The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  ‘Crap. And if you get away before midnight come back.’

  She kissed me again and then I tore myself away and stumbled out into the night.

  *

  I got the taxi to drop me on the corner by Moss Bros, and then walked through into Covent Garden. Having a taxi right up to the door would have been lese-majeste and bad security. Anyway, one had to approach as a penitent on foot; barefoot, if the weather were right. The door to Robert Cledwyn Sutcliffe’s flat looked like the entrance to some seedy publisher’s offices.

  I rang the bell and after an interval Hackett, his man-servant, opened it. Before he did so I knew that he would have checked me over the monitoring system from inside.

  ‘Hullo there, Mr Carver,’ he said cheerfully. In itself a bad sign.

  ‘Hullo there, Hackett, old cock,’ I said, following him in.

  He turned from shutting the door, and said, ‘You’ve bin drinking.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Yes, I bin drinking, Hackett. What you bin doing? Getting the torture chamber ready?’

  Hackett shook his head. ‘We’re in that kind of mood, are we, Mr Carver? I don’t think he’ll like it. He’s been off his food for three weeks.’

  ‘Good. Let’s hope he keeps it up and starves to death.’

  ‘Oh dear, Mr Carver, I would advise you to take a brace.’

  ‘Give me a stiff one, neat, before I go up then. Who’s with him?’

  ‘Mr Manston and Mr Perkins.’

  ‘The unholy trinity.’

  He winked and nodded me up the stairs on my own. I took a three seconds’ brace outside the door, knocked and walked in.

  The only light in the room came from the brackets over his half a dozen paintings. They were always modern and were always different each time I came. Facing me on the far wall was a red-and-blue Francis Bacon job of a nude man who looked the way I felt, all twisted up. To one side of it stood Manston; tall, well-built, in evening dress, a red carnation in his buttonhole, his face tanned and giving me a mild smile. He looked disgustingly healthy. Perkins, in a stiff Donegal tweed suit, had his great bulk collapsed into a leather armchair. He had a fat cigar in his mouth, jutted his chin at me like the prow of a cruiser in welcome, and reached an arm about five feet long out to a side-table to retrieve his glass.

  Sutcliffe was sitting in another armchair, a plump, dumpy man, face big and bland like a Buddha’s. A blue smoking jacket was rumpled up over his shoulders and his small legs were thrust out for his tiny feet to rest on a footstool. He looked at me with calm, cool, grey eyes that had behind them over fifty years’ experience of not being fooled or ever indulging in the stupidity of being warmhearted. He went on looking. Nobody said a word. I shuffled my feet and looked at the sideboard. There was a lot of bracing material there. In the past they’d indulged me with the odd glass of Glenlivet—when they had wanted me to feel at home. There were no signs of real welcome now.

  I said, ‘It’s pretty cold in here for the time of the year.’ I pulled Saraband Two’s letter from my pocket.

  ‘We’re in no mood for any of your low-level social chat,’ said Sutcliffe. He said it quietly, but each word had a vibrant core of ferocity.

  ‘Well, here’s something on a very high level for you to get your teeth into.’

  I handed him the letter. He looked at the letter, and then at me, pursed his plump lips in a prissy little movement and then said, ‘God help you, Carver, if you’re up to any of your old tricks.’

  ‘I’m as pure as driven snow. And driven is the word. Read this after you’ve read that.’ I handed over Wilkins’s letter. I glanced at Manston. ‘You’re reasonably fond of me. Don’t I get a drink?’

  Perkins said, ‘Just be content with breathing.’

  Sutcliffe sunk his head into his shoulders and began to read. I watched his face. It showed no emotion whatever. It wouldn’t. He had been training it that way for over fifty years.

  Tired of Perkins and Manston, I stared at one of the modern paintings beyond Sutcliffe. The canvas was covered with irregular coloured squares and triangles, and in the top right-hand corner was the word Hommes and in the diagonally opposite corner the word Femmes. I didn’t try to work it out. I was just content to be a bloody-minded Philistine.

