Desmond Bagley - The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

Carey drew a sheet of paper towards him and scribbled on it. ‘The next thing we want are doctors – tame ones who will ask the questions we want asked and no others. A plastic surgeon and –’ he smiled at McCready bleakly – ‘and an alienist. The problem must be decided one way or the other.’

‘We can’t wait until they arrive,’ said McCready.

‘Agreed,’ said Carey. ‘We’ll work on the assumption that a substitution has been made – that this man is Denison. We know when the substitution was made – in the early hours of yesterday morning. Denison was brought in – how?’

‘On a stretcher – he must have been unconscious.’

‘Right!’ said Carey. ‘A hospital patient in transit under the supervision of a trained nurse and probably a doctor. And they’d have taken a room on the same floor as Meyrick. The switch was made and Meyrick taken out yesterday morning – probably in an ambulance at the back entrance of the hotel by arrangement with the management. Hotels don’t like stretchers being paraded through the front lobby.’

‘I’ll get on to it,’ said McCready. ‘It might be an idea to check on all the people who booked in on the previous day, regardless of the floor they stayed on. I don’t think this was a two man job.’

‘I don’t, either. And you check the comings and goings for the past week – somebody must have been watching Meyrick for a long time.’

‘That’s a hell of a big job,’ objected McCready. ‘Do we get the co-operation of the Norwegians?’

Carey pondered. ‘At this time – no. We keep it under wraps.’

McCready’s face took on a sad look at the thought of all the legwork he was going to have to do. Carey tilted his chair back. ‘And then there’s the other end to be checked – the London end. Why Giles Denison of Hampstead?’ His chair came down with a thump. ‘Hasn’t it struck you that Denison has been very unforthcoming?’

McCready shrugged. ‘I haven’t talked to him all that much.’

‘Well, look,’ said Carey. ‘Here we have this man in this bloody odd situation in which he finds himself. After recovering from the first shock, he not only manages to deceive Mrs Hansen as to his real identity but he has the wit to ring up Meyrick’s home. But why only Meyrick? Why didn’t he check back on himself?’

‘How do you mean?’

Carey sighed. ‘There’s a man called Giles Denison missing from Hampstead. Surely he’d be missed by someone? Even if Denison is an unmarried orphan he must have friends – a job. Why didn’t he ring back to reassure people that he was all right and still alive and now living it up in Oslo?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ admitted McCready. ‘That’s a pointer to his being Meyrick, after all. Suffering from delusions but unable to flesh them out properly.’

Carey gave a depressed nod. ‘All I’ve had from him is that he’s Giles Denison from Hampstead – nothing more.’

‘Why not put it to him now?’ suggested McCready.

Carey thought about it and shook his head. ‘No, I’ll leave that to the psychiatrist. If this is really Meyrick, the wrong sort of questions could push him over the edge entirely.’ He pulled the note pad towards him again. ‘We’ll have someone check on Denison in Hampstead and find out the score.’ He ripped off the sheet. ‘Let’s get cracking. I want those cables sent to London immediately – top priority and coded. I want those quacks here as fast as possible.’

Giles Denison stirred his coffee and smiled across the table at Diana Hansen. His smile was steady, which was remarkable because a thought had suddenly struck him like a bolt of lightning and left him with a churning stomach. Was the delectable Diana Hansen who faced him Meyrick’s mistress?

The very thought put him into a dilemma. Should he make a pass or not? Whatever he did – or did not – do, he had a fifty per cent chance of being wrong. The uncertainty of it spoiled his evening which had so far been relaxing and pleasant.

He had been driven back to the hotel in an Embassy car after dire warnings from George McCready of what would happen to him if he did not obey instructions. ‘You’ll have realized by now that you’ve dropped right into the middle of something awkward,’ said McCready. ‘We’re doing our best to sort it out but, for the next couple of days, you’d do well to stay in the hotel.’ He drove it home by asking pointedly, ‘How’s your side feeling now?’

‘Better,’ said Denison. ‘But I could have done with a doctor.’ He had been strapped up by McCready, who had produced a first-aid box and displayed a competence which suggested he was no stranger to knife wounds.

‘You’ll get a doctor,’ assured McCready. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘I have a dinner date,’ said Denison. ‘With that redhead I told you about. What should I do about that? If she goes on like she did yesterday I’m sure to put my foot in it.’

‘I don’t see why you should,’ said McCready judiciously.

‘For God’s sake! I don’t even know her name.’

McCready patted him on the shoulder, and said soothingly, ‘You’ll be all right.’

Denison was plaintive. ‘It’s all very well you wanting me to go on being Meyrick but surely you can tell me something. Who is Meyrick, for instance?’

‘It will all be explained tomorrow,’ said McCready, hoping that he was right. ‘In the meantime, go back to the hotel like a good chap, and don’t leave it until I call for you. Just have a quiet dinner with … with your redhead and then go to bed.’

Denison had a last try. ‘Are you in Intelligence or something? A spy?’

But to that McCready made no answer.

So Denison was delivered to the hotel and he had not been in the room more than ten minutes when the telephone rang. He regarded it warily and let it ring several times before he put out his hand as though about to pick up a snake. ‘Yes?’ he said uncommunicatively.

‘Diana here.’

‘Who?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Diana Hansen, who else? We have a dinner date, remember? How are you?’

Again he caught the faint hint of America behind the English voice. ‘Better,’ he said, thinking it was convenient of her to announce her name.

‘That’s good,’ she said warmly. ‘Are you fit enough for dinner?’

‘I think so.’

‘Mmm,’ she murmured doubtfully. ‘But I still don’t think you should go out; there’s quite a cold wind. What about dinner in the hotel restaurant?’

Even more convenient; he had just been about to suggest that himself. In a more confident voice he said, ‘That’ll be fine.’

‘Meet you in the bar at half past seven,’ she said.

‘All right.’

She rang off and he put down the telephone slowly. He hoped that McCready was right; that he could manage a sustained conversation with this woman in the guise of Meyrick. He sat in the armchair and winced as pain stabbed in his side. He held his breath until the pain eased and then relaxed and looked at his watch. Half past five. He had two hours before meeting the Hansen woman.

What a mess! What a stinking mess! Lost behind another man’s face, he had apparently dropped into the middle of an intrigue which involved the British government. That man, Carey, had been damned patronizing about what had happened on top of the Spiralen and had not bothered to hide his disbelief. It had been that, more than anything else, that had driven Denison into disclosing who he was. It had certainly taken the smile off Carey’s face.

But who was Carey? To begin with, he was obviously McCready’s boss – but that did not get him very far because who was McCready? A tight little group in the British Embassy in Oslo dedicated to what? Trade relations? That did not sound likely.