Old Flames (Frederick Troy 2)

by Lawton, John

  ‘Not exactly,’ Driberg paused. Let Troy sip a little more of the malt. ‘I told him I’d do it.’

  Nice, thought Troy. Get yourself out of that one, Tom. But, of course, the whole point in Troy’s being there was that Driberg expected something of him. Surely, even in his wildest imaginings, he did not think Troy could get him out of this?

  ‘Tell me, Tom. Did Nikita Sergeyevich offer you a tot of vodka by any chance?’

  ‘Well, yes. Several, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Fine. Now, let me get this straight. After a few too many, one over the eight, your hollow leg brimming with the spirit, you tell the leader of the Soviet Union and his head of KGB that you’ll spy on the Labour Party for them?’

  Driberg drew in his breath, let it out slowly, as though what followed needs must be precision.

  ‘Sort of,’ he muttered.

  ‘Sort of?’

  ‘Well. Obviously I won’t but . . .’ The sentence vanished into the vagueness from which it came. A hand waved out into nowhere indicating a vast whatever.

  ‘Let me put it this way, Tom. What on earth do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Well,’ Driberg perked up, almost smiled. ‘You know the bugger. You’ve spent more time with Khrushchev than anyone else in England. You must be the envy of half the spooks in MI5. Can you trust him? Is what I want to know.’

  ‘I’d hate to have to trust him,’ said Troy hoping the remark was not too obscure for what appeared to be a bad day for Driberg’s intelligence. And at the back of his mind dreading the day he would ever have to place his trust in a man like Nikita Khrushchev.

  ‘But if push comes to shove?’

  ‘Tom, he’s a politician!’

  ‘Bad as that, eh?’

  ‘Yes. And if you take my advice you’ll tell the spooks before one of their moles tells them first.’

  ‘Yeees,’ said Driberg slowly, musing. ‘I was going to have a natter with them a bit later on in the week. It was just . . . the money, you see.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The money. They weren’t expecting me to do it for nothing. Gave me five hundred pounds up front. Told me they had a network. Absolutely untraceable. They could pay money to me in Britain, and it would never be traced back to Russia. I’ve spent a few bob of it already. You know, souvenirs. That sort of thing.’

  Troy did not believe a word of this. The idea of Driberg blowing hundreds of pounds on concentric wooden Russian dolls and odd boxes to keep fags in was pretty well preposterous. This was simply Driberg’s way of stating that he was broke. It was in Driberg’s nature always to feel broke, regardless of circumstances—and his circumstances were that he was out of the House, after stepping down at the 1955 election, and probably feeling very broke and very sorry for himself—but Troy knew damn well that literary London was awash with rumours that he had recently taken a large advance—one never heard rumours of small advances—from a publisher, the Viennese émigré George Weidenfeld, to write a biography of Burgess. He was just about the last person Troy would have trusted to write such a book, and he doubted whether George would get his money’s worth, but he rather thought that this had bankrolled the trip to Russia. All Driberg was saying was that if at all possible he’d like to have his cake and eat it—to tell MI5 and somehow hang onto the loot.

  ‘If they’ve got a network, why did they take the risk of giving you cash?’

  ‘Network temporarily out of commission, Serov said. Asked if I minded cash, much the same way one asks a chap if he minds a cheque when one knows damn well the bloody thing’ll bounce. I wasn’t crazy about carrying that much boodle through customs, but then they hardly look for currency coming in. Much more concerned about it going out. And they’d be back to business as usual in a few weeks, Serov reckoned. I didn’t ask what he meant.’

  Troy knew exactly what he meant. Angus had used precisely the same argument to him when Troy had queried the money-laundering operation in which Cockerell was so patently involved. Driberg was an unlikely source for the confirmation Troy had sought, but here it was. The piece of the puzzle that made it all make sense. This was what the man had been up to with all those phoney figures and floating thousands. It was logical. Soon enough, they’d replace him. A new courier would be found, and any minute now some of the world’s worst carpet-patterns would be magically transformed into a healthy row of noughts in Driberg’s bank account.

  ‘I think you’ve no choice about this, Tom. Tell the spooks. Give them the money and let them take care of it. At the very least you’ll get an anecdote for your memoirs out of it.’

