Resignedly I explained. His expression cleared gradually as if a responsibility had been taken from him.
‘But, you see,’ he said pleasantly, ‘we in the Embassy would not speak to them ourselves. We approached our opposite numbers for relevant information, and were informed that no one knew anything of any significance.’
‘You couldn’t have spoken to those men face to face in their own homes?’
He shook his head. ‘It is actively discouraged, if not positively forbidden, for private contacts to take place.’
‘Forbidden by them, or by us?’
‘Bit of both. But by us, definitely.’
‘So you never really get to know the Russian people, even though you live here?’
He shook his head without any visible regret. ‘There is always a risk, in unofficial contacts.’
‘So xenophobia works both ways?’ I said.
He uncrossed his legs and recrossed them left over right. ‘Fear of foreigners is older than the conscious mind,’ he said, smiling as if he had said it often before. ‘But, now, about your enquiries...’
The telephone at his elbow interrupted him. He picked up the receiver in a leisurely fashion after the third ring, and said merely, ‘Yes?’
A slight frown creased his high smooth forehead. ‘Very well, bring him round.’ He replaced the receiver and continued with his former sentence. ‘About your enquiries, we can offer you telex facilities, if you need them, and if you’ll give me your room’s telephone number I can ring you if any messages arrive for you.’
‘I gave you the number,’ I said.
‘Oh, did you?’ He looked vague. ‘I’d better take it again, my dear chap.’
I repeated the number from memory, and he wrote it on a notepad.
‘Let me see to your glass,’ he said, splashing away with a lavish hand. ‘And then perhaps you might meet one or two of my colleagues.’
There were the noises of people arriving downstairs. Oliver Waterman stood up and brushed his smooth hair back with the insides of both wrists; a gesture of preparing himself, I reckoned, more than any need for grooming.
There was one loud intrusive voice rising above a chorus of two others, one male, one female, and as they came up the stairs I found myself putting a name to it. With no sense of surprise I watched Malcolm Herrick advance through the doorway.
‘Evening, Oliver,’ he said confidently, and then, seeing me. ‘Well, sport, if it isn’t our sleuth. Made any progress?’
From a fleeting glance at Oliver Waterman’s face I gathered that his reaction to Malcolm Herrick was much like mine. It was impossible not to attend to what Herrick said because of the physical force of his speech, the result no doubt of years of journalistic necessity; but there was no visible warmth behind the sociable words, and possibly even a little malice.
‘Drink, Malcolm?’ Oliver suggested, with true diplomatic civility.
‘Couldn’t be better.’
Oliver Waterman, bottle and glass in hand, made introducing motions between me and the other newcomers. ‘Randall Drew... Polly Paget, Ian Young. They work here with me in this department.’
Polly Paget was a sensible-looking lady in flat shoes, past girlhood but not quite middle-aged, wearing her hair short and her cardigan long. She gave Oliver Waterman a small straightforward smile and accepted her drink before Herrick, as of right. He himself looked as if he thought attache’s assistants should be served after him.
If I hadn’t been told Ian Young’s name or heard him speak, I would have taken him for a Russian. I looked at him curiously, realising how familiar I had already become with the skin texture and stillness of expression of the Moscow population. Ian Young had the same white heavyish face in which nothing discernable was going on. His voice, when he spoke, which at that time was very little, was unremarkably English.
Malcolm Herrick effortlessly dominated what conversation there was, telling Oliver Waterman, it seemed to me, just what he should do about a particularly boring row which had just broken out over a forthcoming visit of a prestigious orchestra.
When Polly Paget offered a suggestion, Herrick interrupted without listening and squashed her. Oliver Waterman said, ‘Well, perhaps, yes, you may be right,’ at intervals, while not looking Herrick in the eye except in the briefest of flashes, a sure sign of boredom or dislike. Ian Young sat looking at Herrick with an unnerving lack of response, by which Herrick was not in the least unnerved: and I drank my drink and thought of the wet walk back.
All possible juice extracted from the music scandal, Herrick switched his attention back to me.
‘Well, then, sport, how’s it going?’
‘Slow to stop,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Told you so. Too bad. That whole ground’s been raked fine and there’s not a pebble to be found. Wish there was. I need a decent story.’
‘Or indecent, for preference,’ Polly Paget said. Herrick ignored her.
‘Did you talk to the chef d’équipe?’ I said.
‘Who?’ said Oliver Waterman. I saw from Herrick’s face that he hadn’t, but also that he wasn’t going to admit it unless forced to: and even then, I guessed, he would pooh-pooh the necessity.
I said to Oliver Waterman, ‘Mr Kropotkin. The man who oversees the training of the horses and riders for the horse trials. The non-playing captain, so to speak. I was given his name by Rupert Hughes-Beckett.’
‘So you’ll be seeing him?’ Waterman said.
‘Yes, tomorrow morning. He seems to be all that’s left.’
Ian Young stirred. ‘I talked with him,’ he said.
Every head turned his way. Thirty-five or so, I thought. Thick-set, brown-haired, wearing a crumpled grey suit and a blue and white striped shirt with the points of the collar curling up like a dried sandwich. He raised his eyebrows and pursed his mouth, which for him was an excessive change of expression.
‘In the course of the discreet preliminary enquiries required by the Foreign Office, I too was given his name. I talked with him pretty exhaustively. He knows nothing about any scandal to do with Farringford. A complete dead end.’
‘There you are then,’ Waterman said, shrugging. ‘As I said before, there’s no fire. Not a spark.’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘It would be best that way. But there is a spark. Or there was, in England.’ And I told them about Johnny Farringford being beaten up by two men who warned him to stay away from Alyosha.
Their faces showed differing levels of dismay and disbelief.
‘But my dear chap,’ said Oliver Waterman, recovering his former certainty, ‘surely that means that this Alyosha, whoever he is, is absolutely determined not to be dropped into any sort of mess? So surely that makes it all the safer for Farringford to come to the Olympics?’
‘Except,’ I said apologetically, ‘that of course Farringford was also told in the summer that if he came to Moscow, Alyosha would be waiting to extract revenge for the stresses which gave Hans Kramer a heart attack.’
There was a short thoughtful silence.
‘People change their minds,’ said Polly Paget at length, judiciously. ‘Maybe in the summer, when Kramer died, this Alyosha sounded off a bit hysterically, and now, on reflection, the last thing he wants is to be involved.’
Herrick shook his head impatiently, but it seemed to me the most sensible solution yet advanced.
‘I really hope you’re right,’ I said. ‘The only trouble will be proving it. And the only way to prove it, as it always has been, is for me to find Alyosha, and talk to him, and get from him his own positive assurance that he means Farringford no harm.’
Polly Paget nodded. Oliver Waterman looked mildly despairing, and Malcolm Herrick unmirthfully laughed.
‘Good luck to you, then, sport,’ he said. ‘You’ll be here till Doomsday. I tell you, I’ve looked for this bloody Alyosha, and he doesn’t exist.’