  Sutcliffe read through the two epistles, held the various sheets up to the light, squinted at them, fingered their texture and then read them all through again. This done, he said to no one in particular, ‘Get Hackett up.’

  Perkins reached out a long left arm and thumbed a bell push in the wall. Ten seconds later Hackett came in without knocking.

  ‘Sir?’

  Sutcliffe swung his head round slowly and gave Hackett a smile. ‘Take Mr Carver down to the waiting room and make him comfortable.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And see that he doesn’t panic.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Hackett came over to me. An automatic had suddenly sprouted out of his right hand. With his left he ran expertly over my jacket and trousers.

  ‘Nothing lethal,’ I said. ‘Except a nail-file in my ticket pocket.’

  Hackett led me out and shut the door.

  ‘They must be cross with you, Mr Carver. Never sent you down to the waiting room before, have they?’

  ‘No.’

  But I knew all about the waiting room from hearsay. Personally I would have been glad to leave it that way.

  We went down into the basement. Hackett unlocked a green baize door at the end of a little corridor and waved me in. He did it with the automatic, so I had to obey.

  The door closed behind me and I was alone. It was a big room without windows. The floor was tiled, plain white tiles. The walls were sound-proofed, leather panels covering whatever they had used for insulation. When you touched the stuff it gave gently. In a recess at the far end of the room was a bunk, screwed to floor and wall. At its foot a little washbasin was set in the wall. Behind a plastic curtain in the right-hand wall was a recessed toilet. A plain wooden table and a kitchen chair stood in the middle of the room. Set in the ceiling behind an iron grille was a light. Above the doorway almost at ceiling height was a row of small portholes, some glass-covered and some covered with perforated brass discs. From one of them now was coming the gentle hiss of air being forced into the room. Looking up at it, I caught the blast of hot draught funnelling down at me. As I stood there the noise of the hissing increased.

  I went over to the bunk and sat down on the low pile of folded army blankets. I’ve lived in some odd rooms in my time, most of them crummy hotel rooms, and generally managed to make myself comfortable. In this room I knew I was never going to be comfortable. Nothing would ever make it sing for me—and why should it? The purpose of this room was to make people sing loud and clear if they had any sins or deceits to be purged.

  Within five minutes the temperature had gone up to tropical level and I had my jacket off and my collar loosened. Within the next ten it went down to freezing point so that I had the blankets huddled round me and my breath hanging in cold clouds before my face. This hot and cold sequence went on for about an hour. It was nothing serious. It was just annoying. But I knew that it was no more than a mild foretaste of unpleasantness to come unless I decided to behave myself. They needn’t have bothered. Within reasonable limits I had already decided to behave myself. Like Martin Freeman, I had a high survival factor and meant to protect myself.

  From a loudspeaker in one of the portholes over the door Sutcliffe’s voice suddenly came out cold and clear into the room.

  ‘We’ll be down later, Carver. Don’t rely on any sentiment about the help you’ve given us in the past—almost outweighed, of course, by the trouble you’ve given us too. You don’t come out of that room alive until we have the last scrap of truth out of you about this business. Think about it and prepare yourself for confession.’

  I said, ‘Can you hear me?’

  He said, ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Because in that case I wo
n’t speak my deepest thoughts about you out loud. I’ll just be polite and say, “Drop dead, you stinking bastard!” ’

  I heard someone laugh. It could have been Perkins or Manston. It certainly wasn’t Sutcliffe.

  CHAPTER 10

  Next Stop Hades

  At no time were they all three in the room together. Sometimes there were two, usually only one, while the others, I guessed, watched and listened on the closed-circuit screen in Sutcliffe’s room. Or, if they had any sense, took a nap . . . because what was there to get from me?

  But they obviously thought that there was something.

  Manston, alone, started the ball rolling. About four hours after my being shown into the room, Hackett let him in. From the moment of his arrival the air-conditioning went back to normal.

  He sat on the kitchen chair while I lay on the bunk.