  ‘Oh really,’ said Driberg rather too keenly. ‘Do you think anyone will want to read them?’

  §78

  A dozen times in the weeks since he had been summoned to Portsmouth to look at the bloated mess that once had been Arnold Cockerell, it had crossed Troy’s mind to call Charlie. Each time he had put it off. He had never, on any Scotland Yard case, asked a favour of Charlie. It would break the silent agreement they had made many years ago, at the end of the war, when the fiction of Charlie the Diplomat had first been launched; it would make of his work the last thing either wished it to be, an issue between them, that ran the constant risk that it might divide them.

  It was almost dusk when he got back from Driberg’s, a little the worse for the whisky, clutching The Less Deceived, which Driberg had thrust on him. He reached for the phone, not at all sure what he would say if Charlie answered.

  There was haste, a tearing urgency even in the word ‘hello’.

  ‘It’s Freddie.’

  ‘Freddie,’ Charlie slipped into charm mode, effortlessly. ‘Long time no see, but sad to say it may yet be longer. I have a cab at the door.’

  ‘I just wanted to—’

  ‘And a plane waiting. Sorry. Blame Colonel Nasser. I’m flying to Akrotiri tonight. If it can wait I’ll call you the minute I’m back. Honestly. Must dash!’

  Troy said a snatched goodbye and hung up. He remembered what Charlie had read at Cambridge in the early thirties—Arabic. All British diplomats were Arabists. That, too, was part of the fiction. It somehow lifted them onto a plane of academic respectability. To read German or Russian might mean you really wanted to be a spy, to read Economics or Philosophy might mean you were too bright to be a spy, and as everyone who was too thick to read anything else read History, Arabic did nicely, tinged, as it was, with a little learning and a little empire, smacking of T.E. Lawrence and St John Philby. He could not believe for one second that Charlie had ever thought he’d be called upon to use it, but what other purpose could there be in sending him to Cyprus? Cyprus, after all, did not matter. Everyone who was anyone knew that sooner or later the British would give Cyprus to the Cypriots. Egypt—Egypt was another matter.

  §79

  Clark called on Troy the next morning. It was gone nine. Troy was being lazy. Still in his dressing gown. Still sipping coffee and flicking through the morning paper. He had read a page of Nabokov and felt better about it, and a page of Larkin and felt even better about that. He opened the door to see Clark standing in the eastern light, staring up at the warmth of sun edging in over Bedfordbury, much as Troy’s pigs would do at any opportunity. He turned to Troy and smiled.

  ‘Cracked it, sir,’ he said simply.

  Troy swung back the door and Clark bustled in. He took a sheaf of papers from his jacket pocket and quickly unfolded them at the dining table. Troy sat down, pushed a cup and the cafetiêre towards Clark. Clark ignored it. He was brimful of enthusiasm, the customary demeanour of misery, his habitual disguise—all good coppers needed one, Troy thought—temporarily suspended.

  ‘I can’t stop long. It was a piece of cake. The only thing that threw me was the knock-on. Every repetition would move on two, but every pattern of five, she’d move on three. I think she must have been a darts player. Still, it was vowels more often than not.’

  ‘She?’ Troy queried. He had not been at all certain whether it was the work of Cockerell
or of Madeleine.

  ‘It was written by a woman, sir. You’ll see. An amateur too, but a good one. Someone who took a real delight in deception. The satisfaction of a good red herring.’

  It took Troy back a little to realise how much Clark had been able to deduce of the character of Madeleine Kerr from a simple cryptogram. She had been a delightful liar, he thought. She had paid a terrible price for her lies. Was this the reason?

  ‘Skip the technical stuff, you’re talking to man who’s never finished a crossword in his life.’

  ‘Right you are, sir.’

  Clark sat down opposite Troy, breathed deeply and began to read.

  ‘Dear Sis—does that make sense to you, sir?’

  ‘Yes—just read the lot, Eddie.’

  Dear Sis, if you are reading this then the chances are that daft bugger Ronnie’s gone and got us both killed. And there’s nothing I can say here that’ll hurt you more than I have already so I’ll tell you the lot and let you make your own mind up.

