‘And how often are you going to be here?’
She hesitated for a moment, and then said, ‘My instructions are that I am to live here with you and put myself entirely at your disposal. I can fetch my things in this afternoon.’
He looked at her. The long, narrow chin was tipped a little defiantly, but not very convincingly. He knew that from the moment he had entered he had been upsetting her but it didn’t matter. He could reverse all that in a few hours if he wanted to, and he almost certainly would. She hadn’t been quite so heavy with her make-up but she was wearing her hair pouffed up on top of her head so that it looked like a ridiculous bird’s nest affair. She wore a tight black jumper that left her arms bare from just below the shoulders, and long, close-fitting pink trousers. He followed the long line of her legs, marked the flat stomach above the slight pelvic thrust, and the press of her large breasts against the jumper. She had a good body.
He said, ‘If I should object strongly?’
‘Those are my instructions. You would have to take it up with him. Do you want to eat here … I mean alone if you want? I could go and get my things.’
‘There’s no need. You can get them after lunch.’ He walked over to her. ‘ I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. But this kind of situation can put you in a bit of a bastard mood. All right?’ He smiled, picked up his case and carried it into one of the bedrooms.
She went into the kitchen, put on a small apron and began to make a salad dressing. She found herself wondering whether he would like it the way she was doing it. He’d got her disturbed right down to the pit of her guts. That bastard Sarling. ‘You live with him, do what he wants, and watch him.’ What was she, some bloody detective, or a woman who just wanted out of the whole stinking trap? She caught sight of her face in the small mirror over the kitchen table. It was such an unhappy face that she had to laugh at herself. Whoah, Belle. Always darkest before the dawn … Christ, why is it that nothing I ever do for myself turns out the way I’d seen it? Look at that hair. That bloody little hairdresser had said it would make her look so good. It made her look like a freak. She began to peel two eggs she had hard boiled for the salad. One of them, still soft, broke in her hand and covered her fingers with yolk. That bastard in there, making her feel ten inches high.… She wanted him to be nice to her. She wanted to be nice to him. Any kind of niceness he wanted. But all she’d got—without a chance for her to give anything—was this nervousness in her.
Chapter Three
Before she went he gave her a receipt for the contents of the safe. They were a sealed letter from Sarling and a bulky brown-paper parcel. The parcel held, in notes of one, five and ten pounds’ denomination, two thousand pounds. He didn’t bother to check the amount. Where money was concerned he was sure that both she and Sarling would be meticulous.
With the girl out of the way he sat down, lit a cigar—there was a box of Bolivar Regentes on the sideboard—and opened the envelope. Clipped together were some sheets of lined quarto writing paper covered in Sarling’s large script. He read:
Conduct of operations and communications from Mount Street. Miss Vickers will take care of commissariat and all incidental financial aspects. All communications with me will be made through her.
Payments to outside people for operational duties, or retainers pending operational duties, will be made in cash from the two thousand pounds provided.
Chain of command, some security notes. At no time will you, in dealing with subordinates, let it be known that there is anyone in authority over you. At no time in dealing with subordinates will you use your real name or reveal your Mount Street address. The only people known personally to one another will be me, you, Berners and Miss Vickers.
Selection of operators. There are in existence at Park Street—Downham House—the files of over fifty people—men and women—who have, to choose an all-embracing word, certain discrepancies in their past. On indication to Miss Vickers of the type of person required she will supply a selection of files from which a choice can be made.
Raikes leaned back in the chair and blew a cloud of smoke towards the stampeding horse picture. He read on, almost bored now, anger and belligerency long gone from him.
There was some more stuff about security details and the need for the minimum appearance of himself and Miss Vickers in public together. Why that, when the whole of Galway House would know within a fortnight that they were living together up here? Didn’t Sarling know the world held porters, postmen, chars and nosey neighbours?
The last sheet of paper was headed PRELIMINARY OPERATION, and read:
1. All the relevant facts appertaining to this operation are listed below. The success of this operation is vital to the main one to follow. It will be planned by you and Berners. Only one condition is imposed by me. The operation must be completed within the next two weeks.
2. There is an Army Supply Depot at M.R. 644550. Ordnance Survey Sheet No. 171 (One-inch map). Hut 5 contains six crates, painted green, with usual War Department markings, and all stencilled in white paint with the identification BATCH Z/93. SERIES GF1. One of these crates is to be stolen. All their contents are similar. The crate is to be lodged in some safe place.
3. The operation will be carried out with the minimum of violence. Either you or Berners will take an active part in it.
Raikes folded the sheets of paper carefully and put them in his inside breast pocket. Batch Z/ 93. Series GF1. It all sounded a far cry from the kind of operation which he and Berners had carried out.
He went out and bought himself the Ordnance map. The Army depot was in Kent, near Wrotham. Just after he got back, Belle Vickers came in carrying a large suitcase. He got up, took it from her and carried it into the other bedroom. She took off her coat and he saw that she had changed into a plain green dress with the silver franc piece pinned to her breast.
He said, ‘ If you make us a cup of tea we can have a chat. There are some things I want to get straight.’
