No Comebacks

by Frederick Forsyth

  On his arrival home Lettice was in a more corn-plaining mood than usual. There had been three calls, all asking for him by name, which had disturbed her afternoon rest. It was really not good enough.

  The fourth call came just after eight. Samuel Nutkin shot out of his chair, left Lettice watching the television, and went into the hallway to take it. Nervously, he let the phone ring a few times before picking up the receiver. The voice was that of a man, but fogged as if by a handkerchief held to the mouthpiece.

  'Mr Nutkin?'

  'Yes.'

  'Mr Samuel Nutkin?'

  'Yes.'

  'Or should I call you Henry Jones?'

  Samuel Nutkin's stomach turned over.

  'Who is that?' he queried.

  'Never mind the name, friend. Did you get my little present in the morning's post?'

  'What do you want?'

  'I asked you a question, friend. Did you get the photos?'

  'Yes.'

  'Have a good look at them, did you?'

  Samuel Nutkin swallowed hard with the horror of the memory. 'Yes.'

  'Well, then, you've been a naughty lad, haven't you? I really can't see how I can avoid sending the same set to your boss at the office. Oh yes, I know about your office, and the managing director's name. And then I might send another set to Mrs Nutkin. Or to the secretary of the tennis club. You really do carry a lot in your wallet, Mr Nutkin ...'

  'Look, please don't do that,' burst out Mr Nutkin, but the voice cut through his protests.

  'I'm not staying on this line any longer. Don't bother to go to the police. They couldn't even begin to find me. So just play it cool, friend, and you can have the whole lot back, negatives and all. Think it over. What time do you leave for work in the morning?'

  'Eight-twenty.'

  'I'll ring you again at eight tomorrow morning. Have a good night.'

  The phone clicked dead, and Mr Nutkin was left listening to the dialling tone.

  He did not have a good night. He had a horrible night. After Lettice had gone to bed he made the excuse of banking up the fire, and item by item went through the contents of his wallet. Railway season ticket, cheque book, tennis club membership card, two letters addressed to him, two photographs of Lettice and himself, driving licence, membership card for the insurance company's social club, more than enough to identify him and his place of work.

  In the half light of the street lamp shining from Acacia Avenue through the curtains he looked across the room at Lettice's disapproving face in the other twin bed — she had always insisted on twin beds — and tried to imagine her opening a buff envelope that had arrived, addressed to her, by second postal delivery while he was at the office. He tried to visualize Mr Benson up on the director's floor receiving the same set of photos. Or the membership committee of the tennis club passing them round at a special meeting convened to 'reconsider' Samuel Nutkin's membership. He couldn't. It baffled his imagination. But of one thing he was quite certain; the shock would kill poor Lettice ... it would simply kill her, and that must not be allowed to happen.

  Before he dropped into a fitful doze just before dawn, he told himself for the hundredth time that he was simply not used to this sort of thing.

  The phone call came on the dot of eight. Samuel Nutkin was waiting in the hallway, as ever in dark grey suit, white shirt and collar, bowler hat, rolled umbrella and briefcase, before setting off on his punctual morning trot to the station.

  'Thought it over, have you?' said the voice.

  'Yes,' quavered Samuel Nutkin.

  'Want those photo negatives back, do you?'

  'Yes, please.'

  'Well, I'm afraid you'll have to buy 'em, friend. Just to cover our expenses and perhaps to teach you a little lesson.'

  Mr Nutkin swallowed several times. 'I'm not a rich man,' he pleaded. 'How much do you want?'

  'One thousand quid,' replied the man down the phone, without hesitation.

  Samuel Nutkin was appalled. 'But I haven't got one thousand pounds,' he protested.

  'Well then, you'd better raise it,' sneered the voice on the phone. 'You can raise a loan against your house, your car or whatever you like. But get it, and quick. By tonight. I'll ring you at eight this evening.'

  And again the man was gone, and the dialling tone buzzed in Samuel Nutkin's ear. He went upstairs, gave Lettice a peck on the cheek, and left for work. But that day he did not board the 8.31 to Charing Cross. Instead, he went and sat in the park, alone on a bench, a strange solitary figure dressed for the office and the City, but sitting gnome-like amid the trees and flowers, in a bowler hat and black suit. He felt he had to think, and that he could not think properly sitting next to old Fogarty and his endless crossword puzzles.

  He supposed he could borrow £1000 if he tried, but it would raise a few eyebrows at the bank. Even that would be as nothing compared with the bank manager's reaction when he asked for it all in used notes. He could say he needed it to pay a gambling debt, but no one would believe it. They knew he didn't gamble. He didn't drink much beyond a glass of wine now and again, and did not smoke either, except a cigar at Christmas. They would think it was a woman, he surmised, then dismissed that too. They would know he would not keep a mistress. What to do, what to do, he asked himself over and over, rocking backwards and forwards in his mental turmoil.

  He could go to the police. Surely they could trace these people, even through the false names and rented flats. Then there would be a court case and he would have to give evidence. They always referred to the blackmailed person as Mr X, he had read in the paper, but the man's own circle usually discovered who it wa3. One could not keep going to court day after day and no one notice, not if one had led a life of unvarying routine for thirty-five years.

  At 9.30 he left the park bench and went to a telephone kiosk where he rang his office and told the chief of his department that he was indisposed but would be at his desk that afternoon. From there he walked to the bank. On the way he racked his brains for a solution, recalling all the court cases he had read about in which blackmail was concerned. What did the law call it? Demanding money with menaces, that was the phrase. A nice legal phrase, he thought bitterly, but not much use to the victim.

  If he were a single man, he thought, and younger, he would tell them where to go. But he was too old to change his job, and then there was Lettice, poor fragile Lettice. The shock would kill her, he had no doubt. Above all, he must protect Lettice, of that he was determined.

  At the door of the bank his nerve failed him. He could never confront his bank manager with such a strange and inexplicable request. It would be tantamount to saying, 'I am being blackmailed and I want a loan of a thousand pounds.' Besides, after the first £1000, would they not come back for more? Bleed him white, then send the pictures? It could happen. But at any rate he could not raise the money at his local bank. The answer, he decided reluctantly, for he was an honest and gentle man, lay in London. It was thither he went on the 10.31 train.

  He arrived in the City too early to present himself at his office, so to fill in the time he went shopping. Being a careful man he could not conceive of carrying a sum as large as £1000 around unprotected in his pocket. It would not be natural. So he went to an emporium for office equipment and bought a small steel cashbox with key. At a variety of other shops he bought a pound of icing sugar (for his wife's birthday cake, he explained), a tin of fertilizer for his roses, a mousetrap for the kitchen, some fuse wire for the electrical box under the stairs, two torch batteries, a soldering iron to mend the kettle, and a number of other harmless items such as every law-abiding householder might be expected to have about the house.

  At two in the afternoon he was at his desk, assured his department head he was feeling much better, and got on with his work on the company accounts. Fortunately the idea that Mr Samuel Nutkin might even think of making an unauthorized withdrawal on the company's account was not to be entertained.

  At eight that evening he was once again in
front of the television with Lettice when the phone rang in the hallway. When he answered, it was Foggy Voice again.

  'You got the money, Mr Nutkin?' he said without preamble.

  'Er ... yes,' said Mr Nutkin, and before the other could continue he went on, 'Look, please why don't you send the negatives to me and we'll forget the whole thing?'

  There was a silence as of stunned amazement from the other end.

  'You out of your mind?' queried Foggy Voice at last.

  'No,' said Mr Nutkin seriously. 'No, but I just wish you could understand the distress this is all going to cause if you insist on going ahead.'

  'Now you listen to me, Nutcase,' said the voice, harsh with anger. 'You must do as you're bloody well told, or I might even send those photos to your wife and boss, just for the hell of it.'

  Mr Nutkin sighed deeply. 'That was what I feared,' he said. 'Go on.'

  'Tomorrow during the lunch hour take a taxi to Albert Bridge Road. Turn into Battersea Park and walk down West Drive heading away from the river. Halfway down turn left into Central Drive. Keep walking down there till you come to the halfway point. There are two benches. There won't be nobody about, not at this time of year. Put the stuff, wrapped in a brown paper parcel, under the first bench. Then keep walking till you come out the other side of the park. Got it?'

  'Yes, I've got it,' said Mr Nutkin.

  'Right,' said the voice. 'One last thing. You'll be watched from the moment you enter the park. You'll be watched as you place the parcel. Don't think the cops can help you. We know what you look like, but you don't know me. One hint of trouble, or the fuzz keeping a watch, and we'll be gone. You know what will happen then, don't you, Nutkin?'

  'Yes,' said Mr Nutkin feebly.

  'Right. Well, do what you've been told, and don't make mistakes.'

  Then the man hung up.

  A few minutes later Samuel Nutkin made an excuse to his wife and went into the garage at the side of the house. He wanted to be alone for a while.

  Samuel Nutkin did exactly as he was told the following day. He was walking down West Drive on the western side of the park and had reached the left turn into Central Drive when he was hailed by a motorcyclist sitting astride his machine a few feet away, studying a road map. The man wore a crash helmet, goggles and a scarf wrapped round his face. He called through the scarf, 'Hey, mate, can you help me?'

  Mr Nutkin paused in his stride but being a polite man he covered the two yards to where the motorcycle stood by the kerb and bent to peer at the map. A voice hissed in his ear, 'I'll take the parcel, Nutkin.'

  He felt the parcel wrenched from his grip, heard the roar of the engine kick-started, saw the parcel drop into an open basket on the handlebars of the motorbike, and in seconds the machine was away, weaving back into the lunch-time traffic of the Albert Bridge Road. It was over in seconds, and even if the police had been watching, they could hardly have caught the man, so quickly did he move. Mr Nutkin shook his head sadly and went back to his office in the City.

  The man with the theory about names and nicknames was quite wrong in the case of Detective Sergeant Smiley of the Criminal Investigation Department. When he called to see Mr Nutkin the following week, his long horse face and sad brown eyes looked very sombre. He stood on the doorstep in the winter darkness in a long black coat like an undertaker.

  'Mr Nutkin?'

  'Yes.'

  'Mr Samuel Nutkin?'

  'Yes,... er, yes, that's me.'

  'Detective Sergeant Smiley, sir. 1 wonder if I might have a few moments with you.' He proffered his warrant card, but Mr Nutkin bobbed his head in acceptance, and said, 'Won't you come in?'

  Detective Sergeant Smiley was ill at ease.

  'Er... what I have to discuss, Mr Nutkin, is somewhat of a private nature, perhaps even somewhat embarrassing,' he began.

  'Good Lord,' said Nutkin, 'there's no need to be embarrassed, Sergeant.'

  Smiley stared at him. 'No need ...?'

  'Good gracious me, no. Some tickets for the police ball no doubt. We in the tennis club always send a few along. As secretary this year I quite expected ...'

  Smiley swallowed hard. 'I'm afraid it's not about the police ball, sir. I am here in the course of inquiries.'

  'Well, there's still no need to be embarrassed,' said Mr Nutkin.

  The muscles in the sergeant's jaw worked spasmodically. 'I was thinking, sir, of your embarrassment, not my own,' he said patiently. 'Is your wife at home, sir?'

  'Well, yes, but she's in bed. She retires early, you know. Her health ...'

  As if on cue a petulant voice came floating from the upper floor down to the hallway. 'Who is it, Samuel?'

  'It's a gentleman from the police, my dear.'

  'From the police?'

  'Now do not fret yourself, my dear,' Samuel Nutkin called back. 'Er ... it simply has to do with the forthcoming tennis tournament with the police sports club.'

  Sergeant Smiley nodded in grim approval of the subterfuge and followed Mr Nutkin into the sitting room.

  'Now, perhaps you can tell me what this is all about, and why I should be embarrassed,' said the latter as the door closed.

  'Some days ago,' began Sergeant Smiley, 'my colleagues in the Metropolitan Police Force had occasion to visit a flat in the West End of London. While searching the premises, they came across a series of envelopes in a locked drawer.'

  Samuel Nutkin gazed at him with benign interest.

  'Each of these envelopes, some thirty in all, contained a postcard on which had been written the name of a man, all different, along with home address and in some cases address of place of employment. The envelopes also contained up to a dozen photographic negatives, and in each case these proved to be pictures of men, usually mature men, in what one might only describe as an extremely compromising situation with a woman.'

  Samuel Nutkin had gone pale and he moistened his lips nervously. Sergeant Smiley looked disapproving.

  'In each case,' he went on, 'the woman in the photographs was the same, a person known to the police as a convicted prostitute. I'm afraid to have to tell you, sir, that one of the envelopes contained your name and address, and a series of six negatives in which you featured engaged in a certain activity in company with this woman. We have established that this woman, along with a certain man, was one of the occupants of the flat visited by the Metropolitan Police. The man in the case was the other occupant. Do you begin to follow me?'

  Samuel Nutkin held his head in his hands in shame. He gazed with haggard eyes at the carpet. Finally he sighed a deep sigh.

  'Oh, my God,' he said. 'Photographs. Someone must have taken photographs. Oh, the shame of it, when it all comes out. I swear to you, Sergeant, I had no idea it was illegal.'

  Sergeant Smiley blinked rapidly. 'Mr Nutkin, let me make one thing quite plain. Whatever you did was not illegal. Your private life is your own affair as far as the police are concerned, providing it breaks no laws. And visiting a prostitute does not break the law.'

  'But I don't understand,' quavered Nutkin. 'You said you were making inquiries ...'

  'But not into your private life, Mr Nutkin,' said Sergeant Smiley firmly. 'May I continue? Thank you. It is the view of the Metropolitan Police that men were lured to this woman's apartment either by personal contact or by contact through advertisements, and then secretly photographed and identified, with a view to subjecting them to blackmail at a later date.'

  Samuel Nutkin stared up at the detective round-eyed. He was simply not used to this sort of thing.

  'Blackmail,' he whispered. 'Oh, my God, that's even worse.'

  'Precisely, Mr Nutkin. Now...' The detective produced a photograph from his coat pocket. 'Do you recognize this woman?'

  Samuel Nutkin found himself staring at a good likeness of the woman he knew as Sally. He nodded dumbly.

  'I see,' said the sergeant and put the photograph away. 'Now, sir, would you tell me in your own words how you came to make the acquaintance of this lady. I will
not need to make any notes at this stage, and anything you say will be treated as confidential unless it now or later proves to have a bearing on the case.'

  Haltingly, ashamed and mortified, Samuel Nutkin related the affair from the start, the chance finding of the magazine, the reading of it in the office toilet, the three-day tussle with himself over whether to write a letter back or not, the succumbing to temptation and the writing of his letter under the name of Henry Jones. He told of the letter that came back, of noting the telephone number and destroying the letter, of making the telephone call that same lunch hour and being given an appointment for the following day at 12.30. He narrated the meeting with the woman in the basement flat, how she had persuaded him to leave his jacket in the sitting room while taking him into the bedroom, how it was the first time in his life he had ever done such a thing, and how on returning home that evening he had burned the magazine in which he had found the original advert and vowed never to behave in that way again.

  'Now, sir,' said Sergeant Smiley when he had finished, 'this is very important. At any time since that afternoon have you received any phone call, or had knowledge of a phone call being made in your absence, that might have been connected with a demand for payment in blackmail as a result of these photographs being taken?'

  Samuel Nutkin shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'nothing at all like that. It seems they haven't got round to me yet.'

  Sergeant Smiley smiled at last, a grim smile. 'They haven't got round to you yet, sir, and they won't. After all, the police have the photographs.'