An Old Spy Story

An Old Spy Story Page 4

by Terry Morgan

Frank and Olga

  As usual I blame myself.

  I was the one who told Donaldson about Frank Marshall.

  Frank Marshall was already seriously caught up in quicksand before I knew him but as soon as he became Donaldson’s man in Lagos as well, the quicksand was to become like deep shit.

  In some respects, Frank was well suited to Donaldson’s style because Frank certainly didn’t run his business on a strong set of ethical principles even though he was supposed to be in pharmaceuticals.

  In fact, Frank Marshall managed a run-down business from an asbestos roofed building in Ikeja employing a small team of ladies in faded, green overalls who poured thick red cough mixture from big drums into small bottles, stuck labels on the bottles and put the bottles into boxes. Frank also made money from deals he negotiated for international pharmaceutical companies.

  Frank was a commission agent of the old school.

  Frank was the underpaid, dishevelled, sweaty, expatriate side of overpaid pin-striped, eau de Cologne corporate life.

  He was there for those who sat in plush, oak-panelled boardrooms with Chinese carpets in Basle, Paris and London.

  He was there for those who could then claim legitimately that he was solely responsible for the manner in which the orders they accepted were obtained. Bribery is subcontracted out even more often than murder.

  In short, Frank ensured that many of the pharmaceuticals selected for importation by the Ministry of Health into Nigeria were not for the well-being of the nation’s poor and sick but for the well-being of the officials who ran the Health Ministry and the directors and shareholders of corporate Switzerland and America. But to stay on the right side of what little law was upheld, he was a mere manager of the business.

  Frank was a fixer.

  The company chairman, to whom he owed so little, was an ex Minister who had once been in charge of the Nigerian Ministry of Health. It was the ex Minister who did the travelling to London, Basle and New York, wearing his Saville Row suits, staying at the Nigerian Embassy and lunching with the manager of the New Nigeria Bank in Cannon Street.

  Meanwhile, poor old Frank stayed entirely in Lagos with occasional trips to exotic spots like Kano, Port Harcourt and Ibadan. He had ventured as far as Ouagadougou once and had also been to Accra several times.

  So Frank’s international business career had not materialized in quite the way he had foreseen when he had first arrived in Lagos with his bag of samples as an immature young export salesman. But, his appointed role as occasional escort or agent for people he thought represented Her Majesty’s Government had given him a sense of importance, however false and however short lived.

  Frank’s English wife had taken one look at Lagos and left him many years before to return to Maidstone. So Frank lived with a very dark woman who wore a very recognizable and ornate headscarf like a turban. She spoke a very rare, native dialect, a little French and even less English. But it didn’t seem to bother either of them as they communicated mostly through grunts and sign language. Sex is, after all, a fairly similar exercise wherever you go.

  She had come from a place we once called Upper Volta and Frank had imported her into Nigeria in exchange for a few crates of cough mixture when he went on a visit to Ouagadougou.

  Frank called her Olga as if she was a blonde Russian but this was far from the case. I suspect that Olga was actually the closest Frank could manipulate his tongue to say her real name, which stretched to many long syllables and included strange clicking noises unknown to anyone living outside Olga’s village.

  But Olga acted as wife and maid and they lived an exotic tropical existence in a fortified concrete villa with a corrugated roof and surrounded by rolls of barbed wire, several grubby Alsatian dogs and an ageing Nigerian ex policeman with a pistol tucked in his belt.

  Frank spent the mornings in his factory overseeing quality control and production schedules. He then lunched at the Red Lantern Chinese Restaurant, where he had developed a remarkable resistance to no end of gastric complaints and then spent his evenings at a notorious den of sophistication in Ikeja where he concluded his business deals if he could stay awake long enough.

  And just to remind you or to connect things up, it was at one of these high society gatherings at the Pink Coconut, where I met Angie.

  On that trip, my first sight of Frank was as he pushed his way through the crowds of jostling, sweating, humanity. As always, he was wearing his stained safari suit, sandals and grey socks.

  He was shouting, cursing and waving a rolled newspaper. Frank’s arrival had been very timely because the hot and stressed Immigration Officer sat at his high desk in his unnecessarily thick uniform and rows of medals, had been questioning everyone’s right to enter Nigeria.

  And until Frank arrived it looked as though there might be difficulties with my right to enter the country. My vaccination certificate for Yellow Fever was not in order and this was vital for compliance with the sophisticated bureaucracy of Nigerian Health and Immigration Policy. But Frank’s newspaper had done the trick, containing as it did several crumpled Naira notes tucked inside. I remember him tapping the Immigration Officer on the shoulder.

  “Here, General, whatever you bloody title is, catch up with the news. Have a looksy at the sports page. Lagos Loonies beat the Kano Crappers. It’s all there. It’ll make your eyes smart.”

  I can see Frank now.

  Frank often spoke so fast that it did not matter what he said or to whom he said it or whether or not English was their first language. And I have never seen Frank in anything except the same, grubby, beige safari suit. He had long hair in an untidy Beatle style that seemed totally out of place in Nigeria. He had a red, sun burned face and, on this occasion, a burning cigarette cleverly tucked between the same fingers that held the newspaper. His blue eyes had taken on a permanent sparkle from too many evenings in rooms filled with ganja smoke or other narcotics.

  But, payment received, my passport was duly stamped. It was shoved towards the edge of the desk for me to collect and Frank’s General disappeared behind his high desk to conceal the newspaper and its contents beneath his chair. Frank had grinned, grabbed my bags and shouted at me to follow.

  “Come on. Don’t lose me, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Let’s get out of this fucking hell hole.”

  Despite his recent appointment of working for the Crown via Donaldson, Frank was not known for his sophisticated use of Queen’s English. Frank’s company car, too, was also less than sophisticated. It was a rusting Peugeot with sagging seats, the body parts held together by layers of dried, red mud.

  Frank only had two real friends.

  One was Olga and the other was sat waiting in the car with the engine still running.

  Frank’s driver, Smart, was a young, athletic Nigerian who, if opportunities for fulfilment had been available, looked as if he should have tried professional boxing or athletics. Smart was not smart but he was very reliable.

  He would do anything Frank asked and would drive for hours without a break, even sitting in the car in the hot sun whilst Frank refreshed himself in the shade of banana trees at roadside beer houses.

  “So! Ollie!” Frank shouted above the general melee.

  I checked myself by visualizing the navy-blue passport I had just had stamped. Yes, this time I was Oliver Thomas, not David Reynolds. But then, of course, Frank only knew Oliver Thomas.

  “That’s what some friends call me,” I said.

  “Got a cable to say you’d be coming.”

  We clambered into the car and Smart drove off into the traffic.

  “Where are you staying, Ollie?”

  “Airport Hotel.”

  “Luxury. Must be on good expenses.”

  The Airport Hotel had never struck me as luxurious but I let it pass.

  Fried eggs were the only breakfast at the Airport Hotel.

  Sometimes they were the only lunch and the only dinner. It was never boiled eggs and never poached eggs. It was only ever fried
eggs. I had queried it one morning.

  “Sorry sah. No water.”

  It was the obvious explanation and I should have known, after all I had cleaned my teeth in beer earlier.

  “How are you doing, Ollie? Business good?”

  “Yes. Can’t grumble. Dodging and diving, bit of this and a bit of that, you know.”

  I would often speak like that to start although it depended on the person I was with.

  Frank was a suitable person for this particular style and I needed to create the early impression that, today, I was not in the business of bothering about too much legitimacy. Frank needed to know that anything would interest me if I had a chance to make a quick and easy buck. And if this meant a bit of under the counter stuff to get around stuffy government regulations that just got in the way of healthy international trade, frankly I couldn’t have cared a fig.

  This was often true I have to admit.

  I would usually keep my agenda flexible in case something cropped up. At other times, I would revert to my real agenda if it had already been laid out.

  But behind whatever façade I created and whatever impression you might get I was, in fact, a complete professional in international trading and export.

  There weren’t many like me then and there are probably even less nowadays.

  “Pharmaceuticals interest you this time?” Frank was doing his own prying into my motives for being there.

  “Always,” I said.

  “To ship home or ship elsewhere?”

  The number of pharmaceutical wholesalers in England who would have risked their reputation bringing in medicines that had passed through Frank’s factory was going to be limited. But Frank was prying and the questions were already sufficient proof that he was going on what Jack must have told him because Jack and I had discussed pharmaceuticals as a ploy before I left. It was unlikely however that Frank knew anything about Donaldson – yet. Such was the manner in which the man operated I was dropped at the Airport Hotel and I thanked Frank for meeting me, told him I had another meeting early the following morning in Lagos and suggested we continue our chat over lunch. With that, Frank’s red mud plastered Peugeot drove off in a cloud of blue smoke with Smart at the wheel.

  I had fried eggs, rice and beer for my dinner that night. But next morning after an uncomfortable night spent scratching in a bug infested bed that smelled of stale sweat I took a taxi to a much plusher residence in downtown Lagos for my meeting with the spoilt English heir to half of the Scottish Highlands.

  Donaldson’s plans – or instructions if I am to grant him some leeway over what might, in this case, have been his own predicament – had been quite clear.

  My own predicament if I didn’t do things right was also quite clear.

  But it was simple enough in that I was merely to introduce a senior British diplomat to Frank Marshall.

  This distinguished Civil Servant held an Oxford degree in Ancient Greek but his business training had probably been limited to reading “Teach Yourself International Trade”.

  Unlike most of us, the man’s upbringing meant he was automatically destined for the House of Lords and a type of diplomatic immunity wherever he went or whatever he did.

  He had risen through family connections to a role as a sort of government advisor on African affairs although, at the time,

  Africa was not regarded as a Foreign Office or a Defence Ministry priority. His only knowledge of Africa appeared to have been as a boy of six living with his parents for a year in Nairobi.

  Not content with the thought of one day inheriting a Scottish Castle, the odd commission paid into a Swiss account was starting to take on the innocent legitimacy of normal, day to day expenses to top up his income and he was becoming a liability for diplomatic progress on many fronts. He had started out as a spoiled child. Now, on the frail excuse that Her Majesty’s diplomats, unlike small businessmen, needed refreshing after seven day stints visiting the Third World, he was being spoiled by attending too many cocktail parties, staying at too many hotels on Park Lane and eating at too many places like the Ritz at the expense of others. He was in fact thought to be becoming, or already was, a risk to national security.

  Having been mistakenly employed by the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence he was known to have acquired information that was strictly confidential and, also since the age of six, he had been well known for being unable to keep secrets for very long.

  He would go to Nairobi, Khartoum and Cairo and then back to London for his refreshment and then find an excuse to go to places like Addis Ababa, staying, of course, at The Hilton Hotel. It is strange I had never met him before, but his itinerary and mine had never coincided and, anyway, his choice of hotel would not have been the same as mine.

  The Red Lantern

  On arriving at the Lord’s temporary Lagos residence, I was sure I could smell smoked bacon and toast being cooked. It turned out to be a small, private hotel or guest house built in the colonial style and so a full English breakfast would have been very likely.

  Surrounded by a high, concrete wall with metal spikes along the top, it hid amongst a small clump of high coconut palms. But the garden was a sea of red mud because it was morning and dark, thunderclouds had only just finished depositing an inch of rain in the space of half an hour.

  When I arrived, the hotel’s gardener was sweeping flood water full of floating debris, but his toils were in vain. A foot of water had already breached the front steps and a gritty, red stream was running into the open plan reception area where someone else was sweeping it out of a rear door.

  But I knew what to do. I took my shoes off, folded my trousers to my knees and put my briefcase on my head as a shelter from the water still dripping off the palm trees. Suitably attired, I waded towards the building and up to the long wooden reception desk. Above me was a high ceiling with a huge, creaking, wooden fan that slowly turned, hitting the top branches of a tamed coconut palm growing from a clay pot. The muddy, red water ran across the scratched marble floor between low wicker chairs placed against dull, unpolished wooden coffee tables showing round stains of tea and coffee spilt from cups.

  It was steamy and hot but, despite the conditions, a waiter hovered with a tray and an off-white cloth draped across his arm ready to serve coffee to a few white guests sat in mud stained suits. A white woman in a light chiffon dress and a wide brimmed hat sat with her long legs crossed, nearest to the clay pot and with a cigarette in a long holder held between her thumb and first finger. Her feet, fortunately, were on a dry part of the floor, proof that the floor itself was uneven.

  I had met her once before at the Embassy, the wife of a diplomat but I couldn’t remember exactly who she was. She was not the Ambassador ’s wife, I felt sure, but she was the sort of longer term resident to be expected in a place like this. The equally unsuitably dressed receptionist, sweating in his black suit and bow tie seemed to be expecting me.

  “Yessah. Mr Thomas, is it? You are expected. The Lord is waiting for you sah.”

  I have never forgotten that greeting.

  Ever since then I have wanted my entry into heaven, whenever it came, to be announced like that. The pity is that I never told anyone, not even Sarah.

  The Lord was not slow in appearing but I have always hoped that the real Lord, once we met, would avoid the visual image that this one created.

  Donaldson’s latest assignment minced towards me with his hand outstretched like a peacock on a catwalk and I could not help wondering how someone who apparently spent so much time travelling in Africa and the Middle East could look so anaemic and pristine. He wore pure white slacks and shirt, shiny brown shoes with a matching belt and a white hat, slightly less frilly than that of the diplomat’s wife sitting in the other corner. But his main adornment was, as Donaldson predicted, a cravat. This was a long, wide, multi-coloured specimen made of the finest silk, which he swished like the tail of a pedigree filly in season.

  “Ah, Mr Thomas? Good morning. I’
m so pleased to make your acquaintance. Glad you could make it. Sorry about the weather here. Damned messy at times. But been here before, I expect, have you? If so you will be quite used to it. Damned perspiration. Seems destined to leak from every conceivable orifice, don’t you think?”

  As advised by Donaldson I tried hard to avoid eye contact but became immediately uncomfortable about the way my knee was being touched. We sat in the opposite corner to the diplomat’s wife who kept flapping at flies with a handkerchief, which she held in the hand that was not holding the cigarette and we started with a general discussion about my business. I quickly, deliberately and sneakily dropped in a suggestion of some interest in military supplies to North Africa.

  But with no prompting he said: “Yes. I have to say that my confidential discussions in Tripoli suggest that arms get in through Chad anyway. So, whatever we can do to ensure we supply direct will limit their clandestine operations. Keep some control. Don’t you agree?”

  What, on earth, was this man talking about, I thought.

  We had only just met yet he was taking no precautions. He could not possibly have known who I was or how a small import-export business based in Croydon might possibly fit around official Foreign Office or Ministry of Defence policy.

  And, at the time, I was probably more of an expert on Libya than anyone in the British Government. I certainly knew all about Chad but it was something I always kept to myself.

  Then he said: “Cup of tea? I’m sure we can order some.”

  He waved at the waiter holding the grubby towel and ordered tea before moving rapidly on.

  “So, Mr Thomas. May I call you Oliver? Tell me just a little about the other opportunities you’ve apparently been lining up, besides the military ones, which might benefit from my input and a little official backing and encouragement from Her Majesty’s Government. We so need to keep all our options open, but at all times we wear our desire to help British trade openly on our sleeves.”

  I had briefly wondered what to say at this point but was well used to handling inquiries about my business, even when they were often at odds with the other jobs I performed for Donaldson & Co.

  What I found myself saying was a figment of my imagination but one founded in such confidence that if challenged to give more detail would not have required me to dig too deeply to appear utterly convincing. It was an acquired skill that had required some good practice. I also knew that Frank would back me up.

  “Well, yes. I have some pharmaceutical interests here as well – a small, local operation – an agency, distributorship and some small-scale local manufacture. It is a joint project with Pennex Pharmaceuticals. Their headquarters are based in Kent. Do you know them?”

  “Oh Kent, the Garden of England. How lovely,” he pronounced with great delight.

  “Yes, well,” I said, moving my leg again, “We need a few high-level government contacts to help win a few contracts. Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia – that sort of area. Your name cropped up.”

  “As it would, Oliver.”

  With that he gave a toothy smile, I got my knee patted and the cravat swung wildly. But the response was obviously positive and I was encouraged to continue despite the hand now resting more firmly on my knee.

  “Well. I wonder,” I said, “would you care to meet the local manager of the plant tomorrow morning? Say ten o’clock?

  He’s a British chap – name of Frank Marshall.”

  “Of course, I’d be delighted. Here?”

  “Well, I thought you might like to meet him at the plant. It’s out near the airport at Ikeja.”

  “What a splendid idea. Ah, here’s the tea.”

  And that was all I did face to face with the Lord.

  I left shortly afterwards to meet Frank for lunch.

  The incentive for Frank, you see, was that he had been promised a commission and other benefits and someone had to make this offer whilst trying to explain the whys and wherefores in more detail. That job was, of course, mine.

  As the subcontractor living half way down the mountain I was to subcontract the job down to Frank who lived on the edge of the jungle. My job was to persuade Frank to subcontract it to someone else who was living right in the middle of the jungle.

  I did my bit of persuasion on Frank over lunch at the Chinese Red Lantern.

  But do you now see how easy it is for those at the very top to deny ultimate responsibility for their instructions?

  They sit in offices far removed from the factory floor and only venture out to point towards jobs that need to be done.

  Sometimes they even get others to do the pointing and nothing is ever in writing of course. After that, they retreat to their offices once again.

  But it was obvious that Frank had already heard something before we met for lunch.

  I thought he may have met someone on the commercial staff at the British Embassy.

  It was the same man who, apparently, would call at Frank’s factory from time to time with other requests.

  I learned all this at the Red Lantern by plying Frank this time with gin and tonic. The gin and tonic was poured in and Frank’s heart poured out. He got more and more drunk and then more and more emotional.

  “You’re a good mate, Ollie. You see . . . well, fuck . . .”

  Frank had been almost in tears and the embarrassment had been such that I had spent most of the time in the Red Lantern studying the food-stained red flock wallpaper, which is why I remember it.

  Frank’s south London accent, that he had almost forgotten in favour of Lagos speak, improved all the time, as the gin proved amazingly effective. Quite why I had plied him with drink I don’t know, but I had an uncanny urge to find out how Donaldson worked on others and Frank proved to be an excellent case study.

  Frank was more used to beer, the local concoctions, and other forms of exotic stimulation, the sort that was inhaled, rather than drunk. His Beatles hair cut was lying down across his sweating forehead, his eyes were red, his tongue was loose and his soul was being hung out to dry. But fortunately, in this state, his speech was slower and much easier to follow.

  “See, Ollie, this time the bastard came with an official, bleeding letter from the Embassy stating that all British subsidiaries operating in Nigeria should adopt a code of practice when dealing with the Nigerian Government. Code of bleeding practice! I ask you, mate, what a load of shit!

  “Anyway, we are not a subsidiary anymore. Wholly owned Nigerian buying raw materials from the stupid fuckers back home. So much for their commercial savvy, eh? But it was as though the commercial attaché himself was as clean as a whistle and all the rest of us were on the take or bribing officials left right and centre just for the bloody hell of it.

  “We all know what they get up to at the Embassy. They can be as corrupt as any in the ranks of pen-pushing bleeders in the Nigerian Ministry of Health for example. If they can make some dash without too much fuss they will. But I was one of the few fucking local Brits they knew who was dealing direct with the local assholes. The rest, particularly those silly sods with their fucking suits and polished shoes passing through on short trips, all go through the Embassy and always seem to know who to see. They seem to know before they even catch the bloody B Cal flight out. They are promised action but that money may need to be placed in certain accounts.

  “They aren’t disappointed either. Fuck no. The money disappears from where it is put and they get the contract – a thousand times the size of the dash. It’s the same with all types of business here – telecommunications, roads, civil engineering, water, electricity, medical equipment. You know, Ollie, mate. All those public services, utilities and things that’ll still never fucking work properly even after the next fifty years.”

  How right Frank was. He was telling me nothing I didn’t know but I listened nevertheless.

  Despite his condition, Frank had vision and was still being realistic.

  We all knew it.

  Millions of pounds of good Nigeri
an money, money that would be publicly announced as destined for improvements to the country’s infrastructure. Money that would never flow down to the pockets of the millions who really needed it but that would end up in the pockets of Nigeria’s elite, the military, or in the pockets of international businesses who would never complete their sides of the bargain. Money that would end up in the private bank accounts of diplomats, politicians and other middlemen, men who, if the folks back home ever knew about their extra-curricular activities, would and should have lost their jobs and the hefty pensions that always came later.

  This is the sort of money that seeps through cracks in the system and lines the pockets of people such as Donaldson.

  And if I had wanted to, I could have lined my own pockets.

  If I had I would certainly not be sitting here in Gloucester typing away on this old machine.

  “So how does your own Chairman fit into the scheme of things?” I asked Frank.

  It was my turn to pry because I was already pretty sure that this was Frank’s weak spot. And I had not yet got to the point of giving Frank the envelope that contained a passport and air ticket from Lagos to London.

  Frank sat back in his Red Lantern chair, his eyes flashing beneath the greasy strands of hair.

  Meanwhile, Mr Ho the proprietor was fussing around his best customer, clearing the dregs of tinned chicken and sweet corn soup and handing it to his apprentice, a serious Nigerian boy aged about ten who scurried off towards the kitchen dropping spoons and forks all the way.

  The red wallpapered walls were splattered with the chicken and sweet corn soup of previous diners.

  Frank leaned forward again and downed the last of the gin, the thick slice of orange and a small lump of ice sliding out, down his chin and on to the tablecloth.

  “His fucking Excellency, you mean?”

  He laughed a drunken, bleary-eyed laugh and then beckoned with his forefinger to come closer.

  “Shhh – not so bloody loud, Ollie. Got me by the short and curlys, ain’t he? Know what I bloody mean, mate?”

  We stared at one another for a moment. Frank’s eyes were moving from focussed, to wandering, to half shut.

  “Go on,” I said, to encourage him.

  Frank looked inside his empty gin glass.

  “Get us another, Ollie. It’s good to chat. I only get to talk to Olga when she’s finished fucking me and we never go into much detail as I’m always too knackered.”

  I suppose that showed a degree of sensitivity and intelligence remaining inside Frank and I suddenly felt sorry for the man. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five. Yet here he was living with an African woman he couldn’t talk to and caught up in some sort of quagmire, unsure what to do and merely succumbing to the inevitable. I knew the feeling and perhaps I had been lucky. But for the grace of better fortune perhaps it might have been me sitting there dribbling onto the table with Mr Ho’s special chow mein noodles dangling from my mouth.

  But Frank went on with the verbal diarrhoea, probably a precursor to the gastric version that was to come later.

  “You mean His Excellency, Doctor fucking Abu Fayinke, one time head of the Ministry of Health, now Chief Executive, puke, puke, of Pennex (Nigeria) Ltd and still the unofficial controller of all the sodding freaks and pen pushers who claim to be working for the good of the nation’s health? Also, brother to this chief and that chief, friend to every politician in Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt and Kano? Also, the best mate to all the chiefs in Sokoto and Rivers State, first cousin to General whatsit and every other big tit in the army? Mr Fucking High ’n Mighty? Wined and dined by six of the world’s most unethical pharmaceutical companies and on the best of dishonourable terms with all those who run the Nigerian Central Bank. I shouldn’t be saying it like that but you’ve got to live here to fucking know, mate.” He stopped and then added: “You mean that Chairman?”

  “That sounds like him,” I said.

  Frank then looked down, sadly at the gin and noodle splattered red paper covering the table.

  “You know what else, mate? Even the bloody ex policeman who sits guarding my fucking house allegedly to protect me from every cat burglar and murderer this side of Maiduguri is really there to stop me escaping at dead of night. You think he’s more likely to shoot raiders or shoot me?”

  Frank now started tugging on a corner of the red paper like a sulking boy. Then he tore a piece off, twisted it expertly between his thumb and first finger to form a small, rigid cone, stuck it up his nose and used it to soak the mucus that was running from each nostril.

  Meanwhile, Mr Ho brought the next gin, left it by Frank’s elbow and left.

  Frank said nothing for a while clearly waiting for the nose plug to work. Eventually, he extricated the sodden twist of paper, tossed it on the table, grabbed the glass and all but downed it in one.

  “But why? Can’t you just pack up and go?” I asked Frank, whilst looking at the wet plug which had landed near my plate.

  “Got me by the short and curlys,” Frank repeated. “How?” I asked.

  “Not enough money that’s how. You need money to fix things around here. I got as far as checking in at the bloody airport once until someone suddenly decided my passport wasn’t in order. Got into a right fight. Fucking bastards said I didn’t have the right stamp in some place on page thirty-six, no bloody signature on this and that, no bleeding cross on a T somewhere . . .”

  “The Embassy – couldn’t they help? It’s their duty to help a British citizen.” I asked although I already knew the answer.

  “Don’t make me laugh, Ollie – conniving bleeding swine, they are. Seem to think I don’t play by the local rules so leave me to my own bloody ends. Wash their hands so to speak. I got arrested once for peeing against a wall and was carted off by my shirt collar with a bamboo stick the size of a bloody tree trunk stuck down by belt.

  “God forbid. They all bloody do it. You see notices on all the fucking walls in Ikeja. ‘No Urinating Here’ but everyone, including the fucking women, deliberately piss on the notices themselves. Or go shit behind them. But me, oh no! White you see. Got dragged off around the corner, paid my fine from my wallet and walked away. I told the Embassy. They laughed. Shouldn’t piss on walls they said. Fucking useless bastards.”

  Frank paused only briefly.

  “I found out the bloody Immigration Officer was in the pocket of his Excellency as well. Also, he pays me in Naira. What’s the fucking use of that? I came here with nothing. The wife’s got the house in Maidstone and a new bloke. And . . .” Frank tailed off, tearing off another piece of red paper.

  “And?” I prompted him to say more.

  “Then there are all the others. Those you met the night we went to the Pink Coconut.”

  “Augustus and Co?”

  “That’s them. Oh, great friends. Any or all of them could get me arrested at a moment’s notice if they wanted. The only one that’s OK is a girl called Angie. But one is a senior police officer. Know that? I know you thought he’s in Defence but, well, he is sometimes but it’s more like a protection racket.

  That’s the way it is. Bloody confusing. They carry all sorts of fictitious business cards. Another one is a lawyer. Know that as well? Another is a brother to Major Big Tit. And one is the fucking manager of the bank where my money goes. They watch me like hawks between using me to act as the authentic, white face that goes with some of their money laundering activities. Scary, innit?”

  “And what about Pennex back in England?” I enquired with great seriousness.

  “I’m nothing to do with them now. It’s sold I think. Here, we’re wholly owned Nigerian Company but I didn’t know it was happening till it happened. His Excellency’s bright idea.” “So, what do your pals, whom I met that time at the Pink

  Coconut, think I’m here for?”

  “You think they really care? As long as there might be some swag at the end of it or they thought you might be looking to me to help swing a thing or two.
I’m the honourable white face again you see. They smell a nice, big lump of dash somewhere. So, I am the buffer between white hypocrisy and black corruption.”

  We both sat back, probably looking and feeling exhausted.

  For a moment, Frank looked, temporarily, a little soberer. I chose that moment.

  “So, what do you think I’m here for now?” I said because we had still not yet discussed the other business.

  Frank looked bemused again.

  “Christ knows,” he said. “I just got a message you were coming. No one spoke you understand. Someone left a letter from the Embassy with one of the girls at the factory marked Private and Confidential. It just told me to meet you. Name, flight number, that sort of thing. I assumed it was the fellow from the Embassy from Florence’s description and I smelt another chance to get me out of this fucking hole. But it was signed by a guy called Jack Woodward.

  “I knew the name Woodward,” Frank continued. “My dishonourable Chairman has a habit of name dropping sometimes.

  He likes to make out he is connected at high level in UK and even mentioned MI6 once. Fucking crap. But the note said ‘we’ God knows who ‘we’ were – understood my predicament and would try to find a way out in return for a few favours.

  “The message said to call someone at the Embassy but it wasn’t an Embassy number, I know that.

  “I called but it took a whole bloody day to get through. I spoke to the chap who answered the phone. He sounded foreign – not sure where from – not English – Arab possibly – there’s a few Lebanese here. I asked him what was meant by favours. Course, he didn’t know. He knew nothing and, of course, there was no one there to ask. They think I’m mad. So, in the end, I just turned up to meet you.”

  Frank leaned forward holding his head as though to stop it spinning around, which it probably was.

  “That’s about it,” he concluded forlornly. “Well let me explain,” I said.

  I then went on to describe my meeting with the Lord earlier in the morning and that he would be visiting Frank’s plant at ten the next morning.

  But then I came to the tricky bit.

  “Can you arrange a further visit to your other factory,

  Frank?”

  “What other factory?” Frank asked, suddenly appearing even more sober.

  “The one you plan to build to allow for your expansion plans. The one you’d like to build amongst the lush green forest up near Ibadan. Ask Smart to take him there. You don’t need to go. Just say you’ve got another site manager up there.

  Smart has friends near Abeokuta doesn’t he?”

  There was no need for me to say anything more.

  Frank clearly understood what was needed and he fell silent for a while. As I waited for him to think, I beckoned Mr Ho to bring us some coffee.

  The chipped cups and saucers arrived and for a while we sipped the coffee in yet more silence although I could sense Frank was tempted to drink his direct from the saucer which was already half full anyway.

  Finally, Frank said, “Mmmm.”

  Taking this as understanding, I said, “So, do you want to know the pay-off?”

  “That would be very nice.” Frank said it without looking up from his saucer, which had parted company from the cup and now sat on the edge of the table ready to fall off.

