No Hearts, No Roses

by Colin Murray

  I snaffled a glass of red wine from a passing waiter and sipped. It was nasty – oily and cheap. I looked around for a friendly face.

  I saw Les on the other side of the room, surrounded by four or five large, beefy men, all smoking cigars. His pneumatic secretary was by his side, looking at him adoringly. And Jimmy Bolt stood on the other side of the room, at the centre of a group of young men and women, sounding off about something. Pompous little prat.

  Daphne saw me, broke away from the group she was with and sauntered over.

  ‘You’re looking very glamorous, Daff,’ I said. And she was. A black cocktail dress showed off her legs to good advantage, and she’d had her hair done since I’d last seen her. The rope of pearls coiled around her neck rested on a very impressive embonpoint. I could see what had attracted Les twenty years ago. Pity he hadn’t realized that it all came wrapped around a very astute brain and an acerbic tongue.

  ‘Enjoying yourself?’ she said. She had that slightly glazed look that suggested she’d been drinking solidly for the past hour and a half.

  ‘Only just got here, Daff,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘don’t drink too much of the champagne. It does funny things to your eyesight. I keep thinking there’s more than one Les here. And that’s an awful thought.’

  ‘I can think of worse,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said firmly. She tried to take a sip from her empty glass. ‘Bugger,’ she said. ‘Excuse me, I have to go see a man about a horse. Or a dog.’ She tapped her nose and looked meaningfully at her glass.

  ‘Let me get you a refill, Daff,’ I said and extended my hand.

  ‘No chance,’ she said. ‘You don’t know where the secret bottles of champagne are.’ She tapped her nose again and drifted unsteadily away.

  I risked another taste of the filthy wine and wondered how soon I could leave.

  I looked around and saw a couple of actors I recognized, including an oily creep I’d failed to find in a basement club in Soho once. The yellow electric light gleamed on his brilliantined hair, which shone as brightly as his patent-leather shoes. A few young women were hanging on his every word. Not that that would get them anywhere. He was a creep with a taste for the exotic. I thought about warning them, but I was distracted.

  I recognized her perfume before she spoke, and I didn’t need to turn to know who it was when I felt her light touch on my arm.

  ‘Miss Beaumont,’ I said.

  She left her hand on my arm. ‘I just wanted to thank you, Mr Gérard,’ she said. ‘For rescuing Jon.’

  So that was where the little piece of ordure had fled.

  ‘It was nothing,’ I said.

  She was looking more animated than I had ever seen her, almost glowing.

  Maybe she was a woman in love, the better half of me thought. And maybe Jonathan Harrison had cured her blues with some of his ‘special’ medicine, the less attractive half of me suggested.

  ‘Tell me about him,’ I said. ‘He, er, slipped away before we got a chance to become acquainted. But he seems a rum sort of English student.’

  ‘He is,’ she said. ‘I met him at a party in Cambridge. Well, just outside. He didn’t know who I was, which was refreshing. So I knew he was just attracted to me, not the film star. You don’t know how unusual that is. And he was young, of course. And good looking. And, in spite of everything, very innocent.’

  ‘In spite of everything?’ I said. ‘What?’

  ‘In spite of the way he pays his way through university,’ she said.

  I looked the question at her.

  She laughed. It was a pleasant sound, rich and deep, and it flowed over you like warm honey. Even though she was laughing at me, it was very seductive.

  ‘I didn’t have you down as naive, Mr Gérard.’

  ‘I thought you liked innocence,’ I said.

  ‘Only the real thing,’ she said, ‘and I do believe you’re flirting with me.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said, and I felt my face reddening.

  She smiled and put her hand to my cheek and tapped it lightly. ‘And now I’ve made you blush,’ she said. ‘I am sorry.’ And she laughed her warm-honey laugh and left her hand against my cheek for a teasing second or two. ‘Anyway, I wanted to say thank you, because I don’t suppose Jon remembered. So, thank you.’ And she stepped forward again and brushed her lips against my cheek. Then she looked behind me and the smile and the animation left her face. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘My agent just came in. I’d better say hello.’

