No Comebacks

by Frederick Forsyth

  'Papers,' said the sergeant.

  Murphy reached into the cab and handed him Liam Clarke's sheaf of documents.

  'Liam Clarke?' asked the sergeant.

  Murphy nodded. The documents were -in perfect order. The constable had been examining the tractor and came back to his sergeant.

  'One of your man's headlights doesn't work,' he said, nodding at the farmer, 'and the other's covered with clay. You would not see this rig at ten yards.'

  The sergeant handed Murphy the documents back and transferred his attention to the farmer. The latter, all self-justification a few moments ago, began to look defensive. Murphy's spirits rose.

  'I wouldn't want to make an issue of it,' he said, 'but the garda's right. The tractor and trailer were completely invisible.'

  'You have your licence?' the sergeant asked the farmer.

  'It's at home,' said the farmer.

  'And the insurance with it, no doubt,' said the sergeant. 'I hope they're both in order. We'll see in a minute. Meanwhile you can't drive on with faulty headlights. Move the trailer onto the field and clear the bales off the road. You can collect them all at first light. We'll run you home and look at the documents at the same time.'

  Murphy's spirits rose higher. They would be gone in a few minutes. The constable began to examine the lights of the artic. They were in perfect order. He moved to look at the rear lights.

  'What's your cargo?' asked the sergeant.

  'Fertilizer,' said Murphy. 'Part peat moss, part cow manure. Good for roses.'

  The sergeant burst out laughing. He turned to the farmer who had towed the trailer off the road into the field and was throwing the bales after it. The road was almost clear.

  'This one's carrying a load of manure,' he said, 'but you're the one up to your neck in it.' He was amused by his wit.

  The constable came back from the rear of the artic's trailer section. 'The doors have sprung open,' he said. 'Some of the sacks have fallen in the road and burst. I think you'd better have a look, sarge.'

  The three of them walked back down the side of the artic to the rear.

  A dozen sacks had fallen out of the back of the open doors and four had split open. The moonlight shone on the heaps of brown fertilizer between the torn plastic. The constable had his torch out and played it over the mess. As Murphy told his cellmate later, there are some days when nothing, but absolutely nothing, goes right.

  By moon and torchlight there was no mistaking the great maw of the bazooka jutting upwards, nor the shapes of the machine guns protruding from the torn sacks. Murphy's stomach turned.

  The Irish police do not normally carry handguns, but when on escort duty for a minister, they do. The sergeant's automatic was pointing at Murphy's stomach.

  Murphy sighed. It was just one of those days. He had not only failed signally to hijack 9000 bottles of brandy, but had managed to intercept someone's clandestine arms shipment and he had little doubt who that 'someone' might be. He could think of several places he would like to be for the next two years, but the streets of Dublin were not the safest places on that list.

  He raised his hands slowly.

  'I have a little confession to make,' he said.

  MONEY WITH MENACES

  IF SAMUEL NUTKIN had not dropped his glasses case between the cushions of his seat on the commuter train from Edenbridge to London that morning, none of this would ever have happened. But he did drop them, slipped his hand between the cushions to retrieve them, and the die was cast.

  His fumbling fingers encountered not only his glasses case, but a slim magazine evidently stuffed there by the former occupant of the seat. Believing it to be a railway timetable, he idly withdrew it. Not that he needed a railway timetable. After twenty-five years of taking the same train at the same hour from the small and sinless commuter town of Edenbridge to Charing Cross station, and returning on the same train at the same time from Cannon Street station to Kent each evening, he had no need of railway timetables. It was just passing curiosity.

  When he glanced at the front cover Mr Nutkin's face coloured up red, and he hastily stuffed it back down the cushions. He looked round the compartment to see if anyone had noticed what he had found. Opposite him two Financial Times, a Times and a Guardian nodded back at him with the rhythm of the train, their readers invisible behind the city prices section. To his left old Fogarty pored over the crossword puzzle and to his right, outside the window, Hither Green station flashed past uncaring. Samuel Nutkin breathed out in relief.