  Suddenly he sounded extremely polite but perhaps he was at the end of his tether. He then looked up and tried grinning, although the result was not a pleasant sight.

  “Want to know what I’ve got in my case if you agree?”

  “That would be nice as well,” Frank replied.

  I bent down to my briefcase and, at last, produced the brown envelope.

  “Jack Woodward gave me this for you. In my opinion, you’ll need to get an urgent haircut and a new suit or something to look like the photo or you might get recognized by your Immigration friends. But, in there, is your chance.”

  Frank stared at the envelope.

  “I was told to give you this. It’s a British passport with correct stamps and everything else you’ll need, or so I’m led to understand, and an air ticket issued in the name on the passport. It’s all in order. You just turn up at the scheduled hour. Fly out of Kano so you don’t meet your Immigration Officer friend. Call Jack on arrival in London and he’ll sort you out with some more money as well.”

  “OK,” said Frank. “So all it means is that Lord Fancy Pants needs to get permanently lost, is that it? But I don’t do anything and you don’t do anything.”

  Frank had said it aloud.

  It didn’t sound nice like that but we were both pretty much in the same sort of shit.

  “That sums it up,” I shrugged, but with a nasty picture of Donaldson in my mind.

  “Permanently lost” was also one of Donaldson’s favourite expressions. It was used to describe the fate of anything that was no longer required, from a piece of paper to a human being and I remember how he had put it to me as he stood, silhouetted against the window.

  “Just think of it as another German or a bloody Jap old chap. The enemy, you know. You probably shot down one or two of the bastards in your time. Never thought of it twice afterwards, did you? Did your job for Mr Churchill and that was it. Hey presto, back in the cockpit and on to the next one.

  And, on this occasion, you don’t even have to pull a trigger.”

  Now it was to be Frank who had to organize the details.

  But even Frank was to be removed from the actual task.

  Surprisingly, Frank had seemed aware that such a job might come his way.

  Perhaps Jack had already pre-warned him of a need to pay for his release from his prison. Perhaps Frank had already done something similar so was used to it.

  But our final minutes in the Red Lantern were spent in agreeing that Smart might be just the man to carry out the deed.

  In fact, Smart turned out to have all the attributes for the job.

  From what I heard later, once the honourable Lord had been introduced to Smart, Frank’s athletic driver, deliberately dressed, for the first time in his life, in a new pair of tight, white slacks, red socks and a royal blue, open necked silk shirt the battle was half won. Smart looked really smart for the first time and even Frank had made an effort and worn a cleaner safari suit.

  And so it was that the Lord went to inspect a non-existent pharmaceutical factory the following afternoon.

  He was never seen again, having displayed none of the skills required for a miraculous resurrection of the sort the other Lord specialized in.

  Smart had looked and behaved smart for just one day. There were some-short term diplomatic difficulties between

  Nigeria and London when it appeared that the Nigerian authorities were not exactly falling over themselves to find out what had happened to the son of a diplomat and ex politician. Perhaps it was an unfortunate bush incident, after all several known criminals and bandits operated in the area. It was also perhaps a fortunate coincidence that two French businessmen had disappeared just a few weeks previously. One had been found naked and murdered on a patch of wasteland near the airport.

  The other had disappeared without trace.

  And Donaldson had found a way of ensuring that a few well-placed suggestions as to what the man, with his particular habits, may have been up to, soon laid the story to rest. One Sunday newspaper had a field day on speculation and even the extended family of the Lord in Scotland shut up for the embarrassment that might have occurred.

  But guilt over my own contribution has never been laid to rest because Frank . . . well.

  Poor Frank.

  To this day, I am not certain what happened.

  But Frank never made it to Gatwick airport. Something went drastically wrong because he was picked up at Kano airport with his false passport and ticket and he, too, disappeared. And the next time I went to Lagos, this time as David Reynolds, Pennex (Nigeria) Ltd wasn’t there.

  When I crept around one night to look it was just an emp
ty, boarded up factory surrounded by barbed wire. Someone had even stolen the asbestos roof. Frank’s concrete house had also been treated in the same way. Frank, too, seemed to have been obliterated. No one knew where he was or where Olga was.

  Embassy staff just shrugged and said they had assumed he had returned to England.

  Jack also shrugged and said he was mystified and that Frank’s unclaimed expenses were still showing in the accounts.

  Donaldson would say nothing specific but he never lost an opportunity to use Frank’s and the Lord’s disappearance to his own advantage.

  “I heard they’re still looking into the Lord’s disappearance, Ollie.”

  The man was always called “The Lord”. There was never a name or an official title.

  At times the poor man was mentioned in the same way as one might recall a sick dog that had had to be put down. At other times, though, Donaldson would infer that high-level investigations were still going on, that scapegoats were being sought and that arrests might be on the cards. And at those times he would look at me as though I was the sacrificial lamb, tethered and ready to be offered up if there was ever a necessity to save the skin of himself or others.

  The only one person I could find to blame was the one who had handed Frank his passport to freedom at the Red Lantern Chinese Restaurant – myself.

  But my discussion with Frank at the Red Lantern had continued well beyond the handing over of that brown envelope.

  As usual, one thing led to another. Frank and I opened a fresh bottle of gin after the coffee and Frank’s revelations about money laundering Nigerian style were an eye-opening experience. As I’ve said, one thing always led to another.

  Shortly afterwards I was able to put Frank’s information to very good use.

  Gathering Evidence

  “Will o’ the lisp, more like, ha!”

  Donaldson once tried to make a joke about my good friend William Akinbiyi. I didn’t like Donaldson insulting my friends.

  William had a pronounced lisp, which Donaldson, after meeting him for the first time in London, found amusing. We were back in his Regent Street office.

  “So, that’s your black friend, Will, is it? I liked his mithing ethith and his yeth, thir, no thir, free bag fool, thir.”

  “William’s an honest man, unlike some I could name,” I said to Donaldson.

  Donaldson had already drunk beer and several glasses of wine and was in a bad mood. He turned to face me.

  “And what the bloody hell are you implying, now?” he shouted.

  I didn’t reply but continued to sit in the chair on the other side of Donaldson’s desk, twiddling with my fountain pen and staring at the floor between my legs. My own anger was welling up inside. The bastard’s silhouette moved from the window. He grasped the back of his swivel, leather chair, turned it around, sat in it and then swung back to face me from his side of the desk. His face was flushed as if silence from an accuser was getting to him.

  “For fuck sake. The whole bloody place is awash with corruption. Top to bloody bottom. The only way to get to the bottom of it is to chance your arm a bit.”

  It was one of those occasions when Donaldson tried to turn the suggestion around to imply that he was the innocent party.

  In other words, to beat them you needed to join them.

  But then, still sitting staring at the carpet between my legs and unable to look Donaldson in the face I asked him the other question that had been troubling me since he had asked to meet my friend William with a problem concerning Nigeria.

  “That might be so, but what the bloody hell has this got to do with Her Majesty’s Government? If anything, it’s the problem of the Nigerian government not ours.”

  This was just the sort of question Donaldson disliked. There was a moment’s silence before he exploded again.

  “Christ’s sake, man. How many times have I got to say it? Instructions are instructions, understood? Just get out there and get to the bottom of it.”

  “What bloody instructions?” I asked, “Whose instructions? You think I don’t know what you get up to Major?”

  I was pushing it, still not wanting to directly accuse him of manipulating things for his own financial gain because I didn’t yet have the evidence. But he knew what I was getting at.

  “Instructions are to be obeyed, otherwise shit hits the fan,” he replied, clearly still trying to play the innocent one.

  I tried to keep calm, speaking slowly but firmly. But I was already mad about things that Donaldson had said during lunch with William.

  “Fuck you!” I said, “No. I’ve already told you. I’ve got several visitors coming over in the next couple of weeks on business – my Angolan agent is coming, then I’ve got a Tunisian chap. I dislike letting people down and . . .”

  But I hadn’t been allowed to finish, because Donaldson’s chair creaked as he suddenly leapt up and leaned over the desk towards me. One of his big hands clamped on to some paper, crumpling it still further. The other slid across the polished surface knocking the black telephone, which gave a sharp ring of discomfort at being hit.

  Jack, who had been cowering near the door as usual, jumped.

  “Go now.” Donaldson had shouted. “Not next month, not next week, A-S-A-P, got it? This is fucking urgent. Cancel the bloody Angolan. Postpone the fucking Tunisian. Leave the bloody country on the next available bloody flight. This is the best chance we’ve had for months. It cannot be delayed, do you understand? It is imperative we nip it in the bud.”

  A few more, well-worn phrases poured out along with the spittle from Donaldson’s thick lips, but it was the intense anger and desperation that unnerved me. It was as though Donaldson’s personal livelihood depended on it and as though he himself was under enormous pressure to act.

  But, as usual, he finished his tirade with a direct threat. The Frank job had only just passed and memories of Donaldson’s threats made with the gun pointing at me were still very fresh.

  Slowly sinking back into his chair, he swung it around to face the window again and fell quiet. Then he took a deep breath and spoke in short sentences in a surprisingly quiet voice as though trying to control his impatience and anger. He was still facing the window.

  “You know, Ollie, old chap, once you’re embroiled it’s difficult to pull out without all sorts of complications setting in. Government doesn’t like it. Always looking for a scapegoat to save face. I’ve seen it before. They watch you like a hawk. Got to stay one step ahead. Wait for them to lose their jobs. Blasted civil servants always linger though. Asking questions, tipping off Ministers. Don’t know what it’s like at the sharp end. Comfy offices, good pensions. Bloody paper shufflers.”

  I was not clear exactly what he was trying to say as I already thought he was one of those paper shufflers with a good pension, albeit enhanced by income from extra-curricular activities. But he then swung around again and leaned back. Again, he spoke in those strange, short and incomplete sentences.

  “You’re a man who likes a bit of spice in his life, Ollie. Never seen you as a bloody paper shuffling civil servant. Like the cut and thrust. Bit of a loner. Not one to sit behind a desk all day. Like me in a way. Need the excitement. But once you’re in it, you’re in it. No way back. Need to make a living. Save for the future. Got a wife and family to think about, but ideal chap for these sorts of jobs. But there’s a lot at stake here old man. We are – all of us – up to our necks in shit. Marked men, one way or another. Step out of line and your fucking throat’s cut. We’re all pushed and leaned on from somewhere. I’m leaned on. You’re leaned on. But the pushing and leaning has to stop somewhere, Ollie.”

  Donaldson had paused, perhaps for effect before continuing.

  “But you, old chap, are bottom of the scrum, so to speak. Who the fuck do you lean on?”

  I knew Donaldson was watching me although I was still staring at the floor. But I was seeing Donaldson, yet again, for the man he was. I looked up to see him staring, unblinking. Jack
was coughing nervously in the corner.

  I shouted back at him.

  “You know who I lean on, you bastard – my wife. But I don’t lean on her in the way you lean on me. I rely on her for a touch of sanity. There’s a clear difference – not that you’d understand it. She is the one bit of common sense left around here. Perhaps if you were sufficiently human to have someone yourself, you’d start to understand, you bastard.”

  Donaldson stared, his face reddening all the while and his lower lip trembling. It was as though a nerve had been touched.

  He then took another deep breath.

  “Then you know what to do, old chap. Go out there for her fucking sake.”

  And with that, Donaldson got up and went to the window to stare down into the street below. But it still wasn’t enough for me.

  “And what if I don’t go?”

  Donaldson continued to stare down into the Regent Street traffic.

  “Then she’d soon get to know about the shit you’re involved in, old chap. What’s more, she’d get to learn a hell of a lot more if, one day, you failed to make it back in one piece.”

  He stopped, apparently waiting for things to sink in again.

  But I was by then hardened to this sort of comment.

  We had been here many times before and I just sat there thinking.

  Donaldson was being driven by personal gain but it was taking me far too long to piece together the evidence.

  I glanced over at Jack who had clearly been watching the scene. But he averted his eyes.

  Jack never had the look or manner of a sophisticated crook.

  He appeared to be a lackey, up to his eyeballs in the shit as well. And did he really understand or have the balls to realize what Donaldson was up to?

  I wasn’t sure. I stared at him.

  As far as I knew, Jack never ever went to the Whitehall office.

  He seemed to operate loosely through Regent Street without an office, desk or even a chair. He would stand in Donaldson’s office as though he had just wandered in and was about to wander out again. But then Jack was a yes man as I knew.

  But I, at least, was starting to see things in a different and perhaps more accurate light. It was as though the shadows that the new light cast threw a clearer picture on the truth. Jack reminded me of a show I had watched in Singapore where stiff, unmoving, Chinese puppets made from flat, lifeless cardboard held on sticks were, once reflected from behind, brought to life as moving beings with changing shapes and characters. If you had the patience to follow it and could tolerate the tinkling music coming from a cheap, wooden xylophone a story slowly unfolded.

  I thought about the hundred or more assignments I had been given by both Jack and Donaldson over the years.

  Some could be considered legitimate in that they may, I suppose, have been of use to British Intelligence. Perhaps these had been requested and sanctioned from higher up.

  Others, however, were more akin to commercial investigations like industrial espionage. These might have been of more use to bigger businesses or other organizations that could find ways to use what I found out or even sell it on. But approved by Government? It was unlikely. Donaldson had always tried to make these latter assignments smell a little better by a touch of perfume from a bottle marked “best interests”.

  This fresh proposal that Donaldson was so worked up about clearly fell into the latter category but he was so visibly stressed that it looked personal.

  So, that’s why I was pushing him. I was trying to make him feel so uncomfortable that he cracked and so shed some light on his motives. But Donaldson was made of granite as hard as that used to construct his office in that tenement block in Edinburgh.

  It seemed to me that Donaldson was somehow behind this unfolding Nigerian drama that was to involve William Akinbiyi, just as he had been behind the Frank affair and probably the Libyan-Irish affair.

  A silence had descended but I could hear Donaldson breathing heavily.

  I looked at the quivering Jack Woodward and shook my head at him trying to provoke him into doing or saying something.

  “So, what do you think, Jack?” I said and added, after a calculated pause, “Old boy, dear fellow”.

  I was mocking Donaldson who shot me a look but said nothing.

  Then he turned to Jack with a look that was enough to turn a bottle of milk sour. Jack was expected to say something. Jack was there to back up Donaldson, say the right thing, lock the office door whenever necessary, smooth things out, calm things down and gently persuade me to go along with things. He was there to say yes, yes and yes again.

  To my great surprise, Jack opened his mouth.

  “It needs someone with commercial contacts, Ollie. Not the usual government or diplomatic ones. There’s a lot of it going on.”

  He then shut up and looked at Donaldson who was still staring at him with an expression that suggested that this was a fair start but not enough. I could see what Donaldson was thinking. “Keep going, you stupid fucker. Give him more. And if you don’t help me out here, God help you as well, you pathetic bastard.”

  Jack clearly saw a problem and tried again, stroking his chin.

  “Yes, a lot going on.”

  It was laughable. God knows what Donaldson thought.

  What Jack meant, of course, was that there was a lot of bribery and corruption going on but no one needed a small-time office manager and yes man to tell us that.

  But Jack was, you see, doing his imitation of a Charles Dickens character. In my mind, I often compared him to Uriah Heap, a character you may recall that was noted for cloying humility, obsequiousness, and insincerity. Jack was similar although instead of making reference to his “umbleness” like Uriah Heap, Jack referred to his, and everyone else’s sense of “duty”.

  Uriah Heap wrung his hands but Jack’s particularly nauseous side was a sort of sickening fawning accompanied by the stroking of his smooth chin.

  Jack clearly never grew out of this mannerism as he demonstrated when we met at the Cumberland many years later and asked about Sarah.

  But, yes, Jack was right about a lot of things going on in Nigeria.

  These sorts of things had been going on for centuries and, as far as I know, still go on.

  But Donaldson had clearly had enough. “You fucking sort this or . . .”

  He was pointing a fat finger directly at Jack and it was the first time I’d seen this.

  “If it’s not sorted in ten minutes all fucking hell . . .” He got up and went out, slamming the door.

  He didn’t go far though.

  In the brief silence that followed and while Jack and I looked at one another, I heard a match being struck outside the door. Donaldson was having a smoke.

  But he was unusually stressed.

  I sat and stared at the floor again waiting to see what Jack might do or say. I planned to say nothing. This time it was Jack’s turn.

  He moved a few feet and came roughly where I could see him out of the corner of my eye but then reverted to his Uriah Heap character. This time it was the bullshitting version.

  “You are the best, Ollie – the one D trusts. How’s the Nigerian business? Going well I hope.” Jack was probably wringing his scrawny pale hands.

  “I haven’t been back recently,” I said. “What happened to Frank rather put me off.”

  “Ah, but there’s commission in this one, I believe.”

  I turned to face him and found he was not wringing his hands but wiping his chin and looking at me as if I always went weak at the knees at the thought of money.

  “And why the bloody hell would Nigeria want hardware?”

  I asked, meaning military supplies but knowing full well that this particular need was highly unlikely. But I was helping Jack out of his predicament.

  “It’s not that. It’s to do with aid money, apparently. It sounds complicated to me but D knows much more.”

  “Aid money?”

  “Apparently, it’s been happenin
g a lot lately. Money earmarked for agricultural projects, schools and that sort of thing. But it goes astray. Finds its way into the Central Bank, then, hey presto! – gone!”

  With that Jack ran both hands across his chin and then his cheek and forehead as though the mention of the subject was giving him a hot flush. Then he held both hands up like a magician who had just made a white rabbit disappear.

  “D knows a lot more,” he said without adding any more value to what he had already said.

  Of course, D knew more.

  D was the instigator probably. D was the mastermind. D ran a whole division of the Mafia.

  But I was astute enough to need to know details of my remuneration.

  “And how will our mutual friend, D, work out my commission if ever we found a way to stop it. Ten percent of a million pounds’ aid package seems interesting. But ten percent of a stolen Sunday morning church collection doesn’t sound like much.”

  There was a pause.

  Jack was never that quick when it came to mathematics.

  “Yes, well. I see. I hadn’t thought about that. You would need to speak to D.”

  Jack would never have made a good businessman. But he was good at ensuring the availability of cups of tea. Jack was like Mohammed who cleared the parrot’s droppings and he was brilliant at being the conveyor of bad news wrapped up in auras of uncertainty and naive innocence.

  And then, as if to demonstrate his commercial prowess he said: “I’m not sure D wants it stopped. Apparently, it needs to be redirected.”

  Ah! I thought. Now we’re getting somewhere. Perhaps Jack had made a mistake and was now revealing secrets. I could see it now. This was not a plan to track money and make sure it didn’t get into wrong hands. This was probably an attempt to track money and then launder it or a crude plan to move it

  directly into private pockets, probably Donaldson’s.

  “I see,” I said. I was tempted to rub my own chin but didn’t.

  But it was as if Jack was so dim that he couldn’t see what was going on under his own nose, though, perhaps, he was temporarily overcome by the power of sitting in Donaldson’s chair because he had moved around to face me on the other side of Donaldson’s desk and sat down.

  There was a few minutes’ silence. Donaldson could still be heard outside.

  But Jack had given me more reasons for suspicion and I was intrigued.

  “OK,” I said. “But I need to understand more.”

  Jack went to the door, spoke to Donaldson and he returned still puffing on his cigarette.

  It seemed that around two million dollars was lying in a Swiss bank account, destined to fund the purchase of medical equipment for several small, rural health clinics in Nigeria.

  Whether this was an accumulation of charity donations or not I didn’t pursue.

  It certainly didn’t sound plausible but then all jobs coming from the Regent Street office looked dubious.

  But Donaldson was particularly wound up about this one as though there was a lot at stake and he was worried about losing something substantial.

  I smelled a rat somewhere. I knew I was being used but decided it might help prove my case against the man and if I could find a way to screw things up for him good and proper then I needed to seize it.

  I agreed to help saying I needed a lot more information as soon as possible and left.

  I contacted William to say I was flying to Nigeria and wanted to see him, booked a ticket and met up with Donaldson and Jack again the day before I was due to fly to check if everything was still in place.

  Jack handed me a small buff folder.

  “The bank details are in the file, Ollie.”

  “Thanks. So, my suggested plan of action is still on?”

  “Yes,” said Donaldson.

  “Nothing changed?”

  “No,” said Donaldson.

  “And I receive one per cent?”

  “Yes,” said Donaldson and then added, “I met a chap from the Nigerian High Commission. I told him you would be helping out.”

  “You did what?” I was shocked that he’d already broken my cover so to speak.

  “Don’t fret. Trust him.”

  Donaldson rarely used the word trust. Trust wasn’t something he understood and he always found difficulty saying the word. He rolled the “r” like a Scotsman and missed the last “t”, so that it sounded like the word truss.

  Trussed up was probably what he meant anyway.

  “What chap from the High Commission?”

  Donaldson tapped his nose, “Need to know basis old chap.

  No need to worry, it’s all sorted. Relax.”

  I suspect that, by telling me not to worry and to relax, Donaldson was really telling himself.

  I saw something in his eye that meant he was now far less stressed.

  Donaldson had fixed something but I didn’t yet know what.

  William

  This time on my arrival in Lagos, there was no Frank to meet me and take me to the Airport Hotel in Ikeja.

  But as usual, once I’d made my own way to it, there was no telephone, the electricity was off and the water was of the brown drips variety.

  I doubt if it has changed much during the last forty years but I ate a dinner of fried eggs and rice, which I admit was as good as anything served earlier on the plane. And then, as night descended, I walked the short distance up the red and dusty road to the club, the sound of drums and saxophones increasing as I got closer.

  And, mixed with the sticky, humid, air, was the usual Lagos smell – dust, beer and stale sweat. I actually like it and, for a while, I forgot about Donaldson and why I was there.

  The Pink Coconut club was largely a tin shack open to the air and mostly for the slightly better off locals. But as one of the few, or only, white faces there I found myself, as usual, surrounded by ten or more girls standing, waiting and chattering outside the entrance waiting to be taken in. Then, as usual, I ran the gauntlet of the men in charge and was asked to pay ten times the normal entrance fee.

  But one of the most persistent girls held onto me with her sticky hands and escorted me inside, where we found a wobbling, metal table and hard metal chair in the dark shadows, somewhere under the corrugated canopy. She ordered me a beer and for half an hour I sat there, sipping cool beer, soaking up the atmosphere and listening to the loud and throbbing music that blended jazz and blues with a unique West African sound.

  And while I sat, I knew eyes were looking in my direction from the darkness. It was normal but I never felt intimidated. Whispering something to the girl sitting alongside to makeher laugh would always break the ice. I called to one of the other group of girls who were still lurking in the shadows behind and cracked another silly joke to make them laugh. I bought some more beers, shared them amongst the girls and then sat back while the band played on under dim spotlights and as the flying ants, mosquitoes, moths and bats flitted around.

  That night I had not had to wait long before William Akinbiyi turned up.

  It was past eleven and I was on my third beer but I heard his characteristic, loud voice as he approached through the shadows behind. It was a voice that broke through the music. “Yeth. You mutht have theen him. You thaw him path thith way?”

  I glanced around and the girl sat by me, helping me drink my beer with her hand on my thigh looked behind too.

  “Ah. Yeth man. No worry. I thee him, now.”

  William’s gleaming white teeth were the first sight to emerge from the darkness.

  “Hey, Mr Thomath – Ollie, my man,” he said pushing his way through from twenty yards away, “Glad to thee you.

  Making yourthelf at home, I thee.”

  Then the tall figure of William appeared, holding out his big hot hands.

  William’s greetings were always the same. One large, sweaty hand would grasp mine. The other would be slapped hard around my shoulders. He scraped up a chair in the dry dust opposite and sat down.

  “Hey, haff girlfr
iend already. Very nithe.”

  The girl laughed and got up. “You wanna beer?” she asked William.

  “Tuthka.”

  William slapped her as she squeezed by and the hand stayed there briefly, a finger easing its way under her bottom.

  She shrieked, wriggled and moved away to get his bottle of Kenyan Tusker.

  “So. Lagoth again, Ollie, my man?”

  “Nice to be back William,” I replied.

  William Akinbiyi was one of my many business contacts.

  He was an importer of farm tractors and other agricultural equipment and had taken over the business from his father who had died in a farming accident while William was studying at University in England. We first made contact when I was looking for distributors for tractor spares and I met him at the back of a concrete-block house in Ibadan.

  “Yeth. I can thell one hundred a year with all thpare parth. We thervith tractors all over Nigeria from Lagoth to Kano, from Maiduguri to Calabar. No problem.”

  Confidence oozed along with the glistening sweat from every pore of William’s body and he had used his English University education to impress all those with lesser qualifications.

  These included a wide spectrum of local chiefs and politicians from crooked Christians in the south to money grabbing Moslems in the north. As such William was well placed to know a thing or two about how to manipulate the wretched system that had evolved.

  But William had his honourable side.

  Despite his size, his speech defect and his occasionally coarse behaviour he was likeable. The hard, extrovert layer was a form of protection because, beneath that hard, outer crust was a softer layer. He believed in fairness, respect for others and that you took as much as you could – but only by hard work or by being better than the others.

  But it was the more visible, coarser streak that gave him an edge of respect from those in the more dubious quarters. They did not possess the sensitivity to recognize his deeper, nicer side. They thought that he was, like them, mean and selfish in all his dealings. They thought, too, that his respect for others was limited, like theirs, to those who could be snuggled up to, for material gain.

  That hour with William was spent in drinking and listening to music but the next morning, after my breakfast of more fried eggs, he came to the hotel and we sat in the shade offered by some wooden scaffolding to discuss how to deal with the latest assignment set by Donaldson.

  I told him exactly what Donaldson had told me – that large sums of money collected by charitable donations was going astray rather too often than made sense and that we were going to try to put a spanner in the works if possible.

  I didn’t tell William that I rarely believed a word Donaldson said because that meant telling him about my experiences of the last twenty years.

  But for William poor people who gave to charity had no right to see their hard-earned cash being siphoned off into the pockets of the rich and those with know-how and influence. So it was not difficult to persuade William to ask a few questions and dig around a bit in banks and other places in Lagos.

  We brainstormed a few well-placed villains likely to be behind it all and William came up with a very likely candidate. It proved to be spot on and what’s more William knew where he lived and had a way to contact him.

  I left him to do his further digging and I went off to see another of my business contacts to see if I could get an order to cover the cost of my trip. Two days later, we had devised a rough plan and were off on our mission.

  We took a mid-morning internal Nigerian airways flight and by afternoon were bouncing along a red, dirt track in a hired car with the sun flickering between rows of banana trees on either side.

  The car was swerving to avoid potholes filled with red, muddy water and William was driving with his sunglasses on, his seat on the farthest adjustment backwards and with one hand on the steering wheel and the other lying across the back of my seat behind my neck.

  “Long way but muth get there before dak, Ollie, my man. Not eathy to fine thith plathe.”

  Throughout the ride, we went over the plan as best we could although we knew we had to be prepared to change things to suit the rules of their game. I ended up telling William that Donaldson had said he was the bee’s knees.

  “Bee’th knee’th, Ollie? What the fuck is that? I ain’t no little bumble bee. I’m a wothp with a thting and yellow and black thtwipes. Ha ha.”

  Eventually, William stopped the Peugeot that was, by now, covered in red dust from roof to doorsills and we walked towards a big, concrete house along a muddy track somewhere in Calabar.

  “Thith ith the plathe, man.”

  Later, in the same house, I sat around a table with William and another Nigerian man in cumbersome ethnic dress of white and gold. A short, fat lady, presumably a wife, in a long colorful dress served up a meal of spicy fish soup and mashed yams as a bottle of Black and White whisky circulated.

  Much later, William and I groped our way back down the dark track to William’s car and headed off, slightly the worse for wear, to find somewhere to stay for the night. And on the way, we chatted again.

  “You thee, Ollie. There ith a lot of money going athtray. Millions.”

  It was true and a simple plan for transferring the two million US dollars destined for health clinics across the whole of Nigeria had been made very clear over the fish soup and pounded yams. William’s digging and intuition had proved invaluable.

  Our host for dinner had, only a year or so before, been the Minister charged with delivering the state’s health care.

  But the one-time Doctor and student from a British medical school who had risen to such heights had, suddenly, found himself to be missing a friend or two and so was out of a job again. Having reached the heights, the only way now was in a downward direction and so he was looking for some income. He already had one or two accomplices but what he really needed was a legitimate company to bounce the deal off and move the funds somewhere.

  That the one-time Minister seemed to trust William and me to help was, undoubtedly, down to Donaldson having said something to the Nigerian High Commission because the subject cropped up as we were emptying the bottle of whisky. “So, we are in good company, Mr Thomas. The wheels are well oiled so to speak. But it’s all done and dusted so to speak.”

  And then the man had gone on a long and tortuous explanation of why the medical equipment wasn’t really needed anymore now and that there was a far better use that could be made of the allocated funding if it was transferred elsewhere for other projects.

  It was all the usual hypocritical nonsense and I think I probably dozed off or focused on removing hundreds of needle-like fish bones from the soup and analyzing the other strange ingredients.

  I remember our host describing how he had recently joined other high powered dignitaries in visits to local hospitals and schools, all desperate for funds and, for good measure, speeches had been given about the evil ways of international big businesses that drained the country’s limited resources on needless infrastructure projects that always failed to deliver. And the press who followed in droves had been encouraged to take many photos of poverty and terrible living conditions.

  Mostly they had been courted for votes, of course.

  I deliberately woke myself up as we arrived at the crunch point.

  He was saying: “We’ll soon find a far better use for the funds. But it’s the bureaucracy you understand. It takes so long to get the funding in place and then we have to line up all the medical equipment. By then the need has gone.”