  She walked towards a lean, well-dressed man I recognized from our brief encounter in the Imperial Club. From the vicious look he gave me, I suspected that David Cavendish recognized me too. I decided to melt into the crowd. I turned and bumped into someone. Before I could apologize, he spoke.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said a familiar voice. ‘You’ve obviously made a hit with the beautiful Beverley Beaumont, Mr Gérard.’ It was the use of the acute e that gave him away. ‘I wonder if you’d mind stepping outside for a moment. We have much to discuss.’

  I shrugged, looked around for a surface to put my glass on, relinquishing the remaining wine with little regret, and followed Jenkins out of the sweaty, stuffy room.

  FIFTEEN

  If it was warm back in the function room, the atmosphere was positively icy out in the dim, musty corridor. Jan the Belgian stared through the thick lenses of his spectacles bleakly and unremittingly at Charlie, who glared back. Charlie looked tense and uncomfortable, and he pulled and tugged at the collar of his shirt as though it was chafing his neck. Next to the Belgian was a compact, hard-looking man of about my age. He was wearing a blue suit and what looked like a regimental tie with red and yellow stripes. He was holding a black trilby. Over his arm was a neatly folded fawn mack. In contrast to Charlie, he looked confident and relaxed. In contrast to Jan the Belgian, he looked amused.

  Jenkins lit a cigarette – one of his Dunhills – and blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘What am I to do with you, Mr Gérard?’ he said amiably. ‘You just won‘t be told.’ He nodded at Jan the Belgian, presumably to indicate the impeccable source of his information. The Belgian favoured me with a contemptuous glance.

  Suddenly, I vividly recalled standing in Mr Barraclough’s office, with the sun gliding in through the grimy window, dust motes floating in the still air, the gentle early-summer breeze carrying the boisterous shrieks of schoolchildren from the playground. ‘I remember my old headmaster saying much the same thing,’ I said.

  ‘You should have listened to him,’ Jenkins said. He shuffled a few steps along the corridor. ‘Walk with me, and I’ll endeavour to explain some of the more essential and pressing facts of life.’ He reached towards me with one of his big hands and beckoned.

  I fell into step beside him. He looked down with sad, rheumy eyes. I assumed it was the smoke from his cigarette that was making him a little tearful, rather than any compassion for my situation. He put his arm around my shoulders, as though we were the best of friends. I could smell his cologne and the sharp, acrid smoke on his breath.

  ‘I’m guessing that you think that Jan is not a nice man,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to disagree with you and sing his praises. He isn’t a particularly pleasant fellow.’ He paused and sucked on his cigarette. ‘But he does love his diamonds.’ A thin streak of smoke rose up into the air. ‘Well, they’re mine really, but that doesn’t make him love them any less. We’ve shared them ever since 1947, and we hope to share them for years to come. They enable us to live rather well, although not too ostentatiously. I wouldn’t want to attract the attention of my former employers.’

  We had reached the foyer. Jenkins’ hand slipped down to the middle of my back, and he firmly eased me out of the door, which was held open by the same functionary who I’d seen on the way in. He was as fawning and unctuous to Jenkins as he had been graceless to me. I chalked that up against him as well.

  ‘I’ll be honest,’ Jenkins said as we emerged into the grey night and
the little crowd that milled around outside the hotel, waiting for taxis. ‘I came by the diamonds in unusual circumstances after the war, in Berlin. You don’t need to know the details. All you need to know is that Jan facilitates their passage to this fair and sceptred land, via my little team of penniless students.’ He sighed. ‘You are probably wondering why I trust him when he is so obviously untrustworthy. Well, the short answer is that I don’t. And that is where Alfred, the gentleman with Jan, comes in. If you think that Jan is not pleasant, I can assure you that he is as jovial and good-natured as Father Christmas when compared to Alfred.’

  I noticed that he was steering me towards a car – the Humber Super Snipe, no less – parked on the Strand. I glanced back and saw Jan the Belgian and the apparently not very nice Alfred following us very closely.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘what’s all this got to do with me?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘This is all just by way of a preamble to let you know what’s what. You and I, and Jan and Alfred, are going back to your grubby little flat over in Leyton and you are going to let me have those diamonds that naughty little Jonathan handed to you and then we’re all going to forget this ever happened.’