  The magazine had been small with a glossy cover. Across the top were the words New Circle, evidently the title of the publication, and along the bottom of the cover page another phrase, 'Singles, Couples, Groups — the contact magazine for the sexually aware'. Between the two lines of print the centre of the cover page was occupied by a photograph of a large lady with a jutting chest, her face blocked out by a white square which announced her as 'Advertiser H331'. Mr Nutkin had never seen such a magazine before, but he thought out the implications of his find all the way to Charing Cross.

  As the doors down the train swung open in unison to decant their cargoes of commuters into the maelstrom of platform 6, Samuel Nutkin delayed his departure by fussing with his briefcase, rolled umbrella and bowler hat until he was last out of the compartment. Finally, aghast at his daring, he slipped the magazine from its place between the cushions into his briefcase, and joined the sea of other bowler hats moving towards the ticket barrier, season tickets extended.

  It was an uncomfortable walk from the train to the subway, down the line to the Mansion House station, up the stairs to Great Trinity Lane and along Cannon Street to the office block of the insurance company where he worked as a clerk. He had heard once of a man who was knocked over by a car and when they emptied his pockets at the hospital they found a packet of pornographic pictures. The memory haunted Samuel Nutkin. How on earth could one ever explain such a thing? The shame, the embarrassment, would be unbearable. To lie there with a leg in traction, knowing that everyone knew one's secret tastes. He was especially careful crossing the road that morning until he reached the insurance company offices.

  From all of which one may gather that Mr Nutkin was not used to this sort of thing. There was a man once who reckoned that human beings tend to imitate the nicknames given them in an idle moment. Call a man 'Butch' and he will swagger; call him 'Killer' and he will walk around with narrowed eyes and try to talk like Bogart. Funny men have to go on telling jokes and clowning until they crack up from the strain. Samuel Nutkin was just ten years old when a boy at school who had read the tales of Beatrix Potter called him Squirrel, and he was doomed.

  He had worked in the City of London since, as a young man of twenty-three, he came out of the army at the end of the war with the rank of corporal. In those days he had been lucky to get the job, a safe job with a pension at the end of it, clerking for a giant insurance company with worldwide ramifications, safe as the Bank of England that stood not 500 yards away. Getting that job had marked Samuel Nutkin's entry into the City, square-mile headquarters of a vast economic, commercial and banking octopus whose tentacles spread to every corner of the globe.

  He had loved the City in those days of the late forties, wandering round in the lunch hour looking at the timeless streets — Bread Street, Cornhffl, Poultry and London Wall — dating back to the Middle Ages when they really did sell bread and corn and poultry and mark the walled city of London. He was impressed that it was out of these sober stone piles that merchant adventurers had secured financial backing to sail away to the lands of brown, black and yellow men, to trade and dig and mine and scavenge, sending the booty back to the City, to insure and bank and invest until decisions taken in this square mile of boardrooms and counting houses could affect whether a million lesser breeds worked or starved. That these men had really been the world's most successful looters never occurred to him. Samuel Nutkin was very loyal.

  Time passed and after a quarter of a century the magic ha
d faded; he became one of the trotting tide of clerical grey suits, rolled umbrellas, bowler hats and briefcases that flooded into the City each day to clerk for eight hours and return to the dormitory townships of the surrounding counties.

  In the forest of the City he was, like his nickname, a friendly, harmless creature, grown with the passing years to fit a desk, a pleasant, round butterball of a man, just turned sixty, glasses ever on his nose for reading or looking at things closely, mild-mannered and polite to the secretaries who thought he was sweet and mothered him, and not at all accustomed to reading, let alone carrying on his person, dirty magazines. But that was what he did that morning. He crept away to the lavatories, slipped the bolt, and read every advertisement in New Circle.

  It amazed him. Some of the adverts had accompanying pictures, mainly amateurish poses of what were evidently housewives in their underwear. Others had no picture, but a more explicit text, in some cases advertising services that made no sense, at least, not to Samuel Nutkin. But most he understood, and the bulk of the adverts from ladies expressed the hope of meeting generous professional gentlemen. He read it through, stuffed the magazine into the deepest folds of his briefcase and hurried back to his desk. That evening he managed to get the magazine back home to Edenbridge without being stopped and searched by the police, and hid it under the carpet by the fireplace. It would never do for Lettice to discover it.