  “So is the equipment already ready and waiting to be shipped,” I asked noticing that William still had his eyes shut.

  “Of course,” he said as though I should have known. “And, of course, it is already paid for. We just need to find a way to release the allocated funds to use for other humanitarian projects. This is where you come in.”

  He passed the bottle to me once again and I filled my glass.


  Then I hit William with the bottle to wake him up but his head stayed, resting on his chest.

  “Yes,” he said. “Your company will receive a number of Letters of Credit to cover the shipment. The total amount will be around two million dollars. The equipment is already paid for and waiting to be shipped. So you don’t have to buy it.

  That would be a real complication and we would not want to put you to so much inconvenience. Then you will receive the shipping documents. You present them to the bank as usual and, under the terms of the credit, the funds will be paid into the Swiss Bank . . .”

  My ears perked up. This was why I was wide awake.

  He finished, “. . . and that’s it. Simple! No problem!”

  I jumped. “I would prefer that the money is paid direct to Thomas Import Export so we can deduct our charges first,” I said. “Then we’ll transfer the balance.”

  “Oh no, there has to be some trust here. But your percentage will be transferred immediately.”

  I was expecting it. It was the first sign that the plan I’d put to Donaldson had changed.

  “OK,” I thought, “I wasn’t expecting to make anything, although one percent for my troubles might have been nice.”

  The question now was whether the rest of the plan would unravel. That plan had been that I would hang onto the whole two million dollars while the scam was reported to the Government and the charity concerned. The authorities were then supposed to pounce.

  Donaldson’s job, as a servant of the Crown working for British Intelligence, the Fraud Squad, Interpol or anyone else that might be interested, was to arrange the pounce.

  William had missed all of this but suddenly woke up with a grunt.

  We left soon after that and groped our way in the dark through the bushes to find the car. Once in the driving seat, William fully woke up.

  He was still speaking as he drove us around the town looking for somewhere to stay.

  “Nithe man, Oliver. Good food. Very fat you thee. Big money. Big idea. Well connected with all them high-grade politician around Calabar. He was Minithter of Health one time in the patht. Knowth all them big chief in Lagos too. Have big farm ath well. Told you already about that. Many people taking big dash to keep quiet. Travel a lot ath well. London, Thwittherland, U Eth A. Well known by High Commithun in London. Belong executive club with British Caledonian and Thwith Air. Friend of Thentral bank and ethpethially New Nigeria Bank. Talk to all them foreign politician too. Yeth, he very fat man. “

  William suddenly braked and the car skidded to a stop and I thought he had spotted a place for us to stay but, instead, he looked straight at me and added: “He altho fucking big bathtard Ollie.”

  The final, concluding sentence made us both chuckle.

  “What to do then, William?”

  “Good quethtion. Ha ha.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him, that my worst fears were coming true.

  “I think we just keep to plan A, William. What do you think?” “Yeth, Ollie. Plan A is the bee’th kneeth, Ha ha.”

  Two days later and I was home.

  Three weeks later I arrived at the office to find Beaty with what looked like a smile on her face. A Beaty smile was a very rare sight.

  “Oh, Mr Thomas. Such good news. I’ve just opened the post. We’ve got six letters of credit for the medical equipment contract you mentioned. All confirmed. I can hardly believe it!”

  Beaty must have seen the look on my face which was hardly one of ecstasy.

  I felt so sorry for her but I couldn’t possibly explain.

  “Ah! Good,“ I said, trying to look pleased. “Let’s see.”

  “Here, Mr Thomas. Look! The big one is for nearly half a million dollars, the smallest for two hundred thousand. I totted it up and it’s one million, nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars. What do you think, Mr Thomas?”

  “Mm,” I said, “That was quick. Surprising really.”

  “That’s because you went out there, Mr Thomas. I knew you’d win a big one sometime.”

  Beaty was almost beside herself.

  I’d never seen her so enthusiastic. She was actually smiling although the sight was little better than when Donaldson smiled.

  “Yes, good old William,” I said. “He’s done his stuff.”

  “But the expiry date is so short, Mr Thomas. Look. It all needs to be shipped within eight weeks. How on earth will we organize it in time? And how are we going to buy the goods to start with?

  But I expect you have already thought about that, Mr Thomas.”

  Beaty was actually very good. She was far better than Jack and commercial realities rarely passed her by.

  Normally, such an order would have required me to buy the goods in advance which meant cash. But, for an order of this size, a bank loan would have been the usual route and a charge on our house would have been the security. There would have been other ways but if I didn’t get paid for whateverreason, the upshot would be unthinkable.

  Bankruptcy would stare me in the face and I have experience of that scenario as you will learn.

  But this was no ordinary deal. The medical equipment was, as our friend in Calabar had confirmed, already paid for and ready to be shipped.

  Beaty knew nothing of course.

  “Special arrangement, Beat,” I replied. “The goods are all ready to go and suppliers will get paid when we do. All we’ve got to do is process the paperwork. Margins aren’t too good, but we’ll make a little. Christmas bonus, Beaty.“

  “Oh, Mr Thomas, that would be nice.”

  With that I seemed to put her mind at ease and she set about her typing once more.

  But let me explain now that the most commonly sought skill for fraud, especially international fraud, is to know how to get paid for supplying absolutely nothing.

  Empty containers are a good one or containers filled with crates of stones to give weight.

  An Iranian dealer I once knew was highly skilled in this type of business. All he needed was an accomplice or two living near his foreign suppliers.

  The accomplice would arrange for right footed army boots to be shipped through one port and left footed boots through another port on the other side of the country. Naturally he refused to accept delivery on the basis of incomplete shipments or wrong contents and also didn’t pay his supplier.

  The shippers then auctioned off the containers as useless waste and guess who bid the highest? Yes, the same chap.

  He then spent a week sitting in the dust of his warehouse in Tehran, carefully matching up the boots again and, hey presto, found himself in possession of two container loads of perfect pairs of army boots that were worth a small fortune.

  In my case, all I had to do was wait whilst someone, somewhere, organized the shipment of eighteen containers of medical equipment. Then wait for the shipping documents, certificates of origin and all the other pieces of paper to arrive to submit to the bank.

  A month later, all the documents arrived in the office, everything seemed in perfect order, Beaty did her usual perfect checking job, I double checked them and we submitted them to the bank.

  I assumed then that the money would be released and paid to the specified bank. It would have been nice then to see my one percent paid but I didn’t hold my breath.

  I got on with other things and I assume Beaty thought everything had gone like clockwork and waited for her Christmas bonus.

  Not having the heart to tell William what had happened in case he thought I was totally inept and naive, I paid him his agreed amount immediately.

  Then I went to see Donaldson.

  I was perfectly calm as I listened to his explanation.

  “What can we do, old chap?” said Donaldson. “You’ve done your bit. I understand, the Government wants to keep it under wraps at present. Let them deal with it through normal diplomatic channels. I’ll keep you posted.”

  While Jack stood nervously rubbing his chin by the door, Donaldson went to the window of the Regent
Street office and looked out. But I could distinctly see his reflection in the window glass.

  Donaldson was trying not to laugh.

  Oh yes, I thought, case proven.

  I said nothing but took a deep breath and then looked at Jack Woodward to see whether anything similar had registered with him.

  But no, there was no expression from the man except one that suggested confusion, uncertainty, doubt and a total lack of comprehension. He stood there, rubbing his cheeks and chin as usual, a man completely under someone else’s control or completely out of his depth. Here was an ex-serviceman who had become a yes man, probably on a minimum wage and standing there like a dumb waiter too scared for whatever reason even to say boo.

  I gave Jack the same smirk I had seen on Donaldson’s face in the reflection and then turned and spoke to Donaldson’s back.

  “Ah well,” I said, “you win some and you lose some. I’ll be on my way, then.”

  It was then that Jack managed to find a few words.

  “See you soon in the Feathers, Ollie.”

  “Sure,” I said and walked out.

  On Christmas Eve, I gave Beaty her bonus.

  On Christmas Day, William phoned me at home from Nigeria.

  “Ollie, I don’t underthtand.” “What’s the problem, William?”

  “About the two million poundth medical equipment.” “You paid me my commithun.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But I think thumthing went wrong, Ollie.”

  “Yes, I know, William. But don’t worry I was expecting it. You did your best and that’s why I paid you.”

  “Did you get paid, Ollie?”

  “No, William but, fortunately, it has only cost me some time.”

  “But you know what, Ollie? The fucking bathtards sent thirty thix Merthaydeeth cars in the containers inthted of medical equipment.”

  “Mm,” I said, “I was expecting something like that. There’s been a spate of theft of brand new Mercedes around south London.”

  “You get a Merthaydeeth, as well, Ollie?”

  “No, William, still got the Ford.”

  “All of them are fucking bathtards, Ollie.”

  “I know,“ I said. “Have a good Christmas, William.”

  “And you Ollie.”

 

  Good Advice

  After I left the Regent Street office with Donaldson smirking at his own reflection and Jack still playing with his own chin, I may have looked and sounded calm but inside I was fuming.

  I walked towards Victoria station planning to go home but the anger was not subsiding and I didn’t want Sarah to see me like this. So, as I passed the Duke of York pub, I went in, ordered myself a pint and went to sit alone in the corner to think.

  I needed to do something about Donaldson.

  In fact, I had decided to act some years before. So, why hadn’t I?

  Well, that was simple. I had kept going partly because of Donaldson’s blackmailing tactics and threats but also in the faint hope that things just might start to ease up and that my link with Donaldson might fade.

  But it hadn’t faded.

  In fact, it seemed to be entering a new phase of fraudulent deals involving huge sums of money. The problem was that I didn’t understand how Donaldson operated.

  I gulped down mouthfuls of my beer.

  What exactly was he up to? How did he operate? What were his plans?

  Whatever, it was perfectly clear to me that he had built a parallel career on the foundation of his official job. But more concerning was that I had become an integral part of it. I was being used as an innocent messenger and a provider of useful information. I was like a sales representative for a company with plans to join the Mafia or one that had already joined.

  But for a salesman in a company like that, resigning was a problem. You already knew too much. And this was the reason for the blackmail and threats to person and family. They were designed to keep me from wandering.

  So, would it be more and more blackmail and threats until I’d earned my keep and then the threats would be carried out anyway just to keep me quiet?

  The more I sat and thought, the more the worry and anger inside me grew.

  I downed the last drop of my beer, went to the bar for another pint and returned to my corner.

  There I started to think about Thomas Import Export Limited. It was my small business that I had started by myself with limited private funds with youthful ambitions to gradually build into something important and international in order to provide Sarah, the children and myself with a good income and, when the time came, an asset to finance our retirement. But it was still far too small and it felt as if it had become just a convenient tool for Donaldson to bounce his fraudulent deals off.

  As I drank, I was watching two men playing darts. The board was old and worn with so many holes in it that, more often than not, darts would bounce off the board and fall onto the floor.

  Thomas Import Export was also being played with. There were only so many holes it could bear. And I was also being played with.

  I was still doing unpaid jobs for Donaldson that were wrapped up in a cloak of secrecy because I still believed that what I was doing was linked to British Intelligence and I was still where I left off after the war in doing things for the sake of patriotism.

  But how many times had I, in the middle of one of Donaldson’s assignments, suddenly thought to myself that what I was doing just didn’t add up or make any sense? But, believing as I did, that Donaldson worked for the Government, I had always put it all down to the way these things worked. “Benefit of the doubt” as Sarah often said.

  So what should I do now?

  I got up to order a third pint but this time, instead of taking it back to my corner, I paid for it, leaned on the bar next to a small group of other men and withdrew into my thoughts.

  Donaldson was clever and I still had no idea how to deal with him.

  I’d already dismissed ideas of speaking to government officers, a minister, my MP or the police for fear I would not be believed and for fear that Donaldson would take action long before I got anywhere. I still felt very alone.

  I drank half of the pint glassful in one swallow and put the glass back on the wet beer mat.

  “Need a new TV, mate?”

  I looked up at a young man in open necked shirt and jeans who had moved away from the other group. He was winking at me. Long black straggly hair hung down to his shoulders.

  “TV?” I asked.

  “Yeh, mate. Watch TV do ya?”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “when I’m around.”

  “Cheap,” he said. “Job lot. Me and me mates have a van around the corner. Nice quality.”

  “In the TV and radio business, are you?” I asked.

  The young man took a mouthful of his beer and grinned.

  “Yeh – today, anyway.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Got to move on. You know how it is, mate.”

  “Yes,” I said and took a mouthful from my own glass, “You’re right. You definitely have to move on.”

  “In business yourself, mate?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Dodging and diving, mate?”

  “Plenty of that,” I said.

  “What’s your specialty, mate?”

  “International arms trading,” I said for a laugh.

  “Fuck,” he said. “Really?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Hence the ducking and diving.”

  “Fuck,” he repeated. “Got anything in stock at present?”

  “Only if you order a forty-foot container load.”

  “Bloody hell,” he said and his voice dropped to a whisper.

  “Yes,” I said. “It is bloody hell, I can tell you. My advice is never get involved. Keep life simple.”

  “Fuck me,” the young man said. “Who are your customers?”

  “African despots, Middle East terrorists, IRA.”


  “Jesus!” he said. “Your own business?”

  “Yes,” I replied after taking another swig. “Want to buy it?”

  “Your business is for sale?”

  “Yes, just waiting for the right offer.”

  “How much, mate?”

  “Free,” I said.

  “Fucking free?”

  “Yes.” I replied. “But it comes with a liability.”

  “What’s that then mate?”

  “You get followed everywhere, your family gets threatened and orders only come from the head of the London Mafia.”

  ”Jesus Christ!” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ve asked Jesus Christ, but he’s not interested in buying it either.”

  “Not surprised, mate,” the young man said. Then he laughed a little which suggested he thought I might be pulling his leg a little. I decided I needed to put him right.

  “You think I’m joking?” I said, staring into my empty glass. “What would you do if you wanted to get out of the business?”

  “I’d shoot the bloody head of the London Mafia to stop him destroying me, mate. You gotta get out of this bleeding mess, man, before it’s too fucking late. That’s what I’d do. Shoot the fucker.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s exactly what I thought. Want another pint?”

  “Ta, mate. Don’t mind if I do. Now, what about a nice, new TV?”

  “No thanks,” I replied, beckoning to the barman. “I’ve got to go home to check to see if my wife is still alright. She’s probably sat watching the TV as we speak. But enjoy your drink. And thanks for the advice.”

  Back Scratching

  It was Farouk who provided a way to solve my problems with Donaldson.

  As usual it started with a phone call to the office. “It’s Mr Farouk, Mr Thomas.”

  To me, Farouk was like Smith, Jones or Brown. I knew dozens of Egyptians with the name and I asked Beaty to ask which company he was from to give myself time to think.

  “He says it’s not business, Mr Thomas. It’s private.” As soon as she said it, I knew which Farouk it was. “Alright, Beaty, I’ll speak to him.”

  Beaty handed me the phone but looked at me as though she was being bypassed in some way. The look was becoming increasingly noticeable as if I should notify her of everything I did, even private matters. Perhaps it was because she was always in the office and I wasn’t but it was still my business and she was being paid by me. I was becoming more and more concerned about Beaty’s increasingly strange manner but, in my usual fashion, put it down to her age and dismissed it once again to talk to Farouk.

  Farouk and I had known each other for many years.

  The first time we met was a day of clear, bright blue sky in the mountains behind Beirut at a hotel on the road to Zahle where the white snow still lay amongst the rocks in the shade.

  This was long before the civil war had started to rage and before the city had been bombed into concrete rubble. We had met to discuss pharmaceuticals but had ended up talking politics.

  I think that Farouk called himself Farouk for business and political reasons as he was actually a Christian born in Alexandria into the Coptic Church. He also looked more European than Arabic and my suspicions about his name were confirmed when I once heard him being called Frank and saw a letter from Germany on his desk addressed to Franke. But let us not go into that for Farouk was a good friend who I trusted.

  He ran the business from an office in Amman but also had a small warehouse in Beirut and another tiny office in Damascus and was helped by a small team of Jordanian and Egyptian salesmen selling mostly to pharmacies. Farouk had tried hard to keep his religious background quiet. But with all the difficulties in the region, his political opinions had matured into a clear set of bottled up principles which he seemed relieved to express to a well-travelled English businessman who offered a good ear well practiced in the art of extracting useful information.

  Farouk’s pent up political frustration had poured out over a delicious meal of humus, lamb cooked in yoghurt and mint, all washed down with too many glasses of arak.

  And it had soon become apparent that Farouk was not averse to dabbling in other imported items in order to supplement his already substantial income from pharmaceuticals and cosmetics and to satisfy an appetite for small scale subversive politics.

  What helped Farouk in this was his network of affluent pharmacists and medical practitioners who were reasonably well paid professionals and far more inclined to prefer a steady, peaceful co-existence with their neighbours than the angry, unemployed residents in the Palestinian camps.

  So, after we had finished the bottle of arak I agreed to help Farouk by organizing a few deliveries of other items, not in large quantities, but carefully concealed in boxes of codeine tablets, antibiotics and bottles of hospital disinfectant.

  “Only for defence you understand, Oliver. We do not want to cause trouble. There is already too much of that simmering here.”

  Indeed, Farouk had no need of guns for they were to be found everywhere in Beirut and most nights were to be heard going off after the restaurants had closed. At the time, hand grenades were less easily available but once bought and imported into the UK in boxes of Tunisian dates ready for the Christmas market were not difficult to re-export. I was well used to this sort of trade, believing that wealth creation through added value was far more important to the British economy than strict compliance to customs requirements. And it was only on a very small scale.

  So, a few weeks later, Farouk received his consignment disguised and packed in boxes that were clearly labelled: “Disinfectant – Hazardous Chemicals – This Way Up”.

  I suppose that admitting to a little arms trading, however small scale, might be a good excuse to charge me sometime but it was never a particularly profitable exercise although I suppose I could have specialized in it and made a fortune. But I have always disliked things that make a loud noise and kill people. So it was just a passing interest, you understand, a useful service I sometimes provided to oil wheels.

  In the seventies, I had several suppliers of such things in my address book.

  They call it networking these days but I used to call it sniffing around because these were the days before the advent of telex, fax and email and when telephone calls and cables were also unreliable. So, sniffing around was a high, fixed overhead for a small business like mine.

  But after that first small successful deal with Farouk, our friendship remained at a very low key. We met up in odd places like Paris or Brussels to reminisce or complete another small deal, which in most cases were for less interesting things such as hospital disinfectant and throat lozenges. But the business was almost secondary. What we possessed was friendship, mutual respect and a good understanding and, if he is alive today, I would love to see him again.

  Farouk would cable his needs in code to the office and Beaty would pick them up without really understanding the message. Neither did she have to deal with packing his special needs inside boxes of detergent because I did that myself in the corner of a small warehouse I rented in Brixton.

  But “5/10 Metro” would have been enough of a message for me to arrange a quick trip to the Paris Metropole on October 5th, pick up a small shopping list from Farouk and have a quick chat over a meal in a Lebanese restaurant.

  Sarah and I were still living in the Victorian brick place in Croydon but, with surprising speed, Farouk seemed able to afford to buy an expensive apartment in Paris, surrounded by other Lebanese.

  Farouk had become one of my sources of ideas and contacts but he also said that he owed me one big favor sometime. It would usually be as we shook hands outside an exotic place called the Byblos Hookah lounge and restaurant near the Champs Elysees.

  “Thank you, Ollie,” he would say as we emerged from the hot, smoke filled room into the Paris lights. “You scratch my back for me and so I must scratch yours someday, yes? I don’t forget your English saying. You just let me know when you h
ave itch. Ha ha!”

  I waited too long but, eventually, decided that the time for the back scratching to be reciprocated might have arrived.

  Farouk was one of my friends I managed to keep secret from anyone, be it Donaldson or Beaty. Keeping just a few secrets like this was one of the few ways I tolerated the bastard for so long. Sometimes I regret not having spent more time on business of the sort that Farouk and I did. It was a missed opportunity. Perhaps if we had gone into some more formal partnership I would have opened my offices in Paris and Tokyo and this shabby character sitting here typing on this ancient machine might have become a multi-millionaire. Perhaps I would have been sitting in the sun by the pool at my villa overlooking the sea near Cape Town and about to don my suit by Armani, my shoes by some other Italian cobbler and my socks by Debenhams. Whereas, instead, I am sat here looking out at a rainy day in Gloucester wearing a twenty-year-old shirt, some Marks and Spencer’s slippers and trousers with the damp and dubious stains around my lap area. I really must dig out another pair.

  But I couldn’t take the business into the more exciting directions that I wanted simply because I was too distracted by ensuring Sarah and my family remained unaffected.

  Mostly I operated as Oliver Thomas but there were many circles within which I was also David Reynolds.

  I still felt sorry for the real David Reynolds but using his name whether for Donaldson assignments or my own did open other doors. After all, I still had the business to run. Both characters looked similar although Reynolds was much less acquainted with shaving cream and a razor and his hair was parted on a different side.

  But it was still risky for the circles sometimes overlapped and the problem was bumping into people who knew me by the other name. Horn-rimmed spectacles with plain glass in them were what I wore as Reynolds but Oliver Thomas tried hard to appear better groomed and clean-shaven.

  Farouk knew me only as a businessman called Oliver Thomas who ran an import-export business from south London.

  Farouk believed I was just rather well connected with people whose identity he had no reason to ask about but whose status might be useful to him if he continued to befriend me and complete the odd deal through me.

  Farouk knew I was a frequent visitor to the Middle East but he saw no reason to ask too many questions. This suited both of us and was the way it had always been. If Farouk had been with me and someone else had referred to me as Mr Reynolds, a wink and a nod might well have been enough to satisfy Farouk. In fact it might well have served to increase the trust, such was the nature of our relationship.

  So it was Farouk’s constant reminding of a desire to scratch my back sometime that provided a possible solution to my problem with Donaldson.

  So, when Beaty took Farouk’s phone call and said, “He says it’s not business, Mr Thomas. It’s private,” it was timely as the Nigerian case and the Mercedes cars had just passed and was still very fresh.

  Farouk had arrived as a foot passenger on a morning crossing from Calais. It was odd for a man just wanting to chat about old times and I suggested he hire a car and drive up to Croydon. But Farouk did not like driving on the left so I took my own car and met him at the Red Lion pub outside Dover. It was a cold, wet day, a far cry from the open-air restaurant in Baalbeck where we had last met.

  It was also a very difficult period in the Middle East, the era of Black September and Wadi Hadad’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and another Leila called Leila Khaled. Bombings and hijacking were almost common place, but it had never stopped me visiting countries like Lebanon.

  I thought about all of this as I drove down to Dover. I also thought about Donaldson as I knew from meetings in the Feathers that he was well versed on the politics and clearly maintained a few old contacts of his own there whom I knew. As a result, I also knew he was not liked. He was regarded, even then, as untypical of an ex British Army Major working for the British Government and seemed to have formed a reputation amongst the few who knew him as a bit of a wide boy.

  Apparently, he gave the impression of always being on the lookout for business opportunities, which ran counter to what others saw as his official reason for being there. But it all fitted perfectly with my own opinions.

  Farouk would have summed up Donaldson fairly quickly if he had known him but Farouk’s weakness was in being impressed by a proper English businessman with skills of persuasion honed over many years and who was also a source of new English words and amusing expressions. Farouk liked well spoken English.

  So, Farouk and I met for the first and only time in the Red Lion.

  We ate steak and kidney pie which was a disgrace to the human palate and an utter embarrassment to me who was used to being entertained at great expense at Paris’s best Lebanese restaurants.

  Farouk then gave me a small order but I think he was, by taking a ferry to Dover to see me, trying to show that he was saving me the bother of going to Paris. Farouk, you see, was already feeling that he owed me something.

  A few weeks later, however, we met again, this time by accident.

  I had taken a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight to Amman with an idea to meet another of my agents and then move on to Damascus.

  I didn’t tell Donaldson where I was going but he seemed to know already.

  Donaldson was on my mind for all the usual reasons of threats and insults, but he had recently told me I was being tailed. Putting someone on my tail in Amman would have been very simple for Donaldson and it had probably been going on since well before Reynolds was killed.

  “Go careful, Ollie. Big Brother’s watching. And don’t be away too long. We’ve got another job coming up in Nigeria again shortly.”

  I tried to ignore him as I was there solely for my own business.

  I checked in at the tiny Al Shams Hotel behind the mosque off Sharia Zarqa, dumped my small case of white shirts that Sarah had ironed just a few days before on my bed and decided to take a short walk, because the cooler evening air would be a pleasant way to waste half an hour and to think before I turned in.

  I took a mazy route through the busy souk just in case I was being followed and then walked along the pavement surrounded by the smell of charcoal fires, spicy chicken, lamb kebabs and night flowering jasmine that hung over the iron railings and the stone walls. I then crossed the wider road near the mosque.

  A dim street light cast a dark shadow beneath the canvas canopy of the grocery shop with its open sacks of dried fruit, rice, herbs and spices and rows of bottles and tins. Black dressed women with round, brown faces, looked at me without turning their heads as they wended their way home from their evening shopping. A fully lit coffee shop was still busy.

  And then I saw a familiar face amongst its customers.

  Farouk was seated amongst some tables set well back from the pavement outside the entrance. He was with a group of much younger men, some of whom were relaxing by pretending to be much older men – sharing pipes, tilting backwards on the back legs of chairs or sitting cross-legged on a red carpet behind. I automatically switched direction in order to give myself time to think because, as usual with Jordan, I had entered as David Reynolds.

  But Farouk only knew Oliver Thomas.

  It was far too early to return to the hotel so I put my glasses in my jacket pocket, pushed a hand through my hair to change the styling and tried, in an instant, to become Oliver Thomas.

  But the time had been right, the atmosphere conducive, the young men were relaxed and probably a little high on whatever it was they were drinking and smoking and I had, in part, come to see Farouk anyway.

  So, I turned back, wandered into the café through the clutter of tables and greeted Farouk in Arabic.

  “Farouk! Salaam Alekum!”

  Farouk stood up, perhaps unsteadily.

  He grabbed my right hand and then my wrist and held it for a long time, shaking my hand and, in the way he had greeted me when we met at the Red Lion in Dover, planted brotherly kisses on both my cheeks. I
was then dragged towards the main table and invited to meet Amin, Farid, Fouad, Talal, Bashir and several others and was given coffee and invited to smoke and was soon immersed in their excited conversations.

  Time stood still.

  “Why George Best so crazy? He is so brilliant at football. Why they send him off? You see Beatles? Why they play with crazy Indian man, that Ravi Shankar? They run out of ideas already?

  Hey, what about all that oil in the sea? How can they dig in the sea? You go to America, Mr Thomas? You see moon landing on TV? We watch here. Very good. We have no scientist like that in Amman. Maybe we go in fifty years. I want to be first Jordanian to go on moon. No, me. I have better map of solar system. Ha ha.

  Have you read any Solzhenitsyn books, Mr Thomas?”

  Oh yes, this was one of the most enjoyable nights I’ve ever spent.

  After football, George Best, Rolls Royce and North Sea oil and after more smoking and drinking the talk degenerated into more laughter and jokes about girls said to be wearing short skirts on the streets of London. And then they laughed again as they discussed their doubts about whether such wonderful sights would ever be witnessed in Amman. They were young, intelligent, fresh and well educated.

  We then talked about Ireland and the IRA and bombs and terrorism, of Catholics versus Christians and of Jews versus Moslems, as though they were still talking about football.

  Then we talked about Christians versus Moslems and Moslems versus Moslems. And because, by then, they were all drinking something transparent that looked like but wasn’t water and breaking up huge blocks of ice with the sharp end of a small, ornate dagger that Amin had pulled from his belt, I soon found out that they were all Christians.

  And suddenly I noticed the chattering had gone quieter.

  We then leaned forward to the centre of the table where Amin had stabbed his dagger. The conversation became softer and more intense and some of it had been very difficult for me to follow as they were speaking in fast Arabic mixed with English and a little French. Two of Farouk’s friends, it turned out, were Lebanese.

  But during the joking and laughter, Farouk told them that his friend, Mr Ollie, was a good man who had helped him out whenever possible and that Mr Ollie had very good connections. And so, as the conversation became quieter, passionate and more intense, their eyes brightened further and they all started to look around to see who was passing on the pavement and on the road.

  Fouad and Bashir, particularly, were getting agitated.

  This was not just the drink, although that was helping, for I could see something else in their shiny black eyes. They were fired with a passion inflamed by resentment and a determination for some form of justice.

  Later, much later, we parted and I went back to my hotel with far more on my mind than I had started out with.

  But then, in the spring-like warmth of the following afternoon, on the road out towards Jerusalem, I sat with Farouk again and built on the achievements of the previous night. The restaurant we stopped at was beneath some delightful tall palms but it was also next to a small herd of camels that urinated in gallons and dribbled and spat green froth.

  I started by giving Farouk just a few snippets of information that I’d picked up over the years from recent visits to Beirut, Damascus, Amman and Tripoli. It wasn’t much but enough to prove to him that there was more to my work than just running a small trading company. I showed my knowledge of Middle East politics and then dropped names of people whom anyone who regularly read Middle East newspapers would have heard of as string-pullers on opposing sides.

  I mentioned casual meetings in hotels where I often picked up snippets of intelligence and I used the word “intelligence” deliberately and frequently.

  I showed him how good I was at dangling a carrot or two before the faces of hungry individuals who would then look upon me as a good source of more carrots.

  And I did this because I knew Farouk, himself, had been one of these individuals.

  “Ha ha. I like your English words, Ollie. I now see the man sitting on the donkey holding a stick with a carrot is you. I think maybe I am the donkey.”

