“We’ve gotta get some gas,” Krellburger said about twenty miles outside the suburbs. Luckily, my wallet had also been recovered from my flat. I opened it and found a five pound note and some gold. I looked at the crisp, white banknote, and wondered how much this would buy of a liquid more precious, ounce for ounce, than the better Scotch whiskies. I’d never bought petrol, but supposed £5 should get us at least to Catford. We pulled into a filling station and drove past the long queue of cars for the charging points. An old man grunted at the banknote and unscrewed the filling cap. I tried not to wonder how many more banknotes like this I might have to my name. Five minutes later, we were back on the road.
We were now well within range of the general network of charging points, and the road was crowded with traffic. Here and there, it was slowed to a crawl. We came off the main road near Croydon and plunged into the teeming suburbs. First was the outer ring of detached and semi-detached properties. After another mile of so, we hit the immense inner ring of Victorian terraces, grander or meaner, where worked, slept and lived the bulk of the Imperial City’s ten million people. As we passed slowly by the shell of the new Crystal Palace, Krellburger knocked the cigarette from my mouth with a sudden hand signal, and pulled left into the car park of one of the larger self-service food markets. I thought for a moment he’d start one of his recitations from Ayn Rand for or against this loving, if slow, recreation of Paxton’s green house. But he didn’t bother looking at it.
“I’ve gotta make a ‘phone call,” he said shortly. “Nathaniel’s gotta call the Council together.” I smiled weakly. He opened the door. “Listen,” he said, looking in, “if you see anybody suspicious, just keep your head low. I’ll be back in five minutes.” I nodded. I watched him thread his way through the parked vehicles towards the big building where, as sign above the entrance shouted, all that a modern household might require could be found. Even in his travelling clothes, he had a pleasing shape, and it rested my mind to see his confident stride. Once he was gone out of sight, I took out my wallet again and began counting the change.
“Anthony!” A voice sounded urgently from all round me. I looked behind. Of course, the back seats were empty. “Anthony, I will say this only once. You have to listen to me and do exactly as I say.” I swallowed and dropped my wallet. Was I going mad? Had Macmillan fed me some slow-acting drug at dinner? But no—there was a voice. It came from the wireless speakers buried in the upholstery of the doors. And it was Vicky Richardson speaking to me.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
“Don’t try speaking back to me,” Vicky continued. “Just listen very carefully.” I looked about me. Outside, the rain had cleared, and a watery sun was low in the sky. We were in a car park crowded with electric vehicles. Women with children were supervising uniformed boys as they unloaded metal trolleys filled with bags into the boots of the cars. Some of the boys were pointing at the very grand vehicle where I was sitting. But I couldn’t see anyone who seemed interested in me. For sure, I couldn’t see Vicky Richardson anywhere.
“Anthony,” she said again, now urgent, “I want you to get out of that car at once. In just a few minutes, men with guns will surround it and take you prisoner again. If you try to resist, they will shoot you. I want you to get yourself to Daddy’s office. You will be safe there, and all will be explained.”
“Where are you?” I shouted. “What is going on?” But she’d told me not to try speaking back. Either she couldn’t hear me, or she wasn’t interested in conversation. The wireless went silent. Then, through more static, I heard the measured tones of the Home Service presenter as he read out the sermon Archbishop Lewis had earlier delivered on the new altar. There was a note of relish in his voice at those clear and balanced sentences. Normally, I’d have given my whole attention. But I turned the wireless off and unlocked the car door. I got out and stretched my legs. I was stiff all over from the long drive, and I could feel another headache coming on. I reached back in to get my overcoat and hat. As I put them on, I thought of waiting for Krellburger. Or I could follow him into the shop, where he was making his telephone call.
But now I saw the black van pull into the car park. It was one of those fancy models that had been popular back when diesel was still a viable fuel. This one hadn’t been converted to some other fuel, and I could hear the loud throbbing of its engine from fifty yards away. Its way was blocked by a couple of cars that were waiting to get out into the stream of traffic in the main road. Looking through the windscreen of the van, I could see two big men. The one who wasn’t driving was looking carefully about. I stepped back behind the cover of one of the higher electric cars. I crouched down and made my way under cover to the far side of the car park. There was a brick wall, rather low on my side, but with an eight foot drop on the other. I swung myself over and dropped into a road lined with small houses that dated, by the look of them, from the early 1940s. I looked left and right. About a hundred yards to my left, brisk traffic was moving up and down Westwood Hill. I didn’t know Catford terribly well. All considered, I didn’t really want to see Catford today. But I knew that going down in that direction would take me into an impenetrable maze of streets and alleys where no one would be able to track me.
I broke into a limping run along the road. At the junction with Westwood Hill, I looked left, back up towards the shopping market car park. There was no sight of the van or of anyone suspicious. I darted across the road and turned right down the hill. Running would have drawn attention to me. So I walked as briskly as I could, keeping myself away from the kerb. In the summer months, the gardens of the fine, detached houses I was passing would be in full bloom, and the trees and bushes of their front gardens would have given plenty of cover where they overhung the pavement. But, even if some had their garden heating on for the early shrubs, this was March, and there was no cover. Still, I hoped I could keep myself inconspicuous. Even if my pursuers were still poking about the car park, I was a wanted man. If I was to give myself in, it wouldn’t be to the local plod. I pulled my hat down and pushed my chin into the collar of my overcoat. Once or twice, I looked round. There were people behind me. But no one looked as if he was following me.
At the junction with Kirkdale, I managed to catch a trolley bus. This hadn’t gone past where I’d started, and—nervous as I was still feeling—I couldn’t imagine that the women and schoolchildren who filled the seats were in the service of Harold Macmillan or Michael Foot. We trundled rapidly along the whole length of Kirkdale, and turned right when we came to Horniman Museum. From here, it was downhill through a small but respectable shopping street, and then into a series of bends that took me into another wide road lined with detached older properties. I got off at the junction with Brockley Rise and walked quickly past a parade of shops that were mostly selling second hand furniture and second hand books. It was the bookshops that had, in better days, brought me this far out into the suburbs of South East London. I stopped for a moment beside a council school and looked across the road at the window of Mortimer’s Fine Antiquarian Books. It took up the less broken down half of some storage building that had gone up when, all about, there was nothing but fields and a few muddy lanes. Such warm and jolly times I’d had in there. Most of the books, I’d soon discovered, weren’t so old as the proprietor. But Mortimer always claimed he’d once carried proofs for Oscar Wilde, and was a source of entertaining, if somewhat unlikely, anecdotes about life in the fabled days before the Great War. I thought of going in a throwing myself on his mercy. “Never speak to the rozzers about anything!” was the favourite text on which he preached to his younger admirers. “Never give them anything. Never ask for anything.” Would he believe me if I told him I was being hunted by the Foreign Secretary and the Leader of the Communist Party? He probably would, and he’d gladly shut me away in one of his basements until such time as all danger had passed and I was tired of his recollections of an astonishingly scandalous youth.