  I know you thought I was a prat for going off with him. And I know you thought Brighton was nothing much. But it got me out of Derbyshire, didn’t it? It got me out of an office and a life of shorthand typing. It got me out of the prospect of marrying some dozy bugger off the mill floor, who might just make foreman if he worked his balls off for the rest of his life. It got me out of a semi on a fucking council estate. Sorry. I said I wouldn’t hurt you anymore. Didn’t mean that. Well, my love, it wasn’t Brighton. There was more to that, just as there was to Ronnie. You could never see that side of him, could you? I told you he’d whisked me off my feet and you should have believed me. I knew the risk and I took it—and I don’t mean the risk of another woman’s husband. Sis—I’ve seen Paris. I’ve seen Amsterdam, I’ve seen West Berlin. I’ve played Chemin de Fer in Monte, I’ve skied in Zermatt, I’ve browned me tits on the beach at St Tropez, I’ve been pissed as a fart in Biarritz—and I’ve watched Ronnie run circles round MI5 and the Russians.

  Now, I don’ t want you to be alarmed at this. There’s a lot of loose ends to be picked up. If you want to do it, it’ll set you up for life. If you don’t, put this lot on the fire and walk away from it.

  Ronnie and me smuggled money. The Russians gave it to us in cities all over Europe and Ronnie pushed it through the business. Where it went after that I don’t know. Ronnie never told me and I didn’t ask. We were careful. None of the people Ronnie dealt with ever saw me. I saw them, but they didn’t see me. But like I said, if you’re reading this we slipped up somewhere, didn’t we? There’s money in five banks. At the Banque du Commerce Coloniale in Paris, and the National Bank of South Africa in Zurich, at Gebrüder Hesse also in Zurich, at The Merchant Orient in Amsterdam and at the Monégasque Premiere in Monte Carlo. Somewhere in the region of forty or fifty thousand quid, I think. It’s all legit—Ronnie’s cut. He swindled nobody. We deserved every last penny of it.

  There’s also a list of everyone I ever saw or everyone Ronnie ever told me about in the game. This is dangerous stuff, but it might protect you if you know. On the other hand, it might just get you killed. But—like I said—you can walk away from it if you want.

  See you in heaven, my lovely.

  Clark paused breathily. When he picked up again his voice had dropped almost to a whisper.

  ‘It’s signed “Stella”, and then there’s a list of numbers matching the keys you gave me to the banks.’

  Troy felt the weight of silence. Clark’s professional satisfaction had not blinded him to the inherent sadness in the letter. A dead woman who referred to the conspiracies of complex, devious organisations as a game. A romantic fool who’d paid with her life for what amounted to no more than a series of dirty weekends with a man twice her age in the fashionable watering holes of Europe—a deadly holiday in a class not her own—a deadly ‘game’ of which she could scarcely have grasped the purpose. Troy was stunned. He was not surprised. Since the day Angus had told him Cockerell was running a racket, what else could it have been? What else, after what Driberg had told him, could it be? How it must have appealed to the vanity of the man, to be so deliciously out of his depth in the gaming rooms of Monte Carlo, with a woman as beautiful as Madeleine Kerr on his arm. To be seen with her, simply to be seen with her—and all the time kidding themselves it was their secret, the fond illusion that they saw without being seen. What did she mean by ‘Ronnie ran circles’ round the spooks? What did she mean? When it came down to brass tacks the war had done for Arnold Cockerell as surely as it had done for those it killed quickly and those it killed slowly in the years that followed. He had died of not recovering, of not wanting to recover from that brief taste of adventure, that exhilarating rush of adrenaline. But Troy doubted that he had run circles around anyone—the spooks had him. They loved romantic fools. They were better than cannon fodder.

  ‘Sir?’

  Clark was looking quizzically at him, beckoning him back to the moment.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ he said again.

  ‘Of course. How did you manage to get away?’ Troy asked.

  ‘Mr Wildeve’s in Hammersmith, sir. Body under the floorboards. Terrible niff. The neighbours called the Yard.’

  ‘And Stan?’

  ‘Mr Onions? Funny you should ask, sir. Nobody’s seen him since Saturday.’

  ‘Not funny at all,’ said Troy.

  He went back to the kitchen and returned with the Post. He folded the paper open at page five—Overseas News.