  “Oh, no Farouk, you’re not a donkey. And I do not ride on your back. It is me who has become a stupid ass.”

  We were sipping ice cold arak and dipping pieces of flat bread into plates of humus.

  Farouk looked at me, puzzled.

  “You? A stupid ass, Ollie? No, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, yes my friend. I have decided I am a very stupid one and a very naïve one.”

  “No, I can’t believe. Why so?” Farouk asked and I could see he thought it was the start of yet another English joke.

  He was holding a small pile of oily, green olives in one hand, a glass of arak in the other and his mouth was stuffed with bread and humus.

  “Because I started out in life by believing that all people were innocent, you see,” I replied. “Even when I was nine years old my mother warned me about it. But I took not enough notice. As a young man, I would go along with the wishes of others in the firm belief that they must know far more than me just because they were older or held a higher rank. But later, too late, I discover that they are not so innocent but guilty of serious crimes. But they continue to use me to do all their dirty work.”

  Farouk stopped his chewing, his eyes wide and curious.

  “Yes, I am the stupid ass, Farouk. Others have been riding on my back for too long. And the one who holds the whip and smacks my legs to keep me walking is becoming very heavy.

  You see, Farouk, the more you feed people, the greedier, fatter and heavier they become. And, what’s more, this stupid ass is becoming older and weaker and his back is now bending. But this stupid ass still stumbles on thinking he can see a big sack of carrots ahead that will feed him forever. But each time it is

  like a mirage in the desert sand.”

  I stopped and looked at the camels but I knew Farouk was looking at me.

  I heard Farouk blow air through his mouth.

  “So, does your wife, Sarah, know, Ollie?” Farouk had cleverly hit my sensitive spot and he continued.

  “If it’s serious and what you say is true then you must share it with your wife.”

  “I cannot tell her, Farouk,” I said, “because I feel it may hurt her too much. I can only tell my friend.”

  “So, do you want to tell me, Ollie?”

  I was still staring at the camels but suddenly felt vulnerable.

  It briefly crossed my mind that I had just behaved like some sort of smooth salesman, pouring out a syrupy story aimed at attracting sympathy and an order to meet my sales target. But I hadn’t started out with that plan. What I had just told Farouk was honest, truthful and from my heart. It was like a load had been lifted from my chest. For the first time, I had shared something of my inner self with another man.

  But I had said nothing specific.

  No names had been mentioned although Donaldson was clearly the villain in my own mind. And I had said nothing about what I did for the bastard.

  “It is far too complicated,” I said.

  And with that, it was as though I had just wasted one huge opportunity. But then, perhaps fortunately, I remembered another English saying that Farouk might like.

  “But,” I said, “as we say in England, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Let me give you some small examples.”

  And with that I took up where I had left off and went off at a tangent.

  I dropped in words like “official secrets”, “information gathering” and “military intelligence”.

  Farouk just listened.

  “So,” I concluded, “it’s not just Thomas Import Export. Too much of my time is spent on all these other jobs and too much time is spent away from my wife and family. Too much of my energy is spent on doing the dirty work of others and too little time on my business.”

  And as we got stuck into the main course of our lunch, I went even further and fed Farouk a banquet of insi
ghts into political and military intelligence.

  I didn’t say I was a spy because I hated the word and I was, after all, only self-trained in that job. But then I added spice to his meal by sprinkling it with other English words like “fraud” and “money laundering” and dropped some names into the conversation just as Farouk himself dropped lumps of ice into the silver bucket that contained our bottle of arak.

  And, when we were sitting back in our chairs at the time when, in England, we might have been ordering brandy, I felt it was time to go even further.

  I felt no guilt and no fear. Perhaps I had been emboldened by the arak but I was at a stage of going for everything or nothing.

  And to support what I said and because if nothing is ventured then nothing is gained, I offered examples of gross hypocrisy, of levels of distrust and of how people hid their real agendas. Possibly I embellished bits by slight exaggeration but it was only to ensure I’d made my point.

  “You have it here, Farouk,” I said. “It’s widespread. Corruption and greed is universal. But do you have clever people who are so well connected that they can divert charity money donated by innocent, well-meaning ordinary people for the poor of Africa into the pockets of the already rich and take a lump for themselves while they’re at it?

  “Would you expect senior Government officials to get rich by diverting arms shipments to terrorist groups who then blow up the very people that the Government is there to protect?

  “Can you imagine these same Government officials using blackmail to protect themselves?

  “And do you think a democratically elected British Government would really sanction the killing of one of its own foreign diplomats just because he didn’t turn out to be as good at the job as they hoped if there wasn’t money in it somewhere?”

  Farouk listened intently, his head nodding or shaking at the appropriate times.

  All the while I could see I was well on the way to convincing him that there might be a way, at last, for him to scratch my back.

  But I still wasn’t finished because I then related a story of corruption, greed and double standards actually within British Intelligence itself and dangled unanswered questions that I knew would hang in Farouk’s nostrils like the pungent smell from the camel piss next to us.

  “Why, for example, do you think the British Government’s stance on the Middle East sometimes appears ambiguous, Farouk? Is it because they are fed lop-sided stories? Who might be giving intelligence to the wrong side? Who’s telling fairy stories? Do we have a traitor in our midst? A man who’s moved from one side to the other to feed his appetite for personal wealth? Could there be someone working to counter the good works of others just to line his own pocket?”

  And as I finished my story, Farouk’s black eyes were as ablaze as the students from the night before. A spark had ignited inside him.

  He became furious as though he owed it to his British friend Ollie to do something. So furious had Farouk become, in fact, that jokes about scratching backs were temporarily forgotten. But as Farouk’s eyes opened even wider, he finally asked me the question I’d been waiting for.

  “So, who is it, Ollie? Who is the fat man riding on the back of the donkey?”

  And I was finally able to name one Major Alex Donaldson and, knowing Farouk’s love of English expressions I added:

  “So, that’s him, Farouk. Major Alex Donaldson. Now there’s a subject for a bit of target practice. When you’re ready just give me a nod and a wink and I’ll tell you where to find him. No skin off my nose, as we say in England.”

  Farouk was driving us back towards Amman and, although his driving was showing the effects of the arak I knew I hadn’t lost a friend when he said: “I think the time has come, Ollie, for me to scratch your back.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve had a really bad itch right in the middle of my back now for thirty years and I just can’t find a way to reach it with my own hand. And I’m now getting too old to be a donkey.”

  Farouk laughed and swung the steering wheel just in time to avoid another man on another donkey. We left behind us a cloud of dust.

  “OK, Ollie, I have some very good back scratchers with long arms.”

  Set Up

  It was only a week after my meeting with Farouk and I was in the Feathers again.

  It hadn’t been my suggestion to meet but Beaty had left me a message that I picked up after five one evening.

  “Mr Thomas. Can you please meet Major Donaldson this evening at seven at the usual place? Beatrice.”

  The usual sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach appeared but this time it was accompanied by another. Since the Nigerian scandal and my meeting with Farouk any thoughts about Donaldson brought out a different feeling. Yes, it was anger, but it was an anger tinged with a confidence that came with believing I was becoming more in control.

  It was seven thirty though by the time I made it back to London and walked into the thick blue haze in the Feathers. Betty the barmaid had, by then, long moved on somewhere to be replaced by two new barmaids, Polly and Nancy.

  I must have been abroad when Betty left but, in a moment of sarcasm induced by another of Donaldson’s threatening comments about my family, I had said something about Betty going.

  “Got tired of the local lecher, did she?”

  Jack had looked the other way. Donaldson stared me straight in the eye.

  “You’re so unbelievably, bloody naïve, Ollie. Why don’t you just fuck off abroad again?”

  The barmaids may have changed now but the usual two stools were already occupied by Donaldson and Jack and Jack was, as usual, sticking a little wooden stick into a fresh bowl of shrimps when I strolled in this time.

  I squeezed myself between Jack and the back of another man leaning on the bar. Donaldson, on the other side of Jack, knew I was there but was deliberately looking away from me as he always did. The arrogance was something I was well used to.

  “Ah,” said Jack, trying to be polite. “Sorry about this but something urgent cropped up apparently. D knows. Pint?”

  “Half,” I said, “I don’t want to be late.”

  It was Polly who pulled me a half pint of Bass.

  “Shrimp?” asked Jack.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “Well? What is it?”

  Jack nodded at Donaldson who was still looking to the other corner of the bar where a game of darts was in progress.

  “Yes, I saw him,” I said. “Has he got a tongue?”

  Jack dug his stick into another shrimp. I took a mouthful of my beer. Then I took another mouthful. Then I leaned on the bar, took a spare stick and prodded a shrimp. I examined it. I licked it. I smelled it. Then I put it back in its dish.

  “You can’t do that,” said Jack.

  “Do what?” I said.

  “Lick it and put it back.”

  “The vinegar will kill any germs,” I said and took another, longer drink from my glass. It was already almost empty. Then I stared into space.

  My anger was at tipping point but I had had an idea earlier on the train up from Croydon.

  “Right, I’m off,” I said as loud as I could. “Thanks for inviting me. But I’ve got a business to run.”

  Polly looked at me. The stranger on my right picked up his glass and moved away.

  I put my half pint glass down ready to go.

  It had happened before and was guaranteed to start Donaldson off on the wrong foot and I knew it. Sometimes it meant I started with a slight advantage and was able to keep it going a bit longer than normally. Inevitably, though, I eventually lost.

  “Cheerio, Jack,” I said and turned.

  Donaldson moved. As I turned he was right behind me.

  “Business first, Ollie,” he hissed as though for the ears of the stranger on my right who was still moving away. Then he blocked my way and waited.

  “Corner,” he said and nodded towards a small, spare table and three chairs in the opposite corner to the darts board.

  “Mm,
business,” I winked at Jack. ”It must be urgent. Are you joining us or do you want to finish your shrimps?”

  “Yes,” Jack said, nervously.

  “Yes you’re joining us or yes you’re staying here to finish your supper?”

  “Yes,” said Jack and followed me as I made my way to the corner.

  It soon became clear that Donaldson had a job for me that meant me flying to Athens and then to Cairo. It was nothing new and I had done similar jobs before.

  “Pick up from Dimitri at the usual place and time. Transfer to Tahir, who is coming up from Khartoum.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “It needs to be there by Saturday, next week.”

  “Then use a carrier pigeon.”

  “That’s you, you fucking asshole.”

  By these later years, Donaldson’s language had gradually changed.

  He seemed far less comfortable using expressions like old man and dear fellow. In fact, his language was now very coarse and sounded more like those characters from Northern Ireland that I had met in Malta some years before. So maybe it was the company he was keeping. He went on.

  “And before you ask what it is, it’s confidential. Don’t lose it. It’s sealed and someone will be watching the transfer so no fucking messing about. Got it? If it doesn’t arrive in the state it started off, then all hell will break loose this end. Do you fucking understand?”

  “Naturally,” I shrugged.

  I’d been here before and it was pointless arguing.

  Nowadays such jobs might not need a courier and can be sent on the Internet.

  In those days, and it’s not so long ago, it was different. I could actually see the changes coming even then, but time was not on my side. I am, for what it is worth, a form of life that, along with other veterans, may well be nearing extinction.

  I got up to go.

  Jack pushed his chair back.

  Donaldson sat staring into his beer, clearly not a happy man for whatever reason. So, I decided to liven up his evening and sat down again.

  Jack hesitated, nervously scratching his cheek. I think he would have preferred it if I’d left.

  “By the way,” I said, “I was in Amman last week – as you probably know anyway because I twice saw someone watching me from the shadows. I think it was Kamal this time. He needs better training. That aside, I got wind of a demand for some nice fresh Dollar bills in exchange for suitcases full of unfashionable Dinars. All cash, of course. Sounds like trouble brewing again in Beirut and someone needs to top up on arms. Extremely attractive exchange rate terms being offered, I understand. It might be something the US or British authorities should take an interest in. It all sounds very dodgy to me. “

  I knew Donaldson would like the sound of this. It was his comfort zone.

  “If you want any more, call me,” I added and got up again. “How much?” growled Donaldson without looking up from his beer.

  “What do you mean how much?” I replied in pure innocence.

  “How many dollars?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I said, “I was only given the Dinar amount and that runs into several millions, but the exchange rate means it won’t be anything like the same number of dollars.

  But I understand they are willing to pay twenty percent more than you’d get in a bank.”

  I could see Donaldson doing mental arithmetic.

  Jack seemed to be counting something on the same fingers that were scratching his chin.

  “I can’t say more, here,” I said looking around. “But I have a name in Beirut.”

  “Who?” asked Donaldson looking up, clearly concerned I was about to leave and go back to Croydon.

  “Sorry. Need to know basis,” I said touching my nose and knowing that this would madden Donaldson beyond even his normal boundaries.

  He stared at me, his eyes furious. But I knew he wouldn’t explode in the pub. Explosions were reserved for the Regent Street office.

  “But I’m not going,” I said, “so don’t even ask me. This is one for someone who isn’t known so well in those parts. It needs someone fresh. Someone preferably willing to operate incognito but with some understanding of the way these things happen. I don’t want my cover blown. It wouldn’t do any of us any good if you understood.”

  I was now deliberately tempting Donaldson to fall into a trap but I still kept going.

  “And I wouldn’t want many other people knowing about it either,” I added, deliberately lowering my voice.

  Jack sat down.

  “We need more,” Donaldson said, “far more.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But don’t expect me to talk to anyone else. It’s far too dangerous for me and for the Department.”

  “I’ll deal with the bloody Department,” Donaldson said, and fell one step further into the trap. Then he added: “So who needs the fucking money?”

  “Look,” I said, trying hard to retain the initiative, “I’ve got to go. I need to pack. I’m so busy at present and I’m supposed to be in Paris tomorrow afternoon and you also seem to want me to go to Athens. There are only twenty-four hours in a day.

  So, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “Sit the fuck down,” hissed Donaldson. Jack jumped. “I’ll deal with the Department. We’ll find a way to deal with this.

  Who needs the money?”

  I pretended to be thinking whether I should reply.

  “Someone linked to Assad in Syria,” I said and got ready to stand up again.

  “So, it’s Moslem?” Donaldson asked.

  “Yes, of course. They think they’re losing.”

  “Would someone need to go out there?”

  I blew a jet of air through my mouth.

  “Go out there? Of course we’d need someone out there. Bloody desk bound bureaucrats aren’t any good. This needs a pro. Don’t you have anyone in place in Beirut who’s up to it?”

  I watched Donaldson doing more mental contortions. His face was turning puce which meant that either he was about to explode or that he was slightly drunk. I knew it was both.

  “No,” he said and he looked at Jack who was sat looking worried with a finger now stuck in his mouth. “Nobody. You’ll need to fucking go. You’ve got the local contacts. You could round up some third party to do some listening-in or something. No need to get directly involved.”

  “And still blow everything?” I said. “No, I’m just too well known.”

  “So, who the fuck is the guy on the ground that you’d use?”

  “Probably Talal Abdullah,” I said.

  “Who the fuck’s that?”

  “Talal Abdullah,” I said. “Talal at the AUB.”

  “AUB?”

  “American University of Beirut.”

  “Ah yes,” Donaldson said. “But how the fuck can the AUB help over these few million Dinars?”

  “Politics, man,” I said and I knew I was pushing my luck.

  “Talal will know. But it’s an ideal time to get in there during this lull. I’ve crept in and out during occasional lulls in the past and it’s usually OK if you keep your head down. I doubt it’ll last long though. No one thinks it’ll last. Now is as good a time as any.”

  Donaldson looked at Jack. Jack looked away.

  If Donaldson was even thinking of sending Jack it would have been an act of total irresponsibility. But clearly Jack saw the possibility and his face went a strange shape. But Donaldson was no fool in decisions like this.

  “Look, I’ve got to go,” I said once again and stood up. “If you decide what to do, call me after Friday when I’m back from Paris. Frankly, though, I couldn’t care less. And I really don’t think it’s anything to do with the British Government. It’s gross interference in another country’s affairs. I’m just passing on the news.”

  With that I left, leaving Donaldson and Jack still sat around the corner table.

  For once I had felt in control and Donaldson was clearly unsure what to do or say. But, this time I’d dangled my
own carrot and it was over Donaldson. The test was whether he’d reach out to take it.

  If he did, I decided it would prove my case against the man once more.

  And if he did, then I wasn’t responsible for the consequences.

  I wasn’t really planning to go to Paris.

  Farouk was the only person I ever traveled there to meet and Farouk, I knew, was still in Jordan. So, I spent the next two days in and around my office.

  On the second day, the phone rang.

  Beaty answered it and I knew from her expression it was Donaldson. I could hear his voice, even from where I was sitting. He clearly thought I was away and in Paris.

  “Ah, yes, good morning . . .” Beaty said politely. But she got no further.

  “Fucking Thomas back yet? You know where he is?” I heard his loud voice so clearly.

  “Ah, yes . . . ah, no. I mean yes, but he . . .”

  “Come on, you stupid bitch, when’s he back?”

  “Back? From where, Major? He’s not…..”

  “Look here, listen. When he gets back tell him to call me pronto, OK?”

  I heard the phone being slammed down. I was facing away from Beaty and my head was deliberately buried in a catalogue.

  Beaty was still trying to play a game and continued to hold the phone for a moment. Then she said, as if the person was still there, “Thank you for calling. Good bye.”

  Then I heard her start her typing again and I turned to face her. Her face was red and her neck was as pink as her twin set. She coughed.

  “Major Donaldson?” I asked.

  “Ah, yes, Mr Thomas. He’d like you to call him sometime,” she said and coughed again. Then, as I continued to watch her, she bent down to her handbag which she always kept at her feet, withdrew a white handkerchief with some pink embroidery on it and blew her nose.

  “Got a cold coming on, Beaty?”

  “Uh no Mr Thomas, it’s just a tickle.”

  “Donaldson’s a bastard,” I said.

  “Yes, Mr Thomas.”

  “Are you afraid of him, Beaty?”

  “A little, Mr Thomas.”

  “Why’s that, Beat?”

  “He’s . . . uh, not very polite and . . .” she spluttered and blew her nose again.

  “Bastards are usually very rude, Beaty. It’s the only thing they’re good at. What did he want?”

  “As I said, he would like you to phone him.”

  “All in good time, Beaty. Anything else?”

  “Uh, no Mr Thomas, thank you,” and she sniffed before starting her typing again.

  As I watched her, though, I started to recall some other things she had recently said to me. Beaty was hiding something.

  “I have been trying to bring myself to tell you something, Mr Thomas, but it’s all very difficult, you see.”

  Beaty often looked and sounded embarrassed but she had recently been showing signs of genuine concern about something. But I, because of my own desire not to bother her more than necessary, would tell her not to worry. I would dismiss her obvious concerns as though they had been nothing worth bothering about, as though it was just typical of her to fuss about nothing in particular.

  “Don’t worry, Beat. Nothing to worry yourself about. Don’t fret. Got to catch the train.”

  And I had gone out again without giving it a second thought.

  Then once, some months before, after I had just got back from somewhere when perhaps I was too tired. Maybe I had been a little harsh on her. But I could now remember what she said.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr Thomas. But it can be quite stressful here when you are abroad. We really need to talk sometime, Mr Thomas, privately.”

  I could now remember her eyes looking at me almost pleading with me to pry into her concerns. But again, I would lose the chance, believing she was feeling overworked.

  “Never mind, Beat. Don’t let the system get you down. Life’s for living, Beat. Take it easy.”

  But what was it that was making her so stressed?

  Now, as I watched Beaty sniffing and wiping her nose, her voice kept echoing back.

  “There was a phone call for you, Mr Thomas. Beirut again. You . . . you . . . you need to be so careful, Mr Thomas. It’s such a – such a dangerous place, these days.”

  And another time.

  “Does Mrs Thomas know about this, Mr Thomas?”

  Or had she said, “Mrs Thomas needs to know, Mr Thomas,”?

  Then I remembered something else, some weeks later.

  “Mrs Thomas must know, Mr Thomas…where you are . . .always . . . just in case. I can always inform her . . . if . . . if something goes wrong.”

  As I watched her now, sniffing and tapping away on her typewriter I suddenly felt sorry for her. Her eyes moved up from her typing and peered at me from behind her spectacles. They looked damp, worried, caring and perhaps guilty.

  Stupidly, I turned to study my catalogue again. I was eventually to deeply regret that lost opportunity.

  But I decided to phone Donaldson later that same day.

  Phoning Donaldson was a mysterious process in itself. The number I used was answered, if at all, by a man who always said he’d get a message to Donaldson. Usually Donaldson would phone the next day or even later.

  This time, he was on the phone in twenty minutes. Beaty took the call again.

  “It’s Major Donaldson for you, Mr Thomas.”

  The call took less than half a minute. It was a summons to attend the Regent Street office urgently and I arrived during the London rush hour. As usual, Jack was also there.

  “Beirut,” Donaldson said as an opener.

  “Yes?” I replied. “But I’m not going.”

  “Not asking you to, old man. Thought I’d do this myself.

  Got a gap in my diary and there’s a bit of a lull out there at present. Need to refresh myself, get my head around the current situation. We need someone with some proper understanding of the ways things work.”

  Donaldson was surprisingly polite. He went on: “Been doing some digging. This man Talal. Any good?”

  “Talal Abdullah? Yes. I’ve known him for several years,” I replied. “He’s an Iraqi doctor. Christian. Works for the Americans and French I think. Good starting point.”

  “Ah, just as I thought,”

  Donaldson had donned his old Army Major style. This usually only ever lasted a short while but it made a pleasant interlude. I jumped on the opportunity.

  “Talal’s the one who told me about the funds. He’d give the necessary lead and set a few things up. He’d probably use his networks to get something moving.”

  “His motivation?” Donaldson had now donned his Senior Intelligence Officer style.

  “He doesn’t want to see any more money being made available. He’d want to screw things up for the Palestinians.”

  “Exactly what I thought.”

  Donaldson paused. I waited. Jack shuffled by the door.

  “Who’s the guy you know on the other side – the Syrian side? The one you see with your other hat on?”

  “You mean Ashur Mohammed?”

  “That’s him. Do you have his contact details?”

  “Yes, but he moves around a lot so no guarantees. But Talal will help you,” I said.

  I could then have resorted to questions about the relevance to British interests of all this, but I was not in the mood to put Donaldson off or question his opinion.

  A few more brief questions and that was my day finished. I went home because Sarah said she’d do roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

  A few days later Donaldson got on a plane for Beirut for his first overseas jaunt in several years. Next morning, I phoned Farouk in Amman.

  Then everything went quiet for ten days until Farouk phoned me from Paris and invited me to fly over to see him.

  We met in the late afternoon in his smart new apartment off the Champs Elysees for a glass of French wine and we talked generalities – politics, the new agency he’d sig
ned with a Japanese pharmaceutical company, that sort of thing. Then he invited me out to eat.

  “We must celebrate, Oliver. You need to enjoy yourself more. Life is too short. Why did you not bring Sarah?”

  “She hates flying,” I said. “Anyway, where’s your wife, Farouk?”

  It was a poor attempt at diverting the subject from my private life and I knew Farouk’s wife was still in Amman.

  “She will join me in Paris soon. We need to make more money first. My two sons are growing up and we will bring them to Paris to go to the University.”

  “You’re doing well, Farouk, I can see,” I said, looking around his smart apartment and sipping my wine from one of his crystal glasses.

  “Yes, Oliver, but you are not. I can see it in your eyes. The donkey needs to shed its heavy load and find a fresh field of green grass. Why do you not move away from London? You can run your type of business from anywhere. You are a clever man, Ollie. You could be such a brilliant and successful businessman with all your connections. You are such a passionate man and the most skilful in your trade. You still have plenty of time. Your wife, Sarah – I think you cherish her beyond everything. I can see it in the way your eyes move when I mention her. You are like a teenage boy in love with a secret girlfriend. But things are still eating into your soul. You look like a tethered lamb trying to break free before he is sacrificed.”

  I was actually touched by Farouk’s words but also quite shocked.

  I know I’d said rather a lot when Farouk and I had met for lunch in Jordan but I had no idea that my appearance shed such a strong light on my worries.

  Had my problems become so physically obvious?

  I was standing by the large plate glass window facing the street and I turned to look outside. It was getting dark and lamps were shining onto the wet street below.

  Perhaps I was hoping to study my own reflection but it was Farouk I saw approaching me from behind. He tapped me on the arm.

  “Maybe we have just cut the lamb free, Oliver. Can we hope so?”

  I didn’t know what to say but Farouk smiled. “Come,” he said, “let’s go and eat.”

  We walked without talking whilst sharing a large black umbrella to protect us from a thick drizzle to a packed Lebanese restaurant called Noura.

  I knew that Farouk was well known but I was surprised at the number of his friends I met that night. We ate mezza and drank arak and, around ten o’clock, all the tables were cleared and a space made for a small group of musicians and an Egyptian belly dancer.

  Up to this point Farouk and I had said nothing about Donaldson.

  But then, as the music and singing grew louder and the temperature inside the restaurant grew hotter, Farouk leaned over towards me and beckoned me to come closer. Then he whispered in my ear.

  “Have you heard the news about your friend, Ollie?”

  I tried to appear unsure who he was referring to. “I have many friends, Farouk. Which one?”

  “Your friend, the British Major.”

  “He’s not a friend, Farouk. But what news?”

  “He is no more,” Farouk said. “I think you have an English expression. Pushing up the daisies, yes?”

  “Yes,” I confirmed.

  “Well Major Donaldson is doing just that. It seems he got caught in some crossfire on the road to the airport. It was very unfortunate.”

  “Mmm,” I said, “You mean he’s dead?”

  “Yes, someone scraped him off the ground and he was later pronounced dead at the hospital.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Two days ago,” whispered Farouk as the music suddenly got louder, the clapping started again and the dancer swirled around and thrust her hips in our direction.

  “The lamb has been freed, Oliver,” Farouk said.

  Then we both joined in the clapping.

  A Mistake

  I only felt a little guilty for the cock and bull story I had invented to tempt Donaldson to go to Beirut but it did not last for long.

  It was some two weeks after I met Farouk in Paris that the Daily Telegraph had a small paragraph on an inside page that was headlined ‘British Army Major Shot.’ I bought a copy of The Times to double check and found an almost identical paragraph as though based on the same official press release. ‘The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that Christian militia were behind the shooting of a British Army officer in Beirut. The officer, thought to be Major Alexander Donaldson is believed to have been working for British Intelligence. The Ministry was unwilling to comment further until more information became available.’ That was it.

  After that, nothing more ever appeared in any newspaper or on any item of radio news as far as I know. It was as though the extra information was never made available. Perhaps none had been sought.

  I gave it a few days and thought I had better telephone Jack as a sign of my deep sorrow on the news. But Jack sounded unaffected as well.

  In fact he sounded positively, and unusually, breezy.

  “I can’t comment, Ollie. Bit of a shock, I know. But, as you well know, Mum’s the word. It’s a dangerous sport, but there it is. Had a good innings and then got bowled out.”

  And that was about it.

  Jack did not appear to be going through a long period of deep mourning as though he, too, may have been grateful to whatever had happened.

  So that was that.

  I had a quiet smile to myself, shrugged and carried on.

  And because I now had a bit more time unhindered by assignments and threats from Donaldson, I started to look for some fresh business.

  This was exactly what I had wanted to do for twenty years but for Donaldson sitting on my shoulder issuing his threats. I felt free.

  Sarah noticed a difference in me but, of course, I never told her why.

  We were sat together eating a Sunday roast lamb and mint sauce lunch on what I recall was a bright spring day. At least it seemed bright for Croydon. But perhaps that was because Sarah had placed a bunch of yellow daffodils in a vase on the table.

  She was smiling.

  “It’s so nice to have you home at dinner time, dear. And you’re looking so much better recently. You don’t have that troubled look on your face.”

  I saw an opportunity.

  “So, how about us moving abroad,” I ventured. “I could run the business from anywhere – South Africa, Malta, the Far East, Australia? It could be quite a shrewd move in the present economic climate.”

  “Oh, no dear, let’s not rush into things. Let’s see how things go for a while. You never know.”

  “You never know what?” I pursued.

  I watched Sarah concentrating on slicing through a piece of meat on her plate. I also noticed the usual look of uncertainty in her eyes. Her smile had also gone and I thought perhaps I had gone at it like a bull in a china shop instead of tiptoeing around it.

  With hindsight, I now know it was something else.

  “Let’s just wait a while, dear. We don’t want to jump from the frying pan into the fire,” she said.

  “What frying pan? What fire?”

  “Oh, you know dear, we need to be really sure that things are safe and right. We mustn’t be too rash.”

  “It’s not rash, my love,” I said. “It’s a very good time to go.

  We’re not too old and not too young. Robert and Elizabeth have gone their own ways. It would be a fresh start. You’d like it in South Africa. Why not come with me and see what it’s like?”

  “Well, let’s just wait and see, dear. I hate the thought of flying. Just you enjoy your lunch for now. The vegetables are so fresh and I always like a leg of lamb in springtime.”

  That was it. Decision delayed once more.

  But, whatever we were to do in future, I still needed to make some bigger money. What I needed was one or two big, profitable orders. But I was, by then, in my very late fifties and other things had already moved on. Many of my older contacts were as old as me and already retired or
had sold their businesses to other, bigger companies with whom I had no useful relationship. I could see that Beaty was too often sat there without enough to do and what little regular business we did was only enough to pay increasingly high overheads and an inadequate salary for myself.

  So, with my business looking very jaded after too many years with too many distractions but with Donaldson gone, I started an urgent search for more sales.

  But I was interrupted once again.