  Lettice was Mrs Nutkin. She was mainly confined to her bed, she claimed by severe arthritis and a weak heart, while Dr Bulstrode opined it was a severe dose of hypochondria. She was a frail and peaky woman, with a sharp nose and a querulous voice, and it had been many years since she had given any physical joy to Samuel Nutkin, out of bed or in it. But he was a loyal and trustworthy man, and he would have done anything, just anything, to avoid distressing her. Fortunately she never did housework because of her back, so she had no occasion to delve under the carpet by the fireplace.

  Mr Nutkin spent three days absorbed in his private thoughts, which for the most part concerned a lady advertiser who, from the brief details she listed in her advert, was well above average height and possessed an ample figure.

  On the third day, plucking up all his nerve, he sat down and wrote his reply to her advert. He did it on a piece of plain paper from the office and it was short and to the point. He said 'Dear Madam,' and went on to explain that he had seen her advert and would very much like to meet her.

  There was a centrefold in the magazine that explained how adverts should be answered. Write your letter of reply and place it, together with a self-addressed and stamped envelope, in a plain envelope and seal. Write the number of the advert to which you are replying on the back of the envelope in pencil. Enclose this plain envelope, together with the forwarding fee, in a third envelope and mail it to the magazine's office in London. Mr Nutkin did all this, except that for the self-addressed envelope he used the name Henry Jones, c/o 27 Acacia Avenue, which was his real address.

  For the next six days he was down on the hallway mat each morning the instant the mail arrived, and it was on the sixth that he spotted the envelope addressed to Henry Jones. He stuffed it into his pocket and went back upstairs to collect his wife's breakfast tray.

  On the train to town that morning he slipped away to the toilet and opened the envelope with trembling fingers. The contents were his own letter, and written on the back in longhand was the reply. It said, 'Dear Henry, thank you for your reply to my ad. I'm sure we could have a lot of fun together. Why don't you ring me at —? Love, Sally.' The phone number was in Bays-water, in the West End of London.

  There was nothing else in the envelope. Samuel Nutkin jotted the number on a piece of paper, stuffed it in his back pocket, and flushed the letter and envelope down the pan. When he returned to his seat there were butterflies in his stomach and he thought people would be staring, but old Fogarty had just worked out 15 across and no one looked up.

  He rang the number at lunchtime from a call box in the nearest subway station. A husky woman's voice said, 'Hello?'

  Mr Nutkin pushed the five-penny piece into the slot, cleared his throat and said, 'Er ... hello, is that Miss Sally?'

  'That's right,' said the voice, 'and who is that?'

  'Oh, er, my name is Jones. Henry Jones. I received a letter from you this morning, about a reply I made to your advert...'

  There was a rustling of paper at the other end, and the woman's voice cut in. 'Oh, yes, I remember, Henry. Well now, darling, would you like to come round and see me?'

  Samuel Nutkin felt as if his tongue were of old leather. 'Yes, please,' he croaked.

  'Lovely,' purred the woman at the other end. 'There is just one thing, Henry darling. I expect a little present from my men friends, you know, just to help out with the rent. It's twenty pounds, but there's no rush or hurry. Is that all right?'

  Nutkin nodded, then said 'Yes' down the phone.

  'Fine,' she said, 'well now, when would you like to come?'

  'It would have to be in the lunch hour. I work in the City, and I go home in the evening.'

  'All right then. Tomorrow suit you? Good. At twelve-thirty? I'll give you the address ...'

  He still had the butterflies in his stomach, except that they had turned into thrashing pigeons, when he turned up at the basement flat just off Westbourne Grove in Bayswater the following day at half past twelve. He tapped nervously and heard the clack of heels in the passage behind the door.

  There was a pause as someone looked through the glass lens set into the centre panel of the door, and which commanded a view of the area in which he stood. Then the door opened and a voice said, 'Come in.' She was standing behind the door and closed it as he entered and turned to face her. 'You must be Henry,' she said softly. He nodded. 'Well, come into the sitting room so we can talk,' she said.

