Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

I picked up my suitcase from near the door and followed him downstairs. We shook hands before we left – separately, just in case. I had to walk right down to Theobald's Road before I caught a taxi.

Victoria coach station late on a winter Sunday was a draughty parade ground with a sketchy pretence at a glass roof. A few dark buses stood around like abandoned hulks, and little clumps of shivering passengers huddled against the walls below posters for Italy and the Devon coast and waited for the overnight to Scunthorpe.

One of the two lit buses had denniston's in big flowing script down the side, yellow on green. It already looked crowded and most of the windows were solidly steamed up.

A busy little man in a quilted anorak pounced on me. 'Are you Mr Evans?'

Was I? Christ, yes. 'That's me.' The driver appeared, snatched my case, and hurried it round to the back. I heard the hatch slam.

'You're the last,' the courier said, ticking me off on a typed list. 'Got your passport?'

I handed it over. He skimmed it quickly, nodded, and shoved it into a sort of satchel slung from his shoulders. 'If anybody in the coach asks you, I should say you belong to the firm. Just hitching a ride to Dunkirk. That'll help explain it when you scarper.'

'Good idea.' I climbed aboard and he followed.

A few seconds later and we were on our way.

We had the road pretty much to ourselves and made as good a time as I've ever done to Dover. The seats were good – high-backed, airliner-style – but so they'd ruddy well better be; the other poor sods were going to sit in them for forty-five hours out of the next eighty.

The bloke next to me was a widower in his fifties, as quiet and dull as I'd hoped when I chose to sit by him. I asked if he'd been to Belgium or Holland or Germany before and he said. 'Yes, the hard way.' It turned out he'd been a gunlayer on a Cromwell in the Third Armoured Division from late 1944, so we talked about tanks most of the way.

At Dover docks the immigration boys came aboard, did a quick head count and a shuffle through the stack of passports, and we were allowed out for twenty minutes' drinking and leaking, no more, dinner to be served aboard the boat itself.

I stuck to my gunner in the terminal bar, although it cost me a double Scotch. He was useful cover – two men look far less conspicuous than one solitary drinker. We were all back in the bus in a bit over twenty-five minutes, and it drove on board soon after.

The courier gave us a little lecture about getting back into the bus before we docked, and turned us loose – for nearly four hours on that route. I made sure I was last off.

'Nice to have had you with us – Mr Evans,' he said insincerely. Or maybe not – he'd be earning more from me than anybody else on that tour, and probably only for the cost of typing up a second set of papers.

'What about my case?'

'Oh, God, of course. Where's Harry?' But there wasn't any Harry with the luggage-hatch key. 'Pick it up when we come back on, right?'

I didn't exactly have a choice. I nodded and found the stairs up to the main decks.

I tried to shake off my co-tourists immediately, though it wasn't too easy since the boat was anything but crowded; over half the vehicles below were loaded trucks or brand-new cars going for export. In the end I simply skipped dinner and then roosted in the bar; they weren't likely to be expense-account drinkers if they were going on this sort of holiday.

Halfway across there was the usual announcement about passengersnot with cars or suchlike going to the passport office to pick up a landing ticket. So now I went back to being James Card again, although I didn't like it, not going into France. But hell – I wasn't that important; Arras could never have got a permanent look-out set up for me, even if they'd thought I might be stupid enough to come back so soon.

I had no trouble at the office, anyhow.

We docked about a quarter of an hour late, just on midnight. I was one of the first down to the bus and this time Harry the driver was around with his key. My case had been last in, so there wasn't any problem to hauling it out. I carted it back up to the deck where the mere pedestrians were waiting.

In the cold blue light at the bottom of the gangway there were four gendarmes and two other officiais. One had a submachine gun. Just slung from his shoulder, but still not the normal way to greet innocent ski-parties and coach tourists who don't want to see more than five capitals in four days, if that much.

A bunch of schoolboys went down first and were let through – but their master was stopped and his passport checked. A couple of women went through without any trouble. And that was enough for me. I broke some sort of record back down two flights of stairs and up to Denniston's Tours bus; Harry was just starting the engine.

The courier gave me a look of genuine home-cooked fright and held out a hand to stop me swinging back on board.

I said, 'I'm coming off with you, after all.'

'You can't!'

'We can but try. Get my case out of sight.'

He reached and pushed it away behind him, in a sort of a cubby-hole behind the driver's seat. Then he started to protest again.

I soothed him. 'You've still got the Evans passport. Use it. You're not risking any more than I am.'

That really got through to him. 'I'm not riskinganything.'

'Yes you are, chum. If anybody asks, I did this deal directly with you. No Dave Tanner, no middlemen at all. Swing, swing together – is that how the Eton Boating Song goes? I wasn't ever there anyway – were you?'

Harry the driver, who must have overheard at least some of this, growled, 'For Chrissake – dosomething: I've got to move.'

The bus lurched forward a few feet, waved on by a sailor controlling the unloading.

The courier flapped his hand in small circles and squawked, 'But what can we do? If they're looking for you, they'll see you.'

'Then I'll stand up here beside you and you explain I'm learning the trade. They won't mistrust your nice honest face.' But I pulled off my sheepskin and slung it into the rack along with all the plastic bags of duty-free booze and cigarette cartons; that had been in my Arras description. The bus moved forward in whining jerks.

Behind me, most of the interior lights were out and most of the passengers dozing; it was after midnight and they weren't going to sleep anywhere else tonight. We followed a short queue of cars up the ramp and out across the cold, neon-lit concrete towards the passport control.

Suddenly, sooner than I'd expected, a gendarme swung up on to the step and sang out,'Les passeports, s'il vous plaît, et les noms des passagers.'

Silently, the courier gave him the stack of passports and a typed list – the right one, I hoped. Then he nodded nervously to me and said,'Je vous présente Monsieur Evans. Il est en train d'apprendre le métier.'

The cop shook hands without really bothering to look at me, and went on shuffling passports. I asked,'Cherchez-vous quelqu'un en particulier? '

'Un Monsieur Card.'Then, to the courier.'Est-te que. quelqu'un d'autre, est monté dans le car depuis l'embarquement?'

'Non, non. Personne.'

The cop nodded briskly, handed over the paper and passports, and hopped off.

"There, you see?' I said. 'It wasn't so bad, was it?'

He looked back at me with a sick expression. Half an hour later, we were in Belgium.

They dumped me off outside the Gare Central in Brussels at half past five, with a bloodshot dawn breaking behind the Palais de la Nation and a nagging cold wind scouring the empty streets. The courier didn't even bother to wave, and Harry nearly made the bus stand on its hind legs getting away from me. I knew I must have BO by now, but I didn't think it wasthat bad.