  And, as ever, it started with the telephone ringing.

  “Call for you, Mr Thomas. It’s a Mr Creighton.”

  I had no idea who it was.

  “Mr Thomas? Oliver Thomas?”

  “Yes, that’s me,” I said.

  “Bill Creighton, Ministry. Don’t think we’ve had the pleasure before.”

  “Oh!” I said, whilst still reading something or other on my desk.

  “Like to pop in, Mr Thomas? Catch up? Talk? Quick cup of tea?”

  “What about?” I asked.

  “Catch up. Cup of tea.”

  “Where?”

  “Usual office. You know. Thursday afternoon? Three pm?”

  “Which usual office is that?” I asked.

  “HQ, of course.”

  “You mean the Ministry?” I was shocked. Normally my only direct contact with a Government Department was the tax office and I phoned them.

  “Of course. When shall we say?”

  There wasn’t any more I could extract but two days later I went up.

  I arrived on time and was directed by the reception desk to the same numbered room on the fourth floor that Donaldson had used on the two or three occasions I had been there. But I barely remembered the place. I waited in a corridor to be seen.

  Eventually when I was called in it seemed there had been a reshuffling of staff, as Donaldson might have called it. The man called Bill Creighton was sat in what I just remembered as Donaldson’s office and in what looked like his old chair. Creighton may have also re-shuffled the furniture slightly but he still exhibited one of the apparent qualifications for the job. Like Donaldson, he stood with his back to the window, a black silhouette just slightly shorter than his predecessor, with a perfect egg shape outlining his bald, head.

  When his hands were not in his pockets he used them to twist the ends of a pointed moustache that extended beyond his cheeks into the silhouette. His shadow looked, to anyone with any imagination, like the head of a black cat.

  I have never understood what they all did in that concrete office block. This particular room was along a long corridor and the whole edifice seemed occupied by men in dark suits with middle aged secretaries fussing around, coming and going through stained, wooden doors, along dark corridors carrying pieces of paper, grey folders and cups of tea. It was deadly quiet except for the clatter of typewriters behind closed doors and the hum of photocopiers in recesses in the corridors.

  Telephones never seemed to ring either but quiet meetings, perhaps held in whispers, went on behind those same closed doors. The meetings were followed by quiet exits, more shuffling down corridors and all accompanied by the rattling of now empty teacups in saucers.

  I was forced to wait nearly an hour on a chair by a photocopier before Creighton eventually called me in. I felt like a schoolboy reporting to the headmaster.

  Creighton spoke in short bursts of incomplete sentences. “Now then, Oliver – may I call you Oliver – sorry for the wait and all that. Ha! Sorry we’ve not had the chance to meet before – get to know one another. Things changing around here – change of government and all that – different politicians, different ideas and all that – cuts and axes – you name it. You’ve heard about it, I‘m sure – read the news and all that. Essential changes of staff ensue. Ha! Restructuring, reorganising – you know the deal – been around a bit by all accounts – I’ve seen your file.”

  There was a slim, buff folder on the desk before him which looked as though it contained about three sheets of A4.

  “Is that it, there?” I interrupted.

  “That’s it. Nothing much in it to worry about. But it’s budgets and all that now. D’s not around the place either, any more – poor bloody blighter – never mind – got to get on with it. All getting on a bit anyway – probably my last stand as well, ha!”

  Creighton stopped twisting his moustache, went to the desk, flipped open the almost empty file and closed it again. Then he sat down.

  “Cup of tea?”

  “No thanks,” I said, “I’m too busy.”

  “Of course. Sorry for the wait.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but you already apologised for that.”

  “So I did.”

  “I’ve only been here once or twice before,” I said.

  “Yes, the file’s not big,” he replied, flipping it open.

  “But I did a hell of a lot more than will fit in that,” I said pointing at the folder. “But then I used to meet Donaldson at the Regent Street office, not here,” I added.

  “Regent Street office you say?”

  “Yes, the one near Hamley’s.”

  “Near Hamley’s you say? What office is that?”

  “Donaldson’s other office,” I said, “The main office. But there was also his other office in Edinburgh.”

  “Edinburgh, you say?”

  “Yes, the one in Morningside.”

  “Morningside?” There was a pause. “Mmm,” Creighton said, scratching his bald head.

  I knew then he had no idea about Donaldson’s other offices. Case proven yet again, I thought. The bloody Ministry knew nothing and I hardly registered on their books. For a chap who thought he had worked his socks off for the Queen and country for twenty-five years almost non-stop, I was as about as important to them as the two-millimetre thickness of my personnel file.

  I sat back and stared at Creighton. I wanted to wring his neck.

  “Mm,” he said once again, “Ah well. Anyway, here’s the gist. You know the score – signed the forms to keep mum and all that. Got to get on with life or what’s left – Ha! Retire, old chap. Buy that country cottage at last. You’ve done your bit – getting too complicated now. You know the way it is – IRA – Middle East – clearing up Callaghan’s bloody mess – Jimmy Carter – general state of the economy and all that. Ha! Still got your own business by all accounts – going well is it? Good. Got a pension? Good.”

  It seemed clear to me after only three minutes that this office was specifically designated for use by self-important, jumped up bureaucrats to spout shit.

  Creighton never stopped to wait for answers to his string of questions but that is about all I can remember of the short time I sat there.

  There were no thanks, no gold watch and no speeches over drinks with old friends and work colleagues. I had been dismissed and told to retire.

  I walked out in a daze.

  I assumed it was partly the upshot of Donaldson’s visit to Beirut and so I had sensed that changes were likely, but at fifty-nine or whatever I was, I still felt young.

  Or at least I felt young until I caught sight of myself in a shop window.

  It was then that my predicament suddenly came home to me. The reflection in the window was a shock.

  An old man, resembling myself but looking older, more worried, and more depressed than I had imagined, stared back at me. That pathetic image with its hands in its pockets was the force that made up my mind about the business.

  Thirty years in business and I still had nothing like enough in the bank and, whilst the problem of Donaldson was now gone, tensions were now starting at home because Sarah wanted to move to Gloucester to be closer to Robert who had moved there with his job.

  My plans, of course, were to move much further away than Gloucester but I was on very weak ground without the money.

  I needed a rapid solution.

  Then: But excuse me while I draw the curtains and have a quick drink before continuing because what is coming next might well bring on nightmare
s and a serious bout of Thomas’s Disease.

  I’ve just had a couple of drinks and taken a deep breath so here goes:

  My money problem looked likely to be solved unusually speedily after a strange encounter in Trafalgar Square. I was taking a short cut and dodging pigeons when someone came from behind and tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Mr Thomas ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Good lord! Good morning! What brings you here? Ron, isn’t it? We met recently in the office down there, when I was left sitting around for an hour.”

  “That’s it, Mr Thomas.”

  “And while we waited, we shared a cup of coffee from that infernal machine that, when kicked, churned out tepid brown water.”

  “That’s me, Mr Thomas. Fucking awful place ain’t it, mate.”

  “Not as exciting as some places I’ve been, I have to agree,” I said.

  “Time on me ’ands now, Mr Thomas. Got the push. Like you ’ave I ’eard. Not that I ever knew what you did, like. But times are changing ain’t it?”

  Looking back I now know that taking a tip from such a source had been a mistake. But Ron, who now held a position of authority seemingly little better than the one I was about to move to – he had just started work in the rates office at Wandsworth Council – had been happy with the twenty pound note I gave him for his services. The man had engaged me in a long, meandering conversation whilst scattering small pieces of sliced, white bread from a plastic bag.

  Pigeons were everywhere.

  “Still running your own show, Mr Thomas?”

  Wings, feathers and bird shit flapped around our heads.

  “Young Forsyth’s going out your way, Mr Thomas.”

  “Forsyth? Who’s Forsyth?” I asked for clarification.

  “Yeh – you know, mate – military bloke – the Embassy in Lisbon. You know him. Sure, you do, mate. Going to the Gold Coast or Ghana or whatever they bleedin’ call it these days. It’s to do with supplies for the army or something. Big stuff I understand although its only rumour like. But surprised you didn’t know, Mr Thomas. In fact, your name cropped up. I thought they were gonna call you. Your sort of business ain’t it?”

  Apparently, Forsyth had only recently arrived in Accra from Lisbon or so Ron led me to believe although the name was completely new to me.

  If he had been from Cyprus or the Lebanon I might well have known him but Portugal had been slightly off my patch and so it was no surprise that our paths had never crossed. So, Brigadier Royston Forsyth was a bit of an unknown quantity and as Ron clearly had no precise idea what was required in Ghana I tossed ideas around in my head for a whole week wondering what, if anything, to do.

  But, for the first time for many years, and having been officially retired from whatever unofficial position I had held for thirty years I suddenly felt a free man able to move around unhindered and able to concentrate on making a decent pot of money without other distractions. So, I plumped on making a move to find out what was going on and, with my imagination running at an unnaturally riotous pace, also started thinking about my, and Sarah’s, retirement.

  I dreamed for a day or so about sunny skies and a big, modern bungalow on a breezy slope facing the sea near Cape Town, spending happy hours gardening with Sarah, visiting the vineyards at Stellenbosch and inviting Robert and Anne to fly out to join us from time to time. I felt like a different man, one whose domestic considerations were at the centre of all things. But what I needed to bring all these imaginary visions to fruition was a decent pot of money.

  So I took the bull by the horns and contacted Forsyth by telephone on the London number that Ron had given me. I gave him a brief summary and dropped a few hints that I was a man with some experience in the sort of business that he was probably interested in, that I would be visiting Accra shortly and would appreciate an opportunity to meet.

  “Yes,” I said, “we’ve done a fair bit with West Africa. It’s mostly been Nigeria up to now but we’ve had plenty of experience around North Africa and the Middle East and we’ve been operating for some twenty-five years. We’re well established.”

  I often used the word “we” when necessary as there are always customers who feel more comfortable dealing with a big organization than a one-man band.

  Forsyth, it appeared, was in London for a briefing session but was moving to Ghana within days. He agreed to meet in a week’s time in Accra and as it all sounded very positive, I tried telephoning my Ghana agent, George Owusu to tell him I was on my way out and I might need his help.

  Unfortunately, all local phone lines were down and normal communication was impossible and so, not wanting to waste time, I decided to fly out unannounced, hoping George would be there when I arrived. Unfortunately, George wasn’t.

  If you’ve ever popped out to visit someone expecting to find them in and then found them out, it’s frustrating. But if you’ve flown all the way to Africa, believe me the frustration is far worse.

  When I arrived at George’s office his secretary, Mary, was lying across her empty desk in front of the Mitsubishi fan by her typewriter cracking chicken bones with her teeth and spitting the fragments into her waste paper basket.

  Mary broke the news of George’s long term absence immediately on my arrival. Then she continued her crunching and spitting. I have never forgotten the accuracy of Mary’s spitting.

  Even sitting, as I do so often, in Gloucester with my glass of whisky against my lips, I can still hear the bone fragments bouncing into the centre of the metal bin and Mary’s husky, Ghanaian accent.

  “Sorry, Mr Thomas, sah. Mr Owusu is gone to Kumasi. Maybe he’ll be back soon – ssssssspit.”

  Mary was vague but as accurate as she was ever likely to be. I knew she really had no idea of where he had gone, whom he was seeing or how long he was likely to be. That had been the first setback because without George it was going to be difficult to find anyone I could trust to do what I wanted. But time was short.

  I decided to call Brigadier Forsyth on the number he had given me and so returned to my hotel to test the local telephone network. Surprisingly, this time it worked and Forsyth agreed to meet the next day at a local hotel.

  Perhaps I had been feeling tired.

  Perhaps I was feeling old and long in the tooth.

  Perhaps I appeared a little out of touch. Certainly, I had not done enough research on the Brigadier, distracted as I was by my retirement plans and what I thought would be a fairly straight and easy deal. Perhaps I was generally not on form that day but I know that I did not perform at all well. In fact, this is a gross understatement.

  Such meetings need a certain type of tact and professionalism, which I had always possessed in abundance. But if positive results are required it follows that both parties should, at least, remain sober.

  Fortunately, Brigadier Forsyth had seemed to like whisky as well.

  It was he who asked the waiter what types they had, although I could have told him that the choice was likely to be restricted to only one – Johnny Walker Black Label. So, within minutes of meeting, I saw evidence of someone who had not travelled far. His accent was faintly Scottish – Edinburgh – as though he had been born there, or educated at somewhere like Fettes and moved on.

  We sat beneath a flimsy thatch shelter in the open-air bar outside the hotel and surrounded by grass and a pleasant urban jungle of banana trees, coconuts and butterflies and the conversation started constructively enough with worldly affairs and international politics, subjects that came easily to myself. And then it had roamed over everything else – except business.

  I remember we ordered not glasses of whisky but a bottle and we had a silver bucket filled with chunks of ice.

  And how clearly, I remember the black clouds that were gathering on the skyline over the sea and the flashes of lightning that could be seen from our table by the wooden steps leading onto the grass. Now and again I could hear a rumble of distant thunder. A storm was brewing and I watched it approaching. I
remember glancing at it from my wicker chair beneath the thatch covering that overlooked the carpet of lawn that lay iridescent in the bright light of late afternoon. The sun was slowly sinking from view behind a row of high coconut palms that stood silhouetted against the darkening sky well beyond the banana trees.

  A cooler wind then started to blow and the palms waved and hissed faintly in the air. And, gradually, the breeze coming in from the sea picked up and green coconuts started to fall with a thud. And I watched, through increasingly unfocused eyes, as the distant black clouds bubbled upwards into the pink and orange sky, flashing dire warnings.

  If I had seen it as an omen then perhaps I would have ensured that the business side of the discussion was left for another, soberer, time and that the drinking session was merely to lubricate the wheels of friendship and confidence building for the future. That would have been far more in line with my usual tactics. Patience, and a slow build up leading to a successful deal, was my normal style.

  I specialized in setting the scene, building a foundation, establishing the feasibility and leaving the final architectural details of the structure to be built as yet undecided. In other words, I preferred keeping my options open at the beginning and judging the time to make a move when it suited me.

  Oh yes, it was not that I was inexperienced. I had been a master of the art.

  But, for some reason, that afternoon in Accra, I felt impatient.

  My private life was becoming far more important to me than anything else. George’s absence had not helped my patience and I was also on my way to Cape Town via Nairobi and Johannesburg and managing as best I could without my suitcase and fresh, clean clothes that Sarah had prepared for my trip. Losing luggage was not unusual but, this time, the airline had lost the bloody case somewhere between Frankfurt and Accra and I was not sure if it would turn up before my scheduled flight out.

  It was only a mild irritation but it had been getting to me far more than usual because of the other priorities on my mind. Lost luggage was becoming a regular and annoying occurrence and it had happened just a few months before. I had been flying from Jeddah to Addis Ababa on an Ethiopian Airline flight, crammed amongst Haj pilgrims with their carpetbags and their antisocial habits of trying to cook curry on Butane stoves in the passenger aisle of the aircraft whilst flying at thirty-five thousand feet somewhere over Djibouti.

  On that occasion, by chance, I had spotted my case amongst a million others stacked in a warehouse at Addis Ababa airport. But as all attempts to retrieve it failed I had had to bribe a customs man. But the bag still failed to reach me before I left so I had flown to Athens, then to Cyprus with the suitcase following behind from place to place until I was finally reunited with it in Cairo.

  I related the story to Brigadier Forsyth and the Brigadier had laughed and tried, but failed, to outdo me with a similar tale.

  As a result, I had already deduced in the earlier, more sober stages that the man actually hated being thought of as a domesticated family man. And I had also concluded that the Brigadier’s own, less interesting tale, of a piece of hand luggage lost between Paris and Lisbon might well have been embellished. In other words, had I been my usual self, I would have noticed the clear signs of a bullshitting amateur and factored it into my own decision making.

  But what had also been puzzling me all along but, again, insufficiently as it turned out, was that the name Forsyth was a new one.

  As well as the contents of the ABC flight timetable I kept a mental list of the names of British military attachés and the list was, I thought, reasonably up to date. My thoroughness had rarely let me down – until then.

  The tickets for my onward flight to South Africa were safe in my briefcase but, unfortunately, it also contained far more brochures on retirement property than technical fact sheets on products of possible interest to a military attaché.

  Unlike the slightly younger Brigadier, I was at an age where I wanted to give up the jet setting and the bullshitting and become, at long last, a more domesticated family man. So my motivation had been misdirected, my objectives, like the horizon, were becoming cloudy and my plans were already badly thought through.

  Then there was that other story I had told the Brigadier after the discussion about lost luggage. How we had laughed about flying and travelling in Africa and the Middle East. Laughing and joking, we had played verbal table tennis with bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label and an ice bucket as a net and stories as the ball.

  And I had believed I was winning it all – games, sets and hopefully the match. The Brigadier was already pouring more whisky and throwing more blocks of ice into my glass and I remember leaning back having thought of yet another story to tell.

  “How do you travel on Nigerian Airlines without an airline ticket, Roy?”

  By then, you see, we were on first name terms and shortened versions at that. Roy, the Brigadier had looked deliberately puzzled.

  “I’ve no idea, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me, ha ha.” “Well, first you need a good local agent.”

  “Yes, go on, ha ha.”

  “Well now. Answer me this, Roy. What do you need to board a plane?”

  “Uh, uh, ah yes, a boarding pass.”

  “That’s it. So, you use your agent to give the fellow at the check-in desk a new, shiny ball pen with a promise that there’s a good chance of the matching fountain pen and the fancy box it all goes in, if he can get you a couple of boarding passes.”

  “Ha ha. That’s a good one.”

  “Of course, the only problem is getting on the plane when it is already totally overbooked with fifty people having already bribed the same check-in clerk whose desk is already piled high with free gifts.”

  “Ha ha. So, what next?”

  “Well, when the rumour spreads – and rumour is all you get because, as you know, Roy, there is no PA system – that the plane that’s sitting shimmering in the heat on the tarmac about half a mile away is yours, you run. Oh yes. You run like bloody hell. After all there’s no bus and you wouldn’t want to wait for it even if there was. The temperature is in the upper nineties and the humidity the same but you run. You sprint, you push and you shove and you deliberately trip up as many of your would-be fellow passengers as you can. The half-mile is done in less than two minutes. It’s Olympic standard running I can tell you and you’re carrying your bags as well. Then the first to arrive at the steps is the first to get a seat, ha ha.”

  “Ha ha. That’s a good one. You want a top up?” “Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.”

  That’s how it had been until the first huge drops of tropical rain had started to fall. Then, with the pretentious chandeliers in the hotel flickering warnings of an imminent power failure, I looked at my watch, decided I needed to relieve myself and went to the Gents toilet.

  And now, oh yes – memories of another reflection. But, leaning, because I could hardly stand, at the grubby wash basin, I stared at the image of myself in the mirror.

  It was not a pretty sight.

  I tried desperately to clear the numbness from my brain and to remember my role as a professional businessman.

  I stared at myself, splashed water onto my face in a forlorn attempt to re-direct my thoughts from Sarah and my trip to Cape Town back to the here and now and towards a potentially complex deal on army supplies. I knew I was making a big mistake.

  Even in that state of mind, I knew there was a good chance I was going to make a rare error of judgment. But what could I have done? Time was of the essence and I had already decided I needed to get out of the mess I had been embroiled in for too long. It was all very urgent and I felt uncharacteristically impatient.

  So, I went back to the bar where the Brigadier was still sitting, legs crossed with the whisky glasses and ice bucket on the table.

  In fact, I didn’t go directly back to the bar but watched him for a few seconds from the corner of the room. I watched the small, Ghanaian bartender in his red waistcoat, wiping his bar and putting
glasses away and I looked at the few other white, hotel guests sitting around the room chatting. Then I looked at my watch and tried in vain to see the position of the hands.

  And then the lights went out completely.

  An intense flash of lightning outside coincided with a huge crash of thunder and the rain fell in torrents. There were a few cheers and some laughter from the other corner. The bartender went to light a few candles before the dim light of dusk outside had a chance to meet up with the deepening blackness of the clouds overhead. I, meanwhile, groped my way towards my seat and fell into my chair.

  But I was met with a surprisingly straight and sober look from the Brigadier and I knew immediately that I had totally misjudged the amount the other man had drunk.

  But it seemed that the Brigadier, on his own initiative, now wanted to talk business. It was not supposed to be like that because I was the one who needed to retain the initiative. I felt a sudden horror that spread like a hot flush through my body. The heat that flooded through my blood and spilled over into my brain told me that Brigadier Royston Forsyth had done far more homework on me than I had been able to do on him.

  And my instincts later proved to be correct in every respect. Perhaps, indeed, the Brigadier had not had to do any homework at all but just read a file given to him by someone else. It was as though my trip to the lavatory had suddenly relieved me not only of the contents of my bladder but my ability to entertain a client.

  Not only that but I could hardly see.

  The room was now so dark and my eyes so unfocused that I could barely see the man’s face. But I could hear him though and knew that the joking was over. His light, Scottish accent was as clear as the crystal chandelier had been before the power went off.

  “So, Ollie. You mentioned earlier on that you would find it quite straightforward to arrange the shipment of certain items which, in principle, are already approved for export.”

  I can’t remember if I had actually said that but the words were not those of someone trying to communicate under the influence of alcohol. I know I delayed my reply for far too long but my condition was not granting me much in the way of common sense. And yet I knew I needed to retain some control or there might be unforeseen circumstances. I struggled with my own reply.

  “Yes. Naturally it depends on the specification, the quantity, the value, how we are to be paid – that sort of thing.”

  There was a mental list of other requirements but my brain fizzled out after raising just four of them. But it hadn’t been a bad effort.

  “Naturally,” replied Forsyth quickly, and then said, “So, when is your scheduled departure?”

  I was unnerved. It was a style of spoken English that seemed to have changed radically since the lights went out and I found it hard to remember what I was supposed to be doing or when.

  “Uh, tomorrow afternoon. Nairobi.” Forsyth leaned forward.

  “Here’s the list.”

  I was then shocked at how prepared the Brigadier was.

  The list had apparently been in the buff folder that had lain, unopened but in full view, on the table since we met. I opened it with fumbling, uncoordinated fingers to reveal a single sheet of paper, clipped to another, which apparently showed the British Embassy, Accra address. Watching me fumble, Forsyth detached the top sheet and pushed the bottom one towards me across the table.

  “Not a huge amount as you can see. Tents, camouflage, a few civilian earth-moving vehicles, military camping supplies.

  The problem is its destination. The shipping is critical.”

  I had experienced these types of situations before. I was not that naïve. I also knew that every situation was different and with its own peculiarities but my mind was not up to its usual clear and instant analysis.

  “So where do you want it shipped?” I asked.

  “Chad. N’Djamena for transhipment north.”

  This was not Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia or any of the other places I had assumed it might be. And my geography was still good despite my condition.

  That the Libyan border stretched for five hundred miles or so across the north of Chad was also not lost on me. Neither was the fact that I was probably not expected to ask too many questions at this stage, or the deal might be off. A knowing, perhaps quizzical, look was all that I would normally have given in situations like this so I gave it the best I could.

  And then, while my brain went around in circles, I leaned forward to take the paper, trying desperately to focus on its contents. There was no possibility of seeing it for my glasses were back at my hotel, the type was small and all I could see was a grey blur that extended about half way down the page. The candles didn’t help either. There were, what appeared to be, figures on the right-hand side although it was hardly possible to decipher them. But I knew I had to try.

  Forsyth was looking at me, perhaps trying to make out what sort of trader he was dealing with. I sat back in the chair, holding the paper to my face to hide it and trying desperately, at the very least, to read some of the figures in the flickering light of a candle twenty feet away.

  There were three columns and experience suggested they were lists of items required, some brief specifications, quantities and, probably, estimates of their cost. So, on that assumption, I glanced at the final figure that lay beneath the small line at the bottom. I saw a pound sign and six as yet indecipherable figures that ended in three zeros. So, with at least that much knowledge, I decided to place the sheet back on the table to appear to have finished my first superficial glance.

  The Brigadier though was the first to speak again.

  Perhaps he realised the difficulty I was having in reading it, for the diplomacy was obvious.

  “Two hundred and forty thousand pounds FOB.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  I couldn’t, but it was a faint remnant of my own diplomacy.

  A quick mental sum was still possible, though. At twenty percent or so I could net perhaps forty-eight thousand pounds’ profit or commission, depending how I handled it. But it was enough to top up the savings and to buy the house in Cape Town.

  “We need it delivered before the end of January. Letter of Credit, payable to your company in the UK. Can you do it?”

  Forsyth was now pushing me hard and didn’t wait for an answer.

  “We’ll need a Pro-Forma Invoice of course to arrange for the credit. Under its terms, you will have to use a specified shipping company. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, when can we get the Pro Forma?”

  “You’ll have it within a week as soon as I return to UK.”

  With very little else after that, we parted company. I was given the address of a shipping company in East London that I had only vaguely heard of and we swapped a few other details. But within half an hour I was back at my own, less prestigious hotel, drenched from walking through the tropical downpour.

  The next day my lost suitcase finally caught up with me, but, with still no sign of George and not needing him now anyway as the deal clearly didn’t involve Ghana at all, I left for the airport. I took the Ethiopian airline flight across Africa to Nairobi, connected with an overnight flight to Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town. En route, I studied the shopping list.

  In Cape Town, in the October sun of southern-hemisphere spring I almost managed to forget about Brigadier Forsyth but, whilst there, made a few telephone calls to a dealer friend in Turkey and one in Hungary to set the ball in motion for when I returned home. It was not going to be easy and I knew I was going to have to speak to the bank to borrow some money to pay the two main suppliers in advance. I had faced this sort of thing before, though, so whilst it was not ideal I felt fairly comfortable with it.

  Then I spent the next few days looking at property along roads towards the Cape. By the end of the fourth day, I had collected an armful of brochures, pictures of the local scenery and property details to take home to Sarah to start on my plan of gentle persuasion.

&n
bsp; But that was when my well-intentioned domestic plans clashed with the difficulties with Brigadier Forsyth’s arms shipment.

  But I need another drink urgently so excuse me.

  I am picking up my typing two days later.

  This is unfortunate as I was making such good progress.

  But all thoughts about Forsyth bring on nightmares and I have had two days of feeling under the weather with Thomas’s Disease.

  But now I am sitting here by the table strewn with the contents of the box that has lain upstairs and unopened for many years.

  Everything in that box brings back a flood of memories and amongst it are the fading papers to do with that Forsyth shipment.

  Sorting the contents of that box is far from a calming process because every scrap I pull out I find I am forced to pore over in minute detail. Is it any wonder I dream about its contents?

  It is when reading old office papers that I hear the clatter and ring of Beaty’s typewriter as she typed them and I see my old desk, my pens and pencil sharpener. The smell of each piece of paper still carries with it the scent of where it had been and what it had done.

  On one, I could clearly smell a hotel room in Beirut.

  It was that room where I had sat and mended my broken suitcase with string pulled inch by inch from the top of the curtains and then threaded through the shattered corners of the case with a toothpick. The curtain had survived but without the high-quality pleats it had started with. But I had had plenty of time to do the laborious sewing job because a bomb had blown out most of the front of the hotel after I’d finished my dinner in the restaurant and there was no easy way through the rubble to the road outside until it had been cleared next morning.

  Many of the papers in the box have grown brown spots, as though they were damp when I put them away. Some had been folded because they had been posted. Some were still in envelopes that carried old postage stamps and one of them looked as though parrot droppings might have been wiped from it. Some were bound with paper clips or staples that had started to rust and left brown marks when I removed them.

  And inside one brown envelope were the documents related to the Forsyth shipment.

  Last night I removed them one by one and lay them on the table for the first time for a quarter of a century.

  On the top was the original shopping list from Brigadier Forsyth.

  But Forsyth had not left me the other sheet of paper that had been attached which, I recall, showed the Embassy address. Perhaps it had been used merely to flash before my eyes to give the impression of some sort of official sanction.

  So, I only have the shopping list, the quantities and the estimated costs but the typing is now very much easier to read than it had been when I first saw it.

  But, behind this and all held together by a large rusty paper clip, were copies of all the other documents to do with that shipment.

  There was a copy of my Pro-Forma invoice to the Shipping Company in East India Dock Road, whose name I had been given by Forsyth and, behind that, copies of quotations and invoices from my two, main suppliers and copies of my confirmation orders and dispatch instructions to each of them. It was neat and tidy and professional.

  Then there was a faded copy of the Letter of Credit and copies of all the other documents and certificates that I had had to present to the bank in order to get paid.

  Then, last of all, came the letter from the bank, itself, after I had presented the documents.

  This was not a copy but the original with the blue ink signature of the bank manager and I read it for the first time for more than twenty-five years.

  Despite the lapse of time, the letter’s contents are still imprinted on my mind.

  Even for a professional, dealing with Letters of Credit can be a reason why even seasoned exporters die prematurely. You live on your nerves at the behest of some bank clerk seated in a darkened office somewhere and equipped only with a pair of spectacles and a quill pen of the sort used by Scrooge as he sat at his desk on Christmas Eve back in Dickens’ time.

  His job is to find just the smallest error in your own handiwork.

  But for the exporter with a Letter of Credit issued by the Central Bank of Fairyland it can be a simple error of a comma being out of place, the failure to dot an I or cross a T. And it’s not just your handiwork they judge. It can be a misspelt name or any other problem with the bank draft, the shipping documents or a certificate of origin which fail to read in quite the way that Scrooge believes it should.

  And in places like Fairyland, these bespectacled clerks retain their mean images and add to their private wealth by a willingness to be bribed heavily to overlook such tiny errors.

