Europe in Autumn

by Dave Hutchinson

  There was still no indication of why his hosts should think that Central would want him dead, nor indeed how they had come across this information. The subject was never mentioned. His Coureur life was never mentioned. It was as if he was a favourite nephew, come over from Europe to visit his Uncle Red for a couple of months. Mr Bauer was the very image of the amiable, absentminded and indulgent uncle. Mrs Gabriel was the very image – the very archetype – of an English housekeeper. So much so she might have clambered down off the pages of a Conan Doyle novel.

  That, in the end, was what decided Rudi. These people all came from Central Casting, and in his experience there was no such thing as an archetype.

  After about a month observing the comings and goings at Smithson’s Chambers and the other chambers on King’s Bench Walk, Rudi began to see a discrepancy. You had to look carefully for it, and even then you might still reasonably convince yourself that you were imagining things, but Rudi had a Coureur’s eye for surveillance, and he knew. Smithson’s Chambers was a shopfront. Fewer clients were passing through its doors, fewer barristers worked there, than at the other chambers. Taken with other observations, the logical inference was that Mr Bauer was a sockpuppet. If he extended that inference, Mr Self was a troll representing, however tenuously and deniably, the people who had set up the shopfront.

  Quite what the shopfront was for was another matter entirely. Just a safe house for babysitting people of... unusual provenance? Or something more? It was impossible to say with any certainty.

  It was all very odd. Struck by the lack of instructions to keep his head down, Rudi decided to push the envelope one day, informing Mrs Gabriel at breakfast that he intended to do some sightseeing.

  “I’ll see if we can find you some maps somewhere,” she replied, standing by the table with a tray of cleared-away breakfast things in her hands. “Mr Bauer collects maps like other people collect stamps or train numbers.”

  Sitting there, looking at his half-eaten breakfast, Rudi almost weakened and told her not to bother, but instead he said, “Thank you, Mrs Gabriel, that would be very kind of you.” The very act of speaking English in London seemed to bring out an exaggerated politeness.

  For tourists, Londoners still produced paper maps, and Mrs Gabriel brought a sheaf of them to Rudi a minute or so later – surely not long enough for her to consult her superiors and get their consent, certainly not long enough for them to organise a tail. Although London was by some distance the most surveilled city on the face of the Earth, and anyone who knew what they were doing would have had a tail waiting outside, twenty-four hours a day, for just this eventuality.

  The maps were tattered and frayed from constant refolding, and useless in any operational sense. The street maps showed tiny cartoon representations of notable buildings and big advertisements from corporate sponsors. The Underground map simply looked unlikely, a multicoloured circuit diagram inviting travellers to have a go if they felt lucky.

  Outside, on King’s Bench Walk, he fought down an urge to stand and look at every passing clerk and barrister and tourist. Movement was the important thing.

  Up through the archway and onto Fleet Street, and he stood for a few moments trying to get a sense of the place.

  This was not, he felt right away, a European city. You could visit Paris or Brussels or Madrid, even St Petersburg, and know you were in Europe. London was different. London was... he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Even standing there watching the everyday workers and tourists go by, he heard snatches of conversation in half a dozen languages. London was certainly cosmopolitan. More than that, it was an immigrant city. First, waves of conquerors. The Romans. The Normans. Then waves of migrants from... well, from everywhere. Jews, Huguenots, Somalis, Bangladeshis, West Indians... the list went on and on. Rudi had even found, in one of Mr Bauer’s books, a mad story about a group of exiles from fallen Troy who were supposed to have sailed up the Thames at some point in the far and misty past to found the city.

  His phone, of course, had never been returned to him, and a replacement had not been provided. And Jan’s watch had vanished somewhere along the way, which bothered him obscurely. But he judged that he had been standing there long enough for a tail to be organised by any half-competent security service, so he turned right and set off down the slope of Fleet Street towards St Paul’s.