Over the tea he said, ‘ Where did you go for your stuff—Park Street?’
‘Yes. I’m either there or down in Wiltshire. It was more interesting, in a way, when I was in the City with him.’
‘You sleep with him?’
‘I used to. Not now.’ It was so unimportant it roused no feeling in her.
‘What happened to his face?’
‘So far as I know it was burned when he was a young man. I don’t know how.’
‘Have you any idea what he’s after? This collecting people and using them?’
‘I think it began just in a business sort of way. You know, get the dirt on someone, and then use it to swing a deal.’
‘And it’s grown from that to something else?’
‘If you say so.’
‘He warned you, of course, that I would pump you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ll tell him that I have.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d like to be free of him, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So would I. We might do something together.’
‘He said you would suggest it.’
‘So, what’s the answer?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, take your time. Now let’s get down to business. Have you any idea of the instructions I have received?’
‘No.’ She was easier with him now, even though she could not help a certain curtness in her tone; and, anyway, she suspected him, she just had to. He didn’t care a damn for her. Just himself. How he was to get out of whatever fix it was that he was in, was all that bothered him.
‘These files. I can have what I want from them?’
‘That’s what he said. But he’ll know which ones you get.’
‘Right. You’ve got a good memory?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want a man, somewhere in the forties, English, and who’s been in the Army or the Navy. Someone who can wear a uniform and knows the drill. Someone who knows about cars and not an
educated type. Someone, who could look after himself in a fight. Got it?’
‘Yes. Today?’
‘No, tomorrow will do. I’ve got two weeks to work with. We’ll begin as from tomorrow. That leaves us the rest of the day. Are you a good cook?’
‘No. Nothing turns out right.’
‘Then I’ll take you out to dinner.’
With a touch of alarm, she said, ‘You can’t do that. He told me we’re not to be seen in public together.’
He grinned. ‘His own words are “a minimum appearance” in public. Once is as minimum as you can get.’
He got up and moved toward his bedroom. From the door, he said, ‘If there’s a film you would like to see we could take that in first.’
They went to see The Sound of Music at her choosing. Within a few minutes she was completely absorbed in it. That pleased him. No matter what she’d done in the past to put herself in Sarling’s hands (and it must have been something that had aroused Sarling’s respect which meant that she had a courage and hardness of her own) she was at the core a romantic. He wasn’t going to have any trouble with her at all. Perhaps this was Sarling’s big mistake, putting her with him.
Afterwards he took her to the Pastoria in St. Martin’s Street; whitebait, fillet steak, and a bottle of Chateau Beychevelle of which he drank little.
Walking across Leicester Square afterwards to find a taxi, he said, ‘I want a car tomorrow morning by ten. It’s got to be a station wagon. Hire it in your name, but don’t use Galway House as an address. You’d better say we want it at least for a month. I’ll be back sometime in the late afternoon. Could you have the files waiting for me then?’
She nodded and he took her arm and steered her across the road. She was still probably dancing and singing somewhere with Julie Andrews. (Actually she was telling herself that he had decided to be nice to her, to play her along, and that meant, of course, that he had decided to have her gang up with him against Sarling. She enjoyed it when he was nice to her. He’d been amusing and attentive—only just now and again a touch of curtness coming in, like about the car and the files. Whether she would play along with him, she didn’t know. Sarling might be odd at times but he was no fool. He had money, power, his own intelligence and the brains of other men that he could call on. This man might not have a chance against him, and for the sake of her own skin she had to be on the right side. She would have to think about it. Anyway, there was no need to make a decision yet.)
He sat and had a nightcap while she went off to bed. Down in Devon he had scores of male acquaintances and friends, but nobody who had come really close to him since school. Berners was his only friend. They were two of a kind. He smiled as he thought of the first job they, had ever done together. A simple operation directed from one room in the Strand—The International Sportsmen’s Directory; a mailing list of sports celebrities, bought from a legitimate mail-list agency for a few pounds, and then a first-class brochure to catch the eye and a form for filling in biographical details—to be returned with a three-guinea subscription which covered the entry and a copy of the directory when published. Simple and as old as the hills, and they’d netted two thousand pounds and cleared out within three weeks. God, his father would have turned in his grave.
She was back with the car at ten minutes past ten. Quiet, efficient, no fuss, he liked that. In the flat before he left, he handed her twenty pounds.
‘Buy yourself a second-hand wedding ring. We don’t want any unnecessary talk about us. Have a chat with the porter sometimes, and mention your husband. And twice a week post some letters to us here. Separately and both together, Mr and Mrs stuff. I don’t have to tell you to change the handwriting and postmarks, do I?’
Stiffly, she said, ‘I hadn’t thought about the ring, but I’d already decided to arrange the letters. You’d like me to say something nice in the ones to you?’
He chuckled. ‘Plain paper will do. Sorry if I’m a bit brusque, but you know the reason why. Nobody likes a half-nelson on them and their face pushed into the dirt.’
