"So the grand slam?" said Rooke, refusing to be wooed by Burr's joviality.
"Yes, Rob, the grand slam. That's what everywhere means, isn't it? An international warrant for Mr. Thomas Lamont, criminal. Do you want me to send it to you in triplicate?"
Rooke replaced the receiver, lifted it and dialled a number at Scotland Yard. His hand felt strangely stiff as he touched the numbers ― the way it used to feel in the days when he played with unexploded bombs.
And when he's crossed the bridge, we'll burn it, Burr had said.
SIXTEEN
"Old love," Corkoran proposed, lighting his first foul cigarette of the day and balancing a porcelain inkstand by way of an ashtray on his lap. "What say we pick the fly shit out of the pepper?"
"I don't want you near me, actually," Jonathan said, in a prepared speech. "I've got nothing to explain and nothing to apologise for. Just leave me alone."
Corkoran lowered himself gratefully into the armchair. They were alone in the bedroom. Frisky had once more been ordered to remove himself.
"Your name's Jonathan Pine, formerly of Meister's, the Queen Nefertiti and other emporia. But you are now travelling as one Thomas Lamont on a bona fide Canadian passport. Except that you don't happen to be Thomas Lamont. Contest? No contest."
"I got the kid back. You've had me patched up. Give me my passport and let me go."
"And between being J. Pine of Meister's and T. Lamont of Canada, not to mention J. Beauregard, you were Jack Linden of remotest Cornwall. In which capacity, you topped a mate of yours, to wit one Alfred alias Jumbo Harlow, an Aussie boat bum with sundry convictions for drug running down under. Whereupon, you did a bunk before the law could have its way with you."
"I'm wanted for questioning by the Plymouth police. That's as far as it ever got."
"And Harlow was your business partner," said Corkoran, writing.
"If you say so."
"Dope-running, heart?" asked Corkoran, glancing up.
"It was a straight commercial venture."
"That's not what the press cuttings say. It's not what our little dickybirds say either. Jack Linden, alias J. Pine, alias you, ran a load of dope for Harlow single-handed from the Channel Islands to Falmouth, what the hacks called an impressive sail. And Brother Harlow, our partner, took the dope to London, flogged it and bilked us out of our cut. Which miffed us. Understandably. So you did what any of us would do when he's miffed with his partner: you topped him. It wasn't the neat piece of necessary surgery it might have been, given your proven skills in the field, because Harlow churlishly offered resistance. So you had a fight. But you won. And when you'd won, you topped him. Hoorah for us."
Stonewall, Burr had said. You weren't there, it was two other blokes, he hit you first and it was with his consent. Then yield ungracefully and make them think they've got the real you.
"They've no proof," Jonathan replied. "They found some blood, they never found the body. Now for Christ's sake get out."
Corkoran seemed to have forgotten the whole subject. He was grinning reminiscently into the middle air, all bad thoughts abandoned. "Do you know the one about the chap applying for a job in the Foreign Office? 'Look here, Carruthers,' they say, 'we like the cut of your jib, but we can't overlook the fact that you've done a spot of time for buggery, arson and rape....' Really not know it?"
Jonathan groaned.
" 'Perfectly simple explanation,' says Carruthers. 'Loved a girl who wouldn't let me diddle her, so I banged her on the head, raped her, shafted her old dad and set fire to the house.' You must have heard it."
Jonathan had closed his eyes.
" 'Okay, Carruthers,' say the selector chaps. 'We knew there'd be a reasonable explanation. Here's the deal. Keep away from the girls in the typing pool, no playing with matches, give us a kiss and you can have the job.' "
Corkoran was really laughing. The chubby wreaths around his neck went pink and shook; merry tears ran down his cheeks. "I feel such a shit, you being in bed, you see," he explained. "And the hero of the hour to boot. So much easier if I had you under a bright light with me playing James Cagney and walloping you with a dildo." He adopted the high-flown tones of a court policeman. " 'The wanted man, M'lud, is believed to 'ave a revealin' scar on 'is right 'and!' Show," he ordered in a quite altered voice.
Jonathan opened his eyes. Corkoran was standing at the bedside again, his cigarette held to one side and upward like a grubby yellow wand, and he was holding Jonathan's right wrist in his damp hand, examining the broad scar curling along the back of it.
"Oh dear," said Corkoran. "You can't have done that shaving.... All right, be like that."
Jonathan had snatched back his hand. "He pulled a knife on me," he said. "I didn't know he carried one. He wore it on his calf. I was asking him what was in the boat. I knew by then. I'd guessed. He was a big man. I couldn't trust myself to throw him, so I went for his throat."
"The old Adam's apple, eh? You're quite a brawler, aren't you? Nice to think Ireland's been some use to somebody. Sure it wasn't your knife, old love? You do seem quite partial to a knife, from all one hears."
"It was his knife. I told you."
"Who did Harlow flog the dope to ― any idea?"
"None. Zero. I was just the sailor. Look, go away. Go and persecute someone else."
"The mule. Mule is the term we use. Mule."
But Jonathan kept up his attack. "That's who you are, then, is it? You and Roper? Drug-runners? That's perfect. Home from bloody home."
He dropped back on the pillows, waiting for Corkoran's response.
It came with a vigour that found him unprepared. For, with remarkable agility, Corkoran had sprung to his bedside and helped himself to a substantial handful of Jonathan's hair, which he was now pulling very hard indeed.
"Sweetheart," he murmured reproachfully. "Old love. Little boys in your position do well to watch their fucking language, actually. We are the Ironbrand Gas, Light & Coke Company of Nassau, Bananas, short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Respectability. The question is, who the fuck are you?"
The hand relinquished Jonathan's hair. He lay still, his heart thumping. "Harlow said it was a repossession job," he said huskily. "Somebody he'd sold a boat to in Australia who'd welshed on the debt. Jumbo had traced the boat to the Channel Islands through some friends, he said. If I could bring it to Plymouth we could flog it and get ourselves off the hook. It didn't seem such a tall story at the time. I was a fool to trust him."
"So what did we do with the body, old love?" Corkoran enquired chummily, back in his chair. "Dump it down the proverbial tin mine? The great tradition?"
Change the rhythm. Let him wait. The voice grey with despair.
"Why don't you just call the police, extradite me, claim the reward?" Jonathan suggested.
Corkoran removed his makeshift ashtray from his lap and replaced it with a buff, army-style folder, which seemed to contain nothing but faxes.
"And Brother Meister?" he enquired. "How did he offend?"
"He robbed me."
"Oh, you poor lamb! One of life's true victims.... But how?"
"Everyone else on the staff got a piece of the service money. There was a scale, so much for rank and how long you'd been employed. It came to quite a lot each month, even for a newcomer. Meister told me he wasn't obliged to pay it to foreigners. Then I found out he was paying the other foreigners, just not me."