‘Did you tell Harper that we were going to be up here?’ Helen said when I got back. She was picking through Mrs Grace’s reading matter: a number of old copies of the National Geographic magazine and an early text by Victor Silvester: First Steps in Ballroom Dancing.
‘Yes.’
‘And what about the twins? Did you tell him where they’d gone — about Mrs Grace?’
‘No. Just that they’d gone with someone to a hotel outside town.’
‘What did he say?’
‘To keep off the streets. Oh — and to keep together. We’ll pick up the children as soon as he comes. Don’t worry.’ She looked at me doubtfully in the hot gloom, a smell of baked wood everywhere. The slates above us were still hot to touch after the brilliant day. ‘They’ll be there,’ I went on. ‘They weren’t going to follow Mrs Grace to the hotel. That car we saw — after the tractor, in front of the house — that was the one they kept at the end of the lane for us. Not the children. And we’ll hear Harper downstairs as soon as he comes. We’re only up here in case the KGB call by.’
They called an hour later. It was 6.30 — half an hour to go before the dancing started. First we heard several successive keys groping the hall door lock, then quiet footsteps in the reception area, then — nothing. I was tempted to call out, fearing it was Harper and his men and that now they would leave without knowing we were there. A minute passed. I looked at Helen, whispering, ‘Shall I call?’ And if she had nodded a second sooner than she did I would have. My mouth was just opening. And then her hand was across it in the same instant, gagging me desperately, as the voice rose clear as a bell from the studio immediately beneath us.
‘Nichevo …’ Then two more voices in Russian, talking. And now the three of them were walking about the place, moving tilings, looking. One of them came into the gents changing room, then the lavatory. Silence. Then the airing-cupboard door opened.
Helen’s arm lay across my chest. I started to push her away, trying to get at the revolver. But the footsteps went back into the hallway, then into the studio where the voices started again.
‘Nichevo …’ Followed by a lot more in the same vein. And then the word appeared, the name, emerging from the Russian dialogue as clearly as if the man concerned was being introduced at the Kremlin.
‘… Harper …’
And just after that the other name, less well accented, but clear enough: ‘… Moorend Park Hotel …’ Then they left, the hall door closing softly, footsteps dying away down the mews.
Helen’s arm dropped away from me and I found I was holding the revolver after all, but had no memory of how it had got there.
‘Christ. It was Harper. With the KGB. All along. I’m sorry.’
She said nothing, looking at me in the gloom; she turned away, went over to the trap-door and started to undo the screws.
‘Wait. It’s no use. They’ll have someone at the hotel already — if they know about it. Harper must have had them check all the hotels on the outskirts of the town. But the twins will be all right. They won’t move on them —’
‘Of course they will. They probably have. Hostages. We’ll find a note when we get there.’
‘All right. But let’s think. You still have those names. And that’s what they want. The twins will be safe for the moment — as long as you have the names. I can get somebody else down from London — now that I know it’s Harper —’
‘Yes — and have a shooting-match somewhere. With the twins in between.’
‘All right, but —’
‘Well, we can’t simply stay here. We must do something. Anything. Telephone. Come on.’
But we couldn’t leave through the studio, for just then the first of the dancers arrived, someone in charge of the music it seemed, and as we started to squeeze through the window making for the pub, the bouncy sounds of a Silvester quick-step rose up into the attic as he checked the machinery in the studio, some happy old melody imprisoned now in a strict tempo.
It was cool outside on the roof where we crouched until the light began to fade. And then it was safe to move and we were down the short drop into the pub yard and lurking among the cider crates in the half light.
The back door opened. Two men came out, slightly tipsy. There was music inside, a piano being hammered, people singing, a lot of chatter and laughter, with broken bursts of huge gaiety in the steady hum, as if everyone inside were being systematically tickled.
We went through into the crowded saloon bar. It was an old provincial city pub, a small Victorian ale-house happily forgotten in these narrow streets in the inner town, with the original porcelain-handled beer-pulls, curved mahogany counter, and a series of dirty seaside postcards pinned up next to the dart-board. And it was packed tight with elderly folk, part of some group it seemed, very merry, the men in their best dark crumpled Sunday suits holding straight glass pints of bitter, and the women, squat, with bright-hued mackintoshes and unsuitable hats, full of Guinness. A seedy, narrow-faced man, cigarette ash trickling over his double-breasted suit — a caricature piano-player — was playing the piano, thumping out a fifties Jimmy Young number.
‘They tried to tell us we’re too young …
Too young to rea-ly be in love …’
The crinkled faces beamed, sang, swallowed, belched and swayed.
We pushed through this happy alcoholic euphoria, this old England briefly revitalised in merry song and strong ale at the end of a Sunday charabanc outing to Weston-super-Mare, into the public bar which gave out onto the street. And this was crowded too, with quieter regulars and with a group of men in smart blue suits drinking at the end of the bar by the doorway. The suits, I thought. Suits. What are they doing here?
But by then it was too late.
The first man at the counter had turned and was looking at me. It was Harper, the pock-marked face expanding in astonishment, a glass of gin and tonic raised to his lips. The second man looked up over a glass of light ale. It was Croxley. Detective Chief Superintendent Croxley of the Special Branch. And beyond him there was a third figure, tough, well-built, who wasn’t drinking and had obviously just arrived in the bar. Three devious emblems of somebody else’s law and order. I had come home again. I knew it now. Back where I’d started.
‘Marlow!’ Harper almost shouted, like a bully, putting a hand on me. ‘How in God’s name did you get here?’ He took no notice of Helen. I was suddenly angry.
‘Harper,’ I said, ‘you little —’ But I stopped. ‘You tell me — how did you get here? Why didn’t you pick us up?’
The tune had changed next door. They were singing ‘Good-bye Dolly Gray.’
‘Good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you …’ The piano going very strongly.
‘We couldn’t get down the mews. They were there before us — saw them go down as we arrived. We got them as they came out, end of the street in their car. But you weren’t with them. Or back at the studio.’
‘How do you mean “them”?’ I was going to add: you’re with them. But I stopped in time. That knowledge was something I might need later.
Harper didn’t reply. I looked at Croxley. He smiled. ‘What’s this, then,’ I asked him. ‘The Last Round-Up?’ He nodded, deprecatingly.
‘How are you, Mr Marlow? We’d heard you were dead.’
‘I’m fine. Or I hope I am. This is Mrs Jackson.’