Len Deighton - Spy Story

I rapped it. It was hollow. The thin plywood panel slid easily to one side. Behind it there was a door.

The door was stiff, but by pushing the rackful of clothes aside I put a little extra pressure on it. After the first couple of inches it moved easily. I stepped through the wardrobe into a dark room. Alice through the looking-glass. I sniffed. The air smelled clean with a faint odour of disinfectant. I struck a match. It was a box room. By the light of the match I found the light switch. The room had been furnished as a small office: a desk, easy chair, typewriter and polished lino. The walls were newly painted white. Upon them there was a coloured illustration of Von Guericke’s air thermoscope given as a calendar by a manufacturer of surgical instruments in Munich, a cheap mirror, and a blank day-by-day chart, stuck to the wall with surgical tape. In the drawers of the desk there was a ream of blank white paper, a packet of paper clips, and two white nylon jackets packed in transparent laundry packets.

The door from the office also opened easily. By now I was well into the next apartment. Adjoining the hall there was a large room – corresponding to my sitting-room – lit by half a dozen overhead lights fitted behind frosted glass. The windows were fitted with light-tight wooden screens, like those used for photographic dark rooms. This room was also painted white. It was spotlessly clean, walls, floor and ceiling, shining and dustless. There was a new stainless-steel sink in one corner. In the centre of the room there was a table fitted with a crisply laundered cotton cover. Over it there was a transparent plastic one. The sort from which it’s easy to wipe spilled blood. It was a curious table, with many levers to elevate, tilt and adjust it. Rather like one of the simpler types of operating table. The large apparatus alongside it was beyond any medical guess I could make. Pipes, dials and straps, it was an expensive device. Although I could not recognize it, I knew that I’d seen such a device before, but I could not dredge it up from the sludge of my memory.

To this room there was also a door. Very gently, I tried the handle, but it was locked. As I stood, bent forward at the door, I heard a voice. By leaning closer I could hear what was being said ‘… and then the next week you’ll do the middle shift, and so on. They don’t seem to know when it will start.’

The reply – a woman’s voice – was almost inaudible. Then the man close to me said, ‘Certainly, if the senior staff prefer one shift we can change the rota and make it permanent.’

Again there was the murmur of the woman’s voice, and the sound of running water, splashing as if someone was washing their hands.

The man said, ‘How right you are; like the bloody secret service if you ask me. Was my grandmother born in the United Kingdom. Bloody sauce! I put “yes” to everything.’

When I switched off the light the conversation suddenly stopped. I waited in the darkness, not moving. The light from the tiny office was still on. If this door was opened they would be certain to see me. There was the sound of a towel machine and then of a match striking. Then the conversation continued, but more distantly. I tiptoed across the room very very slowly. I closed the second door and looked at the alterations to the wardrobe while retreating through it. This false door behind the wardrobe puzzled me even more than the curious little operating theatre. If a man was to construct a secret chamber with all the complications of securing the lease to his next door apartment, if he secretly removed large sections of brickwork, if he constructed a sliding door and fitted it into the back of a built-in wardrobe, would such a man not go all the way, and make it extremely difficult to detect? This doorway was something that even the rawest recruit to the Customs service would find in a perfunctory look round. It made no sense.

The phone rang. I picked it up. ‘Your cab is outside now, sir.’

There are not many taxi services that say ‘sir’ nowadays. That should have aroused my suspicions, but I was tired.

I went downstairs. On the first-floor landing outside the caretaker’s flat there were two men.

‘Pardon me, sir,’ said one of the men. I thought at first they were waiting for the caretaker, but as I tried to pass one of them stood in the way. The other spoke again. ‘There have been a lot of break-ins here lately, sir.’

‘So?’

‘We’re from the security company who look after this block.’ It was the taller of the two men who’d spoken. He was wearing a short suede overcoat with a sheepskin lining. The sort of coat a man needed if he spent a lot of time in doorways. ‘Are you a tenant here, sir?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

The taller man buttoned the collar of his coat. It seemed like an excuse to keep his hands near my throat. ‘Would you mind producing some identification, sir?’

I counted ten, but before I was past five the shorter of the men had pressed the caretaker’s buzzer. ‘What is it now?’

‘This one of your tenants?’ said the tall man.

‘I’m from number eighteen,’ I prompted.

‘Never seen him before,’ said the man.

‘You’re not the caretaker,’ I said. ‘Charlie Short is the caretaker.’

‘Charlie Short used to come over here now and again to give me a break for a couple of hours …’

‘Don’t give me that,’ I said. ‘Charlie is the caretaker. I’ve never seen you before.’

‘A bloody con man,’ said the man from the caretaker’s flat.

‘I’ve lived here for five years,’ I protested.

‘Get on,’ said the man. ‘Never seen him before.’ He smiled as if amused at my gall. ‘The gentleman in number eighteen has lived here for five years but he’s much older than this bloke – bigger, taller – this one would pass for him in a crowd, but not in this light.’

‘I don’t know what you’re up to …’ I said. ‘I can prove …’ Unreasonably my anger centred on the man who said he was the caretaker. One of the security men took my arm. ‘Now then, sir, we don’t want any rough stuff, do we?’

‘I’m going back to “War and Peace”,’ said the man. He closed the door forcefully enough to discourage further interruption.

‘I never had that Albert figured for a reader,’ said the taller man.

‘On the telly, he means,’ said the other one. ‘So –’ he turned to me, ‘you’d better come and identify yourself properly.’

‘That’s not the caretaker,’ I said.

‘I’m afraid you’re wrong, sir.’

‘I’m not wrong.’

‘It won’t take more than ten minutes, sir.’

I walked down the flight of stairs that led to the street. Outside there was my taxi. Screw them all. I opened the cab door and had one foot on the ledge when I saw the third man. He was sitting well back in the far corner of the rear seat. I froze. ‘Do get in, sir,’ he said. It should have been a mini-cab, this was a taxi. I didn’t like it at all.

One of my hands was in my pocket. I stood upright and pointed a finger through my coat. ‘Come out,’ I said with a suitable hint of menace. ‘Come out very slowly.’ He didn’t move.

‘Don’t be silly, sir. We know you are not armed.’

I extended my free hand and flipped the fingers up to beckon him. The seated man sighed. ‘There are three of us, sir. Either we all get in as we are, or we all get in bruised, but either way we all get in.’

I glanced to one side. There was another man standing beside the doorway. The driver hadn’t moved.

‘We won’t delay you long, sir,’ said the seated man.

I got into the cab. ‘What is this?’ I asked.

‘You know that flat is no longer yours, sir.’ He shook his head. The driver checked that the door was closed and drove off with us, along Cromwell Road. The man said, ‘Whatever made you trespass there, at this time of night? It’s brought all three of us out of a bridge game.’ The taller man was sitting on the jump seat. He unbuttoned his sheepskin coat.