  Others are paid to find the errors. Either way it’s a good opportunity to top up your salary. Unfortunately, in the case of Brigadier Forsyth’s shipment, it was clear that I had come across a Scrooge being paid to find errors.

  Last night, I had to refill my glass several times to give myself sufficient courage to re-read the letter for the first time for a quarter of a century. And there it was: “Payment cannot be made due to the following discrepancies . . .” it started.

  I had stared at it in disbelief when I first saw it twenty-five years ago, and it had the same effect last night.

  This sort of sight is sufficient to trigger nightmares that cause heart failure because what followed in that letter was a long list of irreparable problems. I had omitted this and not complied with that. My invoice was wrongly worded and the certificates of origin unacceptable. The list went on and on and I knew that no amount of bribing was going to make the responsible bank clerk overlook everything.

  In effect, all hopes of a wealthy retirement were gone. I was not going to be paid but that was not all. My suppliers, of course, had expected their payments up front and I had honoured these. I had paid in advance from the short-term bank loan secured on the house.

  Oh yes, I lost my deposit good and proper.

  And there is no Government Ombudsman to come to the aid of a one-man band small business. Tough, they say. Oh dear, what terribly bad luck.

  I was out of pocket by a huge amount. After repaying the bank, my loss was over one hundred thousand pounds of hard-earned funds and my savings were virtually gone. It is fortunate, I suppose, that I had some to lose. Others have been known to put their houses up as security and lose everything.

  As I read that bloody letter from the bank yesterday my stomach churned just as it had the first time. It was like looking at a copy of my own death warrant.

  But, beneath that letter from the bank, were copies of all of the documents that I had meticulously prepared and sent to the bank and my real anguish was in knowing that what I had signed and prepared for submission to the bank had been perfectly good.

  I was no start-up amateur. I was a professional.

  I had been expert at my job and I had also taught Beaty to be as good as me so there were always two pairs of eyes to check everything.

  I may have been an agent of sorts, voluntarily or otherwise, for British Intelligence, but I had also been a good export agent. I knew my job well. The important thing is that I knew, even at the time, that something had happened to those documents between leaving my office and arriving at the bank.

  But then, along came another problem to compound everything else.

  Two days before the letter came from the bank, Beaty failed to turn up for work.

  A man, whose voice I did not recognize, called to say she was sick.

  But Beaty had never gone sick in twenty-five years.

  Beaty

  Everything seemed to be collapsing around me and I resorted to sitting alone in my office for several days. Beaty was the least of my problems during those days because family issues were also giving me a headache.

  Robert had now moved with his job to Gloucester.

  Sarah had already visited Robert and Anne at their new home and was buzzing with excitement about moving closer to them and so away from Croydon.
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  “We need to look at some houses, dear. It’ll be such a change. You need it now. It’s time to pack up our bags.”

  This was such a change from a few months ago when we had sat eating roast lamb and I proposed moving to South Africa that I couldn’t grasp what was happening. To Sarah, Gloucester seemed like El Dorado. To me it seemed like Croydon but I was too preoccupied to argue so just went with the flow.

  Sarah sensed something was bothering me but to raise the financial problems caused by Forsyth with her at this stage seemed inappropriate and I was still trying to find a way to resolve it. I know I should have been more open but domestic bills were always paid and, just before Forsyth, I’d bought the new Jaguar, the one that is still in the garage now.

  So, to Sarah, everything looked fine.

  But I finally decided it was time to break the pattern of a lifetime and talk about financial problems.

  I fretted on the problem for several days before going home one night with a set of well thought through sentences to start a long and constructive conversation.

  I planned to start by explaining why I had gone to Ghana and that the order I hoped to win would have been profitable enough to retire on. But it had been slightly more complicated than I anticipated and that this had happened and that had happened and there was a problem here and a last-minute hitch here and then the bloody banks this and the bloody banks that and some people were not to be trusted and that I was still trying to resolve this and that and soon I’d be ...

  But I needn’t have worried.

  I had hardly got to the sentence about Ghana when: “Never mind, dear, that’s life. Win some, lose some. We’ve got to keep on going. It’ll be fine you see. Being close to Robert and Anne will be good. We’ll be grandparents, yes? You’ll be able to take them to school and pick them up. And it’s so much nearer the countryside. The Cotswolds are right on our doorstep. It’s not like here in Brick Terrace.”

  I didn’t have the heart to remind her that Gloucester wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

  Neither did I actually get to admit that the losses were actually over one hundred thousand pounds. But I still don’t think it would have mattered to Sarah.

  I got as far as, “but I’ve lost more than expected and, having had to repay the short-term bank loan, it’s not looking as good as I . . .”

  “Oh, never mind, dear. Beggars can’t be choosers. Waste not want not. What you haven’t had you never miss.”

  Sarah’s reasons for everything being ship-shape and Bristol fashion, as she also used to say, were endless.

  But that, in a nutshell, is why twenty-five years later I am still here in Gloucester and looking at the reflection of a wrinkled, eighty-six-year-old man in the window.

  I had only ever argued with Sarah once and had no desire to argue with her again.

  Living in Gloucester was what she seemed to want and I felt I now owed her something. The fact that Robert and Anne packed their bags and moved temporarily to Plymouth almost as soon as we moved to Gloucester made no difference. Sarah took that in her stride as well. “Ah well dear, we can visit them in Plymouth.”

  God knows, I had left her alone for far too long over the years. In effect, I felt I no longer had a leg to stand on – as she would have said.

  I’m grateful to Sarah, though, because she never ever complained. She made our home life together easy and good, and that is why I then did as much as I could for her.

  But the other woman in my life was, of course, Beaty.

  I had never imagined Beaty with a man who cared about her health and wellbeing as much as I did Sarah’s. But then, Miss Beatrice Collins, spinster of Brixton, had never taken a day’s sick leave in her entire life as far as I knew. She would usually sit sniffing and coughing through any cold she ever caught leaving sodden handkerchiefs everywhere. The only other hindrance when Beaty was sick was the strong smell of menthol throat lozenges.

  So, her sudden absence in the middle of all of this added to my problems.

  But what does an employer who has just lost a large slice of his personal wealth overnight do when his only staff member goes sick at the same time?

  Well, he does what any good employer does.

  He forgets his enormous personal difficulties for a moment and decides to send his loyal employee a bunch of flowers by Interflora with a “Get Well Soon” card attached to the address that he has on file.

  But still I heard nothing and Beaty failed to turn up for work after more than a fortnight.

  Even the strange man who had called on her behalf never called again. By the third week I was getting worried and so, on my way back from London one day, I called at the address in Brixton to check. The house, itself, was exactly where and how I had imagined it.

  But the person who opened the door of number 82 was definitely not Beaty.

  The lady who came to the door was a dark, nutty brown with long black hair and a red spot on her forehead and clearly not of Beaty’s pallid texture or even her ethnic origin. Beaty was as white as freshly fallen snow, a cheese and pickle sandwich and meat and two veg person and very clearly of South London ethnic origin.

  This resident was of Indian descent and the waft of curry that followed the resident to her front door was not something I would have associated with Beaty’s kitchen.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I am looking for Miss Beaty Collins. I understood she lived here.”

  ‘But I am Mrs Riaz, sir. My husband is Doctor Riaz. He is a doctor at St George’s Hospital, sir. Very sorry, sir,’ she said in her polite Indian way.

  “So, do you know Miss Beaty Collins?” I asked, because I thought she lived here.

  “Sorry, sir,” she said. “But perhaps she is the lady who used to live here with her mother.”

  “That might be her,” I said.

  “If that is so, sir, she left several years ago, because we purchased this house about five years ago.”

  I was very surprised. Beaty had never mentioned anything about moving house but then, as usual, I never discussed personal matters so perhaps it was my fault.

  So, I thanked her and was just about to leave when Mrs Riaz said, “But we have a forwarding address here, somewhere.

  Would you like me to find it?”

  “Thank you,“ I said, and she disappeared along the passage. But then she turned and came back.

  “Please to step inside, sir. I won’t be a minute. By the way, sir, are you the person who recently sent flowers here?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Miss Collins was my employee. I thought she was sick because she hadn’t come to work. She worked for me for more than twenty-five years.”

  “Goodness,” said Mrs Riaz, “that is a long time. I’m sorry, but naturally we couldn’t take delivery of the flowers.”

  “I fully understand,” I said, and she disappeared once more leaving me feeling hungry from the smell of curry.

  A few minutes later, however, she returned with a torn off slip of paper.

  “This is the forwarding address, sir.”

  I thanked her and left with an address that turned out to be just a twenty-minute walk from our own house in Croydon.

  So, as the situation was becoming more and more mysterious, I decided to stop off at this other address.

  Number 36 turned out to be yet another Victorian brick terraced house with a gate and a handkerchief sized patch of weeds and buddleia for a garden and faded net curtains. I rang the bell but heard nothing from inside. I also knocked several times but as there was still no sound I turned to go.

  It was then that I saw the black face of a woman in the next house peering from the downstairs window so I waved and beckoned her to come out.

  With that, a door scraped open and the woman appeared, wiping her hands on a cloth.

  “Police?” she asked before I could say anything.

  “No,” I said, “Not at all. I was given this address as belonging to someone called Beaty
Collins. I’m her boss. Is something wrong?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No. Why? What happened?”

  “They found her body.”

  “What body?”

  “The woman’s body.”

  “Where, when?” I asked, wondering what had been going on.

  “Near the bus stop, late one night.”

  I didn’t stand around much longer but phoned the police and was asked to call in.

  But I first phoned Sarah to say I’d be late and why.

  Sarah was shocked and far more upset about Beaty than about the loss of money.

  I left her in tears on the phone but promised to be home soon. Then I called into the police station where I asked some questions and made a brief statement.

  But what could I say?

  Loyal employee of mine for twenty-five years – very good worker – she was single – no family I knew of after her old mother died – suddenly went off sick – very unusual. I’d had a phone call from a man who didn’t give his name. I’d then tried the Interflora idea – got redirected by the new home owner to the house in Croydon – found out she’d died – phoned police.

  And what did the desk sergeant tell me?

  That Beaty’s body had been found early one morning in an alley way close to the bus stop at the end of her road.

  Ambulance was called but pronounced dead at scene. Middle-aged lady, dressed in a pink cardigan, grey skirt and a coat and a purse in the handbag identified her as one Beatrice Collins of the Croydon address. Police had found nothing in the said house except personal things, a drawer full of electricity bills and such like, which confirmed her name, but little else. No bank statements, not even any pay slips or other evidence what she did or where her income came from. Complete mystery. Police thought there were signs of a break-in at the rear because the door handle was broken which was why they came twice. But no signs of anything having been taken so assumed the lock had been broken for some time. Not pursued. TV, clothes, neat piles of women’s magazines, a bookshelf laden with romantic novels, a single bed with clothes neatly hung in a wardrobe, a bathroom with a medicine cabinet full of cough mixture and menthol throat lozenges and a black cat, wandering around looking lost with its food dish empty. No evidence of any family except a letter found from someone in Brentwood in Essex who turned out to be a cousin and only known living relative. Cousin identified body but confirmed they hadn’t seen each other for several years. Cousin claimed she was a lonely widow who often got depressed. Work for a small export business was her only interest in life. Post mortem, death certificate. No known cause of death so went down as natural causes. Cremation had taken place just two weeks ago.

  “No pay slips, officer?

  “Sorry, sir. Nothing. You paid her regularly?”

  “Of course, properly, by cheque, national insurance everything.”

  “Sorry sir, there was nothing. Not even a working telephone in the house. Otherwise we might have contacted you.”

  “So, who do you think it was who called me, Sergeant?

  Whoever it was said she was sick, not that she’d died.”

  “No idea sir. Sorry.”

  And that was that, also.

  “Thank you for calling in Mr Thomas and I’m sorry you weren’t notified but we had no way of knowing you were her employer. There was just nothing much in the house. Strange but it happens sometimes.”

  I was about to leave when I thought of something else.

  “Is it possible you could give me the address of Beaty’s cousin in Brentwood?” I asked. “It’s just that she has a few personal belongings in my office which I could return to her.” “I don’t see why not, sir.”

  I left the police station scratching my head, but with a piece of paper with the address and telephone number of a Mrs Dorothy Fletcher.

  Something wasn’t quite right here, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Beaty had sat opposite me in my office for a quarter of a century and had kept it running with undisputed efficiency through all my prolonged and frequent absences. But her private life had been, and still was, a complete mystery. But I had never intruded, you see.

  When I got home I updated Sarah on the news and she burst into tears yet again.

  “Poor Beaty,” she sobbed. “She was always such a worried woman, dear. She was as worried for you as much as for herself. You should have talked to her, you know. She never said much when she phoned here – mostly just to ask if I’d heard from you.”

  “She phoned? Did she phone often?” I asked, surprised. “Only sometimes,” Sarah replied. “She was just checking if I was alright. I think she worried about me when you were away. It’s all very sad.”

  And as Sarah said the last few words she had a look in her eyes that I was to see more and more as we grew older. Sarah knew far more about everything than I thought.

  “What else did she say, my love?” I asked with my arm wrapped around Sarah and wiping her tears with my hand.

  “Not much. Just that she was worried.” “Worried for whom?”

  “Me, you, herself.” “Herself?”

  “Oh yes, she hated the job you know.” “Hated me?”

  “No not you. She hated the job. In fact, she was always very concerned about you. She just seemed under pressure from somewhere.”

  “Pressure?”

  “Her family, I think.”

  “What family? She only had her old mother.”

  “Maybe not her family, but something else or somebody else.”

  With that Sarah started to cry again and we never discussed it again but I now wish we had.

  The following day I telephoned Beaty’s cousin, Dorothy Fletcher.

  “Oh, yes,” she said when I introduced myself, “Beaty mentioned you and her job. Export business, wasn’t it? We rarely saw her but it was the only thing she seemed to do. She didn’t seem to have much else. She always seemed very lonely. We invited her here for Christmas once but she declined.”

  We talked for a while about how good Beaty had been. Then I asked my question.

  “Did she ever mention a Major Donaldson?”

  “Oh yes,” Mrs Fletcher said. “Only once but I will never forget it. It was after my aunt’s, Beaty’s mum’s, funeral and my husband and I briefly went back to Beaty’s house in Brixton because she wanted to give me some things that had belonged to my aunt. She was, of course, already dreadfully upset about her mother but, while we were at the house, she had a phone call. It was that Major. She was even more upset afterwards. We had a terrible time trying to console her.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what he said but she was telling him to leave her alone. She was terribly upset and trying to say she had just buried her mother. It went on for ten minutes or so.”

  “Do you know why he phoned?”

  “No but Beaty was a very nervous and lonely woman, Mr Thomas. She didn’t want to talk about it. But she did mention his name and that is why I know it. It sounded to me like he was her boss. In fact, I always thought he was until you just telephoned. That Major Donaldson was not a nice man but she seemed completely under his control.”

  “Why do you think Beaty died?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. The post mortem was inconclusive. But she was only fifty-five, Mr Thomas. I think she died of loneliness and a broken heart. I think she had just had enough but I don’t think we’ll ever know, for certain.”

  It was three weeks after that and two months after the Forsyth shipment problem that I learned more.

  I was already feeling increasingly concerned about Beaty’s death and Beaty’s cousin’s words had done nothing to ease my suspicions. But it just didn’t add up to me. Something was wrong.

  In particular, who was the person who had phoned me?

  Whoever it was had phoned about two days before she was found dead.

  So, because I was still feeling genuinely upset about it, one morning I decide
d to check through the drawers of her desk.

  But she had left very little behind. It was as though she knew she was leaving and had cleared everything pens, paper and spare typewriter ribbons.

  The copies of the documents for the disastrous Forsyth shipment were still in a folder on her desk. I was tired of reading and re-reading them since the bank refused payment and decided to put them in an empty drawer in Beaty’s desk.

  But, as usual, I couldn’t resist one last look.

  I had gone through them over and over again to check for accuracy before I submitted them because they were so vital.

  They were, I had thought, in perfect good order.

  I had decided that they had not been rejected.

  I felt that I had been stitched up and my suspicions about Beaty’s involvement started to grow.

  I had checked several times with the shipping company who said they knew nothing. They said the documents they had given me to present to the bank had been perfectly correct and I agreed with them. They pleaded ignorance, threw their hands up in regret and shrugged. Naturally, each of my suppliers including the shipping company had been paid so they weren’t too bothered. The shipment had gone and presumably arrived at its final destination. They confirmed all that, which was as far as their responsibilities went.

  But, somewhere along the route something had happened.

  Somewhere between my office and the bank, the documents had been changed.

  But not only did Beaty disappear.

  Forsyth disappeared as well.

  I telephoned the British Embassy in Accra and was told they had no record of a Brigadier Forsyth ever being based there. I really had made one very serious mistake. But as Donaldson was gone my suspicions now centred on Beaty and Forsyth.

  I sat in her chair next to her desk with its empty drawers trying to fathom out what might have happened. I picked up one of her hair clips off the floor and stuck it in the drawer as though she might be coming back to reclaim it.

  And then I heard her voice, inside my head.

  “I’ll leave it there, Mr Thomas, for safe keeping. Just in case.

  You never know.”

  We didn’t keep a safe in the office as I didn’t deal in cash, but Beaty would, on occasion put an order, a letter, a cable or, later, a telex message inside my ABC Flight Timetable. This was a fat book, rather like Yellow Pages and ideal for inserting such things. I was, in fact, a walking, talking version of it. It was my travel agent and was very personal to me.

  Beaty knew this.

  I went to my own desk and took it out of the drawer for the first time since I’d used it to work out the best flights and times to fly to Accra, Nairobi and on to Cape Town.

  And out fell a piece of paper. Printed at the top was the address of the military hospital in Cyprus. I knew the hospital quite well. There was its telephone and telex address in Larnaca.

  It was a strange piece of paper to be in there.

  But, beneath the printed name and address, someone had scribbled the name Credit Suisse, Zurich and what looked like a bank account number.

  But then there was a name as though it was the account holder.

  The name was clear – R. B. Forsyth.

  I sat back staring at it. It hadn’t been there before I went to Ghana.

  Someone had put it there during the last two months.

  But then I turned the sheet over and found something else.

  This was written in Beaty’s own handwriting.

  “Dear Mr Thomas. I am so sorry. You did not deserve all this. Forgive me but I cannot live this lie any more. I hope you find this and hope it is enough for you to work out that there are things you should know. I have been living under increasing pressure. I have tried to tell you everything but it is very hard. I have now been told I must leave my employment. Yours, Beatrice Collins.”

  My mind tumbled over itself trying to understand what she was saying.

  Told to leave? Then it dawned on me.

  It had been Donaldson who, twenty-five-years before, suggested that I needed some help in my office.

  “Need to get a good secretary, old chap. Can’t be distracted by doing everything yourself. You need to concentrate on managing the business.”

  “Not yet, Alex,” I’d said, “plenty of time and I can’t afford it yet anyway. Give me a year or so.”

  A week later, though, Beaty had written to me as a complete stranger looking for a job.

  Two weeks later I’d appointed her and twenty-five years later she was still there.

  But it was now very clear.

  Beaty had been planted by Donaldson and it looked to me as though somehow, probably through this man Forsyth, Donaldson had had the last laugh from beyond the grave.

  Sarah

  I need to skip twenty-five years because, having got so far, it would be a pity not to live to complete this. But there is little for me to write about those intervening twenty-five years. It has all been very quiet. So, it is time for me to write about Sarah.

  I have spent the best part of the last two years taking care of her whilst spending the other part coping with Thomas’s Disease – meaning the nightmares and the almost permanent state of moderate intoxication.

  I’ll start with one of my nightmares in which Donaldson, in a fit of red faced rage and with spittle flying everywhere pulled out a gun and shot me. Had this been based on fact, that would have been the end of me but I was actually sat in the chair in front of Sarah’s log effect gas fire. I awoke with such a jolt that the whisky bottle emptied itself all down my front. But I had definitely heard a loud bang. I had a terrible waste of whisky in my mouth but as I could find no blood, I decided it must be something else.

  Also, as the sound seemed to have come from upstairs, I swayed my way to the top of the stairs and, because I was holding my head with both hands to stop my head from thumping and to quell the drumming noise in my ears, opened the door with my foot. Then I tried to focus, though still expecting to witness a tragedy.

  It was not as bad as I thought.

  Sarah had moved in the bed and the arm that had, perhaps, tried in vain to pull herself into a sitting position had, instead, caught a metal tray of tea and toast that I thought I had put out of reach. Cold tea had soaked into the carpet. The cold toast, on the other hand, lay upside down beneath the bed at the head of a messy trail of butter and crumbs.

  But my immediate concern was not the mess on the carpet.

  Sarah still seemed to be half-asleep. Her arm was hanging outside the bedclothes and the sound coming from her throat was a faint, irregular gasping for air, like sobs, behind closed eyes as though she, too, was having a bad dream.

  Trying not to breathe whisky fumes over her I bent over, tucking her arm under the blanket and whispering to her to wake up out of whatever awfulness was going on in her mind. It was as though she, too, had witnessed an assassination or heard a gunshot, perhaps for the first time. She mumbled something, incoherently, and I asked her what she was saying. But, instead, she gasped for air again as though unable to wake. So, I touched her cold cheek and stroked her forehead to bring her back into the land of consciousness. I took her other hand, pressing it as hard as I could without hurting her and then parted the strands of grey hair that covered her ear and I called her name, more loudly this time.

  It seemed to work.

  The mumbling stopped and her eyes seemed to move behind her closed lids. Her mouth opened, slightly, as though she wanted to speak, but nothing came except another sound like a gurgled, drawing of air. It had been like that just two nights before. It was as though she was awake but did not have the strength to break through a barrier of unconsciousness.

  I felt utterly helpless but understood how she might be feeling. Fighting with nightmares is a similar experience.

  After the first occasion, it had happened to Sarah, I had mentioned it to Dr Stephenson, during his routine visit. But he had merely listened, nodded his head gravely and continued
to concentrate on measuring her blood pressure and holding her wrist.

  I have opinions about doctors as well as opticians, dentists and barbers.

  They seem to think that as long as they lay a cold stethoscope on your chest, stick a thermometer beneath your tongue and wrap a sphygmomanometer around your arm you’ll be impressed, their vast skill and knowledge bound up in a few antique instruments that have been in use for a hundred years.

  But I had also mentioned Sarah’s situation to the nurse and will never forget how she had looked away. It was as though she hadn’t heard me.

  I sat there, watching Sarah and listening to her although my heart still pounded in my chest. After a while, her breathing became more regular and the closed eyes stopped their desperate searching. So, I let go of her hand gently and bent down to deal with the mess on the floor.

  Then, with my head slowly clearing, I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her, wondering how she could sleep so much when, for the first time in sixty years all I needed to do was talk. I needed a long conversation but an answer to one simple question would have sufficed.

  “What can I do, my love?”

  But as all I got back was silence, I looked down at her.

  Her skin looked grey and pale and her mouth was still slightly open. Her breathing was so shallow with just a gentle noise from her throat. I brushed away the wisps of hair from her forehead and then I kissed her cheek. But Sarah was starting to look different in a way I cannot describe and it worried me constantly. Her cheeks, too, felt cold as if they were reflecting the cooling of her personality and I had not seen her quite like that before. She had become very slow in turning over in bed and constantly complained of pains in her back and side and even her elbows.

  I knew she was becoming quite weak and had painful sores.

  I always helped her but usually she would wake up if I came into the room. The night I heard the gun in my sleep it was as though she was deeply asleep but unable to wake from whatever she was dreaming about.

  I knew Dr Stephenson was concerned about her but she refused to go into hospital.

  “She’s stubborn, Doctor,” I said although I knew I was excusing myself to the one person who would have been aware of how serious the situation was becoming. But I had no wish for her to go into hospital as I had made a pact with myself never to leave her at the mercy of others.

  Sarah was my responsibility.

  So, I pulled the sheet a little higher and, after a last look, went downstairs.

  Occasionally, I would join her in, or on, the bed but this was becoming more and more unusual. I rarely felt tired enough to go to bed, preferring the chair downstairs. Despite the greater intimacy, I also hated the thought of lying there with my eyes wide open staring at the ceiling.

  I would usually fall asleep in the chair by the log effect gas fire. If I wasn’t drinking, I sometimes switched the television on but, more often than not, I never watched it. A late-night film might be flickering away with the sound turned down so that I could listen for any sound from upstairs. They were visual distractions that I glanced at occasionally between mouthfuls of whisky but I never followed any of them.

  More often, I listen to the radio at night – the BBC World Service, switching on in time to hear a few bars of “Sailing By”. The World Service is my lifeline to the world and radio is so much better for the imagination. But, often, the radio is mere background talk – conversation, like the babbling of friends. Sometimes I feel I am actively taking part but at other times I leave them to talk amongst themselves whilst I wander off, aimlessly amongst my own thoughts, memories and dreams.

  Sometimes I annoy myself by listening to tripe. Music doesn’t interest me as much as it did Sarah. She liked all sorts of music – light music, classical music and church music, especially Christmas Carols. Sarah loved Christmas and it upsets me deeply now that on more than one occasion I was away.

  But when we were younger she would always go out carolling with groups of friends and neighbours armed with candles and song sheets and dressed in coats and scarves.

  “Come on,” she used to say. “Come on, come and join us.

  We need a good baritone. There will be mince pies for everyone at the end of it all.”

  Smiling, laughing as she sang Good King Wenceslas, Away in a Manger, Once in Royal David’s City. Those were her favourites and I always envied the simplicity. Bless her.

  I never went of course, but I have been known to venture to the door to look out for her if I thought she was a little late. But it would have needed more than mince pies to persuade me to go. I like some church music, but Sarah thought my particular choice far too depressing.

  Faure’s Requiem would be the record I’d take with me on the Desert Island.

  I’d take it to cheer me up and to remind me of life’s fragility.

  I like the words of the English translation and the deep emotion the music seems to stir. The Libera Me is the best part and I always remember the words. “Music for real men and for those not afraid to die, my love,” I used to tell Sarah. And she would look at me and walk away disgusted.

  “Don’t run away. Faure’s Requiem is not music for the faint hearted, my love,” I would say, chasing after her. And I would quote from it when I caught her up or thought she was in the mood. Perhaps, she had ticked me off for some petty domestic offence.

  “Oh! Full of terror am I, and I fear the trial to come. That day shall be a day of wrath, of calamity and misery. That day shall be a mighty one, and exceeding bitter.”

  Then we would both laugh and laugh until the tears came. “Oh, get away with you! You are a dreadful tease!”

  That was my Sarah talking as she used to.

  But once, I awoke at five thirty in a panic because I knew I had not checked Sarah for hours.

  Getting up, only served to make my headache and the pain in my full bladder worse. My whisky glass fell from my lap to the floor and toppled over, but knowing that my head was not up to bending to retrieve it and that my bladder was at bursting point, I left it lying there, the last dregs of whisky soaking into the carpet. But I made it to the toilet.

  I then went to the kitchen where I filled the kettle and, while it boiled, went upstairs. It was a slow ascent because my head felt detached from my body. But as I pushed open the bedroom door I could see Sarah asleep as usual.

  She was lying on her back, her head turned slightly towards the window and her mouth slightly open. Being unable to bend too far I leaned on the bedside table with one hand, the other holding my throbbing head and looked down at her. In the light from the bedside lamp she looked so pale.

  She had begun to look so much smaller towards the end and I knew she had become anaemic. Part of Dr Stephenson’s daily cocktail of medicine was for this.

  She moved slightly and her breathing faltered as though she might have heard me, but her eyes stayed shut.

  For several years, I slept poorly beside her. If she moved or made even the faintest sound I would wake up – instantly. I could never manage seven or eight hours at a stretch. Two is often all I need. But lying by her side was the closest to bliss sometimes. The best times of my life have been spent like that. Just lying, wide awake, watching her, listening to her breathing. I would often wake at five thirty or earlier although I might have only slept for an hour or so. But it was enough and often, after just a few minutes of lying, watching and listening I would get up.

  To lie there any more would cause me to panic as though I had an appointment or a job to do. This was nonsense of course, but it is impossible to destroy a lifetime of habit. Sometimes, though, I would fight the urge to get up. Sometimes I would continue to lie there, looking at her, touching her face, pushing the hair from her forehead or stroking her cheek. Sometimes I would feel I wanted more than that because my body felt her closeness. When we were young we would make love in the early morning.

  My gentle touching of her cheek and hair would be just the start. I would move my hand alo
ng her neck, around her ears, caressing and brushing her hair, perhaps moving closer to touch her ear with my lips. Then I would run my fingers around her neck and down between her breasts. That was when she would move towards me. Her eyes would open then. Or perhaps she would smile, giggle or murmur with her eyes still closed. I always knew when she was ready. We always preferred mornings.

  Mornings are fresh, new and unspoiled.

  Mornings feel uncluttered like fresh beginnings whereas night times are invariably spoiled by a mind that’s full of trouble, tension and guilt.

  Night times are endings but mornings are the start.

  But my life had become a time of constant nights with the nightmares that went with them.

  Towards the end, Sarah would still stir if I touched her.

  Her eyes would open as though she was responding as she used to. But, at other times, she seemed totally unaware of what I was doing. She would lie, perfectly still, her eyes firmly closed as though she had also lost her sense of touch.

  The sense of intimacy that simple caressing gives is something I missed, dreadfully. I missed her responding, her quiet murmuring, her smile, with her eyes still closed. I missed the look of contentment on her face and I missed her touching and holding me. I missed the sharing and the togetherness and I missed her voice. But, more than anything, I missed her company.

  The days had become long and monotonous and the nights dominated by sweating headaches and nightmares.

