by John Lawton
“I wrote …
Burgess
Macmillan
Iain Stuart-Bell
Blaine
Venetia, Venetia forever saying ‘I know everything’
then …
Jordan
Kearney
“And then the line I couldn’t get out of my head or out of my dreams: ‘Put the gun down, Herr Troy.’”
“I’m sorry, I don’t get it.”
“It’s what the flic in Vienna said as I came round after Blaine was shot, two minutes before he arrested me.”
“You had a gun?”
“That’s not the point. The gun was Blaine’s. The point is he knew my name and he spoke to me in English. And it’s run around in my head ever since. ‘Put the gun down, Herr Troy.’”
“So?”
“So … how did he know my name? Logically, he should have had not an inkling who I was. But he did … he knew me … and I doubt I was out cold more than a matter of minutes … how did he and a team of armed rozzers get there so quickly? Only one answer. They were waiting for us. The flic had been briefed. The KGB didn’t shoot Bill Blaine, the Vienna police shot him on orders from Kearney. Kearney being queer is the key to it all. He was a one-time lover of Guy’s. He was the last man in London who’d ever want Guy back again. If Guy blabbed, Kearney’s career was over. As surely as Iain Stuart-Bell’s. He’d never get a shot at the top job. He’d be shuffled off to the Scunthorpe branch of MI5 and never let near a secret again.
“At some point Kearney realised Blaine had told Venetia Stainesborough he was a double agent, and he killed her. I don’t really know how he found out, still less why he had to kill her. Except that the more people she told, the more flimsy his own story might seem. Even then, he might have got away with it. As long as the queer thing didn’t come out. But of course, he didn’t know her. Venetia wasn’t about to broadcast Blaine’s treachery.”
“But she told you?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Can you prove any of this?”
“Not yet.”
“And not ever … Freddie, I believe you, I believe every word you say, but I say again, tell no one. This can end no other way but badly.”
§144
On Monday morning Troy asked Jack, Jordan, and Eddie into his office. He kept it short and far from sweet, and ended as he had begun with Rod.
“The KGB didn’t shoot Bill Blaine, our people did.”
And more or less as he had predicted, Jack said, “Here we go again, poking around in the fires of hell” and Eddie said half a dozen “Bloody Norahs” in lieu of Hail Marys.
Jordan turned to both of them and said, “Would you chaps mind giving us the room?”
“Willingly,” Jack replied.
Eddie left, still mumbling his private mantra.
When they were alone, Jordan said, “Spit it out, Freddie.”
“You already know everything I know.”
“One more time. Just sum up what you have refrained from speculating on until now. There is no room whatsoever for us to misunderstand one another.”
“Kearney would have pulled you off the Vienna trip regardless of any call from Hollis. He was always going to send Blaine. He was going to have Blaine killed the minute he heard about Burgess. It was the perfect cover. If he was caught, then he could play the Blaine-was-a-double-agent card, and bargain his way out of the mess. Sacrificing you would have no get-out clause. Blaine was disposable. Either one of you dead would have put paid to Burgess’s attempted return … but Blaine came with a guarantee. I told you last week—it was his Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.”
“Why send anyone at all after Macmillan made it clear he wouldn’t have Burgess back?”
“Why take a risk when he could make returning impossible for Burgess for years to come?”
A pause of the kind to which Jordan was not often given.
“You’re really convinced of this, aren’t you?”
“Yes. And you’re not?”
“Oh, yes. I am quite convinced.”
Another unfamiliar pause.
“Then there’s something you’re not telling me?”
They’d been standing for several minutes, ever since they assembled around Troy’s desk. Jordan sat down with a thump, unwrapped his scarf, took off his gloves, loosened his buttons. Shook his head like a wet dog.
