Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

Caswell said: "He's a bloody sight better than you'd expect. I suppose you're offering me a job, too?"

"Yes." Maxim forced himself to look Caswell in the eyes. "I've got no bullshit to spread on it. It's a good job to say No to. You're a married man."

"I've been a married man as long as you've known me. It didn't stop you trying to get me killed before. "

Maxim smiled. "I'd still settle for the wheels and whatever you've got in your bottom drawer. "

Blagg looked puzzled; Caswell moved very slowly to light a fresh cigarette, one-handed, and said with wide-eyed innocence: "I wouldn't know what you're talking about, Major."

"I don't either, but I'd still like to borrow it. I've heard you often enough about what the world's coming to and how when you left the service you were going to be damn sure you had something to defend your home and family with. "

After a pause, Caswell said: "There's an automatic shotgun."

"Automaitc?"

"I know, I know." Soldiers despise the automatic shotgun, which is strictly speaking only semi-automatic, reloading itself after each shot, as being too complex and likely to go wrong. The SASpreferred a pump-action type for blowing away locked doors and sometimes softer targets. "But you try using a pump-action with a stiff elbow; take you a week. It's the usual Browning; holds five."

Blagg asked: "Aren't theylegal?" That idea seemed to shock him as much as the automaticness.

"Oh yes," Caswell said, "if you've got a licence. I have."

"I'll take it," Maxim said, "if the shot's the right size."

"Special SG." That was a form of buckshot, quite big enough to kill a man at twenty metres. "But why are you scratching around for stuff like this?"

"Jim, you just don't know how unofficial we are. All I've got so far is two thirty-eights, mine and the one Ron was using."

Blagg's knobbly face cracked into a happy smile, showing very white but irregular teeth. "You hung onto it, then. I was beginning to like that one." What he meant, Maxim reflected, was that he'd killed two people with that pistol – though that was no bad reason to like a gun. "Mind," Blagg added, "I'd as soon use the Browning, if you don't want it, sir?"

"That's mine, lad," Caswell said. "You can use the grenades."

Maxim stared. "Whatgrenades?"

"I was going to tell you about them."

Maxim took his own car down to the village to stock up on food and put together a first-aid kit from a chemist that stayed open late. When he got back the garage hadclosed signs out and Blagg was checking the tyre pressures of the Renault on the forecourt. Caswell waved Maxim through the sliding door to the harbour of lost cars; both he and Blagg had changed into baggy trousers, drab shirts and jackets with lots of pockets. Agnes must have rung.

"We're all loaded up," Caswell reported crisply. "The young lady from Five rang to say they're as sure as they can be about the place. She didn't say where, just to meet her outsidethe old John Barnes building at Finchley Road station; she said you'd know it. I told her we'd be there at 2100. " Half an hour ago, he'd have said nine o'clock.

Maxim parked his car among the drop-outs, a little saddened to see how well it fitted in, and carried the bag of first aid and his holdall out to the Renault. They helped him. The hatchback was open before he got there – the Browning and grenades had to be in there somewhere, but nicely and casually concealed – and they stowed his stuff for him, smiling cheerfully the while. Then Caswell held out the keys so that he could drive the first stretch, to get to know the car, the way a commander should.

God damn it!-this isn't an exercise. It isn't even The Real Thing, a Widow's Pension or Glory. It's just an amateur-night effort to save something from somebody else's cock-up. And yet they're grinning like chimpanzees at their first tea-party, even Jim with those years of service, and they don't even know…

They know, he thought, oh theyknow. It might be a lot easier for me if they didn't know.

He took the keys. "All right, gents: we're off to war in the usual way and for the usual reasons."

Getting to Finchley Road station meant a diagonal grind right across south-east and central London, and Maxim hoped to hell there was some point in it and that they weren't going to have to turn back to Tilbury or out to Harwich. But it was certainly a chance to get to know the car, both on the brief snatches of motorway and in traffic. It was much as Caswell had said: a high-revving hot-running engine giving a very comfortable fast cruise but not much jump-off from traffic lights.

Every now and then Maxim caught himself feeling guilty about not watching the mirrors enough, or taking too direct a route. But this was one time he knew nobody was following. Sims was busy and nobody else wanted to know.

Agnes was waiting for them, wearing brown slacks and a worn but expensive suede jacket and carrying an airline bag.

Maximlooked at her suspiciously. "Now hold on, you're not joining the People's Private Army. "

"I'm liaising, duckie. You get information out of my service only through me. Aren't you going to introduce me?"

Maxim did. Agnes smiled at Blagg and nodded. "Ah yes, we've heard quite a lot about you of late. How are you, now?"

"I'm fine, thanks, Miss." Blagg was suddenly all big feet and hands and a bashful grin. He simply wasn't at ease with women.

"A good car. Inconspicuous," Agnes commented, and Caswell chuckled. "Who's driving?"

"You can if you want to. " Maxim didn't want either of the others tiring himself out. He slid into the passenger seat. "Where are we going?"

"Goole."

"Where's that?"

"Humberside. About forty miles upstream from Hull and Grimsby." She slid the car out into the Finchley Road again, heading north.

Maxim opened the AA Guide. " 180 miles. About three hours or a bit more; it's mostly motorway. How sure are you about this?"

"It's only about fifty miles from where Mina Linnarzwas living, up in the Dales beyond Harrogate. Andjust a few hours ago, Deutfrachtchanged the destination of a coaster they had coming in to Hull and booked a space in Goole instead."

"Is that so odd?"

"They haven't made a change like that for months; it means going another forty miles upstream, over some dicey sandbanks so you have to take on a pilot, and then pay God-knows-what to get the lock gates opened and watermen to push you into a berth. So you're losing time and money and all for slightly better road and rail links. Only for them there's another advantage: you know what most docks are like, all fences and high walls and gates with coppers on them? Well, Goole's wide open. You can walk in there day or night."

"That sounds bloody odd," Blagg said, remembering his own dockland childhood, then: "I'm sorry, Miss."

"It's bloody odd, all right: there's even a public right-of-way across the main lock gates. It could be that there isn't much worth pinching there; it started off as a coal port, now it's mostly importing wood."

"You've been swotting," Maxim said.

She grinned. "That's right. We aren't expected to know every British port by heart, though we do keep a fairly active eye on them."

"When does the ship get there?"

"Around midnight, it's the tide. They start unloading in the morning, so if they're going to push the old lady on board it has to be some time between them getting through the lock and tying up, and dawn. "

"You mean like they work at night?" Caswell asked, not believing it of civilians.

"They get paid for it. Ships have to come up just about at high tide – it's those sandbanks – so they lose twelve hours if they wait for the next one. "

"4.43,"Caswell said.

"What?" Maxim twisted round to look; Caswell was consulting a diary.