Grasping my umbrella, I set off across the road. Already the first glum lights had appeared in the net-curtained windows: chrome chandeliers and cut-price desk lamps for the upper levels, neon for the unwashed lower down. A breeze-block chicane led to the front door. Unsmiling young acolytes in chauffeurs' suits hovered at a temporary reception desk of plywood. Cranmer, I said, as I handed over my umbrella and the shirtmakers' pretty box inside its carrier bag: I'm expected. But I had to empty my pockets of keys and loose change before the metal detectors would accept me.
"Tim! Fab! Long time no see! How's the world been using you? Pretty good, man, judging by what I see, pretty bloody good! Hey, listen, have you remembered your passport?"
All this as Andreas Munslow pumped my hand, clapped me on the shoulder, snatched a slip of pink paper from the acolyte, signed for me, and gave it back.
"Hullo, Andy," I said.
Munslow had served as a probationer with my section until I abruptly had him moved elsewhere. And I'd sack you again tomorrow, I told him cheerfully in my mind as we processed down the passage, chatting like old buddies reunited.
The door was marked H/IS. In Berkeley Square, no such post had existed. The anteroom was furnished in plastic rosewood. In Berkeley Square we had rather gone for chintz. A notice said PRESS BELL, AWAIT GREEN. Munslow glanced at his deep-sea-diver's watch and muttered, "Bit early." We sat down without pressing bell.
"I'd have thought Merriman would have wangled himself something on the top deck," I said.
"Yeah, well, you see, Jake thought he'd turn you straight over to the people who handle this stuff, Tim, catch up with you later kind of thing."
"What stuff?"
"Well, you know. Post-Sov. New Era."
I wondered what was new era about an ex-agent disappearing.
"So what does is stand for? Inquisitors' Section? Imminent Sackings?"
"Best ask Marjorie that one, actually, Tim."
"Marjorie?"
"I'm not totally versed, know what I mean?" He made a show of brightening. "Hey, great to see you. Really super. Not a day older, all that."
"You too, Andy. You haven't changed a bit."
"If I could just have that passport, actually, Tim."
I gave it to him. Time went by.
"So how's life in the Office these days?" I asked.
"Tim, the overall feeling is good. It's a great place to be. Really hopping."
"I'm glad."
"And you're making wine, Tim. Right?"
"I tread a few grapes."
"Great. Fabulous. They say British wine is really up and running."
"Do they indeed? How very nice of them. Unfortunately, there's no such thing. There's English wine. There's Welsh wine. Mine's inferior English, but we're studying to improve."
I remembered that he had a hide like a horse, for he seemed quite unmoved.
"Hey, how's Diana? The queen of vetting, they used to call her, back in the old days. Still do. That's quite a compliment."
"She's well, I hope, thank you, Andy. But we've been divorced these seven years."
"Oh, Christ, sorry about that."
"Well, don't be. I'm not. Neither is Diana."
He pressed bell and sat down again while we awaited green.
"Hey, listen, how's the back?" he asked in another spurt of inspiration.
"Thank you for remembering, Andy. Not a murmur since I left the Service, I'm proud to say."
It was a lie, but Munslow was one of those people with whom you do not want to share the truth, which was why I wouldn't have him in my section.
* * *
Pew, she said. As in church. Marjorie Pew.
She had a good handshake and a straight gaze, grey-green and slightly visionary. She wore pale face powder of a translucent quality. She was dressed in broad-shouldered navy blue, with the white stock at her throat that I associate with women banisters, and a gold fob-chain round it which I guessed had been her father's. She had a young figure and a very English carriage. Bending from the hip and holding out her hand to me, she lifted her elbow sideways, suggesting country girl and public school. Her brown hair was cropped like a boy's.
"Tim," she said. "Everyone calls you Tim, so I shall too. I'm Marjorie with an i-e. Nobody calls me Marge."
Not twice they don't, I thought as I sat down.
No rings on her fingers, I noticed. No framed photographs of hubby ruffling the spaniel's ears. No gap-toothed ten-year-olds on a camping holiday in Tuscany. Would I like tea or coffee? Coffee, please, Marjorie. She lifted a telephone and ordered it. She was used to giving orders. No papers, pens, toys, or tape recorder. Or none visible.
"So shall we take it from the top?" she suggested.
"Why not?" I said, equally hospitably.
She listened to me the way Emma listens to music, motionless, sometimes smiling, sometimes frowning, never quite at the places I expected. She had the judicious superiority of a psychiatrist. She made no notes and waited till I had finished before asking her first question. I was fluent. Part of me had been rehearsing my act all day and probably all night. The arrival of a half-forgotten colleague distracted me not at all. The door opened—a different door from the one I'd come in by—and a well-dressed man set a coffee tray between us, winked at me, and said Jake would be along in a minute, the FO was in a flap. With a start of pleasure, I recognised Barney Waldon, king of the Office's police liaison team. If you were mounting a domestic burglary or planning a small kidnapping or your daughter had been caught, drugged out of her mind, racing her souped-up Mini round the M25 at three in the morning, Barney was the one who made sure the Might of the Law was on your side. I felt a little safer for his presence.
Marjorie had placed her hands primly below her chin. While I spoke she observed me with a saintly concern that put me on my guard. I omitted all mention of Emma, I made light of changing my telephone number—vague talk of misrouted computer calls making one's life utter hell—and I confessed I had rather welcomed the chance of a respite from late-night drunken conversations with Larry. I made a rueful joke of it: something about anyone who shoulders the burden of Larry's friendship becoming an instant expert in the arts of self-protection. It won a watery smile from her. Perhaps I should have been more frank with the police, I said, but I was concerned not to appear close to Larry in case they drew the wrong conclusions—or the right ones.
Then I sat back in my chair in order to show her I had told her the whole truth and nothing but. I exchanged a friendly glance with Barney.
"Tough one," he said.
"A bit uncalled for," I agreed. "But typical Larry.”
“You bet."
Then we both looked at Marjorie with an i-e, who had not spoken. She was staring at a spot on her desk as if she had something to read there. But she hadn't. I noticed two doors behind her, one to each side. It occurred to me that this was not her room but an anteroom, and that real life was lived elsewhere. I had a feeling we were being listened to. But in the Office you have that feeling anyway.
"Forgive me, Tim. Didn't it cross your mind to tell the police to come back later, and phone us immediately? Instead of simply opening your doors to them?" she asked, still studying the desk.
"I had a choice—as in any operational situation," I explained, perhaps a trifle patronisingly. "I could have sent them packing and phoned you, which would have sounded their alarm bells. Or I could play it as it lay, normally. Just a normal police enquiry about a normal missing friend. That's how I played it."