“Venetia,” he said at last. “I’ve remembered where I saw her. A party. Bloke I work with turned fifty. Threw a party at his own home. Not sure when, ‘55, perhaps ‘56. It should have stuck in my memory. It’s rare for agents to gather socially—almost entirely against the grain of the job. What would we talk about, after all? Most of our office gossip is marked ‘Top Secret.’ Venetia Stainesborough turned up on the arm of Denzil Kearney.”
“A beard?”
“So it seems now. If I’d had my suspicions … but I didn’t. And it’s not as if every homosexual in the service hasn’t been considered a security risk ever since Burgess defected. Guy queered the pitch—literally. We’ve wallowed in suspicion, mostly without cause. And Kearney escaped it all. Over the last three years, I’ve seen half a dozen women escorted by Kearney. All much of a muchness. Tall, English, good-looking, aristocratic. All blondes. All beards. All part of the mask of heterosexuality. It worked. We all thought of him as promiscuous. Single, promiscuous, and lucky. The perfect bachelor. In all probability what half the service think of me. Queer? I didn’t get so much as a whiff.”
“Except for the Nivea handshake.”
“I know. I’ve been stupid. Rub it in. But it’s not as if he hung around Piccadilly Circus. If he has boys, then he’s even more discreet than Bill Blaine was with his whores.”
“It does, however, explain one thing.”
“What?”
“Why Venetia opened the door and let him in.”
Jordan sighed.
“There’s more. I had hoped not to tell you this. I’m no fucking good as a secret agent if I can’t keep a secret, but this one’s had its day. We searched Burgess’s flat after he skipped the country. Someone had been in ahead of us … done a quick clean-up—I rather think it was Blunt … there, another damn thing I shouldn’t have told you.”
“It’s OK. I know about Blunt. You’re not the only one who can’t keep a secret.”
“Westcott?”
Troy said nothing.
“But he … whoever … didn’t bother to open Burgess’s guitar case. It was crammed with love letters. Enough dirty linen to send our latter-day Oscar Wildes down for another stretch in Reading Gaol. And if I were to tell you the names of those Oscar Wildes … well, I won’t. Some secrets I can keep. Let me just say that Guy Burgess has enough dirt on the English Establishment to plunge it into eschatological chaos. I understand exactly why Macmillan doesn’t want him back. Indeed, I understood the minute you told me. My reservations were all about Kearney.”
“Were there letters from Kearney?”
“I doubt it. I’d’ve remembered, and from what you’ve told me this morning I rather think Guy and Kearney were ships that passed in the night.”
“But … close enough to get Bill Blaine and Venetia Stainesborough killed?”
“Oh yes.”
“So … we agree. Kearney had Blaine killed and killed Venetia himself?”
“We do, but … we can tell no one.”
Such a familiar phrase. A haunting whisper of impossibility.
“Exactly what my brother said,” said Troy.
“Rod’s right. There’s no one we can tell. Not without evidence. And you have none.”
Now Troy paused. Gathering up the thought that had dogged him all weekend.
“There is one person I can tell.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I think it’s time I paid Commander Kearney a house call.”
§145
The address Jordan had given him was a redbrick mansion block on the southern side of Battersea Park. To the north all the
tawdry pleasures of the last remnant of the Festival of Britain still rattled on in the form of the fun fair, with its Big Dipper and its House of Horror, which had stood seven years now and was surely due to be torn down any minute. It was quiet now, nine o’clock of a Monday night in winter.
Troy looked up at the lighted windows of the flats. The orange glow of a hundred shaded reading lamps. It seemed to him, the fun fair notwithstanding, to be a building tailor-made for the single man. And for the singular man.
He pressed a button in the brass plate of numbered and lettered apartments.
After a short wait a tetchy voice said, “Whoever you are, what do you want at this time of night?”
“Chief Superintendent Troy, Scotland Yard.”
“Y’don’t say? Well, can’t keep the Yard waiting, can we? Second floor, on the left.”
An electric bee buzzed and the lobby door swung open.
The apartment door stood ajar, a faint stream of music curling out. Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, in Gustav Mahler’s orchestral arrangement.
