The woman shot me a glance full of hate and a promise I hoped she’d never get the chance to keep. Then she went out, returning a moment later with my clothes, cleaned and pressed.
I looked at Reilly for a minute. She showed no sign of leaving so I removed my nightgown and did a careful examination of my body, checking the bruised and anointed spots carefully.
‘Is this really necessary?’ said the Brigadier impatiently.
I pretended to think the protest was a moral one and replied, ‘She can always look away.’
‘From what?’ said Reilly scornfully.
I got dressed.
The air outside was probably more contaminated than the air within, but I gulped at it like Bacardi on the rocks. The street in front of the hospital was narrow and relatively quiet, but it ran into a well-lit and busy highway. I watched the London traffic and people go pouring by in a never-ending stream. It seemed that I just had to plunge into that and I’d be swept away out of sight and out of reach in seconds. But there were things I needed to find out. And in any case, I guessed the apparent ease of exit was illusory.
We went to a small French restaurant a stone’s throw from Fitzroy Square. Ten years ago it had been a pizzeria. I knew because Vita 3’s offices had been just around the corner in the Square as I was sure the Brigadier and his aggressive companion were very aware. We were expected, and ushered to a reserved booth which offered some privacy but not as much as the general bustle and hubbub of the place, which was crowded.
‘Are there any dietary restrictions?’ enquired the Brigadier.
‘What? Oh, I see. Well, I don’t chew many raw chillies,’ I said.
‘The rognons are highly thought of. Or the veal.’
‘Both,’ I said. ‘Preferably though not necessarily in that order.’
He ordered in good French. He had an omelette and Reilly stuck at Perrier water and stick biscuits.
‘Have you two been in their kitchens, or what?’ I wondered. ‘I’m the one with the busted gut, remember?’
‘You’re doing Sam Spade again,’ said the Brigadier in a pained voice.
‘Sorry. All right. I’ll try to eat like a gentleman.’
The meal continued in silence. The food was excellent, though rather let down by the wine which affected to be a 1970 Médoc of the most impeccable provenance but which wasn’t a patch on the Chilean red which I imported into Margarita by the barrelful.
I felt able to express this opinion to the Brigadier, whom I could not feel to be my host in the real, that is the financial sense. He seemed to be genuinely interested and made a note of my recommendation, saying that he had a certain advisory responsibility to his club cellar committee.
‘You won’t regret it,’ I said. ‘No, no pudding for me. A lot of black coffee, an ounce of armagnac and about six inches of Cuban tobacco will round things off nicely.’ I got them except that the Cuban was Jamaican and the armagnac was cooking brandy. At least it all confirmed the restaurant was genuinely French. They cheat on everything but food.
‘Ok,’ I said, drawing luxuriously on my cigar. ‘What’s the pitch? Or, if you prefer, isn’t it about time you put me in the picture, sir?’
The Brigadier shook his head slightly as though irritated by a fly and said, ‘Mr Swift, please don’t let this pleasant treatment you’re receiving go to your head. We can afford to be gentlemanly with you because we simply don’t need to be anything else. We hold all the cards, believe me. You hold nothing. You are nothing.’
‘You think so?’ I replied with an effort at jauntiness. ‘Even criminals have rights in a free society, Brig. And I’ve still got a few influential friends.’
‘I doubt it,’ said the Brigadier. ‘And even if you had, I do not think that they’d care to match their influence against mine.’
There it was, a gentle reminder of the official clout this cold-eyed ringmaster and his attendant clown must carry. I didn’t really need reminding. I remembered how unhappy old Honey had looked in the hospital. But when the Brigadier had cracked the whip, Honey had gone trotting off as obedient as any high-stepping circus horse. Anybody who can make a Scotland Yard Commander jump has every reason to be confident he can make a cancerous criminal fugitive leap like a performing flea.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ve got no rights and I’ve got no friends. But I must have something, else why the big welcome?’
The Brigadier smiled and nodded.
‘Indeed you have, Mr Swift,’ he said. ‘Though you weren’t to know it, your move came at almost the perfect time for us.’