  ‘All right,’ he said, no emotion in his voice, no encouraging look on his face, ‘just tell your story from start to finish—and omit nothing.’

  I sat upright and told him. It took quite a while and when I had finished he said, ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shook his head. ‘You mean to say it was just pure chance that you were given a commission by the London Fraternal Insurance Society to recover Mrs Stankowski’s property—and this led you, again by chance, into this Freeman business?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it was just some little bell ringing at the back of your mind that began to warn you that Bill Dawson might be the Prime Minister’s son?’

  ‘Yes. The name worried me. Then in Tripoli I saw a newspaper headline about his father. In Captain Asab’s office, actually. I got Wilkins to check. Dawson isn’t interested in politics. He’s an oil geologist or whatever you call it and he was employed by an oil exploration company in Libya. It had been in the press at some time.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come to me with the information you had about the Villa La Sunata? We could have had Dawson back home by now.’

  ‘I didn’t know about the villa when I met you. And you made it clear you needed no help from me. When I did know . . . well, let’s say I was silent out of pique, or vanity—’

  ‘Not cupidity?’

  ‘I’ve often wondered if that word had anything to do with cupid.’

  He got up slowly and came towards me.

  ‘It has. From the Latin cupere, desire. It’s a capsule description of your basic motives—money and sex.’

  ‘So, I suffer from a common disease.’

  ‘How much did Saraband Two say would be put in your bank account?’

  ‘Five thousand pounds. But it was Duchêne who said it. I refused.’

  ‘Sure it wasn’t fifty thousand—and you haven’t refused?’

  Light dawned.

  ‘You think I’m in on this job?’

  He reached down and got me by the shirt front. He was nothing like as big as Perkins. He wasn’t much bigger than me. But I was moved, jerked up, swung round and then thrown to slam up against a wall, my head thudding against it. I lay where I had fallen.

  ‘That’s what we think,’ he said. ‘We’re just waiting for you to confirm it.’

  He moved to the door, paused by it, and said, ‘By the way, there’s nothing personal in my actions. I just want you in the right frame of mind.’

  ‘That’s what Paulet said. Thanks. It’s nice to know this isn’t going to spoil a beautiful friendship.’

  He went out. I went back to the bunk. In the next hour they rang the changes between equatorial and arctic temperatures until my body responses would have sent a Pavlov off his head with delight. I swear to God they got me so mixed up that sometimes I sweated when it was freezing and shivered when the place was like a bakehouse.

  Then Perkins came, big, bluff and genial.

  He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the table.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘just tell your story from start to finish—and omit nothing.’

  I told him. It took quite a while, and when I had finished he said, ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Jane Judd visited you because she was worried about Freeman and wanted to know if you knew what was happening?’

  ‘Yes. And I told her I didn’t know what it was all about.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about the postcard you took from her bag?’

  While I was down here they were obviously doing some fast checking outside.

  ‘I didn’t think it was important. You don’t want Freeman. You want Dawson. They won’t be in the same place. Freeman and Pelegrina have sold out to the K.G.B. boys.’

  He moved fast and sledge-hammered me on the chin with his right fist. I went to the floor and stayed there.

  He went to the door.

  ‘Think the story over again and try to remember all the details.’ He went out. I got up. The temperature changes started again and this time went on for two hours. I thought over the details between shivering with heat and sweating with cold. Surely, I told myself, a man must be allowed to retain something, just something, which he could use in a cupere way.

  The next time it was Sutcliffe. He had changed into a neat blue suit and wore his Old Etonian tie. He sat on the kitchen chair and pouted his plump little lips at me.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I will now tell you my story from start to finish—and omit nothing.’

  ‘Good.’

  I went to the little washbasin to get a drink.

  He said, ‘The water’s cut off. It won’t come on again for some time.’

  I told my story with a dry mouth. When I had finished, he said, ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He said, ‘You were at Gloriana Stankowski’s yesterday evening?’

  ‘Is it tomorrow already?’ I looked at my watch. It was.