Why was he disturbed by this? A shock, however slight, to think that Kearney might be cultured? Somehow rendered less of a criminal by good taste, taste very much his own? Of course he’d be cultured. The man had read classics at Oxford. For all Troy knew, he was listening to Schubert in a panelled study lined with the works of Homer, Catullus, and Ovid.
The door was yanked wide.
Kearney stood in his stocking feet, tie at half-mast, towering over Troy at more than six foot. It reminded him of dropping in on his brother—so far the only real difference was that Kearney’s socks matched and Rod’s never did.
“Do come in, Troy.”
A false smile, an arm spread to point the way.
Troy stepped into a panelled study lined with the works of Homer, Catullus, and Ovid. There they were on the shelves behind the radiogram in their neat, pocket-handy, pastel-coloured Loeb editions, next to the twelve-volume edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.
Troy turned back to speak. Kearney banged him solidly on the side of the head with his fist and dropped him into the nearest armchair, as light and limp as a feather pillow.
Kearney flipped the buttons on Troy’s overcoat and then tore his shirt open, buttons pinging off the walls, the cloth tearing in his hands.
He stood up, breathed in deeply.
“Sorry about that, old man. But we could hardly talk about what you’ve surely come to talk about if you were wearing a wire, could we? Now, Scotch OK for you? Ice or soda?”
Troy said, “I might almost think you were expecting me.”
“Oh no. Oh no. I most certainly was not expecting you. In fact, I thought I’d left not so much as a loose thread. Yet … here you are.”
The arm was yanked mercilessly off the vinyl. Troy could feel the scratch on Schubert more painfully than the lump swelling on his head. A Scotch and soda was thrust into his hand. Kearney sat down opposite him. Picked up his drink, pushed a lock of dark hair out of his eyes.
Troy’s eyes swam towards focus. Jordan had been right in his description—tall, dark, and handsome. Indeed, Kearney looked remarkably like the depiction of James Bond on the paperback of Casino Royale—the strong profile, the ever-errant lock of hair, the unfeeling brown eyes. The same cover on which Vesper Lynd was shown wearing the red dress Venetia had worn the night he had killed her. Troy wondered about the “desk jockey.” There was a scar on his right cheek, faintly tracing the bone, that might speak of something outdoors and hearty … but the punch had been amateurish. Anyone who knew how to throw a punch would have knocked him cold.
“Cheers, old man. Sorry you have to catch me a little déshabillé, but so are you.”
Then.
“Spit it out.”
Nobody seemed to have any patience in MI5. Spit every damn thing out.
“I know you killed Venetia Stainesborough.”
“Really?”
“You knew she was Bill Blaine’s sister-in-law. After you had Blaine shot in Vienna she was the only loose thread. You had her followed, and when you realised she was seeing me she became too much of a risk.”
Kearney was shaking his head.
“No, noo, nooo. I’m amazed you ever made it out of uniform, Troy. I have better detectives emptying the wastepaper baskets at Five. Try again.”
“There is no ‘again.’ You killed them both.”
Kearney knocked back his drink, reached for the bottle and topped them both up. The hospitality of the captor. Troy thought he was buying a few moments of time. Wondering how much to tell.
He sat back down, glanced away at nothing for a minute, then looked straight at Troy.
“OK. This is it. This is what you get and all you get. Killing Bill made perfect sense. Even with you there. I just didn’t think you’d be there at the precise moment the Austrians took him out. Silly really. I should have known they’d fuck it up. All the same, I thought you’d walk away from it. I was pretty certain Stanley Onions would make you. But I didn’t allow for Dick White’s reaction. He came at it all … what do they say these days? … out of left field. So, I didn’t have a deal of choice. When you’d seen off the inevitable Special Branch posse, seen off Joe Holderness … I still had you followed around London. And you didn’t spot that, did you? I never followed Venetia. I followed you.”
