Len Deighton - The Harry Palmer Quartet

‘Any other questions?’ Ross said, just like he’d answered the first one. There was another silence and I stifled the impulse to clap. The jolly fat doorman said, ‘Good day, sir,’ as I left the Horse-guards Avenue entrance, and walked down Whitehall to Keightley at Scotland Yard.

Inside the entrance an elderly policeman was speaking into a phone. ‘Room 284?’ he said. ‘Hello Room 284? I’m trying to locate the tea trolley.’

I saw Keightley in the hallway. He always looked out of place among all those policemen. His slick hair and deeply lined pale, freckled face, and white moustache gave a first impression of greater age than was really the case. He had a pair of heavy black spectacles of the sort with straight side bars. These latter facilitated his pulling his glasses half off his face just before telling or showing you something, then snapping them back on his nose to lend emphasis to what he was saying. His timing and execution were perfect. I’d never seen him miss his face yet. He came down to collect me. In his hand he had a film tin about eight inches across.

‘I think you’ll agree,’ he had his glasses well off his face now, and was peering over them, ‘your journey was well worth while.’ They snapped into place, little images of the doorway reflected in the lenses. He rattled the tin heavily and led the way to his office. It was cramped for space, as are so many of the offices at the Yard. I closed the door behind me. Keightley began to remove the heap of papers, files and maps from the knee-hole desk that used up most of the floor space.

An old crone appeared from nowhere with a cup of muddy coffee on a wet tin tray. I wanted to tell her that there was a call out for her, but I resisted the impulse. Keightley got an old black crusty pipe going and finally, after we’d been through the niceties of British meetings, he leaned back and began to let me have it.

‘The haunted house,’ he began, and smiled, while rubbing the stem of his pipe along his moustache. ‘These people,’ Keightley always referred to the Metropolitan Police as ‘these people’, ‘did a very thorough job for you. “Finger-prints”. Normally we only do a check going back five years, except for murder or treason cases; for them and you we did the whole eighteen-year collection.’ He paused. ‘Then they did all the special collections; the “scenes of crime” collections; the Indian seamen collection …’ Keightley poked a match into the bowl of his pipe and sucked his cheeks inwards … ‘Of men jumping ship, and the sacrilege collection.’ He paused again. ‘Nothing anywhere. Forensic Science,’ he tapped his second finger. ‘We did the usual tests. The old bloodstains were Group “O”, but then forty-two per cent of the country is Group “O”.’

‘Keightley,’ I interrupted. ‘Your time is valuable, so is mine, I know all this. Just tell me what you sent the message about.’

‘Procedure: house exterior,’ he tapped his next finger. I knew it was no good. I’d have to go through the whole thing. Getting Keightley to tell one punch line immediately was like trying to get an aspirin without first removing the cotton wool. He gave me all the stuff – digging down to eighteen inches in the kitchen garden. Using a mine detector over floors and lath and plaster walls and in the garden. He listed the books they’d found and the oxygen cylinders, the tinned food and the complicated safety harness bolted to the tank. ‘It wasn’t till then, sir, that we found the film tin. I don’t think it was hidden at all. In fact, at first we thought it must be something the FS 1 boys had brought with them.’

By now I guessed that it was the tin Keightley was talking about. I held out my hand hoping that he’d pass it to me. But no such luck. Keightley had a captive audience and wasn’t letting go.

‘We checked all the equipment, then I decided that if they were carrying things out to cars in the drive and in a big hurry – and doubtless they were in a big hurry.’ I nodded. Keightley was on his feet, acting the whole thing out for me. ‘Coming out with huge armfuls of stuff.’

‘What sort of stuff?’ I asked. I was interested in Keightley’s fantasy life; anything would be a relief in a day like this was turning out to be.

‘Ah,’ Keightley laid his head on one side and looked at me. ‘Ah,’ he said again. He looked like the wine waiter at the Tour d’Argent being asked for a bottle of Tizer. ‘That’s what you’ll have to tell me , sir, what sort of stuff.’

‘Then let’s for a minute say “Ships in bottles”,’ I said.

‘Warships, sir?’

‘Yes, nuclear submarines, sea-borne missile platforms, floating Coca-Cola depot boats, Life magazine colour-section printing-machine barges, thinking men’s filter replacement transports, psychological-obsolescence tankers, and deep-frozen do-nut supply ships.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Keightley pretended that his pipe had gone out and clamped a match-box over the bowl to make a great show of fanning it back to red sparking life. His cheeks popped in and out. He looked up, smiled weakly and said, ‘You’d probably like to hear it, sir.’ He opened the film tin and removed a reel of ¼ in recording tape.

‘Remember though, sir, I’m not saying they did originate from the occupiers.’

‘They?’ I stared insolently. ‘You mean this tape and the film you sent Ross at the War House?’

It wrecked Keightley. Mind you, I don’t blame him. He was just trying to keep everyone happy; but not blaming him and not preventing a future incident of the same kind is a different thing again. Keightley’s loosely captive eyeballs circuited their red bloodshot linings. We sat silently for perhaps thirty seconds, then I said, ‘Listen, Keightley, Ross’s department is all military. Anything that passes your eyeballs or eardrums and has even a sniff of civilian in it comes to Dalby, or as the situation is at present, to me, or failing that, Alice. If I ever have cause to think that you are funnelling information of any sort at all, Keightley, any sort at all, into unauthorized channels, you’ll find yourself lance-corporal in charge of restricted documents in the officers’ mess, Aden. Unless I can think of something worse. I won’t ever repeat this threat, Keightley, but don’t imagine it’s not going to be forever hanging over your bonce like Damocles’ chopper. Now let’s see what you found at the bottom of the garden. And don’t start tapping your bloody finger-tips again.’

He played the tape through on the big grey Ferrograph. The sound was of an abstract quality. It was like a Rowton House production of the ‘Messiah’ heard through a wall and played at half speed.

‘Animal, vegetable or mineral?’ I asked.

‘Human voices, these people say.’

I listened to the undulating and horrisonous mewl, to the bleating, braying, yelping howl, and found it as difficult to listen to as it was to label. I nodded. ‘It doesn’t do a thing for me,’ I told him, ‘but I’ll take it away and think about it. It might grow on me.’

Keightley gave me the reel and the tin, and a quiet good-bye.

1 Forensic Science.

The next day I didn’t go into the office in the morning. I drifted up to the Charing Cross Road on a number 1 bus, then cut off across Soho. I wanted to get a few groceries, some coffee, aubergines, andouillettes, some black bread, that sort of thing. The girl in the delicatessen had trimmed her eyebrows – I didn’t like them so much like that. She looked constantly surprised. With the clientele in that shop perhaps she was. I decided to have a cup of coffee in Led’s. The coffee may not be so good there – but the cheesecake was fine and I like the customers.