  Within the first fifteen or twenty minutes he decided that, if anyone was following him, they were fantastically good at their job. He prided himself on being fairly sharp at spotting a tail, and he couldn’t see anyone even vaguely suspicious. He tried four or five fairly lazy evasion routines, on the grounds that it might lead the people behind Smithson’s Chambers to underestimate him, which was never a bad thing, and when he’d completed the routines there was no sign of anyone picking him up again. Fine. Fuck it.

  So he just forgot about surveillance and walked, map in hand, for hours. He did a long, leisurely tour of the City, the square mile that enclosed the oldest part of London and housed some of the city’s financial institutions. He walked out of the City and into the West End and theatre-spotted. Did a tour of the awesomely primal kitsch being sold on stalls in Covent Garden. Stood in Trafalgar Square and stared at Nelson’s Column.

  The map he was using was about six years old, pre-dating the massive terrorist truck bomb which had blown a six-metre-deep crater in Whitehall and led to the gating off of the entire street. He stood at the gates for a little while, looking down towards Westminster, then he turned away and walked down to the Embankment, crossed the road, and sat for almost an hour on a bench watching the Thames and the various working and tourist boats passing by up and down the river. London, he had decided, was a mad place, very much of itself, entirely unique. He thought he liked it. He wondered if he would be able to make a run for the Estonian Embassy, and whether they would take him in if he got there.

  Finally, hunger got the better of him and he walked back along the Embankment to Temple Station, through the side gate into the Temple, and back to Smithson’s Chambers, where Mrs Gabriel had prepared some doorstep sandwiches – what was it with these people and colossal hunks of white bread? – of boiled chicken and a big pot of Yorkshire Tea.

  AND SO IT went on, day after day, week after week. He dutifully ate Mrs Gabriel’s meals, worked his way steadily through Mr Bauer’s library, went for walks. He had no money with which to access public communications; he walked in and out of internet cafés hoping to catch an unattended terminal with some credit still on it, but without success. He thought he detected a boundary when he asked for some money to buy a pass and explore the Underground network and it was refused, but nobody made a big thing about it. It wasn’t even a refusal, properly speaking. He raised the subject with Mr Self one morning, just in passing, and Mr Self said he’d see about it, and it was never mentioned again. He considered repeating the request, but he’d got the point.

  Anyway, Central London turned out to be surprisingly small, once you got to know it. All the important stuff was within walking distance, so long as you enjoyed walking. From the eastern edge of the City to the western end of Oxford Street was an hour and a half’s easy walk, and you could make it from Euston all the way over Waterloo Bridge to the great glass and steel blocks of the South Bank in less than that. It was hardly a stretch. And as everyone fell into a routine, Mrs Gabriel even made up sandwiches and gave him a small cardboard carton of fruit juice to take with him on his wanderings. This routine, this boredom, was of course exactly what he wanted. And equally, the inhabitants of Smithson’s Chambers knew this and indulged him. And he exploited them. And they let him. And so on. He was honestly curious about how long they could keep playing this peculiar little game. He suspected it could be quite a long time. The strongest impression he had formed so far about whoever was holding him was that, as well as having an unusual way of doing things, they were people of quite considerable patience.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t stay here for ever. Apart from any
thing else, despite all the exercise he was getting, Mrs Gabriel’s food was putting weight on him.

  As if sensing this new strain of restlessness, Mr Self began to make more frequent appearances at the Chambers. Rudi noticed him more and more about the place, talking Mr Bauer through interminable legal documents in his office, chatting lasciviously – he was a man of some lasciviousness – to Mrs Gabriel – who giggled like a teenager and thumped him on the shoulder – and all the time making sure he knew where Rudi was. Rudi found this new behaviour quite interesting, but kept up with his daily walks all the same. For the first time in weeks, he started keeping an eye out for a tail again.

  One day in the first week of March, Mr Self happened to pass through the living room, where Rudi was sitting on the window seat reading a tattered biography of Brad Pitt.

  “Oh,” Mr Self said as if the thought had just occurred to him, “ought to have told you. Having a party day after tomorrow.”

  “Oh?” said Rudi.

  “Big legal wigs,” said Mr Self. “Judges. High Court bods. Couple of MPs too, I think.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Rudi said, imagining a room full of English Parliamentarians and legal types solemnly ploughing their way through a three-course meal prepared by Mrs Gabriel. He assumed bread pudding would feature somewhere, or the mysterious substance known as ‘Spotted Dick.’ Comfort food for men of Empire.

  “Wouldn’t mind staying out of the way, would you?” asked Mr Self in that English way which was really an order.

  “If you give me some money I could go to the theatre,” Rudi suggested. “Fiddler On The Roof at the Savoy.”

  Mr Self thought about it. “Not a bad idea. I’ll see if I can get you tickets.”

  Rudi shook his head. “It’s okay. I was only joking.”

  Mr Self tipped his head to one side and regarded Rudi as if examining the hitherto unsuspected parameters of joking. “Alternatively,” he said finally, “you might want to turn in early. It’s going to be dreadfully boring. Very dry.”

  “Perhaps I could cook for you,” Rudi said.

  Mr Self considered this for roughly a femtosecond before shuddering. “And upset our Mrs Gabriel? Oh no, no thank you.” He laughed, but there was no humour at all in his body language. “No, I think we’d best leave the catering to her, old son.”

  Rudi shrugged. “As you wish.” He went back to his book – Brad and Angelina were adopting another child – but Mr Self didn’t move. Rudi looked up. Mr Self was watching him. “Was there something else?”

  Mr Self kept watching him. Rudi could almost hear him composing a report. “Subject offered to cook dinner.” He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No.” And he left.

  Rudi laid down his book and looked out of the window at barristers and solicitors and clerks and tourists and local workers going past below. He thought he and Mr Self understood each other very well by now, and expressed that understanding with an atmosphere of polite mutual distrust. Still, a party was interesting. And whoever was behind Smithson’s Chambers would know that it was interesting. He wondered if it was a test.

  THE DAY OF the party dawned wet and windy. Mrs Gabriel’s breakfast – fried eggs, fried bacon, grilled tomatoes and a rather horrible Cumberland sausage – was hurried and not even up to her own less than exacting standards. The little woman hurried about the Chambers with a vacuum cleaner and a tattered cardboard box full of cloths and cleaning solutions, making a valiant and rather noteworthy attempt to bring the cluttered and dusty rooms up to a standard which would not offend legal bigwigs and Ministers of Parliament, and everywhere she went she kept having to move Rudi out of the way because he was sitting or standing just where she needed to clean or dust or hoover next, and finally this enraged her so much that she spluttered that it would please her very much indeed if he would just go out and leave her in peace to get the place ready, please. To which Rudi protested that it was raining. Which broke Mrs Gabriel’s reserve entirely and caused her to say, in a very loud voice, “I don’t care if it’s cats and dogs pelting down outside, sir. I need to get this place ready!”

  Unwillingly, grudgingly, Rudi put on his shoes and shrugged into his jacket, and, collecting an umbrella from the elephant’s foot stand by the door, went out into the wet windy world.

  Which wouldn’t have fooled anyone, but that wasn’t the point. The point was simply to cause nuisance. So he unfurled the umbrella and put it up and set a brisk pace up to the archway and out onto Fleet Street, imagining a surveillance team being scrambled as he turned left and stepped out towards Trafalgar Square.

  It was a dreadful day, but he felt lighter of heart than he had for some weeks. He had already been more than averagely fit, and his long rambles around London had tempered him, and he put on as much of a spurt of speed as the other umbrella-bearing pedestrians allowed as he reached Trafalgar Square and worked his way around the various street crossings to Admiralty Arch.

  The vehicle gate of the arch was closed off, but the pedestrian ones remained open, fitted with scanners manned by drenched policemen. He slipped through, past the ivy-choked bulk of the Citadel, and into St James’s Park.

  Once in the park, he slackened his pace, wandering seemingly aimlessly. He treated it like one of Fabio’s training exercises, scoping out likely locations for dead drops but not being quite as careful as he normally would. He imagined the surveillance team – and he knew they were there, they could not not be there, his departure from the Chambers had been too obviously stage-managed for them to ignore it – arriving flustered, catching up, seeing him looking for somewhere to stash – or collect – something. What could he be planning? What could be going on in his mind? What could he possibly be going to do later? He imagined Mr Self snorting at all this but being unable to ignore it, just in case. Rudi was so obviously, transparently, taking the piss, but how to be certain? Could it be a double-bluff...?

  So he spent a leisurely hour in the park, then he picked up his pace again and walked down to Victoria, and from there onto the Embankment for a nice calm stroll back to the Temple and Smithson’s Chambers, where Mr Self was waiting with a barbed glance and a flustered and busy Mrs Gabriel was waiting with a cold collation – a couple of cold chicken drumsticks, some thickly-sliced ham, doorsteps of white bread, salted butter, and a pot of tea – and a request to please stay out of my way for the rest of the day, please, sir. Rudi smiled. Been a bad boy. Sent to bed without my dinner.

  On the way up to his room, carrying a tray laden with Mrs Gabriel’s efforts at supper, he saw Mr Self again, and the look that passed between them was so freighted with meaning and nuance that it could have won a Nobel Prize for Literature, or at least an Oscar. It was a look, finally, of acknowledgement, of recognition. They smiled at each other. Mr Self’s smile was ghastly. It made Rudi’s heart lift like a dirigible.

  BUT IN THE end, the day had merely been mischief, a diversion from the creeping boredom that had been gathering around him. It had been fun, in an anarchic kind of way, but now it was over and he was contemplating his cold collation, he felt a bit low, almost post-coital. Annoying his hosts had been terribly gratifying at the time, but it hadn’t actually achieved anything.

  He took up Brad Pitt again, and read while the antique streetlamps outside came on and the noises of Mrs Gabriel clattering about trying to clean up downstairs were gradually replaced by an expectant silence and a scent of roasting meat and boiling vegetables mushrooming up through the Chambers, and then, quite slowly, the increasing hubbub of a dinner party getting into gear in the rooms beneath his feet.

  Rudi lay on his bed, reading by the light of the little green-tasselled bedside lamp, listening to the murmur of conversation on the floor below, judging the arrival of each course by lulls in the noise. It sounded as if quite a few bigwigs and MPs and assorted top hats had responded to Mr Bauer’s invitation.

  At some point between the main course and dessert, Rudi got up from the bed and went over to the door of his room. He opened
the door quietly and stepped out onto the landing.

  Smithson’s Chambers, like the other Chambers on King’s Bench Walk, occupied a building on six floors. The ground floor was where the main business of the Chambers was conducted – interviews with clients, administration and so on. The first, second and third floors were accommodation. Bedrooms, dining rooms, sitting rooms, the kitchen. The sixth floor was a chaotic space under the eaves of the roof, piled haphazardly with old furniture and dusty rolls of carpet and cardboard boxes of ancient ribbon-tied legal files.

  The floor below that was a tiny maze of quiet corridors lined with closed and locked doors. Rudi had scoped it out, by degrees, in his first couple of weeks here. There were no obvious surveillance devices in the corridors, and none of the less obvious ones, and an open saunter around the fifth floor one evening had prompted no reaction from any of the other occupants of the Chambers. Which was not in and of itself any proof, of course.

  Rudi walked calmly around the fifth floor, examining the locked doors. There was dust on some of them, in spite of Mrs Gabriel’s best efforts, but two of them were clean and shiny, their big brass escutcheons scratched by generations of badly-aimed keys. He unlocked one with a biro and the hook broken off a coat hanger and turned the handle slowly. Nothing obvious on the frame. No wires. No contact spots, shiny or matt. He pushed the door open, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him, all in one movement.