John Carré - A Delicate Truth

Now she was asking the tough questions.

‘Who did this to you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you know why they did it to you?’

For appetizers, he thought. To warn me off. To punish me for being nosy and stop me being nosy in future. But it was all too woolly, and too much to say, so he said nothing.

‘Well, whoever did it must have used a knuckleduster,’ she pronounced, when she had got tired of waiting.

‘Maybe just rings on his fingers,’ he suggested, remembering Elliot’s hands on the steering wheel.

‘I shall need your permission before I call the police. Can I call them?’

‘No point.’

‘Why no point?’

Because the police aren’t the solution, they’re part of the problem. But again that’s something you can’t easily put across, so best just let it go.

‘It’s very possible that you’re suffering internal bleeding of the spleen, which can be life-threatening,’ Emily continued. ‘I need to get you to a hospital for a scan.’

‘I’m fine. I’m in one piece. You should go home. Please. They may come back. Honestly.’

‘You are not in one piece, and you need treatment, Toby,’ she replied tartly, and the conversation might have continued along these unproductive lines had not the front doorbell chosen that moment to emit its croak from the rusted tin box above Emily’s head.

She stopped stirring the soup and glanced up at the box, then enquiringly at Toby, who started to shrug, thought better of it.

‘Don’t answer it,’ he said.

‘Why not? Who is it?’

‘No one. Nobody good. Please.’

And seeing her pick up his house keys from the draining board and start towards the kitchen door:

‘Emily. It’s my house. Just let it ring!’

But it was ringing anyway: a second croak, longer than the first.

‘Is it a woman?’ she asked, still at the kitchen door.

‘There is no woman !’

‘I can’t hide, Toby. And I can’t be this afraid. Would you answer it if you were fit and I wasn’t here?’

‘You don’t know these people! Look at me!’

But she refused to be impressed. ‘Your neighbour from downstairs probably wants to ask how you are.’

‘Emily, for Christ’s sake! This isn’t about good neighbours.’

But she had gone.

Eyes closed, he held his breath and listened.

He heard his key turn, he heard her voice, then a much softer male voice, like a hushed voice in church, but not one that in his over-attentive state he recognized, although he felt he should.

He heard the front door close.

She’s stepped outside to talk to him.

But who the hell is he? Has he pulled her outside? Are they coming back to apologize, or to finish the job? Or did they think they might have killed me by mistake, and Crispin has sent them to find out? In the rush of terror that has taken hold of him, all of it is possible.

Still out there.

What’s she doing?

Does she think she’s fireproof?

What have they done to her? Minutes like hours. Jesus Christ!

The front door opening. Closing again. Slow, deliberate footsteps approaching down the corridor. Not hers. Definitely not Emily’s. Too heavy by half.

They’ve grabbed her and now they’re coming for me!

But they were Emily’s footsteps after all: Emily being all hospital and purposeful. By the time she reappeared, he had got up from his chair and was using the table to punt himself towards the kitchen drawer to find a carving knife. Then he saw her standing in the doorway, looking puzzled and holding a brown-paper parcel bound in string.

‘Who was it?’

‘I don’t know. He said you’ll know what it’s about.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’

Grabbing the parcel, he turned his back on her – actually with the futile intention of protecting her in the event of an explosion – and set to work feverishly feeling the packet for detonators, timers, nails or whatever else they might have thought to add for maximum effect, very much in the manner in which he had approached Kit’s nocturnal letter, but with a greater sense of peril.

But all he could feel, after a lengthy exploration, was a wad of paper and a bulldog clip.

‘What did he look like?’ he demanded breathlessly.

‘Small. Well dressed.’

‘Age?’

‘Sixtyish.’

‘Tell me what he said: his words.’

‘“I have a parcel here for my friend and former colleague, Toby Bell.” Then something about had he come to the right address –’

‘I need a knife.’

She handed him the knife he had been reaching for and he slit the parcel open exactly as he had slit open Kit’s, down the side, and took from it a smeared photocopy of a Foreign Office file emblazoned with security caveats in black, white and red. He lifted the cover and found himself gazing incredulously at a clutch of pages held together by a bulldog clip, and written in the neat, unmistakeable handwriting that had followed him from post to post for the last eight years. And on top of them, by way of a covering letter, a single sheet of unheaded notepaper, again in the same familiar hand:

My dear Toby,

It is my understanding that you already have the prelude but not the epilogue. Here, somewhat to my shame …

He read no further. Jamming the note to the back of the document, he avidly scanned the top page:

OPERATION WILDLIFE – AFTERMATH AND RECOMMENDATIONS

By now his heart was racing so fast, his breathing so uneven, he wondered whether, after all, he was about to die. Perhaps Emily was wondering too, because she had dropped on her knees beside him.

‘You opened the door. Then what?’ he stammered out, frantically leafing through the pages.

‘I opened the door’ – gently now, to humour him – ‘he stood there. He seemed surprised to see me and asked if you were in. He said he was a former colleague and friend of yours, and he had this parcel for you.’

‘And you said?’

‘I said yes, you were in. But you were unwell, and I was your doctor attending you. And I didn’t think you should be disturbed, and could I help?’

‘And he said? – go on!’

‘He asked what you were suffering from. I said I was sorry, I wasn’t allowed to tell him that without your permission but you were as comfortable as could be expected pending further examination. And I was about to call an ambulance, which I am. Are you hearing me, Toby?’

He was hearing her, but he was also churning his way through the photocopied pages.

‘ Then what?’

‘He seemed a bit thrown, started to say something, looked at me again – a bit beadily, I thought – and then he said might he know my name?’

‘Give me his words. His actual words.’

‘ Jesus , Toby.’ But she gave them anyway: ‘“Would I be impertinent if I were to ask you your name?” How’s that?’

‘And you told him your name. You said Probyn?’

‘Doctor Probyn. What do you expect me to say?’ – catching Toby’s stare. ‘Doctors are open , Toby. Real doctors give their names. Their real names.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘“Then kindly tell him that I admire his taste in medical advisors,” which I thought was a bit fresh of him. Then he handed me the package. For you.’

‘ Me? How did he describe me?’

‘“For Toby !” How the fuck d’you think he described you?’

Fumbling for the note that he had shoved to the back of the photocopied pages, he read the rest of its message:

… you will not be surprised to learn that I have decided that a corporate life does not, after all, agree with me, and I have accordingly awarded myself a lengthy posting to distant parts.