‘Makes you believe in God, does it, Brig?’ I asked.
‘He is certainly providing us with the big guns,’ he replied. ‘You see, when we heard you’d been caught, our interest was aroused for reasons that will become apparent. But as your usefulness to us would involve giving you a certain amount of freedom, and as your lack of freedom looked to be our main bargaining counter, well, we could see that it was going to be difficult to hold you to your side of any deal.’
‘You could have asked for my word,’ I said.
‘Once, perhaps. But I don’t think you’d find a man in England willing to accept your word now,’ he said. ‘Nevertheless I sent Miss Reilly down here to keep an eye on the situation. And when she called in to tell me that the doctors had diagnosed a terminal cancer, that put a different complexion on things. Not only did it explain your sudden desire to come back to the UK, but it gave us a real lever.’
‘That’s what makes me believe in God,’ said Reilly. ‘Crap like you getting cancer at just the right moment.’
‘You see, all you can do now is give us a straight yes or no,’ said the Brigadier. ‘If you say no, I’ve spelt out to you what the rest of your brief life will be like.’
‘I heard you, and I remember things, sometimes for a couple of hours together,’ I said impatiently. ‘No to what? Yes to what?’
The red-headed woman leaned forward, her face close to mine. The proximity made her features look even more squashed than they were but her breath was sweet.
She said, ‘We want you to kill someone for us.’
I smiled incredulously. I’d been busy examining all my possible areas of expertise and had been hard put to come up with any single one which would make me a desirable property. But being a hit-man didn’t even figure at the bottom end of the list.
‘You’ve got the wrong Swift,’ I assured her. ‘Boy, have you got the wrong Swift!’
‘They’re the only two that we know of,’ said the Brigadier. ‘And we’re pretty sure we’ve got the right one.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ I said, suddenly alert. ‘Who is it you want me to kill?’
‘Who is it in the whole world you’d most like to see dead?’ murmured the Brigadier. ‘We wouldn’t dream of asking you to do anything that would go against the grain.’
‘No!’ rasped Reilly in her bog-brogue. ‘It’s just the job for a creepy cockroach like yourself. We want you to kill your father!’
4
… Friday’s footprint …
I sat very still for a while after that.
The Brigadier must have done another of his finger-waggles, for a waiter sloshed some more cooking brandy from his armagnac flask into my glass.
‘Drink up,’ advised the Brigadier. ‘Get your breath back. I’m afraid we’ve taken you by surprise.’
‘Don’t waste your sympathy,’ said Reilly. ‘The bastard’s just working out whether he should use a knife or a gun.’
‘Brig,’ I said. ‘Just one thing—do we really need this … this amphibian?’
‘Miss Reilly is my right-hand—er person on this exercise,’ said the Brigadier reprovingly. ‘Where I go, she goes.’
‘Even when you go for a leak?’ I said, standing up. ‘Well, not with me.’
I didn’t want to be like a kid in class putting his hand up but it seemed wisest to get some kind of agreement. So I looked interrogatively at the Brigadier, who smiled
slightly and nodded, before I set off down the open corridor at the back of the restaurant. To my right was the kitchen. Straight ahead was the rear entrance. It was tempting, but no doubt the Brigadier had stationed one of his yo-yos there among the dustbins. Added to which, I was in full view of the table still.
To the left were the loos. I opened the door and glanced back. The Brigadier was deep in reverie but red Reilly was watching me like a bug she was preparing to swat. I smiled invitingly at her and went through the door.
If she’d accepted my invitation she wouldn’t have been out of place. I was in the Ladies. Fortunately it was unoccupied.
More years ago than I care to remember, I’d realized I was fully committed to the crooked path when I found myself always checking exits shortly after making entrances. When I used to chew rubbery pizzas in this place after a late night at the office, there’d been two rear doors, the one in the corridor plus one in the kitchen, both easily covered by one man. The Gents didn’t even have a window.
But the Ladies did.