  I felt slightly aggrieved at his description of my flat but there were more pressing concerns. Like the fact that I didn’t have the diamonds. And doubts that he was going to forget it had all happened.

  I contemplated telling him about my lack of diamonds but then he’d ask me where they were and I couldn’t drop Bernie in it. So I said nothing.

  I thought about making a break for it and haring off down the Strand, like Roger Bannister with his shorts on fire, but I couldn’t see what I’d gain. Even if I got away, which was by no means certain – Jan and the redoubtable Alfred really were following us very closely – they’d find me in a day or two. I might gain a few hours, but we’d still end up in my crib confronting the essential issues. And, in the meantime, I’d be watching my back all the time. That wasn’t how I liked to lead my life.

  The Germans took me in for questioning once. It had just been a routine round-up in some small town in Normandy – Pontorson, where I had foolishly ventured by bicycle, some way from our stomping ground, to see Mont St Michel – but they hadn’t liked my papers. They took me off to Caen, held me for three days and then, inexplicably, let me go. Robert hadn’t said anything, but he watched me closely for ten days and reined in our operations so I knew he’d assumed that I’d sold them out and only gradually came to accept that I hadn’t. In fact, I’m not sure that he ever did trust me completely again.

  My time in that cell and in the little office used for interrogation hadn’t been pleasant, and I still don’t know how I got away with it, but I did. Ghislaine, to snorts from the hard-line atheist Robert, talked about me having a guardian angel, but I don’t really believe that there’s someone up there looking out for me. Like my father, I tend to think that you face up to what life throws at you and it’ll either sort itself out or it won’t. So far, it had always sorted itself out. My father’s fatalism, always expressed with a shrug and an amiable grunt, had a surprisingly optimistic side, and so does mine.

  Since I had no intention of racing off to Bernie, reclaiming the diamonds and handing them over to Jenkins, I climbed meekly into the Humber, noting that Don wasn’t driving, and settled down in the back seat, reckoning that I might as well face up to things now.

  I did vaguely wonder if Charlie might alert someone to my predicament, but that was asking a lot of him and I rather doubted it. He had a party to police.

  Alfred and Jan the Belgian sat down on either side of me. Both of them looked depressingly determined and competent.

  My thinking, in not charging off to Bernie and reclaiming the stones, was that, oddly, I stood more chance of staying alive by not giving Jenkins what he wanted, although I recognized that, either way, my chances of survival were slim.

  I looked from Jan’s red, pitted face to Alfred’s unremarkable, even features and wondered which one would pull the trigger, or tighten the cord. Then I slumped down in the seat and used the silent journey to consider what Jenkins had told me.

  Jerry had been stationed in Germany, although not in Berlin, for part of his National Service, and I’d been there briefly, sat incongruously behind a desk, trying to keep track of NAAFI supplies. My pre-war experience in accountancy coming back to bite me through my coarse battledress in the backside. Rumour constantly bubbled away about corruption and theft. There were even a few arrests. Jerry was of the opinion that everyone was at it, to a greater or lesser extent. I wasn’t so cynical, but I’d certainly heard of fortunes being made in the chaos. Jenkins’ reference to his former employers suggested that he had been in some branch of Intelligence, which meant he had access to former Nazis. It wasn’t a big step to guess at a middle-ranking member of the party bribing his way to freedom.

  Quite how Jan and Alfred fitted in I wasn’t sure, but Alfred had the slightly mad look of some of my former colleagues in Special Operations. He’d make an excellent enforcer. For those in the know, the threat of someone like Alfred was more than enough. And Jan was probably, as Ghislaine had suggested, a racketeer. And that was about as much as I would ever deduce or learn. Not one of the three of them was likely to risk their operation out of any misguided sentiments for my well-being. And Jenkins had already told me more than was good for him, or, more pertinently, for me. I hadn’t exactly made my bed, but I was still going to have to lie in it.

  Such were my gloomy thoughts as we drew up outside Jerry’s shop. It was quiet and dark, although it was only nine thirty.

  At least Jerry and Ghislaine wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours.

  We sat quietly for a few seconds, listening to the rumble of the big, idling engine.

  I can’t speak for the others, but I was preparing myself for what was to come.

