up, and came walking up the steps. Slowly.'

'Don't push her around,' said Perry.

*

Gail's testimony has become evasive. Or so it sounds to her lawyer's ear, and no doubt to Yvonne's also. Yes, the girls arrived in front of her. The elder girl dropped a bob that she must have learned at dancing lessons, and asked in very serious English with only a slight foreign accent: 'May we sit with you, please, miss?' So Gail laughed and said, 'You may indeed, miss,' and they sat down either side of her, still without smiling.