So I went back to the house, bolted the side door top and bottom from the inside, slipped the locking pin into its housing, then walked through the living room again, passing Emma's piano stool on my way. I let myself out of the front door, double-locking it because that was how I had found it. Then I stood on the crown of the road and called to the upper window.
"Thanks, Wilf. Mission accomplished. All done."
No answer. I don't think I remember a longer twenty yards in my life than the distance from the front door of 9A to the blue Toyota, and I was halfway when I realised I was being followed. I thought at first it might be Larry behind me, or Munslow, because my follower was so quiet that my awareness of him was communicated less by hearing than by my other professional senses: the prickle on your back; the reflection in the air before you, made by someone just behind you; the sense of presence each time you check a shop window and see nothing.
I stooped to open the car door. I cast about but still saw nothing. I rose and swung round with my forearm in the strike position, and found myself standing face-to-face with the small black boy from the Ocean Fish Bar, who had been too serious to speak to me.
"Why aren't you in bed?" I asked him.
He shook his head.
"Not tired?"
He shook his head again. Not tired or no bed.
I climbed into the driver's seat and turned the ignition key while he watched me. The engine fired first time. He put his thumbs up, and before I could stop myself I had dragged Colin Bairstow's wallet from the sweat-sodden recesses of my jacket and given him a ten-pound note. Then I drove off down the road calling myself every kind of fool, because in my imagination I was hearing Inspector Bryant enquiring in his most blandishing voice what the nice white middle-aged gentleman in the blue Toyota thought he was buying for himself when he handed you that tenner through the window, son.
* * *
There is a hilltop on the Bristol side of the Mendips that gives one of the longest and most beautiful views in England, steeply downward over small fields and unspoiled villages and outward between two great hills towards the city.
It was one of the places where I had driven Emma on sunny evenings, when we liked to hop in the car and go somewhere for the joy of it. In spring and summer there is quite a traffic of young lovers up there. Fathers kick footballs with their children in the nearby fields. But by late October, between one and seven in the morning, you may be pretty confident of privacy.
I sat with my arms on the wheel of the Toyota, and my chin in my arms, and stared into the shifting night. Stars and moon hung above me. Smells of dew and bonfire filled the car.
By the courtesy light I read the lovers' exchange of messages, one square of yellow paper after another stuck along the dashboard of the car in the order in which I had removed them from the picture frame.
* * *
EMMA: AM expects your call 5.30 today.
Who's AM? I heard Bryant say. AM who's all over Pettifer's diary?
LARRY: Do you love me?
EMMA: CC rang. Didn't say where from. Still no carpets.
LARRY: Where's the bloody Bovril, woman?
Larry hated coffee but was an addict. Bovril was what he called his methadone.
LARRY: I am NOT obsessed by you. It's just that I can't get you out of my stupid head. Why won't you make love to me?
EMMA: AM rang. Carpets arrived. All present as promised. Because I'm off games. Wait till Thursday.
LARRY: Can't.
* * *
The hours crawled by like all the useless hours I had wasted waiting for spies to come and go—in cars, on street corners, in railway stations and lousy cafés. I had two beds in two hotels and couldn't sleep in either of them. I owned a comfortable, leather-upholstered Sunbeam with a brand-new heater but was obliged to freeze in a clapped-out Toyota. Gathering Larry's moleskin over my shoulders like a cape, I tried repeatedly to go to sleep, in vain. By seven I was pacing the gravel, fretting about the fog. I'm stranded! I'll never get down the hill! By eight-thirty, in perfect visibility, I arrived at the entrance to the covered car park of a new shopping centre, only to learn that on Sundays it didn't open till nine. I drove to a cemetery and mindlessly studied headstones for half an hour, returned to the shopping centre, and embarked on the next leg of my spy's odyssey. I parked in the car park, bought shaving cream and razor blades for the seeming, caught a cab to Clifton, collected my Sunbeam from the Eden, and drove it back to the shopping centre. I parked the Sunbeam as close to the Toyota as I could, freed a reluctant trolley from its string of partners, placed it alongside the Toyota, dumped the four bin bags into it, boots, typewriter, answering machine, and green raincoat, and transferred the whole lot to the Sunbeam.
All this without shame or circumspection, because when God invented the supermarket, we used to say in the Office, he provided us spies with something we had till then only dreamed of: a place where any fool could transfer anything in the world from one car to another without any other fool noticing.
Then, because I had no wish to draw attention to Miss Sally Anderson of Cambridge Street—or for that matter Free Prometheus Ltd., or Terry Altman, Esq.—I drove the Toyota to a filthy industrial estate beyond the city's parking zone, pulled the plastic cover over it, and wished it an unfond farewell.
Then back to the supermarket car park and so by Sunbeam to the Hotel Eden, where I parked, paid my bill with a Cranmer credit card, and took a cab to the Starcrest motel, where I paid a second bill with Bairstow's credit card.
Thence to the Eden to collect my car, and so to Honey-brook to sleep, perchance to dream.
* * *
Or not, as Larry would say.
On the verge opposite the main gates, two cyclists were busy doing nothing. In the hall, a painfully written note from Mrs. Benbow regretted that "what with my husband's heart and the questions going on by police," she would not be obliging me in the future. The rest of my mail was scarcely more cheerfuclass="underline" two demands from the Bristol Constabulary for payment of parking fines I had not incurred; a letter from the office of the Value Added Tax inspector advising me that, acting on information received, he proposed to launch a full investigation of my assets, income, outgoings, and receipts over the last two years. And a premature bill from Mr. Rose, my carrier, who had never been known to send a bill to anyone unless someone went round to his home and threatened him with the collectors. Only my friend the excise officer seemed to have escaped enlistment:
Dear Tim,
I propose to make one of my surprise visits to you next Wednesday around midday. Any chance of a bite of lunch?
Best, David
David Beringer, ex-Office. Never happier than when he was resettled.
A last envelope remained. Brown. Poor quality. Typed on an old portable. Postmark Helsinki. The flap tightly sealed. Or, as I suspected, resealed. One sheet of paper inside, ruled. Inky handwriting. Male. Blotched. Headed Moscow and dated six days ago.
Timothy, my friend,
They have let loose an unjust hell on me. I am a prisoner in my own house, disgraced for nothing. If you have cause to come to Moscow, or if you are in touch with your former employers, please assist me by making my oppressors see reason. You can contact Sergei, who is arranging to post this letter for me. Phone him in English only at the number you know, and mention only the name of your old friend and sparring partner: