Watchman (novel)

by Ian Rankin

  He didn’t recognize any of them, but that didn’t mean anything. Their accents were English, but that meant nothing either. He had counted four of them so far, four or just maybe five. Oh God, what had he done? He was sure that it had something, everything to do with Miles Flint. Mr. Partridge had warned him. Miles bloody Flint and his bloody snooping. He dived into another street, seeking a telephone box, not knowing who to ring. Perhaps he should turn and confront them. Yes, why not? Every reason in the world.

  Pete Saville was scared.

  This was no game, no Armorgeddon. It was real, and it was dangerous, perhaps lethal. He glanced back. Two following on one sidewalk, two on the other. Walking briskly. Hands by their sides. Almost casual.

  What had he done?

  He turned corner after corner. Saw a bus and made a run for it, but it moved off ahead of him, leaving him flailing at the wind. There were people about, some of them giving him curious looks. He could tell them, but tell them what?

  Oh, he was scared, how he was scared.

  So run, and keep on running. But they had decided to make their move. They were gaining effortlessly, coming nearer, nearer. And now a fifth man was calling out his name, patiently, as though paging him in a hotel. Pete Saville didn’t feel as though he were in a hotel.

  The smell of the abattoir was in the air.

  Pete’s heart was melting with the heat in his lungs. His brain was singed. He could taste cordite on his tongue. He stopped, leaning his head against a car. But when they were a few yards from him, he took to his heels again, willing himself on with the last of his being. He rounded a corner and was confronted by policemen. They were cordoning off an area of pavement, unraveling a length of red and white tape with which to make the road impassable. A small crowd had gathered on the other side of the tape, watching. It was being broken up by several uniformed policemen. Damn, it was a dead end. But the men would do nothing, not with the police here. No, Pete was safe.

  He was safe!

  He heard his name called again, and pushed his way past some onlookers, slipping under the cordon. Someone shouted at him, a different voice this time, then someone screamed. He thought he heard the word “bomb” and stopped in his tracks. He was outside a small restaurant, and saw for the first time the soldiers, who were everywhere. And beyond them, his pursuers, watching with the rest of the crowd, smiling at him, not about to follow him past the cordon.

  Bomb? Oh God, what had he done?

  The police stood at the tape and told him to come back from the building. But no, he couldn’t do that. The building was his sanctuary. He could pass through it and out of the other side, could lose the men that way. Making up his mind, he headed into the restaurant, vaguely aware of two army men working at the back of the tables.

  There was a sudden suction, a huge, dusty gust of hot wind, and the roar of jet engines, of thunder overhead. When the dust cleared and the screams abated, and people were blinking and shaking fragments from their clothes, Pete Saville wasn’t there anymore, and neither were the two bomb disposal experts. Even the hunters seemed to have disappeared, leaving behind them only the police and the civilians, most of them in shock, and the man called Andrew Gray, standing at a safe distance beside a lamppost, watching.

  ELEVEN

  “YOU KNOW ABOUT IT, THEN?”

  “Cynegetics?” Mowbray laughed. “Of course I do.”

  “Why am I always the last to hear about these things?”

  Mowbray shrugged, looking more transatlantic than ever in tinted glasses and a sheepskin jacket. He was supposed to look like an estate agent who showed people around the large Forest Hill house which the firm had procured for Harvest. Harvest was supposed, so Billy Monmouth had said, to bring forth a “bumper crop” of IRA sleepers, soon to be activated now that a full-scale campaign was under way. Three more poor bastards had been blown up, one a civilian. Nobody knew who he was. He had just run into a cordoned-off area at the wrong moment, and a bomb had gone off prematurely. There was nothing solid enough left to identify.

  The Harvest cell had been under surveillance for weeks, three Irishmen and a woman in a house across the road from the watchmen. The occupants were, variously, an unemployed electrician, a groundskeeper, a mechanic, and a secretary on a building site. If they were sleepers, then they were sleeping soundly. It looked like yet another waste of time, but Miles knew that no one could afford to become complacent.

  “There isn’t even a bloody telephone in the house,” said Mad Phil. “There’s never been a cell that didn’t have a phone in the house.”

  Mad Phil enjoyed complaining and liked to think that he excelled in it. He was neither mad, nor was his name Phil, but those were the letters after his name: Graham Lockett, MA, D.Phil. Billy had coined the nickname, and it had stuck, just as “Tricky Dicky” and “Mauberley” had stuck for Richard Mowbray.

  “Doesn’t it worry you, Richard?”

  “What?”

  “That Cynegetics are on to you.”

  “Not in the least. What is it I’m doing that’s wrong?”

  “Have they been to see you?”

  “Yes, several times, and Partridge has had a word, too, but I repeat, what am I doing that’s wrong? If the firm is clean, then why should anyone worry about my little dossier?”

  Suddenly Miles could see the beauty of Mowbray’s tactics: those who opposed him must have reasons for doing so, and so were suspects themselves, while those who aided him would be thought clean.

  “You’re right, Richard.”

  “Of course I am, Miles.”

  “Shift’s nearly over,” said Mad Phil, checking his watch. For once, there was not a trace of complaint in his voice.

  Jack had left London, off to visit friends in Oxford before heading north. Miles had slipped him fifty pounds as he left.

  “Bye then,” he had said, and that had been that. They had not managed to agree on a time for their lunch together, and so it had never taken place. It hung between them in the air, just another broken promise.

  “Thank God,” Mowbray said to Mad Phil. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Nothing much. I thought I might try that new wine bar in Chelsea. The Lustra. Have you heard of it?”

  “I haven’t, no.”

  “Then I’ll probably finish up at the Cathay, since I’m in the area. Best Chinese food in London.”

  “Sounds good. What about you, Miles?”

  Miles had thought of going back to the office, but knew now that his every move would be subject to Cynegetics’ scrutiny. He had not been in touch with Pete Saville, but a call to Billy had brought the gossip that Saville had been moved on, though nobody knew where.

  “What do you suggest, Richard?”

  “I suggest we go along with Phil here to this Lustra place. Sounds kinda fun.”

  “It’s a bit of a distance from here,” said Miles.

  “A few miles,” said Mad Phil grudgingly. He was seated at the window, a pair of high-powered binoculars in his hands. Everyone was at home across the road.

  “I suppose I could phone my wife,” said Miles. Anything to keep him away from the house.

  “That’s the spirit,” said Mowbray. “It’s settled then, Phil can drive us in the company car.”

  Mad Phil didn’t look altogether happy. Perhaps, thought Miles, he liked to drink alone. Well, for this one evening, Phil would have an audience for his complaints against life.

  The Lustra turned out to be everything Miles had expected, and it appalled him. There were mirrors everywhere, half hidden by various potted plants and creepers.

  “Great place, eh?”

  The clientele were opening-night vampires, the chic underbelly of London whose sole intention in life was to “get noticed.” It was not the place for an “invisible man.” The clothes were loud, the music marginally less so, but everything was drowned out by the shrieking, vacuous voices of the young things. Miles’s whiskey had been drowned, too, scoop after scoop of the barma
n’s ice shoveled into it. It now resembled an iceberg looking for a disaster. Disaster, in fact, was all around.

  “Great place, eh, Richard?”

  “Absolutely, Phil, absolutely.”

  Mowbray, slapping one hand against the table out of time with the music, looked almost as out of place as Miles.

  “My round,” he said now, heading off to the distant bar. Mad Phil pointed to a figure somewhere at the back of the lounge.

  “She’s a celebrity,” he said, “though I can’t remember why.”

  “Doesn’t that disqualify her from the title?” asked Miles, loosening after the first two drinks.

  But Mad Phil hadn’t heard him, and was surveying the crowd again.

  Mowbray returned, his large hands cradling three tumblers. Miles was not surprised to see that they were doubles, and said nothing. Mad Phil did not seem to notice that the drinks were larger than his own round or Miles’s had been, and he polished off a sixth at one gulp. Miles waited. Mowbray’s kind could never remain quiet about their acts of generosity, for it was not generosity in itself, but rather a keen desire to impress; which was, in fact, the opposite of generosity.

  “This,” said Mowbray, on schedule, “is what I call a drink. Cheers, Miles.”

  “Cheers,” replied Miles, stifling a schoolboy smirk.

  “You know, up in Scotland they serve fifths or even quarter gills. No wonder they’re a nation of alcoholics.”

  “They’re not, actually, a race of alcoholics, Richard. And they possess the most civilized licensing laws I know of.”

  Miles sounded hurt.

  “Sorry,” said Mowbray, “I keep forgetting you’re Scottish. It was just a joke.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “This is quite a good place really,” said Mad Phil, turning to them both.

  Miles left the Lustra early, feigning tiredness, and walked to South Kensington station, changing onto the Jubilee Line at Green Park. He caught the mid-evening hiatus, and only a few washed-out businessmen sat in his carriage. Mowbray had started his speech about circles within circles, infiltration, double agents and double-double agents, and Miles had felt a need to leave.

  “Jeff Phillips believes me,” Mowbray had said. “So do others in the firm. If anything goes wrong on a case, one of our cases, we’re suspicious.”

  “Then I would have thought, Richard,” Miles had said, “that I would have been on your files as a potential double agent.”

  “But you are on our files, Miles. You’re under suspicion.”

  Well, good luck to them. Good luck to the Mauberley Barmy Army and its witch hunt. Perhaps Mowbray thought this a speedy and efficient way to make his mark on the firm, and more important, on its overseers. But it was also going to make him an awful lot of enemies. He was staking all or nothing on plucking a fine, sharp needle from the haystack. Perhaps Miles should remind him that needles have a way of making people go to sleep for a very long time…

  Darkness was falling, early and cool. His car was parked a distance from the house, not for security reasons but because parking spaces were so difficult to find. A bird had left a large token of its esteem on the roof of the Jag. His father had always said that birdshit was lucky. His father had nurtured some curious notions.

  He was still a distance from his house when he saw a man emerge from the gate and walk confidently away in the opposite direction, toward Abbey Road. Through the dusk, Miles was uncertain for a moment whether it had been his gate or not, but as he neared the house he felt sure that it had been. The man had looked familiar, too, even from a distance. He had disappeared now, and Miles walked thoughtfully to his front door, opening it quietly, standing in the hall for a moment, sensing its warmth, seeking a scent, a presence.

  He went to the living-room door and listened, then, remembering Sheila’s words, opened it quickly. The room was empty. There was a bottle of wine on the floor, and, quite correctly, a single glass beside it. The bottle was half empty, and a little of the missing half was still in the glass. Nothing was out of place. Leaving the room, he gave the hall scant attention, moving up the staircase silently. He could hear Sheila now. She was in the bedroom, humming a tune. But first he went to Jack’s room. Here, too, everything was as it should be. There were posters on the walls, curling, faded memories of adolescence, and paperback books on the floor and packed into a secondhand bookcase. Miles had studied this room before, curious as to its secrets. Nothing was wrong.

  Except the fact that the low single bed was still warm with a slight musk of body heat.

  Downstairs again, sweating, Miles opened the front door and slammed it shut. He opened the living-room door, looked in, then closed it again.

  “Miles? I’m up here.”

  He took the stairs two at a time and entered the bedroom. Sheila was packing some clothes into a small case. Miles felt his insides jolt, as though they wanted suddenly to be his outsides.

  “Hello there,” Sheila said, folding a cardigan.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This? Oh, I’m throwing a lot of my old clothes out. There’s a jumble sale at the church, and I thought they might be glad of…Miles? What’s wrong? You look ghastly.”

  “No, no, I’m all right. Been a busy day, that’s all.” He sat down on the stool at the dressing table.

  “This doesn’t mean that I’m about to embark on a spending spree, you know,” said Sheila, as though this might have been what was worrying him. But Great God, he had thought for a second that she was leaving him, he had really believed it.

  “You’re back early,” she said now.

  “Am I?” He checked his watch. “Yes, just a little, I suppose.”

  “What was wrong? Company not to your liking?”

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s always been your problem, Miles. You’ve never learned to adapt. You’d never make a diplomat.”

  “And what have you been up to?” he asked quickly, giving her the chance to recall that someone had just left.

  In reply, she picked up a green coat from the heap on the bed and studied it.

  “Do you remember this, Miles? You brought it home one day, said you’d bought it on impulse. The only coat you ever bought me. It’s well out of fashion now.”

  “You never liked it.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I can’t remember you ever wearing it.”

  Sheila just shrugged, perhaps thinking him a little drunk and edgy, and folded the coat into the case. The case was now full, and she pulled the clasps shut.

  “Shall we go downstairs?” she suggested.

  In the living room, he mentioned the wine.

  “Well,” said Sheila, “if you can go slinking off to barrooms with your friends, what the hell, I can drink by myself.”

  “Fair comment.”

  “What was the pub like, anyway?”

  “It was a wine bar.”

  “Pardon my mistake. Why are you so snappy?”

  “Snappy?”

  “Yes, snap, snap.” She clapped together her hands as though they were an alligator’s jaws. “Snap, snap.”

  “Well, the wine bar was bloody foul.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  He paused, swallowed, mumbled something about needing a glass of water. Sheila reminded him that there was plenty of wine left.

  They finished the wine between them, listening to Shostakovich. Miles checked the kitchen, on the pretext of making a sandwich, but found no more evidence, no washed-up wineglass or recently emptied ashtray. At last he excused himself and went to his study. He remembered Jack’s practical joke, the beetle. It was in a drawer of his desk and he brought it out, making it jump at his command. Thank God there was something in his life he could control.

  That Sheila had made no mention of a visitor was damning enough in itself, but then there was also the bed, still warm. He thought of all the revenge trage
dies Sheila had read, all the dark tales of cold, furtive couplings. Inch-thick, knee-deep, o’er head and ears a forked one. The beetle jumped. He heard Sheila begin to climb the stairs, calling down to him that she would see him up there.

  “I won’t be long!” he called back.

  Surely, he reasoned, Sheila was intelligent enough not to let a man come here. But, having considered this, he thought, too, how ideal the situation had been, with Jack out of the house again and he, Miles, out drinking. He knew that his telephoned excuses to her often resulted in a long night away from home. Everything had been perfectly set up for a deception, for a long-deferred meeting. For everything. The warm bed, which grew hotter in his memory, would be cold and neutral now. Just as the Arab’s smile had faded away to nothing. They seemed part of the same process of disintegration.

  There was something more, though, something that bothered Miles much more. For he was in no doubt now that the man who had walked away from him had walked with Billy Monmouth’s gait and was wearing Billy Monmouth’s clothes.

  TWELVE

  JIM STEVENS WAS SUCKING MUD. It was not a pleasant sensation. He should have taken the morning off, should have visited a dentist.

  He was drinking coffee, trying to trickle the gray liquid into the good side of his mouth, the side where it didn’t hurt. Coffee dribbled onto his tie and his shirt, while the other customers in the café looked at him blankly.

  Where was the man he was supposed to meet? He was late, that’s where he was. That was London for you. Time went to pieces here; the more you watched the clock, the later you were. Stevens had been in London only thirteen months. It really pissed him off. His new editor did not allow him much freedom, certainly not as much as old Jameson up in Edinburgh had. He had become a cog. They didn’t want him to use his initiative.