  ‘She told you that she had received anonymously ten thousand pounds in notes from Freeman. Why haven’t you mentioned that?’

  ‘Because you bloody well already know.’ I could afford to lose my temper with him. At least he wouldn’t try any strong-arm stuff on me. ‘You’ve got a Treasury hyena on her tail and he knows.’ Sutcliffe shook his head. ‘You must try and understand. When we ask you for your full story we mean the full story—even if some details of it are already known to us.’ He stood up. ‘By the way, I made a mistake about the water not being on. You can have a drink if you wish.’

  I went to the basin, grabbed a glass—plastic—and held it under the tap. As my right hand closed over the metal tap to turn it I got a shock up my arm that jolted me three feet backwards. I lay on the floor and wasn’t aware of Sutcliffe going out.

  When I found the strength to get up I flopped on to the bunk.

  For the next three hours I did the arctic-tropical trip so many times that I lost count. But that didn’t matter. From the moment of Sutcliife’s going a brass band had started to play over the loudspeaker. It was a good band—mad about Sousa—and played at top volume for the full three hours. Heat, cold and sound. Simple little things. They kept them going. I slowly began to go mad. I put it off for a while by chewing up medicated toilet paper from the loo and wadding the wet pads into my ears. They finished the recital with ‘Sussex by the Sea’, and then a slow funeral march.

  I lay on the bunk like a piece of chewed string.

  Manston and Perkins came in together and propped me up.

  ‘Shall we,’ said Perkins, ‘go through your story again?’

  I looked at him with a limp smile. ‘Do we have to? I was just beginning to enjoy the music.’

  Manston said, ‘The general opinion is, Carver, that while you may be holding back a few details . . . you know, magpie stuff, little bright bits that you can’t bear to part with . . . the serious aspect is that you are refusing to admit the overall truth. You can keep your little bits. But you must give us the basic truth.’

  ‘You’ve had it.’

  ‘No. I’ll admit t
he truth of your story, right up to the time you went to Tripoli and discovered that the Dawson who had been kidnapped was the Prime Minister’s son.’

  ‘Thanks. Can I get a drink now without electrocuting myself?’

  Perkins, a true white man, got up and filled the plastic tumbler for me. Then he drank it himself and leaned back against the edge of the basin.

  ‘When you learnt that, you realized why Duchêne and Paulet were stringing you along with a phoney story, and you made a good guess as to their interest. So—’

  ‘Let me tell it, please.’ I got up and went to the basin. I looked at Manston. ‘Tell this gorilla to get out of the way. I want a drink and if I don’t get one I’ll tear his stupid Anglo-Saxon head off his over-muscled rowing shoulders.’

  Manston looked at Perkins, and Perkins stepped away. I drank like a camel. I probably sounded like one as well.

  Bloated, I turned. ‘So,’ I said, ‘the moment I’d got the dope about the Villa La Sunata from La Piroletta, I did a deal with Duchêne and we all went up there together. Right?’

  ‘Right.’ Manston nodded. The carnation in his buttonhole was wilted. Not so much as I was.

  ‘And we worked out a plan to keep me in the clear. A phoney kidnapping of Wilkins and so on. And me to come back here and play the man under duress to you. And eventually the prisoner exchange deal would go through and I’d get a whacking great secret payment for my services and Wilkins would come home, safe and sound, and never know what a triple-crossing, corkscrew-minded man she had for a boss. Is that it?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Perkins.

  ‘You believe that?’ I asked Manston.

  He nodded. ‘Knowing you, yes. It measures up to your kind of morality.’

  ‘Oh, sure. No real harm is done to Dawson or Wilkins. Brooke comes back from Russia, and the British tax-payer is saved the expense of keeping two people in prison here, and by now anyway they have no vital information to hand over to Mr V. Semichastny—he only wants them as a matter of face. So what harm is done to anyone? And I get fifty thousand pounds in a numbered Swiss account. It’s all been good clean fun. You believe that?’