It was high and it was narrow and it probably hadn’t been open since the Frogs moved in. They don’t like draughts. They spoil the soufflés.
Balancing on one foot on the handle of the lavatory door, I tried the window. It was firm as a rock. Fortunately there was a space of about three feet between the top of the door and the ceiling. I was able to swing myself astride and apply more direct pressure. It still didn’t budge.
So I wriggled round on my back, not an easy trick on two inches of wood, and drove my right foot hard against it.
Now it budged. In the confined space of the loo it sounded like an explosion. But in the restaurant it had the din of the kitchen to contend with. Outside, at the end of the narrow service alley into which I now dropped, it had the riot of London’s night traffic.
I dusted myself down and glanced up at the window, which looked so small I could hardly believe I’d got through it. The moral, I told myself as I strolled away, is—if you want to get slim, get cancer.
It didn’t sound like one of my better jokes.
One of the gifts sparsely scattered into my infant cradle was an antibrood regulator. Or perhaps it was a legacy of Pa’s self-sufficiency conditioning. Anyway, as my career to date has shown, I guess, I can be very single-minded. I rarely get hung up on irrelevancies, no matter how emotionally compelling. So now within a few paces I was able to put the Brigadier’s crazy scheme right out of my mind and concentrate on the matter in hand. Which was to check the truth of what he’d said about Kate and Angelica.
Six or seven minutes not too conspicuously brisk walking brought me to the quiet Bloomsbury cul-de-sac where Kate and I had spent most of our uneasy marriage. The lease of the house had been in Kate’s name from the start, a legal precaution rather than a token of love. But it had worked out well enough. There was no way they could suck the house in when the Charity Commissioners and the Law came vacuuming through the debris of Vita 3. There was also the steady income from the trust I’d established for Angelica’s upbringing and education. The papers had it that the marriage cracked because of the scandal, but it was just the final blow, though Kate had reacted with surprising bitterness. There’d been one outraged letter, then I’d communicated with her via Uncle Percy. Not that there’d ever been any question of her rejecting my generous financial arrangements! I sometimes wondered what she would have done if I’d asked her to share a life of luxury in exile with me. But I’d never really seriously considered it. Margarita Island was no place for a girl to grow up. At least that was my bullshit reason. My asshole reason was that I didn’t need the lumber, that I was better off travelling light.
All motivation claims are either asshole or bullshit; that revelation was another of the gifts that had hit me in the eye as I gurgled my first disbelieving disgust at the world. Bullshit reasons are those which are strongly laced with altruism; asshole reasons those shot through with selfishness. They are equally false. Our altruism rarely helps others. Our egotism rarely helps ourselves. There’s something else, I don’t know what, but when you wake up in the night racked by nameless terrors, then you must be getting close.
The house was dark. I took out my leather key-pouch. Probably Honey had taken impressions of the lot, but at least he’d put them back. Without looking, I selected a key by touch alone and slipped it into the lock. Another woman might have changed the locks in ten years, but not Kate. She was mean in every sense.
I examined the street carefully before closing the door. It looked empty enough, but I couldn’t believe the Brigadier wouldn’t send a yo-yo round here as soon as he discovered my flight. The house was empty too. I stood in the hallway and felt it. I’m rarely wrong. Even if there’d been the faintest stir of life in the most distant room, I’d have picked it up.
There was no time for a nostalgic tour. I went quickly up the stairs and checked the bedrooms. In the main one, the wardrobes though not empty were well depleted and on the dressing-table there was no sign of the apothecary’s shop range of junk that Kate imagined she needed to magic her face back to life each day.
In the adjoining bathroom, the same evidence of departure was present. Pills, potions, shampoos, toothbrushes, all gone. But in the wall cabinet I found a man’s razor and an empty tin of denture cleansing paste. I clicked my own almost unsullied teeth together with some satisfaction till it struck me I’d be willing to give up the lot for a healthy gut. I hoped the bastard shaving in my mirror got leprosy. Angelica’s bedroom I’d expected to be a trial, but if anything it presented less problems than her mother’s. Despite Uncle Percy’s bulletins and the occasional snapshot, I guess I was still thinking in terms of hair-ribbons, teddy bears and the kind of elfin clothes a girl of six wears. Punk posters and an unhygienic knot of jeans in a corner of the wardrobe did nothing for me.