  I still possessed enough energy to walk and even to take the car out occasionally.

  Perhaps, at eighty-six, I am too old to be driving on modern, congested roads but the desire is still there. I like to see long and winding roads, from behind a leather steering wheel. I want to watch green fields flash by as Sarah and I drive to nowhere in particular.

  I still want to drive over hump backed bridges through country lanes, to picnic in woods, to have a ferry ticket in the glove compartment and to park with a view to a distant horizon. I want to share that view and know that when we arrive, there would be yet another view to share over the next horizon or around the next bend.

  Desires still lurked somewhere, deep in my body and soul and they manifest themselves in many ways.

  I wanted to abandon the bloody walking stick.

  I wanted to explore on foot, even if it was just undiscovered back streets of Gloucester. But more than anything I wanted Sarah to be with me on those walks and drives. I had no real desire to walk alone anymore. I have spent too many years doing that. I wanted to take Sarah on holiday, to the sea, to listen together to the rolling waves and the screaming gulls, to breathe the windy, salty air, to sit on a stone wall eating fish and chips and to poke sticks into slimy, rock pools.

  I still wanted to walk with her through woods kicking dry leaves that smelt of autumn.

  I needed to have her beside me at the supermarket because she was far better at shopping than I was. And I wanted to hold her hand and to make love again when the dawn was still breaking.

  So, that morning, I whispered to her as I bent over her still holding my aching back.

  “I want our life to start again, my love.”

  I was tired of the daydreaming and the nightmares and fed up with the repeats and the mental videos of my past life. I wanted my life to start again, to make amends, to put right whatever it was I might have done wrong and to spend time with the most important person in my life. In the cold light of dawn, I wanted my life back not because it had been wasted but because most of it had been good. It was just that there were a few things I still did not fully understand and there were some big corrections I still needed to make.

  I wasn’t finished yet.

  But suddenly my legs felt very weak.

  I sank slowly to my knees by the bedside and then, leaning on the blanket that covered Sarah, I reached beneath it to hold her hand. I held it and squeezed it, willing her to wake up and talk to me. But still her eyes stayed closed. And then, my own eyes closed and still kneeling, but with my head now resting on the pillow next to hers, I drifted off to sleep.

  It was the best sleep I had had for many a long week. I would have been quite happy to die there and then. But death is not allowed to arrive so blissfully at a selected point in time.

  And this sleep didn’t last long enough because at seven o’clock, on schedule, the radio switched itself on and I was already dreaming when it came on.

  It wasn’t a nightmare this time but, in my sleep, I had been watching a radar signal. A thin line of rotating light was picking up brighter, slowly moving spots of lights and there was a sense of excitement with someone saying something into my ear.

  “Come on Ollie, jump to it old chap. Bandits, three o’clock.”

  Then I was hearing the radar as it blipped – short, sharp pips.

  At the seven o’clock pips on Radio 4, consciousness dawned and, slowly, I opened my eyes.

  And there before me – how wonderful! I will never forget that sight.

  Next to mine, was a pair of light blue eyes topped by eyelashes and grey eyebrows. These eyes blinked at me, slowly, and the corners creased just a little. I could feel my hand beneath the blanket. It was warm and it was holding another and I felt mine being squeezed very gently.

  It was enough.

  My eyes filled with tears.

  I stayed there, unmoving, unembarrassed as a trickle of salty fluid ran down my cheek to the pillow because Sarah’s eyes were so close to mine. They were inches from me, but too close for me to see clearly as my glasses had fallen off somewhere. The eyes seemed to watch me as I sniffed back the water that was running inside my nose. They watched and seemed to take on a much softer look. No tears formed in those other eyes but, instead, the hand inside my own moved and squeezed it just a little harder. I felt it.

  And then the creases near the blue eyes next to mine grew deeper.

  This was enough.

  I had no wish for anything else now.

  I would have happily stayed like that forever. To die at that moment would have been perfectly acceptable. To have died, perhaps, at that moment would have been best for everyone.

  But Sarah spoilt the moment.

  “Hello dear,” I heard her whisper.

  I was unsure if she could see the wetness on my cheeks but her words seemed to stop the hard ache that was growing in my throat. I sniffed again, my wet nose just inches from hers.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  But I had no answer ready.

  All I knew was that my head still felt light, my eyes were sore and my back, arm, and now my knees, ached. So, I said the only thing that came to me. Nothing else seemed appropriate. I said it because I felt slightly absurd kneeling and half lying there. My knee joints were crumpled, my back bent double and my hand was inside hers. Whether, too, it was a symptom of the hangover, I am not sure, either. Perhaps it was the faint, seven o’clock news headlines that had just started on the radio. But, more than anything it was because, in my mind,

  I was still hearing the pips and watching the radar screen. It was the only reply that came to me.

  “Bandits my love. Need to scramble,” I said.

  Sarah’s eyes were looking at me, unsure, and the look on her face changed. And then she spoke the three words I had wanted to hear her say for weeks.

  “Well I never,” she whispered.

  And her strength was still enough for her to continue. “Dreaming,” she said.

  I raised my aching head.

  “Oh no, I saw them on the radar,” I said.

  The greyish blue blur of her eyes stared blankly at me. It was clear she did not understand, so I just looked deep into them as best I could.

  I love Sarah’s eyes.

  I love the questions they ask. I love their skepticism, their doubt and their playful mocking. I love their sincerity, their innocence and their uncertainty. But, most of all I loved their familiarity.

  I smiled at her and kissed her cool cheek and then wiped
my own wet one with my hand.

  “But,” I said, “you know the real problem?”

  Her eyes still looked at me and I paused, just for a second.

  “I can’t get up,” I said.

  And then I wanted to laugh and to cry all at the same time and for Sarah to join in and laugh as well. I looked down at her, willing her to join me, but as so often, her sense of humour, like her sense of touch, seemed to have gone.

  I waited just a second or so and tried again.

  “I think I’ve broken both my legs and probably my back,” I said.

  But as she still didn’t laugh, I struggled to stand up, holding my back.

  And then she spoke, but no longer was it a whisper.

  “Whisky,” she said.

  How, in God’s name, I wondered, did she know that? Could she smell it on my breath? I breathed into my hand and smelt it but, to me, there was nothing except a sour dryness and, anyway, it was several hours since the last glassful.

  So, had she heard me, perhaps? But she had been asleep and I thought I had been very quiet. Perhaps, in my dreaming, I had laughed or even cried, or perhaps she had heard the chinking of the bottle against the glass or perhaps she had seen me lose my balance when I tried to stand up. I even wondered if she had crept downstairs and watched me but the notion was absurd.

  “Nonsense,” I said, “just a tipple before I came to bed.”

  “Did you come to bed, dear?” she said and I was shocked at that, too. The blue eyes that I could barely see were probably mocking me now but I was still trying to straighten my back, arching it with my hands behind, checking the functioning and bending it back into shape.

  But then I knelt down again and whispered with my lips pressed directly to her ear.

  “How, on earth, do you know what I do, Mrs Thomas?” I thought I could see her trying to smile, just a little.

  “I know everything Mr Thomas. Anyway, you didn’t kiss me.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I kissed her again and sat down on the bed, felt for her hand in the warmth of the sheet and held it. But her hand moved as though she wanted to disentangle it and the moment, that I wished would last forever, was over.

  So, I went to the window and peered out from behind the curtain.

  Daylight was still failing to make any impact on night.

  I wiped some condensation from the glass and looked out to where the street light continued to do its dismal best. The road looked wet and our small, overgrown lawn with its scattering of decaying, wet leaves that had fallen a month ago, looked muddy. But the cherry tree was bathed in an unnatural orange glow from the street light. It was swaying in a cold wind that swept down the street. A car drove slowly past, its tyres hissing in the wetness and its headlights reflecting off the road. Then I turned around again to look back at Sarah.

  She was looking the other way, to the side where I had been kneeling. Then I watched her move, quite sharply as though something was digging into her back.

  She made a sound like a short cry and her head suddenly turned to face me. Her eyes opened and I moved quickly over to the bed. Her face had crumpled as though she was in pain.

  “What is it?” I asked her but she only groaned.

  “What is it, my love?”

  Tiny beads of sweat were forming on her forehead but it was still cold to touch. I had seen it before and thought it might be pain from the one kidney that still worked but I was certain the spasm would disappear as soon as it appeared.

  Sarah felt the pain but I felt the powerlessness to help.

  But I knew it wasn’t just the kidney. There were other problems. She was not eating properly. That was why she was starting to look so small and thin. But still she refused to go into hospital.

  “What can they do?” she would say. “How will you manage?”

  Those were her reasons and, for some reason, I did not argue.

  But, now, in the dim light, I could see she looked frightened and it then started to frighten me. I sat on the bed, my hand resting on her cold, damp forehead. The spasm had gone but her eyes were shut and she was still frowning. I held her hand and squeezed it but she remained with her eyes closed.

  I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say and to do so much – but what?

  “Robert and Anne are coming,” I said, but as soon as I had said it I realized it sounded as though I was admitting openly to her that time might be running out.

  “I phoned him,” I said, repeating myself. But her eyes still remained shut and I was not sure if she had heard or was even listening. It was as though she was again cutting herself off from me.

  This was one of the worst things.

  It was as though she was not interested in seeing or hearing.

  At other times, though, she was still quite sharp. Her accusation of just minutes before that I might have been drinking was shrewd. I found it so depressing and it had been like that for months now although I felt the trend seemed to be towards losing interest in what was going on. I tried again.

  “Robert said they’d fly over for Christmas.”

  There was still no reply and her eyes stayed shut.

  “Sarah, my love?” I spoke loudly and then again, even more loudly. It was the frustration.

  “Sarah. My love.” I squeezed her hand and moved my face close to hers.

  “You want to see Robert – and Anne?” I asked.

  I then tried to whisper, but still she did not respond. But I was desperate to find things to keep her interested. And then, something happened that I will never forget.

  Another spasm seemed to rack her and she groaned loudly. Then she spoke and it shocked me.

  “Help me,” she said.

  Still her eyes were shut and her face looked full of fear. I held her hand, firmly, unsure now of what to do or say. I felt totally helpless.

  “Help me,” she said again, her voice fainter and coming through almost closed lips. I bent down so close that I was touching her lips with my own. I was desperate to kiss her, talk to her, help her. I was racked with anguish, uncertainty and panic about what to do.

  “Sarah, my love. I’m here. Everything’s alright.”

  She took a deep breath, coughed weakly and then relaxed into the pillow again.

  And all I could do was wait and watch as her head sank onto the pillow and fell to one side.

  Then her breathing stopped.

  It was only for a few seconds but, just as I was beginning to panic, it started again with a sudden gasp and a fluid sound from her chest. I clung to her hand, desperately looking at her, my other hand gently pushing cold, damp strands of hair from her forehead.

  I sat there for what seemed like an eternity, unable to move as I watched the blanket across her chest rise and fall, irregularly and just perceptibly. Occasionally I moved my position just to counter the numbness in my own legs. My mouth was now seriously dry, my head still throbbed and I was desperately in need of a cup of tea but I just could not leave her even to go down to the kitchen.

  I thought about telephoning the clinic but that was a constant dilemma because I was concerned that, if I did, decisions about what to do would be taken out of my hands and Sarah had been saying for months that she did not want to leave home – ever.

  “It’s safer here,” she would say.

  She had made me promise not to leave her or allow her to be moved to hospital. And I had agreed. I agreed because I wanted to do what she wanted, although common sense sometimes suggested that, perhaps, this might not be in her best interests. But, neither did I want her to go into hospital with its lack of privacy and even more depressing undertones. If there was to be some quality of life, better that it should meet both our wishes. But then, at other times, I doubted that wisdom. And so the torment went on.

  Finally, as her breathing became deeper and more regular and she seemed more comfortable, I took my hand away and crept downstairs for my tea.

  But I knew that she had, once more, said the words that constan
tly went around and around in my head.

  “I know everything, Mr Thomas.”

  By midday both the nurse and doctor had called and Sarah had been awake while they were there. To me she seemed better though very tired. After they went I made her another cup of tea.

  The nurse had washed her and also took an advanced order for a ‘Meals on Wheels Christmas Lunch Special’.

  “It’s very good, Mr Thomas. Nice big dinner of turkey, stuffing, all the trimmings and you get a pudding as well with custard.”

  I said to her, “But November has hardly started.”

  “Better early than never, Mr Thomas.”

  “But how often will they be serving the Special between now and Christmas?” I asked.

  “Now don’t start on me, Mr Thomas. After a week, I’m beginning to know you only too well. It’ll be nice, you see. Try to look forward to it.”

  I was surely tempted to remind whatever her name was that Marmite on toast with a few glasses of Bell’s as pudding was also nice. I also felt like telling her that after eighty-six Christmas lunches could they perhaps try using some imagination and invent something new instead.

  Instead, I said: “Thanks. I’ll look forward to it. If I don’t finish it, you can eat the leftovers.”

  Three days later, things changed.

  Sarah seemed to be asleep, her mouth, as ever, just slightly open and the wisps of grey hair just falling across her forehead.

  As usual, I brushed them to one side and gently kissed her cheek. It was even cooler than normal, but the bedroom, too felt cold as though I might have left the window open. So, I checked, pulled the curtain and briefly looked outside.

  The wind had dropped and the cherry tree hung motionless. The road glistened with wetness as usual but whether it was rain or frost I could not tell. But, as expected, the window was shut so I drew the curtains again and returned to the bedside, kneeled down, brushed Sarah’s cool cheek with my fingers again and gently pulled back the blanket to search for her hand to wake her.

  This was also nothing unusual.

  I had been doing exactly that for weeks and always it was the same routine. I would leave the landing light on, creep in, check if she was awake, brush her cheek with my hand, then lightly with my lips, then go to the window. Sometimes I would gently brush her hair back or comb it gently. Sometimes she would stir a little, perhaps murmur something. Then I would kneel, then feel for her hand beneath the blanket, hold it, perhaps squeeze it a little and stay like that for as long as my knees and back held out.

  Tonight was different.

  What I felt beneath the blanket shocked me.

  I felt the blood drain from my veins because her arm was as cool as her face. My own, warm, hand felt its way down her arm to her hand. Her hand, too, was cold and it seemed to have become bent inwards in an odd way.

  My own hand stopped for a moment near her wrist and I moved my left hand to touch her face that was so close to mine.

  Then, with the blood still draining from my body I reached for her fingers. They, too, were cold. They felt hard and seemed to open again involuntarily. In a sudden rush of horror, I released my own hand and held her face again, this time with both hands. Then I cupped it in my hands but more firmly than usual. Then I pressed my hand onto her cold forehead and all around her face, around her ears, across her head, around her neck and then across her cheeks again. I moved her hair back and tugged at it very slightly and then bent to kiss her fully on her cold lips.

  She did not move or respond.

  I kissed her again and held her cheeks, trembling, feeling reluctantly but desperately for a pulse in her neck. But the trembling turned to shaking and I found I was holding all of her small head in my hands. I was shaking it, trembling all the time, pulling, caressing, pulling again and then tried desperately to pull her up from where she lay. I then collapsed and I fell onto the pillow beside her, tears pouring from my eyes.

  Twenty-four hours later, I was alone again for the first time since I had discovered Sarah. I had spent the whole time barely knowing where I was or what I was doing. After a full two hours lying in the bedroom alongside Sarah, I had finally managed to telephone the doctor and then sank into a trancelike state of utter devastation, not knowing what I was thinking or doing.

  Drained by a grief that I never fully understood was possible, I know I cried like a baby for what must have been hours. A doctor, a nurse, an ambulance and some other people whom I cannot remember ever having met before arrived at various times between midnight and the late morning. The doctor called again in the afternoon offering what help he could, but my body and mind was too numb and weakened by fatigue and utter desolation to understand what was being said to me.

  All I remembered was the doctor offering to help if I wanted to go anywhere or if there was anyone else who needed to know urgently. Robert had been the only name I could think of, and the doctor had made the telephone call to Los Angeles for me, handing the phone over for me to speak to Robert for just a few moments.

  And all I can remember saying to Robert was how desperately sorry I was that I had been downstairs and not with her at the time she passed away and that this hurt would stay with me for the rest of my life.

  Robert

  Robert and Anne arrived a day later, both of them looking a lot older than I remembered. While Robert and I sat in chairs by the table opposite one another, Anne busied herself tidying the sitting room and in the kitchen preparing the first proper meal that had been cooked there for months. Mostly, Robert and I sat in silence, passing clutter towards Anne and moving our feet to allow her to clear underneath.

  But that day and the evening that followed is only a vague memory and I must have eventually fallen asleep in the chair.

  I woke up very early next morning, crying and sobbing like a baby but trying desperately to control myself in case Robert or Anne might hear. My cheeks were wet but my mouth was dry and my bladder felt almost ready to burst. But I sat, unable to move as reality kept washing over me.

  Slowly I recovered some sense of order and, as all seemed quiet upstairs where Robert and Anne were, I assumed, still asleep I first went to relieve myself and then to sit in the kitchen for a while. I drank a glass of cold water as I waited for the kettle to boil. Then, before it had boiled, I got up, washed in the kitchen sink, shaved as best as I could manage with a blunt razor on three days of growth and made myself a pot of tea. The shave wasn’t at all good as my hands were too shaky, so I stuck a few newspaper patches on my face to absorb the blood. But then, as I carried the tray to the sitting room, I heard the stairs creak.

  It was a sound made by another person stepping on a certain part of the top step of the stairs and something I had not heard for a long time. For just a second, my eyes filled with tears again as I realized that, that was how it used to be when Sarah came downstairs in the morning as I sat drinking my tea. But it was Robert’s cough that stopped the tears from running too far down my sore face and I wiped them away just before Robert appeared.

  We sat at the table and talked.

  “Why didn’t you tell us, Dad? Anne and I could have come over long ago to help.”

  “No need, Rob. Your mother didn’t want it. No need to fuss was one of her favourite sayings. What will be, will be – that was another. What can they do? I don’t want to be a burden.

  You must remember what she was like, Robert?”

  “But was she up to making a decision, Dad?”

  “It was what she wanted, Robert. I tried. I suggested that we invited you to come for Christmas but no, she didn’t seem bothered and she hasn’t made it anyway. Fact is she has barely known what day, week or month it is for a long time.”

  “But that’s terrible, Dad. Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Because we agreed to stick it out here, just the two of us, depending on one another and not reliant on others for as long as possible, that’s why.”

  Robert fell silent, sipping tea, as though admonished.


  “And you know what, Rob? It was the right thing to do. I have no regrets. What could you have done? Worried? What good is that? Remember her as she was, Rob. It has not been a very good year but at least we’ve been together and I would not have wanted it any other way. It was our decision, your mother’s and mine. But it’s not been easy I can tell you. I just wish I had been with her when she passed away.”

  I stopped, pulled off one of the bloody paper patches on my chin and dropped it on the floor. Tears were not far away and I swallowed hard, forcing myself to keep going.

  “But I have other regrets, Rob. In fact, I have too many. I’ve sat here for too many hours over the last year or so pondering on the past. I’ve even been drinking a bit as well.”

  Robert interrupted me.

  “We noticed. Anne found dozens of empty glasses and bottles. You’re OK just now though aren’t you Dad? There’s nothing wrong with you, is there?”

  I sat, staring into my empty tea mug.

  “I’m OK I suppose. I dream too much. I think too much. I sit around too much. I go over the past too much. I don’t sleep much. I don’t eat much. I read the foreign sections of the paper too thoroughly. I go to the shop once a day. The bloody nurse comes in to see your mother. I look out of the window a lot. I scribble a lot in a notebook. I watch TV with the sound turned off because it’s absolute shit. I listen to similar shit on the radio.”

  I looked up at my son and our eyes met for perhaps the first time in years.

  “Thanks for coming, Robert.”

  With that, I have to admit I choked on what felt like a hard lump and tears formed once more. They welled up, overflowed and ran down my cheeks.

  And then Robert stood up, with his face in a strangely contorted shape. His eyes were bulging and he put an arm around my neck and his head on my shoulder. He seemed to sniff a bit, too.

  But, seconds later, the top stair creaked again and we both heard it.

  Robert sat down again, wiped his nose with his hand and picked up the two empty teacups ready to go to the kitchen just as Anne walked in wearing a dressing gown.

  We both looked up, knowing our eyes were probably a bit red and our faces a little damp. But Anne spoke.

  “So, did sleep do you some good?”

  I had forgotten Anne’s American accent. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed it the night before.

  “Thank you.”

  “Could you take a little breakfast? Need to eat you know.

  You’ve not been taking care of yourself.”

  For some reason, I felt hungry and it surprised me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So, what do we normally have?”

  I was going to say I normally have a hangover but thought better of it. Instead, I said, “Normally we have nothing.”

  Anne wore glasses and she looked at me over the top just like my mother used to.

  “You see, Rob, your father needs looking after.”

  Anne was trying to act kindly but Robert sensed something slightly out of order with what she had said and the way that she said it.

  “Dad’s OK, Anne. He’s doing fantastic. Why don’t you go back down to the store where you got the groceries last night – buy some eggs or something.”

  Robert’s American way with words, too, suddenly became apparent and, as I realised how sensitive I still was to the intonation and the accent, I had a sudden flashback to another accent that I had recently heard in a nightmare.

  “Jordanian,” I said aloud, completely forgetting I had live company.

  “Pardon me?” Anne said, pouring herself a cup of tea and I looked at her.

  “Jordanian,” I repeated. “Shula was Jordanian. Egg on toast would be nice.”

  The rest of the day passed.

  We talked about funeral arrangements, the house, the garden and what I might do with myself when they returned to California. The doctor and nurse called and sat talking with Anne and Robert while I excused myself to go and sit in the bathroom. The evening passed, another large dinner of steak and mashed potatoes was prepared and eaten, leaving me with an uncomfortable reminder of what indigestion felt like.

  I asked Robert if he’d like to share a glass of whisky after the meal but, seeing Anne’s look, I withdrew the suggestion immediately by saying that perhaps it was inappropriate and, anyway, I was feeling unusually bloated.

  The following morning, Robert came downstairs to find me again drinking tea at the table. It was six thirty.

  “So, what’s with all the paper and notes, Dad?”

  Robert was looking at the back of the table nearest the window where Anne had tried to neatly pile the clutter spread across the table.

  “I was doing some sorting out – old papers. There’s another box upstairs that I’ve not looked at for thirty years.”

  Robert leaned over and picked up a bundle.

  “Old newspaper cuttings. Nineteen seventy-two. IRA.

  Hijacks. What’s all this, Dad?”

  “Old records, cuttings, that sort of thing.”

  “You were out there, weren’t you, Dad? Middle East and other places.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mum never talked about what you did, you know. And you never said anything, either.”

  “No.”

  “Business wasn’t it, Dad? Export or something.” “Yes.”

  Robert was still flipping through a small bundle. “What’s it all about, Dad?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “And this? An old invoice. Thomas Import Export Limited.”

  Robert stopped, turning something over in his hand.

  “Rifles, ammunition?”

  “Put it back, Robert, it gives me nightmares.”

  “Is this what you did for a living?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Robert put the pile down and looked towards me.

  “You always were a bit of a mystery, Dad,” and he leaned over to pick up another pile.

  “Leave it, son.”

  I know Robert almost jumped out of his skin. I was very abrupt. But he then sat up holding another bundle of papers, his eyes almost gleaming.

  “But what did you do, Dad? Mum said something once. I asked her where you were because I hadn’t seen you for weeks. It was years ago. I may have been about twelve.”

  “What did your mother say?”

  Robert seemed to struggle to remember.

  “She said you were up to your old tricks again. I thought it sounded funny. You know Mum and her sayings, Dad. She was well known for them, wasn’t she? She had lots of others like that. He’s out, playing with fire again. That was a common expression. We always joked about her way with words, didn’t we? So, I asked her what she meant. She said you’d probably been – what was it? – operating incognito again – that was it.

  I remember that exactly, Dad. Incognito she said. I’d never heard the word before. I asked her what she meant. ‘Ssh,’ she said, ‘your father’s work is secret.’ Then she said you were probably running around doing dirty work for others. She seemed cross if I remember. An off day I suppose. I ignored it.

  But she went on a bit that night, if I remember.”

  Robert stopped, trying to read a small square cut from an old newspaper but I found myself staring at him.

  “What do you mean, she went on a bit?”

  Robert continued trying to read a scrap of paper but put it down as though it was not as interesting as the last.

  “It was many years ago. But it wasn’t the first time. She often grumbled about what you were up to. For God’s sake, Dad, you even missed Christmas once or twice. Mum was really upset. She used to sit by the fire, you remember, the one in the house in Croydon. Reading. Mum read a lot in those days. She regularly took books from the public library. Sometimes she would put her book down and look at the clock. I remember. I might have been doing homework. She worried a lot, Dad. She didn’t always show it. When you were home she was fine. But she worried about whe
re you were, when you were coming home, what you were doing. The office would phone sometimes.”

  “The office?”

  “Yes – sometimes.”

  “What office?” It was a ridiculous comment but I was imagining Donaldson’s Regent Street office.

  “The Croydon office of course.”

  “Uh, who called?”

  “I suppose it was the old woman – the one who ran your office. Miss Collins, was it?”

  “You knew about Beaty? She wasn’t that old.”

  “We knew her as Miss Collins. She sometimes phoned when you were away. Except once.”

  “Except once?”

  “Yes, I remember quite clearly. It was one evening when I was doing my homework. It was a man. Typical RAF or Army officer accent or how I used to imagine it as a boy. It was a funny conversation, too. I remember. He asked to speak to Mum – Mrs Thomas he called her. I said Mum was out and could I help. He asked me to give Mum a message. I said OK, no problem. Then he said to tell her that Mr Reynolds was in Libya. I told him to hang on while I wrote it down just like Mum had told me to if someone called. Mr Reynolds. That was it. Mr Reynolds was in Libya.”

  I was now sitting up, listening intently, my eyes unable to blink.

  “Mr Reynolds? Christ almighty! What else did he say?”

  “It was a long time ago, Dad. But it was as though Mum would understand because she knew Mr Reynolds as a friend or a business colleague of yours. Is that right, Dad? Was he? The guy said to tell Mum that Mr Reynolds was in Libya and then, very weird, he said to pass on the message that Libya was a red line. That’s it – a red line.”

  Hitherto unconnected chunks of my twenty-five-year-old jigsaw had, suddenly, clicked together.

  Even as Robert sat there talking idly and picking up odd pieces of old newspaper from the pile on the table, I could hear Sarah’s voice: “I know everything, Mr Thomas.”

  What was also clear was that Sarah was expected to know what a red line was. And there was only one person who used that expression – Donaldson.

  Donaldson used it to describe a place where I was likely to be followed or somehow tracked. God, himself, would need to intervene to help me if I ever stepped over the line. The red line was like the one on a pressure gage. Cross it and there would be an almighty explosion.

  The red line was Donaldson’s boiling point.

  “Don’t fuck up, old chap. You know it’s not in anyone’s interest. Think family, old chap, think pension, think security, think common sense and think bloody straight for once. Let’s not mess up. I know, let’s give this one red line status, shall we? There, that’ll show you why you can’t fuck this one up.”

  My mind was in overdrive again.

  I already knew that Sarah had known Beaty, at least via the occasional phone call.

  But Donaldson?

  Sarah, it seemed, had also known something about Reynolds and that I travelled abroad as Reynolds as well as Thomas, which was why she had used the expression incognito to Robert. “I know everything, Mr Thomas.”

  I pushed myself up from the chair, walked to the cupboard, brought out a fresh bottle of whisky and two glasses and sat down beside Robert again. “Dad, it’s not yet seven thirty.”

  “I know.”

  I broke the bottle seal and unscrewed the cap.

  Robert watched. The process was performed quickly and efficiently. It was followed by a quick inversion of both glasses, first holding them against the ceiling light to check for dregs from previous usage and within seconds both glasses were full of neat whisky. A moment later my glass was empty. “My God, Dad. Down the hatch like a professional. I’ve never seen that before. I can’t do that. Not at seven thirty in the morning, anyway. I hope Anne isn’t coming down.”

  Robert took a small sip, swallowed, then coughed as his throat burned and his eyes ran.

  “Bit early for me, Dad.”

  I, meanwhile, was already pouring myself another.

  “Life’s a bloody sod, Robert, I said. “I wish I’d talked to your mother more now. God knows we’ve had enough time over the years. But I’d been trying to forget everything you see. Once I realized your mother had no interest in moving away from here I went into a type of mental limbo. I once tried to persuade her to pack our bags and go abroad but it was pointless. God knows why we stayed in this house, in this place, for so long. But your mother seemed to like it here. She seemed to like the familiarity and the domesticity. I assumed she liked having me around. I know I’d spent too much time away from home – far too much – but we could have been together, somewhere else – anywhere other than here.”

  “Perhaps she was frightened of strange places, Dad.”

  “No,” I said, reality dawning, “I now think she was frightened of strange people, Rob.”

  My words tailed off and a silence fell. Robert tried sipping the whisky again and then picked up the conversation.

  “You’re depressed, Dad. Why don’t you come over to the States after the funeral? See a bit of the world again if you miss it so much?”

  “Perhaps. We’ll see.”

  “But what else is eating you, Dad? There’s something else besides Mum isn’t there? What’s all the stuff lying around here,” Robert waved a hand at the boxes and piles of paper.

  “Another mistake, I suppose,” I said. “Old and dusty boxes should be left to gather more dust not opened up, peered into and sorted through. It has not exactly been a therapeutic pastime. It’s what mainly gives me the nightmares, Rob.