Troy said nothing.
“Imagine my surprise, as the clichés of pornography would have it … when you led me straight to Eaton Place. A connection I didn’t know existed. I’d no idea the two of you had ever met. But London is a smaller place than one ever imagines. Society more closely knit than one ever likes to think. Of course I knew Venetia was Bill’s sister-in-law. It was Bill who introduced us, after all … but … it was a simple sum … two and two made four … Troy and Venetia made a rather risky four … I wasn’t certain she knew all about Bill, but it seemed highly likely … we all need someone we can tell, don’t we? … and she knew about me … wooing her for a week or two didn’t fool her for a second … she knew my … my tastes … and … the prospect of an exchange of information between you and Venetia … well …”
Troy said nothing.
“No. I didn’t kill her, Troy. I had no intention of killing her. It was an accident. All I wanted was to know what she had told you.”
“And when she wouldn’t tell you, you tried to shake it out of her.”
“Alas, yes, but she was a strong woman. She broke my grip, took a step away from me, and went over backwards down the stairs.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what did you do next?”
“I let myself out and walked away. What would you have done?”
Troy would have checked her pulse, called an ambulance, tried anything that might have stood a cat in hell’s chance of saving her life. But he said nothing.
“Believe me. It was an accident. I meant her no harm. My weakness was I had to know. Call it a spy’s weakness, if you like, a copper’s weakness even, always wanting to know. And I knew your reputation for doggedness. I didn’t want you turning up on my doorstep.”
“Yet here I am.”
“Yes. Here you are. Mea culpa. All the same, you leave with nothing. Your consolation prize is the same as mine—I know, you know. We both know everything and have gained nothing—and now you can just fuck off because there’s not a damn thing you can do about any of it.”
§146
He called Gus Fforde. It seemed stupid not to check out one last possibility.
“Are we on a secure line?”
“Scotland Yard to a British embassy? I should bloody well hope so.”
“Méret Voytek is still in Vienna.”
“So I gather.”
“She’s going back to Moscow on the twenty-third. Can you get a message to her? She rehearses most afternoons at the Konzerthaus.”
“Don’t see why not.”
“Good. The message is for Guy Burgess—”
&nb
sp; “Oh bloody hell … Freddie … no no no!”
“Gus, just do it.”
“Freddie, have you a death wish? You’ve only just climbed out of the last pool of shit over Bill Blaine.”
“Gus—I wouldn’t ask if there were any other way.”
“OK. On mine own head be it, I suppose. Fire away.”
“It’s simple. Just jot this down … Number 7? Number 8? Denzil Kearney?”
“OK. Easy enough. Will Burgess know what you’re on about?”
“Yes.”
“Denzil Kearney. Sounds familiar.”
“Don’t ask.”
“Wasn’t going to. I was going to ask how do you expect to get a reply without our lot and their lot reading it?”
“She’s back for the New Year’s Eve concert. Catch her then, pick up Guy’s answer. Call me.”
§147
Troy got home to Goodwin’s Court.
Two small suitcases stood just inside the door.
This meant nothing.
Then Foxx rushed up and kissed him, jumping from the chair she sat in.
Then he knew.
“You bugger,” she said. “You’ve forgotten what I look like, haven’t you?”
He fought against himself and kissed her back.
“Don’t be daft. I just wasn’t—”
“Expecting me? Look, I’m sorry. It all took far longer than I thought. But it’s done now. The loo works, hot and cold running in a new sink, the house is let and Rosie and Malcolm installed. I am … home!”
Of course she was. He didn’t think he’d noticed his home in days. He had fallen through a hole in time and space. He had lived with the dead, and could not handle the living woman in front of him.
They ate out, in Giovanni’s, the Italian restaurant just across the yard.
After a silent minestra, over the linguine, Foxx said, “Where are you? You seem very distracted.”
“Oh, you know. The job,” he said truthfully, feeling as he spoke that it was a lie.