But one thing was clear. The Brigadier hadn’t lied. They were gone, and on no short visit either.
I would have liked to have a good poke around, read a few letters, checked appointment books, to get some line on their destination. But I was short of time.
I went back to the big bedroom, clambered on the dressing table stool and removed the Picasso print from the wall. You’d have thought the cow would at least have chosen her own pictures. I bet myself she wouldn’t even have gone to the expense of having the combination changed on the safe behind the picture.
I’d have won. It clicked open and the door swung back. It was empty. Well, that wasn’t surprising. Kate had an old-sock-under-the-mattress mentality.
I took out my key pouch and selected a small latchkey. In the jamb of the safe just visible when the door was open as far as it would go, that is, barely more than ninety degrees from the wall, was a faint groove. In fact it consisted of three indentations joined by a narrow channel. I fitted the teeth of my key into them and pressed down, once, twice, three times.
There was a gentle click. I reached into the safe and with my fingertips slid the back panel to one side. It was still there, the small washleather bag. I thought of Kate; all those years of screwing with her toothless lover, and a quarter of a million in industrial diamonds a few feet over her head.
There was something else too. A gun. I didn’t like guns. Only a fool makes plans that need guns. But even a wise man needs protection against the unforeseeable. What’s the point of fooling the world if some yo-yo after your wallet puts you in hospital at the crucial moment? So I got a gun. I had to leave it behind of course. Even ten years ago you didn’t turn up at Heathrow with a gun in your suitcase. So I left it with my cache. Every where I go I leave caches, like a cat marking out its boundary trees. Come the thirtieth century and they’ll probably be as eagerly sought after as hordes of Roman coins.
I pocketed the washleather bag. Then I reached for the gun too. I was deep into the world of the unforeseeable.
Just how deep I began to realize when I picked it up. There was a small envelope underneath it. That hadn’t been left by me. That was as sta
rtling as Friday’s footprint.
I picked it up. It had my name on it.
I put it in my pocket and carefully wiped my fingerprints off the surfaces of the safe before closing both the inner and outer doors.
That was my way of showing I was still in control.
I stepped down from the stool, replaced it before the dressing-table, and sat on it.
Only now did I open the envelope.
It contained a single sheet of paper with a single line of type.
Room 272 has been reserved for Mr Alexander Evans at the Abbotsford Hotel.
Shit, I thought. You clever little brigadier, you! He knew about the window in the ladies’ loo. And guessed that I’d know too. He just wanted me to have a little run around in the fresh air, expend my excess energy, show I was independent, then come to heel.
I took the gun out and checked it carefully. Firing pin, action, ammunition, I went through the lot, then put it back together again.
At least at my next interview with the Brigadier if I didn’t like what he was doing with his mouth, I could shoot it off.
Reilly’s too. That thought cheered me up a lot.
Quietly I let myself out of the house, If they thought I was going to go quietly to the Abbotsford with my tail between my legs, they didn’t know me yet.
I picked up a taxi in New Oxford Street and told him to take me to Gloucester Place. Here Uncle Percy had had his modest apartment for thirty odd years. If I had any slight hope of getting out of the Brigadier’s stranglehold, I’d find it here. Not that Percy Nostrand was a man of very great influence. His Whitehall career hadn’t carried him to the heights and he had spent the last twenty years of it in some quiet backwater of the Home Office. But I knew that there was considerable character behind that benevolent, almost simple exterior, especially when he felt that an injustice had been done. Indeed this had caused our only main point of disagreement for he steadfastly refused to acknowledge my father’s guilt all those years ago. I suspect that this blind setting, of friendship above all evidence had been partially responsible for his low-key career thereafter.
Traitor's Blood Page 3
