Blame The Dead

Dave's office was in a converted Georgian terrace literally on the fringes of the law north of Gray's Inn and the Theobald's Road police station. All around were the small-time solicitors who could remember the name of the Duke but not where they'd put your file, the income-tax advisers who were careful not to call themselves accountants, the doctors who could get your friend into a good nursing home cheap. Dave's organisation didn't belong with them, but he'd move if they did; he knew his place and it wasn't behind a big glass front in Leaden-hall Street. If you had a problem that was a teensy-weensy bit disgusting or just slightly illegal, he might or might not take your case, but he didn't want a classy décor to put you off telling him about it.

I was let in by a lad who couldn't have been more than twenty-five – which was probably why he found himself handling the Sunday business – but already had the hard, prove-it eyes of his trade. I said I was Jamie to see Dave and he led me upstairs without a word.

Dave nodded to him, waited till he'd closed the door, then waved me to a seat. 'Evening, Major. Sorry to hear about all this.'

I shrugged and sat. His office, and the others in his organisation, had the atmosphere of an oldestablished newspaper: big battered desks, solid filing cabinets, a general air of inexpensive efficiency. In the corner was a big grey safe, a really serious job where Dave told his clients he kept their files and actually did keep a few.

'Does Dunkirk suit you? – sorry I can't do Belgium direct, but you'll be over the frontier in half an hour or so.'

'It's fine. When?'

'You're on the eight-o'clock boat from Dover. Coach trip -five capitals in four days, lucky you. Denniston's Tours, here's your ticket. Have you got any luggage, or want to borrow some?'

'I'm okay. It wasn't that much of a hurry.'

He lifted his eyebrows but let it pass. Then he opened a drawer and took out a British passport almost handed it over, then remembered to scrub it clean of fingerprints first. Just in case.

'Victoria coach station, five o'clock. See the tour guide; give him your ticket and that passport.'

I'd been looking at my new identity. Apart from the fact that it was about a man of roughly my age, it fitted me as well as a halo did. He was two inches shorter, with different-coloured eyes and hair, and the photograph showed glasses.

'I hate to quibble, Dave, but somehow this just isn'tme, if you know what I mean.'

'Doesn't matter, Major. Could be for a performing bear and nobody would know. The courier hands it up with twenty-four others, they count twenty-five heads, twenty-five passports, bingo, you're through. On these tours half the old berks would lose their passports if you let 'em keep them for themselves.'

'Is that how you came by this one?'

'Not quite. This one lost his life, too. There're always some, every year. Run a coach over a cliff, caught in an avalanche, hotel burns down, or they just freeze to death waiting for it to be built. The Army's got nothing on these tours, Major. And if the passport's still with the courier or. hotel, well, who can prove it?'

And there's always somebody to remember there's a market for these things. In some countries, of course, it's a state monopoly: the KGB could make them, all right, but an agent's too valuable to risk with a forged passport that needs only a single check to show its number was never issued, or to a different name. It takes longer to pin down a real one, even if the owner's dead; how many widows remember it's their duty to turn hubbie's passport in once he's planted?

I nodded. 'And after that, what?'

'Once you're on the boat you're on your own. Use your own passport – you've got it, haven't you? – to get off at Dunkirk. No problem.'

'And nobody cares that I've gone AWOL from the tour?'

'It's no crime, even if anybody noticed. Same thing for the passport control over there: they get twenty-four passports, they count twenty-four heads. Just don't wiggle your hips at any rich widows in the coach: they might start asking what happened to the nice man with the military manner.'

'I'll try and remember, Dave.'

'Fine. This Sunday work knocks hell out of me. Care for a quick one?'

Before I could answer he'd lifted the bottle out of the deep file drawer on the right of the desk – just like the classic private detective. So? So you get plenty of people behaving like the popular image of themselves, including judges and politicians as well as private eyes and sergeant-majors. It keeps their clients reassured.

It was a very pale single-malt Scotch; good, maybe too good for me. I still prefer my whisky soaked in soda. There had to be a good reason why the Cards left Scotland.

We toasted each other. Outside in the main office the phone rang and got answered, the typewriter clattered, a drawer in a filing cabinet screeched.

Tanner said, 'There's just the sordid business of money, Major.'

'Of course.' I took out my wallet and dealt him a double flush in fivers. He collected them slowly and stacked them on one side by the desk intercom, and asked, "You're sure you don't mind about it being France?"

'I'll survive.'

'I expect so. Did you have time to get some protection into your luggage, or d'you want to borrow something? Hire it, I mean."

I smiled a little bleakly. 'No thanks, Dave. I'm all right.' At any rate I wasn't going to land in France carrying an extra, and unfamiliar, pistol. The derringer on my arm was risk enough.

'Okay. You heading anywhere in particular?'

'Norway.'

'Again?' But he didn't press it. 'Had you thought of hiring us totry and clear things up for you so's you can come back?'

'Not yet. I think things'll just blow over.'

'You ought to know.'

'That's what I keep telling myself.'

We had one more drink and it got to be after half past four. He stood up. 'The wife's got people coming in, and you'd better not be late, either.* I gulped the last of my Scotch and then waited while he locked and double-locked the office door behind us. Every serious private detective has files he doesn't want his employees to see, and maybe particularly the employees junior enough to land the Sunday-evening switchboard watch. There's more than one way to the top in private detection.

I picked up my suitcase from near the door and followed him downstairs. We shook hands before we left – separately, just in case. I had to walk right down to Theobald's Road before I caught a taxi.

Thirty-four

Victoria coach station late on a winter Sunday was a draughty parade ground with a sketchy pretence at a glass roof. A few dark buses stood around like abandoned hulks, and little clumps of shivering passengers huddled against the walls below posters for Italy and the Devon coast and waited for the overnight to Scunthorpe.

One of the two lit buses had denniston's in big flowing script down the side, yellow on green. It already looked crowded and most of the windows were solidly steamed up.

A busy little man in a quilted anorak pounced on me. 'Are you Mr Evans?'

Was I? Christ, yes. 'That's me.' The driver appeared, snatched my case, and hurried it round to the back. I heard the hatch slam.

'You're the last,' the courier said, ticking me off on a typed list. 'Got your passport?'

I handed it over. He skimmed it quickly, nodded, and shoved it into a sort of satchel slung from his shoulders. 'If anybody in the coach asks you, I should say you belong to the firm. Just hitching a ride to Dunkirk. That'll help explain it when you scarper.'

'Good idea.' I climbed aboard and he followed.