  “Then there has been the growing feeling gnawing away at me that your mother knew far more about the past than she ever let on. You’ve just proved it.

  “But I’ve never been one to chat endlessly about this and that,” I continued. “I’ve always felt there were things best kept to oneself.

  “I’ve also been wondering about my old sense of patriotism and wondering whether it has now worn off. Some things were so complicated, though. So complicated that I never really understood them myself and the misplaced patriotism meant I didn’t ask enough questions.

  “But I’ve always struggled to know where to start telling someone. I struggled to know where to start with your mother. I was always waiting for the right time but the right time never came.

  “Perhaps I’ve also struggled with a genuine desire to say something. After all, how can you explain willing complicity in doing things that, under different circumstances or on reflection many years later, you might consider wrong? I have, you see, done things which I can barely believe I had in me to do. But feelings of duty and responsibility do strange things to a man. Ask any soldier. Ask a politician.

  “But then just as I started to think I might be coming to terms with it and that time was running out, your mother got ill and seemed to disappear into a sort of shell from which she never emerged – although she retained a certain ability to surprise me even until a few days ago.”

  I paused to take another drink.

  “Am I unique, Robert? Or are other men the same? Why is it that you can live with a woman for more than sixty years, be lost without her and yet be lost for words with her?

  “But for me, a pint of beer with a friend always tasted better if we sat saying nothing.

  “I don’t think I am alone in this. Men are not emotionally deficient just because they don’t reveal themselves to those they are close to. I can see how pouring your heart out to a friend like some women do is therapeutic but I’ve never been like that.

  “I can talk. I can talk and discuss for hours. Talking is what I have done all my life. But I can’t chat. I find chat embarrassing and self-revealing.

  “That is particularly true if I am required to chat about my inner thoughts. I clam up. I have to think where to start and how much detail to provide.

  “I actually think men are far more emotionally charged than women, although it is never recognized and especially not by women. Women sometimes try to trigger a debate by saying something trite like
‘we need to talk about this’. Sarah used to try that many years ago. But that would be the trigger for me to clam up completely. I would go into a sort of panic and shut down completely.

  “I always preferred to deal with facts not with trying to unravel or explain a feeling or a mood. Is it any wonder your mother used to bury her head in a romantic novel whilst I buried mine in the Daily Telegraph?

  “I wasn’t deliberately trying to avoid discussing feelings. But because feelings and emotion are so impossible for anyone, man or woman, to fully fathom out I would fall silent. I would go into one of my panics and probably end up wandering to the garage to tinker with the car. I may have been tinkering but all the time, unbeknown to your mother, I was trying to find the right words to come back in to talk. By that time, your mother had, of course, completely forgotten about it all. And, of course, the right words never came to me, anyway. After three hours of tinkering I would return although, by that time, mainly driven by hunger or thirst.

  “I suppose it has taken me eighty-six years to realise some of this and it might explain why I have spent the last year talking to myself and to anyone who happened to wander into my dreams.

  “Do you understand, Rob?” “Yes,” said Rob.

  Jim

  The funeral came and went although I can barely remember it. Then Robert and Anne went home but I decided not to accept the invitation to go with them to Los Angeles. I still had things on my mind.

  But let me now tell you about Jim because Jim threw spanners in the works that gave me even more to think about.

  I have known Jim longer than I knew Sarah.

  It was after New Year and I was sat at the table holding a Christmas card with a robin.

  I knew it was from Jim because of the Teesside postmark on the envelope. But I hadn’t bothered to open it because when it had arrived the so-called festive season, which commences in early November these days, was destined to last for weeks and drag well past the New Year. Long days and nights of monotony stretched before me.

  So, this card with its pathetic depiction of a bird renowned for its association with happiness and the festive spirit of Christmas had sat amongst the clutter on the table for a fortnight or more awaiting the moment when I felt excited enough to want to open it. But with that feeling never having appeared and it being well past New Year I was about to toss it in the bin when I thought that, out of common courtesy, I should at least read it for the first time.

  I took a quick look at the sad robin on its sprig of holly on the front and opened it to find a printed message, proof in two words that the art of poetic inspiration is also a thing of the past.

  “Season’s Greetings”, it said.

  This drab card was enhanced by a spidery signature beneath. In years gone by it would have been neater and extended to at least ten words. The spending of just a little time would have been detected in that it would have included the recipient’s names, Ollie and Sarah and there would have been a friendly wish with both senders’ names, Jim and Flo.

  But the only thing scrawled in blue ballpoint pen on this occasion was “Jim”.

  That was it.

  Normally Flo would write cards and Jim would add a few, scribbled attempts at humor on the back, words supposedly to remind us of our RAF days.

  “I scrambled to get this off in time!”

  “Sorry for being late. Haven’t been in a Mess like this for years!”

  Then there were the occasional postcards from holidays with Jim’s brother, Eddie, and his sister-in-law Hilda.

  “Ed and Flo are watching the ebb and flow in Skegness.”

  It was childish humour of the bar variety which Sarah and Flo found utterly ridiculous. But there had been no humour this year and neither was there any sign of Flo’s backward-slanting signature. It struck me then that Flo had also passed away and I had a vision of Jim slumped in a chair, wrapped in a tartan blanket covered in dribble and the remains of his breakfast, in his conservatory in Sunderland.

  Nevertheless, I have to say a small lump came to my throat.

  Poor old Jim, I thought.

  On the other hand, I thought, poor old Ollie. But at least I was not wrapped in a tartan blanket. I might have been slightly pissed and so only spilling Bell’s whisky on my trousers but I could still hobble to the off license and back.

  I tried phoning Jim but only got his daughter, Mary, who had clearly moved into the house to take care of the one remaining geriatric occupant. And, yes, she confirmed that Flo had passed away a few weeks earlier, co-incidentally almost the same week as Sarah.

  I told her to tell Jim that Sarah had also died and she did her courteous bit of offering condolences etcetera and said that Jim was asleep but that she was sure he would like to speak to me some time.

  Finally, I said to her: “Would you give Jim another message for me? Tell him it was me who nailed Major Donaldson.”

  Mary asked me to repeat it. I did so.

  “Will he understand, Uncle Ollie?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure. I don’t know,“ I said because it was true.

  After I put the phone down, I asked myself why I’d asked Mary to tell Jim that. What earthly reason had there been for mentioning the subject?

  Then I realized why.

  It was not a good reason but a possible explanation.

  I was, as I have said, slightly pissed when I spoke to Mary but I decided it reflected my own geriatric affliction, the Thomas’s Disease, and I knew I was starting to believe some of my own dreams.

  In a recent nightmare, I had watched Donaldson himself being shot in exactly the same way as that poor man David Reynolds. But in the nightmare, it had been me who had pulled the trigger and I was surrounded by hundreds of my old friends and colleagues going back to the war. William, Farouk, Farid, George Owusu and Moatassim were there. So were long dead friends from the squadron and so were Jack and Beaty and Betty from the Feathers. They were all standing around watching, but no one was saying a word. There was utter silence until the gun went off at which point they all covered their ears and stood with their mouths open as though shocked by the violence. But still no-one said anything.

  And Jim had also been there amongst the crowds, his face covered in blood stained bandages from his fresh burns. Jim was shaking his head as though in disbelief and it was he who then broke the long silence that followed in his Geordie accent.

  “Aye, man – that’s something that is.”

  It was Jim’s voice that woke me and, in my intoxicated state, my arms were thrashing about and I was shouting.

  “Sorry, Jim, but the fucking bastard had it coming.”

  Such is Thomas’s Disease.

  But two days after I spoke to Mary, the phone rang.

  I picked it up and waited for a squeaking and rustling sound to stop before I heard a voice. “Ollie?”

  It sounded rough as though its owner might have been recovering from a bout of bronchitis. It was a voice that might well have aged even further over the last few months, but the Geordie accent even though it had only spoken one word was unmistakable.

  “Jim?” I asked. “Aye,” Jim said.

  There was another rustling sound as though the receiver was being moved from one hand to another and the speaker was still getting comfortable.

  The accent brought with it a flood of memories and for just a fleeting moment my mind filled with a vision of Jim’s scarred face. For no apparent reason, I suddenly recalled Jim’s old joke about lady’s underwear made from Utility fabric and then about being with Jim at the cinema, a long ago, during the black out. We were watching “The First of the Few” and Jim had already started courting Flo.

  “Aye, I suppose Flo might well be the last of the many,” he had joked and how right he had been.

  Only a second or so had passed in time, but snippets of Jim’s companionship of fifty years flashed through my mind. One minute I was in the bar at the Hen and Chicken with more of Jim’s jokes and then it was the clearest vision
of sitting in Jim’s conservatory surrounded by Flo’s indoor garden and Jim’s banana tree.

  The phone squeaked once more. “Long time, Ollie,” Jim said gruffly.

  I was still imagining Jim’s familiar, disfigured face, pock marked with the healed burns from his crash but then it changed to the bandaged face of my dream.

  We exchanged a few more simple words and I expressed my sorrow about Flo and he did likewise about Sarah.

  “Aye, it all comes to an end,” Jim said, sadly.

  How right Jim was. Jim was eighty-nine going on ninety but, with his slow speech and gurgling cough, sounded more like a hundred and ninety and I was shocked.

  But the shock was about to increase.

  “I got your other message, Ollie,” he eventually said. The comment registered only superficially because I was still distracted by how old Jim sounded.

  “Message?” I asked.

  “Aye, about Donaldson,” Jim said.

  Donaldson! The name suddenly focused my thoughts on that other matter and I wondered if Jim had really phoned to talk about Donaldson.

  “You said it was you who nailed Donaldson, Ollie.” “Yes,” I said, “but it’s not important.”

  There was a sound of Jim muttering something but it was completely incoherent. Finally, I caught up but then he said something that threw me completely.

  “Donaldson’s still alive, Ollie.”

  For a second I thought I had misheard.

  “Say that again, Jim,” I said.

  “Donaldson’s still alive.”

  I could still hardly believe what I was hearing.

  For more than twenty-five years I had assumed he was dead. Shot in Beirut and pushing up the daises, as Farouk used to like saying.

  For a while, I must have stammered or gone strangely incoherent. But this was quite understandable because everything I had believed for so long was suddenly unravelling. What’s more the person unravelling it was my best friend. My entire life seemed to stall.

  Slowly I recovered while Jim creaked, groaned and coughed on the other end of the phone.

  “What? Donaldson’s still alive, you say Jim? I thought the chap had had his chips years ago.”

  “Aye. There you are man. Life’s a bugger.”

  “So what . . . how . . . where the hell is he then, Jim? And how the hell do you know?”

  “I met an old friend at a Remembrance Day service. Flo and I got taken down to the Cenotaph.”

  “An old friend? Who the hell was that, Jim?”

  “Jack Woodward.”

  “Jack Woodward?” I almost shouted.

  “Aye, in a wheelchair. Ninety-two. But he’s dead now. He died a month later I heard.”

  “Jack Woodward?” I shouted again. “I thought he was also long gone.”

  “Well, he’s gone now, Ollie.”

  I sat there, holding the phone, my head in a whirl.

  “But what about Donaldson?” I said. I still couldn’t believe what Jim had just told me.

  “Aye, still alive.”

  “So where does the bastard live?”

  “Och! Somewhere near Oxford I heard.”

  Jim’s vagueness and slow speaking slowly got to me and I said: “For fuck’s sake, Jim. I’ve spent twenty-five years thinking the bastard was lying, pushing up the daisies somewhere in a graveyard in Lebanon or somewhere. Now you tell me the bugger’s still alive. Where? For heaven’s sake, why don’t I know?”

  I waited patiently for what seemed an eternity.

  “Aye. He was living near Oxford. He sold the place in Edinburgh I understand and moved south. It was many years ago.”

  Jim stopped and I waited, hoping for more, but nothing came.

  “Oxford, you say. That’s just up the road. That’s too damned close for comfort. Where in Oxford, Jim?”

  “Aye, not in Oxford,” said Jim.

  I remember taking a deep breath, summoning as much patience as my increasing headache and beating chest allowed.

  “So where, Jim? If not in Oxford, where?”

  “Aye, near Oxford. He had some big mansion in a village I heard.”

  “A bloody mansion?” I heard my voice pick up an octave.

  “Aye, as I say he sold up. His kids were grown up.”

  The news of offspring was also fresh.

  “Kids, Jim? What kids?”

  “Och man. His kids.”

  “I didn’t know he had kids!” I was almost beside myself with shock.

  “Aye, he had them all in public school in Repton or somewhere. It was half way between London and Edinburgh.”

  “Bloody Repton? It must have cost a fortune!”

  “Aye.”

  I was dumfounded.

  “How could he afford that then, Jim?”

  “Not my business, Ollie. His wife was a lot younger.”

  It suddenly struck me that to have kids then there must have been a mother or two around somewhere. But the idea of Donaldson having a wife had also never occurred to me.

  “His wife?”

  “Aye.”

  “What bloody wife?” “The one he divorced.”

  This was getting complicated but it was as though I was the only person who didn’t know.

  But family life had never cropped up in my conversations with Donaldson. Donaldson’s private life was his own business.

  I could not stand the man, so why the fuck should I have bothered to ask? I couldn’t have cared less about his domestic circumstances. They were totally irrelevant and, in fact, had I raised the subject in a conversation, it would have suggested that I was both interested and concerned about the man. But it partly explained his trips to Edinburgh and the odd mention of Burton-on-Trent and Derby train stations. But it still raised interesting questions about how a jumped up civil servant with only a short military career behind him could afford to buy a mansion in Oxfordshire and send so many kids – born in or out of wedlock – to one of the most expensive private schools in the country.

  I asked Jim a few more questions but it was clear that Jim was the one now starting to get annoyed.

  “God’s sake, Ollie. What’s wrong with you? I haven’t got a damned clue about his ex wife or the one before. He was divorced twice. One was called Betty that’s all I know.”

  “Two wives, Jim? What happened to the first one?”

  ”Who cares, Ollie?”

  “I care, Jim.”

  “Why? What’s the problem, Ollie?”

  Jim was asking me what the matter was but I was in the middle of a vision of another Betty – the one behind the bar in the Feathers, the one with the big assets and cockney accent.

  No, it couldn’t be. There were lots of Bettys in those days.

  Could it be? No, surely not. She was young, early twenties. She must have been at least twenty years younger than Donaldson. If she was alive now she’d be perhaps seventy. I dismissed it.

  “I need to know, that’s all,” I said.

  There was another pause.

  “I don’t know what happened to his first wife – or the second, Ollie.”

  Jim’s voice was breaking up again. It was getting rough and I could hear another gurgling sound coming from deep down inside. It seemed I may not get any more information before it packed up altogether.

  “Then who does, for Christ’s sake? You still seem to have cronies scattered around. Do any of them know?”

  Jim coughed, productively, and seemed to swallow the accumulated debris.

  “Och! What cronies? Not many left, Ollie. Might be one or two left but beats me why you need to know Ollie. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that. You seem very agitated.”

  Jim’s observation was very accurate.

  “I need to know, Jim. Something has cropped up and I need to know.”

  “Aye. I’ll check. Someone might know. Did you have a good Christmas, Ollie?”

  Suddenly I felt I was going to explode.

  “Christmas, Jim? What the bloody hell is getting i
nto you? Are you getting senile or something? Christmas! Sorry, Jim, but Christmas was weeks ago. It’s not exactly on my mind.”

  “Then what is, Ollie?”

  Then I felt lost for an explanation.

  “I’ve just been thinking too much, Jim – thinking and writing notes and looking at old files. And I’ve now started typing it all up – for the record so to speak. But if you can, please check on Donaldson’s whereabouts, Jim. There’s a pal.”

  We said cheerio after that but Jim was as good as his word.

  Who his remaining cronies were I didn’t ask, but when I phoned about a week later he gave me an address in a village near Oxford and a house called “Chalford Hall”. It sounded large.

  “Happy now then, Ollie? Got what you want?”

  “Thanks. But I thought Donaldson had been killed, Jim.”

  “Yes, you keep saying that. Ollie. But it was all hushed up.”

  “By who?”

  “Aye man – tha’ knows – upstairs.”

  “Upstairs, Jim? What upstairs?”

  “Ollie, man – don’t play games. Don’t tell me you didn’t know he was in Intelligence.”

  “Well . . .,” I said but a thousand questions were running through my brain. Not least was what Donaldson’s own thoughts might still be on the matter, assuming his brain could still think. My own was working overtime.

  What exactly had happened?

  Why had the authorities, whoever they were, not followed up the incident? Or had they done just that and decided to leave the matter alone? If so why? And how had I got away with what had happened for so long. Was the matter still being investigated after twenty-five years? Were the terrifying nightmares in which I saw, heard, and even smelled Donaldson, explicable as some sort of final retribution by a living ghost? The questions ran thick and fast and I was sweating profusely. But, during the silence with Jim still hanging on the other end of the phone, I had been rummaging in the clutter on the table to find the Daily Telegraph newspaper cutting.

  “But . . .” I said, at last, “I kept the reports, Jim,” I said.

  “I have it here. ‘British Army Major Shot’ it says. I bought a copy of The Times to double check and found an identical report.”

  Jim interrupted me again.

  “Aye I remember it,” he said, “but how long afterwards did the press release come out? And it didn’t say he died. Neither did it actually confirm a name. ‘Thought to be’, I believe it said a scandalous use of words that a solicitor could not have got away with. But you’ve forgotten what sort of people run Intelligence. They are all codes and secrets. Even I knew him as D. Perhaps he became another letter. J – Just alive, perhaps.

  Or R – R for Resurrected.”

  Twenty years ago, it would have been cause for a laugh, another swig of beer and perhaps another joke or two tagged on to extend the humour. Now, neither of us seemed to see it as amusing or have the strength to laugh.

  “My God,” was all I could think to say.

  “Aye, bloody sod,” said Jim with almost another touch of humour.

  But instead of a joke, Jim then threw another spanner into the works.

  This was a real shock.

  It was a spanner guaranteed to jam up my mental machinery altogether. Pistons, valves, timing chains, prop shafts and bearings flew in all directions as though my engine had received a direct hit. I felt as though I should be trying to bail out while there was time. In fact, my hand jumped as though trying to open the roof of the cockpit. It often did when I was suddenly frightened. But I had no parachute this time.

  “But you’re right in some respects, Ollie.”

  I was barely listening because my mind was still racing and the hangover from the night before was returning with a vengeance.

  “Aye. Apparently, the man who was shot in Beirut did die, though – officially that is.”

  The confusion was now starting to dull my senses.

  I had no idea what Jim was talking about and there was silence as I tried to fathom it out.

  Jim meanwhile said, “Aye,” once again, contemplatively, or just for good measure.

  “What do you mean, he died – officially.”

  Jim didn’t now sound like an old man with either chronic pneumonia or senile dementia.

  “Aye, man,” he said again, “officially he died but officially he was not Donaldson. Donaldson is still living. O for official, like.”

  “For God’s sake, Jim. Talk sense man. Stop trying to joke.

  What are you saying?” I asked, almost desperately.

  Jim coughed again, perhaps to prove that his pneumonia still persisted, but the delay while I waited was almost unbearable.

  “Well,” he gurgled, “it’s like this – as far as I heard, you understand. The man who got shot in Beirut was, in fact, Donaldson – definitely sure it was. But he survived. Then, for some reason the powers that be decided they needed to say that someone had been shot and had died. But Donaldson actually survived. Got it now, man?”

  My mind was now in such a state that there was no chance of me getting it so I decided to admit it.

  “No, I bloody well haven’t,” I said.

  Jim wheezed a bit more, seemed to take a deep breath as though he was speaking to a dimwit and went on.

  “The man in Beirut who got shot was definitely Donaldson but he did not die. He survived. Do you understand? Then they decided it was in the interests of security or officialdom or bureaucracy or whatever, to report the event by suggesting that he had died.”

  Jim seemed to wait a moment but then repeated, “Suggested that he had died. Understand, now? Suggested!

  As it said in the press release.”

  It must have been obvious from my silence that I still did not understand.

  Thankfully, Jim seemed to have the patience to try again.

  He wheezed, loudly.

  “Och! Man. Someone, somewhere, probably Intelligence, decided to issue a press statement that said that a British Army Major working for British Intelligence had been shot. For reasons best known to themselves they then needed to give the impression that he had died. They stated publicly that the man was thought to be Donaldson. Thought to be. Got that?

  But Donaldson had, in fact, survived.

  “But for the official records, the paperwork and the death certificates and such like it was decided that the man was to be named as someone else – someone called Reynolds, if I remember. Reynolds had also, apparently, been working undercover for British Intelligence. Who Reynolds is or was I don’t know, Ollie. I assume it was Reynolds’ name that was used for death certificates and to keep the books straight. But the press reports were to give an impression that it was Donaldson.”

  Jim ground to a final halt but seemed unable to resist a final attempt at humour.

  “R for Reynolds, I suppose. Not R for resurrected,” he grunted.

  Jim had just spoken for far longer than seemed good for him. He sounded almost completely out of breath but still found a few, last ounces of energy to produce a wheezing gurgle of a laugh at his own humour. But, this news had only compounded my own total confusion.

  “Reynolds?” I shouted, “Are you sure, Jim?”

  “Aye,” said Jim, “Jack told me that when we met at the Cenotaph two years ago. By the way, he asked about you. He said I should pass on his best wishes. Sorry, I forgot. But Flo got sick.”

  It was as though I was having one of my worst nightmares except I knew full well that I was wide awake.

  “But I was Reynolds, Jim,” he said.

  It was Jim’s turn to go quiet. The phone merely creaked and I let it creak for a while.

  “You still there, Jim?“ I asked.

  Jim coughed again.

  “You, Ollie? You were Reynolds? You worked for Intelligence?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I did years of assignments for Donaldson as Reynolds. I was there when the real Reynolds got shot in Amman years before. The man was assassinated in fro
nt of me. For years, I carried his passport. I was David Reynolds. It’s still here – the passport. It’s upstairs in my box, it’s . . .”

  I stopped talking suddenly feeling as though I had been trapped by clever interrogation.

  I checked myself, remembering other events that might now start to click into place. I briefly began to compare my life since the war to Jim’s as a solicitor. Mine was definitely the more complicated.

  It was true that assignments in the name of Reynolds stopped after Donaldson had been shot but that was what I had wanted to happen.

  But then my mind went into a spin again because it had been my own decision to continue to use the Reynolds name for a short while afterwards for my business.

  Jim was still on the other end of the phone but memories of other events then rose up before my eyes like ghosts from the past.

  A few days before I met with Farouk in Paris when he told me what had happened to Donaldson, I had, by chance spent a night in Cyprus on my way to Beirut. I was in Larnaca with the Reynolds passport hidden in its usual place in the lining of my case when I had heard a single gunshot very close by and a group of people not six yards from me panicked and ran. At the same time, a puff of stone dust erupted from the side of a building not ten yards away. Gunfire was not uncommon to me and I had been the last one to move. But I did not hang around to investigate. I had never understood who the shot was aimed at and subsequently forgot about it. But I know it was very close.

  Then there had been another situation just two days later in Beirut. It was ridiculous for me to be there at all, I suppose, but that’s the way I behaved. I had only been there a day and was coming home and already at the airport check-in when I was stopped by a Lebanese messenger apparently from the British Embassy.

  I was asked to delay my flight to return to the Embassy. Something urgent had cropped up which they thought might interest me – a sudden business opportunity. I was in two minds, of course, but all I had wanted to do was to go home. And I had not liked the way the messenger kept looking back towards the airport entrance. So, I had refused the offer.

  But the man had become agitated when I said I had no interest in returning and he grabbed my arm. Fortunately, there had been other people around, I shook him off and he walked away.

  That was also, perhaps fortunately, the last time I ever set foot in Beirut and I stopped using the Reynolds passport soon after.

  But Jim’s comments now suggested to me that, perhaps, they had been looking for a real body of a real person with a passport in the name of David Reynolds to bury. How simple it would have been for them. I was finally expendable and of no further use.

  My blood ran cold. Had I been that close?

  Jim’s rough voice came down the phone line.

  “Aye, Ollie, man,” he said, “well, well. That’s news that is – that’s something. I gave up trying to understand it all many years ago. Pity you didn’t tell me before. A few stories there over a pint.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” I said. “But Donaldson was a bloody crook, Jim. A big-time crook into arms trading and money laundering and . . .” I stopped myself again.

  Perhaps fortunately, Jim seemed to be losing the will to carry on because I don’t think he heard me.

  “Aye, a few stories there over a pint, Ollie,” I heard him say again and then I heard the phone click. I supposed he’d got fed up and put it down.

  I stood there holding the dead phone line for a moment but then replaced it and shuffled though the pile of old notes and newspaper cuttings still lying in a pile on the table to find the note that Beaty had slipped inside the ABC Flight Timetable.

  And more of the jigsaw fell into place.

  For at the time of the Forsyth deal I believed Donaldson was dead so had blamed others, and mostly Forsyth, for what had happened.

  But if, as Jim had said, Donaldson had not died but was recuperating somewhere or was already fully recovered, then it seemed more than likely that it had been he who was behind Forsyth. So, who was Forsyth?

  I re-read Beaty’s note: “Dear Mr Thomas. I am so sorry. You did not deserve all this. Forgive me but I cannot live this lie any more. I hope you find this and hope it is enough for you to work out that there are things you should know. I have been living under increasing pressure. I have tried to tell you very thing but it is very hard. I have now been told I must leave my employment.

  Yours, Beatrice Collins.”

  Then I turned it over to the front, printed side showing the address of the military hospital in Cyprus.

  Then I looked once more at the handwriting beneath, the bank address, the account number and the name R. Forsyth and I stared at it with fresh eyes that now knew that Donaldson had still been alive at the time. The handwriting was faint but unmistakable.

  Donaldson’s handwriting had always been terrible.

  It looked as if a spider had walking through an ink blob and what little he ever put on paper was usually scrawled on scraps torn from pads or hotel notepaper. His maps of where to find something were often drawn on the plain insides of old cigarette packets. He would talk as he drew them.

  “The road from the mosque apparently goes like this, old chap,” he would say, scribbling a wavy line. “The souk is about there and, apparently, the place you need is about a hundred yards up there, on the left.” And he would put an X.

  But rarely was there anything left of the scraps of paper he used.

  Even in the Regent Street office he would openly remove the printed tops or bottoms by using a ruler to tear across in a straight line removing any evidence of an address.

  Donaldson specialized in covering his tracks well. But, on this occasion, he seemed to have forgotten.

  Donaldson’s brief scribble on the front page was faint, but it was clear enough.

  Beneath the printed address of the Cyprus Military Hospital in Cyprus were the telex address and the POB number in Larnaca and the bank details and the name of Forsyth.

  Was Beaty trying to tell me that Donaldson was alive and in hospital in Cyprus and that he and Forsyth were working together to destroy me financially?

  Or even kill me?

  Was Beaty well aware that she was at the end of her usefulness to Donaldson?

  Was Donaldson afraid Beaty might spill some beans?

  If so, how had Beaty really died? Natural causes had always seemed unlikely.

  “I have tried to tell you everything but it is very hard. I have now been told I must leave my employment. Yours, Beatrice Collins.”

  A few days later, poor Beaty was dead.

  Why had I not noticed?

  The signs that something was wrong had been there for years.

  Was I so blind to the feelings and fears of others?

  Beaty’s? Sarah’s even?

  “I hope this is enough for you to understand, Mr Thomas. I have tried to make it quite clear.”

  What had she been trying to explain?

  Then, another day and another time: “I have been trying to bring myself to tell you something, Mr Thomas but it’s all very difficult, you see.”

  Was I so insensitive? So naïve?

  “Don’t worry, Beat. Nothing to worry yourself about. Don’t fret. Got to catch the train.”

  And off I would go again without giving it a second thought.

  Then, once, long ago, after I had just got back from somewhere. Perhaps I was too tired. Maybe I had been a little harsh on her. But I could now hear her voice so clearly.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr Thomas. You see it can be quite stressful here when you are abroad. We really need to talk sometime, Mr Thomas, privately.”

  I could now remember her eyes looking at me almost pleading with me to pry into her concerns. But again, I would lose the chance, believing she was feeling overworked.

  “Never mind, Beat. Don’t let the system get you down. Life’s for living, Beat. Take it easy.”

  But what was it that was making her so stressed? Her voice echoed back again
.

  “There was a phone call for you, Mr Thomas. Beirut again. You . . . you . . . you need to be so careful, Mr Thomas. It’s such a – such a dangerous place, these days.”

  And another time.

  “Does Mrs Thomas know about this, Mr Thomas?”

  Had it been a question or a statement?

  Did she really say, “Mrs Thomas needs to know, Mr Thomas.”?

  There had been the briefest, pause looking down then looking up at me again, the poise or confidence returning.

  Perhaps, more likely, it was her diplomacy returning. She had been sat opposite me in the office.

  “She really should, Mr Thomas. She must know . . . where you are . . . always . . . just in case. I can always inform her . . . if . . . if something goes wrong.”

  Beaty’s eyes again, peering at me from behind her spectacles. The eyes had looked worried, caring, guilty, perhaps wet even.

  And I knew now from Robert that Beaty had spoken to Sarah more often than I ever thought.

  What about was still a mystery and was likely to remain so but Sarah had known far more than I ever thought.

  “Oh, I know everything, Mr Thomas.”

  The familiar cold sweat broke out again because I had told Sarah nothing – ever.

  In fact, I had kept everything a total secret because I had decided that it was unnecessary for her to know. Rightly or wrongly, I had been trying to protect her.

  I took a deep breath and leaned back.

  But then I got up and went to get a fresh bottle and poured myself a large glassful.

 

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