  He followed her down the passage to the first room on the left, his heart beating like a tambour. She was older than he had expected, a much-used mid-thirties with heavy make-up. She was a good six inches taller than he was, but part of that could be explained by the high heels of her court shoes, and the breadth of her rear beneath the floor-length housecoat as she preceded him down the passage indicated her figure was heavy. When she turned to usher him into the sitting room the front of her housecoat swung open for a second to give a glimpse of black nylons and a red-trimmed corset. She left the door open.

  The room was cheaply furnished and seemed to contain no more than a handful of personal possessions. The woman smiled at him encouragingly.

  'Do you have my little present, Henry?' she asked him.

  Samuel Nutkin nodded and proffered her the £20 he had been holding in his trouser pocket. She took it and stuffed it into a handbag on the dresser.

  'Now sit down and make yourself comfortable,' she said. 'There's no need to be nervous. Now, what can I do for you?'

  Mr Nutkin had seated himself on the edge of an easy chair. He felt as if his mouth was full of quick-drying cement. 'It's difficult to explain,' he muttered.

  She smiled again. 'There's no need to be shy. What would you like to do?'

  Hesitatingly he told her. She showed no surprise.

  'That's all right,' she said easily. 'A lot of gentlemen like a bit of that sort of thing. Now take off your jacket, trousers and shoes, and come with me into the bedroom.'

  He did as she told him and followed her down the passage again to the bedroom which was surprisingly brightly lit. Once inside she closed the door, locked it, dropped the key into the pocket of her housecoat, slipped out of the latter and hung it behind the door.

  When the plain buff envelope arrived at 27 Acacia Avenue three days later Samuel Nutkin collected it off the front door mat along with the rest of the morning mail and took it back to the breakfast table. There were three letters in all, one for Lettice from her sister, a bill from the nursery for some potted plants, and the buff envelope, postmarked in London and addressed to Samuel Nutkin. He opened it without suspicion, expecting it to be
a commercial circular. It was not.

  The six photographs that fell out lay for a few moments face up on the table while he stared at them in incomprehension. When understanding dawned, sheer horror took its place. The photos would not have won prizes for clarity or focus, but they were good enough. In all of them the face of the woman was clearly seen, and in at least two of them his own face was easily recognizable. Scrabbling furiously he scoured the inside of the envelope for anything else, but it was quite empty. He turned all six photographs, but the backs were unmarked by any message. The message was on the front in black and white, without words.

  Samuel Nutkin was in the grip of a blind panic as he stuffed the photographs under the carpet by the fireplace where he found the magazine still lying. Then on a second impulse he took the lot outside and burned them all behind the garage, stamping the ashes into the moist earth with his heel. As he re-entered the house he thought of spending the day at home, claiming illness, but then realized that must attract Lettice's suspicion since he was perfectly well. He just had time to take her letter upstairs to her, remove her breakfast tray and run to catch the train to the City.

  His mind was still whirling as he gazed out of the window from his corner seat and tried to work out the implications of the morning's shock. It took him till just past New Cross to realize how it had been done.

  'My jacket,' he breathed, 'jacket and wallet.'

  Old Fogarty who was studying 7 down shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'too many letters.'

  Samuel Nutkin gazed miserably out of the window as southeast London's suburbs trundled past the train. He was simply not used to this sort of thing. A cold horror gripped his stomach and he could no more concentrate on his work that morning than fly.

  In the lunch hour he tried to ring the number Sally had given him, but it had been disconnected.

  He took a taxi straight to the basement flat in Bayswater but it was locked and barred, with a For Rent notice attached to the railings at pavement level. By mid-afternoon Mr Nutkin had worked out that even going to the police would serve little purpose. Almost certainly the magazine had sent replies for that advertisement to an address which would turn out to be an accommodation, long since vacated without trace. The basement flat in Bayswater had probably been rented by the week for the week in a false name and vacated. The telephone number would probably belong to a man who would say he had been away for the past month and had found the door latch forced on his return. Since then there had been a number of calls asking for Sally, which had completely mystified him. A day later he too would be gone.