Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

Another slapped Maxim across the face, but not very hard. "We can keep doing that 'til you tell us. "

Maxim goggled at them. "Bloody hell! I came down here to try and find him. If I knew where he was I wouldn't have come. I thought you were hiding him. "

"Don't give us that shit."

"If I knew where he waswhy would I come here?"

He was slapped again, still without much conviction. "You just tell us where he is. "

"I don't know. You had him at the Lord Howe, that's the last I know. I'm an Army officer and all I want to do is persuade him to go back to the Army. "

"Well, if you don't know where he is, where is he?"

Maxim stared back wearily.

"We're going to torture you, " one of them decided. "I mean like stick cigarettes in your face until you talk. "

Maxim did his best to shrug inside the ropes wrapping him to the chair. "Go ahead. It's a police job already so why not give them some solid evidence like burn marks?"

"Stuff the police."

"They're involved, from the moment you get those two to hospital. Unless you just leave us all here to die. "

The black boy suddenly keeled over and his head hit the concrete with a startling crack.

"Oh Christ," the torturer wavered. "Is he going to be all right?"

A door banged, echoing across the empty bay, and footsteps clattered towards them. The boys stepped back, looked hastily around, then just resigned themselves. Maxim tried to turn hishead to see, but Billy Dannhad already begun to talk before he came into view, with Dave Tanner limping behind.

"Jesus," he said softly. "I have seen some fuck-ups in my time, butyou lot, andthis…"

Billy Dann's office was long and narrow, almost as narrow as the desk placed across it just in front of the window, but very high because it had been partitioned out of a much bigger room. The walls were lined with old fights posters and photographs of boxers in stiff, ferocious poses, and it had a musty, faded feel to it, contrasting with the bright cleanliness of the gym just up the hall.

By now it was dark, with just two small desk lamps throwing clear-cut areas of light: one at a typist's table halfway down the room where Maxim had finally met up with a pint of cold lager, one at the desk where Dann waslistening on the telephone and sipping a small glass of neat gin. The rest of the room was lit only by the dim bluish light from a street lamp below the uncurtained window.

Dannput down the phone. "One busted forearm, one ruptured spleen. They have to remove that. They say they'll be all right. Might even fight again. It's the arm that worries me. If you remember what it felt like, broken, every time you throw a punch… I don't much like you, Major. " Maxim just nodded. "What about the police?"

"They've been there. I don't know what they asked, I didn't get to talk to the boys… maybe they'll think they filled each other in, I don't know. If nobody makes a complaint… What are you going to say?"

"Nothing if nobody else does. " Maxim had a sore forearm and. stomach, a slight headache and a torn seam in his lightweight jacket. "I'll send you the tailor's bill."

"You do that, Major,"Dannsaid heavily. "You do that."

"And I still want to know where Ronnie Blagg is."

"So do I. I'm not arsing you around, I just don't know. When we got him out of here, a couple of the boys had a cuppa with him at a caff down the road. An hour later, he rings in, he says he thinks somebody's following him. That's all. Nobody's seen him. I said something to the lads, I don't knowwhat, like your people had caught up with him… They must've got the idea from that, called Dave Tanner and got him to set you up… I mean it was stupid, just plain wet-nappy stupid. "

"D'you have any idea where he might have gone?"

"He had a mate in the country. Kent, I think. "

"I know that one. He's not there."

"Was it your people? I mean the Military Police – what's the Army call them: the Redcaps?"

"Actually the Army calls them 'those fucking MPs'. No, they wouldn't have followed him, they'd have grabbed him. He belongs to them, now. I don't know who it was. " He took a drink. "You can't think of anybody else he might go to?"

"Tanner, he'd be the only one. "

There was a silence. Dannlooked at Maxim's glass, then took a bottle of gin from a desk drawer and refilled his own. He wasn't a drinking man. At fifty-five his stomach was as flat as an ironing board. He took a big swallow and sighed.

Maxim asked carefully: "Did he see you before he went to the country, when he first came back from Germany?"

Dannconsidered. "Just a minute or two."

"Did he say anything why he deserted?"

"He said… This is unofficial? – I really mean that."

"Yes."

"Well, he said he might've killed somebody. "

"He told me he had, quite sure. "

Dannlooked relieved, then curious. "And you didn't tell nobody?"

"Not officially."

"I'm buggered if I understand that Army of yours."

"Me too. But you were never in the services yourself?"Dann wascertainly the age for National Service, if not the war itself.

He tapped his left ear. "I've got about twenty per cent hearing in this one, that's what they said last time. That happened in the ring, we didn't have head-guards in those days. When I was just seventeen. That's why I took up PE, training. Another punch and I could've lost the lot. " Could you have been a contender?"

Dannthought for a moment. "You have to say yes. You have to believe it. But how much does anybody else know about… about Ron and this business?"

"I've read the German papers and there's nothing been said, so we don't think they've made the connection. So if you see Ron, tell him if he goes back and keeps shut-up, he'll only have the AWOL to answer for. But I'd still rather talk to him myself."

Dannnodded slowly, then asked:"Who d'you mean by 'we'?"

Maxim grinned suddenly at the idea of dragging George openly into this. "Nobody's who going public on it. So if he does get in touch…" He stood up and wriggled carefully. "I'm stiffening up. I'd do better to jog home than drive."

Dannstood up, too. "You did better against those… thosetwats than I'd've expected. Some of them must be near half your age. I still don't like you much, Major, but I don't say I've liked most of the best fighters I've trained. In a way, I won't say I like Ron too much, and he could have been a contender. "

"In its small way, the Army also contends. You've still got my number in case anything comes up? It could be important. And still unofficial. "

He walked slowly towards the hall, stretching at each step like a newly awakened cat. He had an early appointment the next day.

Agnes Algar had dressed with particular care on Friday morning. She chose a slightly flared skirt of fawn flannel, plain white silk shirt with a demurely high neckline, a jacket in soft pastel-brown tweed with a standing collar, absolutely plain but very expensive Italian court shoes and a matching handbag that was small enough to be ladylike but not so small as to seem frivolous. Around her neck she put a thin early Victorian gold chain, on her right hand a fire opal she had recently had reset in a simple gold ring, on her left wrist the gold Baume amp;Mercierwatch.

Agnes thought of her clothes and jewellery in such terms, just as she thought of her car as a two-year-old 3-door Chevette ES in Regatta Blue with wing mirrors and two radio aerials. She lived in a world of detail and precision, of getting the names right and the appearances correct, and had done ever since she joined the Security Service straight from Oxford fourteen years before. She would have described herself quite objectively as aged 35 and looking neither older nor younger, height 5 feet 4 and usually just under nine stone with a figure that was well kept rather than dramatic. Her hair was light ginger and she had long ago given up trying to curl it; she had a snub nose and blue eyes in an oval face that was cheerful but perhaps forgettable. But being forgettable was part of her job; a jigsaw piece that fitted invisibly into any puzzle.