Len Deighton - The Spy Quartet - An Expensive Place to Die, Spy Story, Yesterday’s Spy, Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy

There were ten or twelve people around her by the time I reached the body. The butler arrived and threw a car blanket over her. One of the bystanders said ‘ Tant pis ’, and another said that the jolie pépée was well barricaded. His friend laughed.

A policeman is never far away in Paris and they came quickly, the blue-and-white corrugated van disgorging cops like a gambler fanning a deck of cards. Even before the van came to a halt the police were sorting through the bystanders, asking for papers, detaining some, prodding others away. The footmen had wrapped the girl’s body in the blanket and began to heave the sagging bundle towards the gates of the house.

‘Put it in the van,’ said Datt. One of the policemen said, ‘Take the body to the house.’ The two men carrying the dead girl stood undecided.

‘In the van,’ said Datt.

‘I get my orders from the Commissaire de Police,’ said the cop. ‘We are on the radio now.’ He nodded towards the van.

Datt was furious. He struck the policeman a blow on the arm. His voice was sibilant and salivatory. ‘Can’t you see that you are attracting attention, you fool? This is a political matter. The Ministry of the Interior are concerned. Put the body in the van. The radio will confirm my ruling.’ The policeman was impressed by Datt’s anger. Datt pointed at me. ‘This is one of the officers working with Chief Inspector Loiseau of the Sûreté. Is that good enough for you?’

‘Very well,’ said the policeman. He nodded to the two men, who pushed the body on to the floor of the police van. They closed the door.

‘Journalists may arrive,’ said Datt to the policeman. ‘Leave two of your men on guard here and make sure they know about article ten.’

‘Yes,’ said the policeman docilely.

‘Which way are you going?’ I asked the driver.

‘The meat goes to the Medico-Legal,’ he said.

‘Ride me to the Avenue de Marigny,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to my office.’

By now the policeman in charge of the vehicle was browbeaten by Datt’s fierce orders. He agreed to my riding in the van without a word of argument. At the corner of the Avenue de Marigny I stopped the van and got out. I needed a large brandy.

I expected the courier from the Embassy to contact me again that same day but he didn’t return until the next morning. He put his document case on top of the wardrobe and sank into my best armchair.

He answered an unasked question. ‘It’s a whorehouse,’ he pronounced. ‘He calls it a clinic but it’s more like a whorehouse.’

‘Thanks for your help,’ I said.

‘Don’t get snotty – you wouldn’t want me telling you what to say in your reports.’

‘That’s true,’ I admitted.

‘Certainly it’s true. It’s a whorehouse that a lot of the Embassy people use. Not just our people – the Americans, etc., use it.’

I said, ‘Straighten me up. Is this just a case of one of our Embassy people getting some dirty pictures back from Datt? Or something like that?’

The courier stared at me. ‘I’m not allowed to talk about anything like that,’ he said.

‘Don’t give me that stuff,’ I said. ‘They killed that girl yesterday.’

‘In passion,’ explained the courier. ‘It was part of a kinky sex act.’

‘I don’t care if it was done as a publicity stunt,’ I said. ‘She’s dead and I want as much information as I can get to avoid trouble. It’s not just for my own skin; it’s in the interests of the department that I avoid trouble.’

The courier said nothing, but I could see he was weakening.

I said, ‘If I’m heading into that house again just to recover some pictures of a secretary on the job, I’ll come back and haunt you.’

‘Give me some coffee,’ said the courier, and I knew he had decided to tell me whatever he knew. I boiled the kettle and brewed up a pint of strong black coffee.

‘Kuang-t’ien,’ said the courier, ‘the man who knifed the girl: do you know who he is?’

‘Major-domo at the Chinese Embassy, Datt said.’

‘That’s his cover. His name is Kuang-t’ien, but he’s one of the top five men in the Chinese nuclear programme.’

‘He speaks damn good French.’

‘Of course he does. He was trained at the Laboratoire Curie, here in Paris. So was his boss, Chien San-chiang, who is head of the Atomic Energy Institute in Peking.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ I said.

‘I was evaluating it this time last year.’

‘Tell me more about this man who mixes his sex with switchblades.’

He pulled his coffee towards his and stirred it thoughtfully. Finally he began.

‘Four years ago the U2 flights picked up the fourteen-acre gaseous diffusion plant taking hydro-electric power from the Yellow River not far from Lanchow. The experts had predicted that the Chinese would make their bombs as the Russians and French did, and as we did too: by producing plutonium in atomic reactors. But the Chinese didn’t; our people have been close. I’ve seen the photos. Very close. That plant proves that they are betting all or nothing on hydrogen. They are going full steam ahead on their hydrogen research programme. By concentrating on the light elements generally and by pushing the megaton instead of the kiloton bomb they could be the leading nuclear power in eight or ten years if their hydrogen research pays off. This man Kuang-t’ien is their best authority on hydrogen. See what I mean?’

I poured more coffee and thought about it. The courier got his case down and rummaged through it. ‘When you left the clinic yesterday did you go in the police van?’

‘Yes.’

‘Um. I thought you might have. Good stunt that. Well, I hung around for a little while, then when I realized that you’d gone I came back here. I hoped you’d come back, too.’

‘I had a drink,’ I said. ‘I put my mind in neutral for an hour.’

‘That’s unfortunate,’ said the courier. ‘Because while you were away you had a visitor. He asked for you at the counter, then hung around for nearly an hour, but when you didn’t come back he took a cab to the Hotel Lotti.’

‘What was he like?’

The courier smiled his mirthless smile and produced some ten-by-eight glossy pictures of a man drinking coffee in the afternoon sunlight. It wasn’t a good-quality photograph. The man was about fifty, dressed in a light-weight suit with a narrow-brimmed felt hat. His tie had a small monogram that was unreadable and his cufflinks were large and ornate. He had large black sunglasses which in one photo he had removed to polish. When he drank coffee he raised his little finger high and pursed his lips.

‘Ten out of ten,’ I said. ‘Good stuff: waiting till he took the glasses off. But you could use a better D and P man.’

‘They are just rough prints,’ said the courier. ‘The negs are half-frame but they are quite good.’

‘You are a regular secret agent,’ I said admiringly. ‘What did you do – shoot him in the ankle with the toe-cap gun, send out a signal to HQ on your tooth and play the whole thing back on your wristwatch?’

He rummaged through his papers again, then slapped a copy of L’Express upon the table top. Inside there was a photo of the US Ambassador greeting a group of American businessmen at Orly Airport. The courier looked up at me briefly.

‘Fifty per cent of this group of Americans work – or did work – for the Atomic Energy Commission. Most of the remainder are experts on atomic energy or some allied subject. Bertram: nuclear physics at MIT. Bestbridge: radiation sickness of 1961. Waldo: fall-out experiments and work at the Hiroshima hospital. Hudson: hydrogen research – now he works for the US Army.’ He marked Hudson’s face with his nail. It was the man he’d photographed.