  ‘Read this,’ he told Clark.

  ‘What this? “British Soldier Murdered in Cyprus”?’

  Clark’s eyes flashed down the page; he read the whole piece in a matter of seconds.

  ‘I don’t get it, sir. Who is Flight Sergeant Kenneth Clover?’

  ‘He was Onions’ son-in-law. “Our Valerie’s” husband.’

  ‘I see. Poor bugger. Tortured to death and dumped in a ditch with a placard round his neck. Nasty way to go.’

  ‘Not the first. Not the last. There’ve been a dozen or more this year. EOKA mean to have us out. Flight Sergeant Clover was the poor sod in the middle.’

  ‘Did you know ’im, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I knew him. I knew Valerie too. Onions will be in Salford with his daughter.’

  ‘Why has he told no one?’

  ‘He’ll have told anyone who matters, the Commissioner, his secretary—he might even have told me if I’d been around—but he’d never let the reason be commonly known. This will make Stan mad as hell. Rage is one of the few ways he knows to register feeling. He’d be embarrassed to think his family and its troubles were being talked about.’

  ‘Troubles don’t come much bigger than this,’ Clark said softly.

  ‘Quite,’ said Troy. ‘But he’ll handle it alone. I was a sergeant when his wife died. I’ve seen him this way before.’

  Clark got up. Looked without loss at his cold cup of coffee.

  ‘I’d best be off. I think Mr Wildeve may be in Hammersmith a while. I’ll be able to call you a bit more often. I must say, sir. I thought I’d left my days of discretion behind me in Berlin. I’ve told more lies since I came to work for you than I have since I flogged black market stockings.’

  Troy showed Clark to the door and stepped into the sunlight of the yard. Warm sun on his face, cold flagstones under his bare feet.

  ‘I trust it’s not an imposition?’

  Clark blinked up at the sun, one hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes.

  ‘Lord no, sir. I was born to play Leporello. And what’s life without a bit on the side?’

  Troy watched him amble off towards St Martin’s Lane. He understood exactly what Clark meant. It summed up the fat, little rogue he had met in Berlin in the bleak years very well—but it was also the philosophy that had got Cockerell and Kerr killed. He wondered if he should tell him about Tosca. He never had. Simply let it be known that he had married quietly. On the Continent. An old flame. Clark had said a swift ‘congratulations’, and that was that
. But he knew. In his bones Troy knew he knew.

  Back in the house Troy could hear the telephone ring. He kicked the door to behind him, picked up the receiver. All his instincts told him it would be Onions. It was.

  ‘You’ll have heard by now,’ he said without preamble.

  ‘Yes, Stan. It was in the morning paper. Terrible news. I’m so sorry.’

  He heard Onions sigh deeply, heard the laboured effort of self-restraint. The pause skirted infinity.

  ‘D’ye think you could come up? She’s askin’ for you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Funeral’s the day after tomorrow. I don’t suppose you could get here today?’

  ‘I don’t think I could,’ Troy answered, thinking on his toes. ‘But tomorrow’s fine. I could be there in good time tomorrow.’

  He jotted down the address Onions gave him—a back street in the red brick wilderness of Salford’s Lower Broughton. He was deeply sorry for Stan. The relationship with Ken had been nothing special, in fact it had often seemed to Troy that the two men had nothing in common but the link that was Valerie, but Valerie was emotional enough for the three of them, and to be left alone to handle her at a time like this . . . all that duty demanded of Onions would not be enough.

  He had from time to time wondered how much Stan knew. That Troy and Valerie had been an item in the last, tense summer before the war, he surely knew. It had been no secret, and they had both been single. It was the reason he sent for Troy now—another emotional buffer-zone to place between himself and the whirlwind that Valerie could whip up. Troy prayed to God that Onions did not know that they had also briefly been an item once more in the spring of 1951, while Ken was in Korea. He doubted that Onions would sanction adultery, but more than that his attitude towards young Jackie Clover, his only grandchild, was protective in the extreme. Onions refrained from open judgement on Troy’s morals—once, a few years ago, he had asked if he ever thought he would marry—Troy had uttered a decisive, if erroneous no—and any speculation on the sex life of a single, well-heeled man approaching forty had been left unspoken.