He drove down into Kent, along the A. 20 to Maidstone. At Wrotham Heath he turned right past the golf course along the Mereworth road. The Army depot was two miles down the road on the right-hand side. It stood in a small wood, the trees and brush cut down to form a twenty yard ride all along the road perimeter railings. He went slowly past the entrance gate, had a glimpse of Nissen huts, decorated with fire hoses and stirrup pumps, roads lined with whitewashed stones, and a small hut just inside the gate. The gate was closed and there was no sign of a sentry, no sign of anyone.
He drove past it as far as a pub called the Beech Inn. He turned and went back. A hundred yards from the gate he checked to see there were no cars on the road. He slowed to a crawl and dropped the car’s nearside wheels into the shallow road ditch close up against the raflings. Holding the car with the brake he spun the back wheels, digging them further into the soft ground.
He got out and surveyed the car. She was nicely canted over and securely held in the ditch. A car came towards him, slowed momentarily as though to stop and help and then accelerated by. He was glad. He wasn’t in need of any good Samaritans. He knelt down by the bogged rear wheel, scooped up some of the loose earth, rubbed it on his trousers and face and worked it into his hands and then headed down the road for the main gate of the dump.
There wasn’t the slightest nervousness in him. It was just as it always was with himself and Berners when they got under way, a cold sustained sense of confidence in their own ability and an unforced manner that made truth out of every falsehood they developed.
There was a middle-aged civilian clerk in the office. Raikes told him that he was stuck up the road and wanted to phone a garage for a breakdown truck to come and pull him out. The clerk obliged with the number of the nearest garage and indicated the telephone. Raikes went to it and called the garage, at the same time making a mental note of the subscriber’s number on the telephone dial. While he waited, he lit a cigarette, chatted over his shoulder with the clerk and casually studied a layout map of the site that was pinned to the wall. It showed the roads in the dump and the huts, and obligingly each hut was numbered. Hut 5 was on the main road into the trees from the camp entrance, the third on the left. The huts on the right-hand side were even numbered.
He got the garage and arranged for them to come out and pull him from the ditch. Ringing off, he turned to the clerk, held out his filthy hands and said, ‘Anywhere I could have a wash-up?’
He knew there was. It had been marked on the site plan. An ablution hut between numbers six and eight up the main site road. The clerk told him where it was and he strolled up the road.
He washed up in the hut. There was no one else there. From the window he studied Hut 5 across the way. It lay end on to the road, and was entered by a normal sized door. Small windows flanked the sides of the door. There were no bars across them and the door had a simple mortice lock. A soldier in battledress cycled up the road whistling and went out of sight.
Raikes went out of the back door of the ablution hut and around the back of Hut 6, which was a Nissen hut of the same style as No. 5. It had a door in the rear as well as the front. He went back down the road to the gate hut.
He thanked the clerk for his kindness and then walked up the road to the car to wait for the garage truck to arrive.
He was back in London by half-past four.
Belle Vickers was there. There were three orange-covered files on the table. On top of them were two pound notes and a two shilling piece.
He picked up the money. ‘What’s this?’
‘The change from the ring.’ She held out her left hand, with a plain gold band on the third finger. ‘ You’ll be glad to hear it was a very simple ceremony. Just the jeweller’s assistant who patted my bottom once. He was damn sure, of course, that I wanted it for a dirty weekend. Sarling noticed it, too. He laughed. At least, I think he did. It’s difficult to tell.’
He gave her back the mon
ey, thrown for a moment by her mood.
‘Buy some cheap brandy. I don’t like using Hines with ginger ale.’
‘So that’s it. Now we’re married we have to economize?’
He gave her a grin. ‘ You’ll be surprised at what we’re going to have to do—once the honeymoon is over.’
He sat down and picked up the files. Apart from Berners—and he could be left in peace for the moment—he wanted one other man.
He went to visit him the next morning.
George Gilpin threw an old tyre on the bonfire, then stepped back, waiting for the black rubber to begin to frizzle and fry and burst into flame, thick, smoky, sulphur yellow flame, black trails of oily smudge whirling high into the sky. Someone would phone from the bungalows up the road in a moment complaining. They always did. Every Thursday when he had his bonfire. Well, let ’em. A garage always had junk to burn, cartons, crates, old tyres, oily rags. A sword-shaped tongue of flame slashed in a great curve from the edge of the fire. He watched it grow, delight on his red, sweating face. Wonderful thing, fire.
His wife came round the corner across the garage yard and out to him on the waste plot. A wave of smoke, billowing in the wind, made him move back a few feet. He saw her coming. Someone must have phoned already. She’d got on her sky-blue office overalls with Gilpin’s Garage embroidered in red across the front. Even the overalls did something for her. Shape, that’s what she had, shape; and no matter how she dressed it came out and shouted at you. A jolly, rollicking, plump, plumper than it needed in places, kind of shape which was one of the delights of his life. He laid a big hand on her bottom as she stood beside him and then slid it up around her waist. Her coarse blonde hair tickled the side of his face.
‘Who is it, old girl? One of the old tabbycats got her washing out. All her woollen drawers getting smuts in ’em. Which is all they ever will.’
‘No. Some bloke out front. Interested in a car.’
‘Then tell Dickie—oh, he’s out, isn’t he? What car?’
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