“I’d like some change, please, to telephone.”
“Sorry, mate. Can’t do,” the clerk said, and went on with his newspaper.
“You could do it last Monday night though, couldn’t you?” The clerk’s head came up fast.
Brotherhood’s office pass was green with a red diagonal line drawn in transparent ink across his photograph. A notice on the back said that if found it should be returned to the Ministry of Defence. The clerk looked at both sides of it and gave it back.
“I haven’t seen one like that before,” he said.
“Tall fellow,” Brotherhood said. “Carried a black briefcase. Probably wore a black tie as well. Well spoken, nice manner. Had a lot of calls to make. Remember?”
The clerk vanished, to be replaced a minute later by a tubby Indian with exhausted, visionary eyes.
“Were you on duty here Monday evening?” Brotherhood said.
“Sir, I was the man who was on duty on Monday evening,” he replied warily, as if he might not be that man any more.
“A pleasant gentleman in a black tie.”
“I know, I know. My colleague has acquainted me with all the details.”
“How much change did you give him?”
“Good heavens above, what does that matter? If I elect to give a man change, that is my personal preference, a matter for my pocket and my conscience that has nothing to do with anybody.”
“How much change did you give him?”
“Five pounds exactly. Five he wanted, five he got.”
“What in?”
“Fifty p’s exclusively. He wished to make no local calls at all. I questioned him about this and he was entirely consistent in his answers. I mean where is the hardship in this? Where is the sinister element?”
“What did he pay you with?”
“To my recollection, he gave me a ten-pound note. I cannot be completely certain but that is my imperfect recollection: that he gave me a ten-pound note from his wallet, accompanied by the words ‘Here you are.’”
“Did the ten pounds cover his rail ticket too?”
“This was totally unproblematical. The price of a second-class single fare to London is four pounds and thirty pence exactly. I gave him ten fifties and the balance in small change. Now have you further questions? I seriously hope not. Police, police, you know. If it’s one enquiry a day, it’s half a dozen.”
“Is this the man?” said Brotherhood. He was holding a photograph showing Pym and Mary at their wedding.
“But that is you, sir. In the background. I think you are giving the bride away. Are you sure you are engaged in an official enquiry? This is a most irregular photograph.”
“Is this the man?”
“Well I’m not saying it is not, put it that way.”
Pym would take him off perfectly, thought Brotherhood. Pym would catch that accent to a tee. He stood at the barrier studying the timetable of trains leaving Reading station after eleven o’clock on a weekday night. You went anywhere except to London because London is where you bought your ticket to. You had time. Time to make your maudlin telephone calls. Time to write your maudlin letter to Tom. Your plane left Heathrow at eight-forty without you. By eight o’clock latest you had done your turnaround. By eight-fifteen, according to the testimony of the airport travel clerk, you had put up your little smokescreen about planes to Scotland. After that you hightailed it to the Reading-bound coach, pulled down the brim of your hat and said goodbye to the airport as quickly and quietly as you knew how.
Brotherhood walked back to the coach timetable. Time to kill, he repeated to himself. Say you caught the eight-thirty from Heathrow. Between nine- and ten-thirty there were half a dozen trains in both directions out of Reading but you caught none of them. You wrote to Tom instead. Where from? He went back to the square. In the neon-lit pub there. In the fish-and-chip shop. In the all-night café where the tarts sit. Somewhere in this dowdy square you sat down and told Tom what to do when the world ended.
The telephone box stood at the station entrance, under a bright light that was supposed to deter vandals. Smashed glass and paper cups cluttered the floor. Graffiti and promises of love defaced the awful grey paint. But it was a good telephone, for all that. You could watch the whole square from it while you said your goodbyes. A mail box was let into the wall close by. And that’s where you posted it, saying whatever happens, remember that I love you. After which you went to Wales. Or to Scotland. Or you popped over to Norway to watch the migration of the reindeer. Or you hightailed it to Canada and prepared to eat out of tins. Or you did something that was all these things and none of them, in an upstairs room with a view of the church and the sea.
Reaching his flat in Shepherd Market, Brotherhood was still not quite done. The Firm’s official police contact was a Detective Superintendent Bellows at Scotland Yard. Brotherhood rang his home number.
“What have you got for me on that ennobled gentleman I mentioned to you this morning?” he asked, and to his relief detected no note of reservation in Bellows’s voice as he read him out the details. Brotherhood wrote them down.
“Can you do me another one for tomorrow?”
“It’ll be a pleasure.”
“Lemon, believe it or not. First name Syd or Sydney. Old chap, widowed, lives in Surbiton, close to a railway.”
Reluctantly Brotherhood phoned Head Office and asked for Nigel of Secretariat. Belatedly, and in the teeth of more larcenous instincts, he knew he must conform. Just as he had conformed this afternoon when he poured scorn on the Americans. Just as in the end he had always conformed, not out of slavishness but because he believed in the fight and, despite everything, the team. A lot of atmospherics followed while Nigel was located. They went over to scramble.
“What’s the matter?” said Nigel rudely.
“The book Artelli was talking about. The analogue, he called it.”
“I thought he was perfectly ridiculous. Bo is going to take it to the highest level.”
“Tell them to try Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus. On a hunch. Tell them to be sure to use an early text.”
A long silence. More atmospherics. He’s in the bath, thought Brotherhood. He’s in bed with a woman, or whatever he likes.
“Now how are you spelling that?” said Nigel warily.
CHAPTER 10
Once again a willed brightness was overtaking Pym as he listened to the many voices in his mind. To be king, he repeated to himself. To look with favour on this child that was myself. To love his defects and his strivings, and pity his simplicity.
If there was such a thing as a perfect time in Pym’s life, a time when all the versions of himself were appreciated and playing nicely and he would never want for anything again, then surely it was his first few terms at Oxford University whither Rick had dispatched him as a necessary interlude to having him appointed Lord Chief Justice and thus securing him a place among the Highest in the Land. The relationship between the two pals had never been better. Following Axel’s departure, Pym’s final lonely months in Bern had seen a dramatic flowering of their correspondence. With Frau Ollinger barely speaking to him and Herr Ollinger increasingly absorbed in the problems of Ostermundigen, Pym walked the city streets alone, much as he had done at the beginning. But at night, with the wall beside him silent, he penned long and intimate letters of affection to Belinda and his one true anchor, Rick. Stimulated by his attentions, Rick’s letters in reply took on a sudden stylishness and prosperity. The anguished missives from outer England ceased. The stationery thickened, stabilised and acquired illustrious headings. First the Richard T. Pym Endeavour Company wrote to him from Cardiff, advising him that the Clouds of Misfortune which had appeared to Gather had been swept Away one and All by a Providence I can only regard as crackerjack. A month later, the Pym & Partners Property and Finance Enterprise of Cheltenham was advising him that certain Steps were now in Hand for Pym’s future with a view to Insuring that he would never want for Anything again. Most recently a printed card of regal elegance was pleased to announce that following a Merger Agreeable to all Parties, matters relating to the above Companies should henceforth be referred to the Pym & Permanent Mutual Property Trust (Nassau), of Park Lane W.