'That's asking one hell of a lot, Colonel – you're asking me to sit twiddling rny thumbs. I'm not sure I can do that without knowing exactly what you are supposed to be doing.'
The Egyptian took a deep breath. 'Does the name Hassan mean anything to you?'
Roskill cocked his head – it had to be the right note of interest now, with no hint of the surprise which tightened his guts.
'Hassan who?'
'Hassan will do for now — it doesn't matter whether it's a real man or just a murderous bloody-minded idea. But that's what I'm after, dummy2
Roskill – that's what I'm after.'
'And if you find him you'll give him to us.'
'Give him to you?' Razzak growled. 'If I find him, you can rely on that. And just you make sure of him, by God. Because if it was Hassan who bombed Llewelyn's car and he finds me sniffing around, he'll put my name to the top of his list!'
IX
HOWE HAD GONE off duty when Roskill finally got through to the department again; a much younger voice answered him, making no trouble – as Howe undoubtedly would have done –
when he asked to be put straight through to the technical section stand-by man.
He had toyed with the idea of asking for further details about Razzak, until he remembered what Audley had said earlier: it was vital that Llewelyn should be kept in the dark about what they were doing, and any official request they made would go straight back to him.
So the bugger of it was that they were thus effectively cut off from their own information services and thrown back on their own resources. Which was fine for Audley, but rendered Roskill himself almost powerless – and, damn it, that might well be just what Audley was counting on! Even calling the technical section was a risk, but it was one risk that had to be taken. The Triumph dummy2
was probably safe enough in Bunnock Street – it always had been in the past. But if any hopeful car thief tried his hand on it the results might be catastrophic. And that was the risk that could not be taken.
Roskill sighed. At least the car was a loose end that could be tied up, a tangible object that could be tested and made to produce facts. It belonged to the world he understood, not to Audley's world of possibilities and theories and hypotheses.
There was a soft Highland voice on the other end of the phone. So Alan's senior partner, Maitland, was no longer on duty; it was a cold, sad thought that by routine it should have been Alan himself who answered him now.
'You've a little trouble with your car?' The man softly rolled each V; it was a comforting, competent sound – the sound of the ever-reliable Scot, resigned to getting the English out of trouble.
Roskill explained the Bunnock Street nightmare as simply as he could.
'That was verra smart of you, sir.'
'It was lucky, certainly.'
'Aye, lucky too,' the Scot conceded, 'And that would be a two-year-old car of yours?'
'Three-year-old, actually. How do you know?'
'The new Triumph has a steering lock – it would be a verra difficult car to move, and you say they didn't have much time.'
dummy2
'I don't quite see why they had to move it at all.'
'Well, it depends on what they've done to it. But likely they preferred to work in a more private place. It's surprising how much people notice. But no matter – it's enough to know that they moved it and we shan't be wasting our time.'
Roskill cleared his throat. The Scot would be wondering why he'd insisted on getting through to him directly when a message would have served well enough.
'I think I ought to warn you – ' he began awkwardly. 'I feel I must warn you personally that there could be a connection between my car and – the car that killed Alan Jenkins. There may not be, but there could be.'
There was a pause at the other end of the line.
'Thank you, sir. I had that in mind, verra much in mind. I'll not forget it – and you'll have your car back in one piece as well, never fear.'
The smell that greeted him as he entered Shabtai's took him directly back to the mess tent under the netting beyond the baking runway where the Israeli Skyhawks had been poised: a Jewish cooking smell that was strange rather than exotic, and exciting as everything on that airstrip had been exciting.
He pushed through a curtain of beads – there was no other way to go – and came to the head of an ancient wrought iron spiral staircase which looked as though it had been extracted from some Victorian garden. Below him was a brick-arched cellar, with dim dummy2
lights and crowded tables and a hubbub of conversation. There was a smoke haze and a whole range of further smells, each of which seemed to predominate at a different level as he descended the staircase, like the strata in an exposed cliff face.
As he reached the bottom step a girl started to sing in the furthest corner. She sang loudly and uninhibitedly, unaccompanied except by rhythmic clapping from people at the tables nearest her.
Presumably she was singing in Yiddish, but Roskill couldn't make out the words anyway – it; was the sort of singing that always embarrassed him because it seemed to insist on audience participation.
He stopped a perspiring waiter and inquired for Jake Shapiro. The man grinned and nodded, pointing to the far corner opposite the singer.
He threaded his way between the jammed tables. In a purely British establishment – at least one with a widely mixed collection of age groups like this – his passage would have been marked by blank looks and murmured apologies on both sides; but here he was received with smiles and left with the impression that he would have been welcome at most of the tables he disrupted.
Audley was wrong, he thought. Caricature or not, Shabtai's atmosphere was genuine. Or perhaps it was simply that Audley was a born loner who couldn't take crowds of people in any form except between the covers of a book, so that his judgment betrayed him in their presence. It would be the idea of Israel, not the Israelis in the flesh, which would attract him.
'Colonel Shapiro.'
dummy2
His vision had adjusted to the dimness, but there was no mistaking the man anyway: the bushy, ragged Stalin moustache and the broad, heavy shoulders – where Razzak was deceptively fat there was nothing deceptive about this hard-muscled bulkiness. It reminded Roskill of one of his father's prize bulls, amiable but unsafe.
Shapiro looked up at him – a confident, unhurried look. The mouth was hidden in the moustache's shadow, but the complex of lines on each side of it suggested that he was smiling.
'Ah! I wondered who it would be.' Shapiro set down the heavy pewter tankard he'd been nursing and brushed back the lick of black hair from his forehead. 'Roskill, isn't it? One of Sir Frederick's band of brothers? We met at poor old David's nuptials
– you were one of the zoot-suited ushers, weren't you?' He gestured with a large, hairy hand. 'Take a seat, Squadron Leader, take a seat!'
'It's nice to be expected,' Roskill drawled. 'I was afraid I might be disturbing a private party.'
'Not at all! Any friend of David's is welcome – even on business.
You must have some of my beer, now you're here.' Shapiro raised his tankard in one hand and snapped his fingers at a waiter. 'I've got my own little barrel – special strong ale, a firkin of it. Not a bit like this pressurised nat's water they flog everywhere now – a real beer, this is.'
He drank deeply.
'To be honest, I didn't expect you, though, Roskill. One of the S.B.
S like Cooper or Cox, I thought it'd be – or if Sir Frederick was in dummy2
on it, maybe Jack Butler. I thought you were strictly airborne these days – in fact, you've just been over to pick old Hod's brains, haven't you?'
'A flying visit – yes,' Roskill said carefully. 'Your chaps were very hospitable.'
'You asked a lot of sharp questions, so I hear. The feeling is that you got more than you gave.' Shapiro wagged a finger. 'I shall have to look out now, shan't I!'