  A match rasped harshly against the abrasive edge of its box and flared into flame as Jenkins lit another cigarette. We all automatically looked at the burning match, and I could almost see why moths might be so fatally attracted to the light. There was something faintly hypnotic about it. Soon, wispy curlicues of smoke drifted over Jenkins’ right shoulder, slowly forming delicate, insubstantial question marks in the stale air before settling languorously into a thin, bluish-grey fug.

  I stared straight ahead, looking through the windscreen at the balmy spring night. I thought about telling them that I didn’t have the diamonds, but then the smoke tickled my throat and I gave a rough, ragged cough instead and completely broke the moment.

  The driver turned off the engine, all four doors were flung open, and they all clambered out and started stretching, coughing and yawning. I slid across the seat and edged out myself. The only advantage I had was that I knew the area. If I was going to make a run for it, now was the time.

  But I didn’t, partly because I couldn’t see the point and partly because I’d just remembered something.

  I ambled slowly to my door and stood in the gentle light of the ornate old lamp-post while I ferreted about in my trouser pocket for my key. It was cool and damp after the closeness of the car, but the gentle wind carried the sulphurous taint of coal smoke from a million fires and gritty particles of industrial effluvium.

  I stabbed the key at the door. The lock was very loose in its mounting and moved an eighth of an inch or so before the key engaged. I assumed that had something to do with Don and Ray breaking in the other day. It was odd that I hadn’t noticed it before.

  The four of them gathered together around me, like a rugby maul forming, as I opened the door. I led them along the dark corridor and up the stairs. I turned the light on in my office. The element fizzed like an R. White’s lemonade bottle opening, and then the bare bulb cast a dim light into the room, throwing soft-edged shadows on the walls.

  ‘Tea, anyone?’ I asked politely.

  Alfred barked out a humourless laugh. It wasn’t a comforting sound.

  ‘This isn’t really a soc
ial occasion,’ Jenkins said, and he looked meaningfully at Alfred and nodded.

  Alfred shifted his weight forward on to the balls of his feet. I’d seen that slightly mad grin before, on the faces of others, just before they launched themselves at the enemy. There was something about him of the mad, naked berserker that had caught my imagination in a history lesson once. The idea wasn’t as appealing somehow as it had been back then in the dusty old classroom smelling of sweat and bad feet.

  Talking my way out of this had always been unlikely, but at that moment it looked about as possible as Orient winning the cup, when they’d been knocked out back in January. If I was going to make any kind of move, however pointless, now was the time to make it – before Alfred exploded into imaginatively violent and, for me, painful action.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I suppose it isn’t. More of a business meeting, really.’ I moved swiftly across the room and bent down to rummage in the battered old cardboard box where what I humorously called ‘my filing’ lurked, gathering a patina of dust, spiders and that curious mystique that ancient, worthless artefacts attract. ‘I imagine you’d like to collect the diamonds and be on your way.’

  Jenkins exchanged an uncertain look with Alfred, who took a step towards me. But he was too late. I already had the Webley in my hand. He stopped and stood still, his right hand hovering in front of his chest.

  ‘You could,’ I said, standing up and looking him straight in the eye, ‘reach for the gun you’ve probably got in your pocket, but I’ll shoot you before you can get it out.’

  Alfred inclined his head in a gesture of acceptance, moved his hand down to his side and stepped back. Jan rather theatrically raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. He had a sour look on his face. Alfred’s expression gave nothing away. He might even have been smiling. Neither look suggested that either of them was defeated. They were both just recognizing the immediate reality and waiting for an opening.

  They didn’t have too long to wait.

  I hadn’t really weighed the driver up before, and now I regretted that. He was a barrel-chested, thick-necked bruiser, and he stepped in front of Jenkins and walked towards me. I guess he had me down as what my old sergeant used to call ‘a useless jessie’. To be fair, lack of resistance on the journey may have misled him. But I’m not quite as useless a jessie as Sergeant Bartlett imagined me to be, and I lowered the gun and fired. Because of the weapon’s double action, the driver managed a step more than I’d allowed for and, instead of the bullet going through the floor in front of him, he anticipated its trajectory perfectly and placed a foot in its path.