Len Deighton - The Harry Palmer Quartet

‘Could be?’ I said. ‘They damn’ nearly killed me.’

‘Oh, I wasn’t worried about you. They were unlikely to kill the goose and all that.’

‘Oh, weren’t you? Well you weren’t there to get worried and all that.’

‘You didn’t see Chico there?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That was the only alleviating feature of the whole affair.’

‘Another drink?’ Dalby was the perfect host.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I must be getting along. I want the keys to the office.’ His face didn’t flicker. Those English public schools are worth every penny.

‘I insist that you join us for dinner,’ said Dalby.

I declined and we batted polite talk back and forth. I wasn’t out of the wood yet. Charlie was dead, and Dalby either didn’t know or didn’t want to talk about it. As I was about to tell him Dalby produced from an abstract painting that concealed a wall safe, a couple of files about payments to agents working in the South American countries. 2 Dalby gave me both files, and the keys, and I promised to figure out something for him by ten o’clock the next morning at Charlotte Street. I looked at my watch. It was 7.50 P.M. I was pretty anxious to leave because Waterman’s instructions were to come at the run after one hour exactly. From his performance so far it seemed unwise to count on him being tardy. I took my leave, still without the name of Charlie Cavendish being mentioned. I decided to leave it until we were in the office.

Half-way down the driveway I realized that between now and tomorrow morning was ample time to get myself arrested on a murder charge. Perhaps I should go back and say, ‘Oh, there’s one other thing. I’m wanted for murder.’

I started up the Austin, and moved easily down the road towards the big pub. It was about a quarter of a mile down the road before Waterman switched on his lights. He kept going up in my estimation. When we got to the car park of the ‘Glowering Owl’, I walked across to Waterman and gave him the money in cash.

‘It went off all right then. I’m glad of that,’ he said, his nicotine-stained moustache following his mouth as it smiled. I thanked him, and he put his car into gear, then said, ‘I thought we were in for a right barny when the big Chink feller came out to look at you through the window.’

Big rain clouds raced across the moon, and an arty-looking couple came out of the Saloon Bar, arguing violently. They walked across the car park.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said, my hand on the edge of the wet car window. ‘Chink? A Chinese? Are you sure?’

‘Am I sure? Listen, friend. I had five years in the New Territories; I should know what a Chink looks like.’

I got into the car seat beside him, and asked him to go through it in slow motion. He did so, but he needn’t have done for all the extra information it gave me.

‘We are going back up there right away,’ I told him.

‘Not me, friend, I did the job I was hired for.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll pay you again.’

‘Look friend, you’ve been there, you’ve had your say – let things be.’

‘No, I must go back up there whether you come or not. I might only glance in through the window,’ I coaxed.

‘This is nothing to do with your wife, friend. You’re up to some no-good. I can tell. I could tell you weren’t a divorce case from the first minute I saw you.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘but my money’s OK isn’t it?’ I didn’t pause, as I considered his disagreement on this score very unlikely. ‘I’m from Brighton – Special Branch,’ I improvised, and showed him my forged warrant card. It passed in the poor light inside the car, but I’d hate to depend upon it in daylight.

‘ You a copper! You never are, friend.’

I persisted that I was, and he half-believed me. He said, ‘I know that some of the new coppers you can hardly tell nowadays. Real mixture they are.’

‘This is an important case,’ I told him. ‘And I want your assistance now.’

The squeelch and buzz of the windscreen wipers continued steadily as he made up his mind. Why did I want him? I thought; but somewhere I had a hunch it would be a good eight guineas’ worth. It wasn’t one of my best hunches.

‘Why didn’t you bring one of your own constables?’ he suddenly asked.

‘It wasn’t possible,’ I said, hesitating. ‘It’s out of our area. I’m acting on special authority.’

‘It’s not monkey business, friend, is it? I couldn’t be mixed up in anything funny.’

At last. At last I was getting it across to him that I was a policeman negotiating a high-class bribe. As he got used to it, he came to quite like the idea of a well-placed friend on the force, but he added, ‘It will cost you another twelve guineas.’

We settled on the fee and set off up the road again, this time both in his car. I didn’t want Dalby to see the blue Austin 7 coming back again. The files were the problem. I didn’t know what to tell Waterman to do with them if anything happened, so I put them on the back seat and hoped that nothing would.

1 United States Medical Department.

2 It was a difficult problem which before the Castro régime had always been handled by a small private bank in Havana, which we more or less owned. Castro, however, had nationalized it, luckily not before the local police had tipped them off, so the documentation was at present intact at Saratoga Springs. Dalby asked me to submit a report about it. This was the sort of situation that I was always called in to help with. Not that I’m any sort of accountant, goodness knows; I can make two and two into something different every time I put those particularly unreliable digits together, but I had done a lot of work with the Swiss bank for Ross. By the time I came to Dalby’s department, I had enough good solid contacts there to trace any secret account, given enough time. As well as this I had learned every legal and illegal way of moving money about the globe. Money is to espionage what petrol is to a motor-car, and it was because I had kept the wraps on my contacts there that I had been so insubordinate to so many for so long.

It all worked quite smoothly: approach without lights, parking, and the walk to the house. It was quite dark now, but gaps in the curtains let some light fall across the flower beds. Perhaps those were the chinks Waterman saw, I thought. I was getting quite skilled at negotiating growing plants on foot at night. Without making too much noise on the gravel I got close to the window of the room in which I had spoken with Dalby. It was a bit shattering to find Dalby was very close to the window on the other side; like a picture on a 21-inch screen. He wasn’t, however, concerned with prowlers in his garden; he was pouring a drink from that damn’ cabinet. On the sofa sat Murray listening to Dalby as he poured and talked. They were talking to someone else outside my range of vision; he must have asked what they wanted to drink because the third party walked across to the drinks cabinet. I watched them only three feet away from me. I could catch an occasional word of conversation even through the double glass. My hunch was right; there was no other face like K.K.’s, and every feature was inscribed on my retina. He was Waterman’s ‘Chink’. K.K. and Dalby. I had seen enough and was about to go – but Dalby and K.K. were both looking across the room speaking to another. It wasn’t Murray, I’d seen him go into the kitchen. And then into my line of vision – like the bad fairy at the princess’s christening – walked Jay.

I almost fell backwards into the Convallaria . After all those hours of screenings, there could be no mistake. The elusive Jay. Few members of the department had ever seen him, and yet I was always coming across him – in Led’s, in the street, in theatre clubs, and now – finally the prince of evil is chatting with the head of the department. How can I tell you the impact this made on me? It was like seeing Mr Macmillan drop a CP 1 card out of his wallet; it was like discovering that Edgar Hoover was Lucky Luciano in disguise. I was watching the scene like a small boy in a lollipop factory. Goodness knows how long I stood petrified with surprise. K.K.’s presence shattered me, but Jay’s made me forget K.K.! ‘We are moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion,’ Dalby had once told me. How wrong can you get? I remembered the two men I had seen from the Terrazza Restaurant window. Undoubtedly they were Jay and Dalby.